View from the Top of the World

Still playing catch-up here, so the events of this post took place about a week ago, on Thursday the ninth. I mean, the date's not importantly anything, it's just to give you a frame of reference as to just how behind I am. Anyway, onward!

When I was planning my European adventure, I read a lot of books. But perhaps no book was more central to the locale-choosing process than my copy of 501 Must-See Destinations. You have probably seen this book on the bargain table in the vestibule of Barnes and Noble. It is fantastic. It cost me all of five dollars, probably, and it has been invaluable not only in trip planning but in making me forlornly (wander)lust after other exotic locales.

At any rate, one of the Must-See Destinations featured in the book is Mercantour National Park in France. As soon as I started planning my trip, I knew I HAD to go there. That being decided, I spent most of my time using the book to borderline assault the rest of my family.

"IT'S JUST SO PRETTY!" I said, shoving the book in my mother's face as she tried to cook dinner.

"LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS!" I commanded my father as he went upstairs to change after work.

"IS THAT NOT THE PRETTIEST THING YOU'VE EVER SEEN?!" I demanded of my sister as she tried to nap on the couch.

And now I've been and gone and I can say that, while the part of the park I saw looked nothing like the picture in my guidebook, it is definitely among the prettiest places I have ever visited.

The pretty scenery overload started with the train ride from Nice to Sospel, a small mountain town on the southern boundary of the park. The train on that particular route is called "Le Train des Merveilles" (the Train of Marvels) because it travels a really beautiful scenic route--so pretty that a train ride is a tourist activity in its own right. I got some pretty pictures but, like the photos from my last pretty train ride, I'm saving them for a later post.

I got off the train in Sospel and set about trying to find one of the GR trails that supposedly went straight through the middle of town. GR stands for "Grandes Randonnées," or "big hikes," and there are tons of them all over France. However, I was having some problems locating them in Sospel. I'd walked down the street out of town, hoping to run into something that looked hiking trail-like, but no such luck, so I'd turned around and wandered back into town. In a stroke of brilliance (read: an average level of logical problem- solving skill) I decided to go to the tourism office. It was, of course, closed for the public holiday, so I was on my own. Keep on wandering, sad hiker without a hiking trail! Keep wandering!

By a stroke of luck, I happened upon a wooden sign pointing me in the direction of GR 52. "GR 52 it is, then!" I said to myself, and started climbing up a giant hill past houses and walls and cars. As I got higher, the houses got farther apart and the road became less busy, and eventually it dead-ended into a dirt hiking trail.

By this point I was soaked through with sweat, not only because the hill was giant (GIANT, I TELL YOU!) but also because the weather, which was supposed to cap out at around 65-70 degrees, was clearly well into the mid-seventies or above already, and it was only mid-morning. I was cursing my jeans and sighing forlornly at the thought of my gym shorts just sitting in my bag back at the hostel.

Luckily, the path became more winding and therefore less steep and strenuous, so my lack of shorts quickly became less of a problem. The trail went through a wooded area for a little while and then began its winding ascent up Mount Agaisen. The path was out in the sunlight, bordered on either side by bushes or rocky bluffs. As I walked, the foliage ahead of me rustled as tiny lizards that had been sunning themselves on the path ran to hide. (There were a LOT of lizards, guys. If you don't like reptiles then I would suggest that you stay well away from Mercantour National Park.)

Just look at this adorable little guy!
Every time the twisty path changed directions, a new "level" began, and at each new level I stopped to take about a gazillion redundant pictures of the view. I knew it was pretty much the same scene every time, but I couldn't help myself. It was so beautiful that I felt compelled to take as many pictures as possible, even though photos just don't do justice to the real thing. I really tried, though:

I reached the summit of the mountain in probably about two hours, and the view there was every bit as lovely--and perhaps even more impressive--than the scenery on the way up. I stopped to eat lunch and enjoy the sunshine and the sight of the mountains and valleys spread out all around me, but had to move on a bit quicker than I'd planned because the spot seemed to be frequented by giant buzzy insects. I don't mind bugs generally--in fact, I think they're pretty interesting to watch most of the time--but these things were giant, like they'd been bred in a mad scientist's lab or something. Plus they seemed to enjoy speeding past my head in group formations, like the insect equivalent of the Hell's Angels. I finished my sandwich and got moving.

I explored the mountain top for quite awhile and eventually came upon a view that can only be described as breathtaking. And I'm not exaggerating or being hyperbolic; I mean that I literally stopped breathing for a second. I was not aware that this was a legitimate reaction to something and not just a tired cliché, so I was pretty surprised by this turn of events. The picture might help explain it a bit, but it won't really convey the feeling of being high above everything else, having a view that stretches for miles, and seeing mountains and valleys spread out before you with very little evidence of humans. In some directions I could see distant towns and houses, but mostly the only human additions to the landscape were some power lines stretching from one mountain top to the next, and even THAT was impressive given the sheer distance from one tower to the next. It was a truly awe-inspiring experience.

Looks like the mountains have been photoshopped in (they haven't) but still doesn't come close to capturing how incredible it all was.
After wandering to my heart's content, I realized that I was beginning to get a bit tired and that I still had at least a two-hour hike back into town. I made good time coming back down the mountain, even though I ended up on a self-inflicted detour with the steepest hills known to man--seriously, they were practically just vertical drops. But I made it back into town with a couple of hours to spare before the next train to Nice.

The story of how I killed that time is worthy of its own post (it's a pretty fantastic anecdote, if I do say so myself), so au revoir for now!

Un Petit Pause

It's 8 pm (and still light out!), I'm twenty-three, and I just rolled into Tours. Better get out there and soak up the culture, right?!

Well, maybe, but I ain't gonna do it.

I'm tired, guys. I've been on the go for nearly two weeks now and things are catching up with me. Plus I just spent a couple lovely days hanging out with my awesome relatives in Montpellier, and during that time I had the luxury of never needing to check a map, watch the clock, ask for directions, catch a train, or find a place to eat. So setting off on my own again today was something of a bummer in a sense, for those reasons and for the simple fact that seeing my family made me a touch homesick.

I hadn't been homesick at all up until this point, which was at first faintly surprising to me until I realized that I haven't really had the opportunity to be homesick. I've been constantly on the go, doing things, planning, catching trains, sorting out food and accommodations and directions and maps and whatnot. Over the last couple of days, though, I had a chance to chill out a bit, and that added to the (very welcome) presence of family is making me feel sort of like a sad sack tonight. I mean, I spent the train ride from Montpellier listening to the Amelie soundtrack; that should give you an idea of the sort of mood I'm in right now.

I read a quote once that about how "melancholy is the pleasure of being sad," and it seems really applicable right now. I'm quite looking forward to spending my night in catching up on some shows I've missed since I've been away (got up to date with Doctor Who yesterday and New Girl today on the train, so tonight will be devoted to Elementary) and wallowing a bit before going to bed good and early. (It's 8:30 pm and still really light out now, so I do have a bit of time to kill before my body will even allow me to go to sleep for the night.)

But I'm gonna take a nice hot shower. I'm going to eat the chocolate marzipan candy that I bought as a gift but that became all melty and squished and therefore ungiftable. I am as pumped about this night in as I was about some actual destinations on my trip. Introverts for the win!

