| In Wien. But you're allowed to call it Vienna for some reason. |
[Jul. 17th, 2006|04:07 pm] |
There have been some adventures. One was spending a four hour train ride on the floor of a boxcar which was turned into an impromptu bar car when some wandering Austrians found themselves a wooden table in storage. Another was getting stuck in the maze of clear glass, which is harder to get through than a maze of mirrors, and a lot more fun because all the Austrian pubescents get to watch and laugh at you. There was Florian, the son of the mayor of a small town, who was staying in Freiberg for a few days training to be a basketball coach and liked to translate the German commentary for us during the final World Cup games. He also got excited over things like big crowds and the fact that Americans actually read the books he's reading in his English class. There was the Black Forest, which looked pretty much like an upstate New York forest, and where people kept asking me questions in German. An Irish fellow spending one night in Munich had lots of stories, mostly about jumping, falling, or sinking into large bodies of water. Upon hearing of a nice lake in Slovakia, his words were, "Is there a place to jump off? Because I love jumping into things." He also reminded me of the important fact that if you have another drink every time the Irish guy has another drink, you're going to have a bad time. What else was there? I tried to figure out why most of the statues around Vienna are of a man appearing to punch a horse in the face. I wandered around the amusement park at night in search of an international Whack-a-Mole showdown, but it didn't happen. I watched Jaws at a big outdoor cinema (they're all over the place here in the summer) and couldn't remember ever cringing that much at one time. I ate some meats, and some not meats. And tomorrow I go home.
Thanks, world! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 11th, 2006|06:36 pm] |
In Munich, which is kind of like a cross between a small New York and Toronto. There's a lot to do and lots of bustling, but the streets are pretty wide and open and the buildings are small, so you never feel trapped. Speaking of which, we're taking a tour to the Dachau concentration camp tomorrow, where, according to the response I got today, it is not possible to pay extra for an overnight stay.
Today was a big free walking tour of the city with an eccentric Irish guide who told us all about the Terdy Years War and other things with hard T sounds in the wrong places. I also ate a lot of meat and a lot of not meat, all of which has been delicious (especially the meat), had some drink in a beer garden, which is basically an outdoor high school cafeteria with beer instead of drugs, and watched groups of evenly browned old men congregate in the nudist meadow, where there may have been one woman (it's so hard to tell from that distance).
It's been nice to be in little burgs and small cities for a while, but it's nice to get back to a major city where it's possible to find all the conveniences and there's always something to do. Apparently Munich was Hitler's favorite city, and I can see why. He probably would have loved this half-Internet cafe, half-video casino, where the constant barrage of beeps and electronic noise is almost enough to push even the most humble of failed artists towards fantasies of global annihilation.
I have to go, the gypsies are ruining everything out there. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 6th, 2006|10:55 pm] |
The Swiss like to laugh at images of Bush in television appearances. Apparently he's gotten himself into some things they don't agree with. Then again, he never stole any Jewish gold, so who's the pot and who's the black kettle? The conversation continues.
At Einstein's apartment from 1905, where he wrote the theory of relativity and which has been preserved as a little museum, I learned a few things. Namely, that he left his wife for his cousin. And he had a suit with the same pattern as a hat I bought yesterday. And that it's actually "atom" bomb, not Adam bomb like everyone thinks. The Alpine Museum had a bunch of three-dimensional reliefs of mountains, and some stuffed rams, and a whole floor of contemporary art which made even less sense because it was all in German. Something about a loaf of bread and some astroturf. At the zoo, there were all the usual creatures, and I got jealous of the seals because it was so hot. We saw a seal pooping. That was pretty cool. And there was one little enclosure where we sat on a bench and a little monkey with a man-face came up and gave me what I believe to have been a stink-eye.
I had a really good time watching a dog play with one of those fountains that sporadically shoots water from spouts in the ground, and a really bad time trying to figure out the Swiss post office, which is actually a bank with a small convenience store in the back, with a post office a floor below that. The Swiss apparently have staunchly avoided automation, which would be great for human jobs and the overall Swiss economy if it didn't mean I have to wait to buy my postage in Germany tomorrow.
