Europe In April (Unabridged)

4-30-09 Frankfurt

2009-05-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

This is it - our last full day on the Continent. We had competing priorities - to try and squeeze in as much fun as possible in our final moments, and to try to stay rested and not ruin a good time by being tired and sore. This is a delicate balancing act, one which usually errs on the side of the former.

An internet review of our hotel said that the free breakfast was only cornflakes, so we opted to pay for a nice sugary breakfast at Starbucks. Here as usual, we try our best to speak German, but the staff always act annoyed and switch to English. My pronunciation could use a little work but Natasha's sounds perfect, and yet people act like they cannot understand us. We'd like to practice and get better but people seem intent on forcing us to speak English.

In Frankfurt we found the Film Museum, which happened to be having an H.R. Giger exhibit. We saw tons of antique cameras, special effects, the original robot from the silent film Metropolis, and of course, the Giger exhibit.

Outside we found this giant Euro sign, which we understand to be outside the official bank of the European Union.
Also, the architecture of this mall, called the MyZeil Centre, was intriguing. We found out later that it was designed by the Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas. The windows apparently have to be cleaned by workers using mountain climbing gear to get inside these strange "tunnels" that snake through the building.
Natasha found her favorite copy yet of Alice in Wonderland in a small bookstore over the river. It was a little expensive, so we decided to see if we could find a more reasonable one somewhere else. We saw a Turkish restaurant on a boat moored to the side of the river. As the day wore on, we were not having much luck finding bookstores, and the ones we did find did not have copies of Alice in Wonderland. Finally we decided to go back to the store, only to find that it had closed 90 minutes earlier. This put a damper on the day.
Once again we had walked ourselves sore, but it was worth it. We returned to the hotel.

4-29-09 Oslo to Frankfurt

2009-05-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

We bid goodbye to fair Norway today. My Norwegian friend had given us a 50 NOK bill when he visited us in Seattle, so we returned the favor by leaving him a US dollar (which is only $1 compared to about $7 that 50 NOK is worth, but we did our best). Most of the day was spent in uneventful travel - a walk to the train station in Drammen, then a train to the Torp airport, an easy flight to Frankfurt, a long bus ride to the Frankfurt train station, and then a short train ride to the hotel.

One thing about the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is that they have a really large store that sells nothing but magazines - but magazines in dozens of languages and on every subject imaginable. As is common in Europe, the pornographic magazines are on full display and well within the grasp of anyone who might want them.

We found to our surprise that our hotel is right on the edge of Frankfurt's red light district! In fact, there was a strip club and sex shop right next door. This didn't affect our stay at all, because Frankfurt's sex industry is legal and tightly regulated, and therefore doesn't make for the same seedy and crime-ridden environment you might find elsewhere.

Our Frankfurt hostel room had a private shower and free wifi. Whatever else a room has, those two things make it a king's mansion compared to some of the places we've stayed in. They even have paper towels (something I hadn't seen in many weeks)!!!

4-28-09 Oslo

2009-05-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

I've heard many things about Oslo over the years, some good and some bad, but everyone will agree on one thing: this place is expensive. More on that later.

It was a relatively short train ride to Karl Johan's Square in central Oslo. This is near the centers of government and major universities. We happened to be there while some Canadian dignitaries were visiting, so Canadian flags were raised all along the main street in front of the palace (Norway has a king!) and parliament building. Throughout the day we would catch glimpses of fast driving limosuines with police escorts, but we never did figure out exactly what was going on.

Our first stop in Oslo was their National Gallery, where several paintings of Norway's best known painter, Edvard Munch, are held. This one of the places that Munch's famous painting The Scream keeps getting stolen from (the other being the Munch Museum, which we did not visit). We got to see their Scream (multiple copies exist) as well as The Day After.

I can only speak for the time I was actually in Oslo, so perhaps it isn't like this all the time, but Oslo repeated a pattern we noticed in Europe: the farther south you go, the more reckless and chaotic everything is, and the further north, the quieter and more orderly things are. Oslo was a big city, but it wasn't crowded with people or traffic. People drove relatively slowly and didn't honk at each other as is the case in most other big cities I've been in, both in the US and in Europe. I could get used to this.

Now, the expense. Although eating at McDonald's in every country had thus far failed to be a rich cultural experience, we couldn't just stop at the last country. We found one nearby and had a relatively simple meal. The food was exactly the same as it was everywhere - except for the startling difference in price. We had double cheeseburgers, small fries, and small sodas, which would run about $8 in the US. When we looked at our reciept and converted the currency, we found that we had just paid over $20 for the same meal!

Next, we had ourselves a little adventure. My friend was at work in Drammen, and he was supposed to call us to arrange a meeting place somewhere in Oslo so he could show us around. Unfortunately, Natasha's phone died, leaving us with no way to contact him. We tossed a few ideas around, and one of us half jokingly suggested that if we could find a Mac store we could borrow their charger for a few minutes. Lo and behold, there was a Mac store right next door to the McDonalds.

We went in there and found the iPod Touches on their charging docks. The docks are universal, meaning they will charge an iPhone if you have the right insert for the dock. Luckily, if you remove the iPod insert, you can just sort of sit the iPhone on the leads and it will be unsteady, but will charge. We pretended to fumble with it for a few minutes before a salesperson asked us if we needed help. We then stalled him as long as possible, asking about the charger. When he said they didn't have docks with a first generation iPhone dock insert, we stalled him longer asking where we could find one. He proceded to give us very complicated directions in broken English, which we had him repeat for clarification several times.

By the time we got out of there, the phone had been charged just long enough for a few minutes' conversation, which we used to get ahold of my friend and arrange a meeting time and place. We had just enough time before he would arrive to go to the Resistance Museum. This was a small museum dedicated to Norwegian resistance to the Nazi invasion and occupation during WWII. It contained several dioramas and historical artifacts, including a sculpture of WWII rifles all bound together, pointing at the incoming visitor as if to drive home the peril of the time.

After this, we met up with my friend. We were supposed to meet up with another friend of mine from Anarchy Online, but he turned out to be busy with work. My friend's plan was to go bowling, either in Oslo or Drammen. We looked for a place to bowl in Oslo, and found one - in the basement of the Hard Rock Cafe. The entire room was lit with screaming black lights and flourescents, and the "bowling" turned out to be a kind of virtual game where you roll a real bowling ball down half a lane and then a computer figures out which pins you would have hit and displays it on a screen. It was noisy, crowded, and expensive. We decided to go back to Drammen instead.

Why is there a statue of a tiger in front of the train station?

We took the train back to Drammen and went to the bowling alley. My friend promptly beat us in two games, then beat me at air hockey as well (which nobody has ever been able to do consistently. Amanda comes close!). As we were leaving, Natasha and I were shocked to discover that two games of bowling for three people came to $60!!! Norway is a great place, but if you visit, come loaded with cash.

Also of note, we discovered a soda that is excellent, called Villa Champagnebrus (which is a kind of carbonated vanilla drink, tastes similar to scotch&soda but not quite the same thing). Later on, we visited a Norwegian import store in Seattle to see if we could find this stuff, but the lady there said that whenever she tries to order it, they only send her boxes of expired bottles. She can only get it when she goes to Norway personally around Christmas. A shame we won't be around here then.

4-27-09 London to Drammen

2009-05-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

It was time for us to leave Isles behind for this trip. We had to board a bus to the airport around 5am. We changed some money at one of the relatively expensive places in the airport, and enjoyed a short and easy flight to the Torp airport in Norway. At the airport, we saw the duty-free shop (selling mostly alcohol) but the lines were too long and we didn't really need anything that badly. We ate something that resembled a hot dog at the airport before continuing our journey.

From Torp, we caught a bus to a train station that was little more than a few benches by the tracks, and boarded the train which took us into the town of Drammen. We had picked Drammen because we were able to stay with another friend of mine from Anarchy Online, which helped us with the otherwise unbearable cost of living in Norway. My friend was still at work, which left us wandering in Drammen with our luggage for a few hours until he got off.

We crossed a bridge into Drammen's shopping district, found a few malls and a few bookstores. I bought a Rubik's Cube (I knew my old one was wrecked and I needed something to keep myself busy), which I paid the standard obscenely high price for. Natasha found yet another bookstore while I waited outside, trying to remember how to solve the cube.

My friend finally got off work and met us back near the bridge. We dropped our stuff off at his apartment and then we ate some lunch at Subway (which is exactly as it is back home, as far as I could tell). He then took us grocery shopping, where we bought some fascinating Norwegian products such as Trollbrus (a sugary strawberry soda-like drink) and some chocolate with a very high milk content which my friend had introduced us to when he visited Seattle a few months earlier.

Video game nerds may be interested in this item, a replica of Cloud's sword from FFVII, which my friend imported from Canada:

Back at his apartment, we Skyped his girlfriend back in Vancouver, BC, and ordered a pizza for dinner. A local pizza place calls their sausage and pepperoni "Stars and Stripes." Over pizza, I had a chance to read their version of Calvin and Hobbes, dubbed "Tommy og Tigern":

4-26-09 London Day 5

2009-05-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

In the morning we took a short visit to Buckingham Palace, which is widely denounced in the tourism literature as an underwhelming experience. Today, at least, there was a marathon going. Other than the historical significance of the site, the literature is quite right. There isn't much to do or see here.

Since the British drive on the wrong side of the road, they are compelled to point out to tourists which way they should look for oncoming traffic (and this really does help, trust me, as it is not so easy to reverse years of ingrained behavior):

After that we went to the Tate Britain, to see one of Natasha's favorite painters, John William Waterhouse. We were disappointed to find that they only have one and it was on loan. There was plenty of other interesting stuff to see, including...Rothko. I've tried and tried to appreciate this type of art before, but time and time again I am left in dismay when I see it. To someone without an art history background, these appear to be simply shapes on a canvas. I must confess I have little formal art education, so perhaps I'm missing something important, but I think I understand what this art is trying to convey, and I still think it is shallow and self-indulgent. It seems more like a big joke that everyone is in on except me. Nevertheless, I keep trying my very best to give it a fair shake.