Tomorrow it's a trip to Chateau Chenonceau and possibly some exploration of Tours, which seems like a pretty cool city. Keep an eye out for more posts in the next couple days...I have some partially written already and this brief break might allow me to actually finish them, post them, and get mostly caught up--hooray!

But for now, it's time for a Me Party. A tout a l'heure!

Eats Across Europe, Part One

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned food much in talking about this trip. If you know me at all, you might find this suspicious lack of food talk puzzling, since I can rarely get through a normal conversation without:

1. Talking about a food I've recently cooked and/or eaten,
2. Expressing a desire to be cooking or eating either at this moment or in the very near future, or
3. Actually eating something during said conversation.

Well, if you've been wondering what's up with me and my non-food-centric blogging, here's your lightbulb moment: I've been reserving an entire blog post to devote to food. AN ENTIRE POST. You're welcome.

This is part one of many, since I'm obviously only about a week into this trip and still have many, many foods to sample and enjoy--especially now that I'm in France, the land of macarons, cheese, chocolate, Gratin Daupinois, ratatouille, croissants (au chocolat!), tarte citron, quiche, and SO MUCH DELICIOUS BREAD.

So without further ado, here's the rundown on my trip's cuisine so far. (This isn't every meal; just the ones I deemed noteworthy for whatever reason.) Keep an eye out for the next food post, which will focus exclusively on European candy bars! (I do this for you guys! It's tough work but someone needs to tell you non-travelers what a Daim bar tastes like.)

Grilled vegetables and goat cheese (Prague)

In Prague, I got dinner with Jenny, a fellow American I met on the Prague tour. We asked our guide to recommend a good restaurant where we could try some Czech specialties, and she sent us to a bar/restaurant a couple streets away, telling us it had vegetarian options as well as the more meat-based Czech dishes.

I wanted to get fried cheese, since it's sort of a Czech specialty (and it's cheese! That's fried!) , but the restaurant was all out. If I couldn't have THE fried cheese, I at least got SOME fried cheese. The meal was good, nothing to write home about really (although, ironically, I am LITERALLY writing home about it right now), but it was so cheap: the meal plus a soft drink cost me the equivalent of about seven US dollars. Go Prague!

Donut and butterbreze (Munich)

I wanted some German food. The German vegetarian place near my hostel was closed and I was feeling quite lazy, so I swung by the train station and was like, "Okay, here we go, fine German cuisine." I got a standard sandwich for dinner but accompanied it with a donut and a butterbreze (butter pretzel), since they're both sort of Bavarian things. No Bavarian cream in the donut, unfortunately, but it was still chocolate-frosted deliciousness, a little fluffier and cakier than donuts I'm used to.

Butterbreze is pretty much what it sounds like: it's a pretzel. Filled with butter. Literally, they slice it open and then spread butter on each half before smooshing the sides back together. The fattiest, most delicious sandwich ever.

Tofuschnitzel (Munich)

Delicious. I don't even know everything that was in there...some kraut, I think, definitely mustard, lettuce, tomato. The guy named off a couple of spices, ginger for sure and, I think, cumin. Had a couple bites where I could really taste the ginger and it was quite unexpected and refreshing.

I ate this magical meal at Royal Kebabhaus by the Hauptbahnhof in Munich, after having read about it on happycow.net, a vegetarian restaurant review site. The proprietor was super nice and friendly, really patient with me even though he spoke only a little English and I speak absolutely no German. Since schnitzel is kind of a thing in Germany (but is traditionally made with super-tenderized meat), I was excited that I got to experience it in my own vegetarian way.

Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln and Augustiner Hall beer (Munich)

I'm not typically a fan of beer, but in when one is in Munich it's kind of obligatory to try the beer. I'd already passed on famous Czech beer in Prague, so I felt like my hands were tied on this one. The beer was okay if you ask me, a non-beer-drinker, but my evaluation is probably not the one to go by, especially if you actually happen to like beer a lot.

The Käsespätzle was really delicious, though. "Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln" means " cheese noodles with fried onions." I'm not sure if it's specific to Bavaria or Germany in general, but it's delicious, like macaroni and cheese but even better. (And you know how I feel about mac and cheese to begin with.) The spätzle, or noodles, are made of eggs and semolina, generally, and they are softer and more tender than the sort of pasta I'm used to eating. The cheese was sharp and salty and perfectly balanced by the sweet sharpness of the onion, which had not been cooked very long and had therefore retained a pretty strong flavor. Yummy, yummy, yummy. The picture does not do it justice at all.

As a side note: I got this dinner with Amanda and Rachel, two women I met on the tour to Dachau. Amanda had somehow found out about this place--the restaurant of the Oktoberfest Museum--and had suggested it. It was a fantastic choice--the restaurant itself was cozy and labyrinthine, with long shared tables and bench seating. Very atmospheric, and a good way to cap off my admittedly brief time in Munich.

Socca (Nice)

Delicious. I'll admit that I was predisposed to like it because I like chickpeas and I like crepes and these are essentially chickpea crepes, but OH MY GOD.

While socca is eaten around the entire Côte d'Azur region and into Italy, Nice is particularly known for socca. There are rivalries between different restaurants in the same way that New York pizzerias all claim to have the best pizza in the city, and people's socca tastes vary just as some people prefer one place's pizza over another. Some restaurants make crispier socca, some do it softer, but I think it's safe to say they're probably all delicious.

The traditional way to eat socca is with a little bit of black pepper. I'm not a huge fan of pepper so I put only a very little, and I didn't think the peppery bits were any better than the plain parts. In fact, I think I preferred it plain. It is definitely a savory dish but the socca I tried (I got mine at Lou Pilha Leva in the Old Town) had a really subtle sweetness to it and an almost peanut buttery flavor. Think of it in those terms to understand the sweet/savory balance...it's sort of got the same ratio of sweet to savory as peanut butter. As a result I'm inclined to say (blasphemy?!) that socca would taste good drizzled with chocolate, but if you ask me there are few foods that wouldn't be improved by that.

Gelato from Fenocchio Glacier (Nice)

Fenocchio is an institution in Nice, a famous ice cream/gelato place offering 70 different flavors. I was only in Nice for two days, so I couldn't try all 70, but I made an honest effort and tried six. I went for the weird ones, too.
You're welcome.

Vanilla with pink pepper: Really weird at the first bite (weird but good!), but I got more used to it as I plowed through it. Pink pepper, in case you've never tasted it (I hadn't) is milder than black pepper, and tastes surprisingly good with vanilla. The only way I can think to describe the taste/texture combo is "sparkly."

Cactus: Mild, sweet, and perfume-y, with some strangely citrusy undertones to it. I wanna say it tasted like aloe (it may have actually been straight-up aloe), but I can never remember actually trying aloe so I have no idea where I'm getting that frame of reference.

Speculoos: This is what made me stop for ice cream in the first place. I'm crazy for Speculoos anything (if you've never tried Speculoos, they're like gingersnaps but better), and this ice cream did not disappoint. It tasted a little like the cinnamon-gingersnap ice cream Tracey and I made once.

