From Europe

The Sorting Continues

2005-07-14T00:31:00.000+02:00

Marjan and his wife should be in Arizona now. Because of the rush, they were the recipients of the first slide show. From that show, I've learned a few things.

One city is enough. We only had one day, so we spent over six hours looking at slides. We even skipped most of Rome, all of Venice, and all of Germany. We also screamed through certain sections.
It's okay to scream through certain sections. Having a small audience was nice because it meant that if they didn't care about Notre Dame, we could just skip it. One of the main items on my to do list is to record all the transition points so future shows can instantly skip over a given museum, city, etc.
I need to live my life. I'd love to do a really thorough cataloging, but I think recording blurbs and transition points is the realistic plan. I finally laid all the ones I think are worth viewing end to end and it's a little over five thousand pictures. At my current rate of labeling (a couple hours and four hundred pictures a day) it will still take over a week to finish. I should put this as data entry experience on my resume. ;)

So that's where I'm at right now. London and France are close to done. Tomorrow should see Zurich and Florence brought up to date. Basically, I'm estimating one week of slides equals one city (until Berlin where I went crazy in the ethnology museum).

After that, it's just a matter of contacting you all individually and finding an evening or three to have dinner and see a major european city. :)

Day 81 - Home

2005-06-30T20:43:00.000+02:00

The subject line says it all. (But it wouldn't be a propper blog entry if I didn't take at least a thousand words to say it. :)

I didn't really sleep much the night before the trip. I stayed up watching Men Of Honor on TV, well aware of the contrast between the title and my encounter that day. I was anxious to get home and anxious about running into the thieves again, so there was little point in trying to get to sleep early. It's unfortunate, in a way, that I was staying in a hotel. Any hostel I spent a week in, I generally made a few friendly aquaintances. The only people I know in Athens are criminals.

I woke up at seven thirty and gave up on trying to get back to sleep about eight. I ate some more fruit from the fruit store, some cheese from the mini-market, and some pound cake from the bakery. One thing I'll say for Athens, it's not hard to find good food. It's annoying to be a vegetarian in a restaurant, yes, but there are markets with good food all over the place. I was particularly impressed with the fruit. The cherries were some of the best I've ever had, and the kiwis, although not as conistent as the cherrys, were quite good too.

After stuffing myself in anticipation of 24 hours of airline food, I headed to the one supermarket I'd seen nearby. It didn't take too long to find chocolate covered raisins. I should have taken heed of the dust on top of the boxes and three price reductions, though. They weren't very good. Still, I was happy to have some comfort food for the trip. I even have an extra box, if anyone wants to try some. The raisins are so small, and the chocolate so sweet, that all I can think to do with them is pour milk on them and pretend they are Calvin's favorite cereal.

As you might be able to deduce from my rambling about raisins, the trip itself was fairly uneventful. I worked out my database schema while sitting in the Athens airport. I am downloading MySQL and Python even as I type this, so photo catagorizing should be underway by the end of the day. I can work on a proper place to sleep tomorrow. :)

Changing planes in Munich was a bit of a hassle. We had no time, but they felt a need to submit us to bonus security checks. Admittedly, the checks in Athens weren't as thorough, so I could see some small benefit. I found it funny when they announced that we had to change course coming into Munich. I knew why before they even told us. There had been thudershowers frequently when I was there, and sure enough, when the captain came on he explained that a thunder storm had rerouted us. Still, we were on time.

The United flight to Chicago was well crewed. There were plenty of movies running every two hours. I watched Coach Carter, Robots, and even the latest Bridget Jones, which had a few funny scenes, but could have been half as long or even less if you just put the funny bits together. "But Blain", you say. "Why weren't you sleeping?" For one thing, the flight went from 4PM to 2AM, Athens time, so I wasn't sleepy for most of it. For another thing, there were multiple screaming children aboard. I hope people don't think I'm a sadist, but I actually enjoy screaming children. They're too young to know better, and watching all the people get annoyed (while not offering any assistance) amuses me. Silly people.

There were a few cool things in the Chicago airport. They had a cast of a brachiosaurus skeleton and a huge moving sidewalk with neon lights over head and giant multicolored squares along the wavy walls. It looked like a painters color chart writ large. I'm sorry if I'm a tease for talking about them. I didn't take any pictures yesterday. I didn't want to mess with taking my camera out of my bag. I just wanted to be done.

So naturally the plane out of Chicago was delayed. I bought a phone card and let mom know what was up. Then it was just sitting. Of course I'd already sat two hours before the announcement, so it was pretty dull. The young ladies (junior high school?) from the Sacramento Synchronized Swimming Team were coming home on the same plane as well. One of them had a temporary tatoo of a cobra on her forehead. Apparently she'd forgotten about it though, and thought I was staring at her. I find it amusing that I creeped out a woman with a snake... tatooed... on her forehead! Heheh. I later learned she had done it on a dare. Good dare.

When we finally did get on the plane, they were blowing cold air like no tomorrow. While they had been working on the mechanical problem that had delayed us (a faulty battery recharger), apparently it had gotten quite hot. But now it was freezing, and they had closed the cabin, which meant that they couldn't turn the AC off until ten minutes after take-off. I figured I'd tough it out in my shorts and t-shirt and ask for a blanket when we were underway.

It was taking a long time to get underway. But I overheard the attendant saying there were no blankets. Great. There's a flight from 11PM to 2AM Chicago time, and they have no blankets. Well. That's not true. They had blankets for all the first class passengers. So by the time we take off and it's okay to get up and get my jacket from the upper compartment my knees are already ice cubes. I get my pant sleeves as well and return my pants to full length. Still, I'm freezing, and all they've got on the flight are cold drinks. This was not my happy place. There was one more touch, for that extra special flight memory. Because of thunder storms in the US, we had to fly a good deal south before heading west, extending the flight another half an hour. Specifically, we had to fly over Kansas. Heheh. That was too perfect.

Now that I think of it, there was also a bonus snub. The one movie in the whole airline movie listing I actually wanted to see (Million Dollar Baby), would play on this flight, but I was way too exhausted to watch, much less enjoy. Eventually I got to sleep.

When we eventually touched down in Sacramento, I was very happy to have a seat near the exit. Three rows got out in front of me. But people are slow. I passed two rows walking towards the main lobby and the last row on the escalator. Even with my pack, I take stairs two at a time and very consistently fly by morons on escalators. It is not a ride!

My parents were waiting. Apparently others of you would have been, but I didn't find an internet terminal to check my mail all day. Sorry about that. I would have loved to have seen you there. My dad said he didn't think it could have been me already. The plane had only landed twenty four seconds ago. I was in a hurry.

We went home. I had some salsa (which I had been sorely missing since Prague, at least) and some ice cream and turned in. The great thing about screaming kids on the plane is that no matter when you get home, you can sleep. Yeah, I woke up at eight in the morning, but I'm sure I'll adjust to my old slacker schedule shortly. :)

In closing, thank all of you for following along, helping me with information, advice, and good wishes. They made me feel befriended even in places where I had none, and that means a lot.

My downloads have finished, so now it's time learn about MySQL and start sorting. Let's kick some S! ... QL. And feel free to drop me a line at brn@calweb.com if you want to get together, see a slide show, etc. I'll probably post at least one more post here as the sorting winds down. Ah, alive again with geekish joy. I still don't have a bed, but my own computer and DSL connection is more than enough right now. Life is good.

Day 79 - The Ten Euro Beer

2005-06-28T17:11:00.000+02:00

Well, my tourist experience is now complete. I have been robbed.

They didn't get much, and I am none the worse for wear. In a way, I'm happier to have the story and feel justified about being as cautious as I am than I am sad to lose a little money. That said, I was a total moron to get snared like I did. So I'm leaving the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It would be the biggest ancient temple of all time, but there's just a few columns left now. Even still, it's impressive. It's funny because so many people talk about the immensity of the Parthenon. Sure. It's big, but I'm standing at the edge thinking, "Get over it people! There's a bigger temple right over there!"

Anyway, back to the robbery. It was a social engineering robbery. Nothing fancy. Just the type I'm most likely to fall for, as well. A man on a bench said hello, introducing himself as a chemical engineer back in the states, but originally from Thessaloniki. He invited me to lunch, but as I don't eat meat, he invited me to a drink. I don't really drink, but this was the first person I'd met in Greece, so I figured it was worth the time and trouble of a beer. The girls were the first tip that something wasn't right. There were a couple women in the place, so immediately I figured he had taken me to prostitutes. When we went to the furthest back bench in the place and they immediately joined us, I knew he had taken me to prostitutes. He had just been talking about how much he hated working in Saudi Arabia with no alcohol and women around, so I figured he was just a lusty greek. They are known to exist. I made it clear I was not interested, but I didn't mind having a beer. I should have asked how much it would cost.

We chatted. They asked lots of questions. Too many, now that I know better. Then the bill came. Ten for my beer and one hundred and sixty for the champaign the "lady" was drinking. I said she could drink with me, not on me. (By that I mean on my tab. I suppose I should phrase my sentences more carefully when prostitutes are involved.) I looked at my new companions. Two fairly young women, the lusty greek, and the big greasy bartender who had handed me this bill. This was not a good scene. I don't even remember what happened next. I just remember putting one foot on the seat of the booth. Then I was out the door and running. I made it to a corner and looked back to see the bartender hoofing it after me. I took a corner, then another. I was sure he couldn't be positive of where I had gone. But then neither was I. I had a general idea of the direction I was headed in, but I also knew they knew enough about where I was staying and when I was leaving to stake me out. I stopped running. There was no safe way out.

I checked my map. I figured I could take a slightly further metro station. I might be able to avoid him that way. When I looked up from my map, he was coming around a corner. In a way, I was relieved. We were now in a public place, one on one. Greasy was breathing pretty hard. I was actually pretty impressed at the time he'd made. He seemed to know no english outside of "call police" and "pay your bill". He got his cell phone out. I challenged him to call the police, and he went back to "pay your bill." He touched me a couple times, but if he was trying to intimidate, he wasn't succeeding because I was still working by the american rule that touching a person against their will is assault, so him holding my wrist for a second just pissed me off. I'm proud to say I was not backing down. I'm also proud to say that when he said "pay your bill, ten euro" I was smart enough to realize I was getting out cheap and paid him off.

I talked to the police. They confirmed that I got off cheap. I realized later that it wasn't quite that cheap as I left my Rough Guide language book and umbrella that Mike gave me. Doh.

For other travelers, the place was called "New York Bar". But I wouldn't be surprised if they change the name frequently to keep ahead of the law and vengeful tourists. There's still a small possibility that they'll stake out the airport and try and get the 160 out of me. I'll try to be an extra hour early just to have police explaining time. I doubt they'll bother, though. In a way, I wish they would. I'd love to get a chance to beat them definitively, maybe even let them do the jail time they deserve. Who knows what would have happened if I'd been the kind of guy who actually did go out for hookers? Yay celibacy. :)

Other than that, the day was pretty uneventful. I went to the agora and keramicos, basically lots of ruins. Yawnsville compared to Rome. I snacked. I drank. I'm more glad than ever to be leaving.

Day 78 - Acropolis: Round One

2005-06-27T17:45:00.000+02:00

Yep. Today I went to the athens acropolis. Every city around here had an acropolis at one time. It was simply a raised area with fortifications and a water supply, according to my city guide. As with many of the great monuments I've seen on my travels, much of the acropolis was entwined with scaffolding (as opposed to the Eiffel Tower, which is scaffolding, and very impressive scaffolding, at that). Regardless, it was still impressive to see the parthenon and some of the adjacent buildings. Really there were only three adjacent buildings: The gate (propylaea), the temple to Athena and Posiedon, and museum. The temple to Athena Nike just seems like part of the gate to me. I'm not even sure I took a picture of it. There was so much construction going on, and so many pieces of the ancient buildings around, I wondered if they weren't planning to rebuild some of the other buildings. My map even names some of the piles of rubble as thought there were buildings there.

As you may have heard, the view from the acropolis is stunning. Athens may be unkempt at street level, but it's still beautiful from above. The city just sprawls in every direction. It's burly. I tried to take lots of pictures and a 360 degree movie. I've still got most of two memory cards left and only two days, so I can afford the space. I'm not bothering to delete bad pictures anymore, either. Take 'em all and let mom sort 'em out. :)

Seriously, though, there will be sorting. I will have an entity relationship diagram for my simple database, along with a tentative list of picture catagories before I touch down in Sacramento. Once I have a computer, chair, and bed, and maybe a little food, it's straight to work. I will post the list of topics, and anyone who wants to see a slide show can just tell me what topics they're interested in. I can tell them how many hundreds of slides that entails, and they can tell me to never mind. :)

I did some provisioning this morning. I think my lunches and breakfasts are taken care of until departure. Outside of one other food necessity, that only leaves dinners. Last night I went to Eden, the one vegetarian restaurant in Athens, according to one web site. I went and found myself having tofu kabobs. They were well seasoned, if a little dry. Overall, I'd say not worth the price. That said, I'll probably still go there for my last night. There were a couple more dishes on the menu I wanted to try. Tonight, however, I think I'll go to a more traditional greek restaurant and try my luck. As for that other food necessity, the chocolate covered raisins are still at large.

It remains to be seen who is holding them. It could be the nun cops. But it could be someone else. There was a detail I neglected to mention in my story of my travels from Budapest to Belgrade. You may remember how I just barely had enough hungarian money (4750 forints) to buy the ticket (4743 forints). And that was only thanks to the lucky find of a fifty cent piece on the floor. Well, what I couldn't reveal until now is that it probably wasn't luck at all. After I bought my ticket, I took a close look at my remaining forints. Three ones, forming the all seeing pyramid. Two twos, forming the foci of the copernian elipse. Five coins in all. Yes, my friends, I can now say with some certainty that I was safely ferried across eastern europe under the watchful eye of the Illuminati. Perhaps simply because I took the time to visit Zurich, or perhaps for some darker purpose. I may turn out to be a pawn (or even patsy) in some international conspiracy. I think the raisins are the key somehow. Raisin... Reason... If only I could figure it out.

Time will tell.

Day 77 - My Second Favorite MC

2005-06-26T17:14:00.000+02:00

My favorite MC, as most of you know, is MC Frontalot. My second favorite is playing here in Athens, so I went to see him today. I'm referring to MC Escher. No, not the musical MC that stole his name, the travelling Escher art show that's now in Athens. It was thoroughly mind bending, and very fun. I got to learn a little bit about the different processes he used to make his artwork. Wood carving, lithography, and another one involving rough metal that I don't remember the name of. As usual, picture are not allowed, but there's so much Escher online and in popular culture, it probably isn't necessary. The most interesting thing to me was how Escher learned about symmetry and patterns by reading books on rock crystal formation that his geologist brother turned him onto. It'd be bizarre if I could learn something about designing tile art for games through the same means.

I also took my airport excursion today. I know how long it takes to get there, where to go, and how early to be. I also confirmed all my flights. "Measure twice. Cut once." Heh. I should have plenty of time to roll out of bed, eat, and get underway. My only question remaining is where to find the chocolate covered raisins. I took a bunch left over from our last movie day when I went to South America. I bought a bag for the flight over (which I finished on the way to Paris, as I recall). I should definitely have some for the flight back.

But I still have two days and change to spend here in Athens. I'm finally ready to tackle the acropolis tomorrow. I've kind of been putting it off as I expect it will be one of the highlights of the trip. I've gotten some glimpses as I've been seeing other things, whetting my appetite. I'm ready.

Day 76 - A Little Wander

2005-06-25T17:08:00.000+02:00

It's been a pretty lazy day today. I went to the Museum of Cycladic Art. Basically it's really early art from the islands off the coast of Greece. Those totally nondescript figurines with the big heads. No, not Easter Island. Wrong ocean. The big flat heads. Oh, nevermind. They'll be in the slide show. There was also some early greek clay art that lends credence to my hypothesis that all really ancient art is a hoax and is actually just clay sculptures made by third graders in Kansas who have a lot of extra time on their hands because they don't have to learn about evolution. :)

About the slide show, my current plan is to get all the photos unique ID numbers and put together a little MySQL database to store data on them: timestamp, country, description, categories. That way, if someone wants to see only the funny slides. (There's one of a pigeon in Prague that makes me smile every time I think about it.) We can do that slide show. If someone just wants to see slides from certain countries (or cities), that should be doable too. I'll probably have a very short slide show entitled "Actually Good Photos" as well. :) Most of my photos are meant as memories, not gallery pieces, although I have gotten a bit more artistic with framing as time has worn on.

Anyway, back to Athens. Siesta is just about over. I'll probably hit the supermarket for some food. I had a wonderful (and expensive) risotto for lunch, so I'll probably eat in tonight. Then again, maybe not. Sometimes it's hard to know which will make me feel better, economizing or splurging. But lunch was really expensive (like $30), so I'm going with economizing. There's a great deal of honking going on outside. I wonder if it's a Turkish wedding or traffic as usual in Athens.

The city planners here should have been shot. The back streets are full of parked cars. You often can't cross at the corner because there's a car parked on the sidewalk there. Heck, there are cars parked on the sidewalk everywhere. It's not like these are cobblestone streets from ancient times, designed for the width of a horse's ass. They're modern asphalt. What were they thinking? Munich is looking like the best city ever designed, right now. Bikes, people, and cars seemed to coexist really well there. Pedestrian underpasses really helped. But maybe there's too much history here for that. I heard they had to delay construction when they were expanding the metro for the Olympics because they kept hitting archaeological finds. "Held prisoner by the glories of the past." It sounds like something right out of the brochure. :
[record scratching sound] Dinner last night was good (if also too expensive). That's what I get for trying a place from the brochure. There look like lots of cheap places around, but I'm really and truly sick of trying to explain being a vegetarian in countries where I don't speak the language and vegetarians are considered only slightly less weird than extra terrestrials.

The walk to dinner confirmed what I'd read about greek sleeping habits. It was nine PM as I walked to the restaurant. The streets were just as full as they were at noon. Victoria Square had children playing. Nobody was at the restaurant when I showed up. Well, there were three other people, I think. The place was almost full when I left at ten. The park wasn't quite so full. I guess the children clear out about ten (although there was a family with two kids still at the restaurant when I left). Part of that is because we're another hour ahead here, so it's not completely dark by nine. Heh. If I could just get two more timezones I'd officially be half a world away. But I just want to get closer to home now, not further.

To that end, I'm planning a test trip to the airport tomorrow. I don't know how the ticket system or transit system work, so I'm hoping to get my ticket and the train schedule all sorted beforehand. The paperwork I got from the travel agent said to reconfirm 72 hours before the flight. Can you tell I'm looking forward to getting home?

Anyway, I should get to the store. I'd like some more paper to do game design on. The little graph paper notebook I bought in Versailles is almost full of game design and travel notes.

Day 75 - Decompression

2005-06-24T18:12:00.000+02:00

Warning: This post is excessively random.

Having arrived in Athens after over 24 hours of train travel, I decided to take it easy today. I walked around a little bit, mostly just to forage. When they say Athens is dirty, they ain't lyin'. There are broken mopeds and mattresses just lying about. Stray animals are common. So are walls with huge chunks of plaster missing. This is not Kansas. But then, neither is Kansas, I expect.

The stray chunks of missing wall remind me of war damaged Berlin, and I think, "Maybe calling it a war on poverty makes a certain sense." Of course, the US only loses figurative wars. I think about all the drug money that goes to foriegn criminals and can't help but wonder if we're making the wrong call. I mean, the US could be the biggest drug producing country in the world if companies like Phillip Morris were only allowed to assign high tech research labs to woefully backwards fields like meth lab construction. Heh.

Anyway, back to Athens. I've been very much enjoying the lazy hotel life, showering at my leisure, watching TV, and washing a few delicates in the sink. I'm afraid I may just have to burn my socks, as yesterdays washing provided only negligible improvement in their olfactory qualities. It must be International Big Word Day. Of course, calling it Big Word Day really isn't in the spirit, is it?

Anyway, back to Athens. TV is actually pretty watchable here. A couple channels show movies in english with greek subtitles. I watched Finding Nemo and The Wedding Singer, classics both.

Anyway, back to food. It's nice having a fridge. It's funny at the same time, because many hostels have kitchens with no fridge, and now I have the reverse. It's mostly full of hotel crap, but there's enough room for yogurt, juice, and maybe some ice cream for later. Breakfast is free here. I didn't get up early enough to enjoy it this morning, but I should make it tomorrow.

I only say should because Athens keeps hours like Buenos Aires. There's a siesta from two to five, and most restaurants are open to midnight or later. Tonight I'm planning an excursion to a nice Italian place. There's a nice Greek one further on, but I don't think I'm feeling it tonight. Today is all about ease. Of course, that's a relative term in Athens.

Athens has to be the least pedestrian friendly city I've ever seen. Rome was crazy, but pedestrians with their wits about them could get around. In Greece, the crosswalk signal may be green, but the people turning won't yield. If I end up jumping on the hood of a car turning right to get across a street before I leave, I won't be the least bit surprised. And if that wasn't bad enough, the scooters here are worse than Rome's as well, cutting in and out of traffic without giving pedestrians a second thought. It'd almost be worth it to buy a scooter just so I don't spend two hours a day waiting to cross streets.

Hmmm. Bringing up Rome reminds me of something I read in the "Athens Guide" available at the hotel. They talked about some of the ruins in Greece as being "from the Roman occupation." I guess Greece is still near enough to the Balkans that people here know how to hold a grudge. There were some other strangely prideful statements in the guide. The orthodox church is very big here, and the guide made sure to mention that greeks were the first christians. I suppose that's true, considering the first apostles after Christ probably did their converting here, but it seems an odd thing to boast about. Were the apostles greek?

Because, ironically, randomness is the unifying theme of this entry, I should take a moment to mention a brass band was playing in a building across the street as I was writing this. I think I recognized the english nathional anthem and 1812 overture. Bizarre.

Day 74 - Greece Is The Word

2005-06-23T11:11:00.000+02:00

I got into Skopje (pronounced scope-ya) at midnight, a full hour and a half after I was supposed to. Since the first train to Greece was at 3:20, and I'd napped on the train, and I'd only found two expensive hotels scouring four or five different online booking sites, I elected to push forward. So now I'm in Thessoloniki, northeastern port city, with about three hours to kill before my train for Athens leaves. Let's review the recent happenings of the last day (and night and day). You'll excuse a bit of punchiness.

