Wrapping Up... Or Not

So I know I promised a wrap up post for this blog, but I think I’ve changed my mind. For one, so much has happened on the boat in France that I’ve quite forgotten what I intended to write. Furthermore, upon giving it some thought, I think my adventures on the cruise ship in September will fit better here than they will on the blog I have just started. And so The Little Engine that Could is not quite dead! Just on hiatus.

For updates and stories about my current adventures on the French canals, please see my latest blog: La Vie en Goose. It was a harrowing epic to get anything up there at all (perhaps I will write about it later), so I will set what I have written on a timer that will release a post every couple of days.

Otherwise, please stay tuned for mid-September when I shall resume populating the records kept here. Until then, a bientot!

Into the Woods

I was going to go to bed early, but realizing that I may not have wi-fi come tomorrow, I’ve decided to stay up and write about the roller coaster that has been my last two days - not just the last two days chronologically, but the last two days of this high gear nomadic leg of my trip.

I disembarked the train in Karlsruhe, Germany, a small town on the north edge of the Black Forest, just ahead of two Syrian men discussing running off to join the civil war. That in itself was a noteworthy start. My hostel, by design, was just across the street from the train station. So I headed over to check in, drop my bags, and begin wandering around town. It was quicker than I expected, not because reception was fast or efficient, but because I opened the door to my room to be thoroughly unnerved by the fellow occupant I found there.

An older woman with grey hair and shabby clothes was sitting at the desk in the room, staring off into space. That was bad enough, but the energy coming off of her was just… terrifying. Not like she was dangerous, but like she was empty or something. She didn’t move when I entered, didn’t look up or acknowledge my presence. It made introductions a little hard, so I just dropped my things, used the restroom, and darted right back out again, a bit shaken.

Things improved from there though. It was my plan to visit the Baden State Museum at Karlsruhe Palace, located right in the heart of the city. It was about a half hour walk, which I thought would be pleasant. Indeed it was, for the first ten minutes or so.

The walk led past the zoo, you see, and it was the most lovely zoo I have seen in my life. No, I didn’t go in, but they weren’t very fussed about blocking off the view from the outside. At one point, I even detoured across a bridge that gave me the most spectacular view of the elephants. It made me wonder if there was even an admission fee to start with. Given more time I might have checked, but I wasn’t traveling to see animals I could see at home.

I made it to the museum just a few minutes after I knew the free admission period started. It wasn’t an expensive museum to begin with, but I like free, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. As it turns out, the collection is exquisite; some of the best preserved artifacts I’ve ever seen. Then again, they might have been reproductions. I wouldn’t know, because the entire museum was in German exclusively. So I’m glad I hadn’t paid, because everything was very pretty, but half the time I had no idea at what I was looking. I certainly didn’t learn anything about history.

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that forty-five minutes into the visit, having climbed the palace tower to get a look over the town, I caught sight of the lovely park I’d missed on the back side of the palace and all of a sudden couldn’t understand why I wasn’t already down there. So I quit the tower immediately, more or less dashed out the palace entrance, and threw myself down on the grass of the park land behind.

It was a large enough park with full enough trees that it was easy to feel lost without going far at all. I found a particularly pleasant spot in the shade of a giant oak, took of my shoes, and set about reading. I couldn’t bring myself to continue Mein Kampf, not when the weather was so pleasant and the surroundings so beautiful. I started Pride & Prejudice instead. I think I might be done with Mein Kampf for good. At least for a while anyway, technological issues withstanding. More on that later though.

It was a perfect afternoon in the park, minus the bee sting I got on the second toe of my left foot. I didn’t mean to disturb him, honest! I did have to head back eventually though, and so I did.

The creepy woman was in bed this time when I entered the room. I’m not sure if she was asleep or not, but she was sort of cocooned in the mound of junk. I think she’s living in the hostel, which is always a distressing proposition. She certainly has many more things than your average traveler. Even the ones who don’t travel light.