Honey and pine nuts: Can I just eat this for the rest of my life? Okay, thanks. The warm sweetness of the honey was in perfect proportion to the savory pine nuts, which kept things from getting too sicky-sweet.

Rice and milk: Creamy taste, chunky texture, delicious overall. If you like tapioca pudding, you would love this. If you don't like tapioca pudding, then I feel sorry for you but you should probably just pick a different flavor of ice cream.

Mojito: My love of mojitos is well-documented (see: every picture from my twenty-first birthday) so I figured I'd love this sorbet. And it turns out it was only okay. It tasted like it had dried mint, not fresh (which I suppose is more practical, but it's just not the same) and there was a sour/bitter aftertaste. It wasn't bad, per se, but I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. On the plus side, I wolfed this down because I was quite thirsty after a day spent hiking in the mountains near Nice and this was definitely a thirst-quencher.


Well, that's it for this round of "What's Renée Been Eating?" Tune in next time for Speculoos macarons, famous Marseille cookies, long-lost favorite French foods, and more!

Nice is...Nice Enough

As far as cities go, I've never been particularly attached to Nice. Or I guess I should say I was never particularly attached to the idea of Nice, since my firsthand knowledge of the place was limited to my once getting a connecting train there.

But now I have actually stayed in the city and can say it with conviction: I have never been particularly attached to Nice.

There's nothing wrong with Nice. It's a perfectly fine city. I just didn't get that vibe from it. You know the vibe I'm talking about.

However, I did enjoy quite a few aspects of the admittedly meager amount of time I spent exploring the city. Colline du Chateau, or the Castle Hill, is pretty cool and offers, among other things, stunning views of Nice, some rather sparse (compared to other places) castle ruins, some interesting cemeteries, a cute park, a picturesque waterfall, and lots of stands selling postcards to tourists.

Some views of Nice from Colline du Chateau

I'm going to straight to hell for even saying this, but doesn't the face in the middle remind you of Voldemort?

Waterfall on Colline du Chateau

Beaches in Nice are made up of rocks, not sand.

I also spent some time walking in the Old Town, which was really cool, and along the famous Promenade des Anglais, which was really overrated in my opinion. For instance, compare the guidebook's portrayal of "relaxing on the Promenade des Anglais" (upper righthand page) to the reality of "relaxing" on the Promenade des Anglais (basically the same picture, zoomed out):

See what I mean?

I did have some pretty good food in Nice, but that's going to be the subject of its own post. There's not much more to say on this front, I guess, so here's an obligatory touristy picture of Hotel Negresco (a Nice landmark).

Until next time!

Dachau

No cheeky titles or wordplay today, guys, because its not really appropriate when you're talking about a place that was simultaneously a prison, a torture chamber, and a mass grave. Fair warning, this is not a particularly light and happy post.

I'm talking, of course, about Dachau, the only concentration camp to be open for the entirety of the Third Reich. Originally an ammunitions factory, Dachau caught Hitler's eye because it was an already-fortified campus, it wasn't being used for anything at the time, and it was a quick train ride from Munich, the center of the Nazi government's power.

I, like many other people, have been fascinated by the history of the Nazis and of Hitler's rise to power. How did a failed Austrian painter who didn't even embody the Aryan "ideal" he championed convince an entire government to participate in widespread murder, torture, and persecution?

I didn't expect a solid answer to that question, but I really felt that touring a concentration camp would be a way to grapple with these really difficult concepts in a way that was not as sanitized as many history books' way of presenting it. I booked a tour with Sandemans again. It was a good choice, because I think an experience like that, where you're forced to confront a lot of truths you'd rather not have to think about, is definitely different when it's shared among others.

When we arrived at the camp, the sky was gray and overcast and it was threatening to rain, which seemed appropriate to the subject matter. Our guide told us about the history of the camp and its origins as an ammunitions factory. The first prisoners at Dachau, he said, were not Jewish people or gypsies, two of the groups most often associated with Hitler's "purification" efforts, but political opponents of Hitler. Basically anyone who had voted against the Nazi party was deemed an enemy of the state and was sent to Dachau to be "re-educated."

As time went on, however, the camp was used to hold men and boys over fourteen who were "unsuitable" for a number of reasons: they were Jewish, gay, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavic, Roma, or criminals. (The last category was particularly sketchy, as Hitler had achieved his campaign promise of cleaning up the streets of Munich by simply throwing all vagrants in jail. Of course, this overcrowded the prisons, and the prisoners were moved to camps. Often, the "criminals'" worst crimes were simply being homeless or drunk in the wrong place at the wrong time.) And of course, political enemies of the Reich continued to be thrown into concentration camps.

One thing I didn't realize was that the camp wasn't immediately emptied and shut down following the end of the war. Dachau was a refugee camp until the 1960s. This is so hard for me to wrap my head around--how people had to live in the same camp under still-horrible conditions even after the war was over. Obviously the Nazis were no longer there killing and torturing them, but these people were forced to live in the same barracks where they'd been starved and exposed to the most unhygienic, unhealthy, uncomfortable conditions...and they were still encountering a lot of the same food shortages and unsanitary living conditions. Every day they looked out into the square where the Nazis had lined them up and, guns in hand, told them that they were subhuman. They lived a stone's throw away from mass graves containing the ashes and bodies of family members and friends, and every day they passed the places where they had been tortured and their loved ones killed.

It must take incredible strength of character to preserve a place like this, a place that has seen so much tragedy and darkness and injustice, in the name of educating future generations. When American soldiers arrived to liberate Dachau, they wanted to blow up the buildings that had been the site of so much horror--the gas chamber, the crematoriums. The camp survivors insisted that the buildings be kept as they were: "Honor the dead by warning the living," reads one memorial in Dachau, just steps away from the gas chamber where entire groups of people were sent to their deaths.

I can't tell every story I heard on my tour--they were nearly all horrifying, appalling reminders of what human beings are capable of. It's enough to say, in a fairly family-friendly blog, that thousands of people were tortured for no reason other than the amusement of their captors. That the Nazis would keep prisoners locked in tiny cells for months at a time--or even a year--only to take them outside in to the sun, blind them, and shoot them. To put it another way: the Nazis would invest the time and expense in keeping someone alive for a year knowing full well that they were going to kill them. They weren't murdering people to spare the expense of keeping them imprisoned. They weren't killing them in the heat of battle. They weren't even doing it for ideology anymore. They were doing it for fun. The idea that people like that have existed at all on this planet is terrifying, but to remember that they were in positions of power--and that they held these positions a mere sixty-odd years ago--is truly chilling.

Despite all this, I did not have the reaction to the camp that I'd expected. I've heard from many people that visiting sites like the Holocaust Museum or concentration camps are very, very difficult emotionally and even physically--some people have very visceral reactions. I did not. I knew this was horrible, I understood its significance, but there was a disconnect between this knowledge and my emotions. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that these events were real, that they happened not long ago, and that I was standing in the middle of the camp where they had taken place. I knew it, but I couldn't feel it. This, of course, makes me feel like a truly awful human being. How can anyone encounter evil like this and not be completely, utterly floored by it?