Belgrade. I got up around ten and, knowing my train didn't leave until two, headed for the market. After provisioning with lots of cookies, water, and a bit of yogurt for breakfast, it was off to the train station. Getting back to the train station by day was much easier than getting to the hostel by night using a 1999 map I found online. For some reason Mapquest has no data on eastern european cities despite the fact that maps are available at any airport or train station (during the day, that is).
Train Station, Part 1. I found a bench and ate my yogurt. It was probably my favorite yogurt I've ever had in my life. It wasn't really flavored, just sweetened enough to keep it mellow, but not at all cloying. Perfect. Too bad I'll never find it again. :P Then I ate some chocolate covered wafer cookies. The box I bought was way too big and they were way too melty. Then I wrote in my game journal for a while. Finally I realized that with two hours left before the train came, I should probably do at least a little sight seeing. My 1999 map showed a giant castle. Stuff like that doesn't tend to move around much.
Belgrade Castle. I made my way through some convoluted streets to the river and, eventually, the castle. Belgrade is really run down. Even Berlin's sixty year old war damaged sections seemed nicer. The castle itself was largely a ruin, as well. I got a few pictures and climbed around a bit in an area I'm not sure I was supposed to climb around in, but there weren't any signs. I was beginning to cut into my safety buffer, so I high tailed it back to the station. On the way back, I made one of the classic rookie explorer mistakes and took a different route back than the route I'd gone out on. I still made it, but there's that sinking feeling you get when you're losing faith that the way back you're taking will actually work. That's a bad feeling.
Train To Skopje. As late as it was, the train ride to Skopje can only be described as magical. It started by sparking a lot of nostalgia. Southern Serbia reminded me a lot of the central valley. Some granite deposites, hills, and changing flora suggested the Sierra foothills. Something about the farm equipment was similar to home. I think it's that the south of Serbia just has better equipment than the north. Also the smell of animal farms after dark brought back memories of family trips on I-5. When you're getting nostalgic over manure, you're definitely homesick. :) Then the ride took a sharp left turn into the magical. It had gotten dark, and we were moving through the hills. I turned out the light, trying to get some shuteye, when I saw that there were dozens of fireflies outside. The train's flourescent lights were also casting a pale bluish green glow on the plant life outside. It made the plants appear to be an unnatural shade of gray, and as the train moved against the swaying fern-like trees, often at a snail's pace, it often felt as though we were travelling underwater. The fireflies became little flourescent fishes at the bottom of the sea. And when the moon came up, it was as full and orange as I've ever seen it. Last, but certainly not least, when we finally did catch sight of Skopje, I swear it looked just like Tulare. How the heck I know what Tulare looks like, I don't really know. I vaguely remember visiting my uncle there once, but even that seems more like a dream than a memory. All in all, it was a bizarre and wonderful ride.
Skopje Station. I knew I'd be able to pass the time in the station when I walked down the stairs and was immediately face to face with the Pepsi Insomniac Pro Gaming Center. Thirty or so Macedonian youth were playing Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, and Warcraft 3, among other things. Unfortunately, they were also smoking up a storm, so an hour of that was about enough for me. I took a few pictures, foolishly tried to change my Serbian money, and waited for the train. I'm probably lucky. Changing Serbian money in Macedonia is probably only a stones throw from trying to cash an Israeli money order in Syria. Stupid tourist.
Train To Thessoloniki. Between lapses into unconciousness, I saw some beautiful mountains and lots more familiar agricultural terrain heading into Greece. It occurred to me that I've seen an awful lot of corn. Then I realized that corn syrup is the cheapest sweetener known to man. Between the rapeseed and the corn, it's no surprise the world is getting fatter.
Thessoloniki. Since my train for Athens doesn't leave until two, and I got in at eight, I decided to wander a bit. I could smell the ocean, and that's always a big draw. Athens isn't costal, so this would be my only chance the entire trip to see the sea. It gave me a worthwhile surprise, too, as it was full of jellyfish. I hope my photos turned out. It's not always easy to get a camera to focus on translucent shapes under a reflective surface. :P I wandered a bit more, seeing very little of interest, and headed back to the station, finding this internet cafe along the way. I knew the parental units would be concerned, so I was very glad to find it. It's almost noon now. I want to double check that the train station I'm leaving from is the same one I came in from. I'm done with rude surprises like that. Once that's sorted, I think I'll grab some lunch. I've still got a box of cookies for the train, but I need something healthy. Just grabbing an apple from a produce vendor on my walk today felt like a major victory after the number of chocolate covered wafer cookiers I'd eaten. As much as I often disregard my body, I do value it. It conveys my head to interesting places.

All right. I'll take a quick peek at where I want to stay tonight in Athens. I'm thinking I'll splurge on a decent hotel for the last few days. Air conditioning in Athens is more than just a luxury.

Day 72 - Hit The Bricks

2005-06-21T11:21:00.000+02:00

Yay burned CD. The gal behind the counter was pretty clueless about how to burn two memory cards to a CD. With her broken english, it would have been twice as fast for me to do it myself. It's not only hostels that require patience. Also, the word for two in hungarian must be one. I say I want one hour. She says two hundred forints. That's bull. The sign at the street says 100 an hour. I tell her so, but pay anyway because it's still cheaper than the other places around. Then I log on and find out I have two hours of time. I'd love to chalk this up to kindness on her part, but this is not the way it worked previously, so the process of elimination yeilds incompetence as the most likely cause. Oh well.

While I was waiting, I got to find out how hungarian childern get their sex education as twelve year olds were watching a threesome on the computer. But mores are a lot different here. Anybody who can stay up until eleven can see porn here. People talk about how sex is considered more acceptable and natural here. I'm not sure there's any real connection between the words porn and natural, myself. Oh well.

I've got about two hours before the train leaves. Time to catch the bus back to the hostel, have some lunch, and head out for the station. I still need to shave. One shower for a dozen people is not optimal. At least the toilets are in other rooms. The hostel in Belgrade is supposed to have free internet, so hopefully I'll be adding an epilogue to today's update from the hospital.

Later!

[later]

I'm boiling a second batch of pasta. A black cat sat in my first bowl. :P It's twenty two twenty. I am glad to have a place to boil pasta. The street signs here are in cyrillic text, so letters aren't what they used to be. I saw one word with a six and a four in it. I kid you not. I'm certain that at least one of the rows of aliens in Space Invaders is a letter here, maybe three or four. Regardless, I eventually found my way. I also made sure to get some serbian currency. Hopefully tomorrow's travel will be less harrowing than todays. But, barring a true catastrophe, it would have to be.

It started early. I had given myself a comfortable margin with which to make the train. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until I set foot in the station that I had missed an important detail. The gal at the info office had said I don't need a reservation, not that I don't need a ticket. My eurail pass was good for the Hungary leg, but not for the Serbia leg. I needed a ticket. I stood in line. My train would leave in twenty minutes. The young man at the front of the line was trying to explain string theory to the clerk. Once he was satisfied with the clerk's understanding he left. My train would leave in fifteen minutes. Three more ticket buyers moved through. My train would leave in ten minutes, and there was only a woman and a couple in front of us. Unfortunately, the woman was trying to get across why Deep Blue has consistently failed to best Casparov. Once she had accomplished this noble goal, she got her ticket. My train would leave in five minutes, and I had no idea where the platform (lucky 13) was located. The couple behind the woman spoke no language the clerk understood so the woman acted as intermediary. The clerk, obviously taking pride in her efficiency, went on break. I took off for track thirteen.

I got on the train with a minute or two to spare with no ticket. I knew the name of the border station on my eurail map. I figured I'd try to jump out there, buy a ticket and get back on. There was no telling if there would be another train to Belgrade today. Every stop was a new conundrum. Where's the sign? Is this the border? Am I going to get arrested if I don't have my ticket yet? For some reason, the train always seemed to stop well short of the station signs, even when I moved to the furthest forward car.

At one stop, the train really stopped. All was silence. I decided it was now or never and grabbed my pack. That was Kelebia. I headed for the nearest building. The first room was the office. I got pointed around the side to the ticket window. All I said was "Beograd". The lady behind the counter said a lot of stuff and wrote down a number. 4743. Wow. I hadn't picked up any extra cash since my first day in Hungary. I pulled a wad of small bills and coins out of my pocket. I had 4700. Crap. Then I noticed the fifty forint coin on the ground. Oh yeah, baby. The train was changing engines, so I had plenty of time to get back on. I at least had the foresight to check the schedule and find out that the train to Skopje leaves at 2PM. That'll be cool because it will give me a morning to take a few pictures in Serbia.

I didn't take a single picture on the train, at first because I wanted to stay focused on making sure I steered clear of any "imperial entanglements". After I got the ticket, I got thrown back to second class and the aquarium window. There were four inches of water between the panes and lots of moss. It was cool to watch it slosh when the train slowed down and sped up, but no pictures would have turned out.

There also wasn't too much to take pictures of. Wheat and corn predominated. There were also incredibly ugly brick homes. There are a lot of darker skinned people (turks?) living in them, from what I could see. Some were so terrible they reminded me of documentary footage I'd seen of the favelas in Rio. I'll take some pictures of them tomorrow probably. Part of me is also a little worried about being pegged as an American in this part of the world. I don't really know what anger is harbored here towards the UN intervention of the mid nineties. There aren't any active warnings on the US travel page, but I'd rather not push it.

Okay. It's almost midnight. I better drink some water and get some sleep. I want to have a big fat time buffer tomorrow. Oops, after I book my Skopje hostel, that is.

Day 71 - I Got A Bad Feeling About This

2005-06-20T21:52:00.000+02:00

Today was the last day to decide how I'm getting to Athens. I could have tried flying, but between the reservation web sites that seemed to be broken and prices that seemed completely illogical (over five hundred dollars from the "budget" airlines), I decided against it. I could have tried Eurail, but I know how that would go, and three solid days of train and ferry travel is out! So what did I decide? I'm forging across the great unknown, in other words Serbia and Macedonia. I arrive tomorrow in Belgrade. I'll spend the night at Three Black Catz hostel and probably head out for Skopje the next day. I'd like to make the whole crossing in three nights. Belgrade, Skopje, Thessaloniki. That'll give me almost a week in or near Athens. Bye bye free trains, hello places I never heard of. Every trip should feature at least one place you've never heard of, right?

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Decisions. Other than make my train reservations, I didn't really have an agenda today. Since I do believe the Palace of Miracles is just a myth spread by the tourist board, I decided to head to the
Zoo. Part of me hates zoos because the animals are so restricted. The giant parks where they have room are okay, but some of the animals in any zoo are so restricted it's just criminal. The cow was tied up in a way that just made me sick. It couldn't do anything but stand there. Admittedly, cows don't usually do anything but stand there, but the fact that it was on a three foot leash tied around its horns was just wrong. The bald eagle in the enclosure that gave it no room to fly was another notable crime against nature. Reservations aside, I love seeing these animals. They're amazing. Just the size is impossible in some cases. The silverback was incredible. The grizzly bears were intimidating even with a huge moat hemming them in. I took a movie of them that will hopefully convey their size better than the pictures.
Veggie Restaurant. Having spent the better part of the day walking to and photographing the zoo, I headed to a vegetarian restaurant. It was more costly than the other vegetarian restaurant, but they had more variety, as well. I tried the chef's special and got breaded tofu with sour cream. It was pretty good. Lunch was actually a better value. I had hungarian macaroni, by which I mean the macaroni noodles were six inches long. At first I thought they were just really fat spaghetti until I tried to slurp one up and found myself sucking air through the noodle.

That's pretty much it for today. The train to Belgrade doesn't leave until 13:35 tomorrow, so I'll take a leisurely shower and shave in the morning, burn a CD, and make sure I'm properly provisioned for the train.

Day 70 - The True Underground

2005-06-19T20:56:00.000+02:00

When we last left our hero, ignorant tourist office people were running him all over Budapest and not helping him find anything. Well, I did what any vigilante would do. I took matters into my own hands, finding the addresses of the attractions online and using the interactive map to look them up.

To The Caves! The caves you get access to with the Budapest card were a little tricky to find. One was unmarked on my map, and the other was well off the edge. [Blain the Hero music kicks up.] It took quite a while to get to the first cave. It involved a bus, metro, tram, and a lot of walking. The walking wasn't really essential, but I prefer to walk in areas I haven't been in yet. You never know what you'll run across. I ran across a traffic jam. I actually had theme music for ten minutes or so as my walking was just as fast as a car in traffic blaring hip hop. I didn't bust a move, though. I always regret it when I leave a move unbusted. [music dies] Still, I had places to be, obscure places. Much like Venice, there are almost no street signs here. You have to look on the sides of buildings, and it is not uncommon for only one of the four appropriate buildings to actually have a sign on it. I don't know how the drivers around her cope. I was relying on intuition as it was, finding a street with a name only similar to one on my map and finding my way regardless. I had five whole minutes to spare, even.
Wussy Cave. The first cave had no warning about being difficult for the faint of heart to traverse, so I call it the wussy cave. It was still pretty, with cauliflower shaped formations. It was cool, as well, a welcome respite from the hot days we've had here. It doesn't seem that hot on the weather.com web site, but when the sun shines down between the buildings, it gets very warm. Those thirty mile an hour winds they write up on the web site are often only encountered when you get out on the bridge over the river.
Nav Bomb. After the wussy cave, I had twenty minutes to make it to the other cave. Because it was off the edge of my map, I had no idea whether it was even close enough to make it there in twenty minutes. Meh. Let's jog. So I jogged it on over. Despite the fact that none of the streets seemed to be going in the right directions or connected in the way I thought, I made it with two minutes to spare. Then they told me the tour was starting fifteen minutes later. Wah. I still rock!
Big Cave. Big cave was pretty cool. It's got some formations with fun mythology. There's a rock haning out of the ceiling, looking like it's ready to fall. The rumor is it will only fall on someone if they've been unfaithful. All the couples giggle, some more nervously than others. There's also the witches kitchen (with "pots" on the walls made by carbon dioxide bubbles). Supposedly you can call out the name of your favorite food and it will be waiting for you when you get home. We'll see. ;)
Vasarely. Hungary's father of something called Op-Art has a museum here. As far as I can tell, Op-Art is drawing lots of geometric shapes with lots of gradients and mathematical transforms. It's a lot like Escher only less obviously mind bending. If you actually try to analyze a picture and pick out patterns, you could probably spend a goodly amount of time on them. In fact, the feeling that I got was that these might be paintings for geniuses. If you had a two hundred IQ, you'd probably just look at them and see the six or seven patterns that contributed to a particular piece. I, on the other hand, just enjoyed staring at them, following a pattern or two at a time. The green X-shaped "Ferde" is the ultimate X-box logo. Bill Gates! Buy it! Market with it! Be cool like me!!!11!1 (You can see lots of what I saw at Vasarely's web site. It's Macromedia Flash, just so ya know.)
Palace of Miracles. The miracle being its disappearance. I still can't find the damn thing, even knowing it's address. I'm thinking it's hidden in the mall somewhere. It can't possibly be as cool as it would have to be to justify the time I've spent, so I may just do a day trip somewhere else tomorrow. Then it's back to Prague.

Okay. It's time to turn in. Party on! (Did I mention they play dance music in this internet cafe?) [/me busts a move]

Day 69b - The Pest

2005-06-18T20:19:00.000+02:00

I had a really good day today, despite some really bad information. I picked up the Budapest card today. Free public transit and admission to a lot of attractions. Unfortunately, I picked up a lot of bad info along with it. I got the wrong location to the kid science place. There was a nice park there, but nothing like what I was looking for. Some security guards gave me directions to where I was supposed to go, but it was too little too late by that point. I didn't care too much because I was still seeing new sights, photographing, and enjoying. I had half a pound of potato salad, a candybar, and some juice... [strongbad] some pumpkin apricot juice! [/strongbad] I always enjoy trying funky juices. Pumpkin apricot doesn't stack up to carrot orange, but it's drinkable, and probably pretty healthy, eh?

I also found a couple mega malls. Mega malls rule for one simple reason. They don't close on Sunday, like every other store in Europe. I will have cheap food on Sunday. Internet, I'm not so sure about, but we'll see. The cafe I'm typing from now is only fifty cents an hour. It rules. I'd like to take this opportunity to appologize in advance for the abrupt subject change.

[record skipping noise/] I looked up some more airline sites. It seems my best bet is to go back to Prague and take a flight from Czech Air. Yay eight hour train trip. Heh. I guess I'll have to take a book from the hostel in exchange for Angels and Demons and make a day of it. w00t.

Day 69 - The Buda

2005-06-17T22:21:00.000+02:00

It was a very mellow day today. I got up around ten, watched everyone else getting ready. The guys from Krakow who said they'd be up around six, and the gals from Ireland who said they were sleeping in until noon. I got to wait a half hour for the gal from Mexico to take her shower. I didn't really care. It was a nice morning. I had breakfast, some cereal I'd bought at the store the night before. That reminds me, dinner last night was frozen vegetables and the closest thing I could find to tater tots. Long live Ashland. :)

After all that, it was finally time to head out. I walked to the train station to pick up a map. While I was there, I was engaged in conversation by a man who rents rooms in his house here. He wanted help getting young tourists to stay with him. He was a big guy, so I could understand how people might be a little afraid if he tried the hard sell. He talked about how hard it's become because a lot of foriegn interests (arabs as he put it) have taken over the hotel industry here and how the textile and some other industries have been taken over by the chinese. With as much programming as the US is shipping off to South America and India, it's hard to imagine how people in the US are going to make money, especially after we've covered every square meter of the country with housing no one can afford, which at the current rate will be in about two months. :P I guess that's why the government is backing the entertainment industry so hard. It's one of the few things we still export effectively.

After our discussion of geopolitics, I wished him the best and headed for Buda. The rail station is well on the east side of town, and Buda is on the west. In fact, you can imagine the division of the two cities like the division of the word. Buda on the west side, Pest on the east. I saw lots of lovely architecture. When I got to the river, I realized that the most beautiful stuff is on the far side, though. There's a huge rocky green hill just on the other side of the river that I climbed to get some great views. There's a church in a cave there, too, but I was wearing shorts, so I decided to leave it alone. A lot of churches don't want anything above the knee, and I didn't want to see the inside that badly. The park on that hill was great. You could go to the fort at the top where they had some statues, which I took pictures of, and some old artillery pieces and ambulances they had up there from when there was a working fort, which I didn't take pictures of. The light was bad. Then I walked down, taking more pictures of the lovely greenery. Then it happened, something I knew was coming from the second I started growing my hair out. Someone mistook me for Jesus. Luckily it was just a local body builder. I'm waiting for a crazy person to really think I am Jesus.

The universe having the sense of humor that it does, I then walked around a three card monte game being conducted in the park. Even walking around it, one of the guys running the game called out to me like I was rude for just walking by. Part of me wanted to warn the people he was most likely stealing from, but I left them, without a word, to their own devices.

I tracked along the river, heading north. I had intended to explore the island park in the middle of the river, but I then realized it was four and I hadn't eaten anything. There was a vegetarian restaurant listed on my map. So instead of hitting the island, I just took some pictures of it (and of the incredibly ornate parliament building beside it) and went to an early dinner. Apparently hungarians eat late, or never eat at "Vegetarium", because I was the only one there. I tried the big sampler plate and ended up polishing off seasoned potatoes, herb rice, soaked cabbage, mushroom dumplings, tofu with tomato and peppers, and a mushroom rice patty somewhat reminiscent of a garden burger. This and a raspberry yogurt shake all for eleven bucks (and that's including an overly generous tip). I was very full.

I wandered back towards the hostel, taking a few pictures along the way. I took a detour to head past a small park. It was full of dogs. No one breed seems to predominate in Budapest. Black collies, terriers, dobermans; poodles, they're all here. There was something that looked like a saint bernard mix I rather wish I'd taken a movie of. It's size was unreal. Whenever it moved, it took it's coat a second to catch up. If it had been in a movie, I would have thought it was bad computer animation.

After that I headed back to the hostel, started this update, watched the computer crash, and then decided to follow its example. All that food needed digesting, after all. I took a nice three hour nap, which was probably good as my roommates were up chatting unti two. It was standard raunchy hostel faire, mostly. I thought with women in the room, it might tone down a bit. You would need a delicate, well calibrated instrument to detect the difference.

So here I am the next morning, more than a little glad that only one of my roommates will still be there tonight. But with the vagaries of hostel life, who knows who'll be next. It's time to do a bit more research and continue my exploration.

Flights to Athens
Map locations of attractions I want to visit

I'm seriously considering finding accomodation outside of Athens. For having hosted the olympics only five years ago, people say it's truly disgusting now. We shall see.

Day 67 - B To The P, Booooooy!

2005-06-16T17:29:00.000+02:00

There's not too much of interest to report today. I got my things in order (including burning another CD) in Prague yesterday and hit the train station early this morning. I couldn't get to sleep. I blame Dan Brown. A guy from my dorm (a super cool guy, by the way) gave me Angels and Demons to read. I haven't read The Da Vinci Code, but I can't guess they're much different. Countless conspiracies, brutal killings and lots of basically accurate info about religion and science. It's a good read and helped the eight hour train ride go faster. I'm almost done with it, actually, and considering I'm feeling that familiar tickle in my throat, it may be a good time to grub, read, and sleep. I don't know if I'll be able to find goulash like mom used to make here, though. ;)

Speaking of here, (marvel at the glorious seguay). It's warm here. I have converted my convertible pants into shorts. Many will go blind, but I won't stink so bad. This is a major consideration as before I got that shoe powder, my socks were so stinky, I didn't have to register them as lethal weapons. No government on earth would dare stand against them. Still, I had finally gotten comfortable going without sunscreen. I shall miss that. And there are more than a few walking sights here in Budapest. Luckily some of them are caves. :)

Also speaking of caves, I'm not so sure about this hostel "rated in the top ten by hostelworld users". The guy working there barely speaks, the free internet computer is hopelessly hosed, and he tried to charge me over twice what my bed is supposed to cost. We shall see.

