Benelux, Hold the Ne

My stop over in Belgium started with both a fizzle and a bang.

After being spoilt for the past week by Dutch and Danish placidity, stepping off the train into a filthy bustling metropolis was a bit of a slap in the face. Brussels is by no means ugly, but due to some hostel shenanigans I had to get off at a station a bit out of the center. In Brussels, a bit out of the center does indeed mean in the slums. Don’t worry. That’s not where I’m staying. That’s just where I had to pick up my key.

Anyway, in the first five minutes I think I had passed more homeless people than homed people, and there was definitely a mentally unstable man who followed me for half a minute or so. I was having definite misgivings about the city by the time I got to the hostel reception, but I paid my balance, got my key, and continued on like this blog title would suggest.

The closer I got to the city center the better things got. It’s still filthy bustling metropolis, but the kind with all kinds of people, and no bars on the shop windows. I don’t even have to go back to the reception point to drop of my key, so as far as I’m concerned that’s over and done. Now comes the bang.

I had just identified the hostel door, a nondescript metal surface with a piece of computer paper identifying it, when a random man sitting a table outside the neighboring restaurant asked out of the blue, quite as if we’d been in a conversation already, “Where are you from?”

I was confused, I think understandably, and I’m pretty sure my face showed it. So he asked again.

“Do you work here?”

And then he explained that no, he did not, but he and his friend ate at this restaurant several times a week, and there were always backpackers coming in and out. He wanted to know why I didn’t couch surf, and when I explained it was because couchsurfing had turned into a bit of a hookup site, well… that set him off.

I probably stood there for a good twenty minutes while he talked about any and everything inappropriate by American standards, completely unable to escape politely. I’m still not sure whether he was trying to make me uncomfortable or trying to pick me up. Possibly both. Apparently this little old Belgian man is also a nudist who routinely hosts female couch surfers. And sure sex happens, but he’s European, not like those prudish Americans. He’d seen an interview with this mother and daugher from Kentucky and…. Kentucky. Was he pronouncing that right? Anyway, they thought women should be arrested for being topless. And had I seen the 50 Shades of Grey trailer that was banned in the states? All it showed was boobs. And boobs this and boobs that and why were boobs so oversexualized? Sex was good either way. And he was into BDSM and it was just a way of life. And he had female couch surfers who were into that too and everyone had a great time and I should see his reviews. His friend could vouch! He made breakfast in the morning, and his place was far more luxurious than this old hostel.

There was something in there about my psoriasis and medical tourism too, but I think I said about six words over the course of the conversation. He was perfectly nice about it, I just wasn’t sure where he was headed with all this, and more than anything wanted to laugh. And put down my bag. Because my bag was heavy.

Anyway, I did escape eventually. And despite what I would characterize as a generally unpleasant first impression, Brussels proceeded to grown on me.

The food is probably the first reason. That first night not so much, because I hit three closed supermarkets before I found an open one, and then proceeded to buy what I thought was a cheese and onion quiche which turned out to be cheese and ham. So I had chocolate for dinner that night. Considering it was Belgian though, that’s only a bad thing in terms of health.

So the chocolate is obviously delicious food number one. Then there were the waffles. Now, you will see lots of tourists combining the chocolate and the waffles, and whipped cream and ice cream and fruit and nuts and any manner of condiment you can imagine, but there is no surer way to annoy a Belgian. I bought my first waffle in line behind an American couple who took at least five minutes to order. As they debated about whether it was really worth the extra fifty cents for whipped cream (note: their waffle with everything on it already cost eight euros), the clerk started making eye contact with me behind their backs and rolling her eyes. Little did she know I was one of them as well. At least my order of a simple gauffre de Liege, in French, didn’t give me away.

You see, there are two basic types of Belgian waffle - gauffre in French. The gauffre de Liege is a sort of oval baked with clumps of sugar in it so that it melts and leaks out of the dough and caramelizes around at the edges. It’s the most common waffle that you can find in little holes in the wall for one euro, or even many bakeries that don’t specialize in waffles. The second waffle is the gauffre de Bruxelles. It’s rectangular, and much less sweet, but traditionally they sprinkle powdered sugar on it for a bit of a treat.

My search for a gauffre de Bruxelles, because of course I had to try both kinds, started a bit later than was wise. I had just gotten off the train from Luxembourg (more on that later), and many of the waffle stores were starting to close. Of the ones that were open, I couldn’t find any that carried Bruxelles variety, until I turned a corner and saw a waffle chain that seemed to be going strong.

The line was at least five people deep, and when they each order six different toppings it takes a while to fill an order. I was determined though, and so I got in line to wait. By the time I reached the front you could tell the employees were harried, but they greeted me friendly enough.

“Un gauffre de Bruxelles, si vous plais.”
“Avec?”

My face got a bit scrunchy and confused, not because I didn’t know the word, but because it hadn’t processed immediately. I didn't want it with anything... “Sucre?”

Over the course of my trip, I don’t think I have seen a more authentic smile on anyone’s face yet. She nodded happily and bustled off to make what a Belgian would actually consider a waffle. I prefer the Liege, I have found, but the Bruxelles is good as well.

The last two important Belgian foods are ones of which I’m not much of a fan: fries and beer. I had them then in the only setting I ever have them in voluntarily; with fried fish. I’m happy to report both were actually fantastic. So now I guess I have to try the beer in Munich as well, just to see if it was a one off or whether all this time in Northern Europe has started to change my taste.

Enough about food though. I should probably make note of some of the things I’ve seen.

My first morning in Brussels started with a visit to the Brussels City Museum, which was about a hundred meters from my hostel and another hundred from the walking tour meeting point. It wasn’t the most exciting as far as museums go; a collection of art made in the city, a bunch of old photographs and artifacts. The city maps were pretty cool, and a couple models of the city in medieval times. I realized too late that perhaps I should have started with the top floor, because not only did it give more actual history of the city, but it held a museum of costumes for Mannekin Pis and a film about his place in the fabric of the city.

For those who haven’t heard, Brussels is home to a statute of a naked baby peeing. It’s name is Mannekin Pis, and in terms of much loved and venerated attractions, he’s definitely at the top of the list. Theories abound about how he came to be there, but ever since he was knighted by Napoleon - for which occasion he had to be dressed, of course - it has become tradition to dress him up on national holidays and special occasions and the like. Thus the museum that functions as his wardrobe.

I wish I’d had the time to stay and watch the entire Mannekin Pis film. Hearing people’s opinions first hand was fascinating. Alas, my walking tour was starting just outside, and so I dashed down the stairs to join the group.

I would rank this particular walking tour at just above average. My guide, an English artist who had moved to Brussels a year and a half ago and was trying to learn French, was knowledgeable enough and quite funny, but also a little loud and easily offended. I also don’t think he realized I tipped him, which makes me feel a bit guilty, but I promise I did! A friend I made on the tour didn’t have change for a ten, so I gave him my five and we tipped together. When I shook the guide’s hand though, I don’t think it registered.

After the tour I made a beeline for the political district. For those of you who don’t know, Brussels is more or less the capital of the European Union, and I wanted to see for myself. I got distracted on the way by the Royal Palace. I hadn’t realized you could go inside, let alone for free, but the sign out front did a lovely job of informing me, so I poked my head in to see.

Poking my head in, it turns out, took far longer than I expected.

You see, the royal family of Belgium no longer lives in that particular palace. They’ve moved a bit further out of the city to a palace estate in Laeken near the Atomium statute. (I didn’t find the time to see either of those, but they are definitely on my list for a future date.) This city palace, in the meantime, has been turned into something of a museum. There was a huge exhibition on King Albert and Queen Elisabeth, the Belgian monarchs during World War I. It took a while to get through, sure, but I learned a ton about the war as a whole and Flanders in particular.

Having finished at the palace, I still had a decent amount of time to get up to the European Parliament too. It's literally in the middle of what amounts to a diplomatic city within a city. I even passed the US Embassy on the way and got a ‘bonjour’ from the marine on duty. I was tempted to stop and chat, but I know from experience that embassy security is not fond of loiterers, so I thought better of it and continued on my way.