Later we saw 4 bookstores on one street in the Theatre District (London's version of Broadway). We finally found cupcakes at a coffee shop, which weren't very good compared to those back home but hit the spot anyway.

4-25-09 London Day 4

2009-05-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the British Library, home to some of the world's greatest literary treasures. We were able to see the Gutenberg Bible, some of the original Magna Carta documents, originals of the Brontës, Woolf, some of Leonardo da Vinci's sketches, old Zoroastrian religious texts, very old copies of the Qur'an, and the King's Library, an enormous collection of 60,000 books owned by English kings.

Unfortunately, three of the things we came to see, namely Beowulf, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and most importantly, the originals of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland, were on loan. This had happened to us a few times already (see Florence Day 2 when Machiavelli's tomb was covered in scaffolding) so it was a little easier to bear, but still disappointing.

Attached to the Library was the British Library Centre for Conservation, where old and damaged books are taken to be restored and stabilized for storage, exhibit, and loaning. Tours were by appointment only, so we had to be content with their 1 room "museum" which had plenty of interactive exhibits, videos of restoration techniques on loop, examples of restored works, information about sources of damage and repairs made, and more. For a book geek, this is a playground.

Parting ways with the British Library, we headed down to Bloomsbury to check out a small bookshop called Collinge & Clark, that served as the backdrop for a British TV show we like called Black Books. We arrived at the store (which was closed, thankfully), and found it to be unassuming, small, and specializing in antiquarian books. We got some shots of Natasha out front just for kicks :)

Earlier I promised a bit of info about the street names in London. The thing about London is that street names can change without warning, often from block to block. As we were trying to navigate our way to the British Museum, we walked down one street that changed names 4 times in 4 blocks. My hypothesis is that they have more famous dead people than they have streets, so they rename streets midway to fit more of them in. But I digress :)

In the British Museum we found the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon friezes, and much more. Normally the museum carries a preserved corpse from Northern England, called the Lindow Man, who is suspected to have been killed as a human sacrifice in a Druid religious ceremony. However, like Chaucer and Beowulf, he too was on loan that day.

That night, we decided to try the pizza place near our hotel. The pizza was average. What was exceptional was the dessert - the menu had a warning that the "Chocolate Challenge" was for two or more people to share, and the price wasn't terrible, so we decided to go for it. This is what we ended up with:

If I recall correctly, this has chocolate cake, chocolate syrup, vanilla ice cream, layered with more syrup, whipped cream, chocolate discs and more syrup. We finished about 2/3 of it. I could have continued but I was sure that I would have poisoned myself in the process. Be warned, America is not the only place where hedonism takes on fantastic proportions :)

4-24-09 London Day 3

2009-04-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

Today we were set to see Romeo & Juliet at the Globe Theatre. Knowing we had to stand in the cheap seats throughout the entire production, we decided to take it easy most of the day. We visited a few bookstores in the shopping district, one of which was the largest in the UK (called Waterstone's). We might have actually bought something if they carried used books (which I have sworn to buy exclusively whenever possible). We then went to the post office to ship some of our excess baggage back to ourselves - mostly guidebooks and souvenirs. This cost a fortune, as you might expect. After everything we've done on our trip, this little bit was enough to exhaust us, so we went back to the hotel for a midday nap.

We got to the Globe Theatre just in time. The actors and actresses were amazing - this night was the debut for the girl playing Juliet! She messed up one line but did a fantastic job otherwise (so far as I know, as I am not a theater critic). We stood through the intermission, which happened very late in the play, after Romeo's banishment and the beginning of their plan to reunite him with Juliet. Our bodies could not take the punishment of standing in place in the cold for any longer, so we left the play early.

I had a headache when we got back to the hotel, so we went to the drugstore for some pain medication. I was able to buy 100 ibuprofens for 0.35£!!! That's like 50 cents or so! Some things about Europe are just so much better than they are in the US.

Tired and hurting, we opted for a little comfort food at McDonalds, even though we had already gotten our once-per-country visit out of the way. We ordered a sandwich called the "M," which was basically a beef burger with a hard bread bun. It tasted OK, just a little bland because of a lack of condiments.

4-23-09 London, Oxford

2009-04-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

Today we took a bus out to Oxford to see the campus and museums. The bus had wifi on board (probably via satellite or something), which worked after some trouble. To our chagrin, we noticed that the camera battery was dead. If we were going to have any pictures in all of Oxford, they would have to be cellphone pics :(

When we got there, we wandered into a cafe to get a drink and noticed that the place had an Alice in Wonderland theme! This is one of Natasha's favorite books (along with the illustrations). Oxford is where the books were written by Lewis Carroll, so the town has some of the history embedded in it. This place even had Alice themed desserts such as "mad chocolate cake."

We paid to get into Christ Church because somewhere in that place was a stained glass window that had Alice in Wonderland pictures in it. Many famous people have studied there, including John Locke. Eventually we found the window - a shame the camera battery was dead, for my cellphone does not do well in low light and far off targets. This is as good as it gets:

We tried to go to the Oxford library but we didn't want to pay the exorbitant fee they wanted for entry and a tour. Instead we checked out some free exhibitions and bought a few postcards at the gift shop. In this picture, Natasha proudly demonstrates that women are allowed inside (which was not the case in Virgina Woolf's time, for instance):

Next we wandered around in a 4 story bookstore for awhile. They had some antiquarian books, which I always like to look at (but would never want to own!). After this it was lunchtime. It was then that I tried the only food item that I really hated in all of my trip - a pasty (the 'a' pronounced as in 'cat'). This is a food that goes back to the days of the industrial revolution, when miners had to eat their lunch down in the mine without washing their hands. The "handle" on the outside was so that they could hold the thing with their dirty hand and eat the rest of it, then toss out the part they were holding without eating (too much) coal or dirt. Anyway, mine was truly awful - I may have just gotten the wrong kind, because Natasha liked hers. I had what was supposed to be lamb & mint, something I absolutely love back home. Instead it tasted like...unsweetened spearmint on potatoes and I couldn't taste any lamb. Yech.

After lunch we went to the Science museum, where we got to see old microscopes, compasses, gloves, chemistry sets, and things like that. They had a glass-framed chalkboard on which Einstein had written one of his equations for a lecture, so we got to see his handwriting in the flesh. While we were there, a teacher was taking a group of boys in school uniforms through, explaining things, but mostly what Einstein's equation was all about. This was really intriguing until he ended his lecture with something about how science is still interesting even though it is eclipsed by theology. Those poor kids will have a tough go of it in the modern world.

After that, there was still the Natural History museum - dinosaurs! They didn't seem to have any real dinosaurs, just casts made from molds of real ones, but they were still awesome. They had a life-size T-Rex skeleton looming over the place! Around the walls the entire history of life was displayed, starting from the trilobytes, winding around the entire room to end up at modern man.

We couldn't stay long, however, because we were worried that the Oxford University Press would close, and it was nearing 5pm. We hurried down to the Press only to find that it isn't open to the public, and their small Print museum is open by prior appointment only. Not only that, but the bookstore that the Press runs is a few blocks away (very close to the Science museum, we had missed it by only a block or so) and was closed.

Still, it was an exciting day. We took the bus back to the hotel, which by now had working internet. For dinner we decided to try the famous fish & chips - Natasha *hates* fish and I don't normally care for it, but, when in Rome...

Natasha managed to actually eat some of the fish, and I ate most of my portion. We were given too much :)

4-22-09 Nottingham to London

2009-04-23T06:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've let on to this much, but I'd been sick with a cold this entire trip. It was today that I finally woke up without cold symptoms. No more carrying medicine around with me everywhere I go!

We noticed that all the tables in the cafe downstairs have steak sauce bottles on them, each of which touts itself as the perfect accompaniment to all breakfast foods, including eggs, bacon, and everything else. Really?

The owner of the hotel apparently screwed up our books, and we had to pay for an additional night's stay in cash on the spot because they had only charged our card for one night, and the card reader was back at her main office and not at the hotel. Can you imagine something like this back home? Truly an adventure.

The train ride to London was easy, full of scenery, and relatively short. When we got to London, we were greeted with something we had been warned about - transportation workers on strike. The Underground line to our hotel was shut down for that day due to the strike, so we had to take a roundabout passage, switching lines and going a little out of the way. Not too bad though. We were told to expect more strikes, especially in France, but this was the first one we'd come across.

Finding our hotel was a little troublesome, as we had forgotten to write the address down, and London street names can be a pain (more on this later). When we finally got checked in, we found to our surprise that, for the second time on our whole trip, we could expect to have wireless internet in our room. The first time this happened was back in Munich, and as I mentioned before, that connection was almost unusably slow. Fate being what it is, the hotel's internet connection was down and wouldn't be repaired until the next day. No worries, though, I was basically caught up on everything by then, having learned to get everything done quickly whenever I got the chance.

We went to Westminster Abbey. Outside, there was a huge protest (completely filling a fenced-in open square about the size of a city block). There were cops everywhere. The protest was apparently related to violence in Sri Lanka. Some of the protesters were on a hunger strike. At this point I didn't know much about the Tamil Tigers, only that they were a rebel group fighting the Sri Lankan government for sovereignty. When I did look this up later, I found to my horror that the Tamil Tigers are listed as a terrorist group, and have an abhorrent record as the first group to use suicide bombers, and the first group to use women as suicide bombers, as well as a host of other atrocities. Without more information, I'm not going to delve into that much, suffice to note that it is hard to imagine what the Tamils must have suffered that would justify such horror.