Day 66 - All Set

2005-06-15T11:40:00.000+02:00

This is my last day in Prague. The first train to Budapest leaves at seven thirty and I plan to be on it. So today is mostly packing, looking up stuff about Budapest on the internet, maybe shooting some more nazis, maybe not. I can't believe I'm paying for it. Gaming, I mean. It's so degrading. I pay at home, but that's for a relationship, not a fling. So wrong. Still, Brothers in Arms is teaching me covering and flanking tactics, so its worthwhile. It's almost more of a puzzle game than an action game, and I expect it will only become more so as it progresses. We shall see.

As for yesterday, it was mostly an evening wasted out with guys from the hostel. It was fun, and I picked up some interesting trivia on Budapest. Now I'll go see if it's true. :)

Day 65 - Richness

2005-06-14T18:38:00.000+02:00

What the heck did I do yesterday? I shot a few nazis. I celebrated listening to all the answering machine messages on homestarrunner.com by eating an entire 400 gram marzipan. It was pretty good. Um, what else... bang!

Nap. You shouldn't eat a big marzipan without a bed handy.
Eat More. I went to the store and got some veggies to have with my remaining pasta. They didn't really have what I wanted so I ended up having pasta with a red pepper, carrot, and onion. It was surprisingly good, especially with a little salt and hot sauce on top. Hot sauce?
Denim Crew. A bunch of guys and gals from the bay area had bought some cheap denim jackets and were cutting them up. Jackets became vests. Cuffs became wristbands. Sleeves became big wristbands, headbands, and leg warmers. It was fun to watch.
Hostel Bar. After cleaning up after dinner, I decided to join the denim crew downstairs. I had an absinthe and a Budwar Budweiser, which is supposedly the beer Budweiser stole its name from. I thought it was good as the three kinds of beer I've ever had went. The absinthe, however, was nasty, no matter how much sugar you put in it. :P
Nap. I went to bed about one in the morning, but since the hostel bar closes at three thirty, I was awoken by the sounds of random yelling in the hallway a little before four. And to make matters worse, we are so far east in the "Paris" timezone, it's actually getting light at four in the morning. It took an hour or so to get back to sleep.
Check out. I had to change rooms since I was extending my stay at the hostel. That meant I dumped my pack in a pack room and headed out.
Tesco. I grabbed some powder for my stinky shoes and a breakfast candy bar. I forgot I still need a few ziplock bags. Minutiae.
Giger. It took a while to get there, being a click away from any metro stop, but I finally made it to the Giger exhibit. The museum it's in is a technology museum. They've got scads of old cameras (still and moving), vehicles (air and ground), astrological equipment, clocks, audio gear, etc. As such, they have scads of school children being led around. They don't get to go into the Giger exhibit, but just the fact that the Alien is clearly visible from the hall made for some interesting traffic jams as eight through ten year olds tried to process what they were looking at. I think I can sum up Giger for me pretty simply. If it looks like a penis, it's in there somewhere. If the texture is rotted, translucent, or pitted, it's in there somewhere. The way he plays with perspective and interconnection between elements keeps me working to figure out exactly what I'm looking at. The level of detail also keeps me looking for, and finding, new elements at every turn. DooM 3 seems so impoverished compared to Giger's work. Giger's work is so mind bending. In fact, I find it silly when he includes classic christian references like satan and the number six six six. His work is so much more compelling than any christian conception of evil and hell that I've seen.

Day 64 - The Toreador Song

2005-06-13T11:25:00.000+02:00

Bang! Bang! Bang! Here come the bullets!

Gaming. I did play some more Brothers in Arms, but the PC I had yesterday was taken, so I had to start over. I think I can now pick up where I left off on PC 24. It's good to remember. It's a fun game, but one that requires some discipline as you have to use supressing fire and flanking effectively. Also it's not as easy to survey the battlefield in zoomed out mode as I'd like. Ah well.
Eating. Dinner last night was mostly almonds and cookies, the vegetarian's version of the high calorie diet. Heh.
Carmen. So I watched a french opera about spanish gypsies performed by the state opera of Prague. Some people in the audience said the french was pretty terrible, and the subtitles in czech weren't useful for me. Czech is one of the wierdest languages I've encountered. It sometimes seems like they have an irrational fear of vowels. You know the letter z? It's a word in czech. You know when Homer jumps around saying, "I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean S-M-A-R-T!" Smrt is a word in czech. It means death. My head spins. But I digress. I had the foresight to look up the synopsis of the play on the Metropolitan Opera's web site. It's basically the story of a woman who wants freedom. She supports the freedom fighters. She loves who she wants. Unfortunately for her, she seduces the wrong man to stay out of jail, Don Jose. Don Jose forsakes a woman he's supposed to marry and his career in the military for Carmen and the life of a resistance fighter. When his morther takes ill, he goes to see her, promising to return to Carmen. Carmen takes up with a bullfighter, and when Don Jose returns, she tells him to get lost. Don Jose, forsaken and jealous, kills her. The end. It's about what I'd expect from an opera. There weren't really any fat ladies, though. At least none with a major role.
Giger. I only mentioned going to see the Giger stuff in Switzerland because I thought it might be a silly thing to do if it was convenient. It didn't seem that convenient, so I gave it a miss. Now the guy is freaking following me around. A travelling exhibit was in Berlin while I was there. It arrives tomorrow in Prague. Just to keep him off my back, I'm probably going to go. Are you happy now, HR? Hehe. Also, I saw a museum for a czech artist who does lovely art deco glass painting. I think they're art deco, anyway. I'll probably stop by today.
Travel plans. It's time to book a room in and train for Budapest. One of the malaysian gals from Florence sent an email saying what activities they enjoyed there.

Truth be told, I'm ready to come home. Matthew's giving lectures on the history of console games. I've been writing notes about the eight bit style game I want to write in my little notebook. All this touristy stuff feels like a big waste of time. I have work to do.

Day 63 - Closed

2005-06-12T11:48:00.000+02:00

Lots of Prague is closed today, but luckily the mini-mall where I use the internet is unaffected. It's a fair distance away from the hostel, but I don't seem to mind. I return to my favorite mood, unshakably mellow. There are several good reasons for that.

Brothers In Arms. They have it here at the internet cafe, so I got to spend an hour blowing stuff up. The acting in the game is really good. The opening is a grabber too. I think I'll play another hour today and see if I can keep my backup from getting killed.
Carrefour. Carrefour is like Target and Albertsons put together. They seem to still be working the kinks out though, as sometimes items don't ring up correctly. Today I'm going to take pictures of the items I buy to avoid any more delays at the register. There's a bar of white chocolate with straberry bits with my name on it. I'm actually trying to eat a little poorly at this point as it has recently come to my attention that I've lost some weight. Well, I've lost some width anyway, as I can now comfortably use the last notch in the belt I brought. Doh.
Park. The park itself is nice. The most fun I had in the park came from trying to photograph bees. I just wanted one picture of each kind of bee. I think I eventually succeeded, but sometimes it's hard to tell on my little preview pane. I can only zoom in so far. After a leisurely stroll through the park, I headed back for the hostel and the remaining food I had left over for dinner. I made pasta again, and while the addition of sauteed mushrooms was definitely a cool addition, I couldn't find decent tomatoes to put in it. The czechs make spaghetti sauce with ketchup. That just ain't right. I used some tomato puree. Meh. I ended up picking out all the pieces of mushroom and garlic. Yummm.
Sweet Rest. Amazingly enough for a Saturday night, the hostel hadn't managed to fill any of the other beds in my room. I locked the door and slept a wonderous sleep.
Morning Walk. I decided to walk to the mall in the morning. Prague never fails to please. Even though I wasn't in the old town, there were still plenty of things to photograph. I also wandered by the state opera house and picked up a ticket for Georges Bizet's Carmen tonight. I think this will be my first opera... ever. It oughta be a good one. And it was less expensive than Duran Duran. :P I need to get more cash from the machine though. Plays in London and concerts in Prague. The National Museum was next door, but I thought the mall might close early on Sunday, so I headed here instead.
Funny Pictures. There have been a few funny threads of posters here in Prague that I've wanted to take pictures of. I ran across well placed ones to phograph this morning. The main one is the official czech beer, Pilsner Urquell. I think if Glenn's Isetta comment every time I see it. It's made in a place called Plzen or something, so I think it might be the place where pilsner was invented. [homer]That crazy Urkel! What will he think of next!?[/homer]

Now I think it's time to check out the lebanese place in the food court. Mmm. Food court.

Day 62 - The Morning After

2005-06-11T11:49:00.000+02:00

Duran Duran was cool. The Prague crowd was a little sedate, but they seemed to enjoy themselves. It made me wonder about the associations we have with music. For a lot of people in the states, Duran Duran means guess jeans, big hair, and beaucoup makeup. For a lot of people here Duran Duran had a lot of their hits during communist rule. How does that color their view of the music?

Duran Duran does bring back the memories, too, as they played every song of theirs I've ever heard. Well, they didn't play the theme to the last Roger Moore James Bond film, but I didn't really expect them to. I didn't realize I knew so many of their songs, actually. Here are the ones I recognized from the set.

(Reach Up For The) Sunrise
Hungry Like The Wolf
Notorious
The Wild Boys
The Reflex
Save A Prayer (for the morning after)
Girls on Film
Rio

They also played a nice instrumental number to give Simon a break and a song called "What Happens Tomorrow" about the war in Iraq. I thought it was really nice.

After the concert I headed back to the metro. Public transit in the US will probably never be as good as it is in Europe, but I'm getting ahead of myself. On the way there, I almost tripped on something on the ground. I turned around and looked at it. "What is that? A koosh ball? It's pretty large for... Woah! It's a hedgehog!" I'd never seen a hedgehog just wandering the streets before. It was a cute little bugger. It started moving and I kind of herded it back towards a grassy area. That was cool.

What was less cool was the drunkard who tried to take a bed in our room at three AM. Oh well. Hostel life. I'll be better about locking up in the future. Today it's time to get my walk on again. There's a huge park, and if I don't see anything else today but its insides, I'll be happy.

Day 61 - It's Full Of Decorations

2005-06-10T15:36:00.000+02:00

Despite the twin snorers in my room, I had a very restful night's sleep. They were very amusing, actually. One has a raspy snore that pitch bends up every breath. The other has a low rumble that changes pitch rather like a fog horn. Listening to them go in and out of sync was strangely relaxing. I've spent most of the day today in a relaxed state of wandering. You can't go wrong in Prague. Old school architecture is everywhere. At first it's overwhelming. Then it's kind of dull as the variations in it seem to be relatively minor. Why spend all this time on ornamentation just to make every building vaguely resemble every other building? There are still a lot of unique buildings though, and I've got plenty of pictures to prove it.

I let the interesting buildings guide me for most of the morning. Eventually I came across the Charles Bridge, an old bridge with a bunch of old statues on it. It's sort of like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, except it has no shops. I waited for the sun to show up again so I could take a picture. It's been pretty cloudy, which makes for nice backdrops but lousy lighting. So I waited, knoshing on some pastry I bought at the market the night before. Mmmm. Hazelnut pastry. While I was waiting, a group was trying to get someone to take their picture. I obliged and after an awkward exchange of camera and pastry I took a picture and was thanked. "Spaceba." I guess the cold war is long over, but I still thought that was a cool experience.

After the light finally showed up, I took a picture of the bridge and a cool building next to it and some cool buildings across the river. They have a lot of cool buildings here, in case that isn't becoming clear yet. I wandered down the river. There's a huge green hill with an Eiffel Tower type structure across the river. I wandered across the river. I kept getting distracted by cool buildings and staying near to the river. At one point I just wandered into a park and started napping on the bench. The weather here is fantastic. The sun will come out and get you toasty, then a little wind and cloud will come along to cool you down. Marvelous. I eventually found a hill, but not the one I had been looking for. I had nothing to do but climb it, so I did. The view wasn't that great, but the trees and weather left me well past caring.

It was about this time that the hazelnut pastry started to wear off, so I decided to head to the little shopping cart icon on my map. Oh my god. It's full of stores. I wandered into a three level mall, where I am now typing this on a much nicer computer than the hostel's for a lot less money. Everyone else is playing Counterstrike. :P

I also took this internet opportunity to check out the Duran Duran situation. It looks like there are still seats available, so I've taken down the ticket center location on my map. Time to rock out, 80s style! :D

Day 60 - Prague

2005-06-09T23:42:00.000+02:00

I couldn't get to sleep last night until about one. I was a little disgruntled because I knew I had to catch a seven o'clock train the next day. Imagine my joy when all my roommates came home at four. Doh! It's hostel life. They finally turned in around six. Totally unable to sleep, I sat in the lobby and ate cookies. Even at six in the morning, the computer was in constant use. :O Speaking of computers in constant use, this hostel has only one, and it's not even free. Three bucks an hour. Nothing in Prague is really cheap. Let's hit the highlights of the last day in Polska.

My Baby Takes The Morning Train. Heh. I sing that all the time with all the trains I take, but this was the most appropriate one. I slightly underestimated the time it would take to walk to the train station, so it was a little bit of a rush at the end, but I made it. The transfer was a rush too. Five minutes to change trains may work in countries where everything is clearly labeled and easy to find, but in the train station we were in, we basically had to run from one end of the station to the other. I travelled with a couple guys from the hostel who were also going to Prague. We had assigned seating on the subsequent trains, so I don't know where they ended up.
Czech Businessman. There was a nice czech businessman in my compartment (on the second out of three trains). He was very quiet at first, but once we started chatting, he was very friendly. He talked about working across eastern europe. He knows russian, polish, czech, english, and german. He gets a little confused sometimes, as I suppose many people would. Regardless, he was kind enough to help me make my next connection (which was also supposed to be a close shave).
Last Train. The scenery in the Czech Republic is beautiful. Grass and tree covered hills abound. I was going to call them forrest covered hills, but I think many of them were tree farms. There are these fir trees which have almost no branches except at the very top. I think they may grow closer together, which would make them ideal for harvesting. Regardless, I snapped many pictures from the train window. I'm really looking forward to burning another CD. I recently realized that my picture taking has slowed down a lot. I have some Berlin, Krakow, and Prague all on the same 256MB memory card. That's just wrong. How am I supposed to wallpaper my room in Wayne's house properly if I don't have at least two thousand pictures?
Prague. The train doesn't really show you that much of Prague coming in. Still, you know it's going to be beautiful. I don't think cities should ever be built on flat ground. Hillsides are what make every beautiful city I've seen beautiful. I was already somewhat late for my hostel so I converted my polish money. When one polish dollar buys you over seven czech dollars, you know you're dealing with a depressed economy. It's about twenty of theirs to one of ours. Still, everything is just twenty times more expensive here. Ingredients for dinner were two hundred dollars. The hostel payment was 1,850. Still, it's fun to throw twenty dollar coins around and carry around a thousand dollar bill. :)
Wandering. I wandered north toward some markets on the twenty dollar map I bought. It's a pretty nice map. But no map could prepare me for the shock of discovering that Prague markets close at seven. I'll bet if I can hit them when they're open, the prices will be much better than stuff here in town. I'll probably want to do that too, as I've already extended my stay here to a full week. Prague is really beautiful and has a huge youth culture and nightlife, so there's plenty to do. Duran Duran is playing tomorrow, but I doubt I can get tickets. I'll check anyway.

Well, I ought to make some attempt at appearing polite and let the nice gal from Florida check her email. Chat atcha later! :)

Day 59 - Yay! Walkabout!

2005-06-08T22:10:00.000+02:00

It's weird because I spent all day walking around Auschwitz, but for some reason it felt really good to walk around Krakow. Maybe it's because I felt like a rebel for not going to the salt mines. Maybe it's because I left the tourists behind. Maybe it's because I saw a hill over four clicks away and got to it with no map. Regardless, it was a nice day.

Train Reservations. Let's just say Italian service doesn't seem so bad anymore. The lady at the information desk speaks no english. Not "little bit" like almost every train person in every other station I've been in. Just none. When presented with my phrase book, one of the clerks claimed to know none of the languages listed. And they say Americans are provincial. Still, everything eventually got settled, and I'll be taking day trains to Prague. With all the night train horror stories, I'm glad to be going during the day (not that I'll let my guard down).
The Park. I left the train station happy to be walking around with nowhere to go. I took some shots of the park and the local architecture. Krakow's quite pretty in the old town. As I worked my way around, I found myself gaining some altitude and realized I was heading up the path to...
The Castle. The word Wawel is used a lot, but I'm not sure if that's the name of the castle or the polish word for castle. Regardless, it is really pretty. I think someone from the hostel said the interior tours are kind of lame, so I didn't bother. I got some nice pictures of the castles and some closeups of some interesting flowers (a.k.a. more wallpapers for mom). Also, I saw some signs for a dragon, so I paid a buck to go through a cave that leads to it. Seeing the dragon itself is free, and lots of school children were doing just that. What an odd field trip. Anyway, as I was walking along the river next to the castle, I saw a mound sticking up from a faraway hill. Ten minutes later, when I saw a sign pointing in that direction that said "WKYZWKYZKWYZKYWKZY - 4km" (or something like that), I knew where I was going that day.
Real Krakow. The first thing that I liked was that I was seeing regular storefronts, cars, etc. I stopped into a bakery and bought a big chocolate covered croisant for forty cents US. The currency here is called the szloty and is roughly the same as Brazillian and Argentinian currency. In other words, once you're out of the tourist traps, things are really cheap.
Little Help. After going a significant distance, I came to a sort of one leaf cloverleaf. I was getting close to the mound, I knew that much. But I wasn't sure if I should head up the hill on a small road nearby, or stick to the main drag. A gal on rollerblades, coming the opposite direction seemed to be my best bet. Amazingly, she spoke fine english. I've since learned it wasn't that amazing as much of the younger generation does. I didn't know how to pronounce the name of where I was going, but happily I had taken a picture of the sign pointing to it and showed it to her on my camera. She said go up the hill, and I was on my way.
The Mound. That's what the signs call it. Some people from the hostel said it was the grave of some ruler so well loved that when he died, everyone brought a handful of dirt for the grave, and it became a hill fifty meters tall. Regardless, it gave a pretty great view. I took lots of snaps. I still don't know if I can trust the viewpiece on the camera with skies. Sometimes the sky seems washed out, so I take another shot in which the ground seems almost black and indistinguishable. We'll see when I get home if I really need to take two of every picture, or if one of the two settings is almost always best.
Walking Back. The walk back was fairly uneventful. I had half a liter of yogurt drink to keep me going until dinner and took a few snaps of the cute little polish fiats you see frequently in Krakow. I also finally bothered to take some picture of the main town square. It's funny how I can immediately talk a beautiful landmark like that for granted just because my hostel is nearby.
Dinner. I got recommendations from the man at reception and headed out. Actually, I was going to take a silly scotsman from the hostel with me, but he disappeared for a while. The restaurant had an english menu, so I didn't have to guess. The staff spoke english. I ate with a british couple. It was almost too english to be the experience I was looking for. But the food made it all right. I had two plates of pirogi. (They had two vegetarian kinds. I had to.) A gal that works there game out to our table at one point to warn us about a guy who had sat behind me. He always comes in, sits next to tourists, orders nothing but tea, and leaves very quietly. Then people tend to notice their cell phones are missing. He had probably had enough opportunity to make off with my camera, if he'd been sneaky enough about it. Luckily he wasn't. Anyway, I had a great time relating some of my favorite experiences with the british couple. They warned me not to take the boat to the castle outside of Prague, as it takes ninety minutes versus the twenty it takes if you take the metro and bus. It's only five miles out of town. I might walk. I think I'll be doing a lot of walking in Prague.

That's it for the night. I'm back on the clock now, as I've pretty much given up using the free internet in Mama's Hostel. It's a great hostel, but they really need to institue a thirty minute time limit per person or something. Regardless, I installed my favorite Nintendo music plugin and got a lot of positive comments about the music. :) All right. Off to bed, then off to Prague!

Day 58 - Auschwitz

2005-06-08T00:04:00.000+02:00

"Free Internet" as offered by the hostel is one computer for fifty people, so I will be brief. Auschwitz was not what I expected. It is so different than it once was that it's hard to imagine the horrors of what occurred here. Grass and wildflowers grow over the majority of the death camp area. Trees frame the edges. It's lovely. I took the tour, but it wasn't really helpful. I know maybe three more things than someone who just read all the placards, and I probably know many things less because we didn't have time to read the placards as we moved through. Plus, hearing someone who sounds bored describe what happened is not nearly as dramatic as having to read it and imagine it for yourself. All that said, some of the things the nazis did to trick people into the gas chambers were truly chilling. They told peole they were being relocated, even giving them tickets that said Krakow. They built a fake villiage nearby that they would see from the train, populated with jewish people. When they were going to lose the camp, they went into the elementary school, gave the children toys taken from children murdered at Birkenkau , and marched the happy kids to the gas chambers. Yeah. I think I took two pictures the whole day. It just felt wrong to be a tourist in the presence of such suffering. I was more of a pilgrim.

We hit a mexican restaurant tonight. The cottage cheese enchiladas were actually pretty decent. Okay. I should be polite (unlike everyone else in the hostel), and I can't seem to shake this tired feeling. I've gotten tired way too early for three nights now. :P

Day 57 - Train To Cracow

2005-06-07T00:14:00.000+02:00

It's not really late, but with the all day train trip, I don't think I'll be clubbin'. There are a lot of cool people at this hostel who are going out. I think the rumors of Krakow being only for old people are greatly exaggerated. Of course it's getting into heavy tourist season and Krakow feels a lot like Florence. Nothing I can't handle! :) (I'm a little random an punchy, if you haven't noticed.) Let's catch up.