Upon reaching the Parliament I was ecstatic to find that there was not only a visitor center, but an entire exhibition, called the Parliamentarium, complete with audio guide, and it was 100% free. Sure it started with “Welcome to your Parliament,” assuming that guests were European citizens, but it was still free to all. It actually answered a lot of the questions I’d had about the formation of the European Union: how it developed over time, when and why states joined and so on and so forth. It’s a fascinating story of economic and political momentum.

Best of all (or maybe not best, but certainly exciting), at the end of the Parliament exhibition they had a temporary exhibition from the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb! I don’t know if anyone else remembers, but that was one of those museums I really wanted to see but didn’t have time for on my whirlwind walking tour of the capital of Croatia. I wasn’t too broken up about it at the time because I wasn’t sure I could take an entire museum of relationship memorabilia, but a more limited (and free) exhibition gave me just the taste I wanted. I considered it a lovely stroke of good luck.

Less lucky was the fact that I was there on a Sunday when visits to the Parliament itself are not running. Considering my lengthy perusals of the palace and the Parliamentarium had led me to missing several other museums, I considered skipping my trip to Luxembourg the following day. I certainly had enough to fill it with in Brussels, and I really like international politics. It was then that I remembered that the day following Sunday is Monday, when museums are generally closed. So that decided it.

The next day I woke up bright and early and boarded the train to Luxembourg. Technically I went to Luxembourg City, but considering the size of the country and the fact that it is home to only half a million people, I feel comfortable just using the name Luxembourg to refer to everything.

The train ride itself was magical. Even as near as the outskirts of Brussels, the entire landscape changed to lovely stone houses crawling with ivy. Sprawling farms and forests speckled with all manner of cows and crops and geese. The best part, and this was only because I was inside the train, was the rain. You see, the lovely weather I’ve been privy to all summer is finally starting to change. I’m probably going to have rain for the rest of my trip. Something about rain and the Wallonian countryside though just felt right. It was prettier than any dry scenery I’ve seen outside of Switzerland and Croatia by a long shot. I was trying valiantly to finish one of those books I had been ‘reading’ for far too long, but I kept getting horribly distracted. You’re probably not surprised that I didn’t really mind.

When we arrived in Luxembourg it was, if possible, better. Not the train journey so much, but the views of the city itself. Luxembourg looks like a fairy tale. Probably because it is such a small and wealthy country, it has managed to keep all of its oldest buildings perfectly restored. It’s new buildings also are consummate works of art, and though it doesn’t do as fine a job as Denmark of blending the old with the new, the new certainly doesn’t look out of place.

I had planned my own walking tour around the city based on limited research I’d done online, but I was a little worried I wouldn’t get the kind of history lesson I wanted. The city museum was closed, because it was Monday, and though I planned to tour the Ducal Palace, I doubted that would satisfy my curiosity. When I stopped by the tourist office to buy my palace ticket though, I discovered they offered walking tours as well, so I quickly signed up. The only thing I’d planned to see that I didn’t was the European Parliament in Luxembourg. They have their own city within a city too. Seeing as they don’t have organized visiting procedures though, and I could still see the buildings from afar, I didn’t consider it that much of a loss.

The tour was a bit of an awkward experience because it was given bilingually. I’d listen in English and then space out as it was all repeated in German. My tour ticket came with a little booklet about the ducal family, so I’d learned a lot of what the tour guide told us already from reading, but I was glad for her explaining the composition of the pre-Napoleonic castle and the structure of the old city walls. It also started raining again halfway through, which was unpleasant, but I’d brought my umbrella, and the city was so lovely I hardly minded at all.

I had to leave the tour a few minutes early to make my entrance time to the palace. It was a small palace for a small country, and as with Belgium the family didn’t live there. It was used for official functions, however, and thus contained a wealth of diplomatic gifts and portraits, the histories of which were explained with great reverence by an elderly Luxembourgish woman who didn’t know much more English than the script she’d memorized for the tour, leading to a number of entertaining confusions.

When the tour ended, I had fifteen minutes before the next train back to Brussels; what I thought was plenty of time assuming I rushed. Apparently I underestimated the distance I’d come over the course of the day, because even at top walking speeds, even jogging in a few places, I arrived just as the train was about to depart… from a platform on the other side of the station.

So there was no way to make it, and I ended up buying dinner from a nearby supermarket and waiting an hour and a half for the next train instead. That put me back in Brussels late, where I packed my bag and went to bed almost immediately, because I had a plan for the next day.

I had realized sometime the night before that if I took a later train from Brussels to Munich I could tour European Parliament and still make it to Munich before ten. That’s later than I like to arrive in new cities, but my hostel should be a straight shot from the train station, so I decided it was worth the risk. I got up Tuesday morning, took my bag to luggage storage at a train station across town, caught a train back to Parliament, and hopped on to a Parliament visit.

It was shorter than I expected, but free again, and I loved seeing the plenary chamber where the parliamentary debates happen and learning a bit more about the functional processes. It also excited me that European Parliament is the single largest translational undertaking in the world. There are 23 official languages in the Parliament, with interpreters to simultaneously translate debates into every single one so that citizens are able to listen in their own languages. It’s quite spectacular when you think about, in sentiment as well as execution.

Because the visit was so short, that even left time for one of the museums I’d wanted to see. The Musical Instruments Museum is housed in a remarkable art nouveau building, the collection comprising traditional instruments from all over the world as well as more classical modern instruments. Visitors even got an audio guide that would play an instrument when approached, which really made the experience. The crown jewel of the museum, however, was an exhibition on the top floor honoring Adolphe Sax, the Belgian inventor of the saxophone. As far as I could tell from the exhibition he spent most of his life in France, but the Belgians are very proud of him nonetheless, and with good reasons. Saxophones are the best. How else would we have come up with jazz?

Anyway, I made sure to leave the museum in plenty of time to catch my train, though of course not before having one last waffle. As usual, I’m on that train now. Half an hour ago it was raining horribly, but wherever we are now it’s sunny and clear. We’ll just have to wait and see what Munich brings!

There's No Place Like the Netherlands

When I first started planning the latter half of this trip, I intended to end in Amsterdam, not only because there was a bus direct from Amsterdam to London, but because I expected the city would take me at least a week. My mother was happy when I had to truncate that visit to two and a half days in order to arrive at the French canals on time. You can make your own guesses why. I would, however, like to revise my original estimation of a week. I expect the city, done properly, would take me at least a month.

Friends I’ve been in contact with over the past few days have had to endure a constant barrage of texts about just how much I love the Dutch. I knew this already from my travels: friends in Ankara, people I’d met on the road, etc. Only upon arriving in a country full of them, however, did the reality of such an opinion hit home. In all my life, I’ve never met a more accepting people, masters of live and let live. The feeling of Amsterdam is not like Copenhagen or the Alps, but it’s a clean, calm, soul deep refreshment nonetheless. A place that makes you feel like you could live there forever. Perhaps you already have.

Of course there’s one exception to that feeling, and I’m sure it’s the exception that worried my mother. I would like to begin with the disclaimer that all things considered, the Red Light District is a perfectly lovely area. It’s not dangerous or scary or even dirty for that matter. It’s full of tourists, many of them high, and there are scantily clad women sitting in the windows, but there’s nothing else to distinguish it from any other city center. The canals there are as gorgeous as anywhere else, lined with cozy old world architecture of brick and stone. Trendy cafes and boutiques line the narrow, winding streets. There are even a couple of churches spattering the neighborhood.

The feeling then comes less from the area than the people populating it. The Dutch by and large don’t go to the Red Light District, and the tourists therefore appear like nothing so much as a bunch of silly kids who’ve decided to go wild because no one’s there to stop them. Even then though, I didn’t find anyone doing anything worse than blocking street traffic by walking too slowly. Perhaps it’s just the vibe of the city that kept even the debauchery discreet and respectful.

My walking tour guide (because of course I took one) gave us three rules by which the Netherlands is run. If it’s discreet, it’s good for business, and it’s not hurting anyone, let it be. I think that ideology tends to rub off, even on temporary visitors. And if it doesn’t, the Dutch are very good at gentle reminders.