On a lighter note, we noticed on a British TV show that ice cream cones here come with a little chocolate stick in them. We finally found out that this is called a "flake" and that it tastes a little like old cake frosting. Not my thing.

We took a short boat tour across the Thames river. On the boat was an amusing tour guide who kept things humorous as he pointed out sights along the river. He used what I think is the funniest euphemism for prostitutes that I've ever heard: a lady of "negotiable affection." Too funny.

The HMS Belfast

The Tower Bridge

As part of our mission to eat at McDonalds in every country, we tried some from the store in the train station. I was expecting them to call the fries "chips," but alas, in true American style, they were called fries. They tasted exactly the same too. So did everything else. Be warned if you ever go to Europe, eating at McDonalds is not a cultural experience anymore.

4-21-09 Nottingham & Eastwood

2009-04-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

I felt a little adventurous this morning, so I opted for the (in)famous British breakfast. This one is a milder form (no blood sausage or blood pudding, thankfully), but Natasha still found it unappealing. It's just baked beans and some other relatively normal breakfast foods! Tons of protein!

Today was our D.H. Lawrence day. For those that don't know, he's a post World War I writer who emphasized nature and emotion in the midst of a dirty and calculating Industrial Revolution. He is one of Natasha's favorite authors. We took a bus out to Eastwood, the town of his childhood, where they keep several commemerative sites in his honor.

We saw a museum set up in the house where he was born, which was stocked with several items from the period. The guide gave us some idea of what life was like for a family back then - dirty, cramped, cold, and rough. We thought we had been roughing it by not having our own bathroom - this would be a whole new idea of roughing it. Think of four kids sharing half a bed, the other half rented out to a vagabond. It escapes my imagination.

They also had a heritage museum that was dedicated mostly to the way of life during the Industrial Revolution. Eastwood used to be a coal miner's town, which greatly influenced everything about life there. We found out about the wages, injury rates (1 in 5 was put out of work for several weeks due to an injury some time in their career) and more.

We had tea & coffee at the White Peacock (named for one of DHL's novels).

After this, we took the bus back to Nottingham, but not before stopping at the IKEA store on the way. Technically there is an IKEA close to Seattle, but we've never bothered to visit. After a quick browse, we hit up their Swedish cafe, and tried some Swedish cakes (two were great, the other had a green frosting that tasted like death). I also tried some lingonberry soda. Not bad!

The University of Nottingham is home to archives of DHL's work, so Natasha wanted to see if we could get access to some of it. We went down to the university library and tried to get in. Turns out the stuff is spread out over multiple campuses, and we didn't have time to get to them before they closed. Still, it was interesting to check out a British university.

We knew now that the whole town of Nottingham shuts down early, so we made it to a Chinese restaurant, ate dinner, and then went back to the hotel to call it a night.

4-20-09 Paris and Nottingham

2009-04-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

After a relatively long stay in Paris, it was time to move on to Britain. We had been putting off mailing our postcards until today, and the few hours between breakfast and the bus to our airport were the only time we would have to mail them inside France. The post office happened not to be open yet, so we had to wait about 30 minutes outside. While there, an Egyptian man hailed us and tried to practice his English with us for awhile. He was pretty aggressive and liked to put his face really close to yours (which I hear is typical of Arabs? not sure) which was uncomfortable, but still, it was a neat experience.

The flight to Nottingham was only 45 minutes long, probably the smallest amount of time I've ever spent on an airplane. The flight was really cheap too - Europe has several small airlines (such as Ryanair) that fly to and from small, rural airports for prices in the 10€ to 20€ range. I wish they had this in the US.

On the bus from the East Midlands airport to the town of Nottingham, we passed a nuclear power plant - the first I've ever seen in my life.

We decided to take it easy today. After checking into our hotel, we wandered around for just a few hours. Downtown we found another Muji store. Nottingham is a relatively small town, so we were surprised to see one here. We went to the tourism office to get bus directions for our destinations the next day. We got back to our hotel and relaxed for a few hours, then left again to try and find food and some toiletries that we were running low on.

Lo and behold, this entire town shuts down at 5:30pm. Except for a few pubs, every place of business in the area was closed between 5:30 and 6. Unable to find anything open except for fast food places, we returned to our hotel.

Back at our hotel, we noticed that the building had a lounge with a television in it. We happened to catch the British version of Nigella Lawson's cooking show, which is kilometers beyond its American counterpart in sophistication. At this point, we were very tired and not very hungry, so we decided to save a couple pounds by going to bed early without dinner.

4-19-09 Paris Day 5

2009-04-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today was our day to check out some historical sites related to some of our favorite French philosophers and other writers living in Paris. We happened across an outdoor bird store as we left the subway station, which was really neat. We then took a short walk around Notre Dame cathedral, and made our way to the left bank of the Seine, where some booksellers sell books from small metal boxes attached to the stone wall beside the river. One of these sellers had a really neat drawing of a cat posing as William Blake’s God. It was a little too expensive and would have been difficult to transport, or else I would have bought it.

From there we visited the Shakespeare & Co bookstore, which has a rich literary history. We then found the two cafes frequented by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and many others. These were the Les Deux Magots, the Cafe de Flore, and the Brassiere Lipp.

After this, we visited the Cimetière du Montparnasse to catch a few more famous tombs. These included Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Man Ray, and many more.

After this, we had a few hours before our scheduled rendevouz with my old friend from Anarchy Online. We decided we would try to interact with history a little by eating lunch at one of those famous cafes we saw earlier. We picked the Les Deux Magots. This turned out to be the most expensive meal of our entire trip (and all told, in all of my recent memory). We were charged 6.50€ for a single drink - a simple glass bottled Coke Lite (what they call Diet Coke in Europe). Our lunch ended up costing 30€ for two drinks and two simple sandwiches. These people know how to milk tourists with an intellectual bent.

Finally, the time arrive to go and visit my old friend. When I started playing Anarchy Online in 2002, Erik was one of the first people I met and befriended in game. We had played together on and off throughout the years. I'd never heard his voice in person (all chat being done via typing) and hadn't spoken to him in a few years, neither of us having played the game in a long time. Still, we were both excited to finally meet.

We got to his apartment and met his wife, children, and friends. The adults spoke very good English, so we had no problems striking up conversations. Erik's little boy Milan (about 6 years old) was a blast to hang out with. He only knew a few words of English, and didn't seem to understand that I didn't know French, so he would go on and on and I could only chuckle and try to figure out what he was saying. By the end of the night he was dressed in a Batman costume and challenging everyone to swordfights with his Sabre-Laser (pronounced sab-ehr las-ehr, French for lightsaber). Natasha tried to fake death in order to stop the fighting, but Milan repeatedly insisted in rapid French that she was only hurt, which took us several minutes to translate.

Erik cooked us up some barbeque chicken and had us drink some Pastis (a liquor flavored with anise, which I am not keen on, but drank to be polite) and some delicious red wine. I don't drink very often, so this was enough to keep me toasty for the rest of the evening. We stayed up until almost 11 talking about politics and gaming and all manner of things. This was probably the best night of the trip for me. The whole experience was mindblowing.

4-18-09 Paris Day 4

2009-04-19T15:23:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the area of Paris called Montemart, recently made famous in the movie Amelie. We made sure to get a picture of Natasha using the viewfinder like Nino uses in the movie, and got some shots of the area from up on the hill.

The way up and down the hill to the church is lined with scammers that try to fit a cotton bracelet around your arm and then charge you for it. I barely missed them on the way up – one of them grabbed my arm and I had to shake it off violently. This put me in a bad enough mood that, when it happened again on the way down, I actually got rough with one of them.

I consider this my “Underground Man” moment (c.f. Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground). I was filled with a feeling of rage and the burning desire to have justice done. A couple was walking in front of us and one of the scammers stopped the female and was trying to prevent her from moving around them. I walked up and shoved the thief right out of the way. To a person thinking more clearly, what happened next was predictable, and we were probably lucky to get out of there unhurt. What was worse was that afterwards the deed felt pointless and stupid, rather than triumphant. Anyways, in the future I will try harder to let things like this go, knowing how fruitless and unrewarding intervention is. At least I didn’t go spend a fortune on a nice outfit first J

Next we visited the infamous Pigalle (nicknamed “Pig Alley” by WWII GIs), which is Paris’ red light district. We were there in the middle of the day, though, so we were only hassled once about tickets to private entertainment. The guidebooks say that at night this can get quite aggressive. Pigalle also hosts a variety of cheap goods in gift shops, as well as the café front featured in the movie Amelie. We went into this café for lunch, but it turned out to be a ripoff – the front was used in the movie but a stage was built for the inside shots. The inside of this café looks nothing at all like the one in the movie. There isn’t even a tobacconist! The food is outrageously expensive as well. We ordered a “croque madame” which is supposed to be a ham sandwich with an egg inside or on top. We got basically an open faced toasted cheese and ham with no egg (which technically makes it an open-faced "croque-monsieur"). It tasted great, but not good enough for the price. If you liked the movie and you’re in Paris, take some pictures outside and move on.

Those who know me well would scarcely believe what we did next. I got a haircut in Paris! I don’t know any French, so all I could do is give the guy my state ID and point to the picture. The shop we went to was gender separated, which was unusual to me. Only men cut men’s hair, and only women cut women’s, and the areas were divided by a wall, so that there was almost two separate shops. The guy did an excellent job, one of the best I’ve ever had, and for a price comparable to what I pay back home. He even used a razor on the nape of my neck instead of close clippers like they do back home. That was a little unnerving when I figured out what that scraping feeling was J

Finally, we went to a market and bought an éclair, another traditional French dessert. This one surprised us by being cold on the inside, but it was still tasty.