Laundry. I had a little fun at the laundrymat. It was just me and a young couple. I took my laundry out of a bag and threw it in. I took off my jacket and threw it in. Then I took off my shoes. I made a signal at the guy (The gal was reading.) to turn around. I took off my belt. Then I took off my pants. I was wearing my long underwear which hadn't seen use since Paris. They found this highly amusing, which was what I was going for. :)
Train Ride. By popular demand, here's what you see when going from Berlin to Krakow.
- Run Down Buildings. This is standard fare for train rides, since the worst real estate is next to the tracks. Still, there seemed to be a disproportionate number of rundown buildings in Poland. I'm assuming the Department of Glorious Communist Neglect had a hand in that.
- Farms. Tree farming seems to be big in Poland. I'm guessing they produce a lot of paper or wood.
- Coal. I saw a number of coal refineries and train cars full of coal. But I'm not sure how much they actually use it in light of the next bullet item.
- Active Cooling Towers. Maybe they weren't what they looked like, but it there appeared to be at least two operating nuclear power plants along the train route. Unfortunately, trees and other obstacles prevented me from getting any good pictures.
- Funny Letters. I am very glad the hostel has an american keyboard. (UK ones are slightly different.) I suspect polish keyboards have only C, Z, Y, and W keys as most words here seem primarily composed of those letters. Words like "wypozyczalnia" are not uncommon. Marjan, are slavic languages related as closely as "romance" languages? Can you get by in most of the countries here just knowing Slovenian? I have only czech in my language book, so polish and hungarian are pretty mysterious.
Mama's Hostel. This place is really nice. They have free lockers, free internet, and free toast for breakfast. And you can even install stuff on the computer so I downloaded the NES music player for WinAmp and am currently listening to the Strider soundtrack.
Dinner. I got some instant soup from the store. I figured a nice polish beet noodle soup would be good as I hadn't eaten anything but dried fruit and peanuts on the train. Good for the colon, but low on calories. I also have some cookies which are calling to me even as I type this. Yeah. It's time to hit the sack. I want to go to Auschwitz tomorrow. The also have a salt mine tour here. It doesn't say anything about slides, but underground chapels carved in "living salt rock" might make up for it. Regardless, the old town here is really cool looking. I'll probably have fun just walking around taking pictures, sort of a prelude to Prague.

Day 56 - Laundry

2005-06-05T13:49:00.000+02:00

Hehe. It's been a bit long since I've done proper laundry, so I'm trying to sneak that into a final lazy day in Berlin. I'm also planning to catch a movie called Yasmin about a palestinian family in Scotland and how people react to them after 9/11. But that's the future. Let's catch up with the past.

Back To The Front. I headed back to the Ethnology Museum. The horror. The horror. The African exhibit, which according to one source was going to dispel any notions of African art as primitive, is closed until August. "I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows." I wandered through the rest of the south seas, indian, and oriental sections. I didn't find myself taking nearly as many pictures as in the south american section. Older oriental art seems so formal and lifeless, and I saw much cooler indian art at the British Museum. Heh. One gal was ending her tour in London and someone said the British Museum is a good review for all the art she'd seen thus far.
Morphine Mood. My drugs and society teacher described being given morphine as sleeping in on a Sunday morning, somewhere between dreaming and waking. I took a nap in anticipation of heading out to the club, but was disturbed partway through (by the oriental screen that gives John's Cozy Little Oriental Hostel its name being knocked over on top of me). The result was that I was in a sort of hippy dippy trippy mood the rest of the evening, and instead of heading out to the club, I wandered the streets in search of falafel, tofu, or whatever for a couple hours. I finally found some falafel, took it back to the hostel, and listened to one of the guys who works there complain about the politics of their tiny hostel worker's community before sacking out again. I'm tempted to diagram the relationships, but you probably aren't interested, and I might get someone in trouble.

And now, back to the future. I've burned my last CD here, so my memory cards are ready to rock. I'm assuming the post office is closed, so I'll probably just hold onto the rest of my CDs until I head home. I have a nice box for them that the memory card reader came in. Isn't that conveeenient? In the meantime, it's showering, laundering, eating, movie watching and relaxing. Tomorrow morning it's provisioning. I'm not planning on spending a ten hour day eating train food. :P

Day 55 - Multicultural

2005-06-04T10:45:00.000+02:00

Yesterday day was the Ethnology Museum. All I can say is Freaking w00t!!! Getting away from European art is definitely refreshing. I did see one painting of Christ and St. John the Baptist, but it was in the northwest native american modern art section and thouroughly unrecognizeable. Mostly it's different interpretations of human and animal shapes, with some unfamiliar mythology thrown in. I have scads of pictures and plan to return today to take more. Unfortunately, the one place I can burn CDs doesn't seem to be open today, and the memory card hasn't come in the mail yet. The story of german efficiency has become tiresome. The states, England, France, and even Italy (probably where the word italics comes from, as the Venetians invented it) deliver mail more reliably than Germany. How's that for a slap in the face? I'm trying to figure out if I need to swing back this way before going to Greece just to pick up my memory card. That's entertainment.

Yesterday night was the night life tour. Whoops. It was all of five clubs, all of which were mentioned in the free guide I picked up, and there was no techno on the tour. It was cool to get a little more history on the places, but it was only a little more than what the free guide said. The King Kong Klub (Yes, it spells KKK.) was cool. It's an expiremental venue. There was a guy singing and playing guitar, backing himself up with an iPod mini. There wasn't enough variety in his set, but for his apparent age and experience he did well. That was the place I got to do the most dancing, too. I would have gone techno clubbing afterwards, but it would have been costly and I would have been too tired to enjoy it. Well, that last part's probably a lie. Techno is energizing. I may have to trek out there tonight.

I got my train ticket for Krakow. Ten hours, and that's the direct train, and that's assuming no delays. Marjan, you were definitely right about eastern european rail. Ah well. It'll work out.

In the meantime, it's back to the museum! I've only been through the americas and half of the pacific islands. I still have the other half of the islands, africa, and india to go! I don't know how I'm ever going to make use of all this stuff, but it's too cool and too late to stop now!

Day 54 - Richard Wagner Platz

2005-06-03T10:01:00.000+02:00

I'm having a little difficulty remembering what I did yesterday, so I named the entry after the street where I had a noontime snack. Heh. I think I remember my food from the day better than the day itself. For breakfast, still sick of müsli, I headed out and got some eggs. I scrambled them well and had them with grapefruit juice. I got burned out on grapefruit juice a while back, but if I have a glass of water before and after the juice, it's nice. Still on a bit of a protein kick, lunch was bread and an apple with a big bag of peanuts eaten a block east of Richard Wagner Platz because I wanted to find a bench in front of the church I wanted to stare at. Peanuts are hard to find here sometimes, which feels odd because they're hard to avoid in the states. For dinner I had two falafels and baklava. Quite possibly the greatest desert I ever had was baklava eaten in Rio. This was not nearly as good, but I should have enough time in Hungary and Greece to find its equal. So much for the food update. Let's catch up with the activities.

Nightlife Tour. The time on the web site is wrong, so I missed the tour by a half hour. It was the perfect end to a cranky day. I was already feeling better at that point, so I didn't really mind.
Busy Work. I booked reservations for Mama's Hostel in Krakow and A Plus Hostel in Prague. I still need to book the trains.
Bröhan. The Bröhan was supposed to have art deco and art nouveau. It did, but you can't take any pictures because they want to sell you forty euro books. I liked the stuff, but not that much. I should mention that out of all the porcelain sculpture I've seen, I think the Bröhan had my favorite stuff. It had character, and personality, and used the characteristics of the medium to its advantage. So much porcelain statuary seems like it's trying to be marble, plastic, or something other than what it is.
Old Museum. I took the metro across town and wandered my way to the antiquities museum. As an aside, the metro here is fabulous. It runs ever five minutes and it moves. The antiquities museum had some cool jewelry from a nomadic culture that was contemporary with the greeks. They were nomads and some of their artifacts were found as far north as Brandenberg. Then someone chased them off and they were never heard from again.
Wondering. I'm still wondering what my interest is in these objects. The art deco glass looks fabulous, but even if it wouldn't poison you, would you dare drink from it? The same can easily be said of jewelry. I'm impressed by how detailed some of it is. I find the interplay of colors and shapes interesting. But I have no use for it in real life, do I? If nothing else, it enriches the textures I dream in, hardly justification, but an interesting side effect, nonetheless.
Scrabble. A couple of hosteler's were playing scrabble. It was very fun to watch and be silly with them. They are both physics students (going for a masters and a PhD), so it was good nerdy fun. Geeking out is definitely one of my favorite activities. The highest scoring word of the evening was quark, at fifty six points.

That pretty much catches you up with the highlights. Today the plan is to visit some museums out near the botanical gardens. Lots of ancient art that is not Greek awaits. :O

Germans are so efficient. They can make that open mouth symbol with one letter. Ö They can do a smiley in one letter, too. Ü Now that's a big smile.

Day 52 - Ready For Some Nightlife

2005-06-01T19:13:00.000+02:00

It was a cranky day today. I'm really sick of being cranky. It's a useless feedback loop. But it is fun to watch people get out of my way in museums when I'm in a bad mood. :P

Today was the Pergamon. The Pergamon does big better than anyone. They've basically rebuilt sections of temples and fortresses inside the museum. The roof is about twenty meters high so that you can check out all their majesty. It's nuts. I made myself cranky by forgetting to recharge my batteries. Luckily my iPod batteries had enough juice to get me through the day. In my continuing study of what makes some art interesting and some art not, I found it really interesting that a lot of the objects in the islaamic section of the Pergamon were lit from below, the same technique used by Wes Craven (or his lighting tech) to make the dream world of Nightmare on Elm Street seem unnatural. Given what I've been reading about German prejudice lately, I'm not sure I approve of the choice, although I thought the artifacts looked cool. Then again, I always keep an eye out for something that might inspire a DOOM wall texture or architectural motif, so maybe they really are trying to make the islaamic stuff look evil.

After that, I took off for the Old National Gallery. That was pretty cool. It's organized fairly similarly to the gallery I liked so much in Munich (the Alte Pinakotek). I largely whipped through it though. I was crochety over my batteries and other things. Also, german museums employ people to watch you at all times. I was told not to get too close to the paintings with my camera. It's not very conducive to the art appreciation experience to feel like you're being there is nothing but a potential problem. Heck, in the nigh deserted Kunstgewerber museum, the guards actually followed me around. Also, they don't want me to put my camera against glass cases to get good pictures of the items within. They don't light it brightly enough that you can take the picture by hand, you can't use the glass to steady your picture, and they don't have pictures of most of the smaller items in any books or card you can buy. What the %$}*. Fire that useless guard and shell out for new glass once a year. The museum will save thousands. And one last complaint regarding the Old National Gallery, the audio guide sucked. Too few works have description numbers. Half of the numbers are wrong. (At least they're written in a different way so you learn not to waste your time.) And your characterization of The Thinker doesn't match up with the description from the Rodin museum. Get it together.

Afterwards, I went over to the culinary school to grab dinner. No dice. They seem to have one menu a day and it doesn't cater to vegetarians. I could have had soup and some veggies in cheese sauce, not a dinner for someone covering as much ground as I do. I had another plate at my favorite turkish place, instead. I really dig that restaurant. The pasta I had today wasn't a culinary delight, but it was good, filling, and cheap. Additionally, the people who work there are always very nice and seem to really care if I'm enjoying my meal. I'll probably eat there more than a few more times before I leave.

Speaking of leaving, it's time to book accomodation in Krakow. Heck, I'd like to get my hostel arrangements out of the way for the month. We are in the last month now, and even as crochety as I've been, I'm going to miss this place and all the others. By the same token, I'm looking forward to not having to constantly relearn how to get basic necessities (food, transportaion, ATMs, laundry, etc.) handled. All right. Tonight is the nightclub tour, so I better get my butt in gear. Berlin is famous for its nightlife, and I'm looking forward to getting a broader feel for it.

Day 51 - Basically Lazy (Stream of Consciousness)

2005-05-31T21:33:00.000+02:00

Mmmmm. Sleep in. Only one roommate. Gone to shower. Better get up.

Musli sucks. Finish the english muffins. Mmmm. Butter-like goo in a tub.

Go walking. Get CD made. Yeah. Gonna suck. Boss isn't in. "But I've got the card reader." No CDs. I take your five. Burn. Can't burn. No CDs.

Go to the store. Wow, four floors. CDs at the top. Slide down to the bottom and back around.

CD PC has no power. But I'm not feeling sour because, all I got are hours. I got nowhere to be and nothing to do. No frustration or elation, cause I'm set on cruise. They set up a laptop it's working I won't stop. They gotta getta cable though, the bat-te-ry's popped. I'm burnin' now, chillin. Cause my memory cards were fil-lin' up. But now it's cool, cause I fit 'em on a disk, quick away to whisk, while the day away I while, thus ends the free-style!

Where's a post office? Meh. Wander. Wander. Ooh. Veggies. Nicer than the market. But no onions.

Wander. Wander. Whither wander, fool. Will I ever find a...

POST OFFICE. Sweet. Under ten euros, as always. Two more CDs and a handful of stubs are winging it back home. Wave bye-bye.

Wander. Wander. Whither wander, fool. Outsville. Industrial land. Factoirs. Saved by a metro stop. Back to the (un)real world.

Metro shark. Circles the city. Duuuh-dum. Duuuh-dum. Feeling hungry.

Where's that school? Oh, it's up north. I'll switch...

Oops. Wrong train. I guess I'm going south.

The garden's out here. I was thinking of going. Then I was going by not thinking.

Pretty. Lots of clouds. Pretty backdrops that make me wait for the light sometimes.

Green house. Flowers. Trees. Beauty. Wallpapers for mom's PC. :)

Oops. Not so nice outside now. Raining. Running. Hiding. Glad I always lug my umbrella.

Back to the Bahn. Back to Berlin. Seventy five cents for another bottle of pasta sauce. Still got noodles at "home".

Add some free garlic. Mmmm. Stinky me.

Talk to Madonna. Lovely Swede. Six years of German and still can't speak... much.

Show pictures to David's Aunt. I'm her hero. Luckily I'll be gone before I can let her down.

Go to the i-point. Type-a type-a type-a. Clack-a clack-a clack-a. Talk-a italian-a. Go-a home-a. Go-a sleep-a.

Ciao-a.

Day 50b - My Kingdom For A Nice Surprise

2005-05-30T20:16:00.000+02:00

Oy, what a day.

First I figured I'd take the metro to the zoo and walk to the Bauhaus museum. I guess some visiting dignitary is taking a walk between here and there, though because the police rerouted me. I just kept a block away from all the blockades and started working my way around. At one point a low flying helicopter was just hovering in the area for a while. Seeing no nun-cops, I was pretty sure they weren't coming for me. Thinking back, I realized I had seen a flag with a star of david flying across from the brandenburg gate. Checking online, I see that Sharon is meeting with a Brazillian dignitary, so I have no idea what was going on. Regardless, I eventually made my way around to Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus Museum is changing exhibits. Mind you, if they'd put this out on a sign, I would have known days ago and not wasted my time. This from the design school that was supposed to make everything people friendly. They had a gallery of really crappy items with no descriptions, much less english ones, for which they charge a euro. There were too busy selling crap from their gift store to serve me in any reasonable amount of time, so I just went in and paid the euro on the way out. I wish I'd paid on the way in so I wouldn't have known I was being gypped. WARNING: Most of this update is complaining, so if you don't find my complaining entertaining, push forward. Some of the stuff in the gift store was at least interesting enough to photograph. It was generally better than the stuff in the gallery. They had funky versions of most household object. They didn't follow the people friendly, high utility philosophy I thought the school was known for, with the possible exception of the ergonomic silverware, which was cool. They seemed more interested in turning everyday objects into funky geometric shapes, mostly. I will say this, if you enjoy nicotine dependancy and want to impress your fellow tools of Phillip Morris and have a hundred dollars to burn, Bauhaus makes exceptional ashtrays. Words cannot describe my level enthusiasm for a famed design school wasting their time on ashtrays. Well maybe the words NEGATIVE EVERYTHING!!! But that's still a little too mild.

After Bauhaus, it was off to the Gugenheim. The one here is the fifth gallery from the Gugenheim family. I actually ran across one in Venice while I was busy getting lost. Since it was Free Monday, it was actually somewhat crowded. I even saw the gals who work at the hostel there. Many of the works were exactly what you'd expect, so abstract or weird that it's hard to justify the use of paper, much less public adoration. They had some photographs that were pretty cool, though. I took some pictures of both types so any of you who are interested can see for yourself. The display area (at least the front room) was built in a way that reminded me of an Alien hive, so that was cool. That reminds me, supposedly Giger has an exhibit here in Berlin. It'll be nice to skip that extra side trip back to Switzerland. :)

After the Gugenheim I took a tip from Terry. As we were touring the area yesterday, he pointed out a university where the cafeteria was open to the public. It was good and cheap. I had a veggie casserole, strawberry milk drink, and a hardboiled egg. I'd never seen hardboiled eggs just lying around like that before, so it was mandatory to try one. After cracking up half of the shell with my spoon I decided it looked as good as half the stuff at the Gugenheim, so look for the Grinning Egg in my slide show. :) I'll have to make sure to try and get some food in the culinary school Terry mentioned as well, if I can remember where it is. Mmmm. On the subject of food, there seem to be a lot of turkish immigrants in most of europe. I've seen kabob places all over. I stopped into one the other day. They had some rice with chickpeas and green been salad that were really tasty... and cheap. :)

All right. Thus ends the truly productive portion of my day. The rest of it was spent trying to understand why no german internet cafe can put my pictures on a CD. The owner of the place I'm using here said he could, but then disappeared for the rest of the day. Five'll get you ten he won't have the CDs when he gets in tomorrow. I wasn't interested in waiting though, so I went to other places around. Four other shops in the vicinity couldn't do it. None of them even spoke english, which is slightly odd to me since most of the internet places I've gone have been full of english speaking people. I went to the train station area, figuring shops in that area might be more full service. No dice. And when I went to the internet cafe in the mega mall next to the Kaiser Wilhelm church three men accosted me on the way in trying to sell me drugs. I like to think I am not a violent man. But I was so frustrated at that point that I wanted to beat them senseless with my umbrella. How the heck do they get away with that in the middle of a public area? Anyway, I finally came back here, my main internet place in Berlin. The owner never showed. I am running out of memory. I'm hoping mom's package with my 512 card comes soon. I've actually bought a card reader in case his doesn't support XD. It may also come in handy as I get further into Eastern Europe. Anyway, now I figure I'll head back to the hostel, eating some more chickpeas and green beans on the way, watching a movie and sacking out.

Day 50 - Brewer´s Tour

2005-05-30T11:44:00.000+02:00

I did decide to go on Brewer´s Best of Berlin tour yesterday. This is why I didn´t update yesterday, as I didn´t reach the hostel until after midnight (and the internet place is an extra ten minute walk from there). The tour was pretty sweet. Let´s see if I actually retained anything. :)

Jewish Synagogue in East Berlin (the vast majority of the city´s history is in the east). There was a plaque in front of it to the police captain who turned away a Nazi mob on the Night of Broken Glass. The synagogue is mostly restored, as opposed to many of the buildings in the east which still show sixty year old war damage. Terry made a good joke about communists having an offical two thousand man Bureau of Neglect that comes up with new and more effective ways of letting their most valuable resources lay fallow or, better yet, deteriorate. You can´t accuse Terry of being PC. He´s a brit, and rails against everything he doesn´t like. I think the main reason he still does the tour is because of how upset he is that all of this stuff isn´t effectively taught in school.
Puzzlingly Elaborate Post Office. Apparently, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, they didn´t use all the gold to gild the victory column. (I don´t really even know if that story is true.) They put half aside as a future war reserve and gave a bunch to all the towns in Germany to build schools, roads, and elaborate post offices.
Jewish Girl´s School where hundreds of students and teachers were pulled from the building. WARNING: This is the first of a lot of ugly bits of history. If you don´t care to read about it, just skip today. Many of the girls were sent off to brothels in Poland and subsequently killed. Many were raped on the spot by Hitler´s men. The people watching across the street reported the rape to authorities, not because it violated the bodies of the girls but because it made the men guilty of violating Hitler´s racial purity law against fraternizing with jews.
Jewish Hospital. Same story, pretty much, except that one "lucky" woman survived because she had gone to pick up medicine for one of the doctors. I put lucky in quotes because although she survived the day, her eleven year old son did not, and he was the last family she had left.
Cemetary. We saw the graves of Berthold Brecht, Hegel (most well known from Monty Python´s philosopher song as being a lesser drinker than David Hume), and some of the architects of Berlin´s most famous monuments (Rauch, Shinkle, Strack, and Cantien).
History Lesson. At this point, Terry poured some water on the ground and gave us a history lesson. He showed Germany at the end of the second world war and put the question forward, much as the allies did, "These people gave us two world wars in thirty one years. What the #§ß* can we do with them?" Apparently the allies seriously floated proposals of killing or castrating every last german male. And they actually spent a few months pursuing the following policy. We´ll destroy all their industry, flood all their mines, and give every german man a bucket, a spade, and maybe some seeds if they´re lucky. That was actual policy for a number of months. Freaky. He then went on to explain how the country and Berlin were divided up by population, things went bad with the soviets, etc. etc.
The Wall. We then went to the wall museum and environs. They´re still completing the roads that link east to west. It really is amazing how slow some of the repairs are. The first iteration of the wall was just barbed wire and completely encircled West Berlin overnight. 400 east german border guards defected in those first few days before the second iteration (a simple brick and mortar job) went up. There were all sorts of crazy circumstances that arose from the wall. In the first few days the east german border guards did not have orders to shoot, so anyone who could outrun them or sneak through the barbed wire when they weren´t looking could escape. In some cases we saw people jumping out of windows because their east german apartment buildings were right next to the wall. Those buildings were soon demolished. By 1971, the wall was a pair of walls with a death strip covered with barbed wire, floodlights, and mines. There is now a double row of cobblestones running across the city where the wall once stood.
Museum Island. We strolled past the Pergamon and a bunch of other museums that I´m sure you´ll hear enough about later.
Hitler´s Bunker. There is no marking for Hitler´s Bunker. The idea was that anything marking the spot would be a rallying point for neo-nazis (who consistently pull a little less than ten percent of the vote in any german election). So instead it´s the paved over parking lot for an apartment complex. I spit on it. It seemed the only proper thing to do.
End of the Tour. We whipped by Checkpoint Charlie and a couple other buildings, but our group was pretty slow, so there were a lot of things we didn´t get to see. I almost wish I was taking the tour again today so I could hopefully see what I missed. But it´s supposed to be raining a lot today, so it´s probably just as well that I´m not. I went out with Terry and a couple other tour members for a snack. It´s sad to see this man who is so passionate about history and doesn´t know how to communicate with the younger generation to really make it matter to them. He´s not a showman. Of course, he´d been picking up shifts for another guide and was pretty worn out that day. Still, I wouldn´t mind sitting down with him and really talking about how the tour might be improved.