My first encounter with Amsterdam, getting off the train on Wednesday afternoon, was a pleasant surprise. I mentioned I was taking a chance staying in a brand new hostel a bit outside the city. If I’m honest, I was worried we might have a repeat of Berlin where outside the city meant in the slums. I’m not sure there are any slums in Amsterdam though - and there certainly weren’t any where I was staying. From the people all around I thought it might be an immigrant neighborhood, but it was by far the nicest minority community I’d ever had the pleasure to stay in. It was only later that I learned just how truly multi-cultural the Netherlands is. Current racial tensions aside, the country has a long history of welcoming immigrants from abroad, especially their former colony in Suriname, and born in the Netherlands or not, the Dutch welfare state prides itself on making sure everyone has adequate food and housing. Housing that, in a woefully uncommon turn, places new and old, rich and poor, black and white in homes side by side. And through the years everyone got along, miraculously enough.

The ten minute walk from the suburban train station, even with my fifty pound bag, was invigorating, including several water features and a park. It was when I saw this sign a block before my hostel though that I knew being here was fate.

So you have to reverse the ‘e’ and the ‘r’ for it to work exactly, but I didn’t notice that at first glance, and regardless, it was too much of a coincidence to pass up.

The hostel itself, while still under construction, was also very nice. As far as I can tell, it’s meant to be an artists retreat when its done, hence the further out location. In addition to dorms, you can also rent studios, and the complex was full of gorgeous green courtyards and inspiring views, modern art dotting the walls of the floors that were nearly finished. They served breakfast free in the mornings, and there were laundry rooms on two floors. If they intend to install a coin or card operated system, they haven’t yet. I paid the requested six euros for my first load then, but might have done one or two more with the extra soap I’ve been lugging around from Florence…

That first evening after checking in, I settled right into sightseeing, quite aware of my severely limited amount of Amsterdam time. It was a forty-five minute walk to the Anne Frank House, which didn’t close until late, so I decided that was as good a place as any to start, and the walk gave me another chance to take in the loveliness of the city. This, for instance, counts as just your average, run of the mill, middle class neighborhood.

The wait to get into the museum when I arrived was about an hour and a half. Considering that was half the average wait time during the day, I considered myself fortunate, and settled in to watch the tourists pass on the canal boat tours - which unfortunately I never got to take. When I reached a sunny part of the line, the museum staff were even handing out umbrellas to make sure everyone stayed comfortable. It was very thoughtful of them, which seems pretty characteristic of Holland in general.

The museum was, as you might expect, both fascinating and heart wrenching at the same time. They’d done a spectacular job mixing information with emotion. Unfortunately, the house didn’t seem to have the same effect on its visitors as the concentration camp, and by the time we were touring the hidden rooms there was a lot of bored chatter and inattention. This was alongside some very passionate people too, however, and the distinction was clear as day on each and every face.

I finished the tour in one of those pensive melancholy moods, but considering the sun was still high, I figured I’d wander for a bit before heading back to the hostel. The Anne Frank House was much closer to the city center than I’d realized, so I headed inward to pass by the Royal Palace, the New Church, the National Monument, the first stock exchange, the Old Church, and finally to get my first glimpse of the Red Light District. By that time the sun was going down though, so I caught the train back to do my laundry and go to bed.

The next day touring began in earnest. I made it into town early enough that I reckoned I had time to see something small before my walking tour started. I had planned for that something to be the Central Library, but I decided at the last minute that the New Church was a better idea. It was located right next to the tour meeting point on Dam Square and closed much earlier than the library, which I could visit at a later time. In the end, this was judged a good decision.

If I hadn’t gone then, I would have gone at all, and I quite liked exploring the New Church. I hadn’t planned to see many churches in Amsterdam because you have to pay to get into them all, but I have since realized that that is because they are no longer churches in the way I have come to understand them. Sure, they hosting religious services, but they’ve taken secularism to a whole new level, hosting museum exhibitions, concerts, and even fashion shows. At the moment, there is an historical exhibition on the Dutch Royal family, which I very much enjoyed because… you know, royalty. I finished just in time for the tour too, even without rushing.

My tour guide was a Dutch man named Robbert who was a lot of fun, mostly because he was full of sarcastic asides that most people seemed to miss. I’m not going to lie, I missed a couple too, but that made them all the funnier when they were caught. As usual, he taught us a lot of the history of the city - how it was reclaimed from the sea and built on piles, for the first time creating a European state to which there was no heritable claim, and thus instituting the importance of equality that would serve as a social bastion through the ages.

After the tour, I accompanied Robbert and a few others to lunch. I love the Durch, remember? And I’d been dying to try traditional Dutch Stamppot, which is more or less mashed potatoes and vegetables. Can you say yum? There was a bit of a mix up ordering when my “no meat, please,” was interpreted as no meal and they didn’t bring my food with the rest, but it was only a minor embarrassment, and we worked it all out.

As having lunch at a restaurant does, the short social interlude ate a lot of my time, and I realized I didn’t have time for all of the museums I’d planned to pack into my afternoon. In fact, seeing as it was already three and they all closed at five, I wasn’t sure I had time for any of them… except perhaps one.

And that was how I found myself at the Our Lord in the Attic Museum. Remember how I mentioned churches in the Red Light District? This is one of them. After the Protestant Reformation when Catholicism was outlawed - but in true Dutch fashion still tolerated, as long as it was discreet - a large number of secret Catholic churches were founded in the Netherlands. One wealthy merchant bought up a row of three canal houses and converted the top three floors into a massive church, henceforth known as Our Lord in the Attic. For such a tiny space, the museum was very well done, and gave me a chance to see the inside a more or less preserve 17th century canal house. Have I mentioned how much I like seeing old houses?

When that museum closed there was only so much left open that wasn’t restaurants. I spent longer than I expected at the Prostitution Museum, which my Australian friend from Hamburg had recommended. It was actually fascinating, getting a first hand look into the daily lives of Amsterdam’s working girls. Then I finally made it up to the library, which was a treat. Seven floors of books overlooking the river and the city center. I sat and read until another tourist showed up with her children, who were loud and distracting to say the least, so I decided to call it a night.

The next day, though the unusually fantastic weather (as most of the locals were eager to tell me) was starting to fade, I stuck to my original plan of beginning my day with a walk through the parks. There was a series of three that more or less led from my hostel in a round about way to the Van Gogh Museum: Erasmus Park, Rembrandt Park and Vondelpark. Even with the rain rolling in, they were phenomenal. I would have loved a full day just to bike around them in circles, but alas, there was no time.

I hadn’t decided whether I was planning to go into the Van Gogh Museum yet or not, but decided against it on the walk. Not only was it expensive (for some reason the Dutch rarely do student discounts), but I got lost so many time between parks that the excursion was bordering on three hours. The way I saw it I wasn’t going to have time for two major museums that day, and I refused to miss the main Amsterdam Museum.

To be fair I enjoyed the getting lost. Not only did I get offered a job with an herbalife company, but I accidentally wandered through a photo shoot with a half naked man painted entirely blue for some #showyourtruecolors campaign. But sacrifices had to be made, so I glanced around the grounds of the Van Gogh Museum, as well as the other art museums that surrounded it, and continued on the nearby Albert Cuypmarket, a place that could not have made me happier that I didn’t buy a ticket to Van Gogh.

You see, the Cuyp is an Amsterdam tradition - a street market selling anything and everything. Of course I’ve been to plenty of street markets on this trip, but never have I been to one so gloriously cheap. For the price of that ticket to the Van Gogh Museum I ended up purchasing a skirt, a top, a pair of shorts, and a strapless bra, all things I needed because some of my clothing has started getting inconvenient holes in it. The new skirt, which I’m wearing now, already has a hole in it from washing it, but at least it’s on the seam and I think I can solve that with a safety pin. I really should have invested in a sewing kit.

After my success at the market, I finally made it to the Amsterdam Museum I mentioned. It’s main attraction is an Amsterdam DNA exhibit, covering the history of the city with lots of films and interactive displays. That led into more detailed histories of Amsterdam arranged by century. I made it to the very beginning of the twentieth before the museum closed, but that means I also missed the temporary hijab exhibition they’d put in for the summer. Alas, I probably know enough about hijabs, truth be told.

Because I had the same after five problem I’d had the day before, and I didn’t fancy hanging around downtown on a Friday night, I headed back to the hostel early. That gave me time to wash my new clothes and eat dinner in the hostel cafe. It was the first night they’d offered a vegetarian option, pasta with vegetables and bleu cheese cream sauce. Eating there also gave me the opportunity to chat with the chef, a veteran restaurateur who seemed very excited to be working in a hostel now where he could meet people from all over the world.