But other than that, Bern is a pretty happening place. It's a small, dense city nestled in the hills, there's lots of good chocolate and cheese, and you can walk from the shopping district in the center of the city to secluded forest campgrounds in less than half an hour. Plus there are oversized chess and checkers boards all over the place. And I fought a stone bear. There are so few places in this world where you can fight a stone bear. Plus I climbed the Materhorn, but it took me at least a couple hours.
And now I'm going to have something to drink in the tearoom and relax on the rooftop terrace. I love being an unwelcome guest at this hotel. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 4th, 2006|10:17 pm] |
In Bern, halfway between Germany and Italy, and those two are playing each other in the football. People from both armies are watching on giant screens in public squares. Let's hope this ends well. Right now I'm in a hotel which provides free Internet access to its guests, which is a pretty good deal for people staying at this hotel, and an even better one for me.
There have been some adventures. We took a tour of the local brewery in Cesky Krumlov. Apparently the regular tour guide was sick, so they brought in an old man who works in the palace archives, and who stretched the last syllables of all his sentences like the Count on Sesame Street, with some in between. Resulting in things like, "Do you caaatch the fiiish?" and "All made from naaature. It's naaature yeeeast!" Even though they weren't brewing on the day we went, we still got to drink the fermenting beer from the big barrels at zero celsius, and some free ones in the brewery's restaurant.
Yesterday Melissa and Samara took a canoe and I took a kayak, the difference being that a kayak is smaller and that I didn't have to end up desperately abandoning ship to avoid some rapids, leaving a pilotless boat to be rescued by generous downstream Czechs. But other than that, it was a good, calm time going through the Czech forests and trying not to hit a lot of rocks.
The train ride here just ended, thirteen hours after our starting time of six in the morning. It wasn't a boring trip, though, considering we almost missed our first train, got booted from first class on another, and had to be rescued in the last seconds by an Irish aquaintance when we didn't realize we had boarded going the wrong way. Plus, I don't know if you've heard, but the mountains here are pretty nice, so there was plenty to look at along the way. I don't know what there is to do in Bern just yet, but it's time for some sleep.
Happy birthday, America. I didn't get you anything. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 1st, 2006|04:07 pm] |
Cesky Krumlov is apparently the most well-preserved medieval town in all of Europe. Meaning it's old and beautiful, but also that everything closes early. It's also been a little cold and rainy, but it's been fine, because the hostel we're staying in is warm and cozy with a kitchen and a balcony and a nice mix of national and international travellers. Even though it's cheap, though, it's been hard to find places to eat when travelling with two vegetarians. The standard non-meat menu here consists of: 1. Fried cauliflower or other vegetable; 2. Fried cheese, with or without cranberries; 3. A baked potato. There was also one vegetarian menu where the first ingredient of the first item on the list was ham. So we've been eating at a little pizzeria where they make a cream of spinach pizza and they use "oregon" instead of oregano, and show the non-American football matches. They also have the most dangerous playground I've ever seen out back, with such illegal-at-home activities as the thirty-foot high rope web, the steel pipe zone, and the loose rock ground cushioning.
I'm in the train station right now and all the postcards they have are photographs of trains, buses, and fire trucks. If anybody wants one, let me know, so that I can make fun of you in the near future. We're waiting around to buy tickets to Bern for a few days from now. The station is a bit outside of the city, but it's easy to get here and back if you don't mind taking the most harrowing cab ride of your life, nudging pedestrians out of the way on cobblestone streets too small for a bicycle and on wooden bridges that creak when you walk over them. It's thrilling. I may also ride a horse, not so much because I want to but because it's cheap and I can, and I want to do it before they eat them all.
To those curious parties: There has been no mention of David Hasselhoff's broken-chandelier shaving accident in the local news reports. When I hear more of this continental tragedy, I will keep you informed.
Tomorrow is massage day and the local vegetarian restaurant for the sore-bodied vegetarian birthday girl Samara. I don't really know what we're doing the rest of our time here. We tried to visit the castle last night, but were told by the 18-year-old guard in a plaid shirt and windbreaker that "to see the castle would be impossible." Apparently it was some kind of VIP-only baroque musical event. Three men in powdered wigs and ruffled collars were let in, and suddenly it felt like being bounced from the worst nightclub in the world.