All right. Enough daydreaming. Let´s hit the Bauhaus, Googenheim and whatever else is open on a Monday.

Day 48 - What... Ever!

2005-05-28T22:03:00.000+02:00

It's been a weird day today. First off I was amazed that I didn't stick to the bed after getting so sweaty dancing the night before. It's a good thing I didn't bother doing laundry before leaving Munich. That would have been a waste! It was really nice to shower in the morning. I'm going to keep an eye out for proper shower facilities when I'm looking at hostels on "the dismal side of the iron curtain".

I ate some cereal, then I hiked about. I wanted to drop by the euraide office to grab a map, but they were closed at 1PM on a Saturday. I'm guessing that was their lunchtime. So I head to BVG. I don't know what BVG is, but the Lonely Planet book in the hostel said it provided tourist info. They sell bus tours, and the maps they have are not suitable for people like me who would usually rather walk than ride. I take one anyway and head over to Easy Internet where my blog update gets eaten. But on the plus side, they have some half decent maps in the back of a free english guide to Berlin. It's more paid advertising than an actual guide, but a map's a map. I start walking and eventually realize I'm on embassy row. It's mildly interesting to see the different architectural styles for the chinese embassy (ancient stone lions on the steps and metal box patterns in the windows), italian embassy (cheesy fluted scroll capital columns), and the south african embassy (with a big rusty gate right out of Half-Life 2's City 17), but I'm not bothering to take any pictures. I check the map and realize I'm close to the Kulturforum, a collection of museums, at least one of which was on my museum list (the long one, not the five item one I wrote about on day 43).

I was not feeling that museum. I had seen much cooler stuff in the Residenz, and everything was in German, so there was no way to gain any insight that might make the collection interesting. So I flew through the old stuff, only taking some snaps of stuff I thought looked especially nice. I don't know if I'll even bother putting that kind of stuff in a slide show when I get back. It's more just for me to look at and try to understand why I like some stuff and not some other stuff. In fact, if there were two similar items and I liked one a lot better than the other, I made sure to photograph both, for future study. Then I started getting into the modern collection. Some of that stuff was awful. I couldn't believe you could have jeweled challises in the same building as this incredibly tacky and uncomfortable furniture. Highlights include the chair made from a shopping cart and the pressboard television.

I wandered the streets for a while after that, locating the Bauhaus Museum for future reference, then I took the metro home, bought some pasta and made dinner. I didn't make sauce. I wanted to, but I couldn't figure out if the market had the right tomatoes, but they definitely had no onions, which is totally improper for saucing.

So now I'm trying to figure out what's up for tomorrow. I'm guessing I'll mark the museums I want to hit on my map for future reference. I was planning to take Brewer's Tour on Monday to try and avoid weekend crowds, but I think I might do the Sunday one. I keep wanting to walk around and saying, "Nah. I can't go see the Reichstag. That'll be on the tour." Best just to get it over with, I think.

Day 47 - Road Movie to Berlin

2005-05-27T21:53:00.000+02:00

Most of today was spent on the train to Berlin. Oddly, there are no direct trains between Berlin and Munich, so I had to spend seven hours to get here. I´m heading out now so I´ll finish this update tomorrow.

Tomorrow:

Doh. This is the second time I'll write this update because Easy Internet near the main train station crashed on me. They owe me forty minutes of vacation! :)

So what did I do on train day? I got up at seven fifteen, ate a bowl of cereal, and hit the train station. Then I napped intermittently until arriving at Berlin at about two thirty. I realized I'd forgotten to get the address to the hostel sorted out. Note to self: always write down the hostel info the second you book. I jumped on the internet and got myself straightened out. I was still about fifteen minutes late getting there. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but the blurb for John's Hostel made it seem like a really big deal if you were going to be the least bit early. And if you're an hour late, they'll sell your bed right out from under you.

After getting settled, a couple of the guys wanted to go clubbin'. They had a flyer for a club playing "Black Musik", and, both being black DJs, were curious as to what that meant in Berlin. It took forever for everyone to get ready, but eventually we headed out. On the way, everyone got nicknames. Nigel got the Bollywood Blaxploitation apellation "Curry Johnson". He's spicy. :) Chris tried to go with the theme and became Punjab Black. My appologies if those are incredibly offensive. I don't think they were meant to be, and I don't really know any better myself. I became Eugy, which is short for Eugene, which is derived from Refugee, which is the title of a Tom Petty song, who both Nigel and Chris think I currently look like. Fair enough, I suppose.

We arrived at the "Black Musik" club at eleven thirty or so. I was told the subway closes at one or two and starts up again at four, so I was figuring on a long night. I was pretty much right. We danced for an hour. Some other people from the hostel showed up. Theoretically that meant there were now women I could actually talk too, but it was too loud. I had fun dancing with them, though. Johanna in particular, was very fun. If it hadn't been waaaaay too hot, I would have tried to dance with her instead of just in her vicinity. Most of us decided to call it quits around three thirty. Nigel and Chris stayed longer and tried to get with some German cuties. Hey, if I spoke German, I would have been trying to talk to them too. They seemed really friendly.

The rest of our intrepid band walked halfway home, then took a taxi. We got to see the victory statue. Apparently when Germany kicked France's butt around 1871 (the Franco-Prussian War), they took gold from the french treasury to gild the giant bronze statue at the top of the column (which was originally to comemorate an early Prussian victory). The statue supposedly faces Paris, waving back to the people who gave it its shiny coat.

Day 46 - I Are Tipsy

2005-05-26T20:09:00.000+02:00

And that's true. You'll understand why at the end.

Neuschwanstein. Phbtbtbtbt. The Neushwanstein is an overpriced tourist convergence spot. The nine euro tour runs fifteen minutes. The famed "grotto" is like a room and a half of fake rock with colored lights. And you can't take any pictures inside so I can't even show you how sad it was. The natural scenery nearby is much cooler than the castle, and could have done without the big white brick, in my opinion. In conclusion, there is no Santa Claus and bah humbug.
Having eaten very little on the way out, I headed for Hofbrauhaus for my last dinner in Munich. It was loverly. I had mushroom soup with dough dumplings, cheese noodle onion stuff, a small salad, and half of my liter mug of beer, which was more than enough. Sorry Chris. It was a glass mug. Nobody seems to actually drink out of steins anymore. You can buy them as souveniers, but they're not in the bars or restaurants.

Despite the fact that I spent a good part of the day wishing I'd gone to the New Pinakothek instead of Neushwanstein, it was a good day. The sun was shining. There was lovely nature. And I finally found out what those crops of yellow flowers I've seen all over the place (France, Italy, Germany, and I think some in England too) are. They're rapeseed, the seed canola oil comes from. Apparently the fried food demands of the world require a heck of a lot of it.

Since this is turning out to be a criminally short update, I'll add a couple of cultural notes. I have never seen or heard of a city the size of Munich where people wait for the crosswalk signal regardless of whether there is any traffic. It's eerie. I do it too, just to blend in, which I apparently do too well. More people per day here approach me assuming I am a native than in any other country I've visited, including England. I'm freaking out!

I'll catch you all tomorrow when it's off to Berlin (and a PlayStation 2)!

Day 45 - I Are Confused

2005-05-25T21:56:00.000+02:00

I forgot to mention a guilty pleasure I pursued yesterday. It's so cool it deserves it's very own list.

Dallmayr. Dallmayr is one of the world's best delicatessens. That's what my Europe by Eurail book said. But when I went by and looked in the windows, all I saw were cigars, wine, and chocolate, staples of a healthy diet, to be sure, but not what I consider delicatessen. Regardless, coming home from the Residenz, I decided to see what the inside was like. It was cool. There were rows and rows of foods I couldn't even identify. There was a fountain with live crayfish. At least I think they were crayfish. I used my sloppy german to ask for some items without meat. I got some potato and veggie cakes, some fruit salad, and some pasta salads I couldn't identify. I also got some chocolate covered fruit (mango, figs, and apricots). And then I saw them.
Avocados. Avocados from Israel. All the avocados I'd seen in european markets could easily pass for recovered meteorites. But this was Dallmayr. These had to be good. They also cost two euros a pop, but who the heck cared! I bought one and was on my way. I didn't even get around to eating it until this morning though as I spent the evening walking around with some guys from the hostel and violating one of the most basic laws of physics and food safety by eating a pretzel bigger than my head. But back to the avocado, it was good, like the rest of the Dallmayr food. The texture was not as smooth (which means it was probably not as fatty) as a Mexican avocado. But the taste was really nice, and I finally got to use the salt and pepper I bought for cooking in France, well, the salt anyway. Mmmmmmm.

Okay. Enough delectation.

Not Neuschwanstein. I somehow slept through most of the construction noise (Oh yeah, did I mention there are holes being cut in walls and ceilings and pipes being run starting at eight in the morning, every weekday in my hostel?) and didn't wake up until ten. It was a beautiful sunny day out, so I thought I'd hit the Nymphenburg gardens. Then I realized I'd just spent the last evening wandering the English Garden with guys from the hostel and wasn't really in a pastoral mood. So what did I do?
Alte Pinakothek. Regardless of whether or not you know what that is, you're probably confused. Why the heck would I go to a painting museum, given I haven't really enjoyed paintings very much in my travels thus far? Well, the guys I'd been walking with the night before were going to the New Pinakothek (with modern paintings as opposed to classical ones) and I figured with my limited interest in paintings, I could breeze through the Alte Pinakothek and catch up with them at the New Pinakothek. Boy was I wrong. I ate that gallery up. I don't even understand why, but I was really enjoying myself. The Flemish masters were really speaking to me. Actually, I think it was the free audioguide that was speaking to me. Considering that admission was only four fifty, the free audioguide was a sweet deal. What's more, it did a really good job of brining out the most interesting parts of the paintings. Sometimes it would talk about the technique involved in making especially bright colors. Sometimes it would talk about the artist and what the artist thought about the painting. There were some oil sketches of some Ruebens paintings (and lots of Ruebens paintings). I took a picture of the sketch for one of the few paintings I bothered to photograph in the Louvre. [Note to self: It was the painting of some Medici lady arriving on a boat.] Anyway, the audioguide definitely helped, but I think the organization of the museum was important as well. It was a simple layout and chronological. It was easy to get lost and run into dead ends in the Louvre. The National Gallery was a bit confusing for me as well. But every room in the Alte Pinakothek is numbered, and in every doorway you can see which room you are leaving and which room you are going to. Leave it to the germans. It's funny how something so completely unrelated to the quality of the paintings makes viewing them so much more enjoyable. I will definitely hit the New Pinakothek and happily give more of my euros to this great institution. They can probably use them too, as there were more people sunbathing on the lawn than viewing the gallery.
BMW Museum. It was about three thirty when I finished up with the Alte Pinakothek, so I started walking. I ended up (after a detour because it moved) at the BMW Museum. I'm not really a big car nut, but I thought some of my audience might be, so I have some photos (including interesting placards talking about the history of the company and the significance of particular models) for you. I spent about half an hour taking pictures, then I headed for Nymphenburg. I never made it.
Olympic Park. Some of you may remember that Munich hosted the olympics. Actually, if you remember it at all you probably remember that eight Arab terrorists murdered eleven Israeli athletes. I didn't remember until I looked it up just now. It's bizarre, because I just spent a beautiful afternoon in the olympic park, watching children play, ducks swim, and healthy germans work to stay that way by biking, jogging, and simulating cross country skiing with rubber tipped ski poles. I took some pictures of the green grass. I climbed a hill and took some pictures of the city. The legacy of that tragedy does not live here. I wonder if there's even a plaque. Maybe it's at the airport where the majority of life was lost. Spooky.

So like I said, I never made it to Nymphenburg. I caught sight of it around eight, but that meant it was too dark, and I was eager to get home to some real food (mushroom pizza in this case). The gal at the pizza place on the corner is so italian. For the record, if the survival of the italian people depends on their ability to perform customer service, they are doomed. If it wasn't for the ruins and art, I'm not sure they'd even have a tourist industry. Regardless, I ate well and will now head back to bed. I guess I have to get up early tomorrow or I'll never make the Neuschwanstein. And the salt mines probably won't make the itinerary either. Oh well. That's what I get for trying to plan ahead.

Day 44 - Residenz

2005-05-24T22:51:00.000+02:00

Will the splendor never stop!? The Residenz was the home of Imperators (sub rulers for the Holy Roman Empire) and Kings. There may have been a duke or two before that, but I don't think so. Anyway, the Residenz is a study in opulence. I get the feeling that I got everything I would have gotten from the Versailles experience by cruising it's gilded halls. The treasure room was really impressive as well. I may have to take a day trip to Vienna, though. I've heard the Hapsburgs had the lock on opulence. If I only end up going to Europe once, I should make sure I "check out all his majesty". It wouldn't be a propper update without a bulleted list, so here you go.

Residenz Items of Note
as compiled by self-admitted monkey lover, Blain Newport

Perseus. They have a statue of Perseus slaying the gorgon, much like the one in the Vecchio Plaza in Florence. I guess I just never noticed it before, but apparently Perseus had a funky bavarian mustache. Uh, yeah.
Nymphoneum Paintings. There's a statuary garden and summer home of the Witten-something family that ruled Bavaria here in Munich. Seeing the paintings of it in the Residenz has me resolved that if we get another clear day here, I'm definitely going to have to take a peek.
Olmec Statue. I couldn't believe it, but the last item in the treasure house is a freaky were-jaguar statue from South America, covered in gold and other precious substances by those crazy european goldsmiths. This is definitely a sign that I need to check out that Ethnology museum in Berlin.

There's lots more, but it's late. I should hit the trail early tomorrow and see if I can't find my way to the Neuschwanstein.

Day 43 - Ulm

2005-05-23T20:24:00.000+02:00

Note to Marjan: I replied to your post on Day 41.

Well, it was time to get the truck out of Dodge, so I hopped a train to Ulm. There wasn't a huge amount to see in Ulm, so I'll skip the bullet point format for this update. Ulm is the birthplace of Albert Einstein. There is a plaque and a statue and a few buildings named after him, but that's about it. Still, much of Ulm is cobblestone streets and really old houses, so it's probably pretty similar to how it was when Al was there. They also have a bread museum. I was curious about what a bread museum might contain, but standing in the lobby, looking at a couple lame glass sculptures and paintings of bread, I thought better of it. No, the highlight of Ulm was definitely its cathedral... THE TALLEST ON EARTH!!! Oh yeah. It's tall allright. 160 meters, and you get to climb 143 of them via three tiny spiral staircases. I like to think my hiking is keeping me in decent shape, but taking the steps two at a time, like I normally do, was not happening. The cathedral is called Ulmer Münster in german, so I now call it the Ulmer Monster. Even though it was a pretty cloudy day, the view was really impressive. It made me wonder at the souls who were brave enough to work on it near the top. It gets pretty windy at that altitude. If it gets really clear, I might have to go again. :)

That's most of my day. After that I bought some groceries and went back to the hostel. They supply hot water, dishes, and utensils, so I've been eating instant soup along with bread so heavy it doesn't resemble bread so much as meatloaf. The array of bread choices here really is bewildering. I should see if the Lonely Planet Germany has any good suggestions. It certainly had enough suggestions for Berlin. There are five museums I am very curious about and... aw hell. I've got time. Let's list them all (in the order of my interest).

Ethnology Museum. Basically it's a lot of art from cultures I don't get to visit on this trip. It has art from Africa, South America (maybe including everyone's favorite Olmec god, Ixtapalapaqetl), South Seas and India.
Bauhaus Archive. The Bauhaus school of the early twentieth century supposedly defined much of what we consider "modern architecture". I'm very curious to see what that means. And if it's really cool, I'll take a day trip to Dessau, where some of their buildings can be moved through, as opposed to just seen in sketches and models.
Brohan Museum. This explores the art of furniture and home decoration. I saw some cool Art Nouveau stuff in D'Orsay in Paris and am curious to see more funky furnishings.
Egyptian Museum. I've seen a lot of Egyptian stuff on this trip. This museum should help put it into context as it has a bunch of different displays about different aspects of early Egyptian life.
Pergamon. Huge museum featuring more fabulous babylonian, islaamic, middle easter, greek, and roman art. The book said to take multiple days, but I'm guessing one will be enough for me at this point.

So that's the top five. I wrote down eight others, just in case I get bored. And I've only started to look into daytrips. And to think I didn't even have Berlin on my original itenerary. :P

As a final note, I have my address for the hostel I'll be at in Berlin. Given that I won't be leaving Berlin for more than ten days from now, it should be safe to mail me postcards, memory cards, etc.

John's Cozy Little Oriental Hostel Berlin
Waldenser Str. 30
10551 Berlin-Mitte-Tiergarten-Moabit

Day 42 - Move Ahead; Fall Behind

2005-05-22T22:12:00.000+02:00

Okay, I took the day off yesterday and felt much better. I didn't really take the day off, though. I grabbed the hostel's Lonely Planet guide to Germany and started checking out Berlin. In fact, I think I've basically sorted out the rest of my itenerary. This is tentative, of course.

Date: City
May 27: Berlin
June 6: Krakow
June 9: Prague
June 14: Budapest
June 20: Athens (may take a day or two of travel)

That's a long time in Berlin, but there's a crazy amount to see there. I've heard there's a fabulous tour by a guy who worked for British intelligence during the cold war. Check it out. The first line of the description of the Nightlife Tour is especially choice for fans of late 80s SNL. I think I'll have to go on that one.

Okay, so let me check where I left off. [goes to check]

Doh! I forgot to tell you the rest of the story about the Devil Church. Even if you don't believe the first story about how the devil built it, here's another. And this one is definitely true. They ran out of funding many times during the twenty years they were building the church. Their biggest fund drive involved bringing in hundreds of vatican priests to sell indulgences. They sold one hundred and forty thousand indulgences to the thirteen thousand people of Munich. So even if you don't believe the devil literally built the church, it's foundation is definitely on shaky moral ground. We now resume your regularly scheduled bulleted list to recap today's events.

Center For Unusual Museums. I was in a mood for something goofy, so I hit the Center. I was getting worried as I headed up to it. There was this piece of paper on all the signs for it with some sort of letter written on it. I thought maybe they were closed for refurbishing or something. I kind of wish they had been. It turns out they're closing. My first day back in the states (June 30), will be the last day of the Center For Unusual Museums. And if you can't muster any sadness, you have no appreciation for kitsch. Skip to the next bullet. Okay, for the rest of you (and this definitely means you, Holly :) the CTUM rox with a capital OX! It's a collection of funky little museums. The most expansive (and probably most hilarious) is the chamber pot museum. You have no idea how elaborate some chamber pots were. The oriental enamel painted ones were as elaborate as any of the vases I've seen in the British Museum or Louvre. You have no idea how silly some chamber pots were. It was apparently very popular to paint an open eye on the bottom of the chamber pots. We move on to the guardian angel museum. Since guardian angels don't get the attention that regular angels, saints, martyrs, and apostles seem to, the CTUM decided to collect everything with guardian angels on it. From paintings to plates; from statues to snowglobes (well, one snowglobe anyway), they had plenty of guardian merchandise. They also had the pedal car museum, featuring pedal cars from since before there were even real cars. (The tricycle horse they had could predate automobiles, anyway.) Then there was the museum of perfume bottles and the museum of official wax seals. Did you know Einstein had a seal? What a kook! I could go on, and certainly will when I get back with my pictures, but before you think this museum was entirely fun and games, let me tell you one thing. One museum in the CTUM was so disturbing, so frightening, so just plain wrong that I dare not speak of it online. Suffice it to say children will not be allowed to view the slides. Brrrr.
Deutches Museum. After being laughed out (and creeped out) by the CTUM, I headed for the german equivalent of the Exploratorium. I gotta tell you, the Exploratorium is way more fun. There were some fun things here, but nothing as cool as the shadow flash room or the shadow dance room at the Exploratorium. They don't even have the bed of pins to poke your eyes out with. Who would have though Germans took their science so seriously? Regardless, there were some cool things to see, but the map it was listed on lied when it said the displays were in german and english. Many were, but a lot weren't (and wouldn'tcha know the most interesting stuff was all german).

That's really most of what I did today. I spent three hours at the CTUM and four hours at the Deutches Museum. Then I dropped my big pretzel on the floor... twice... and ate it anyway. The stores are mostly closed on Sunday. I'm beginning to resent Catholics a little. I wonder if everything in Israel is closed on Saturday?

One last thing before I wrap up. I'll be headed to John's Cozy Little Oriental Hostel Berlin next. (They have PS2 and Xbox! w00t11!) I'll email them to make sure I've got the proper address so we can get that half gig memory card mailed. Swapping the smaller ones is a bit of a pain.

Day 41 - The Sound of Munich

2005-05-21T12:28:00.000+02:00

Wow. Another daily update missed. Chalk it up to my hay fever or whatever I've got. I just remembered I have some only slightly expired anti-histamine in my pack, too. Tomorrow should be better. But first let's talk about the day before yesterday. I don't really understand why, but after my internet usage, I was feeling light headed. I wasn't going to go to bed without some food, though, so I went to a nearby pizza place the gal at the front desk recommended. It gets really cold here at night, so I started off with asparagus soup. I've seen it all over since then, but at the time, I was a little surprised to see albino asparagus. I followed it up with what turned out to be a really funky veggie pizza. I declare artichoke (including softened leaves, not just the hearts) a right proper pizza topping. Then I wandered back to the hostel, all of fifty meters away, in a congested haze, and went to bed. Oh yes, and I thought some of you might get a kick out of the street I'm on. Senefelder Street. I'm not sure if that's what Jerry's family name was pre-Ellis-Island, but I wouldn't be surprised. I love this head cold. It's rambleriffic.