After dinner I intended to do some last minute work on my computer before bed, but got sidetracked by an Iranian man returning from a conference in Delft. He was staying in the room, and while I should point out that he was not in the least bit creepy, he did get rather excited when he realized I knew more about Iran than most Americans, including where it’s located and that it has a massive number of ancient ruins that would be spectacular to visit if tensions between the two countries weren’t so high. That led him to begin showing me slideshows of all the pictures he’s taken on his domestic travels in Iran, which was nice and all… but we know how I feel about pictures.

I did make it to sleep eventually at least, and the weather had cooled down enough that I even got to curl up in my blankets.

The next day was a day I had been looking forward to for a while: my day trip to The Hague! For those who don’t know, The Hague is kind of unofficial legal capital of the world. Any sort of international judicial function, with the exception of a spare few that go on in Geneva, happens there, and so me and my love of all things diplomatic was drawn like a wasp to a flame. Even when I had to start cutting days to shorten my trip, the Hague was never an option. Sure, there’s not that much to see because things are happening in the important parts, and thus they can’t be visited. But things are happening!!

Anyway, I’d plotted out a route for my tour around town, starting at the Peace Palace, home to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). As far as I understood they had a visitors center with a free audio guide that was open to the public, but we weren’t allowed to go in to the palace itself. From there I was meant to take a self guided walking tour of the royal sights in The Hague that would end at an old prison where there was a guided tour at 2:15. Well, all that went out the window as soon as I arrived at the Palace of Peace.

I don’t know how I missed the information about guided tours, but guided tours there were, and for only one euro more than the one at the prison museum. Well, I like prisons, but international law! Naturally I signed up immediately. I had to wait an hour or so, during which time I wandered the center with my audio guide, learning all about the history of Peace Palace. Exhibits included everything from the theoretical foundations of arbitration as an alternative to war to detailed descriptions of how the PCA and ICJ work. Though I finished before the tour, there was also a display of books we were welcome to page through. I began to read one that has caught my eye multiple times in the past, “A Little History of the World.” It’s as much of a page turner as I expected it to be, and while I can guarantee it will be in my library someday, I am exercising mass amounts of willpower at the moment not to give in and buy it when there’s so much else to read.

The tour itself was a-mazing. It reminded me of just why I’m so determined to pursue a career in diplomacy. The things that happen there matter, and have far reaching consequences the world over. Coming off my Amsterdam high (though not that kind), I definitely started to consider how lovely it would be to live and work in The Hague, taking trips out to Amsterdam when the fancy struck me. It’s an appealing concept, just to keep in mind.

Having taken time out for the Peace Palace, my hopes of touring the prison were shot, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t continue with my walk as planned. Wandering from street to street I managed to see Lange Voorhout Palace, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, Kloosterkerk, Grote Kerk, Noordeinde Palace and Gardens, and the Binnenhof Houses of Parliament.

I even managed to find the Gerard de Graaff tobacco shop, which Winston Churchill used to frequent whenever possible. Does it count as a selfie if you can see me in the window?

I finished with perfect timing to catch the earlier of the two trains I’d jotted down to take me on the Brussels. It left from a different station than I’d arrived, but I’d already been there to store my bag because the lockers at Central Station were out of order due to construction. And now I’m on a train! It was suspiciously empty when I got on, but filled up nicely at Rotterdam, and then not so nicely at Antwerp. Just three days and I’m going to miss the Netherlands dearly. In fact, I think I already do.

Hamburger Happy Meal

I am very very tired as I sit down to write this, for good reasons as well as bad.

Hamburg was lovely. Nothing so spectacular that I feel the need to rave, but still a very nice city taken in the aggregate. As the second largest port in Europe and the second largest city in Germany, it’s quite the metropolis, but seems to have better maintained a sense of quiet charm throughout the years. That’s not to say I didn’t see a few of the rough neighborhoods, but a few rough neighborhoods hardly makes it another Berlin.

After the nice relaxing train ride on which I scored myself a forward facing window seat, even without a reservation, I I took advantage of the fact that my hostel was just across the street to stop by the ticket office at the station and do a little more work on getting to France in the next two weeks. I had a little success, but I’m either going to have to chance a three minute transfer or spend $40 I only have to spend because it’s France. Ugh France. You know they just had a train crash last week? You’d think they’d be a bit more accommodating for a bit after that.

Train issues temporarily dealt with, I wasted no time setting off to see some of the sights. Sure, it was nearly seven, but the sun in Hamburg does not set much earlier than the sun in Copenhagen, and at least one of the attractions I wanted to see was open until nine. That attraction? Miniatur Wunderland.

It’s exactly what it sounds like, if not exactly what I expected. An exhibition of the largest model train in the world, complete with representations of America, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, and several different regions of Germany. Italy was under construction while I was there, and there were several temporary definitions showing the city of Hamburg throughout history, political parties’ visions for Germany, and most interestingly the passage of time in Berlin from 1945-1989.

I really liked the miniatures, far more than I thought I would. They’ve been finding their way into my conversations at every turn over the last two days. Apart from the artistry, which was of course impressive, what got to was the stories being told. Yes the recreations of nature are pretty, the mountains and trees and lakes, but what makes the scene is the people, and they’re rarely if ever just standing around.

People hiking and picnicking and sunbathing and working, headed to the airport, attending music festivals, being abducted by aliens, seeing a show at Seaworld San Diego. And the best part was that they all told a story. The kid who snuck off to breakdance behind the airplane hangar at the Berlin airport, the rider who crashed during a major bike race, the hilltop palace burning to the ground. I could have examined the details in the exhibition all day. It took up a whole two floors. I only had a couple hours though, and that was fine too. I examined the scenes until closing and then headed back to my hostel through the picturesque warehouse district.

That night was my first accidentally late night. I’d grabbed some dinner on my way back to the hostel and was eating it in the lounge when a Swiss friend I’d made in Copenhagen sat down to chat. We’d ended up in the same hostel in Hamburg by coincidence, but it was nice to speak again with a decent conversationalist for once. So we talked, and talked and talked and talked, until all of a sudden I realized just how tired I was and excused myself to bed.

It was late enough that even if I’d slept well, I wouldn’t have slept wrong, but now comes the time where I complain about the hostel. Overall it wasn’t that bad; clean enough, and the facilities were decent. It was hellishly hot, however, and not because of the weather.

Hamburg, while warmer than Copenhagen, was still a very nice temperature for most of my time there. The problem in the hostel was that we couldn’t get that temperature inside. The windows cracked, but by no means opened, and when you got eight people in a room at night, or even a mere four, it was difficult to breathe let alone sleep. Even having just showered I was sweaty before I laid down, and while certainly tired enough to sleep, could not seem to ignore the suffocating lack of oxygen in the room. Alas, I made it to sleep eventually only to wake up for a breakfast that was nearly as bad.

For convenience sake, I had pre-purchased breakfast at the hostel in the mornings. Even when it’s a little more expensive, as it was here, the amount of coffee I drink usually makes it worth it for what I would spend buying coffee out. Arriving at eight, an hour after breakfast had started and two hours before it would close, I expected to have beat the biggest crowds, but had no such luck. It took half an hour to get through the buffet line which was then a woefully disorganized and understocked mess. I got a cup of coffee, but hadn’t the time to wait through that ever growing line for more. I actually considered trying to refund my second day’s breakfast, but this morning was much better, thank goodness. I got a whole two cups of coffee, and some yogurt. Though that might have had to do with getting there at seven on the dot.

Anyway, after breakfast the first morning, I set out for my run of the mill walking tour. My guide, another newbie from Barcelona, was more professional than the guide from Copenhagen, but also still getting used to giving tours. Considering how little I knew about the city beforehand though, I learned a lot. Perhaps the most resonant anecdote was that of Operation Gomorrah during World War II in which 80% of the city was flattened, but I also enjoyed all the economic history about securing the rights to operate a duty free port that led to Hamburg’s perpetual commercial prosperity.

After the tour I spent some time wandering through Speicherstadt and Hafencity, two old port districts turned leisure and luxury housing area respectively. That led into a stop at St. Michael’s Church, where I didn’t do more than glance through the door to escape the entrance fee, and a pleasant stroll through Planten un Blomen, one of the bigger parks in the city. Despite the meandering path though, all this walking had a purpose, and I eventually ended up at a commuter train station where I could head out to one of the suburbs to see a museum where my American sensibilities, inundated since childhood with the narrative of the melting pot, felt right at home.