It seems odd to spend a chunk of your vacation wishing you could feel sadder and more depressed, but it feels somehow disrespectful to not be haunted by this experience every minute of every day. (Also, it makes me a bit worried that I'm a sociopath and have no capacity for empathy.)

There was however, one thing that triggered a gut reaction of sheer fear and despair, and that was the gas chamber. Dachau did not use gas chambers in the same way as many other camps; it was in fact a testing facility to determine the best, most efficient way to kill the most people. (I hate that I had to type that sentence. I hate that there were--and still are-- people whose horrible actions gave me a reason to type it.) The Nazis tested a number of variables in the gas chambers at Dachau--how much poison? Should it be pumped in as gas or sprinkled on the floor in another form to be converted into gas by raising the temperature once the prisoners were in the room? How could they most effectively poison loads of people from as safe a distance as possible? Those are the questions the Nazis encountered.

This is the reality that their victims met: The gas chamber at Dachau was made to look like a shower. The men were told they would get a hot shower. They were led into a room with towels hanging on the walls and told to undress. They were then sent into the chamber, which was fitted with shower heads to really sell the illusion. If they asked why it was so hot, they were told that it was the hot water coming up through the pipes. The doors were closed, and the men who had entered would never leave. Their bodies were unceremoniously burned in a crematorium located in the next room, and their ashes were dumped into unmarked mass graves.

Even as a perfectly safe and healthy tourist in 2013, standing in the gas chamber was like standing in a nightmare. The room was dark and low ceilinged and gave the impression that it would crush you if you stood there long enough. It felt claustrophobic even though the doors were open and I was practically the only person in there. And I started to tear up.

I tried to imagine the pain, the suffering, the fear these people faced as they realized they were being poisoned to death. I tried to imagine the horror of being the last living person in the room, surrounded by the bodies of friends and strangers alike. But I couldn't even fathom what that might be like. I can't even fathom how a situation like that could be possible in the first place.

It sounds a little overdramatic, I think, but if there's anything you're allowed to be ashamed and horrified and appalled and depressed and overdramatic about, it's the Holocaust. And this is really difficult for most people. Our guide, who's been leading Dachau tours for four years, sent us into the building by ourselves while he waited outside. "I've only been in that room once," he said, "and I have no desire to ever go back." I heard stories of other tour guides who stopped leading Dachau tours after a year or so because they could not deal with the pain and horror of visiting the camp three or four times a week.

But, as our guide pointed out, it's important and even impressive that Germany has made these sites so accessible. The site is 100% open to the public: no admission fees, no tickets, no line to get in. Schoolchildren from Munich visit about once each year. Members of the German military also visit frequently as part of their duties. Germany is committed to making sure atrocities like the ones at Dachau never happen again. As our guide pointed out, how many countries would put the darkest parts of their history on display like this? The United States, for instance, is no stranger to racism and genocide, but we do not acknowledge these darker parts of history in the same way that Germany has acknowledged the tragedies in its past. We try to whitewash American history by ending with a "happily ever after" sort of conclusion about how all men are created equal and therefore we must all be equals--hooray, America! But this is our ideal, not our reality, and somewhere deep down, we all know it.

I'm not trying to pick on America or hold Germany up as a model of the perfect country, because there is no "perfect country," just as there is no perfect society or perfect race. World history, not just American history or western history, is fraught with hatred, murder, prejudice, and injustice. It's just something I feel like I think a bit differently about now, and that's what I'm trying to convey.

But it's discouraging, to say the least, to live in a world where hatred still exists. On a large scale, it's evident in the fact that Hitler's genocide was only the third largest in the twentieth century. Only. The third largest. In the twentieth century. That there were two other instances of mass extermination of human life is horrible enough in and of itself. (In reality, there were a lot more than just two.) That these two managed to knock HITLER and the HOLOCAUST into second and then third place is even more disheartening and tragic.

On a smaller scale, hatred is still evident in this memorial at Dachau. It's modeled after the badges that prisoners were forced to wear to indicate their "crime." For instance, just as Jewish people had to wear yellow Stars of David, gay men wore pink triangles, criminals wore green triangles, and gypsies wore black or brown. The monument pictured below is a memorial to the victims and survivors of Dachau, but you'll notice that some colors are missing.

The colored glass was smashed by other camp survivors, who didn't feel that some of the groups represented deserved to be memorialized alongside the "real" innocent victims of Dachau. The memorial has never officially been fixed. I say "officially" because our guide told us about a former Dachau guide, a friend of his. The night after this guy stopped being a guide, he broke into Dachau and replaced the empty triangles with high-quality plastic pieces that looked just like the original glass. When he came back in the morning to check out his handiwork, the new tiles had already been removed.

To leave things on a slightly less depressing note (although I feel like a post about Dachau is allowed--nay, expected--to be a downer), in the years since the war, a convent has been built adjacent to the camp grounds. The sisters wanted the entrance gate to the convent to be through one of the old guard towers at the far end of the camp, near the various religious monuments, but the Powers That Be (the earthly ones, I mean) kept saying no. "The problem was solved," our guide told us, "by a sixty-two-year-old nun with a sledgehammer"--thus confirming my belief in the inherent badassery of nuns everywhere. The power of Christ compels you, indeed.

No legal action was taken against the nun; a group of Roma people (gypsies) backed her up and lent their support to the convent's unorthodox building plans. And the gate to the convent remains there (after a bit of touching up...sledgehammer holes aren't that pretty) to this day, a symbol that Dachau is no longer an enclosed prison, but an open memorial site.

So I guess the takeaway from this post is that some people are unimaginably horrible, some people have the most inspiring and incredible strength of character, and some people are kick-ass nuns who get shit DONE.

"Honor the dead by warning the living."

Only in Germany

That SNCF post has taken us out of chronological order a bit, but jump back to Germany with me a moment, if you would be so kind.

If that post about King Ludwig and Neuschwanstein didn't convince you that Germany has been the home to some lovable oddballs, maybe this post will.

I didn't want to overgeneralize, since I actually haven't visited many different areas of Germany extensively at all, but then I got to Dusseldorf and found something there that certainly did not disappoint.

So won't you join me in celebrating the wonderful but undeniably and lovably weird country that is Germany?

1. This fountain basically taking a jab at the motifs of every other fountain ever.

It might be a little hard to see (damn night shots!) but the standing figure has his finger over the water spigot and is shielding his face from the spray forced out by the water pressure. The face is spitting sideways, because why not?

2. Well-dressed guy running errands whilst taking swigs from an open liter-sized bottle of beer. It was ten past ten in the morning.

3. Forgot to take a picture (darn it!) but the Munich Airport had a touchscreen survey in the bathroom asking you to rate your bathroom experience on a scale of colored smiley faces. (For the record, my bathroom experience would have been a broadly grinning green smiley. It was a lovely bathroom.)

4. The automatically-changing advertisement boards in the Munich Hauptbahnhof (main train station) blare out in all caps SHIT HAPPENS, with this phrase (in English) superimposed over various cartoons, one of which appeared to feature a couple of mice, and another an antelope being chased by a lion and saying presumably something cheeky in German. I have no idea what this could possibly be advertising.