For obvious reasons I didn’t want to hang around the room, so I grabbed my computer and headed down to the commons. Because this hostel is more of a hotel with a couple dorms, there wasn’t anyone around either. Not looking forward to going back to creepersville then, I stayed up a bit too late. I don’t even think I accomplished anything. There were other people in bed and asleep by the time I finally went upstairs, but the creepy lady was asleep too, so it wasn’t uncomfortable to shower and get in bed. I made a promise to myself not to let her bother me too much the following day and finally went to bed.

After breakfast the next morning I boarded the train from Karlsruhe to Freiburg, a town much deeper in the Black Forest, and thus, I hoped, and ideal spot for hiking. I was not disappointed. Well, I was. But not by the hiking.

You see, I had checked numerous weather reports the day before, and all of them assured me that it wasn’t going to start raining in Freiburg until at least four o’clock. I could be back by then, or at least on the train. And carrying my umbrella on a nice long hike, compact or not, was hardly ideal. So I left it behind. Which you’ve probably already guessed was a big mistake.

No sooner had I stepped off the train in Freiburg than the downpour began. I had accepted that it might drizzle before four, which I hoped the tree cover would protect me from, but this was another story entirely. Besides, I still had to get to the tree cover first. So I gave in and bought an umbrella. Sigh. I don’t like spending money on things I already own, but it was either that, give up and go back, or get soaked through and ruin everything in my bag. At least it wasn’t too expensive.

The umbrella got me as far as Munster, the giant cathedral. They were having mass, so I wasn’t allowed inside, but it was what was outside the cathedral that I was more interested in. On Saturdays, there is a farmer’s market in Freiburg’s cathedral plaza. Thanks to the rain or the early hour, there weren’t as many stalls as I had expected, but it was still fun to wander around and see everyone’s wares. The most exciting? There was a tofu bratwurst wagon. Do you know how badly I have been wanting to try currywurst? Really, really badly. Not badly enough to eat meat, but badly enough that I ordered one immediately as soon as I saw the tofu variety, despite not being hungry in the least and having nowhere to eat it, in or out of the rain.

I realized my dilemma as soon as I’d paid, saddled there with my umbrella propped on one shoulder, a tray of currywurst in one hand, a roll and two napkins clutched in the other. Well crap. What now?

I managed to wobble through the market until I found a high, wet table behind one of the stands, but let me tell you, preparing a roll of tofu currywurst with one hand while trying to shelter from the rain is not easy. I would call it humiliating, in fact, considering the expressions of the people who noticed me on their way by. Don’t get me wrong, the wurst was delicious. But I was a mess by the end of it. Stains on my tank top, sauce on my fingers. There was even curry on the inside canopy of my umbrella, though I have no idea how that happened.

Despite that mild disaster, I was quite pleased with myself for having managed to try currywurst at all. And so it was with a renewed sense of accomplishment that I set off again for the forest. Accidentally on purpose, I entered the park from a little used back entrance. The park itself is a large stretch of dense trees on a high hill with the Schlossburg, a series of old castle remains, perched on top. Wandering up the steep, winding paths was everything I imagined it would be - so spectacular that I couldn’t possibly do the description justice at this time of night, so you’re just going to have to settle for awesome in the truest sense of the word.

It took maybe an hour to get to the top, where I found a few old foundation stones and a long forgotten clearing commemorating a chapel. Well, maybe not long forgotten, but at least forgotten long enough that I ran face first into a handful of rather substantial spiders’ webs on my way in. That wasn’t why tourists hiked the mountain though. Tourists hiked the mountain for the view.

In one of the various clearings dotting the mountain top was a tall tower with an endless spiral, groups of hikers clustered around the bottom. I climbed it with enthusiasm and was rewarded with a view for miles. Sometime along my hike through trees so dense you could only identify the rain from the sound of the drops on the leaves, the weather had cleared entirely. So this is more less what I saw.

