Best of the Rest Pt.2

Contrary to popular belief, Germans do not go around in those little leather shorts, singing polkas and hanging out at beer halls all day. Well not all Germans, just the ones in Bavaria. I made a stop in Munich, as I wanted to get a feel for the different and very distinct regions of Germany.

It was a good but short stop, though a little strange. The hostel I was staying in had a bar on the first floor, which attracted a lot of people from elsewhere and gave it a completely different feel from a regular youth hostel. Many of the people were middle-aged and trying to chat up young Australian and Asian girls. I did see young people there, but I’m not sure where they were staying, it certainly wasn’t my room. My roommates were in their 30’s and 50’s respectively. Nothing wrong with that of course, but different.

I did meet some young English guys, in for the UEFA cup matches, and some Australian architecture students. The Aussies and I explored the city a bit, catching some dinner at a traditional beer hall. It was a cool eating experience. You sit at long tables with a bunch of people you don’t know and are somewhat forced to make dinner conversation. It’s all light fair of course, and a good opportunity to get to know new people. The only minus was that I had lipstick on my glass from the last person to use it, and it was scented. We also walked through a scene being shot for a movie in one of the city streets around the town hall. I’m not sure what movie it was, but if you catch any Bavarian films anytime soon look for a guy wearing a blue rain jacket and a green plaid scarf. It just might be me.

The day’s activities included a rather sobering trip out to the Dachau concentration camp. It was an appropriately disgusting day with bitter winds and sleet that was blowing sideways, seemingly always into your face. There are still a few buildings left on the sight, like the offices, processing center, Jail and the main gate. There are also replicas of two of the barracks. The main walls are still in tact as are the ovens and there are memorials from different traditions scattered throughout as well.

This was the one stop that just didn’t seem real. At different places, I often try and put myself back into the time of the original occupants and imagine what it might have been like. Despite all the documentaries and photos that I’ve seen over the years, it just didn’t seem possible that such evil could have occurred on that very spot. Yet there it all was. It was not exactly an uplifting time, but all of the effort that has been made towards remembering and preventing similar acts certainly is encouraging.

From Munich, I caught a train down into Italy. Aside from the fact that the heater in our compartment didn’t work and kept making a clicking sound that would make even Job want to rip it out and throw it onto the tracks, it was a pleasant ride. I met a nice older German couple and we talked about various German things for most of the 5 hours.

I then got into Padua and gave my brother a call. He was studying for the semester there, and by the time I came to visit was all fancy and speaking multiple languages and stuff (translating ancient Greek into Italian, I’m not kidding). I got to meet and stay with his host Grandma, or Nonna as he referred to her. She was hilarious and talked to you in Italian constantly, whether you understood it or not. Thankfully with my two years of Italian I could usually get the gist. When she wasn’t talking to you she was showing you pictures or making inappropriate comments about the people on TV.

I did a day trip to Venice. Took some pictures, almost fell in one of the canals, the usual. It was pretty, but perhaps a tad overrated. It was quite dirty, and I can’t imagine the smell from those canals in the summer time. There were lots of good photo ops though, and a pretty cool glass blowing industry.

After Luke got done with his classes, we hopped aboard a plane to Sicily. We have always wanted to go as our Grandma’s (on Mom’s side) roots were there. It was well worth the wait as it had beautiful scenery and weather and has been a lot less spoiled by the tourism industry than a lot of other places in Italy. The people there were some of the friendliest as well, and actually gave us free stuff at the restaurants instead of trying rip us off. People were even encouraging when you made an effort to speak Italian, rather than just rolling their eyes and playing along.

There was a neighborhood that still has some ruins from WWII bombing, including an amazing church: Chiesa di santa Maria dello Spasimo. The roof has never been put back on, and there is now a tree growing up in the sanctuary. There is a whole lot of spiritual metaphor there, but I’ll let you nuance that. There was also an amazing garden up around the outside of church, from where you could look down into a neighborhood and watch the people of Palermo go about their lives. It was a great place to simply explore and soak in. Not to mention the pizza and pasta.

The fourth day we headed about an hour East of Palermo to Cefalu.
A town with an ocean-front view and lots of cool cafes. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any of it, as a typhoon rolled in just about right when we got to our guesthouse. I’m sure we would have loved it though.

From Sicily, Luke had to return to the north to get back to classes, and I headed for Roma. I had already been to Roma Christmas break the year before, so it didn’t hold any of the revelatory discoveries of some of the other places, instead it was like getting back in touch with an old friend.