4-17-09 Paris Day 3

2009-04-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Today we took a stroll to the Eiffel Tower. The views from the Park of the Field of Mars surrounding the tower are great, so much so that we didn’t feel the need to pay to go up. The tower was a different color than we expected – it is a light brownish color rather than grey. We got some decent shots from underneath, and then headed toward Les Invalides, which is host to several buildings, including Napoleon's tomb as well as the Musée de l'Armée.

On the way we stopped for a traditional French dessert, a banana and nutella crepe with coffee (aux lait, which is basically what a latte is back home). This was Natasha’s treat, as I have only recently found a taste for nutella. I had a bite, though, and it was good.

My treat was the Musée de l'Armée. Natasha doesn’t really go in for the war and weapons stuff, but this was one of the best parts of Paris for me. We got to see the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte, a whole WWI/WWII history museum (which had a decidedly pro-French bias throughout), and a museum of weapons from the ancient world up through the 20^th century. We saw samurai armor, medieval armor, ship cannons, spears, rifles, and everything else.

Next up was the Musée d'Orsay, which is an Impressionist and Art Nouveau gallery, located in an old train station. On the way we had our first occurrence of a car actually stopping for us to cross the road (Parisian drivers are famous for ignoring pedestrians), and walked past the Seine and the French Parliament.

Finally, to top this busy day off, we hit the parts of the Louvre that we missed the day before. I saw the painting on the cover of my copy Rousseau’s Emile, and a painting of Hector handing off Astyanax to Andromache before he goes to his doomed fight with Achilles. We saw the Mona Lisa again, and it was no less crowded this time. They keep you too far away from the painting to get good pictures of it, but we managed to snap a few. We also took some pictures of the cat from the painting opposite.

We had our one and only French McDonald’s experience to wrap things up. Again, the food is mostly the same everywhere, except that here, when they give you “fry sauce,” it turns out to be tartar sauce. Ugh.

4-16-09 Paris Day 2

2009-04-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today was our first of two visits to the Louvre. It was an especially busy day, apparently because the banks were all closed for a holiday, freeing up thousands of bank employees for a day of recreation, and thus, extra museum visitors.

Having taken a course in Ancient Greek, I was excited to see some of the Greek pottery, which bears inscriptions in Greek. I was hoping to be able to read some of them. It turns out they are almost unintelligible, and they are written in all upper case letters and usually upside down or backwards. They were very interesting though. I noticed a few kalos inscriptions, which meant that the vase was commissioned by a lovestruck patron for the purpose of being given to a love interest as a gift. The word kalos means “beautiful” or “noble” in Greek. The scenes on the vases ran the gamut of Greek history, from Homer to the Peloponnesian war, and some mythology, including the Amazons.

I also discovered that I like Romantic painting. However much I disagree with Romantic authors and some of their philosophers, the Romantics knew how to get a rise out of a viewer of a painting. One artist I took a particular interest in was Jacques-Louis David, who for a time served as a painter (or propaganda artist) for Napoleon.

That was mostly it for our first day to the Louvre. We saved most of the modern art and the Egyptian/Assyrian stuff for a later day. We went off to find some coffee, only to find that the French idea of coffee is the same as that of the Italians – only espresso, and very expensive. McDonalds had a decent café inside, and their word for an Americano was a “café alonge.” It is extremely difficult to find aspartame sweeteners in Europe (I know it is toxic, but it is what we are used to), so I skimmed the whipped cream off Natasha’s drink and put it in my coffee. This turned out to be the best cup of coffee I’ve had in Europe. They still can’t hold a candle to the local Seattle stuff.

The second part of our day was reserved for the Champs-Elysees, which starts at the Louvre and goes all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. Along the way are some fountains and a commemorative obelisk, taken from Egypt, and placed on the spot where Marie Antoinette was made “a head shorter on top.”

When we reached the Arc, we happened to be there just in time for the daily rekindling of the flame atop the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which lies directly beneath the Arc. This must have been a special occasion, as some monks were present in addition to some war veterans, politicians, and soldiers armed with assault rifles and bayonets. We didn’t have a great view but it was still neat to watch. This may have had something to do with the bank holiday, but we scoured the news and couldn’t find any information about it.

4-15-09 Paris Day 1

2009-04-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

Today we finally experienced the fabled small European breakfast – just one croissant, juice, and coffee. No matter, it was still enough to get the day started. After finding our hotel, our first order of business was to visit Pere-Lachaise, a nearby cemetery containing the graves of some famous historical figures. Paris has several of these sites, but we were only able to visit two during our stay here.

At this cemetery, we found the graves of Colette, Sarah Bernhardt, Maria Callas, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and some others. Seeing these graves can be a quieting experience, but it can also be a nonevent, depending on your mood and your connection to the person. Most of the famous people continue to have fresh flowers, poems, and memorabilia placed on their tombstones by fans. Other not-so-famous people’s tombstones are mossy with neglect. Some crypts are littered with trash, their windows broken and carved text fading. Only fame preserves, and even that will be fleeting for all but a very few.

When we were at Proust’s grave, a landscaping crew was noisily shredding some tree branches they had just pruned. Solemnity is not always guaranteed, even in the most solemn of places. Work must go on.

This cemetery was also host to several WWII monuments – one for each of the worst concentration camps that French citizens were sent to, and several more to the victims of terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Even though relatively few French citizens were carted off during the war (I believe it was in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds or millions), these monuments were extremely evocative and emotionally hard hitting, perhaps even more so than visiting one of the camps itself.

The monuments to members of the French Resistance movement were also moving. They brought to life the ideas of French philosophers such as Camus and Sartre, who were victims of the occupation and worked with the Resistance. According to them, none of us is immune to hard and sometimes deadly choices. Any one of us could be put in the position of those French citizens, under a foreign and tyrannical occupation, and any one of us could be forced to choose between fighting and dying painfully, and cooperating at a loss of all dignity. According to Camus, trying to escape the choice was effectively choosing. Few of us can imagine this predicament, yet we are all susceptible to it.

After this, it was time to take it easy for awhile. The internet was accessible down in the lobby of our hotel (which doubled as a café), so we were able to take turns getting caught up on email and the like, without the rush of timed access as had been the case in all of Italy. We also got to take a shower for the first time in a few days, as the accommodations in Rome had been less than desirable.

In some cities breakfast is made available in the lobby of whatever hotel you are staying in. In some cases this will be included with the price of the stay, as in Rome, and sometimes it will cost extra, as it did in Munich. However, the cost in Paris was a staggering 7€ a plate. After a little wandering, we managed to find a small market and buy some baguettes, nutella, and fruit juice, which was enough to eat breakfast for three days, all for a measly 5€.

We soon discovered that 7€ a plate for breakfast was actually an average to low price for a meal at most restaurants in Paris. The prices for standard meals were usually much higher. There are some exceptions – restaurants will usually sell Paninis for 5€ apiece, and this tends to be enough food to keep you going. There are also Turkish restaurants that sell food at comparable prices. To eat a real French meal was, however, beyond our means on this trip.

4-14-09 Rome Day 3

2009-04-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

We checked out of our hotel and made our way to the subway station, catching our last glimpses of the majestic Colosseum. We thought we had left pretty early so as not to wait in a line at the Vatican Museum. When we got there, however, the line was insanely long. It was easily 500m long, extending around a block and a half with a large snaking portion. We thought that this would be one of those “hours long” lines that we hear horror stories about (get reservations for museums, people!), but to our amazement we got all the way through in about 20 minutes.

I’m not sure if we just didn’t spend enough time on the Vatican website or if they just aren’t very good webmasters, but when we got to the ticket office the price was substantially more than we had expected. We’ve managed to cut enough corners on food and such to be able to afford the price, however. The price was 14€ a ticket. It turned out to be well worth it.

Today was the day I saw my first dead human being in person – there was a mummified woman lying in a sarcophagus in the first wing of the museum. I don’t feel any more adjusted to the inevitability of death as a result – something about the age of the corpse gives it a sterilizing emotional distance.

We found busts of some important ancient Greek personalities:

This golden sphere in one of the courtyards, created for the museum in the 90s, is one of the few pieces of modern art that I’ve actually liked:

The culmination of hours of wandering through this museum was, for us, the chance to see Raphael’s School of Athens in person.

After this room we were funneled into the Sistine Chapel with large crowds. If you ever visit, bring binoculars – the famous ceiling is very high up and the paintings are relatively small. We weren’t able to get good photographs with the light and distance being what they were. The Last Judgment on one of the walls is much bigger and easier to see.

The Vatican museum actually has some information on its exhibits, so at first we were wondering if our 10€ guidebook was worth the price. Eventually, however, it proved its worth, especially in the Sistine, where it names and describes the paintings and their features. In the Sistine Chapel there are repeated admonitions to be silent and respectful since the room is supposed to be holy, but this is almost universally ignored – the room is a madhouse of chatting crowds and screaming children.

Once outside, we managed to get a few pictures of some Swiss guards:

Finally, we found a laundromat, which was different than the ones I’m used to in that a person actually does your laundry while you wait, and gives you some complimentary internet access time on their computers, all for a slightly inflated price of 10€ for a single load.

Our laundry was done in time for us to catch our night train to Paris. At the end of our time in Italy and in the days since, we’ve reflected on our experience there. We’ve found that Italy is a place of crazy drivers (especially the mopeds), rude and pushy pedestrians, and indolent shopkeepers. The food is delicious but expensive, the lunches long and service slow. There is no such thing as an orderly line at a ticket counter or cashier, only a chaotic mob pushing and shoving to the front. In general, it seems like everyone is in a frenzied, panicky rush to get wherever it is they are going so that, when they get there, they can sit around and relax for several hours. To me, it’s a madhouse. Still, there were great sights to see, and the whole experience was incredible.