Ballinstadt Emigration Museum is housed in three of the old Ballinstadt Emigration Halls, giant hostels affectionately dubbed ‘The World’s Largest Inn,’ where emigrants could stay between the time they arrived in Hamburg and the time their ships left for the New World. The museum spanned most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including information on why people left, where they went, how they fared, etc. It was full of details about the emigration halls themselves too, and land journeys and sea journeys and just about everything you could imagine. I’d always heard plenty about immigrant arrivals at Ellis Island, but it was fascinating to see the process from the other side.

At the very end of the exhibit, there were computer terminals sponsored by ancestry.com where you could research your own heritage and whether your ancestors came through Hamburg or anywhere else. I wish I had come more prepared, because getting free reign on ancestry.com was kind of exciting. Alas, I didn’t have all that much time to research anyway. I poked around for a bit, but eventually decided I wasn’t finding much out and hopped the train back to the city center.

That evening, I met my Swiss friend and two Aussies from his dorm room for dinner. We went to a little open air market in front of the town hall where more restaurants than I could count had set up little wooden booths serving all manner of traditional German food. I had spatzle and lentils, in part because it was more or less the only vegetarian option and in part because spatzle reminds me of my mother. I found myself hitting it off with the Aussies too, enough that when they suggested we all go out after dinner I readily agreed, despite my usual aversion to nightlife.

I needn’t have worried. Their version of going out was about as close to my version of going out as it gets. I suppose we were technically in the Red Light District of Hamburg, called Reeperbahn, but being a weeknight it wasn’t as wild as you might expect. We sat outside at a bar, I had a glass of Alsterwasser (a traditional mix of beer and Sprite that was actually pretty good), and we all just talked for ages. Then on the way back, we stopped by Herbertstrasse - a street where women and children are vehemently not allowed. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about why that is, because obviously it wasn’t like I was able to go in.

I think it’s a testament to just how well I got along with these people that we decided unanimously to walk back to the hostel, even though it was at least an hour away and already past midnight. It was a nice walk though, with pleasant company and good conversation. Goodbyes were rather rushed though when we had to split up at the lifts, already half exhausted. I gave the Aussie’s my email, so I’m hoping they get in touch.

And that was really it for Hamburg. I had my breakfast this morning and scampered off to catch my train to Amsterdam. I’ve taken a chance on the hostel there. It’s a bit far from the center and brand spanking new, which means it didn’t have any ratings when I booked. I checked last night though and the first few ratings have started to filter through. It sounds like a pretty good place overall. Let’s just hope the laundry facilities are good, because after the heat of Berlin, the Hamburg dorm, and sitting on all those filthy train floors, most of my clothes could really use a wash. Worrying that the train to Amsterdam might be full I even considered reserving a seat on the second leg, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s one of the emptier trains I’ve been on in a while, and there are even plugs so I can listen to music without killing my phone battery. Oh the little things. =)

Skipping Up to Scandinavia

I didn’t arrive in Copenhagen with an entirely clean slate. As some of your might remember, I spent a good deal of the spring with a half-Danish intern who lives most of the year in Copenhagen, and he talked about the city enough that it was inevitable for me to develop some preconceived notions. Despite his constant adulations to the city, rantings and ravings about how he could never settle anywhere else, most of these notions I developed had more to do with his national pride than they did the city itself. It was great that he loved where he lived, but surely that had as much to do with his Danish roots and social network as it did with the city itself.

Well, I don’t think I ever voiced these notions, but if I had, I would be eating my words.

Copenhagen is spectacular. I arrived on a Saturday evening, sweaty and sore from alternately standing and sitting on the floor of the most crowded train I had been on thus far, disappointed that I had missed free dinner at the hostel because the overcrowding had made us late, and quite ready to just retreat from the world for a bit. No sooner had I stepped out of the train station though then all that disappeared.

Copenhagen has a feeling about it. I wouldn’t have compared it to the Alps until my mother mentioned them last night, there’s none of that same helplessness but to stare, and yet its like the city itself is made of contentedness and calm. Unlike Vienna, when my tour guide told us that Copenhagen was named not only the most livable city last year, but also the happiest and most environmentally friendly, I had no trouble believing.

I had a perfectly located hostel, only five or ten minutes from the train station by foot and barely a block away from Town Hall Square. It helps that downtown Copenhagen isn’t that big to begin with, but the location, and the fact that the sun doesn’t set until 11pm, meant that I had some time to explore, even with my late arrival.

I went to Town Hall Square first, because it was closest. The are used to be taken up by the westernmost city walls until they were knocked down and the space left empty for events and exhibitions. The event taking place while I was in town was a protest supporting Gaza. It was just a booth that first night, but the following day they had added rows and rows of black body bags to represent the casualties thus far. It was moving and, as I imagine it was meant to, made me uncomfortable, but was also a prime example of the culturally prevalent social consciousness in Denmark.

After the the square, I walked another two blocks to the Christiansborg Palace complex. This palace used to be the main residence of the Danish royal family, but when it burned down several hundred years ago it took so long to rebuild that the family ended up permanently moving into their temporary residence at the Amalienborg Palace a fifteen minute walk away. Now the old palace houses the Parliament, the Supreme Court, and a number of museums. I very much wanted to visit the State Rooms and the ruins, but alas, it was not to be. I didn’t know that at the time however, and so took note of entry prices and opening times and went on my merry way.

I might have made it all the way to Amalienborg that night, except a happy coincidence caught me up. The receptionist at the hostel had mentioned while checking me in that the canal tours were a good way to see the city - especially the infamous statute of the Little Mermaid that’s not much to look at for its distance from the city center. When I happened to pass one of the two docks, with two departures left despite the late hour, I figured it was worth a quick hop on to get acquainted with the city on the sea. It was a good decision.

It began to get chilly as the sun set, but there is nothing like Copenhagen from the water at dusk. Many of the grandest buildings overlook the water: the National Theatre, the Opera House, the old stock exchange, the new library extension, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that Amalienborg Palace I mentioned.

As promised, I also saw the Little Mermaid, at least from behind, and learned that far from being popular in Copenhagen as the storybook figure she is for the rest of the world, she is best known to the locals for the vandalism she has suffered. She’s lost her head twice, it turns out, as well as been painted completely pink.

That night there was a fireworks show at Tivoli Gardens, the amusement park just off Town Hall Square. It’s the second oldest amusement park in the world, actually, beaten only by a smaller one about an hour from Copenhagen. The Danes likes their amusements it seems. I didn’t go to the park, because that was far too much money to spend for an attraction that would be little to no fun to visit alone, but I had a perfect view of the show from the hostel windows.

Funny note about my hostel: the top floor I was staying on is new. Now, that might have been part of why the facilities were so nice, but according to the staff that’s also why the door to my room tended to stick. I spent a good ten minutes trying to open it the first time before heading down to reception where they sent someone up to teach me to kick it in just the right spot. We collectively decided as a room shortly thereafter that as long as someone was in we didn’t really need to close it. It was far too much work to open just to run to the restroom or go take a shower.

Door drama aside though, it was a lovely hostel. Breakfast, while expensive, was spectacular, and considering how expensive all the other food in Copenhagen is, it wasn’t that bad. As a welfare state, taxes in Denmark are astronomical. Groceries aren’t that much more expensive, but eating out costs at least three times as much as anywhere else in Europe. That includes street food, ice creams, and all manner of consumables you buy out but don’t necessarily eat at the establishment. I survived on sandwiches stolen from breakfast and a bunch of apples I bought from the supermarket. For the exorbitant prices, I actually ate very well in Denmark. Go figure.

The next morning, as I do on the first morning in most cities, I queued up for a free walking tour around the city. My guide, I was excited to note, was a Torontonian. It is unfortunate that that was where my excitement stopped. While a sweetheart in most respects of the word, it was clear from the way she spoke that tour guiding was her job and not her passion. Not even her hobby for that matter. She had the script down, told all the necessary stories, but she was long winded, imprecise, and unsure of her facts. She also kept passing judgement on things that were none of her business, like implying that Danish history wasn’t worth learning because all but one of the kings is named either Christian or Fredrich. In the end, the tour lasted twice as long as it should have, took twice as much effort to absorb, and only imparted about half as much information and enjoyment as I feel like most walking tours do. I wouldn’t have minded so much, seeing as it was Copenhagen and thus the nicest of walks…

Except on the course of the tour I found myself running into an unforeseen and very critical scheduling conflict.