I considered lingering at the top of the mountain, but the hiking was really the part I liked. Up more than down, but the down had to come sometime, and I still wanted to get back to Karlsruhe in time to do my laundry. So I wound down the tower, and then down the hill. On my way back through town the market had picked up considerably, so I bought a jar of local marmalade as a gift for the new boss I’ll meet tomorrow, and then it was on to the train, where I had one of the worst moments of my trip to date.

As I often do on train rides, I pulled out my Kindle to continue with Pride & Prejudice, which you’re probably not surprised I’ve decided I very much like. I opened up the cover, flipped the on switch, and… boom. Fried.

I do not know if you are familiar with the common glitch in the old line of Kindles where the screens sometimes break for no reason at all, but it’s a thing that happens. It happened to my first in the Sahara in Egypt, and now to my second in the forests of southern Germany. And one day before I’m all set to move to a boat where I intended to do little more in my free time than read.

As soon as I got off the train I called Amazon in a fit of panic. What I thought they could do for me I’m not sure, and sure enough there was nothing. The kind woman from customer service even Googled places to buy a new on in Europe (because clearly they can’t ship one to a moving boat… yet) but she didn’t find anything. Not because they’re not here; there are Kindle adds on almost every German train I’ve ridden. She probably just didn’t know what she was looking for.

In the meantime, I’d struck out on the laundry. You see, in an attempt to restore some sort of control while on the phone, I had been walking towards the spot the receptionist at the hostel had told me there was a laundromat. I had saved my laundry until the last day before moving to the boat because the hostel website said they had washers. Well, they were broken. Or they lied. But I’d been told to take my clothes elsewhere.

Thank goodness I hadn’t brought my clothes with me on reconnaissance though, because there was no laundromat to be found. At the time, however, I was too distressed about the prospect of having nothing but the absolute headache inducing brightness of my phone to read for the next two months to care much. Instead I decided to check out some places I thought might have Kindles in town, and so began my odyssey around town.

I went to five different stores searching for Kindles. Two didn’t carry e-readers, one was sold out. The fourth store I went to had a much better selection. They had, supposedly, all three of the newest versions. I was going to have to abandon the classic keyboard I love so much regardless. That model has been discontinued. I could, however, choose between the others. The catch? Only one of them had 3G.

Now, in a situation where I have reliable access to wi-fi, 3G isn’t that big of a deal, but I’ve had enough experience with my now defunct Kindle on this trip to know that the way I travel it’s a bit of a necessity. And the option with that necessity, of course, was by far the most expensive one. And it was a touch screen, and all fancy and tricked out and waaaay more than I actually wanted.

I thanked the clerk who had been helping me and went to buy and ice cream and mope. Rather than heading back though, I sat with that ice cream and I thought. I wasn’t going to be spending much money on the boat, and without any meaningful face to face company my books have been like my best friends this whole trip. It was worth it, I decided. I’d get used to the fanciness like I got used to my phone.

So I went back to the store and I told them I’d take it. At which point they launched what equated to a search for the holy grail. Apparently inventory said they had exactly one Kindle 3G left, and they turned the store upside down looking for it. Eventually, however, they had to settle for giving me a guilty little shrug. “Sorry, we can’t find it.” At which point I decided it really wasn’t meant to be, and began the long trudge back to the hostel.

There was store number five, which was a funny experience. I got a funny feeling as I passed a later shopping center, and turned in because I couldn’t come up with a reason why not. I hadn’t taken more than three steps in when a picture I could not have seen from the sidewalk slapped me in the face. It was a Kindle, or I thought it was. Except it was actually just a European brand of e-reader that looked a lot like a Kindle. I don’t quite remember the name, but it’s not even a Kobo, which is the competitor I’ve seen in Canada and the UK. It was just funny I’d felt the need to turn in there. The bookstore inside had plenty of them, but who even knows if they’re compatible with everything I’d bought to date? Amazon just makes things so easy! When their products work at least.