4-13-09 Rome Day 2

2009-04-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today was the day after Easter, so we were hoping that the Vatican Museum would reopen. We took the subway there just to check (this is really fast and easy, so it wasn’t much trouble). This was the first subway we’ve been on that runs part of its route above ground – this one crosses the Tiber River above ground. The windows were dirty, but it was still a sight.

Alas, the Vatican Museum was closed that day. No matter, there was plenty left to see in Rome. We took a trip to the Trevi Fountain, which was made famous in the movie La Dolce Vita. It is a pretty awesome sight.

Then we went down to the Pantheon, which used to be a Roman monument to their gods. It has since been almost thoroughly Christianized. Most of the pagan gods have been replaced by saints, and a chapel has been placed inside. The dome of the Pantheon is a famous engineering marvel, and this did not disappoint. I wish that the original pagan statues could have been left alone, but who can blame a culture for being tempted after hundreds of years to leave their mark on the place?

The same was the case with the obelisk out in front of the Pantheon. This was an original Egyptian obelisk, covered in hieroglyphics and brought there by the Romans. It has since been topped off with a cross and decorated around the base with Catholic imagery.

This may seem like a light day, but the distance between these sights meant we were doing a lot of walking.

The Internet is a hard thing to find in Italy – neither of our hotels had it, and Internet cafes are almost impossible to find. We managed to find an internet point in a money changing station, where we paid 1,20€ for 10 minutes on the net. Blazing through email, news, and social networking sites in 10 minutes is a skill that can be learned.

A final thing we noticed today – the city’s sewer grates all read SPQR – which is the ancient Roman acronym meaning Senatus Populusque Romanus (The Senate and the People of Rome). I just thought that was neat.

4-12-09 Rome Day 1

2009-04-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

Today we took a short train ride to Rome (about 2 hours). From the train station we went straight to the subway and took that to the Colosseum stop. As you come up the stairs from this stop the Colosseum itself greets you in all of its magnificence. We took a quick look at the outside, and then walked to our hotel nearby.

When we got there, we found that it was similar to our hotel in Florence, except that this one included breakfast. The lady who met us spoke almost no English, so it was tough going, but eventually we found out that the room wasn’t ready yet but would be in about 30 minutes. We decided to leave our backpacks there and hit the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill right away.

We went through each of these sites. Outside the Colosseum a few locals are always dressed in Legionnaire outfits, charging a fee to have a picture taken with them. We saw the Colosseum itself, which was impressive, and we saw some of the animal bones excavated from the floor, and the remnants of the complicated elevator system in the floor.

The Palatine and the Forum were less enjoyable to me because of the racket museums have going these days. Even though you’ve paid for your ticket, museums have removed all of the information from their exhibits, which forces you to spend an extra 10€ on a guidebook or a tour guide in order to know what you’re looking at. We’ve gotten by just fine up to this point with the materials and research we had done beforehand, but the Forum and the hill were more or less mysterious. The sights there were still awesome, but at times they were just piles of really old bricks.

One thing we were able to discover is that most of the ruins we were looking at were from the later stages of the Roman Empire, somewhere between 300 and 800 A.D. Most of my knowledge of Roman history covers earlier periods, especially the Civil War period around 50 B.C. or so. For example, we found the building where the Roman Senate met, but this wasn’t the same building in which Caesar was murdered, because at that time the Senate was meeting across town.

Most of the time, restaurants near tourist sites are ridiculously expensive, but for the Colosseum this isn’t always the case. We found a row of restaurants near the Colosseum that were all reasonably priced, and we had a nice lunch with the Colosseum in view.

We finally got into our hotel room. One thing I’m starting to notice about Europe is that many, many places haven’t changed their locks in decades – most of them barely work. In our hotel room, the door wouldn’t stay shut unless it was locked, so we had to lock ourselves in our room whenever we were there. The elevator in this building is the old style with an outer and inner door, and the outer door on the first floor is broken shut, so you have to walk up a flight of stairs to get on the elevator up to your floor. It took us a few tries to figure out that the ‘3’ button in the elevator would take us to the 5^th floor where our room was.

We were exhausted as usual (having walked probably 5 miles that day), so we decided if we went to bed early we could skip dinner and save some precious cash.

4-11-09 Florence Day 2

2009-04-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

Since breakfast isn’t included with our lodgings in this city, we were forced to find our own. Rather than try and find a restaurant nearby that was cheap enough, we opted to try and make our own at a market. This worked out great – we were able to put together a decent meal for only 6€ between the two of us. It consisted of gnutella, jam, croissants, bananas, and blood orange juice. We don’t have the facilities for making coffee or we might have had that as well. We do have these little instant espresso shots, but without a way to boil water and with no cream or sugar it just isn’t happening. Probably some lucky person will get one as a gift, since we are tight on money and gifts have to come on the cheap.

On the other hand, a simple can of soda can cost as much as 3.10€ in touristy areas. I forgot what that works out to in USD but it is probably about $5.

Today we went to the Santa Croce where many famous people are entombed. We saw Galileo, Michelangelo, an empty tomb of Dante (his remains have since been transported elsewhere), and Machiavelli, who I was most excited to see. Unfortunately, out of the dozen or so tombs, Machiavelli’s was one of only two that were being restored and were thus covered by scaffolding. I bought a postcard with a decent picture of it as a small consolation.

After this visit we splurged on lunch in the courtyard outside the Santa Croce. We had a bruschetta, which had some delicious tomatoes on it. This was the first time in my entire life that I’ve enjoyed any tomato, ever. We also had a calzone, which was pretty good. We were offered coffee after the meal, something that seems to be common in Europe.

We saw some amusing sights – vendors selling knickknacks on a small towel or sheet laid on the ground, who promptly scoop the whole thing up and book it whenever they see the police coming. Apparently getting a license to sell stuff is too expensive?

After this we hit the famed Uffizi Gallery, home to such masterpieces as Bottecelli’s Spring and The Birth of Venus. We waited in a really long line to walk through a small room called the Tribuna, which has some special significance but, lacking a guide or a tour, we were not sure what it was. One thing about museums like this – not only are they are filled with works of art on the walls and floors, but the ceilings are always entirely painted with dazzling scenes. It is sensory overload to try to take this all in.

After this, we finally found an internet point in the back room of a bookstore and checked our email. The heat is on to get your internet work done with 15 minutes between two people, knowing you won’t have access to it again for at least 24 hours. One of our main goals was to locate Machiavelli's old office, which we had thought was in the Uffizi but unfortunately it wasn't.

We found it in the Palazzo Vecchio. I had a quiet moment with one of the greatest political thinkers of all time. This was easily the highlight of my day.

By dinnertime, we were totally exhausted and near the limit of our daily budget. Almost all of the restaurants around our hotel were closed. Just when we thought all hope of finding dinner was lost, we happened upon a vending machine that microwaves and dispenses small pasta dishes for you. We had a tortellini dish and a panne e prosciutto. For about 3.50€ each, they weren’t bad.

4-10-09 Florence Day 1

2009-04-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

As we made our way from the train station to our hotel, the first thing we noticed is that people here are maniacs on the road. The second thing we noticed is that for every car on the road, there are 3 or 4 mopeds/scooters, entire armies of them, accelerating and swerving like bees in a hive. People screech to halts at red lights, drive in the gutters and on the sidewalks, and honk at anyone who dares to drive safely. The pedestrians are no less daring, darting into the street seemingly unaware of oncoming traffic. The tempo of Florence is *fast*. It was a bit much for me at that point in the trip.

When we got to our hotel, we found out why it’s called a Bed & Bed and not a Bed & Breakfast – not only is there no breakfast, there’s really no staff – just a guy who takes down our information, gives us some “coffee,” and leaves the building. Apparently “coffee” in Italy is just a shot of espresso in a tiny little cup – most of them drink it black this way. To have a cup of coffee the way we drink it, you need to order an Americano (which you can order at any café in the US). I never knew why an Americano was called this until I came here.

Our room came with a dedicated bathroom, which is a plus anywhere. There was no internet, which means these blogs are being posted far after they are written. At this point I figured I could find wifi somewhere to get online, but this proved to be a problem. More on that later.

Windows don’t seem to really shut here – they close but not all the way. I guess the weather must be good here year round. The window in our room opened to a kind of backyard/alley/garden, which is an amazing view and something you really can’t appreciate from the pictures. There were, for better or worse, a half dozen or so cats roaming around on the streets. They were cute, but they tended to fight in the middle of the night.

We ventured out into the city. The first stop was the Duomo, or the Dome. This is the essential feature of the Florence skyline, a large orange dome in the middle of town. We made it to the Dome in no time and got some photographs. We’ve been told the inside isn’t unlike most other churches, and we don’t have the energy to climb the steps to get the view from the top, so we didn’t go inside. Instead we wandered around toward the other city sights.

On the way we found an antique bookstore – they had amazingly old books and luckily their window display happened to be fairy tales, which floored Natasha.

We were hungry and found a McDonalds. I know we said we wouldn’t eat at places like this, but I think that trying it just once per cultural area is a good thing, just to see if there are any local quirks. The fries are just like they are everywhere, but the sandwiches are different. Here they were selling a thing called the CBO (chicken bacon onion), which was so-so, and a Crispy McBacon burger type thing, with an awful kind of orange sauce on it. The sizes on drinks and such had been smaller in Heidelberg and Prague, but in Italy they matched the US sizes.