We're skipping Salzburg for time and accomodation concerns. Bern is next, where we will eat mayonnaise sandwiches because the Swiss Franc is almost twice the value of the dollar, and where affordable Internet access will probably be as inaccessible as it was in comparatively rich Stockholm. After that, there may be some black forest, with or without cake, Munich post-Cup, and then Vienna for the last few bits. But that's assuming I can make it off the horse. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 28th, 2006|12:00 am] |
Prague has turned into an odd, sometimes surreal time. Mainly due to the fact that last night we decided to czech out some "black light theatre," which is a local flavor of stage performance with neon colors under purple lights. There are dozens of shows all over the city, but we settled on Cats in Prague, because it's a classic show with an entertaining story and wonderful music.
The problem is, Cats in Prague is not a local rendition of the Cats we all know and love, but an entirely different play (hence the legally safe title) featuring a mix of cat puppets singing songs in robotic cat voices with Czech accents, and a live male actor in a white suit and several female actors wearing white catsuits tighter than their own skin attempting to lip-synch selected portions of the English lyrics of songs they probably don't even understand. Other problems include heavy Czech accents on the pre-recorded music; a complete lack of story or exposition, other than the single understandable line in the entire show, "Tomcat is the boss"; and the fact that the show's producers were so confident in their ability to pack the house (it didn't happen) that they crammed in enough rows of seats to make sawing off your kneecaps seem like a comparatively enjoyable option.
Other than that, it's been a nice time. The Jewish cemetary, the oldest in all of Europe, was filled with tombstones almost piled on top of each other because the poor residents of the ghetto were unable to bury the dead anywhere else, leaving behind a dense, unique landscape. The Prague Castle, also the oldest in Europe, had a huge historical museum with some old swords and royal things. The toy museum, in the castle complex, had its top floor reserved for a huge Barbie exhibit, with a couple of the original dolls and thousands of others from then until the present. The prototypes for the never-produced 80s avant-garde series were some of the best. As was the Asian man wearing the South Korean flag as a cape, pointing at one particularly famous-looking doll and yelling, "Michael Jackson!" loud enough to scare his mother.
Tomorrow we may go see the Bone Church or the place where Dvorak is buried. After that we go to the medieval town of Cesky Krumlov, where the old-time music festival is in full swing, then to a house outside of Salzburg for a few days, and then to Bern in Switzerland for a relaxing mountain time. In Salzburg I may become a tourist to the extreme and take the Sound of Music tour. Also, Samara wants to go to a spa for her birthday while we're there, but we're having a hard time finding one where the genitals aren't supposed to be out and about. We're good friends, but it's not that good. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 24th, 2006|08:40 pm] |
So, it turns out Prague is the most beautiful place on planet home. Also one of the most culturally rich places on planet home, with some of the most ornate architecture and the oldest bridges and castles and all those old-world things. It's pretty impossible to describe what it looks like here. Google some images, they might start to do it some justice. So far I've been to the Museum of Communism, which was like an elaborate, wordy high school history project, albeit one with a lot of Stalin and Lenin busts. I wanted to buy a Stalin bust candle but figured he either wouldn't make it through the trip, or would end up looking like his Italian friend's corpse. The Jan Saudek gallery had a lot of fantastical false-colored images that, after a while, got pretty tiring. Also, more genitalia than one can normally handle in a day.
The Marionette Museum apparently hasn't been open for several years, so that was a letdown. So was the Czech Museum of Fine Arts, which ironically enough houses exhibitions of contemporary art. I already knew that fact, but no one had told me that "The Contemporary Art Movement of Northern Ireland" means "home videos of drunken old Irish men" and "piles of tea leaves with pretentious overblown artistic statements." I guess that's pretty difficult to translate. We did get to see Battleship Potemkin accompanied by a live orchestra in Smetana Hall, which was the fanciest place I've ever been and which made me feel severely underdressed. It was odd to see the old, weathered film with the live music, because usually the soundtrack to a film like that would be just as weathered and warbled. An interesting contrast. We went back last night to see Vivaldi's Four Seasons and some Mozart. We got as dressed up as we could, which was unfortunate because the crowd was infinitely less dressed than they were for an old Russian movie.