5. The Englischer Garten in Munich has an artificial surfer's wave. Of course.

There's also a nude sunbathing area just through the trees.

6. This is a person. A real, living (green) person.

Fake statues are too mainstream. Munich is innovating.

7. I know that this is only odd to English speakers and within the context of a German-speaking country it doesn't mean anything, but it sure tickled my funny bone.

I don't...I can't even...

Rage Against the SNCF

Okay guys, I know I'm really behind and still owe you stories of Dachau and Nice and my fantastic hike through the Alps, but I would just like to take a moment and share just how much I hate the SNCF, or the French train system. (And also autocorrect, for trying to correct "French train" to"oat rain." Why? I mean, really--WHY?! Do ipad users experience a lot of instances of grain falling from the sky? Is that a thing? Have things in the US really changed THAT much in the week I've been gone?)

Anyway, my hatred for the SNCF burns with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. To be fair, I'm pretty predisposed to hate everything right now, since I am sitting on an uncomfortable granite bench in the Gare de Nice (Nice train station) when I should be in a comfortable first-class seat one-third of the way to Marseille right now. Yes, ladies and gents, I have missed my train.

I should have checked out of my hostel earlier, I'll admit that. Mistake number one. Checkout time was at ten, and I headed to the desk at 9:55. There were at least ten people in line ahead of me. This was unfortunate, as it was a fifteen-minute walk to the tram and then a ten-minute tram ride to the station, where I still had to print my ticket reservation (which I'd already paid for) before hopping the 10:57 train to Marseille. It would be close, but I could do it if I really booked it to the tram, I figured.

At 10:10 I was still in line and was getting pretty antsy. Okay, really antsy. There was much toe-tapping and slapping my wallet against my thigh. At 10:16 I was checked out and running down the steepest hill known to man to try and get the tram and hopefully avoid serious injury in the process.

Made it to the tram station just as the tram was rounding a distant corner, heading my way. I ran to the ticket machine, exact change already in hand, only to find it surrounded by some tourists who looked confused. "...ne marche pas..." I heard a man telling them. "It's not working."

There was a ticket machine on the opposite platform. The tram was not far away now. I shot across the tram tracks, bought a ticket at hyper speed, and then ran back around just as the tram doors opened. I hurled myself and my 15-20 pounds of stuff into a chair and tried to fan myself with my credit cards. But I was on the tram. I did it.

It was 10:20.

I got to the train station and was in line at the ticket machine by 10:35, giving me twenty minutes to get to the front and print the ticket I'd already reserved. Except I'd forgotten one very important thing: the SNCF sucks.

The ticket machine, to give you an idea, operates so slowly that I suspect it is powered not by a computer but by a Rube Goldberg-esque device. You press the button, a marble starts running down a chute, and once it hits the tiny hammer it prompts the machine to ask you for your credit card, etc.

The machine will ignore your credit card if it happens to be an American card, however, because it does not have "le chip." Le chip is a mysterious microchip that European cards have and American cards do not. I find this advanced French card technology ironic given that their ticket machines would be be outperformed by an AOL dial-up connection circa 1996, but whatever.

Since my cards do not have the chip, I was forced to stand at the ticket machine and watch as the clock in the upper right of the screen changed to 10:57 while the bulk of the screen was blaring "CARD NOT ACCEPTED." And that is how I missed my train.

All I wanted to do was sit down and cry. Well, that's not quite true. All I wanted to do was be sitting in an air conditioned first-class compartment on the way to Marseille. Failing that, however, stomping into a corner and collapsing into a sobbing heap of sweaty clothing and chipless credit cards seemed like a pretty appealing option. I didn't care that the train station floor was possibly the dirtiest floor in the entire city, or that all the French people and tourists alike would be walking by judging the pathetic American weeping childishly in the corner. But crying would not get me another ticket, so I settled for stomping from place to place to give vent to my feelings.

From another absurdly slow machine I discovered that the next train to Marseille, at 11:27, was full. There were still seats on the 12:27 though, so I dragged myself over to the ticket sale line and waited. By 11:30ish I was speaking to a ticket guy. I managed to conduct the entire conversation in understandable and mostly correct (albeit not particularly eloquent) French, which was a small bright spot in an otherwise crappy morning. All I needed was to reserve a spot, not buy a ticket, since my rail pass covers that aspect of the trip. That was a plus; reservations are loads less expensive than tickets. The ticket guy pointed out that a reservation for the 12:27 train would cost 18€ but that a reservation for the 12:55 was free. I took the free one, so at least I didn't lose money AND time on this deal, just two hours in Marseille.

But now I'm sitting in the Nice train station (MY FAVORITE THING) with a guy jackhammering something twenty feet away from me (MY OTHER FAVORITE THING) trying to kill time. Writing this post has calmed me down quite a bit, as has helping the American tourists looking for the bathroom. I got to speak to them in English and then turn to the French guy next to me and ask him some stuff in French, which made me feel super awesome and legit, like this was the UN and I was some sort of toilet ambassador. The French guy told me I spoke French quite well, which was flattering but not entirely true, and we made a little small talk en francais, which also cheered me up a bit. So life's looking sunnier than it was when I started writing this post, typing frantically through a red haze of boiling anger and soul-crushing frustration.

Only 35 minutes to go before I'm en route to Marseille, though! Then I'm there for a couple days before I have to move on to Montpellier. To avoid a repetition of this entire process, I plan on arriving at noon for my 3:25 pm train. I just hope I'll be able to access my reservations somehow. If I can't do it with my credit card somehow I don't know what I'll do.

Oh, well, IT'S AN ADVENTURE!

Stop! It's Castle Time!

Bavaria has given the world so many wonderful things. Bavarian cream puffs. Lederhosen. And, among other castles, Neuschwanstein.

Technically the credit for Neuschwanstein goes to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, aka "Mad King Ludwig." Depending on who you ask, Ludwig was either eccentric and misunderstood or completely off his rocker. (The tour I took supported the former interpretation.) Whichever one you choose, you can't deny that Ludwig was a little...off. He enjoyed doing things like dressing up as obscure historical figures, taking sleigh rides in the dead of night, dropping in unexpectedly on his subjects in the Bavarian countryside ("Surprise! It's the king!"), and having dinner parties where the entire guest list consisted of his imaginary friends, mostly historical (dead) European kings. He was also obsessed--and I mean all-caps OBSESSED--with Richard Wagner and Wagnerian opera.

Ludwig had kind of a bummer childhood, as neither of his parents were very interested in, you know, parenting him. He and his younger brother Otto were never given quite enough food growing up. This was supposed to discipline them and make them stronger rulers when they came of age. Personally I think there's no real point in being royal if you don't get to eat dessert. Bring on the Bavarian cream puffs, I say!

Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he passed his childhood without ever tasting the sweet magic of a Toblerone or whatever nougaty Alpine treat was in vogue in the mid-nineteenth century, Ludwig grew up to be quite fit and good-looking. That's what history says, anyway. If we're going by personal taste I think Ludwig might be rocking just a bit too much facial hair (what is that mustache?!) but who am I to argue with history?

Anyway, nineteenth-century Bavarian dreamboat Ludwig got engaged to his cousin, who was by all accounts also very good-looking, and they live happily ever after...right?