One of the main attractions in Florence is the Academia, which is the proud host of Michelangelo’s David. Like most European museums so far, the place was teeming with Christian art from the 13^th century onward. The David is a sight to be seen (I got a head rush when I first saw it). They also had a side room with lots of casts of 18^th century nobles. Among them was a cast of the Machiavelli statue that rests outside the Uffizi Gallery.

Our next stop was the Casa di Dante, located in the approximate location of Dante’s home in Florence. I don’t recommend this museum if you aren’t a Dante buff, as it has mountains of information about the political scene at the time, family background, and other biographical miscellany that wouldn’t be interesting to someone unfamiliar with Dante. Nearby was the church that Dante went to, where he supposedly first laid eyes upon his beloved Beatrice.

This museum is where we got our first taste of the Italian “lunch break.” Apparently most Italians take a three hour lunch break and are not keen on punctuality around this point. When we were finished with the museum, we noticed that the gift shop was selling an exclusive poster with the full text of the Divine Comedy plus the entire Dore illustrations for 15€. The shop was closed, so we asked when it would reopen. They told us about 20 minutes, so we sat outside and waited…and waited. 40 minutes later they still weren’t open, so we asked again, and they said 15 more minutes. We waited…after 30 minutes we asked again, and were told just 10 more minutes. The original 20 minutes was now projected to be something like an hour and a half. No poster is worth that. We just left.

Back at the hotel, we had to fight with a mosquito that had flown in through the crack between the window shutters that won’t completely close. There was a weird string that makes a buzz when you pull it in the shower – I guess maybe the plumbing is shared and it lets the guests in the other rooms know not to flush the toilet or something? It didn’t seem to do anything but make a noise. At night, we heard some thunderstorms, but there was no rain…only fighting cats.

4-9-09 Munich

2009-04-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Today was our day in Munich proper. We had to check out of the hostel, so we put our bags in a locker at the train station so as not to have to carry them all over the city. We bought a 24 hour partner ticket for the public transit system (which covers the trains, trams, buses, and subway) for 9€. I’m starting to get used to all the German speaking around us – it is by this time enticing me to learn it better.

We rode the U-Bahn for the first time – our coach was covered in oldschool wooden paneling:

We had to check out the famous glockenspiel, another clock that has a puppet show at certain times of the day, the best part of which is the jousting knights:

I thought it might be funny to buy a sweater from H&M in Europe, and there were three on a single street, so we went in and checked them out. Turns out they are very seasonal, so it is impossible to buy a sweater in spring time. No worries, I suppose. Better to save the money anyhow.

Natasha thought she had lost her glasses, so we went and bought a pair for around 15€:

We found her old pair later, in the locker with our bags at the train station. At least she has a backup now.

Finding places to eat is a real chore in Europe if you aren’t rich. You can eat cheaply if you have access to a kitchen and know how and what to cook (unfortunately not us) by buying from markets and grocers, but we are basically stuck trying to find fast food and restaurants. Since we came all this way to Europe it seems a shame to eat in places like McDonalds, so we make the task even harder by avoiding some of the easiest, cheapest food to come by.

One great solution to the problem is to find a buffet. We happened to find one on the 5th floor of the Kaupthof (shopping mall) on Marienplatz. These are really more like the cafeterias in universities than buffet restaurants; you grab a tray, pile up everything you want, and then pay for it at a cashier. While we were eating, some guy won a huge prize at one of the slot machines behind us.

We saw a toy store on the 3^rd floor on our way down. In there we found their Lego section, which sported a life-size Lego Darth Vader and Bobba Fett.

After this we found the Muji store. Muji is a Japanese company that makes efficient and eco-friendly products. They don’t have a store in the U.S. yet, although there are plans for just one – in New York City. We bought a few things here – an A5 sized notebook and a cool watch for Natasha, and I bought a half-size automatic pencil made of stainless steel, which I have been making notes with in my Moleskine ever since. Most of the narration of the journey from this point on is made thanks to notes taken this way.

We decided to get drinks at a Starbucks, to see if there were any European quirks to them. There weren’t any, so far as we could tell. I realized how much I had missed mochas – most places don’t sell them here. I’ve noticed that caffeine doesn’t seem to affect me as much here; maybe it is because of all the exercise I’m getting.

We made the mandatory stop by the English Gardens to see the world’s second largest biergarten. We checked out the pagoda and the hundreds of people drinking. Somewhere in the park is a nude sunbathing area, which was supposed to be labeled on the map as FKK (Free Body Culture), but we didn’t see these symbols on any of the maps, and we weren’t about to wander over several square miles just to see some naked old people.

We had some time left before our train left, so we tried to hit up the Alte Pinakotek, which our outdated guidebook priced at 4€ a ticket – only to find that the price had jumped to 9€ a ticket in just 2 years, and we would also be forced to spend 2€ to lock up our bags. This just wasn’t in the budget, unfortunately.

We made our way to the next stop, the Löwenbrau Biergarten. Löwenbrau is a beer from Munich that we used to drink back in high school whenever we could get our hands on it. I just had to stop by their biergarten to connect with a small piece of my past. One of the best things about this garten is that it isn’t advertised well, and it isn’t on any of the tourist maps, so it is relatively slow compared to the English Gardens and the like. Our camera died just after getting one last shot of me with my beer and massive pretzel. I wanted to get a shot of Natasha drinking her 0,5L beer, to prove that she actually did it, but, alas, no. Another great thing about this place is that it is only one U-Bahn stop from the train station.

Speaking of the train station, we saw there what I think is the most saccharine thing ever – a Smarties flavored ice cream popsicle. Ugh.

We were pretty much done with Munich at this point. I definitely wanted more time in this city. You can do a walking tour of the city’s 3^rd Reich history, there are more castles to see out in Schwangau, and we would want to see the Romantic Road if we could. I wouldn’t even mind living here, in one of the smaller towns like Füssen or Dachau, since you can be downtown via train in less than an hour. The city has a great atmosphere and an excellent mix of the old and the new. The infrastructure was great (something I’m coming to appreciate more and more as time goes by). Marienplatz, the city center, is a bit touristy, but there is a lot more to do and see here.

4-8-09 Neuschwanstein

2009-04-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Today was a day for much lighter fare. Schloss (castle) Neuschwanstein was built in the 19^th century by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He was a young king who lived in a fantasy world, and he was enamored with the operas of Richard Wagner. He had Schloss Neuschwanstein built as a monument to Wagner. The walls are covered with murals and carvings in the themes of Wagner’s operas. Most people would recognize the castle as the one that Walt Disney copied when designing the castle at Disneyland. The castle is like something out of a fairy tale, which is why Natasha has wanted to see it since she was a kid.

First, Natasha scored me some more medicine from the Apotheke. This time the instructions were in German, but the drugs were much more recognizable (e.g., cough syrup that looks like Nyquil instead of a clear, watery liquid that tastes like poison).

We headed back to the train station to meet up with our tour group. Neuschwanstein is out near a town called Füssen. On the train ride there we noticed that almost every roof had at least some solar panels on it. Some were almost completely covered in them. There must be a huge government subsidy in that area for installing them.

Neuschwanstein is built in the Alps, so we finally got to see them as we got closer. Having lived around mountains all my life, I’m no stranger to mountain ranges, but these were impressive. We stopped at a hotel at the foot of the mountain to eat, where we ordered something that sounded like wurst and fries (one of the only menu items in our budget range), and we got two hot dogs with no bread and a plate of fries with a single packet of ketchup. Try not to eat at gimmicky tourist places.

Then we climbed the hill. You could really tell who exercises and who doesn’t on the way up. It’s been quite awhile since I did any sustained physical activity, so it took an effort to make it. The climb is a decent gradient and lasts about fifteen minutes. Anyone in decent shape can do it without breaking a sweat. My only excuse is that I had a salty, fatty lunch and a beer before undertaking this feat, which didn’t help any. I might also mention that my lungs hurt from having a cold…but really I’m just out of shape, plain and simple. I resolved to try and exercise when I got back home. We will see how that goes.

Neuschwanstein, unlike most other castles, was built purely for splendor, as the castle was outmoded by the 19^th century as a means of defense. The castle was never finished as Ludwig died while the rooms were being decorated, and upon his death all work stopped. We toured all of the finished portions of the castle and quite a few unfinished rooms. Each room was elaborately decorated with scenes and sculptures from Wagner’s operas and Christian motifs. I was especially struck by how much of the state’s resources were funneled into such an extravagant and fantastical effort. We were not told whether the residents of Bavaria suffered as a result of their treasury being drained.

Since Ludwig patronized Wagner, and Wagner and Nietzsche were companions for a time, I wonder if Nietzsche ever met Ludwig? We were told that Wagner only became successful as a result of Ludwig’s support, and Nietzsche seems to have known Wagner during his heyday. I will have to do a little research on the timeframes.

In any event, had we known that the castle’s theme was so Wagner-centric, we certainly would have done more research on Wagner before going up there. Natasha especially wants to visit the other castles of the Bavarian government, so we may return one day better informed and thus better able to enjoy the murals and paintings.

We bought some ice cream and a small guide to the art inside the castle on the way down, thus completing what we expect to be the most physically challenging part of our entire trip.

On the train back to Munich, we learned from our guide that our hostel is in the “Turkish” area of Munich. The Turks are one of the main immigrant populations in Germany, somewhat akin to the Mexican immigrants in the U.S. This area of Munich is described as “seedy” and Munich’s version of a red light district is very close by (although we never actually saw it).

Also on the train back to Munich I learned why the wedding ring is worn on the particular finger it is worn on – apparently it is near a major blood vessel that runs straight to the heart, and is thus “closest to the heart” of all of the fingers. Neato! I suppose this has nothing to do with our trip as I could have learned this back in the U.S., but all the same this is where I happened to learn it.