When I got back to the hostel I wasn’t quite ready to give in just yet. I’d read some rumor about a misaligned ribbon inside the Kindle while searching desperately on my phone on the train, so I plopped down next to my bed in my dorm room and proceeded to pry the back of my Kindle off. I couldn’t damage it anymore, right? The creepy lady was there again, same exact position I’d found her the day before, but I had more important things to worry about. When she realized I wasn’t going to leave, I think, she got up and left herself, which made me realize she was the source of the strange scent of cheese puffs I’d been smelling all of the last day. Go figure.

I got the back off, but I needed a screw driver to get at any of the potentially helpful pieces, so I headed down to reception to see if they might be able to provide. It was a good forty minute wait in line, but it wasn’t like I had much else better to do, and the receptionist had already snapped when I’d tried to ask without waiting. It wasn’t like I was trying to cut, but it only took a second to tell me if the answer was no.

As I was waiting, however, I did manage to make friends with a French woman waiting just in front. She was traveling with her son, and asked when she saw the open circuit board of my Kindle if the tablet was broken. It was, I explained, and a bit about my far fetched theory for fixing it. It turns out her sons actual tablet, a Samsung, was broken as well. Not like mine, but the screen had frozen. Well, as it turns out, I know how to fix that.

So the son ran and got his tablet, and I rebooted it for him, and then I had a couple of instant new friends. At least for the duration of our wait in line. I think seeing the circuit breaker made the woman think I was more savvy with computers than I actually am, but hey! I was savvy enough for her purposes.

Anyway, reception didn’t have a screwdriver. So I returned to my room, packed up my bag for tomorrow, showered, and got in bed. I’ve been fiddling around doing nothing for a while now, watching my dormmates one by one file in. The median age is much older here than any other hostel at which I’ve stayed. Probably because Karlsruhe isn’t much of a backpacking hotspot, and they offer beds like they offer rooms, so people who would never look for a hostel end up here anyway too.

It wasn’t exactly how I would have liked to end this leg of my trip. I couldn’t even get ahold of my mother, who despite the lack of good wi-fi I was totally willing to pay to talk to. Sometimes when you’re in one of those moods it just doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve calmed down since though, and I’m still excited for tomorrow. I haven’t decided if I’m going to try to find a Kindle in Paris. Maybe it’s just time to give up. I do have my phone, but my eyes are bad as it is. It wouldn’t really do to come back from vacation blind now, would it?

Bavarian Dream

I love Bavaria. Love it. Yet again, after a spare two days, I am on my way out.

Bavaria, and its capital Munich, are home to what you might call the usual German stereotypes: lederhosen, pretzels, and of course the world renowned Oktoberfest and all the beer that comes with it. What I loved most about the state though were the fairytale castles. I did run into some problems where those are concerned, but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s start at the beginning.

As previously mentioned, I’d taken a later train to allow my EU visit, so my time in Munich didn’t really start until the following morning. It was a wet, grey day, as I’d expected, but I wasn’t about to let that get me down. As in Belgium, there was something fitting about the rain on the bricks. Rainy cities are just built for rainy weather I guess. It was strange to my Texan sensibilities to need a jacket in late July though.

Breakfast at the hostel was exciting, mostly because it included pretzels. And fruit. But lots of good breakfasts included fruit, and this was the first time anyone threw in the pretzels. There were also plenty of things to steal for lunch, which I always appreciate. For once, however, I felt like the exception surreptitiously stuffing bread rolls into my bag.

The combination hostel/hotel I was staying in seemed to be hosting an American summer exchange program, and from what I overheard of nearby conversations, most of the breakfast hall seemed to be filled with students who didn’t need to steal their lunch. It was strange to be surrounded by undergrads taking classes again, and to be thoroughly depressed by their complaints about the pointlessness of school when they could be on a beach in Spain. I’m not going to get into the decline of respect for education among American youth because that I could go on for ages and it’s not exactly relevant to this post, but suffice it to say I was glad when the last of them scurried off to class, quite vocally proud of the fact they would be late.

I left myself not long after, taking the long way into the old town so I could pass a couple architecturally interesting churches and gates. I think my meandering path must have been providence, because I found a store along the way having a spectacular sale on purse-like backpacks.