It was the first time I had revisited a place abroad, and since I had absolutely fell in love with Rome the year before, I was really looking forward to it. The American friend I met in Vienna happened to be heading there at the same time to meet his sister, so we met up and I got to act as tour guide for a couple days. The first day, we started up north at the Spanish steps and did a day walk through all of the major highlights such as Trevi fountain, the pantheon, Piazza Navona, Campo di Fiori and Trastevere. It was a strange, but good feeling to reengage so many sights that I had loved so much already. The same wonder and sense of history was still there that I had enjoyed before. It was kind of like having mini flashbacks as I would walk through the different neighborhoods and remember the apertivo I had here, or the gelato from there.

My second full day, and last day before heading back to Sofia, I gathered my friend and his sister and we headed out to the Via Appia Anticha. One of the original Roman roads built many many years ago, yet still in tact and traveled by the people that live on it. Despite the scattered houses and military instillations on it, the Appian way is one of the most peaceful places I know. We spent just about the entire day wandering up and down, examining the various ruins and chatting about places we had been or wanted to go. It was a good way to unwind and collect the thoughts at the end of the trip.

From there I bade western Europe goodbye and headed back to the Slavic regions. It was much of the same as my previous blog postings, grumpy people, cold weather and lots of yogurt. I stayed there through the holidays, getting to meet Raia’s Dad’s side of the family etc.

Most of my time was taken up with my grad school applications. Classes at the Dom have rendered all previous academic acuity I had completely useless, so the process took a lot longer than perhaps it should have. I did get applications for four programs at two Swedish universities completed and am now waiting for their (hopefully positive) reply.
Raia and I did also take a couple of weekend trips, one to the coastal city of Varna and another to Veliko Turnovo in central Bulgaria. Not too much to say about either of the stops ,but they were both pretty and had cool monasteries, ruins and slightly different cultural feels from Sofia. Veliko Turnivo also had an old fortress that provided some great views of the city and university on the opposing hilltop. We also spend an entire evening wandering around a hilltop village trying to find our hostel. The Bulgarian inability to give directions again proved to be our undoing. It wouldn’t have been too bad except that the streets were steep and covered in ice, and the fact that it was in the middle of a snowstorm. At least we found it.

Since then I’ve made stops in Turkey, Greece, Milan, Spain, and am now in Portugal. I will try to get some more updates in before long. Internet has been really difficult to come by though.

The best of the rest

Ok, seeing as I am now 3+ week into my second trip and still have not finished posting about the last one, I am going to try and condense the rest of the last into a post or two. I usually just hit the highlights and funny stories any way, so you can expect the same erudite perspective and thought provoking ruminations as always. Just shorter.

We start in Berlin. Some have said it’s the new New York. Some have said if you don’t love Berlin than you don’t love life. For me it can be summed up with one word: wow. Granted, I haven’t spent a lot of time in each of the places that I’ve been, but not many have provided the same heady mix of history, culture and vibrancy of this capital city. I spent almost all of my time in East Berlin, and very little of it sleeping.

I think I’ve talked before about the wonder of being face to face with objects/sights I’ve heard about since primary school (i.e. the Rosetta stone), in this city, they seemed to be every where you looked. With a key difference as well: they were all less than a century old. The war decimated most of the infrastructure older than that, and the scars of Russian artillery and small arms fire are still visible on that which remains. As if that wasn’t enough of a reminder, there are memorials to key moments in time scattered throughout. Some are grand and provide information overload. Checkpoint Charlie was rebuilt (inaccurate historically) and has an entire museum next to it as well. The Reichstag was restored by a fancy-pants architect with overtones on democracy. Some speak of the ideological battle waged such as the massive TV tower built to be visible over the wall to the capitalist pigs, telepathically transmitting, “we’re doing great over here, you should join us.” None had so much impact though as the understated ones you almost had to look for or you would miss. Walking across the square where the Hitler youth book burning occurred was as haunting as it gets. A square of glass interrupts the pavement, under which are several empty bookshelves; simple, direct and clear. The memorial to the Murdered Jews was also one of the most emotive places in existence. There is also a memorial that spans far and wide across the city. Every so often you would encounter a double brick line running through pavement, park or plaza. It shows the course of the most well-known 20th century symbol of division, the Berlin wall. Now, one could mistake the bricks for an error in engineering or a misguided attempt at beautification, but for those of us barely old enough to remember when it came down, it is a chilling reminder of the division of a state, people and consciousness. Of course, the situation is completely different, but being face to face with the consequences of such a division can only make one ponder the efforts today to build walls in places like Palestine or the US-Mexico border. Each is a seemingly impossible situation, but it’s hard to look at the Berliner Mauer and not question the efficacy or morality of erecting physical divisions between peoples.