Our breakfasts on our trip have been remarkably similar so far. It always consists of a few rolls of bread, jam, a few slices of lunch meat, a slice of cheese (usually Swiss), yogurt, coffee, and orange juice. In the hostel in Munich they also have muesli. I don’t know if this is what you are supposed to do, but I always spoon some yogurt into a bowl and then cover it with muesli, stir it up and eat it (basically using yogurt instead of milk for cereal). I really enjoy this and I’d like to try it back home, if the calories and cost work out closely enough.

We’ve been strangely satisfied with very little food here. The portions are always lighter, sizes smaller, and we’ve been eating at larger intervals than we used to. We are constantly on our feet and thus getting more exercise than usual as well. We might just lose some weight before this trip is over.

4-7-09 Dachau

2009-04-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

(pictures forthcoming)

I had an idea this morning, that I could make this blog more comprehensive if I bought a small notebook and jotted down ideas in it as the day went along, so I could be sure not to miss anything while typing things up at the end of the day. I bought two of the smallest Moleskines that you can buy at the train station, and my life was forever changed (provided I can afford to keep buying these 2.50€ notebooks). I’ll never lose another thought. Previously I had insisted on using my smartphone for this task but it proved to be unwieldy. I had rejected using a notebook before because I found them difficult to write in, but it turns out that if you write in shorthand they are perfect.

Random strange fact about Europe: cars drive up onto the sidewalk all the time. Most of the curbs are a few inches or shorter, so they just drive right up to the doors of shops to make deliveries and drop people off.

Another thing: money changers won’t change coins. We are stuck with about $4 worth of Czech korunas because none of the changers will accept them. We will be giving them away as gifts when we get home, because we can’t afford much else.

For our day trip to the concentration camp Dachau we had an Englishman for a guide. He was friendly and knowledgeable. Apparently in the old days a separate set of tracks ran to the camp in order to keep the traffic to and from the camp away from the normal civilian traffic. Nowadays the tracks are all the same. We took a commuter train to the town of Dachau and then took a bus out to the camp itself.

It was a day of irony – in such a horrible place the plants and trees were blooming and the birds were singing. A further irony is that apparently the camp used to be spotless and shiny, because the prisoners were made to spot clean the entire place, polishing the floors three times a day, not only to make the camp appear like a nice place to the outside world but also as one more way to work prisoners to death.

The most moving part of the camp was the religious memorial set up by the Jewish community. It is symbolic of the journey of the prisoners through the camps: you walk past the barbed wire, into a dark brick building, and peer up through the chimney. It is better seen than described:

All in all though, the thing that disturbed me the most was how little I was disturbed by the camp. Perhaps it is because I’ve seen it on pictures, movies, and in books before. Perhaps the enormity of it is too great for a sheltered and spoiled bourgeoisie to comprehend. Evil, at its absolute worst, has become banal. This struck me as very problematic, and it points to the need for a deeper understanding, but where and how that is to come I am not sure.

I must admit I half expected to find a gift shop there. After seeing all of the gift shops littering everything profound in our world, nothing seems sacred anymore. To my vast relief, there was only a small bookshop that uses its profits for maintenance of the camp. Since we didn’t have time on our tour to read all of the exhibits, we bought one of the books.

Visiting Dachau was really a punch in the soul, but as I said, much less so than I expected.

4-6-09 Trains to Munich

2009-04-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

4-6-09 Trains to Munich

Our day started with a very comfortable five hours on a comfy first class train, with a reserved cabin all to ourselves. However, in Schwandorf, about an hour from Munich, DB decided to stop the train and tell us to make two transfers to go the rest of the way.

This was a little frustrating, but no worries. We found out which of the trains we needed for our first leg to Regensburg – only to find that it was an overstuffed commuter train with no seats left – so we were left to stand for 30 minutes. A little more frustrating, but things were still not too bad.

When we arrived at our stop, German trains being how they are, we had all of five minutes to get from one track to the other. We rushed past the slowpokes and their heavy baggage, sweating from wearing our coats in the midday sun and standing in a crowded space, ran to the track, only to find that the train that should take us to Munich had switched tracks, and was already leaving.

I can be a little overdramatic sometimes, but this was just too much for me. I think I nearly fainted from a combination of fury and heat exhaustion. It took me several minutes to calm down after this point. Despite everything that had gone wrong, there were still a few things working in our favor. We were very lucky to be stranded where we were - Regensburg has a nice, air conditioned train station, unlike quite a few others we’ve been across. We were also lucky that there was another train heading to Munich about 90 minutes later. We caught that one and it turned out to be a decent ride.

(forthcoming: map of train hops)

When we got to Munich, what we found was worth all the trouble. The Haubtbahnhof there is huge and amazing, and after a 10 minute walk (past the European Patent Office!) we found our hostel and got checked in. To our surprise, we had a private wc and shower! Only two downsides to this place – the elevator was an ancient and dangerous, only went to the 5^th floor and our room was on the 6^th, and the hostel was full of screaming children, especially at night. No worries though, we had earplugs and drugs to help us sleep through the cacophony.

Had to go back downstairs to get a user/pass for the internet, the signal is poor even though the AP is in the hallway a few feet down, and the connection is extremely poor beyond that (3s+ ping times to yahoo/google). I did manage to laboriously type in the Czech directions on my cough syrup into Google Translator to verify that yes, you are supposed to drink the stuff, although it tastes like poison and I cannot figure out the correct dose. Interestingly, in the Czech Republic the medicine doses are not indicated by age but by body weight. That might make more sense actually.

After this we ventured out into Munich for the first time. After being in Prague for a few days, being in Munich was like a return to the 21^st century – modern buildings, infrastructure, etc. We found a place to eat that looked good, but it was run by a rude Turkish guy who spoke German poorly and English even worse, and the food was awful. Natasha asked for falafel, which he was out of, so he suggested something as an alternative, which turned out to be a fried fish patty (Natasha *hates* fish). So that was a generally bad experience. Not only that, but on our way home it started to pour rain and neither of us were dressed for this, so we had to run back to the hostel soaking wet. After all that, though, the swanky room was enough to get us relaxed again. We watched some German TV, played on the internet, and went to bed.

4-5-09 Prague Day 3

2009-04-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

(post is unrevised and without pictures. stay tuned for a facelift)

Our agenda for today was to visit Prague Castle and the library of the nearby monastery, and to try to catch Obama’s speech if we could. Unfortunately we slept in, and had to decide whether to eat the breakfast we had already paid for or skip it and head to the castle for Obama’s speech. Having already seen Obama speak in Boise, we opted for breakfast.

When we did get out there, I made a mistake and got us off at the wrong tram station, about a ½ mile away from the castle. We walked as fast as we could and made it to the square halfway through Obama’s speech. Unfortunately the square was already full and the streets leading to it were all jammed with tourists, so the best we managed was to catch a far off glimpse of a monitor showing him speaking. We later found out that this monitor was actually just a few feet from his podium, but getting an actual view of him was impossible. We did hear him pitch the missile defense system to the Czechs – something that neither most Czechs nor I am very happy about.

We had to wait almost an hour for the crowd to clear out the square after the speech was over so we could get through to the castle. Once inside we visited the cathedral, mostly to check out the stained glass window made by Mucha, which is absolutely fantastic. We also got to see a tower that used to be a dungeon, complete with torture and execution instruments. After that we marched up to the monastery library. They had collections of law and medical books from the 16^th century – thousands of books entirely written by hand. They also had collections of theological books from the 18^th century and two full rooms with huge collections that were roped off. Apparently to get inside you need to schedule days in advance, pay 400Kc a head, and have a minimum number in your group. Inside one of these rooms is a locked cabinet with “forbidden books” which only the leader of the monastery had the key to. If I remember right Voltaire and Galileo are among those books. Permission to take photos cost 50Kc extra, so we settled for some awesome prints of the roped off rooms for a measly 10Kc each.

After this we tried some more local food – what looked like a hotdog on the menu turned out to be more like a German brat, and a fried cylindrical dessert dipped in cinnamon, which was decent but overpriced. We also checked out a bookshop, and Natasha found a Czech Alice in Wonderland that was illustrated by a Czech artist. Since this wouldn’t fit in our backpacks, we had to go to the Czech post office and ship it to ourselves. The shipping cost more than the book itself (400Kc if I remember right) but it was worth it to see the inside of a foreign post office.

We were delayed in getting back to our hostel by Obama’s motorcade – while it held us up for about 10 minutes, we were unfortunately too far away to catch a glimpse of him. We rode the subway for part of the journey back to the hostel – if you don’t count the little underground shuttle at the SeaTac airport, this was the first time I’ve ever been on a subway.

As we were sitting in our hostel room at the end of our last day in Prague, we wondered about a few things…what would we do if we had more time here? Would we want more time here? Could we live here? We decided that we would have liked at most one more day to take a trip to Kutna Hora, the Bone Cathedral, and perhaps another day to tour those restricted rooms in the monastery library (if we could afford it). Other than that, we’ve seen what we came here to see. This town is a little on the seedy side and I personally have a taste for contemporary architecture, something which is mostly absent from Prague as far as I can tell. On the other hand, we saw only three homeless people on our entire stay here, which is almost miraculous for such a big city. The old buildings and stone tile roads are quite charming. Nevertheless, Prague is a seedy town, with dilapidating infrastructure, ubiquitous graffiti, and a huge crime problem (which we were lucky enough to avoid). Being so far set back from decades of Communism, the city is only just starting to catch up to the rest of Europe. Who knows what it will look like in ten or twenty years?

Prague Day 2

2009-04-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

After eating another hearty breakfast at the hostel café, we withdrew our entire daily limit from the ATM (so as not to cut our day short again by running out of cash) and set out to find our way downtown. Along the way we ran into a helpful Canadian kid, who showed us which tram station headed toward downtown rather than away from it (apparently he had gotten on the wrong direction the previous day).