Wrong. Because our mustachioed pal Ludwig was gay and consequently broke off the engagement. Remember when I said he was obsessed with Wagner? I wasn't exaggerating. Ludwig had the Wagnerian equivalent of Bieber fever. It's pretty unsurprising, then, that Ludwig's first official act upon ascending to the throne was to track down Wagner, who was on the run from his various debts, and bring him to the court in Munich. Suck on THAT, deprived royal childhood! Nothing says "I'm in charge now, fools!" like casually inviting your teenage idol to come and live with you. (Presumably Ludwig then celebrated by eating the Toblerones his parents had long denied him.)

Anyway, Wagner came to live in Munich and wrote operas for Ludwig, and everything was fine until the people got annoyed at how much political influence Wagner had on the king and rebelled, forcing Ludwig to send Wagner packing.

I'm going to gloss over a lot of Bavarian political history now, because I can sense that you're like, "Yeah, fine, history, whatever. But you promised castles. WHERE ARE THE PICTURES?!" I'm getting there, impatient person driven to caps lock outbursts by blog posts. I'm getting there.

Anyway, Ludwig had succeeded in royally (ha!) pissing off a lot of powerful people. The normal next step would be to lay low and not rock the boat for a while. But Ludwig, as we've seen, was not a normal guy.

He started building castles. Never mind that he had the Residenz in Munich and his childhood home of Hohenschwangau Castle in the foothills of the Alps, on the banks of the Alpsee, plus some other stuff. Not good enough. You know what would be good enough, though? A whole bunch of castles inspired by Wagnerian operas.

Ludwig's childhood home, Hohenschwangau Castle. Cozy, right?

To be fair, Ludwig drew some inspiration from his own life, too. The reason he was captivated by Wagner's operas in the first place was that they were adaptations of local myths and legends. The walls at Hohenschwangau were covered with murals depicting scenes from the tales, so Ludwig had grown up literally surrounded by stories and folklore.

One particularly bizarre and convoluted story involved the Alpsee, the lake on which Hohenschwangau was built. Trying to relate the whole thing here would take more time than I have (I'm currently on a three-hour layover in Dusseldorf, trying to catch up on blogging because I'm a couple days behind), so I will just borrow from the Walt Disney company and say that this story involves "far-off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise"...and a swan. That last bit is the most important.

The Alpsee. You'd totally build a vacation castle here, right?
At the time, Hohenschwangau was called Neuschwanstein, which translates as "new swan stone"; an earlier castle on that site had been called Schwanstein as a nod to the nearby Alpsee and its legendary swan tales. (Hohenschwangau, which means "high Schwangau," refers to the fact that the village of Hohenschwangau is further up the hill than the village of plain old Schwangau. True story.)

Anyway, Lugwig decided he wanted to build his own swan-inspired castle by the Alpsee, despite the fact that the real estate market of the Schwangau area was already saturated with that particular sort of building. It was initially called Hohenschwangau, since "Neuschwanstein" was already taken; the names were switched after his death. For clarity's sake, I'm going to call them by their modern names.

So Ludwig picked a spot and started building. It was pretty high up the mountain and getting supplies up there was a pain and a half, but check out the view.

View over the countryside from Neuschwanstein

Hohenschwangau Castle and town from Neuschwanstein

I would put up with a lot of zoning headaches if it meant I could wake up to that every morning. And that's not even the side with the waterfall!

But let's step out of the past and into the present. (Or, since this all happened on Monday, the not-quite-as-distant-past, I guess.) As you can imagine, I was pretty pumped to see Neuschwanstein. I'd booked a tour with Sandemans New Europe Tours (they are AWESOME, as I mentioned in the Prague post...if you're ever traveling in Europe, check them out!) and it was a lot of fun; the guide was great and I spent a good hour of the two-hour train ride out in conversation with a woman about my age, Sophina, who also happened to be vegetarian (we swapped food recommendations, Bavaria not exactly being the vegetarian haven of the world) and share a lot of the same interests as me. The train ride was also incredibly pretty. I'll put up some pictures in a later post.

Rain and thunderstorms were predicted, but I was determined to enjoy myself regardless of the weather. And how did things turn out? I'll let this picture answer that question.

Look! Neuschwanstein Castle! No blue skies but no rain (yet) in sight!
Yes, folks, that is Neuschwanstein Castle. This isn't even its good side.

Inside, only one-third of the rooms are finished; Ludwig died before construction could be completed, and the Bavarian government was not inclined to finish a project that had pretty much burned through generations' worth of Wittelsbach royal fortune and landed the king millions of marks in personal debt. It was, however, opened for visitors six weeks after the king's death and has been a huge source of income for Bavaria ever since--and not just from tourism.

Have you been thinking, "Gee, that castle looks kind of familiar"? You've almost certainly seen it--or something very much like it--before. Just as I borrowed from the Disney Company a few paragraphs ago, the Disney Company borrowed from Neuschwanstein. This is the inspiration for the "Disney castle" that is featured in the logo before Disney films and forms the most recognizable building in Disneyland parks the world over.

Walt Disney made the mistake of telling the Bavarian government this. "Oh, hey, sweet fairy-tale castle," he said. "It was the inspiration for my imaginary fairy-tale castle!"

"Is that so?" said the Bavarian government. "That's nice. Eight gazillion dollars, please." And that is how Bavaria supplements its already hefty tourism income--with royalties from Disney.

The interior of the castle--the rooms that actually exist, anyway--is not at all what I'd expected from the outside; they're much grander and...heavier-seeming, I guess...than the light, graceful exterior would suggest.

But the best views of the castle were yet to come. We hiked uphill some more (side note: the walk was killer. Remember that picture of the countryside with Hohenschwangau off in the distance? We walked from there. Up an Alp. My soul died a little.) and came to an observation bridge. Oh, the photo ops!

Admit it, the Disney intro music is playing in your head right now.

This was already a known beauty spot when Ludwig started Neuschwanstein. The bridge was here, but he replaced the wooden rails with metal.

Locks on bridges: they're everywhere!
As we began our hike down the mountain (by a different route) it began to rain, so we had to rush a bit; according to our guide, the paths get very slippery in the rain. When we got to this steep metal walkway built into a rock face, I could understand his concern--this ramp would be treacherous even in dry weather.

The base of the ramp was serrated to cling to your shoes, and tiny bars running across it allowed you to brace your feet every eighteen inches or so.
I did still manage to get a few pictures before the rain really set in, though.

Odd little spot with loads of cairns.
We took shelter at a cafe at the base of the hill, where Sophina and I split some fries and chatted with our guide, an English guy named Jon. We then all caught the bus to the train station, took two trains back to Munich, and arrived just after 7. The rest is a story (albeit not a super-interesting one, so don't hold your breath or anything) for another day.

Whew, long post! I'd say I successfully killed this layover. I'm about to head on to Nice, but I'm also due for a post about my trip to Dachau, the concentration camp just outside Munich. It really deserves its own post and it's some heavy stuff, so I may put that off for another day.