Deutshmarkets Uber Alles. First thing yesterday morning was provisioning as I was down to two apricot cakes and a 250ml juice box and the five euro breakfast here looked pathetic, kind of like the breakfasts in the hotel in Buenos Aires, but with even less variety. So I walked around a couple blocks. In addition to lots of naughty shops, there are a ridiculous number of computer shops here. But these aren't like US shops. Apparently everyone here rolls there own, because every shop window was full of pieces and parts, no prebuilt systems. I think a lot of electrical engineers would move to Munich if they walked down that street. Eventually I did come across a supermarket. Well, it wasn't exactly a supermarket. It was more like a really long and skinny U-shaped market. But I had no problem finding a big bag of assorted rolls (including the mandatory soft pretzels), a good sized box of granola cereal, a liter of unrefrigerated milk (a common thing here in Europe), and a liter of vitamin enriched fruit juice cocktail for just under four euros. It's funny. Lots of people get a huge thrill from having the latest, most featureful item. I get a small "oh goody" from that, but the glow I get from a really good bargain is so much more satisfying. I am truly a grandchild of the depression. Thanks for passing it on, dad! ;)
Free Tour. I finished up breakfast just in time to catch the "Free Tour". Really the guides work for tips, so it should read "Free (for total jerks) Tour", regardless, it was nice to be part of a group for a change. Although trying not to get in the way of normal pedestrians was sometimes a challenge. I'm definitely too nice for my own good. Ah well. At least one American is. :)
Marienplatz. Platz means square, so Marienplatz is Mary's Sqaure. There's a gold statue of Mary in the middle, so I'm assuming that's the English translation. Munich is largely Catholic as well. In fact, the St. Michael's church here was built to celebrate the "success" of the inquisition. (What a show.) But I digress. So let's regress to Marienplatz, where they have possibly the world's most famous glockenspeil, which literally means "bell play". First you listen to the impressively out of tune bells play a song. Then a small carosel of marble figures representing a wedding and a joust go around. The second time they go around, the knight representing an enemy state to Bavaria leans back to represent the coolness of Bavaria. Then the carosel below that, representing a funeral goes around twice. Life-sized marble figures twirl around on sticks. It's a very festive funeral appartently. Then the bells clang away for a big more and you wonder if you can't get that twelve minutes of your life back. Seriously, our guides making fun of the glockenspiel was more fun than the glockenspiel. I didn't even consider taking a movie.
The Monkey Tower. I think this tower is attached to the old town hall. Nothing's really old here of course, since the place was levelled during WWII, but they built replicas of all the historic stuff. Anyway, the old town hall and monkey tower courtyard have some cool back story. The low wall (It's actually just a fence.) off the courtyard faces away from the city. Since Munich's leaders were appointed, and often not well liked by the people, the palaces were built at the edge of town so the duke (Munich was a duchy.) could escape quickly in the event of revolt. Okay, but back to the monkey tower. Duke Ludwig the second (as opposed to Mad King Ludwig the Second) was supposedly picked up by a monkey (who I assume was supposed to be there for entertainment purposes). The maid freaked out. This in turn freaked out the monkey. The monkey, baby in hand, jumped out the window and climbed the nearest tower. Apparently the monkey was pretty preturbed because it took over an hour of coaxing to get monkey and baby to come back inside. Of course the tower was built over a hundred years after Duke Ludwig the Second was born, so this story is a total fabrication, but supposedly the locals still like to tell it to people. I like Munich Monkeys.
Devil's Church. Depending on how you look at it, this really is the devil's church. It was built in twenty years, breakneck speed in cathedral time. And one way or another, it could be argued you have the devil to thank for it. One story is that the devil was strolling by while the cathedral was under construction and noticed only one window on the building. (That's because the windows along the sides are all recessed.) The devil finds the architect and tries to trick him by saying, "If you agree not to add any more windows to this church, I'll have my minions finish it for you." The architect happily agreed. When the devil came back, he thought the deal had been broken and demanded the architect's soul. But when the architect showed him how the devil had just stood in the wrong place to see how many windows were there, the devil stamped his foot and disappeared (probably with a suitable BAMF noise), leaving his footprint on the floor of the church. I don't know where that footprint is because I went up the bell tower instead, but I'll probably be back to take a picture of the footprint at some point.
Hoffbrauhaus. Litterally "Royal Brew House" this is the most famous beerhall in Munich, despite the fact that the beer isn't the best, the food isn't the best, and the prices really aren't the best. Regardless, it's the oldest brew house and the Nazis used it to announce their platform (and followed it up by beating up some Commies).
Residenz. You remember how dukes in Munich had to be ready to head for the hills at a moments notice? Well, during a 100 year period of Munich's history, the city grew five times in size, so the original palace was surrounded. Obviously the amount of love the people had for the ruler didn't because a new escape friendly palace was then built on the new edge of town. We just walked through a courtyard there, but I think Eulah's Europe For Dummies book said this place has the greatest collection of royal jewels (from the Hapsburgs?) of any treasury in Europe, so I'll probably drop by.
Military Plaza. Between the Residenz and the Tina Turner Church (a big yellow church who's name in german escapes, but sounds like Tina Turner) is a big military monument showing great Munich generals. Or it would if there were any. The statue on the left is not of a man from Munich, and the statue of the right is not of a general. It's of a military lawyer. He was actually scheduled to lead troops into battle once, but in very un-german fashion was delayed and missed the fight. There's a couple lions on the front. The one next to the Residenz has it's mouth open and the other doesn't. That's to represent that you can say whatever you want about the goverment, but don't mess with Tina Turner. It's too bad Ike had to find out the hard way. And just when you thought this thing couldn't get any weirder, the main statue, a giant black bronze of a man with a spear and a woman with a flag (I think) turns out not to have anything to do with Munich... at all. It looks greek. It was commissioned by a South American government who didn't like the fact that it didn't look hispanic. Munich picked it up cheap and stuck it in their monument. Needless to say, I couldn't help but take three or four pictures. :)
English Gardens. After the tour officially ended, I was feeling pretty beat. But there was a statue of Ludwig the First (the education king) to photograph, and a big garden to explore. If my allergies hadn't clouded my judgement so thoroughly, I'm sure I would have considered the garden excursion a bad idea. Oh well. It was lovely, and I got some gnarly video of one of the river surfers shredding it up.

Okay. My time's almost up. I've sent some more pictures and stuff back, so expect them shortly. Later days.

If you haven't already preordered this, the only possible explanation is that you didn't know it was available for preordering. Consider yourself informed. ;)

Day 39 - Munich Bound

2005-05-19T10:23:00.000+02:00

Gotta catch a train. I'll update when I get settled.

Okay. I´m settled, basically. By the way, the germans use the letter Z a lot, so it is swapped with the letter Y on the kezboard. Correct absent minded mistakes accordingly. Oh yeah, and the "at sign" moved again. Sigh. Oops. And I was going to go visit the at sign shaped staircase in Venice. They apparently invented the at sign to distinguish a package´s origin from it´s destination on shipping manifests. Ah, geek history. I can´t tell how much time I have left on this PC, so I´ll just try to hurry and hope for the best.

Whoomp. The main part of my day yesterday revolved around visiting Torcello, and island to the northwest of Venice propper. I now know why Robert took a speedboat. Even by water bus, the trip took over two hours out, and probably an hour and change on the way back.
Pre Island. There's only one water bus to Torcello, so you have to wait on the island it leaves from before you can go there. This turned out to be a pretty cool thing as the houses there are decorated in all sorts of crazy colors, just like Caminito in Buenos Aires, only more stylish. Caminito people did it because they were poor. People in Venice do it because it's cool. They had curtains, flowers, and paint and trim all matching. It was almost unnatural.
Torcello. After missing a ferry and spending a full hour on the island of the lollipop guild, I finally got to Torcello. The only real attraction there for most people is a nice church. On the scale of churches I've been seeing, quaint would be the best description. But it was still well built. They also had a model of dead jesus in a plastic crypt in the back. Between the realism of the model and Tuesday train incident, this was spooky. So to take my mind off it I climbed a bell tower. There really isn't anything on Torcello at this point. In most directions it's swamp as far as the eye can see. It gives one an idea of what the area must have been like before the Venetians showed up.
Weiner Scottie. After coming back down from the bell tower, I got an opportunity to do something I'd been meaning to do for a long time: take a picture of one of the dachshund / scottish terrier mixes that seem to be so popular in Italy. The lady who owned it seemed pretty tickled that I was so happy to get a picture of her dog.
Yeats. After finding a nice patch of grass, I read my Yeats. The poem and Torcello really did go well together. The feeling of deep faith and lost love mingled with the weathered church and empty swamplands and just seemed to spread out forever.
Night Train. Some of the folks at the hostel wanted to head back into the city and hang out. Not having been involved in any nightlife for a while, it seemed like I was due. We spent two hours lost in Venice trying to find the place. It was fun and goofy. One of the gals from Australia found Venice magical (partly because this was her first trip in). Again, seeing the world through someone else's eyes made it more beautiful. But we didn't hit the plaza until eleven, and the last train was due to leave at twelve thirty. I was definitely having Paris flashbacks, so I left early. The funny part is, they all made it back way before me. They had been using the busses, which I didn't even know went all the way out to Venice. I still feel like I made the best choice at the time, but I'll try to give my fellow hostellers the benefit of the doubt a little bit more in the future.

So that was yesterday. Today was a very relaxing train ride through Austria. I had stocked up on food and drink beforehand, so all I had to do was sit and enjoy the Alps. You can never get the pictures you want from the train because trees and power lines are always in the way, but it was still lovely. Speaking of pictures, I still have my CD from Rome to mail. Luckily the post office is right next to this internet place. I'm already thinking of extending my stay in Munich. There are a lot of cool, weird things to see here. I mean, how great is it to be able to visit a place called The Center for Unusual Museums. They also have a place like the Exploratorium, only bigger (430,000 square feet). I can take day trips to Neushwanstien, to salt mines where you get to slide down chutes, ride mine cars, and cross underground lakes, to Salzburg to catch a concert, the list goes on. I'm already booked for a six day stay here, but we'll see. I would like to make my next reservation early. Oh yeah, and there are strip clubs all over the place. What's up with that? I never figured Munich would have more naughty bits than Rio. ;P

Day 38 - Hello Venice

2005-05-18T09:47:00.000+02:00

I tried to find an internet place in Venice, but the one I found was full, so I'm using the obscenely expensive internet at Hotel Belvedere. (five euros an hour) Regardless, there are definitely stories to relate.

Catacombs. After taking the metro across town and waiting forty five minutes for a different bus than Let's Go recommended, I did make it to San Castillo (as opposed to the four other catacombs in Rome) with an hour to spare. You have to go down with a tour guide and only go down two of the four levels. That's probably just as well as I'm sure someone in the tour group would have freaked at being over 120 feet underground. We did get to see where they buried popes during persecution. We also saw the tomb of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music (which explains Paul Simon's reference to her on Rythm of the Saints). We also saw a bunch of normal tombs and a couple fancy family tombs with some remnants of wall paintings. This was the point at which they informed us we could take pictures without flash (as opposed to the signs which said we couldn't take any) so I have no photos of the pope hole or Saint Cecilia's statue. Overall the catacombs were okay.
Last Night. I hit my second favorite pizza place and my favorite gelato place for my last night in Rome. I still haven't found a decent mushroom pizza anywhere. Baffling. On the other hand, I've found really great grapefruit gelato. ;)
Rain. Just to let me know it was time to leave Rome, it was raining in the morning. This was the only day in Rome anyone bothered to check whether the people getting on the metro actually had passes.
Train. Surprisingly enough, our italian train left on time. Then they made up for it with delays enroute. Once we paused ten minutes for a mechanical problem. Then we paused forty minutes. As we finally started moving again, we crossed a dark green bridge. Then I saw two people taking a picture on the opposite tracks. I then saw little cards marked "A", "B", "C", "D", "E" on the tracks. I couldn't quite make out what they were marking, but suddenly I got a chill about what they might be marking. Sure enough, someone tried to cross the high speed tracks on foot. I know there are veterans reading this who've seen far worse, but let's just say this was not something I expected from my European experience, which is almost funny considering half the items on my itinerary are memorials of one kind or another.
Back to the Hostel. I found that my hostel is not on Venice propper (which is not surprising considering it isn't crazy expensive). So I caught a train back. I was developing a little sore throat, but with only a day and a half for Venice, that wasn't going to stop me.
Venice. I basically just followed the signs to San Marco, with little detours to whatever side streets looked interesting. It's not easy to take a bad picture in Venice. But I was losing the light. Which was odd because it was only seven in the afternoon.
Rain. The sprinkles began about seven thirty. They never got that bad, either. But between getting lost (mandatory in Venice as the streets often dead end at canals and the narrow streets make landmark spotting very difficult) and still stopping to take a few pictures, I was getting really wet. My sore throat was in full bloom, and I wasn't doing it any good being out in the wet and cold. I finally found my way back to San Marco and began following the signs back to the train station. Sounds easy, right? It isn't like it sounds. The signs are not always easy to find as you enter a square and somewhere is the sign. They aren't always lit, either, and it was well past dark. In one square I came across two businessmen also lost. I pointed them towards the next sign, and it was game on. I took point and kept a brisk pace. I felt a little bad for the businessmen in their hard shoes, but we weren't getting any drier. It was a lot of fun. When I saw a sign I would point toward the sign, then the direction it was pointing, and we were off again. There were a couple good "spots" of hard to see signs on my part, and even the businessmen were impressed. The pictures and stuff were great, but it's probably this event that I will most remember from my first night in Venice.

Well, so much for my first night in Venice. My throat feels a little better, so I'm headed out to Torcello (after I get my umbrella and my Yeats, that is). If anyone wants to follow along in your poetry primer, I'll be reading Broken Dreams. It's not really appropriate, but it's a great poem.

Day 36 - Goodbye Roma

2005-05-16T13:09:00.000+02:00

I booked an early train for Venice tomorrow (trying to get the most bang for my buck since Venice is so expensive), so this is my last day in Rome. The more I explore, the more I try to understand why I explore. The picture CD I'm sending home will have lots of pictures of little clay lamps, almost overgrown paths, and side streets that just drew me in. Over time I hope to understand what draws attention, useful in all visual arts. I keep thinking about video games, though. I would fly to Japan in a heartbeat to see a museum designed and organized by Shigeru Miyamoto. His games are so often built to feed the joy of exploration that I'm sure would make for a truly great museum.

That's not to say that the Vatican Museum was bad, of course. All I've done today, apart from blogging and burning a CD, is spend time in and around the Vatican Museum. I was in line two hours before it opened. Well, I was in line two hours before it opened to individuals. Tour groups get in forty five minutes earlier. So by the time the rest of us get in, there are already dozens of clusters to weave through. It makes taking pictures an interesting proposition as well, since much of the art is too big to photograph close up, but there are too many heads to get pictures from far away. But the fact that pictures are allowed at all is great. You can't take pictures in the Sistene Chapel, but it would take too long anyway with the huge crowd and sheer size of the place. It turns out the Sistene Chapel is where they elect new popes, so it's been used recently, which is pretty cool.

I also visited the Coach Museum, featuring lavish carriages that carried popes past, including a 1977 Toyota LandCruiser. Cute. There was also a small painting museum (mostly closed, so if they had any Caravaggios, I didn't get to see them), and some cool chambers by Raffael. They also had some gifts to popes past that were pretty impressive. It's good to be the pope.

So now that the papal goon squad has been paid off, it's time to see if I can squeeze in a visit to the catacombs.

Day 35 - Closed

2005-05-15T10:52:00.000+02:00

As one would expect, much of Rome is in church this morning, and probably won't be working at all today. It took me a while just to find an open internet point (and one with the dirtiest mouse of all time. You know how old ball mice get a little gunky once in a while? This mouse was so gunky that the gunk all came off in one big strip. Wow. Also the space bar doesn't always work, so don't be surprised ifsomewordsruntogether). I'm glad I'm not leaving on a Sunday. I'd never be able to get my pictures burned to CD. I'm also glad to take a day off after yesterday, but I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's see if I can remember what I did after I got off the internet yesterday. Oh yeah, I went to Saint Peter's. Heh. Yesterday had to be a big day if I forgot Saint Peter's.

Saint Peter's is monstrous. The giant pope statues are freaky. The treasure room was expensive (six euro, but you get the audioguide for free), so I was often the only person in the room with millions of dollars in artifacts. The reliquary of the holy childhood was one of my favorites, supposedly containing straw, cradle fragments, and some of Mary's veil from the nativity. I saw enough peices of the true cross there to build a six inch by six inch cube, I think. I saw enough diamonds to make a hundred prospective fiances very happy. If they build cars out of bronze, they couldhave made two out of Pope Sixtus' death sculpture. I forget which of the Sixtusses (Sixti?) it was from. I wish Pope's could be more original.

Security is understandably tight. The lines for the metal detectors were quite long. Not as long as this morning, I imagine, but then they probably had all twenty of them running as opposed to the three that were active when I visited.

Despite the fact that they're in one of the most amazing buildings in Christendom (and got in free to boot), tourists are still tourists. I saw a lot of impatient, resentful, and just generally not awestruck faces. It's a shame that a nonbeliever such as myself seems to appreciate some of these sites more than the devout.

Okay, so I've got about twenty more minutes of internet time in which to describe yesterday's "Vini Vidi Vici" hike. Basically, I walked the circumference of most of the interesting sites of Rome. I had originally just intended to walk around Vatican City to say I walked around a city in a day. Or is Vatican City its own country? Regardless, Rome is so damn small, I couldn't stop. 7:45 AM until 6PM or so. It's a full day. I took pictures along the way, so I should be able to reconstruct the walk completely when I get home, but for now, just the highlights.

Western Hills. From the southwest of my map (along the Viale Delle Mura Aurelie) you can look west and see where the rich and famous of Rome must live. All the houses just stop, except for the occasional sprawling villa with beautifully manicured lawn. I saw a delivery boy dropping off boxes of groceries outside and immediately was reminded of the demo mission for Hitman 2. :)
Southern Landmarks. The south is the ancient city. It was approaching noon and I thought I might catch the tour at the Colloseum, so I high-tailed it around Circus Maximus (which is pretty much just a big depression / jogging track / dog park). I whipped by the entrance to Palantine Hill and bought my ticket. Much thanks to the Let's Go guide at the hostel that recommended picking up the combined ticket at Palantine as it saved me a 45 minute line at the Colloseum. Then it was the Colloseum. Some guy at the front wanted to charge me eight euro for a tour. No thanks. Let's Go said three fifty. I actually never found the tour, but I didn't really care. There are tourguides everywhere, so you can't help but hear. And none of them were saying anything I didn't already know. 5000 animals died in the first 100 days of the Colloseum's opening. There was sand on the floor to soak up the blood. That sort of claptrap. Mostly the Colloseum was big. Palantine Hill, on the other hand, was really cool. Mind you, I have an affinity for ruins. :) There were parts of many brick structures, pieces of many types of marble columns, and what could have been fragments of original floor stones around. It was very cool. Also, it gives you a much better view of the forum and related ruins than you get by walking around between them.
East Rome. Bleh. It had some okay parks and a really funky building with a mosaic museum, but mostly the east was pretty bland.
North Rome. This is where the zoo and mega park and modern art museum are. I went around, so I didn't see too much, but it was still pretty.

There's more to say about my day trip, but you'll have to wait for the slide show as I am out of time.

Ciao!

Day 33 - More Rome

2005-05-13T11:47:00.000+02:00

It's a rainy morning in Rome, perfect for writing blogs and making reservations. I have no qualms about spending only six days in Rome. It's certainly got enough to see, but it just doesn't feel like Florence. It feels more like New York. If you say hello to someone on the street, they assume you want something from them. Not everyone is like that. An older lady I offered some strawberries to was very nice. She chatted at me in Italian, and I was so glad to meet someone friendly I didn't want to spoil it by admitting I didn't understand. And now, for the sights:

Castle of Saint Angelo. Actually, that may be an incorrect translation. The name may refer to the two big angel statues (one in a courtyard and one on the roof). Regardless, it's big, a pope or three lived there, and the tomb of Hadrian (one of the best loved roman emperors, based on the amount of statuary made in his likeness) is what it was built on. You can't really see the tomb as such, but you can see the many different layers the castle was built on. And if you still feel let down, the piles of marble cannon balls (leftover or perhaps cannibalized (cannon-ball-ized?) from castle sculptures) are nifty keen. And if you still feel let down, after seeing the bits of papal furniture, paintings, etc. Head for the roof. As I looked around, I couldn't see any building that looked like it had a better view of Rome. And all this for five euros.
Tomb of Augustus Caesar. Click on his name, and read of his deeds. His tomb is now an overgrown pile of bricks where trash is thrown and homeless people sleep. To say I was indignant would be polite. This man made Rome an empire more even than Julius. I stood at the foot of this mockery and made a soliloquy of my contempt for the people of Rome. They weren't even fit to hold what he captured, and this is his memorial. I understand Italy less and less every day.
Spanish Steps. Placed in Rome, named for the spanish, and paid for by the french, the Spanish Steps have a lot of history, most of which I don't know. :P In fact, I didn't even realize what they were when I first saw them. They were just a busy stairway covered with pretty purple flowers. By the time I overheard a tourist call them by name, I'd already walked by the windows of all the world famous fashion designers. Prada, Armani, and whoever else have their incredibly overpriced stores on the street in front of the steps. Fashion is a segment of the arts I definitely don't understand. The woman is always the pretty part, not the dress. And the suit never bears any designer's mark enough to be meaningful. Regardless, I've seen more crimes of fashion in Italy than anywhere else. They almost always wear pants instead of skirts here, but I guess they wear them low to make up for it. I've seen more whale tails and plumbers cracks on the women here than I ever needed to see. And to whoever made that clingy frilly short skirt in sizes large enough to be worn by the woman I saw it on today: If I find you, I will hit you until candy comes out.

It seems to be clearing up a bit outside. I may brave the hordes and hit the Vatican just to have it out of the way. Or I might jump on a double decker bus, now that I won't get soaked. Ah the freewheeling life of a tourist. ;)

Day 32 - Do as the Romans Do

2005-05-12T11:18:00.000+02:00

There are good and bad points to Rome. Ubiquitous internet access is not one of the good points, altough it is kind of cool to be sitting next to an asian nun checking her hotmail account. :)

Sights. Just wandering from the train station to my hostel, I saw some of the most incredible architecture and ruins. I mean, I'd never even heard of monuments here that are just breathtaking. I guess that's what happens when every emperor needs a monument.
Traffic. I'm glad I'm getting this city out of the way. The traffic and crowds are crazy.
Good Pizza. The best pizza I've had in Italy was a little hole in the wall near the Vittorio Emanuelle II monument, and less than four euros for two slices. The onion pizza, while a little oily, is my favorite so far.
Police. I guess this many monuments and dignitaries mean police out the wazoo. I've seen them in many colors, riding scooters, in motorcades, carrying submachine guns, telling me I can't take pictures on public streets, the works. With regards to that last item, I'm not even sure that was a policeman, but some guy on a scooter said I couldn't take a picture of some Batman boxer shorts in a store window. (Sorry Paul.) I wonder if he worked for the store and was worried I was a spy for AOL/Time/Warner.