I don’t remember if I mentioned being in the market for a new bag, but the purse I left the states with was well and truly done. The outside was all scuffed and peeling from where I had scraped it in tiny stone passages or on winding tower stairs, I was forever losing things through the holes in the lining, and I’d spilled enough things in it that it had developed a distinctive and not entirely pleasant smell. Worst of all, the unequal distribution of the great weight it usually contained, centered on one shoulder or the other, was forever unbalancing me and contributing to the back stiffness born of night after night in subpar beds. After six months of faithful service then, I had decided it was time for a change. And this backpack was cheap.

I didn’t want to move all the dirty things from my purse to the backpack, so I ended up carrying it around empty all day. On my way back to the hostel that night though, I did manage to find a drug store selling disinfecting cloths in packs of forty. Yay cleanliness! My dormmates thought I was a bit strange, sitting there polishing everything I own and then tearing the lining out of my decrepit purse to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but at least it was a conversation starter, and they all turned out to be perfectly lovely people, from Austria, Italy, and Alaska respectively.

Anyway, backpack secured with my budget in tact, I made my way to the walking tour meeting point where I was met by an English archaeologist who, for all his energy, had a terrible sense of humor. He summed it up himself near the end when he quoted an old English joke. “Where would we be without our sense of humor? In Germany.” He was an okay tour guide - not as knowledgeable as I would have expected an archaeologist to be, or perhaps just not very good at communicating it. Nevertheless, I knew little enough about Bavaria that I learned a good deal. It was also perfect timing for seeing the World War II sights as I had just started the Munich chapter of Mein Kampf that morning.

We also got to see the glockenspiel play; the second biggest letdown in Europe, beaten only by the Astronomical Clock in Prague.

Following the walking tour, I figured I had time for one good museum, and had narrowed my options down to the Munich City Museum or the Residence Museum in the old Royal Palace. The palace was more expensive, but I am also a sucker for a good monarchy, and the Wittelsbach family that had owned the palace had ruled Bavaria for more than seven hundred years. So I dashed through the rain to the Residence Museum only to be severely disappointed.

It was certainly a pretty palace, don’t get me wrong, but where I was expecting fascinating insights into the lives of the royals, like those I’d received in the Habsburg palaces, I instead found a lot of more or less empty rooms. And I mean a looooooot of rooms.

Though the palace was mostly destroyed during World War II, it has since been reconstructed, and the current complex includes something like 150 rooms open to visitors. Due to restoration works, only 90 of those were open when I went, but that’s still ninety rooms. Not just that, but ninety empty rooms.

Empty might be a bit of an exaggeration. There were a few pieces of furniture here and there, almost none of it original, and a number of paintings, tapestries, and reproduced frescoes on the ceilings. They were also pretty, but ninety rooms of that with no information was not my cup of tea. Or rather, I shouldn’t say no information, just not the kind of information I wanted.

You see, entrance to the museum came with a free audio guide, which was where I expected the information to be. Rooms, even empty ones, are brought to life if you can fill them with your own pictures of the people who lived there before. As I keyed in number after number however, I kept getting more and more of the same.

“Welcome to the Red Chamber, named for the red wall decorations embroidered in gold. On the ceiling you can see an empty medallion where the central fresco used to be. On the left is a painting of a cherub sitting in a cloud. On the right is a woman holding a Bible. Her dress is red and her hair falls about her shoulders.”

Sometimes they would give dates or the names of painters, but 90% of the audio guide was little more than literal descriptions of the things I could quite plainly see for myself. So maybe it was the information a blind person would want, but I can't imagine it's use to anyone else. If they’d just described the symbolism at least that would have been something, but about an hour into what turned out to be a three hour tour I was so done. I wanted to know about the Wittelsbachs! Where were the stories? The history!?

The Treasury visit that followed (because I’d bought a combination ticket to the museum, treasury, and theatre before the complex had disappointed me so) was a little bit better. The audioguide there gave some information on why the different treasures were precious when they were acquired. Besides the crown jewels there were relics, porcelain, stone work, all manner of pretty things really. It wa at least a bit more impressive, but not exactly worth the entrance fee.