Mondays are the bane of my existence. Not because it’s the end of the weekend. I’m living a perpetual weekend. But because chances are if cool things are closed one day a week, that day is Monday.

You see, in the course of rearranging my travel plans, I had forgotten to account for that tiny Monday fact. Which meant the National Museum that I had planned to wander all morning the next day before my train was going to be closed, and that was something I just couldn’t miss. So as we were walking, I began to rearrange. Having already noted the Christiansborg times, daily 09:00-17:00, I decided that could be moved to Monday and I could see the museum in the afternoon. Except the tour didn’t end until the late afternoon, so I only had two hours at the museum instead of four. Even four wouldn’t have been enough.

The Copenhagen National Museum is by far one of my favorite museums ever. The first floor is full of exhibits dedicated to pre-historic man, leading into exhibits on the Vikings. I knew the Vikings were from Scandinavia, but I hadn’t known they were from Denmark in particular. In fact, according to the museum, it was the Danish decline in the mid-nineteenth century that led to the cultural romanticization of the Vikings. I thought that was noble of them to admit, but pride driven or not, the entire exhibit gave me a craving for some Viking history and lore. They’re definitely now on my list of civilizations I’d like to learn a lot more about. I even took some pictures of Viking garments I hope to replicate into costumes when I finally make it home.

My sub-par tour guide had insisted the entire first floor of the museum would only take an hour, and while I hadn’t believed her, I also hadn’t expected to be less than halfway through an hour and a half in. I picked up the pace a bit, but not being able to stop and read more than the main ideas made me want to cry. My look around the second floor of Renaissance artifacts and 18th century rooms was so cursory I even missed the sword they used to execute Dr. Struensee, which I had been very much looking forward to seeing. I didn’t even make it to the third floor of international ethnographic artifacts, though I think I’ve seen plenty of Egyptian and Middle Eastern artifacts to last me for a while.

When the museum closed I wandered back to the hostel, only a block away, to inquire after dinner. The hostel serves the meal free every day at 18:30, but they only make a limited quantity, so it’s first come first serve. Problem is, it’s not always vegetarian, so I wanted to make sure I could eat it before I got in line. Sure enough, I couldn’t. It was beef goulash, which drove me to the apple buying I mentioned before. It was still too early though, and too bright, to call it a day. As such, I wandered back into the city proper, headed first for the Round Tower which, surprise surprise, is just a big tower that is round. Right next to the Round Tower, however, is the city park, bordering an art museum contained in Rosenborg Palace. The museum was closed, but it was a lovely place to lounge in the grass, read, and munch on my tasty, tasty apples.

As the sun got lower and I more tired of Hitler’s sniveling tripe (I’m still reading Mein Kampf, though it’s become a struggle not to abandon it), I decided dessert was in order, and not just any dessert, but Danish dessert.

Now, let me digress for a moment about the complete incomprehensibility of Danish pastries. Clearly, in English, we just call them Danishes, which one would assume means Danish pastry. I had been told, however, that the traditional pastry in Denmark is called Wienerbrod, a name that literally translates as Viennese bread. When I went to order this Wienerbrod, however, I was quickly informed that there are a wealth of types of Viennese bread, all with completely dissimilar names, which was why I hadn’t been able to find signs for it in any of the shop windows. The kind girl at the bakery pointed them each out to me, explaining that this one had cinnamon and that one apple and the one over there cream. That made sense at least, but when I asked her to pick for me, the Danish Viennese bread pastry thing I ended up with? It was a cinnamon roll. But it was a tasty cinnamon roll, so I wasn’t about to complain.

Anyway, I got my Danish, if we can call it that, and began to walk, as much to enjoy the feeling of being in the streets as to walk off some of the decadent pastry. Stroget, the main shopping street, is always full of buskers in the evenings, so wandering from show to show was a nice way to pass the time. I also stopped back by Nyhavn, the old port (even though the name means ‘new port’) and de facto red light district that has since been gentrified for tourists and lined with historical boats for show.

There are still plenty of Danes who sit along the canal to relax and chat with their friends though. They even jump in for a swim on occasion, a fact which was most apparent on the boat tour the day before where it seemed almost everyone we passed gave a wave and a smile before cannonballing into the canal.

I feel like I should stop for a moment to discuss the Danes as a whole. First, as the Viking thing might suggest, they are a very proud people. That pride, however, has in no way affected their friendliness. I don’t think I ran into a single person who wasn’t kind, helpful, and incredibly well spoken in English. The English thing, coupled with the pride, is a bit strange to me. I have been told several times over, by Mark and others, that all the Danes speak English, and indeed it is true, but they do it with such skill and frequency that I still find it hard to understand. Their nationalism is in no way tied to their language, they feel no compulsion to avoid English, even when speaking to each other, and yet I have heard that when it comes to those living in Denmark, working there or studying, that they will never be truly accepted without perfect, flawless Danish. It’s an enigma, but an interesting one at least.

One of those ‘others’ that had pointed out this language paradigm was Clara, one of Anna’s friends in Venice who studied abroad in Copenhagen for a bit. She’d pointed out something else, however, that I’d found more difficult to understand at the time. Danish architecture, she said, knew how to incorporate nature. I brought up Gaudi at the time, the Catalan architect who loved to mimic nature at every chance, but it wasn’t mimicking, she insisted. She couldn’t describe it exactly, thought it was something in the lines. I understand now though.

The Danes don’t mimic nature; they use it. Everything in Copenhagen was stone and glass and wood. Walking through the city didn’t remind you of walking through a forest for the sounds or the sights, and yet it felt that way somehow regardless. Peaceful. It gave the city a timeless feel, even if the building clearly wasn’t. The city is full of modern architecture, sharp angles, clean lines, and yet because that natural tone is respected it all seems, what I thought was impossibly, to coexist.

A prime example of this became apparent on my last morning in Copenhagen. If you’ll remember, I was going to go to the state rooms and ruins at Christiansborg Palace, but alas, “daily” on the sign or not, it was also closed on Mondays. I was disappointed, but not as disappointed as I would have been if I’d missed the museum. Plus, it’s just another reason I’ll have to come back. For the moment, however, I consoled myself with the beauty of the water instead.

It occurred to me that of things that might be open on a Sunday, the library was probably one of them, and it’s located on the water, which was certainly a major plus. The library, at least the new part, is a giant glass structure called the black diamond because, when the sun reflects up from the water that’s exactly what it looks like. Inside, the walls are stone, the floors are wooden, and it connects by bridge, strangely enough, to the old library in one of the courtyards of the Christiansborg complex.

I wish I had a picture of the two together, because they shouldn’t complement each other, but they do. Google it if you’re interested. It’s an amazing thing that as far as I can tell is completely unique to the region.

I had to fight myself not to just spend all day reading on the canals. It helped that I still don’t like what I’m reading - though I have traded in my hard copy of Under the Tuscan Sun for a bilingual copy of Heart of Darkness in English and French. I had to leave Copenhagen eventually though, and if I could get into Hamburg a couple hours early that was probably for the best. So I’m on a train now. I can actually see the Danish countryside this time, because I think I have mastered this whole ride without a reservation. It’s not Copenhagen, but it’s still lovely, and the bridges, when we cross them, are breathtaking.

The best part about the ride from Germany, and I expect one of the better parts about the ride back, was/will be the ferry. I didn’t realize we’d be taking a ferry on the way in until we were on it, but take it we did. We have to disembark the train for the crossing. It doesn’t take too long, and everything on the boat is over priced, but it’s lovely regardless. I suppose that makes up for having to tunnel across from England, eh?

And now, to temper the nostalgia I already feel at leaving, I shall end with the photo I promised my mother of the view from my hostel window at sunset. Keep in mind, this is somewhere around 11 o’clock at night.

Oh Scandinavia, how I will miss thee.

Prussian Politics and Prurient Paint - Berlin

Berlin gives me strange feelings. I wouldn’t say it’s a city I particularly like, I’m even a little bit glad to be leaving, and yet I already want to go back.