We also went to the belfry of the St. Nicholas Church to get a nice view of the city. You could also see the old villas set up on the hills, the kinds lazy overpaid accountants try to recreate in the Long Island suburbs, except these are right in the middle of the city and aren't gaudy hunks of plastic. In the church itself, the ceiling fresco is painted to look like it's an extension of the interior architecture, which works pretty well depending on where you're sitting. I thought it was pretty impressive and unique until I saw the same exact thing in the Baroque Library Hall where we saw the Classical Hits performance tonight.
Everything is incredibly cheap here. Well, that's not true. Some things are somewhat cheap and some things are dirt cheap, but everything is less expensive than it is at home and certainly the parts of Europe we've been traveling through. Meals can be had for three or four dollars, giant feasts for less than ten. Beer costs less than water. We found an amazing restaurant tonight with fresh pasta and caesar salad with yogurt dressing instead of the titular variety. We'll be going back again. There are tons of little cafes and shops all over the place, which is especially great when the temperature hits the nineties and the humidity is seven hundred percent or so. Here in Battle Zone it's nice and cool, which is why I've just written so much. But I'm going to go enjoy the Prague nightlife, which means I'll drink a Cappy Ice Fruit and put our newly arrived jetlagged friend to bed. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 18th, 2006|07:28 pm] |
Stockholm is in fact quite epic, but I wouldn't call it ace. It's huge, old and beautiful, old-world architecture and hilly cobblestone streets spread over small, beautiful islands. Epic is definitely what it is. But it's also very touristy and expensive, the people haven't been very friendly (one woman at a reception desk refused to translate one word on my map), and the nightlife is a huge bastardized version of Penn State after a game of American football. Ace it definitely is not.
But we went to the Vasa museum yesterday. The Vasa is this big wooden ship from 1628 which was so poorly built and balanced that it overturned and sank before it even got out of the harbor on its maiden voyage. On the plus side, it was so well-preserved in the Swedish waters for three hundred years that they managed to pull it up in mostly one piece and have it reconstructed in this giant building with exhibits about what life on the ship would have been like at the time, if the ship had sailed more than a quarter of a mile, and lots of artifacts and bits and things. Also, I saw some baby bears wrestling at the zoo part of the historical reconstruction village, and suckling pigs and friendly goats.
We made friends with two British Indian girls in our room. If you ever find yourself at an Indian or Bangladeshi restaurant without an English menu, it's helpful to be accompanied by two British Indian girls. They both just graduated from fashion school in London, and someday Radha is going to come to San Francisco and work on art direction for me. Poppy will probably not.
That's about it for now. Next is Prague, spending one night back in Copenhagen to break up the twenty-hour marathon we have ahead of us. I've realized that I really like reading short story collections with old cars on the cover. The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas by Davy Rothbart and When the Nines Roll Over by someone whose name I can't check right now because the Internet cafe in 7-11 (yup) won't let me open a new window. But soon I'll be in the small streets and warm embrace of eastern western Europe, where the dollar buys goods and services aplenty and the meat flows in gravy streams. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 14th, 2006|11:17 am] |
So, we're going to Stockholm because it is, according to our Australian aerospace engineer friend Dirk, both "epic" and "ace." Which could actually turn out to be very bad things, depending on the culture. Also, there are a lot of street performers staying in our hostel, so we're trying to escape that circus.
Yesterday we saw the ruins of Christiansborg Palace. The place was in complete shambles.
Wednesday is when all the museums are open late and have reduced prices, so we're hitting up a few before we leave. After Stockholm we come back to Copenhagen for a night before Prague, and we'll probably go to Tivoli then. They have the big swings, except instead of making it ten or fifteen feet off the ground they lift you up to the top of this giant tower. I am completely uninspired right now.
