4-13-09 Rome Day 2

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  Most of the pagan gods have been replaced by saints, and a chapel has been placed inside.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

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

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

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

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

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

(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.