It’s the history, in the end, that makes it so appealing. Berlin is the only city in which I’ve done a walking tour that didn’t start with the city’s history and background. Instead, we looked at the Brandenburg Gate as the tour guide told us, “This is the Brandenburg Gate. In a few minutes we’ll be walking through it, which is amazing, because fifteen years ago walking through it would have meant walking through the Berlin Wall.” He didn’t have to explain what that meant: what the Berlin Wall was, why fifteen years ago, none of it. Because we all knew. And that’s what’s fascinating about the history of Berlin. It’s not German history, it’s world history.

That being said, it’s still a pretty grungy city. Take New York and imagine it was built on swamp land so now you have swamp gas added to the stench of urine, drugs, and unwashed squatters and there you have Berlin. The fact that it was the birthplace of punk is visible everywhere you look, street art spanning the walls, musicians crowding the trains. It’s an interesting vibe, but alas it’s not really for me. Still, as potentially the most important city in Europe, it was a good place for me to see, even hastily and with some reservations.

I only had two days in Berlin. The first I’d set aside for some of the main sights and museums while the second was meant for a tour of an old prison with an ex-inmate and a few of the memorials further from the city center. I started my first day as planned with a walk by the Reichstag Parliament Building, a trot through the lovely, tree-filled Tiergarten, and a wander through the maze like Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. A definite highlight of the day came from passing the U.S. Embassy, right next the aforementioned memorial, where a sign of congratulations to Germany for winning the World Cup hung on the side of the building. I would have liked to be in the country for the celebrations, but alas, at least the Embassy is congratulating on all of our behalves.

After that came a free walking tour of the city, but it was on that walking your that the rest of my plan went entirely out the window. My guide, you see, was an ex-history teacher from England, and he convinced me that I needed to see more of Berlin than just the museums. Nevermind that I wasn’t staying in the best part of town, and had thus seen more than the museums already. I bought into his spiel, though I did not then buy his second tour. He was charging for his “Alternative Berlin” tour, you see, while one of the brochures I’d glanced through at the hostel had advertised one for free. Now, free isn’t actually free, but I’ve never tipped a guide near as much as the first guide was charging, so I decided to go with the other company instead. It wasn’t my best ever decision.

I saw some nice things on my slow wander from the end of the first tour to the starting point of the second. Humboldt University was hosting a book sale to commemorate the Nazi book burnings. There’s an entire island of museums that were too expensive to go in with my limited time, but which were pretty on the outside from what I could see through the massive construction work. Short after Museum Island, I even ran into a Berlin Dungeon, just like those in London and Edinburgh. I stopped to ask for their times, because I have this thing about comparing experiences across cities, but if I did their next English show I wouldn’t have made the alternative tour, so I took note of the schedule and politely continued on my way.

I’m happy to report that the bathrooms in German McDonalds’ are once again free. Also, despite its love of sausage, Germany is surprisingly vegetarian conscious. I have seen an abundance of vegetarian and vegan restaurants, as well as plenty of other restaurants with veggie and tofu options. I mention these because I stopped at a McDonalds to use the restroom, and then a noodle place where I had rice and veggies and tofu in peanut sauce and it was phenomenal. They didn’t even skimp on the veggies like most noodle places seem to.

And then it was time for the alternative tour, which I’m sad to say was a bit more alternative than I was strictly comfortable with. The idea of the tour was to see some of the sights of modern Berlin - the heart of the city that most of the tourists miss. The highlights included street art and artists squats, as well as a number of historic bars. Unfortunately, it also included endless illusions to all the best places to score various drugs, excessive disparagement of any and all manners of authority, and constant plugging from our tour guide whose band was playing at a rave in a bombed out train station the following night.

There wasn’t anything directly threatening about the tour, but it was all the little things that got to me: the guys in the corner of a park with what I suspect was heroine, the fight that broke out at the Jamaican beach bar where we took our break, the stares from the creepy bartenders as we wandered through the deserted Raw Temple before the sun went down and the patrons came out. And the way the tour guide glorified it all. That was the worst part.

Now, I try very hard to be tolerant of different people and different ways of life, but I was shaken enough after the tour that all I didn’t even want to finish out my day at the various parks I’d picked out on the map. Call me a prude, or uptight, or whatever else you’d like, I went back to my hostel, showered, and climbed in to bed to hide from the world.

While I still maintain it was good for me to see that side of Berlin, I was a bit disappointed that I’d foregone a few museums to do it. As such, I made sure I was up bright and early the next morning to go see at least one of the ones I had missed.

The Palace of Tears exhibition at the former border control between East and West Berlin at Friedrichstrasse Station was both free and fascinating. It chronicled the experiences of the people of Berlin, unequivocally separated overnight and only able to bridge the divide with much danger and difficulty. Following the museum, however, I had a ticket for one more thing I’d let that first tour guide talk me into the day before. Faith in his opinion lost or not then, I couldn’t really back out. This time, it turns out it wasn’t such a bad idea.

What he’d said, you see, was that no one should come to Germany without seeing a concentration camp. It was a thought I’d had before, but considering the distance of the concentration camps as well as the depression they were bound to inspire, I hadn’t fought too hard to fit one in. As I heard my guide speak, however, I’d started to feel guilty. Like by not visiting a camp I wasn’t paying the due respect. I don’t think that was his intention, but regardless, I’d purchased a ticket for the company’s tour of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp that second day.

It was a large tour, prone to selling out on a daily basis, and that day one of the English tour guides had woken up violently ill. So we set out from Brandenburg Gate with twice as many people as the tour guide intended, catching the train out to Sachsenhausen in one giant wave. The guide, I’m happy to say, was a consummate professional, crowd managing without so much as a hint of the impression that he was herding cats.

He was also a phenomenal public speaker. His summaries didn’t feel like summaries at all, delving into not only the history but the psychology and philosophy that permeated Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He was engaging, asking questions and encouraging group discussion nearly as often as he talked. He made the group think, which was nice for a change. And by the end of the tour I wasn’t even frustrated with anyone.

It’s something about the concentration camp, I think. People realize, for once, that they’re in a place where they need to respectful. No loud voices, no littering, and while people took advantage of the fact that photos were allowed, there were none of the jostling crowds pushing and shoving for a commemorative photo in front of the gates. The Spanish tour group we rode the train with still gave me a headache with their vastly different public culture norms, but that was the train, and can’t really be helped.

Speaking of culture, Berlin itself aside, I very much like the German people. I even fell a bit of kinship. It is only by being here that I realize just how German-ly I was raised. My mother has some distinctive French-German routes going back not too far at all, and there are things about the Germans, the way they carry themselves, the way they greet people, that remind me of her. It doesn’t hurt that I have also realized I am clearly built like a German. The number of people who have mistaken me for a local here are higher here than anywhere else by far. But I digress.

The concentration camp was such a trying experience that the tour group as a whole decided to head for a beer garden afterwards to have a drink together and unwind. I contemplated going along. Like I said, I liked this tour group more than just about any other I’d joined before. Nevertheless, given the tour content I hadn’t been particularly social, and while I could have ramped it up at said beer garden and inserted myself into a conversation accordingly, that required too much energy for what was supposed to be a chance to relax. I bowed out then, and headed back to the city proper where I arrived just in time to squeeze into a show at the Berlin Dungeons.

The Dungeons were, at once, interesting and disappointing. I had hoped for some sordid Berlin history, but none of the stories throughout the show were much if any different than the ones in the U.K. The establishment was definitely new. The actors hadn’t quite settled into their roles yet. I imagine the company is working on expanding across Europe, but they’re keeping their model fairly identical everywhere they go. The biggest difference was the the torturer, whose first language clearly wasn’t English, forgot his lines halfway through. Other than that, the interesting part was my fellow audience members.

To begin with, few of them spoke English as a first language. I don’t know how much that had to do with their behavior. Said behavior, however, was at best reluctant and at worst uncooperative to a fault. The show hinges on audience participation. Performers accuse, question, and order the audience about, and without a reaction, or at least obedience, it’s very difficult for the show to go on. People wouldn’t move when they were told, wouldn’t come closer, wouldn’t pile through doors. Part of that was a result of the group being just a bit too big, but even then, an actor would ask a name and the audience member wouldn’t respond. An actor would tell people to get out and point at the door and no one would move. It was a bit sad actually, but possibly one of the reasons that having visited three different city dungeons and a number of similar shows, I was finally chosen as the plague victim that needed her bits cut out.