I'm going to eat a gigabrunch. That's right, they have those here. |
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| I think this sun is curing my polio. |
[Jun. 11th, 2006|08:19 pm] |
Copenhagen is such a wonderful, magical place. It's fitting that the first appearance of the sun in the entirety of this trip was on our train ride here, and it hasn't left since. Literally. The sky is light about twenty hours a day, and it never actually gets black. Just a bit dusky. Also, it's blindingly bright and, since it's up for so long, takes a long time to rise and set, leaving you with even more low-angle blindness. But it's made for some wonderful weather, which has been around seventy fahrenheit the entire week with not a single cloud anywhere in the sky. It's enough to convince me to move here, but I haven't experienced the winter. It must be the polar opposite. When I'm not making bad puns, we're sitting in parks and walking castle grounds and eating spandauers (the Danish danish!)
There are lots of things to do here, so it looks like we're spending a little over a week. Mostly we've walked around and people-watched, which is the most popular public activity according to History of Landscape Architecture. Lots of plads all around (plazas for you Anglos) and beautiful streets and people and public art installations. We've been doing a cultural activity or two a day. The Fotografisk Center had selections from a contest they held in which photographers submitted images taken any time of day and anywhere in Denmark on August 18, 2005, giving a wide overview of the variety of life in this small country. I wanted to buy the book, but didn't want to carry it for six weeks. The Nationalmuseet is all historical artifacts of Denmark. It´s huge, but it's also free and in the center of the city, so we can go for an hour or two whenever we want. We saw an Australian film, Look Both Ways, and tried to see The King with Gael Garcia Bernal but instead had to settle for the international landfill of the Da Vinci Mysteriet. A word to filmloving travellers: you can ignore the Danish subtitles during the English dialogue, but you'll find no help when integral scenes are spoken entirely in French. What's the local word for "lame albino priest killer"?
The Louisiana modern art museum is in this small town, Humlebaek, an hour from Copenhagen. Humlebaek looks almost like an East Hamptons village, with one main one-lane road running through it and little restaurants and ice cream shops along it. The museum is set back from the road in a one-level modern building, with sculpture gardens and clifftop views of the bay and other Denmark islands. The main exhibition was a collection of video pieces, which were for the most part very interesting and kept me from seeing any of the permanent galleries. It´s hard to describe any of them here, except to say that the extremely critical film teacher may actually have liked one or two. We walked around the residential areas and looked at all the beautiful old houses and the Alfa Romeos and decided that, if anything, Denmark should've taken control of Germany.
Today is the Danish Design Center and possibly the Architecture Museum, both of which I'm sure the l'architect library folk would love to see, and some exciting laundry time to combat the dirty-sock feeling I'm getting right now. Tomorrow Samara shops while I spend a giddy day at the Dansk Film Institute |
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| Ms. Adventures |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|11:32 pm] |
We took a train to Bad Harzburg and hiked up a mountain there. It was a small mountain, but at the top there were the remains of a castle from the first millenium and a beautiful view. You could see the webbed network of little red-roofed towns, all little nuclei connected by thin strands of roadway, spreading across the landscape, farmland filling the voids. I already knew they had gradually smaller towns instead of suburbs, but it was great to actually see from above what it all looks like (Tim, that's the landscape thing I had forgotten). On the way down we ended up taking the wrong path and, spurred on by the increasing cold and threat of rain, we headed straight down, cutting across the paths and through the trees. We somehow ended up, not only alive, but at the same exact place where we had started.
There was less luck on the trip to the concentration camp memorial at Bergen-Belsen. We were stranded in Celle when, for whatever reason, none of the connecting buses ever came. We walked around the town for a while, but it was Twilight Zone empty. We did stumble on a beautiful old cemetary with lots of flowers and foliage all over the place, which got me excited for the Central Cemetary in Vienna. There was a young boy taking a picture of the church steeple, and I thought it would be funny if we took pictures of each other taking pictures of each other, but in mistranslation I think my suggestion came off as more of a man-with-a-van proposition, and it didn't work out as planned.