Each of these things contributed to a narrative of the German struggle to remember, yet move forward from a shameful past. It’s a responsibility taken seriously by those who have come after, and I would say done rather well. For what that’s worth. It is evident that the citizens are intent on not letting anything like that happen again. It would be easy for people to say, “it couldn’t possibly happen these days.” But the reality is, it already did.

It wasn’t all history and meditation of course. Berlin has some of the most interesting and engaging night life available. If you’re into it, you can find it. From squatter night clubs that move around and survive on word of mouth between those in the know, to artists’ lofts in neglected and graffitied buildings. There were even “pubs” that were nothing more than old gulfstream trailers set up behind a semi-legal bar taking up the storefront. Of course there are plenty of places to get a cold one with friends back home, but everything here had a gloriously ad-hoc feel to it. It allowed for maximum flow of creativity and expression. I mean who needs a liquor license when you’ve got an artist upstairs who creates 7x4 Pollock-esque paintings?

Prague? Now that was a different story. After an amazing experience in Berlin, where I met very cool people and made quality friends, Praha was, well, a disappointment.

It’s a place I’ve wanted to go for some time. There is a staggering amount of history there, and a cultural cross-roads that would make any humanities major more excited than they have a right to be. Unfortunately the history was covered in a layer of tourist industry so thick that it was almost impossible to see through. What protection was provided during the communist times has been completely decimated through unchecked economic pandering to the frat-boys who go there to “study” for a semester or two.

A case in point was the castle. I paid for the basic ticket, which granted admission to three areas. One was the palace, fair enough. The second was a tower that had apparently been used as a torture chamber. The third was… a row of shops. In almost every nook and cranny was jammed a shop hocking Jamir Jager and Dominick Hasek hockey sweaters and t-shirts for the “Praha Drinking Team.” Things were so geared for tourism, that the same brand food stands would have widely different prices depending on what spot of the street they were on. A little bit higher traffic area? 15% more for that sausage please.

Maybe it was just a perfect storm of a hard city to follow, bad weather, and an empty hostel. But I really did want to go there. I was genuinely excited about it. It had been on the list of places to visit for years. I would give it another chance I suppose.
Oh yeah, and the beer is overrated.

Considering the disappointment with Praha, I probably could have gone to Des Moines and had a good experience. Thankfully though, Vienna is a lot cooler than Des Moines.

A few things come to mind when one thinks of Vienna, but they’re generally limited to Mozart and Architecture. The Viennese are proud of both, but in the northern European modest way. I enjoyed my stay there for several reasons, one of which was the place I stayed. Hostel Ruthensteiner was an excellent hostel that was fairly large, but still managed to be cozy. There was the obligatory horde of Aussies staying there, but about the finest group of people I’ve come across while I’ve been on the road. Most were a bit older and a few years out of university with careers and everything established. This gave a bit more common ground for me than the usual party-hard folks you most often find. I was grateful because the people you meet can often make the city. I’m still in touch with some of the people I met there and even spent time in Rome and Spain with one of them (another Urbanism student from New Mexico).

The city itself lived up to architectural billing with opulent public buildings and spaces. There were manicured gardens and green spaces galore and eye candy in just about every area around the old town. One of the most interesting spots was a museum called Kunst Haus Vien That was something of an Homage to a local artist cum architect named Hundertwasser. He had some far-out styles and concepts, but provided an engagingly organic approach to his creations. Though it was small and not as grand as say the British museum, it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

As for Mozart, there were statues, gardens etc all dedicated to his memory. There is even a chocolate and marzipan confection called, the Mozart ball. The joke around there is that they usually come in pairs.

I also had one of those experiences that shows what a small world we really live in. I visited a traditional Vienna wine cellar/restaurant the second night I was there that was literally a hole in the wall and located in the city center. The next evening, we got a group together and ventured out into a close suburb of Vienna to experience a different place. About 30 minutes into our visit, we noticed that the same group of older ladies that had been sitting across from us the night before, were again eating one table over. Mind you, we took two trains and a bus to get to the second place, and weren’t even sure if it was the place we were trying to find. We all did a bit of a double take and this time spoke with them in the best broken German/English we could muster. This was a strange enough experience, but when combined with meeting my former classmate at the Louvre, and then running into one of the friends I met in Vein in Barcelona, you really start to wonder.

I had one unpleasant experience while in Vein resulting in some less than savory roommates. Before I had left for the day, I noticed that the people coming into the room were unloading paint cans from their luggage. It turned out they were graffiti “artists.” It turned out between then and my late arrival that night, they had decided to vandalize the room. I, being considerate, didn’t turn the lights on when I arrived, and wasn’t aware until I awoke the next morning to a crew repainting the room. At first they thought it was my doing since I was the only one left in the room. But it got sorted out without too much trouble.

Next post: Munich, Padova/Venice, Sicily and Rome-take 2.