Other than the language bit, I don’t really have a theory about why this group would have been less forthcoming than others. Maybe bad groups just happen. Either way, I was glad to get to play my part.

After the Dungeons, it was too late to do any more museums. Most of them were closing within the hour. So I stopped at a chippery for some fried fish (yay protein!) and caught the train back to my hostel for another early night. I even wrote this post before heading to bed! So maybe something will happen between here and Copenhagen tomorrow, and maybe it won’t, but here’s your post early everyone! Sorry there aren’t any pictures… I wasn’t really in the mood.

Sampling Saxony

I hadn’t originally planned to stop in Dresden, but the city came highly recommended by some people whose opinion I value very much, so here I am! Dresden, Saxony, for a little more than twenty four hours.

I arrived in Dresden in the early afternoon, wasting no time in checking into my hostel and setting out to explore the city on foot. There is a comfortable tram system here, and bikes are popular enough that the hostel lends them out for free, but you should all know by now just how much I love to walk. Besides, walking in Dresden is even more of a treat than walking most places.

The city center of Dresden is a wealth of stunning old architecture, first built by the Saxon royals (especially King August the Strong of Saxony and Poland) several centuries ago and almost all located in a circle with a diameter that takes about five minutes to walk. It took half an hour of ambling down tree lined lanes to get there, but of course even that was hardly a hardship. Once in the old town, I saw the Semper Operahaus, the lush Zwinger Palace and gardens, Dresden Castle, the Catholic Court Church, the Procession of Princes scrafito mural, the converted royal mews, the Church of Our Lady, and Bruhl’s Terrace.

The churches were interesting because they seemed in a way to have reversed their places. The Catholic church, built by the Catholic court in Lutheran Saxony, was very plain for a Catholic establishment, whereas the Lutheran Church of our Lady resembled nothing so much as the inside of a giant gilt Easter egg, which was amusing.

The most impressive things about all of these buildings, however, even beyond their beauty, is the fact that every last one of them has been rebuilt. The shelling of Dresden, February 13, 1945, left most of the city in ruins. Each building was rebuilt by different people and organizations in its own time and way, but the fact that they have been rebuilt at all is a credit to the town of Dresden. Even the building surrounding the monuments now, though often in a more modern style, respect the old layout of the city center, presenting a fascinating interplay of new and old.

Pretty as the city center is though, my favorite part of Dresden is definitely the parks. Despite a population of barely 500,000, Dresden is the fourth largest city in Germany by area. Two-thirds of that space is fields and forests and parks. You can literally walk the Elbe River for miles, and while I didn’t go that far, I definitely spent a significant amount of time down the banks. Every little bit you’ll come across a cafe or a park or the ruins of an old bath, all of it sunlit and sparkling for the time I was there.

Without the time or energy to walk the entire city, I bought a boat ticket for the afternoon and boarded a river boat for a tour up down the Elbe. It was a little hard to hear the commentary with the other passengers drinking and laughing and carrying on, but we passed all manner of lovely bridges and mansions and municipal buildings.

On my way back to the hostel that evening, I stopped in at Pfund’s Dairy, named the most beautiful dairy in the world. It is, indeed, beautiful, covered in blue and white porcelain tiles. I didn’t have much use for most of their wares, but I did buy a glass of milk and admire the surroundings for a while before heading back to the hostel, searching for dinner along the way. And boy was it dinner I found.

Supermarkets don’t seem as ubiquitous in Dresden as they have been in some other places I’ve visited. When I passed a tiny organic one then, I figured I might as well stop and see what they had. Well, the nice thing about organic supermarkets is that they tend to carry some of your less common things. In this case, it was vegetarian fare - vegetarian wiener schnitzel to be exact. Of all the local delicacies I haven’t been able to try as a vegetarian, wiener schnitzel was the only one that made me a little sad. Seeing it there made out of tofu then was a major source of excitement for me. I bought it immediately and took it back to the hostel to prepare. It was delicious, I’m happy to say, though probably too expensive for me to try again anytime soon.

Following dinner, I had a nice social evening in the hostel common room. It was more classic backpacker and less loud obnoxious Eurotrip, so I quickly made friends with some Dutch boys playing Star Wars Chess, followed by a group of people who gathered around to participate in the hostel’s free German lesson that night.

Yes, that’s right. The hostel gives free German lessons on Tuesdays. Seeing as German has given me more trouble than any other language so far, I took part enthusiastically. I still can’t do much more than order food, but considering that what used to come out, “please, a scoop stracciatella,” now comes out, “I would like a scoop of stracciatella please,” I feel like that is an important improvement. Also, I am now much better at the numbers.

After dinner, I went with a couple new friends from Montreal, Montana, and Brazil to the nearby park to split a bottle of wine and watch the stars. It was a nice night, and we didn’t even get back too late.

This morning, the sociality continued over breakfast with a boy from Berlin, staying in the hostel while he attended a conference on migrants and refugees. In case it wasn’t obvious, his interests were right up my alley, and we had a spectacular conversation about people and travel and politics until he had to leave for his conference. We exchanged email addresses though, so who knows. Maybe we’ll keep in touch.

After breakfast, I headed back to the city center to read in one of the parks. I’ve moved on from Kafka to an English translation of Mein Kempf. It seemed fitting, with all of the World War II history I’m learning, even I’m sure it won’t be such a pleasant read.

I only read until a bit before noon though, when I headed to the main square to catch a walking tour around the city. It wasn’t a free one this time, but I like hearing the history I might otherwise have missed. To be fair, it wasn’t the best walking tour. The information was fairly dry and obvious, and the tour guide had brought her toddler who kept distracting both guide and group, but it wasn’t a complete waste of money I don’t think. Just not as good as the free tours.

I had planned, after the tour, to hurry back to the hostel, grab my bag, and catch the train to Berlin. I would have had just enough time too, except running low on cash I decided to stop at the ATM. Now, there aren’t many ATMs in Dresden to begin with, and the first one, for whatever reason, wasn’t giving me money. The error message was in German though, so I decided to try another machine. And that was when I started to worry.

The error message on the second machine read, “Money Available: €0.00.” I don’t know if anyone else experiences terror at the news they have no money, but… terror is suspiciously close to what I felt. Terror and confusion, because I had been doing my budget the night before, and I can guarantee I had quite a bit more than €0.00. In fact, just to make sure, I pulled up my bank account on my phone, and sure enough my money was still there safe and sound. That’s the good news. I decided to try a third ATM.

The next one I found as the same brand as the last, meaning of course the error message would be the same. So that was when I decided to give in and call the bank. Joseph, back in Texas, was very nice about the whole thing. He even acknowledged without prompting that I must be paying a fortune for the call from Germany and, I could tell, was hurrying accordingly. To be fair, it’s not sooooo expensive with my international plan, but I was paying, so I appreciated it all the same.

It turns out there was no fraud alert. Fact of the matter was, I’m just a bit slow when it comes to banking. You see, with the euro to dollar exchange rate, the amount I was trying to withdraw was about $40 over my transaction limit. “Just try to take out less,” was his answer. So, problem solved, no harm no foul. Well, almost not foul.

You see, the time it had taken to make that phone call meant I wasn’t going to make my train on time, not unless I ran, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t run with a fifty pound bag on my back. I knew this might happen before I called though, and thus had resigned myself, if the call ran a bit long, to taking the next train two hours later. In the meantime I returned to the hostel, had a bite of lunch, and chatted for a while with last night’s friend from Montana and his brother. I also got a chance to sort of start this post, though the chatting thing later got in the way.

I’ve finished now though! On that later train. The nature in Germany reminds me a bit of France, but the buildings are, of course, decidedly German. I have since arrived in Berlin, where I was told by the nicest most helpful train employee yet that there is absolutely no way to get around the French being the French. Alas, it looks like my only option for getting to the canal boat is going to be six transfers over the course of fourteen hours. Should be fun no?

And now I have arrived at the hostel, which is nice enough, and claimed a top bunk in a hidden corner with a view of a lovely courtyard full of trees. Tomorrow we start exploring the history of Berlin. Too bad my new friend from this morning won’t be there, but with any luck I’ll meet a new bunch of lovely people instead. Tschüss!