We've been doing one load of laundry for the last five hours due to a combination of mechanical failure, the inability to read German directions, and the fact that European washing machines work so differently from American machines that it's hard to tell if they're working at all. But, clean and dried clothes will be the reward, as will the fact that we're leaving Germany tomorrow and heading for fluently-Englished Copenhagen, where we will ride free bikes and sip margheritas in the sunshine. Right after I ask this twelve year old boy to let me take pictures of him. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2006|01:00 am] |
If you're planning on going to the Helmut Newton Museum, try not to go two days before they open two huge exhibits, or else you'll only be able to see about a third of the museum. But when that third includes all his equipment, personal photos, and collection of pubic wigs, it almost seems worth it. There was also a collection of sympathy letters written to his wife from Margaret Thatcher and Richard Gere, among others.
The Hamburger Bahnhof had some Warhols, which I had never seen in physical form before, a mini-Mies Van Der Rohe, some interesting personal collections (and easy decorating ideas!). Also a pro-photo policy, which I found odd, but allowed me to save on postcards.
We went to the Holocaust Memorial, known officially as the blandly titled Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, at night because we thought it would be a solemn, somber experience. But really, since it consists of a tight grid of stone blocks reaching ten feet into the air, by the time you get to the center it's as dark and silent as a hedge maze in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and you're pretty sure some neo-Voldemort is going to spring out at any second and offer you a terrible exchange rate for your worthless American money.
We're in Hannover now and the World Cup fever is in high gear. I had my first real German bratwurst, and it was delicious. They also have these latke-type things made with shredded potato, eggs, and carrots. We watched some football on outdoor televisions. Nobody scored. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 2nd, 2006|06:27 pm] |
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Apparently, I am not smarter than the German transit police. |
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| Danke for reading. |
[Jun. 2nd, 2006|12:04 am] |
This kezboard is different. Berlin, bz the waz, is verz, verz, big. And zou donät realiye how manz ys and zs zou use in a sentence until thezäre switched around on zou. The quotes are different too. Anzwaz, Berlin is a huge sprawling citz, but we covered a lot of it in a free four hour walking tour todaz. Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, remnants of the Wall, the Reichstag, opera houses, Bebelplaya where thez burned all the books, and museum island. And also Hitleräs bunker, where the greatest single force of evil spent his last dazs, and which was demolished bz the Soviets and turned into a small, poorlz designed parking lot. We essentiallz stood on the ground over Hitleräs grave. And saw Katerina Wittäs old apartment.
Thezäve been turning all of their domes and roundßshaped buildings and objects into giant soccer balls. Apparentlz something big is happening. Oh, right.
Everzthing is reallz cheap here. I asked our tour guide about it, and he said itäs because of incrediblz high unemplozment rates. The hostel, the food, the drinks, everzthing is reallz lowßpriced. Which is great for us, but unfortunate for them. Also, thez have some strange problem with dust. When we got in last night, we thought our hostel was just terrible because there was dust everzwhere. In all the corners in the halls, coating live vegetation in the courtzard, floating in through open windows, it was everzwhere. But then todaz, big dustballs were just floating around all throughout the central business and historical districts on our tour, everzwhere we went. I asked our tourguide about it, and he said he hasnät noticed anz dust. I think mazbe Iäm crayz.
Also, itäs strange how this citz evolved. Itäs been constantlz changing over the last centurz, depending on who was controlling it at the time, and so buildings are constantlz being knocked down and erected and knocked down. Right now thezäre in the middle of demolishing the East German parliament building (which obviouslz wasnät used verz much) and in its place thezäre going to build a replica of the palace which used to be in that spot. Itäs all verz interesting and strange.
The great thing is, if zou look like a reallz confused tourist when zou hold up zour expired subwaz ticket, thez just let zou go. Weäve taken four trips on the same oneßtrip ticket. The same charade works when zou reallz need to use the bathroom in a fancz office building. `Danke, bitte, _________ please?' gets zou prettz much anzthing zou want. But weäve been able to survive without reallz knowing the language, thanks in large part to mz weeklz visits to Herwigäs for tagesuppe and rosmarin schweinsbraten.