The last stop was the theatre, which wasn’t meant to be a huge thing to begin with. It was more or less an additional room to the palace. I don’t know who built it, or when, or why - and trust me, I looked for all of that information. It was also pretty though? In case you can’t tell, pretty has stopped being quite enough for me. There are a lot of pretty things in the world.

Anyway, after the museum I managed to make it back to the hostel without getting wet any further up than the ankles. Thank goodness for umbrellas and foresight. The next morning, however, I ran into a number of unfortunate problems.

I intended to wake up early and make my way out to Neuschwanstein Castle, the fairytale castle on which Disney based his, built by King Ludwig II in the Bavarian mountain forests he had loved as a boy. I intended to, but then I overslept. You see, my full scale cleaning the night before had included replacing my earplugs, and new earplugs always work better than old. In this case, they worked too well it seems. I didn’t hear my alarm at all, but I can only imagine it went off and woke the rest of the dorm, for which I felt quite guilty and chagrined.

I was still up before anyone else in the room though, and only an hour later than I had planned. That hour makes a big difference though when it comes to beating the hordes of tourists. I was one of the first people on the train, but by the time we left the station it was standing room only. Of course, that didn’t bode well for crowds at the castle itself.

Before I could get to problems at the castle though, I had what was probably the most horrible fright of my trip on the train. I don’t remember the train of thought that led to the realization, but at one point of staring out the window at the lovely Bavarian countryside, thoughts of my passport floated through my head; my passport that I kept nice and secure in a secret pocket of my purse so it was always accessible but also out of reach of thieves. Thieves and hasty cleaning, it would seem, because that pocket was in the same purse I had thrown out the night before, and I had not remembered to empty it.

My heart stopped. I could picture my passport, in the pocket in the purse in the trash bin, just waiting to be emptied and carried off to the dump where it would sit forevermore, mocking me as I started running around, calling embassies and trying to get a new one. It was still early though, about the time I imagined housekeeping started to make its rounds, and I have never been so thankful for my international cell phone.

I called the hostel, or rather I called the customer service hotline for the hostel and they called the hostel. Why we’re not allowed to call direct I’m not entirely sure, but either way, the woman I talked to was very helpful. She said they were checking and she’d call me back when they had news. It was maybe ten minutes of tense waiting on the train before the call arrived, but it was good news. They’d found my purse and were holding it, passport and all, at reception for when I returned. So that was a bullet dodged, but certainly also a good lesson learned.

From the train, we (because it was now me and about two hundred other tourists) had to transfer to the village at the foot of Neuschwanstein Castle by bus. Again I was on the bus early, or one of the three buses I should say, but again it was standing room only before we managed to depart. When we got to the village I could barely walk for the crowds; and the umbrellas, because of course it was still raining, didn’t help matters at all. At least we got our first views of the castle, rising majestically out of the mists.

I bypassed the information center to jump on the massive line for tickets. I’d been waiting in the rain with my umbrella for maybe half an hour when an employee in a poncho came by to warn us that the earliest entry time left for the castle was 5pm. But you see, the last train back to Munich that got me in before midnight left at 6pm, and I still had to catch the bus back to the station. That wasn’t going to work.

So my heart dropped again. I could still have waited another two hours for a ticket into Hohenschwangau Castle at 2pm, the much smaller castle built built by Leopold’s father Maximilian II in the shadow of Neuschwanstein, but it didn’t have the fairytale interiors I’d been so looking forward to, and it cost just as much as the big castle, and the tour wasn’t any longer. I debated with myself for another ten minutes, not wanting to give in to the inevitable, before finally bowing out and heading back to the information center for a map of the area.