But on a lighter note, I'll leave you with one more picture of King Ludwig's pet project. (P.S.: There is a TON more to Ludwig's story and his building projects, and I highly suggest you Wikipedia him at least. His life is a veritable smorgasbord of weirdness and quirkiness.)

Sightseeing in Prague? CZECH.

Okay, awful pun, I know. You know what the only appropriate response is? PRAHAHAHA.

So it's my second day in Prague/Praha (first full day, really) and BOY did I do a lot of sightseeing. It was a great day, though, and I felt much better/more confident than yesterday, when I sort of felt like I was the guy in the third verse of "You Can Call Me Al."

The morning started out overcast and drizzly, so my umbrella and I left at around 10:15 to meet up with the free tour that leaves the Old Town Square at 10:45. By the time I'd made it into town it was POURING, so I was quite happy to have my umbrella with me.

I wasn't thrilled about the rain or anything, but Prague is one of the things on my itinerary that I wouldn't mind having wet weather for. I'd much rather tote an umbrella around Prague than on a hike in the Alps or the Cotswolds.

We covered a TON on the tour, which lasted into early afternoon, and then I decided to take the Castle Tour in the afternoon, which covers the part of the city on the opposite side of the river. It ended up being a really good choice, so hooray.

Prague is actually a very interesting city. Architecturally, it came through World War II with almost no "casualties"--the Old Town Hall was destroyed by a Nazi bomb just days before Prague was liberated (or, if we're going to be real about things, we'd say that it was just days before Prague was taken over by the Soviets instead of the Nazis). Otherwise, the city has tons of buildings that have survived for literally a millenium.

We visited a whole bunch of these (I was walking around from 10:45 until after 6, with only a couple of 20-minute breaks in there) so there's no time to talk at length about them--or even mention all of them. I'll try to cram as many as I can in, though.

I unfortunately cannot remember the name of this church on the Old Town Square, but it's noteworthy (among other reasons) for its "Adam and Eve towers," meaning that one (Adam) is bigger than the other (Eve). The explanation is that Adam is meant to protect Eve from the elements, but it's actually more likely that two work crews working with inconsistent measurements were the cuprit (so says my tour guide, anyway).

Church and statue of Jan Huss in the Old Town Square

We stopped by the astronomical clock, a must-see Prague site. On the hour, the clock comes to life as figures of the twelve apostles parade across. Unfortunately we weren't there at the right time, but we did learn about the stationary figures on the clock, meant to represent vices--vanity and greed--along with death and pagans (the guy with the lute). The "greed" statue used to have a very stereotypical and anti-Semitic pointed beard, but it was removed because the Communists (in power from the 1940s to the 1980s) thought it looked like a caricature of Karl Marx.

Continuing around the city, we got to listen to these guys play a song written about the Vltava River, which runs through Prague.

By the time we reached the Jewish Quarter, the sun had come out and it was a beautiful day. (I haven't checked in a mirror yet, but I can tell my face is sunburned. Oh, well, it's a small price to pay for a day in Prague.)

We visited a number of synagogues constructed in several different styles and used for a number of purposes. Only the Old-New Synagogue, where the famous Golum of Prague supposedly lies hidden in the attic, still has services. The others are all museums or concert venues or the like. The Czech Republic, it turns out, has the highest number of atheists of any officially Catholic country in the world--70 percent. For that reason, many of the churches are used for a myriad of purposes as well, housing bars, restaurants, concert halls, and so on.

I'd had the chance to visit the Jewish Quarter yesterday afternoon. It was a quick visit, since it was evening and the sites run by the Jewish Museum were closing, but I did get to see Pinkas Synagogue and the Jewish Cemetery. The Pinkas Synagogue was sad and fascinating: it's inscribed with the names of the 80,000 Czech Jews who lost their lives to the Nazis during World War II. It's a really striking, impressive sight and I would have loved to take some photos, but they were not allowed. (Two other women were unfazed by this and took copious amounts of photos. I was quite annoyed by/jealous of their wanton disregard for rules.)

Upstairs there was an exhibit of art produced by children while they were imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp. It was really moving, especially since each drawing with a known artist was accompanied by their date of birth and death--and a lot of those dates were far too close together.

Outside, the Jewish Cemetery was an odd combination of peace and chaos, as the headstones all compete for space. Since Judaism forbids cremation and Jews in Prague were not allowed to be buried outside the ghetto, bodies in the cemetery had to be layered on top of one another, making the cemetery rise above street level and leading to a mish-mash of stones jockeying for positions in the tiny graveyard.

The Jewish Cemetery

But back to the sites we covered today. In the afternoon we went across the river to the so-called "Lesser Quarter," where many nobles once had their homes. (Today most of the buildings are owned by the state or are home to foreign embassies.) The gardens of Valdštejnská zahrada, which are free and open to the public, are steps from the entrance to the Malostranská metro station (such a weird juxtaposition...to me, anyway).

Valdštejnská zahrada. There are peacocks living in the gardens!

We took a tram up the hill. (Prague is built on seven hilltops, and some of them--this one, for example--are doozies.) Our first stop was a monastery famous for its beer. The monks no longer make it themselves, but a brewery on-site uses the same recipe. I did not partake in any beer-drinking due to my general dislike for it, but I really debated it for awhile because hey, in the Czech Republic you've gotta try the beer, right? I ultimately decided against it because I was running low on cash (many places here still don't take credit cards) and didn't want to find another ATM.

We headed for Prague Castle, stopping on the way to admire the Loreta, a shrine to the patron saint of women in bad relationships. (As our tour guide noted, there really is a patron saint for everything.) Loreta wanted to be a nun, but her father forced her to marry. The night before her wedding, she asked God to prevent it. The next morning she had a full beard and her husband-to-be was like, "Awwww hell to the no!" The story ends with Loreta dying anyway, so it's still a downer, but hey, at least she scored a pretty pilgrimage site (a lot of comfort to her, I'm sure).

Step right up, see the amazing bearded laaaaaaaady!

Next up: Prague Castle. It's sort of a misnomer, really, because it's actually sort of a village unto itself--more like a quarter or borough of a city than a separate, private complex. We got to watch the changing of the guard, and then we explored some gardens. One of the highlights was a sort of ampitheater-in-reverse (an antitheater? DONE. Coining it now, you heard it here first). Anyway, you stand on the raised platform in the center and speak normally. Everyone around you hears your voice at a normal volume, but you hear it amplified back to you. Even though part of me suspected this was some story meant to lure gullible tourists into proclaiming "Hi, my name is ___!" in the middle of a little ampitheater (ANTITHEATER! Darn it!), I tried it anyway. And not only does it work, it's the WEIRDEST. You can't really understand what it feels/sounds like without experiencing it, but the closest description I can give is that it sounds like one of those toy echo microphones kids love. Super bizarre.

The castle grounds were lovely and lush. One of the emperors--I forget which--used them as a hunting ground. It's not an odd fact except that he would shoot the deer from his bedroom window and then make servants go and get the carcasses. Even weirder: he would dress in full hunting gear to do so. Personally, I would stay in my pajamas, but that's just me. It's not like I spend a lot of time hunting, though, so what do I know?