The food is good here, but we havenät found anz authentic German cuisine. Itäs such a big, diverse citz, not unlike New Zork, and so thereäs so manz different tzpes of food to trz. Thereäs an African restaurant with dishes from the Massai tribe near our hostel that weäre reallz interested in. Thereäs also Currywurst (I took the time to tzpe that out correctlz), which weäre interested in, but have no idea what it is because itäs never open. But so far weäve had piyya, vegan food, and Argentinian, and thezäve all been fantastic. And cheap. Zou know, if thez donät pick up this economz soon, someone is going to have to come along and mobiliye things for them.
Tomorrow is the modern art museum with the Lichtensteins and the Warhols, and then the photographz museum with the big Helmut Newton exhibit. We havenät seen a big nude in a few dazs, so I think weäre about due. |
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| Utrek to Berlin |
[May. 31st, 2006|12:10 am] |
The Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum were both incredibly crowded, which unfortunately dampened the potential for dramatic effect. The House was very museum-like, with bits and pieces behind glass and guided paths. It was hard to really picture what it must have been like to live in that place with so many people for so long. Even still, it was really interesting to see all the places she wrote about, especially the hidden stairway. What I found most interesting were the bits of paper left on the walls in her room where she had ripped down one of the movie star photographs she had pasted up. That was where it hit me that the little girl who wrote the diary was in the very same room that I was in, at one point leaving behind the remnants that I was now looking at. I didn't want the feeling to stop, so I rented Frequency.
The Van Gogh Museum was set up chronologically to show his progression as an artist and the different approaches he took in developing his signature style and finding his preferred subjects. The biographical blurbs on the walls were all really helpful in understanding each painting and series, but they didn't shed much light on him or his life, so I'm going to have to read up on that.
They charge for plastic bags at the grocery store, so you have to remember to keep bringing yours back each time. Good system.
The cheddar here is the best I've ever had. I made grilled cheese in the panini maker with some kind of citrusy challah and soft dill cheese. It was delicious. Also, I keep seeing mustard cream soup all over the place here. And I need to get the fries in the cone with the peanut sauce before we leave.
Tomorrow we go to Berlin. I'm going to miss this place, with its beautiful town and the floating hookers and the easily understandable language and the beautiful biking people and the friendly hostel with all the free cheese and bread and other things. I won't miss the class of twenty students from MSU who love to barge in and break the beautiful silence just when you're sitting down to read or write or eat or talk. But other than that, Utrecht has really been Mytrecht.
Yes, that was cheesy, but it's still better than the "I AMsterdam" tourism slogan. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 28th, 2006|08:08 pm] |
Utrecht is nicer than Amsterdam. Like a smaller version of it, but much less crowded and more young folk. Brick streets and small stores and brasseries. And floating hookers. Utrecht's red light district is actually a half-mile stretch of houseboats. Much more low-key and discreet than the one in Amsterdam, with quirky paintjobs.
Today we rode bikes to Maarssen to see the Slot Zuylen castle, which turned out to be more of a classy flea market and vegetable sale. Nice grounds to walk around though, and a good ride. It took less than half an hour to go from the busy heart of the city to nothing but cow fields and windmills. I tried to fight one, but was verbodden to go anywhere near it. Probably for its own good.
I've been eating a lot of cheese, since it's free in the hostel. I bought some siljbiel (leaves from the beet plant) en appels to make an omelette tomorrow. I'm picking up a lot of written Dutch, which is easy to understand on something like a menu or anything else you can put into context, but I have no idea how to pronounce anything. I've started speaking broken English with a vague accent to hide the fact that I'm American. People are rarely fooled.
Tomorrow (maandag) we go to the Anne Frank Huis and the fotomuseum, then the next day to Copenhagen or places in between. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 24th, 2006|10:26 pm] |
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Amsterdam is a big, beautiful place filled with Turkish foods. I waited at baggage claim for three hours for a plane to finally bring my bag to me, and that got tired. So did I. Now I go to bed so I can wake up early and tell Anne Frank I demand a sequel. |
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| Bye, continent. |
[May. 23rd, 2006|03:55 pm] |
I cough a lot when I get nervous and before I go on trips. This morning, there was some almost vomit in the sink. We must be strong. If we vomit pre-flight, the terrorists win.
Let's hope I don't go for a swim or do any premature big city sightseeing. |
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mcacrossthepond's journal