Okay, my time's almost up, and I had to change my password to get into this blog so I'm worried my accounts may have been hacked in Florence. Luckily I'm not checking my bank or credit card from anything but the most locked down terminals, but I still should change my Calweb password so I don't lose email access.

Day 30 - Last Days in Florence

2005-05-10T19:01:00.000+02:00

Since I'm already a little behind for not updating yesterday, let's jump right into the update.

Spaghetti. That was the best batch of spaghetti sauce I've made it yet. I was a little worried I'd make another crappy batch like I made in England. There's just no excuse for bad pasta in Italy. Sadly, though, my own pasta is the best I've had since I've been here. I think
Siena. I would never have thought of going to Siena, but Marc was going, and after banging my head against closed signs all day Sunday, I was happy to blow town for a day. Siena has some nice old buildings in it. It was definitely a good photo day. Marc likes to climb stuff as well, so we went up the tower in the center of town. It was only 83 meters tall (pfft), but it was the tallest thing around, so it had to do. From there we got lovely shots of the six or seven churches (for a town with only 60,000 people). Of course the stats on Italy are probably something like 80% catholic, so I guess that's a reasonable ratio. It was pretty sunny out, so I think I did a good job of maintaining my sunburn. I should be thoroughly freckled by the time I return.
Museums. It worked out well that it was rainy and cold this morning, as I didn't have to think twice about trying to catch one more museum. The archeological museum here has absolutely nothing on the British Museum or Louvre, but there were a few interesting items, and I don't have to wonder what I missed.
Lunch. After my success with the spaghetti, I decided to try my luck and roast some garlic for lunch. I put the garlic in the oven as it was heating, then let my brown and serve baguette cook along side it. I think I'd give the garlic five minutes more of a head start next time to make it truly spreadable, but it was still really good. I guess Italy just brings out the chef in people. I also picked up some orange and carrot juice at the store. It made a nice mild companion to the bread. I'm glad Dany (Hi Dany!) turned me onto it.
Il Duomo. I'd already taken a quick trip through, but I wanted to get a few more snaps. The place was almost deserted. I keep wanting to go into a deserted cathedral and start belting out the choral music from Halo. (Hi Dany! ;) Maybe if I can get into the Sistene Chapel before anyone else.

So now I'm in the internet cafe getting ready to burn a CD of my pictures and UPS it, along with some other souveniers. I also need to get my directions to the hostel (Il Chercino, I think) written down. It's supposed to be right next to the vatican, so I may have to tell New Pope to keep it down if he hasn't stopped celebrating his election into the wee hours.

Day 29 - No Time

2005-05-09T20:30:00.000+02:00

No internet time today, but I'm alive and well.

Day 28 - Florence is Closed

2005-05-08T19:07:00.000+02:00

I thought museums closed mostly on Mondays, but apparently a lot of stuff closes on Sunday around here. I guess the Italians are more devout. :) I spent most of the day wandering the streets of closed stores singing A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. I also hit the market, but we'll save that for the end blurb. In the meantime, since I have no sights to speak of (I mean I saw a cat in a garden and took a picture through the fence, but who cares?), I guess I'll blather a little more about Art.

Art very rarely pays the bills. It generally makes bills, in fact. (Hi Blake!) In fact, I find the story of any artist often revolves around their relation to money. Van Gogh sold one painting his entire life... to his brother. One pity sale for a man who really cared about his creations. He wanted to put his soul up there. Then you've got someone like Michaelangelo, without a doubt a genius, but always having to fight like hell to get his patron (the pope) to let him make his own choices. Well he was gay and trying to work for the catholic church as well. But that's a whole other story. I guess what I'm trying to say is that on a practical level, art isn't. (Hi Yogi!)

So why do I care when people are starving and killing each other? I can't answer that in any way that satisfies me, so I won't even attempt an answer for the public at large. But then I can't justify anything except chucking my life and doing nothing but trying to house and feed the poor when I think about things like that. Meanwhile, back my (insulated) world, I like art.

Someone once said that no matter what we study, we are learning about ourselves. I agree. Art tells me what matters to people. When the church dominated, the art is all sacred. When merchants and money became the rage, portraiture took off. People always liked naked pictures. :) The relationship between man and nature is a constant theme. And when nature didn't always look as scary as what humans felt when things howled in the night, they imagined monsters. I don't know if being in touch with these artifacts of humans from the past will ever have any real value for me, but at some level, it makes me feel like I'm not as different as I sometimes feel, like through this understanding I feel a little more a part of humanity. Considering my normal feelings ("All things being equal, I tend to sympathize with the android."), this is probably a good thing.

That's enough for today. I'm going back to the hospital to commit a sacrelidge and make my own pasta in Italy. Hey. If they were willing to sell it at anything close to a reasonable price and in anything more than tiny portions, I'd buy it. As it is, I feel totally justified. I've paid less for the three dinners and breakfast I bought at the store today than I've spent for any single dinner out here.

Day 27 - The Color of Italy

2005-05-07T19:32:00.000+02:00

It's been a good day today.

Slept In. After getting up really early yesterday for the Ufizzi (and not getting to bed until late because Marc had all of his slides up on a laptop) it was time for some quality snoozing. But I was out the door promptly at 11AM. :)
Shop Around. The hostel employee I met when I first got here pointed out a farmer's market, so I decided to go take a peek. It was pretty cool. I got a ridiculous amount of strawberries, some brazil nuts, some dried apples, and some water for really cheap. At 1.50 euros a kilo, I think the nuts are cheaper here than they are at home. I also got some bread to go with it. I got the wheatiest looking loaf they had, but still got burned. I guess oil and vinegar are mandatory for eating bread in Italy because they primarily have baking soda tasting bread. :P
Hit The Parks. I went to the north side of town to see a park or three. Once I got far enough away from the city center, the parks were nice and empty. I've got some pictures of them that I'm eager to share, as well. I'm almost trying to find excuses to take movies now so I can fill up my CD before I send it back.
Hit The Stibbert. There was this museum on the map not close to anything. Since I was in the neighborhood, I dropped by. Um. It was nuts. A guide escorts you and a few other people through rooms filled with antique everything. I was never much of an arms and armor fan, but the sheer quantity and quality of this collection was astonishing. Then you moved onto the living quarters with ridiculously expensive furniture. I looked up at one point and noticed a Grecian Urn sitting on a cupboard. The amazing thing about this was that I could have just reached up and touched it. I didn't because I respect the damage touching does to pottery over time (Heck, David's left foot has suffered irreperable damage from all the people who wanted to touch it, and it's solid marble.), but somehow just knowing I could made the experience more compelling. There were chandeliers and mirrors more elaborate than I've ever seen. There was a table that appeared to made out of close to 80 different types of marble. I saw other furniture with colors of marble I didn't know existed. The oranges and blues were particularly striking. There was more antiques (including guns, lots of guns) and porcelain and suchnot, but because you have to stay together as a group, you don't get nearly enough time to really examine things. I was tempted to buy a book at the end, just to see what I'd seen, but they were broken up into multiple books (Three books? Nobody said anything about three books.), all in italian, and pretty pricey. And of course, you can't take pictures.
More Parks. The park in back of the Stibbert was very nice. It had a lake with some more wildlife to photograph. I'm sure the gals out there will love the ducklings. :) It also had a fake egyptian temple for no reason I can fathom.

That's really about it. It's been relaxed and lovely. Perhaps I've finally found the right balance so that I can sightsee and relax at the same time. Okay, so if you were wondering about the subject line, here's what it means. Green is the official color of Italy, and in addition to seeing a lot of lovely green parks, I also got to see a green robe worn by Napoleon when he went to Italy in the Stibbert. That was behind glass, but I understand the need for precautions there.

Okay. I suppose this is kind of out of place, but dad made a comment about being jaded concerning art, so I thought it might be worthwhile to talk about what I get out of art, and what I don't.

Majesty. Some art is just so massive or well composed you have to marvel at it. David is a perfect example. But a lot of cathedrals have the same effect.
Skill. David is again the best example. Unlike most sculptors who worked in plaster, then transferred to less forviging materials, Michelangelo worked directly in the marble. It's insane. And the skill that goes into a lot of the other works is very impressive, too.
Meaning. Art often tells stories. I like stories.

Well, my time is almost up, so I'll talk more about art next time, but if anyone wants to discuss it, the comment link is now open. :)

Day 26 - Galleryville

2005-05-06T18:20:00.000+02:00

Financial Note: The rough conversion I use for euros is that one euro equals a buck fifty. It's not quite that bad, but it's close enough.

After internetting yesterday, I talked to a gal who works here about putting some pictures on CD. They can read my memory card (or cards since it will take more than one to fill a CD). It's only five euros to make a CD. And they also do UPS shipments here, so I can bypass the potentially flaky italian post office. I'll definitely be doing that just before I leave to free up lost of memory for Rome. It's hard to believe I've still got four more days here after everything I saw today. A day trip to the world's greatest monument to mediocrity (Pisa) may be in order.

Ufizzi. It supposedly has more important works than any other museum on earth. My ignorance was definitely showing in that I didn't recognize most of them. I saw a very nice painting by Michaelangelo (maybe the only painting of his still around), one and a half by Da Vinci (one wasn't finished), and a lot of stuff I knew I'd seen in books, but really didn't make a huge difference to me. My appologies to my christian readers, but I get really burned out on devotional art after a while. I've seen Christ on the cross, off the cross, as a baby, as a child, back from the dead, etc. more times than I can count. It ceases to have any impact after a while. Especially when you've seen it done better by some other painter. Oh yeah, and almost no painters know how to do babies, or want to make baby Jesus unique or something because baby jesus looks freaky. Seriously, the poses, lumpy bodies, and disturbingly adult facial features on baby jesus (and other babies) in paintings are just wrong enough to be truly unnerving. The first painter who starts doing babies right will make a place in history. I also figured out part of why I find paintings so taxing to look at. Painters are frustrated storytellers. Seriously. They try to cram in so much symbolism, extra scenes in the background, etc. that you either go through a really arduous process of examination, or realize you're probably missing a great deal of what paintings have to offer. All things considered, I think they should have invented comic books sooner.
Pizza. I met some nice folks from LA in the Uffizi and joined them and a gal from the Phillipines they also met at the gallery for pizza. This was my first pizza in Italy. It was good. The crust was thin, and the edges were very crunchy. For a topping, I chose to try the scalloped potatoe pizza. It was basically potatoes cooked in oil with herbs and salt. It was pretty good, but I'm betting there's much better to be had here in Florence, nevermind Rome.
Academic Gallery. David.
Academic Gallery. A lot of other stuff that is pretty cool (a Stradivarius violin, viola, and cello, unfinished Michelangelos, plaster originals of a lot of sculptures by his nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti)
Duomo. This was mostly just a stopover, but the architectural triumph known as the Duomo is another cathedra. The main feature of the Duomo is a huge gothic dome over the alter/choir/apse area. It was built without any internal supports. You can't really get close enough to appreciate that from the inside, but that may just have been because we were there during confession.
Bell Tower. Outside the Duomo is a bell tower you can climb for six euros. It was a bit trying for some of us, but we made it. If you want the highest view, climb the Duomo itself. It's maybe twenty feet higher. But since it renders you unable to view the Duomo, I consider the tower the better use of your six euros. Actually, I consider gelatos a better way to spend six euros. Most of Florence is just red roofs. If you want to see the scenery of Tuscany, take a walk.
Gelatos. I hadn't had a gelato yet, so my companions were eager to induct me into the fan club. Gelato is definitely nice. It's not as heavy as ice cream, but it's more flavorful, or the one I had was, at least. There's no replacement for New York Super Fudge Chunk, but gelato is certainly refreshing on a hot day.

That pretty much covers our day today. I want to start checking for my roman holiday location soon. My companions recommended a place a little out of town where you can easily bus to all the sights from, but I'll probably stick with hostels, as I really enjoy walking and encountering other travelers. I started looking today, then realized my reservation online doesn't match with what I think I'm actually doing at the hostel, so I need to confirm my departure date before I make my next booking. Details, details. Let's go have a gelato. :)

Day 25 - Gone Walkabout

2005-05-05T19:52:00.000+02:00

Last night I went up to the bronze David with a couple guys from the hostel. It's a pretty nice view up there. You can see a few of the major landmarks well lit up, and the lights along the river make a nice snakey countour as well. It was a walk, and I haven't stopped walking much.

Follow the River. That's what I did most of the day. In fact, I have a picture of the sign that marks the edge of Florence as I nearly walked out of town. :) There are fabulous views all over. They put just enough homes on the hill to give them color, but never spoil the natural beauty. It must be expensive to live anywhere near here.

Giant Supermarket. The food in town is all at tourist prices. But on the way back from the edge of town, I followed the signs pointing to a "commercial center" with a little shopping cart icon. It turned out to be the biggest supermarket I've ever seen. It's probably too far away to visit again, but I had a huge lunch (bread, apple, mediterranean salad, and a liter of juice) for three euros and seven cents. That's compared to the medium sized plate of spaghetti that cost me seven euros last night. :P

Animals. Florence is the first semi-rural area I've been to so far, so I'm actually seeing a tiny bit of wildlife. And speaking of wildlife, my little plastic troublemaking friend has now been to his Mecca. The plastic warthog Paul gave me when we both left HP has been accompanying me on my travels. He snuck into my bags for Rio and Buenos Aires, so I figured I'd take him to Europe as well. Since he was made in China, he's still travelled more than I have. Anyway, we were coming back from our walk last night when we happened upon a plaza with a giant, drooling bronze warthog in it. This was well after dark, but there was still a line of people waiting to:
1. stick their hands in its drooling mouth
2. rub their wet hands on its nose (now worn very smooth)
3. have their picture taken with it
Obviously this is Warthog Mecca. I read today that this good luck statue is 400 years old! The world never ceases to surprise.

Well, I'm about out of time and I guess I really didn't do much more today than enjoy the natural wonders of bucolic Florence. There were literally dozens of tour busses at the edge of town, and the streets are lousy with other tourists. I'm partly walking so much just to tire myself out so I can get up ungodly early tomorrow for the Uffizi. See you then! :)

Day 24 - Welcome to Florence

2005-05-04T19:50:00.000+02:00

The night train has pros and cons. On the pro side, it's less expensive than almost any hotel: $21. On the con side, it's totally tiny. Those beds and I did not agree. I did like my traveling companions, though. There was the spanish family: mom, the ten year old, and the six year old. They were very friendly and mom was always cracking jokes. (I probably understood one in four. :) And there was a professor of music in Vienna, also a spanish speaker, in our car. He was a class act, translating in perfect english when the family and I couldn't understand each other and securing our door really well by both locking it and blocking it with the ladder used to reach the top bunks, when we went to "sleep".

The Zurich train station was... a train station. I walked outside, snapped a few pictures, and got on the train to Florence. I also picked up a box of chocolates which has already started to evaporate, so I don't think any will be making it home. Oops. I do have another full memory card, though. An Aussie named Marc mentioned you can find places here that will burn your files to CD, so I may start sending photos home that way instead. It's certainly less tempting for a thief than a memory card. Who wants to buy CDs of other people's photos?

I think I made the right choice coming here now. It's already ridiculously crowded. Marc says Rome isn't a bad, but he still had to wait for hours to see the Sistene chapel (and he showed up at 9:30AM on a Monday). Anyway, I'm about out of internet time, so I'll be heading to the top of a nearby hill to get the lay of the land, then trying to find some dinner, I suspect much easier in Rome with pasta in abundance. Someone asked me at about the French brassieries (or however the heck you spell it). The one I tried to eat at had one vegetarian item on the menu, and they were out of it. Think Ranch Cafe with an attitude. Heh.

Day 23 - Burned, Rested, And Ready

2005-05-03T15:26:00.000+02:00

I haven't even left Paris, and I'm already nostalgic. And this is a great day in particular. I feel really relaxed. Partly because I have nothing on the itinerary except getting to the train station before 10PM. Heck, I already wrote up most of yesterdays activities, so there isn't even much to write about. Ah. I suppose it keeps me from developing an enduring passion and ambition, but I so dearly love doing nothing. Some would say I'll have plenty of time for that when I'm dead, but I say why put off tomorrow, what I can do today? Hey, at least there's one area of my life I don't procrastinate in. :)

Day 22 - Notre Dame 2 and The Sun King's Revenge

2005-05-02T20:29:00.000+02:00

Sorry for the lack of update yesterday. I got another late start and it slipped my mind when I got back to the hostel for reasons I'll explain further on.

First, let's get a peek yesterday's itenerary.

Notre Dame. It's the most visited religious site in France (12 million visitors a year). I went on a Sunday. Surprisingly it was well nigh desterted (Not!). It was very cool despite the crowds. I thought the transept windows were better than the ones at Chartres. But the sculpture at Chartres was definitely more detailed. For reference, here's a picture I drew up for cathedral reference. I'm sure it will be useful again. :) You can also check out this article on cathedral terms for reference.
Notre Dame Gardens. They are very simple and nice, and I've never seen gardens more packed with people. I sat there and ate my half liter of yogurt there. It's hard to buy single serving yogurt here for some reason, so I have to eat a lot when I eat it.
Islands in the Stream. Notre Dame is on one of two islands in the middle of the Seine. They're nice to walk around on with nice buildings, gardens, and even some sunbathers on the lower levels right next to the water. Most of the island is built about 40 feet up, presumably to avoid flooding.
French Holocaust Memorial. A passionate french architect from the Astor Museum hostel found this place very powerful. I found parts very effective, but I think being able to read the french inscriptions would have helped a lot, too. Still, it was definitely worth a quick stop. You actually can't t stay too long (without being rude) as the monument is too small to accommodate more than a handful of visitors at a time.

So that was Sunday, pretty much. I also visited a scale model of Paris and tried to go to my favorite internet cafe (which is generally open on Sundays, but not the first Sunday of the month, it turns out). I also found out that I suck. I wanted to find a pen, and said "If I can't find a pen in the Square of the Republic, I suck." I mean, the square is a bustling hub of cafes and various shops. Being Sunday, all the newsstands and tabaccanists shops (what every other country seems to have instead of convenience stores) were closed. So, Primus and I both suck. ;)

After that I went back to the hostel. I met a retired architect from Portland, now teaching in Paris, and a Brazillian architecture student I'd been passing in the mornings and evenings all week. We talked about all sorts of topics, but one of the ones I found the most interesting was how overblown the french dislike of americans is. Albert (the retired architect) talked about how much money french industry had invested in Iraq. I began following the money, realizing that the media outlets here are probably owned by the same companies that lost a lot of money in Iraq. Just like in the US, you hear the news big business wants you to hear. Albert said he never once heard an opposing viewpoint in the media here. It was all negative. Money talks.

Anyway, by the time I got done chatting with my roommates, it was 23:00. Well past my bedtime because I wanted an early start for the one bullet item for today.

Versailles. Unfortunately, the buildings at Versailles were closed. I couldn't tell how much of that was because of the renovations going on, and how much was because most museums (and Versaille might fall into that category) here are closed on Mondays. I didn't really care much because I'd heard that the gardens were the real attraction.
Fancy Gardens. The gardens close to the palace require admission. It's kind of a toss up in my mind as a lot of the public domain stuff is just as nice, but I wanted to see everything. So the highlights of the Fancy Gardens include:
- Statues of all the roman gods you care to name.
- A small forrest that was transplanted into the garden from whatever silly location god had mistakenly put it in the first place.
- Green corridors for days.
- A couple spiffy sculpture gardens with specific scenes in them. (Apollo and his entourage; the defeat of a giant)
- A really crazy amphitheatre with a waterfall background
I don't know if the fountains are turned on other days, but the fancy gardens would really be spectacular to see with running water.
Great Canal. There's a giant canal in the shape of a cross which is a kilometer long. Supposedly warships and gondolas were brought to Versailles and sailed in these giant pools.
Gardens Under Construction. Versailles had fallen into disrepair and was struck with a huge storm in 1999. Work is still underway to repair a lot of it. Even in such "disrepair" the gardens are amazing. I had fifty shots left on my camera and was a little worried for a while that I might run out.
Marie-Antoinette's Faux Hamlet. Wanting a break from palace life, Marie had this fantasy of what peasant life is like (when you don't actually have to do any work) created for her. It's a little chilling to think how far gone the aristocracy was at this point. But I suppose the price they eventually paid was high enough. :P

Okay, okay. If you're still hanging in there at this point, you're probably waiting for me to get to my travel itinerary so you can know what's going on. They're shutting down the computers here, so I guess everyone's anxious. :)

Tuesday - Chill out. Do laundry. Say goodbye to Paris. Take a night train.
Wednesday - Wake up in Zurich. Pay my respects to the gnomes. Abuse my Eurail pass by seeing the swiss alps from the train. Wind up in Florence.
Thursday - Spend a week in Florence, with my hostel in Rome booked so my main memory card can have time to catch up with me at a proper address instead of Poste Restante, which is probably more of a pain and less reliable.

Okay. Time to finish all my snacks I was too buy tromping around Versailles to eat. And apply some of the ointment to easy the sunburn I more than earned. :) Night all.

Day 20 - Notre Dame 1

2005-04-30T12:24:00.000+02:00

As the title aludes to, I'm headed for Notre Dame today. But not the one in Paris. There's a place called Chartres to the north where the greatest Notre Dame, nay the greatest of all cathedrals is supposed to be. It's about an hour away and is open until 7:30PM, so I should have some time, despite my late start today.

Part of the reason for said late start was because I mailed back a couple books about the Lourve and D'Orsay. Crap. I forgot to mail my memory card. Oh well. One more trip. The post office in France on Saturday is just as fast as the post office in the states on a Saturday. Heh. Oh well.