Inside the castle proper, we visited a few sites. The second courtyard is surrounded by buildings whose facades were all altered to neo-classical style (I think) by Empress Maria Theresa of the Hapsburgs, who thought that Prague Castle didn't look enough like a castle because it was too much of a collage of architectural styles and historical periods. Once you're through the second courtyard, you can begin to see some of the different architectural styles, like the Gothic and neo-Gothic St. Vitus's Cathedral. Construction began hundreds of years ago but was halted when the Protestant workers didn't feel inclined to continue construction on a Catholic church. The cathedral was finished in the 1920s--a fact referenced in the engravings above the door, which feature the twentieth century architects in business suits.

Let's play "Spot the Stylistic Anachronism"!

We also passed a huge building--the largest non-secular hall in Europe at the time of its construction--that was built so one emperor (sorry, they all run together after awhile) could have indoor jousting matches with his pals (oh, the royals).

We then checked out the Golden Lane, named, according to legend, after the alchemists that worked there. The houses were rented out as homes until the end of World War II, and one of them belonged to Franz Kafka. I personally can't imagine how anyone could live in these tiny houses, especially in modern times. I practically had to duck through some of the doorways, and we all know I'm no Paul Bunyan myself. But the street was very cute and picturesque.

Franz Kafka lived at number 22.

After some views of the city we checked out the site of the Defenestration of Prague (the second one, the one that in 1618 started the Thirty Years' War). There have actually been three defenestrations of Prague, but this one is the only one that didn't end in fatalities. Or it didn't end immediately in fatalities, I guess I should say, since it did kick off a war that killed 8.5 million Europeans. (The Catholics who were pushed out the window--which is what a defenestration is, in case you weren't up on your obscure methods of medieval murder--landed in a dung heap and survived. According to the Catholics, this was a miracle and it meant there were angels guarding them. According to the Protestants, the Catholics were both full of and covered in shit.) The history nerd in me LOVED this. It was worth the price of the tour ticket for that alone.

It's not as high up as I'd imagined.

Whew, it's getting late and this is long so I'll wrap things up. I know you guys really only want the pictures anyway.

So we checked out the view from the castle hill (where we were serenaded by a cellist playing the most beautiful and badass rendition of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song):

It was "Otherside," in case you were wondering.

Checked out the John Lennon Wall:

Originally painted (and painted over) in the Communist era, it contained Beatles lyrics and paintings of the band. Today it's open for anyone to decorate.

Observed this European phenomenon:

Couples inscribe their initials on locks and then attach them to bridge railings as a symbol of lasting love.

Crossed the Charles Bridge:

Possibly the top tourist attraction in Prague.

Rubbed this statue for good luck (only the right side, which grants good luck and a return to Prague. The left side gives you bad luck and apparently guarantees that you'll never return. This was one of many things I rubbed for good luck in Prague. Also on the list: golden curlicue designs and a statue's golden penis. I really ought to have the best luck ever now.):

You can't really see it in this picture, but there are two engraved panels on the base of the statue. Those are the parts you rub for good (or bad) luck.

After that I grabbed dinner with Jenny, a woman my age who I'd met on the tour, and then we walked back to the tram as the sky whipped itself up into a fairly impressive thunderstorm. Not a lot of rain, but a lot of thunder and lightning.

Ooh, ominous!

And now it's off to bed with me. I've been typing much longer than I'd anticipated (and I initially got on here to do some freelance work--aka the writing I'm actually paid for). Since I have to catch the train to Munich at 9:15 tomorrow, I should probably head to bed. I expect to sleep quite soundly tonight, but not as soundly as yesterday, when I fell asleep, exhausted and jetlagged, at 9 pm (after an hours-long struggle to stay awake for the sake of a normal, non-jet-laggy sleep pattern). There were some German guys talking loudly (one of them was mere feet from my pillow), and they had the lights blazing and were banging doors shut and whatnot, but it didn't even matter. I was dead to the world for a good ten hours and woke up feeling loads better than when I'd fallen asleep. WIN. If I can recapture even a fraction of that level of rest tonight, I will be so very happy (but it's Saturday night and people are definitely in a partying mood, so we'll see how this goes and what the noise level is like).

See you in Munich!

In Transit

First post from Europe, woohoo!

I'm sitting in Heathrow Airport, having cleared security without any problems. I've actually got a good chunk of time to spare, despite the fact that my flight from Boston was at least forty minutes late--no tail winds, apparently. Curse you, tail winds! You're on my list.

Nevertheless, things have been fairly low-stress since I arrived at Logan yesterday. Before that, though, it was a different story. First I was unable to check in to my Virgin Atlantic flight to London because there was no record of me in the system. PANIC. Blind panic. I called the booking agent and was rather testy with him--which I'm definitely not proud of--but he figured things out for me (passenger name was supposed to be listed as Renee [last name] but was instead in the system as Reneed [last name]. Not even Renee D. [last name]? Really? I have to say, I might hate "Reneed" even more than I hate when people pronounce my name as "Ree-nee.")

Anyway, once I was assured that I would indeed be flying to London, I tried to make up for my earlier snippiness by repeating my earlier apologies and being super polite and appreciative. With that settled, Mom and I headed off to the airport.

We were sitting in crawling traffic on 93, so-close-and-yet-so-far from the bridge, when I noticed that my handbag was closing a little too easily. I mean, I'd jampacked that thing so it could barely close, and here it was, clipping shut without any problems. Something was missing.

It was my camera. My camera was NOT in my BAG oh my GOD, you guys!!!

I let loose a string of obscenities that were still not as strong as the ones I wanted to actually use (I refrained for the sake of my darling mother) and definitely freaked out, but did not go into blind, heart-hammering Panic Mode. My mom took issue with this evaluation. "You definitely panicked," she sniffed disdainfully, after I'd found my camera shoved part way under the car seat behind my feet. And yes, I panicked, but on a scale of one to ten, with one being, "Whoops!" and ten being  Wall Street on October 29, 1929, it was maybe a five or a six, whereas the plane ticket debacle was more of an eight.

Anyway, I breezed through security at Logan, ate dinner, had a brief moment of worry when I was paged to the gate desk for "important flight information" (my seat got moved...not an upgrade, much to my disappointment), and exchanged about $100 for 1500 Czech crowns so I can buy shuttle tickets and whatnot when I arrive in Prague. The flight itself was pretty uneventful: dinner, hot chocolate, three brief hours of attempting to achieve something resembling sleep, then breakfast. I watched some TV and did some writing. That's about it.

I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't keep all my Virgin Atlantic swag, though. They always give you an eye mask, ear plugs, a toothbrush, a teeny-tiny tube of toothpaste, and socks. I was sad to leave the socks behind--I have a pair from my last VA flight and they are the snuggliest, comfiest socks, especially for being free socks obtained from an airline. But I have to be really careful not to accumulate too much stuff, especially before my flight from Munich to Nice, which has really restrictive carry-on weight limits.



Well, my boarding gate info is about to be posted, so I'm going to see about that and then try to hunt down something for breakfast. (We ate on the plane, but the first listed ingredient in Virgin Atlantic Muesli Apple Muffin Tops is sugar, so I should probably find something that won't rot my teeth and slowly kill my digestive system.)

Until Prague, then!