Entering the castle, I reminded myself, was still only half of what I had been so looking forward to. The hike up the mountain to Neuschwanstein was forty minutes through the forest. They had buses and horse drawn carriages that would take you, but really, where was the fun in that? So I armed myself with my map and set on up the path. It probably only took me twenty five minutes or so, certainly no more than thirty, but a nice walk through the trees was just what I needed to begin calming my dangerously frayed nerves. There were enough tourists on the path that the trees weren’t much more than a neutralizing effect, but at least neutralizing was enough to keep me sane, thank goodness.

At the top, the views were spectacular. The entire region is mostly a lower area of the Alps, and this time I was actually hiking them. I wandered the castle grounds for a while, then bought a glass of mulled wine and a cookie from the stand out front because they were running a fantastic deal where they let me keep the mug. It’s going to be a pain to add to my ever growing bag of tricks, but at tourist trap prices it was basically free. Who was I to argue?

I walked with my wine to Marienbrucke, a bridge over one of the many mountain waterfalls with a spectacular view of the castle. I expect under different circumstance I could have stood and stared off of it forever, but considering it took twenty minutes to get on, twenty minutes to get off, and you couldn’t move while on it because of the crowds, I had to limit my time to enough for a single picture.

I was so done with other people at that point, so on my way back down the mountain I decided it was time to have an adventure and took the unpaved hiking path, or at least what I thought was a hiking path. In my defense, there was a sign that said the path led back to the base of the mountain, but when the path became more of a narrow trail, I started to have my doubts. When it dissolved entirely into a mountain stream, those doubts turned into very real disillusionment. But I’d been hiking for probably forty minutes at that point. I wasn’t about to turn back. And so I consolidated everything into my backpack, acquired just in time it would seem, and tried my best to wind my way around the edges of the stream - managing it too. I only slipped and stepped into a giant puddle of mud once, at any rate, though you wouldn’t know it from the deplorable state of my shoes.

The hiking was spectacular. I haven’t felt that calm and peaceful in months. I could go at my own pace, stop and smell the flowers. I even watched an entire beehive devouring a grove of what looked like Queen Anne’s lace. I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me, but the patterns they moved in were fascinating. When I did eventually reach the bottom, I was a bit wistful to leave the mountain, but I figured I should take a look at Hohenschwangau too. That was a much shorter hike - maybe ten minutes - and really more of a flight of stairs than a hike. It was pretty, but not near as majestic as its successor. Being further out from the forest though, it did have a pretty garden surrounding it.

After Hohenschwangau, I had a few hours before the last train back. I could have taken an earlier one, but in an effort to get the most out of my visit I decided to stop by the Museum of Bavarian Kings. I was a little skeptical of Bavarian museums after the disaster the was the Residence Museum the day before, but if the museum was outwardly proclaiming to be about the people, I thought perhaps it was worth a shot. I am happy to report that taking the chance paid off, and not just because the views from the museum terrace were spectacular.

The Museum of Bavarian Kings was exactly what I had been looking for: a detailed history of the Wittelsbach dynasty from inception as Dukes of Bavaria under Frederick I Barbarossa until its dissolution after World War I, serving in between as electors and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, and being raised to Kings by Napoleon himself. The exhibition that was supposed to take between half an hour and an hour took me three, and even then I only left because I had to catch that last train I had mentioned.

I made it back to Munich just as everything was beginning to close. In hindsight, this was probably a good thing because I had realized the night before that we’ll be going to Oktoberfest weekend at the Renaissance Festival this year and I was quite tempted to buy a traditional Bavarian costume to wear. Would have, I’m sure, if any of the outlets had been open. But they weren’t, so I spent my last evening wandering around the Oktoberfest fair grounds.

It’s only July, but they’ve already started construction. I wasn’t actually allowed into the construction zone, but I did get to stop by the Bavarian Hall of Fame, a stone temple like structure in a park bordering the grounds. Seeing as the sun was almost down by then though, I decided to call it a night, returning to the hostel to give Munich its only fitting send off with a local Augustiner beer.

There are only two days left in my trip now, which I will be spending in the Black Forest. Then its off to France for most of August. There will be a new blog for that, which I will announce in a summary post I’m planning here. Keep an eye out, and in the meantime much love to you all!

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. =)