Our itinerary for the day was to hit three museums – the Mucha Museum, the Museum of Communism, and the Kafka Museum. First, we found what we thought was the Kafka Museum, but it turned out to be a small gallery located in the building he was born in. We found this out after we had already paid, but luckily the price was only 50Kc. Eventually we located the real museum on the map, but it was farther away than the other two museums, so we saved it for last.

First we found the Mucha Museum, which is dedicated to the work of Alphons Mucha, the founder of the art nouveau style. He is one of Natasha’s favorite artists. We watched a short video biography and checked out some of his original works, including the poster that made him famous.

Next we found the Museum of Communism, detailing the history of Communism in general but especially the history of Soviet influence on the Czechs. What sets this museum apart from others I’ve been to is that they don’t hesitate to use charged language in the exhibit descriptions – they are extremely derisive of Marx, Lenin, and especially the Czech leaders who cooperated with the Soviets during the occupation. Clearly those involved in assembling the exhibits suffered during the occupation. The museum gives a glimpse into a world of poisoning, lies, terror and captivity that is unknowable to us Westerners.

From there we crossed the famous bridge connecting the old town to the castle. This bridge boasts some elaborate statues and a great view of not only the river but the city on the one side and the castle on the other.

On the way we saw the famous astronomical clock do its chime at 13:00. There was a huge crowd of Greeks (from what we could tell it was a few sports teams and their entourages) drumming and chanting and celebrating in the city square, ostensibly because they had won a match. One of them lit a flare which caused a brief rumble with a policeman. The entire crowd of Greeks rushed to the center and looked like they were going to beat the policeman to death – it was a stark reminder of the primal human instinct to defend one’s own.

Then we visited the Kafka Museum proper. This museum is an elaborate attempt to bring to life the alienation, terror, and loneliness of Kafka’s books. There are light and sound effects, and the exhibits are arranged creatively, with pictures underwater and in shadowboxes hanging from the ceiling, notebook pages arrayed in the bottom of open filing cabinet drawers, and much more.

After this we ate a local specialty, starts with soup, then pork over sauerkraut with gravy, dumplings, and bread, and finally a crepe with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. I didn’t enjoy this meal very much but for three courses and a beer the price was right.

During dinner there was a protest march starting from the bridge and going past the restaurant we were eating at. This was apparently a precursor to the main protest to happen the following day after or during Obama’s speech. One of the protesters was waving a Che flag. After an hour or so at the Museum of Communism I was wondering how anyone could be brave enough to be openly socialist anywhere in the Czech Republic.

Night Train, First Day in Prague

2009-04-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

We boarded our night train with our day in Heidelberg behind us. A very friendly conductor took our tickets and showed us to our sleeper car – which was, in a word, awesome. We had a private double with a dedicated WC and shower. There were night lights throughout, and even a power outlet, which I used to stay up late writing the post for the 2^nd J

We were served breakfast on the train in the morning. You can see it in all of its hearty goodness:

It consists of yogurt, rolls, honey, jam, coffee, juice, Swiss cheese, and slices of meat.

A few hours later we arrived in Prague. Here we were greeted by immediate culture shock. We know some German but almost no Czech, and there are fewer cognates between English and Czech, so almost nothing makes any sense. We wandered out of the station and stumbled into the main square. I am starting off our trip with a bit of a cold, so we went in search of a drugstore for some chloraseptic. Luckily the pharmacies here all use the same green cross logo, and the one we found spoke English; otherwise I’m not sure I ever could have gotten across what I needed.

Our Hostel – the Czech Inn (get it?) is a pretty nice hostel. It is newly renovated, which is a big deal in a city where almost all of the buildings are far past their prime. We get a private double, but we have to share bathroom/showers, but these are in great condition, so no big deal.

The currency in the Czech Republic is the koruna, which like the peso or yen isn’t worth very much compared to dollars or Euros. The exchange rate as of this writing is somewhere between 20 to 25Kč per USD. Prices on items can differ widely from those in the US. A soda can cost 50-60Kč and a meal 150-200Kč and up, but you can get a 20oz beer here for 9Kč (approx. $0.50!). The Czech Republic is in the EU but has not adopted the Euro yet – they plan to sometime before 2015. Next time we visit should be easier on the cash front.

We ate at a Mexican restaurant of all things – Natasha had nachos which were simply tortilla chips, cream cheese, and black beans smeared into a paste. I had a “chorizqueso” which was mozzarella cheese melted over strips of chorizo, mushrooms, and onions. These were both appetizers, so the cost of the meal plus drinks and tip was only 250Kč, or about $15.

Our first day in Prague had to end early because after paying cash for the three nights at the Czech Inn, we hit our daily withdrawal limit on our card and ran out of money. We put in early and prepared for a long day of museum hopping.

The First Day - Lufthansa and Heidelberg

2009-04-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

Our journey began with a 10 hour non-stop flight from Seattle to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. Lufthansa is an airline that does things in style – we were fed two meals of decent quality, two delicious snacks, and free drinks throughout the flight. Even in the cheapo seats where we were, each seat gets its own personal touch screen monitor which will play movies, TV shows, and music for free. Natasha and I decided to watch ‘Twilight’ to see what all the fuss was about. I thought it was typical teen drama mixed with thinly veiled abstinence propaganda. There were also main monitors throughout that displayed the plane’s current location on a satellite map, along with its airspeed, altitude, and the temperature of the outside air. At times this reached -70F! We flew over Greenland and Iceland, but there was a cloud cover the entire time so we didn’t get to see anything.

Our plan to overcome jet lag by sleeping on the flight unfortunately failed. We were still full of energy when we got our railpasses validated in the airport and went down to the train tracks. We missed the first train to Manheim, caught the second, then missed the connection to Heidelberg, and caught the second. Then we got off one stop too early and had to catch yet another train to the main station.

Now we had eleven hours to kill in Heidelberg before our night train to Prague departed. We wandered around for a few hours, catching some great views:

There happened to be some sort of student function in the park along the river when we were there. Hundreds of university students were wearing special t-shirts (some advertising something called the “Abipedia,” with the amusing tagline “13 Jahre (years) Copy & Paste.” Some sped around the town hanging halfway out of windows, screaming “Abi!” and blowing on whistles. Even seeing the website, we still aren't sure what was going on there.

There is something in Heidelberg called the ‘Philosophenweg’ which is apparently a path that Goethe, Junger, and Feuerbach have walked on occasion. Unfortunately we had been hiking for awhile, the jet lag was setting in, and the Philosophenweg is a steep uphill climb, so we were unable to complete it.

We managed to get a bus back to the train station. We had seven hours left until our train, but we were too exhausted to attempt any kind of activity. We knew that if we fell asleep in public our bags might get stolen, so the challenge was to stay awake for seven hours when we had already been over 24 hours without sleep. We did manage, barely, by going to McDonalds and taking advantage of the free refills on Coke Lite (Diet), and taking naps in shifts. Finally, after a long, tedious, and trying wait, we were on our night train to Prague.

It might seem a little depressing that our first day in Europe was spent with four hours of aimless wandering followed by seven hours of sitting in McDonalds and in the train station, but that is just the reality of jet lag. If you don’t manage to get productive sleep on the flight (which is difficult) there simply has to be a wasted day to overcome it. We had planned for this and spent our first day in a relatively unimportant city. Heidelberg is delightful and charming, but by no means a must-see destination.

One thing about Heidelberg in particular is that it is not especially tourist friendly. Almost nobody there speaks any English at all. This caused considerable complications due to the fact that Natasha and I both have only about a semester’s worth of German under our belts. Something as simple as ordering coffee becomes an ordeal. At one point we thought a mocha would be a nice way to stay awake, so we tried ordering one from a café in the train station. They weren’t on the menu, so the best we could ask for was “espresso mit heis schockolade, zusammen” which basically means espresso mixed into hot chocolate. What we ended up with was a single shot of espresso with some cocoa powder mixed in. Another time we ordered ice cream, but we were unable to read the sign that we weren’t allowed to sit down in the shop unless we spent a certain amount. So we were kicked out of the shop by someone who could only say “different cost.” We figured out the problem a few minutes later as we were walking away.

The language barrier also has some pervasive alienating effects. When you hear German or other foreign languages spoken back home, it is a pleasant novelty. When you hear it in places like Frankfurt, where you know that employees also speak English and you can get help if you need it, it is fascinating. But when you are in a place where nobody speaks English at all, the atmosphere becomes alienating, and sometimes even hostile. Even the most basic things like getting something to eat become difficult.

Personally, I had also underestimated the difference in things like bathroom facilities. In Heidelberg the facilities were very crude, sometimes to the point of being unusable. The only decent ones were either in businesses like McDonalds or required a 0.50€ payment. Even these were unfamiliar. Not knowing how to flush a toilet creates a sense of panic that I didn’t anticipate.

Still, cities are cities. We were able to navigate their bus system – we bought tickets from a vending machine and found a bus going back to the train station from Bismarckplatz. We managed to stay fed and stayed out of trouble. More than one person addressed me directly in German, which meant to me that I must look enough like a local to be mistaken for one, which is nice. Nothing would be worse than sticking out as a tourist.

Despite these relatively minor tribulations, we are having the time of our lives. Each challenge creates a deeper sense of adventure…something which goes far beyond the simple pleasure hunting that normally takes place on our vacations. You have to earn something as small as a coffee here, and earning something makes it more valuable and enjoyable than if it is handed to you.

Heidelberg was always a grey spot on our schedule…the rest of the trip has more definitive plans, and we fully expect that the experience will only improve!