So let's see, when I rushed back to the Louvre yesterday, I spent a little more time with the antiquities, trying to see if I could actually remember the cultures connected to the pictures I took. I couldn't, so I bought the antiquities book and sent it home. :) Here are a few more things I do remember.

Stella of Mesha of Moab. Stellas are like headstones and commemorate the deeds of an individual. In Mesha's case it was his victory over the Israelites and kingly reign. The mention of the Israelites on his stella was the first mention of them ever. Predating the bible, which sort of glosses over Mesha's victory.
Stella for an even earlier king. He united four kingdoms, which at that time constituted the entire civilized world (we're talking fertile crescent time around 4000 years ago). He was deified. I suppose he was the model for every Alexander, Caeser, and Napoleon since.
Roman statues. I hope they kept all the good stuff in Rome, because most of the roman stuff I've seen so far is really dull, like the romans were too bound by some kind of rule system to do anything creative. I saw a statue of Hadrian and his wife that was just awful. They made Hadrian as Mars and his wife as Venus, but they stole the models from different periods in greek art, clothed the wife but not the husband for some bizarre notion of modesty, and just generally contributed nothing to art. Oh yeah, and Hadrian had a tiny package. :D
Art of Islam. I have no doubt that the artisans of some of these pieces went blind. The detail, on the metalwork especially, is just dazzling. And I got a good snap of the earliest celestial globe (showing the position of the constellations) known to exist.

Anyway, I better mail my memory card, fill up on some lunch, and head out to Chartres. Adieu.

Day 19 - Louvre: Round 2

2005-04-29T16:59:00.000+02:00

Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. But I was on a quest! Heheh. I believe I have found some of the earliest dragons. They're on babylonian artifacts from roughly 4100 years ago. I looked at some even older stuff, but they didn't have dragons. For any of you who don't understand my need to do dragon research, observe this fascinating presentation on dragons by a skillsed artist.

Other than that, the Louvre has been somewhat less interesting today. The ancient stuff usually explains itself, but the more modern works are fraught with symbolism and stories behind their patronages that just float in the ether. Seriously, there are more than a few paintings in the Louvre that are figures from classical times, painted to look like characters from Greek mythology, and so covered with different symbols of countries, royalty, and just general symbolism that it boggles the mind. I sprung for the handset in english. It helps some. I find myself far more inclined to take pictures of works after I've heard their descriptions. I don't really understand enough about brush technique and composition to fully appreciate the workmanship. But if it has an interesting story, is part of a familiar myth, or has a monster in it, I'm there!

Okay, okay. Enough about art. What about travel? I forgot to include my decision to head for Rome. I may take a stop or two along the way (It's a long way by train.), but I'm determined to minimize the tourist crush.

All right. It's time for dinner, then back to the Louvre. It's open late on Friday. After that I need to figure out when to with my last remaining days in Paris. I still haven't been to Notre Dame, and Versailles is calling. A day trip by rail to the countryside may be in order as well. It's definitely time to find a rail office.

Day 18 - I Louvre You

2005-04-28T20:19:00.000+02:00

Note: This update was late because I've been trying to get to the museums earlier.

Yep. I decided to head to the Louvre today. No doubt about it, it's an amazing museum. I headed for the antiquities first. What can I say. I love context, and chronological order helps a lot.

Some of the earliest sculptures of humans, about four thousand years old
Some of the earliest trinkets designed by humans, about six thousand years old. There was a wall of arrowheads that were probably much older (like over a hundred thousand years old), but I draw the line at arrowheads. They're just dull. It seems like everyone draws a line somewhere though because the antiquities never seem to be as crowded as the more modern works (with a few notable exceptions).
Venus de Milo
Winged Victory of Samothrace
Mona Lisa
Two of Michaelangelo's slave sculptures one of which was the basis for a sculpture by... Rodin! It's cool to enter a room in a museum and know the author and name of a sculpture you've never seen before. :)
Lots of cool stuff by societies I'd barely heard of before. Palmyrans, anyone? I hope I can remember the captions for all my pictures!
Cool stuff from Iran well before it was Iran.
Plenty of Egyptian stuff. Too much in some cases.
A quick trip through the current special exhibit about France during the Roman years. There was some interesting stuff there, but for me the best part was that I was only allowed in by mistake. I didn't have to pay to see it. :) There was an interesting column head there with some dragons on it. It got me to wondering when dragons were invented. There are chimera and sphinxes early on, but dragons don't seem to have shown up until the middle ages. Now I have to go on a quest to find the first Burninator!

I also filled up my first memory card. That's 2/5ths memory used in the first 1/5th of the trip. I think I may have underestimated my camera needs. I think we'll have to figure out how the whole general post thing works so you can send my memory cards back, mom. (You can buy a $20 device to transfer the current contents by USB to your PC first. I'll pay you back.)

Okay. This hostel PC has eaten all my coins, so I'll catch up with you all tomorrow sometime. Be well.

Day 17 - Hostel Shuffle

2005-04-27T11:57:00.000+02:00

Well, I'm temporarily homeless until I check into my new hostel. I don't think the room is open until three, so I'm not in a real hurry. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about my next destination. Part of me keeps saying "Rome. Rome. Rome." If Paris is already this crowded, Rome would be a madhouse by the time I was originally planning to go. On the downside, I was kind of hoping to keep the "most likely to be robbed" destinations towards the end of the trip when losing my passport wouldn't screw up everything. I'll decide tomorrow.

In the meantime, let's talk d'Orsay. That's a pretty sweet museum. They were going to tear the building down, but public outcry forced them to find another use for it.

The "original" plasters of some of Rodin's great works are there. Rodin never really took chisel to marble or poured bronze. In those days the sculptor worked in clay or plaster and then assistants took billions of measuements and used special tools to reproduce the work in the less forgiving final materials.
There are lots of impressionist works. In fact there's a whole upstairs gallery I didn't even have time for. I may have to go back. It's got to be against the law to just walk by that many Van Gogh's, Whistler's Mother, etc.
There was an Art Noveau display that was pretty cool. It was a noble idea, but didn't seem to have the necessary practical considerations to ever be adopted by normal humans. Some of it was almost Gigeresque. (In the style of H.R. Giger, creator of the monster in the original Alien movie.) [quickly surfs to discover the H.R. Giger museum in Giger's native Switzerland is a possible destination for later]

After d'Orsay closed, I headed back to the hostel. I decided to make a compromise and do something a little more french for dinner. I grabbed some funky french vegetable cake for the hostel microwave. It was pretty good, but not something I'd seek out later. The truth is, I don't know enough about french food to know where a vegetarian should begin (outside of the obvious baguette, cheese, and fruit).

Well, that's about it for today. I don't really know what I want to do today. I think every other day is the most for museums. Perhaps it's finally time to visit Notre-Dame (Our Lady).

Day 16 - A Good Idea While it Lasted

2005-04-26T10:33:00.000+02:00

I dearly love slack days. Eulah let me peruse her copy of Europe for Dummies while I rested in the hostel room. Since the only chair is metal, that means I spent the majority of the day under the covers. It was very nice. Even the fact that a road work crew with jackhammers has been added to the elevated train and traffic noise didn't stop me from napping profusely. If the day had stayed that restful, it would have been fabulous. I would have gotten to chat with Eulah about her day, written down all the interesting sites that were in her book, and just generally felt refreshed.

As it now stands I spent the better part of my time between midnight and 2AM last night navigating the streets. It all started when I had dinner. The hostel disallows eating in the rooms (a reasonable policy), so I went to the courtyard to eat my yogurt and bread. There I met some fellow americans. It was fun to speak fluently for a while and be goofy. Josh in particular was a lot of fun, with a goofyness I miss over here. Eventually, most of the hostel seemed to be in the courtyard, with a lot of fluent English speakers, four from Canada, five from the states, and four from Australia. It was just like a party back home.

Then we decided to go view the Eiffel Tower at night. Every hour, they flash a bunch of strobes around the tower. It sparkles and is very beautiful. We were hoping to catch a quick metro and train and get there with time to spare. Groups of more than ten are never that quick. Plus there was a miscalculation regarding the trains, and five of us only made it two stops before our train shut down for the night. (Trains shut down before the metro.) So we walked a quarter mile or so to the tower, where we met up with two of our group. They said the rest were coming back for the midnight sparklies, but it was ten till and they were nowhere in sight. So we walked onto the Mars du Champs (the park next to the tower) to get a good view. It was delightful. Our friends apparently missed it. We took off for the metro (which runs until one), but weren't nearly fast enough. We were stuck at the Arc de Triumph, nearly all the way across town. We trudged until about 1:45, then broke down and got a taxi. That's the best 5.40 Euros spent so far. And because there's only one key per room, I had to knock and wake up Eulah to get back in and get to bed.

Sorry to sound all wet blankety, but if I'd just repaired to my room, I'd have had a much better evening. I missed Eulah's last evening here, and I'd grown rather fond of her. Ah well. I've still got a week in Paris ahead of me. I need to plan out the next leg of my itinerary and make train reservations. My eurail pass still hasn't been activated and I need to get the hang of train travel. I think I'll arrange a day trip to Versailles just to get some train training. But not today. Today d'Orsay. My first museum since Rodin. It's concentrated on French art as opposed the the broader perspective of the Louvre (which is closed today).

But first, breakfast! Well, at least after a small meditation on my eating abroad.

Food in England wasn't as bad for me as most people make it out to be, but then I didn't even bother eating out that much. It's so much easier and less expensive just to find a local market and get dinner stuff there (especially in the Astor Museum Hostel where there is always good company in the kitchen). I did have a nice pastie. But other than that, I left British cuisine for the brits. I've done pretty much the same thing in Paris. The first night I had a lovely veggie pizza and some wine. I thought it was the thing to do in Paris. But I just don't like alcohol. For me personally it provides no benefit. Lag sucks.

Otherwise, I've very much enjoyed my bread and cheese and fruit that most of my meals have been made of. But I suppose I should be more adventurous. After all, who knows when I'll be back?

Day 14 - Paris is Closed

2005-04-24T17:03:00.000+02:00

Sunday is not the day to do much in Paris. Lots of shops close at 1PM, and many don't even open. This is a different internet place. Same rates and you can set the keyboard to respond like an english one, so I'm not complaining. Let's see. What the heck did I do yesterday.

Made my reservation at the new hostel. It looks like kind of the AOL of hostels (a cafeteria as opposed to a kitchen, vending machines for everything from toiletries to maps), but I think it'll be a nice change of pace from the constant press of street vendors and the elevated train right out the window. It's pretty far out of town (practically the suburbs), but that's nice too because it lets me see a different side of the city.
Took the subway (also called the metro) across town to the Arc De Triumph. It's big.
Walked down the Champs Elysees. It's totally touristy with beaucoup movie theaters and expensive stores. Meh.
I sat outside the Grand Palais (Palais = Palace) for a while. It didn't seem like the right time to hit another museum, so I kept going. I went around Palais de l'Elysee. It must also be a government building of some kind. You can't even walk on the same side of the street with the wall that surrounds it. The whole area around it is what I call a high security shopping district. Jewelry mostly. Southeby's. They only let customers in the door one at a time. If there isn't a free salesperson to help you, you probably don't get in.
Then it was on to the Jardin des Tuileries. (Jardin = Garden or Park) It's a huge public space. I had fun wandering around, trying to find all the sculptures. It was really cool to run into a little cluster of Rodin's work.
Finally I headed back to the hostel. I chatted with my latest roomie, a gal named Eulah who works with developmentally disabled adults. She was nice. We headed up to the church at the top of the hill near the hostel (Sacre Coeur). I'd been up there two days ago, but it was really fun to experience it for the first time again through her eyes.

You can probably sense a reduced level of enthusiasm. I've got to learn to watch for tourist burnout more vigilantly. Truth be told though, I don't really know what to do with myself when I'm not tromping around in search of whatever site is closest on my map. Today has already been a long day (9AM to 5PM of walking and trying to find places to buy food that were open). And I don't really feel the richer for it. It's definitely time for another slack day.

Day 13 - Mmmmm. Internet.

2005-04-23T12:02:00.000+02:00

Yesterday's walk was fantastic. There is more amazing architecture than I have time to see or photograph. And in truth, photography never does a space justice. It never does a sculpture justice either, which was part of the problem at the Rodin museum yesterday, surely the highlight. They had handsets much like the Churchill museum that made it possible to hear English commentaries on the works. It was very cool. I now know more than I'd ever have expected to about Rodin. And even though pictures don't do the sculptures justice, I'm already looking forward to sharing them when I get home. I wonder if I'll remember what I learned by then. I'll definitely need a refresher on his giant bronze "Gates of Hell" (strangely not a reference to Bill Gates). Rodin liked to reuse figures, so you can point out lots of other famous sculptures inside of it.

Let's see, where else did I go yesterday? I mostly went by a lot of places.

The Eiffel Tower is way too crowded
The giant park next to it (parc du champ de mars) was nice

(The english do gardens. The french do parks. Considering how many of those english gardens are private, I think I prefer the French approach.)

I took a snap or two of some vaguely military buildings (ecole militaire; tourville)
I made sure to get some nice shots of the incredibly gauche gold statues on tourville and Pont Alexandre III
I was going to take a shot of the Assemble Nationale (which judging by the police presence is a working government building), but the giant "We want the games!" sign for sucking up to the Olympic committee kind of wrecked it
I took a couple shots of the Leuvre from across the street, not even knowing what it was, just that it was beautiful and massive. Pray for my poor feet when I begin tackling that beast.
I went by the Orsay (another museum). The line out the door convinced me I should probably go. It's so hard to decide in Paris. There are 23 museums and 22 monuments listed just in the fold out map I got at the traing station when I arrived. And many of those monuments include tours, so it's not like you just snap a few photos and keep walking. Well, I do, sometimes.
I wandered through the Garden of Luxemberg. That's probably misspelled, but I fear reading nothing but British and French spellings has permanently damaged my already shaky spelling abilities.

Okay, that pretty much sums up yesterday. Whew. I'm starting to get the hang of the french keyboard. I've found a nice internet shop where I can take my time. It feels really good to share with all the different friends, relatives, and aquaintences back home. And I love hearing from you as well, so don't hesitate to comment! :)

Today is pretty drizzly, so no good outdoor photos today. Searching for my next hostel has been a chore. I keep hitting the same three names and they don't look any better than where I am now. I'll be looking into Hostelling International's offerings today. They're a separate network, so we'll see. If all else fails, I can survive my current residence another week. Paris is worth it.

Day 12 - The Streets of Paris

2005-04-22T10:30:00.000+02:00

I intend to start at the far end of Paris and walk my way back today. The far end is pretty near the Eiffel Tower. I think I still want to stay in Paris an extra week, but possibly not at this hostel as my quaint room overlooking the street is very noisy and two eggs and my bottled water were stolen from the fridge last night. I think I'll check online for a new place.

Day 11b - Vive le France!

2005-04-21T23:03:00.000+02:00

I'm not entirely sure about this hostel yet, but I'm digging Paris. Shops of all kinds everywhere, lots of friendly people, and everything's way cheaper than Britain (though more expensive than the states, still). Most keyboards here are a pain though. Most have French letter positioning which is a pain for a touch typist. These hostel keyboards have US positioning, but nasty metal keys that aren't very comfortable. Oh well. Cest la vie. You'll just have to get used to short updates.

Day 11 - On the move

2005-04-21T10:53:00.000+02:00

Just a teeny update to let you know I'm safe and sound in Paris. I had a single hotel room last night and need to make tracks for the hostel where I'll be spending the rest of the week.

Day 10 - Off to Paris

2005-04-20T09:44:00.000+02:00

Well, my chunnel train leaves in less than two hours. I'm going to try to stop by the post office first to mail back various tickets, souveneir guides, some police tape I swiped at the London Marathon, etc. I haven't managed to fill my 512 MB camera card yet, so that'll stay in the camera.

I didn't end up doing the art blitz yesterday. Just two hours in the National Gallery and I knew I wasn't going to have any fun doing that. So I went to the War Cabinet, a reinforced bunker and set of rooms under a building between Parliament and Buckingham from which Churchill conducted much of the defense of Britain during World War II. They've taken advantage of many different technologies to make it an interesting experience. You get what looks like a super long phone handset. You punch numbers you see on the wall into it to hear about what you're looking at. They also have lots of touch screens. There are digital binoculars you look through to see weapons they were trying to develop at the time. There are maps with big markers you move around to explore different regions the fighting was going on in. And a huge portion of the museum is dedicated just to Churchill himself. He was an extraordinary man. And he was 65 at the start of World War II. So just remember dad, you have six more years and still have World War II to manage. :P

Anyway, it's off to the post office and chunnel now.

Until Paris,
Blain

Day 9 - Last Gasp

2005-04-19T10:00:00.000+02:00

Well, this is my last day of sightseeing. I better make it count. I think the art gallery circuit will be the order of the day.

Victoria & Albert Museum
Saatchi Gallery (500 Salvador Dalis!)
Tate Modern
National Gallery

Hopefully they'll even let me take a picture or two! Wish me luck! :)

Day 8 - A Little Day Music

2005-04-18T18:41:00.000+02:00

First a little housekeeping, apparently this blog was forcing people to register somehow before they could make comments. I think I fixed that.

Now onto new business. It's been a lovely day in London. I stayed up a bit later chatting with the hostel residents. They're a really nice bunch. Peter, the french architect who stays here because he flys back to Paris every week, shared some key sights to go see. They're both holocost memorials, and I don't want this to turn into the all holocost excursion. I'll definitely check out the one behind Notre Dame, since I'll be there anyway, but I'm not really planning to go to Berlin at all, so we'll see.

Today was a nice light morning. I went to the British Library and saw:

the oldest existing copy of the new testament
the first (handwritten) edition of Alice's Adventures under Ground (later Alice in Wonderland)
the libretto used at the first performance of Handel's Messiah
the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote display

I'm sure I saw a lot of other amazing stuff, but it's all just a big blur at this point. Then I went and heard the free Monday Recital at the Royal Opera House. It was a little dull, but still very cool. I particularly liked five Swedish songs they did. I don't know the composer, but I have the lyrics on the program they gave out.

In the meantime, I guess I should be learning enough French to get from the train station to the hostel, and reserve the hostel. :)

Day 7 - Chewy Chewy Scroll Bars

2005-04-17T07:13:00.000+02:00

I laid down for a nap that turned into a very early night's sleep... again. I swear, this city is practically deserted until seven. Maybe it's just because I'm in the museum district. Maybe the artists district is still jumping at five.

Ah well, I should grab breakfast soon and figure out where to catch the marathon from. The reason the marathon is as long as it is is because of the London Marathon. They lengthened it so that it would go by / end up at Buckingham Palace.

Day 6 - Back Into The Breach

2005-04-16T09:08:00.000+02:00

Well, I wasn't entirely lazy yesterday. I went food shopping. You can use the kitchen here at the hostel, and it was strangely thrilling to find my way around a foriegn supermarket, comparing products I'd never heard of before. It was like I lived here. I could have easily been grabbing a few items to take back to my flat for dinner.

It feels so much more indulgent to waste a day in a city you'll never see again, but I enjoyed it. I watched most of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon on the hostel DVD player. I don't recommend it, but it fit my existence at the time with its indulgence and indolence. Today I'll still take it easy in the early morning hours, but one the Museum opens, me and my camera are having another go. Also, I need to see about Julius Caeser tickets at some point.

Day 5 - Slacking

2005-04-16T04:15:00.000+02:00

This hostel fills up tomorrow, so today I'll try and make a reservation for the rest of my stay. I accidentally ended up near the start of the chunnel yesterday, so I may pick something close to make that transition easier.

Stuff I saw yesterday:

Trafalgar Square
Entrance to Downing Street
Big Ben
Parliament
Random Statues of Important Brits (most notably Churchill and Cromwell)
Westminster Abbey
The Eye (a giant ferris wheel I didn't bother to ride)
Various stretches of the Thames
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre recreation
St. Paul's Cathedral
"National Anthems" starring Steven Weber, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Kevin Spacey (It was pretty good.)

Today I'm looking to find a new hostel, relax, and maybe see if I can find out where gamers gather in old London town. There was a reference to the Atari 2600 in the play that made me nostalgic. :)

Day 4 - To See the Sun

2005-04-14T16:07:00.000+02:00

It's been true to London form here, overcast and drizzly. I can see a little blue through the clouds today though. That, coupled with the fact that the British Museum has beaten me down to the point that if I never read a little yellow card again it will be too soon, means it's time for a walk. I'll be strolling down Charing Cross Road to Trafalgar (where I will _not_ be entering the National Gallery) and proceeding down Whitehall and Millbank (London streets change names every two blocks or so) to Downing Street, Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. If I've still got a will to sightsee, Buckingham Palace will be a few blocks away.

By the way, if anyone has anything they want a picture of while I'm here, let me know.

Oh my god. It's full of stars.

2005-04-13T12:40:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the Astor Museum hostel, located in... um... London near Russel Square. It's very early here, but I can't sleep for the jetlag, so you get an update. Let me just say that the British Museum is absolutely everything it's cracked up to be. You know how long it's been since Christ was around? Well, the museum has more than a few artifacts from twice as long ago. I've been looking at the Egyptian exhibit mostly. I'm looking forward to locking my bag up at the hostel and just going nuts over there. I mean, you have school children having dust blowing fights across egyptian sarcophogi. Any room in that building would be the most amazing museum back home. (Well, we might take the totem poles for granted.)

After the British Museum, the National Gallery is just a few blocks further on. The history is just as unbelievable as I expected. Yay London!

This hostel is full on Saturday, so I'll need to find another before I leave. Heheh. Yay Internet.

Day 2

2005-04-12T16:50:00.000+02:00

Where did day one go? The plane ate it!

I'm in Heathrow airport and will update once I reach a friendly hostel.

First Post!

2005-04-06T12:11:00.000+02:00

I guess there's no prestige to making the first post to your own blog... but I'm making a big deal out of it anyway! In your face, Flanders!

This is a blog for me to update from Europe so my folks and friends can keep track of me. I don't know if it'll be of much interest to anyone else as I'm not really keeping this as a journal, posting pictures, etc. But hey, if you happen to be where I am, maybe we'll join up to see or do something!