This is what our nation's greatest President, Josiah Bartlett, said about the French. Yeah, he was in a bad mood when he said it, so I think we can ignore the animosity behind the sentiment and focus on the positive: the cheese.
Cheese is delicious.
Okay, well that's the end of this blog... hope you enjoyed it!
Just kidding.
But really, cheese is awesome. And for those of you who have never been to France; I'm sorry, but you can only have a theoretical idea of what I'm talking about. Yeah, there are some places in the States where you can get good cheese, but it's always prohibitively expensive, and those pesky government regulations can stand in the way of some really excellent bacterial processes. I rediscovered my love of cheese last week when I met one of my best friends, Elsa (see earlier post... much earlier) to take the south of France by storm. It was a much needed sojurn after two months of moving on every couple of days. Even though I've begun to really love my transitory existence, I can totally see the value of a place to call home. Even if it is only for four days.
We met up in Marseille, which Elsa tells me is a city with which the French have one of those relationships where you either love it or you hate it. She also told me that it's sort of the Naples of France. This didn't give me a wholly positive preconception of the place, since Naples is (I've heard... from everyone who has ever mentioned the place to me) is patently the sketchiest place in existence, and you should only go there if you're heading for Pompeii or somewhere in the vicinity but not the actual place. I didn't find this to be true with Marseille, at all. Granted, we were only there for one night, but it seemed to me that it's a beautiful town on the sea, not a sketch-as-hell litter city in the middle of the south-ish.
We wandered around and talked; I was pretty much just happy to talk to someone again. Elsa has been one of my best friends since I began college, and so she knows me well enough that I don't have to censor the sometimes really dumb observations that come out of my mouth. And the fact that I've had basically two months by myself means that I've thought about a lot of really random things, and that Elsa was subjected to hearing me talk about them, even though they really had no context. That's friendship, baby.
Marseille didn't strike me as the kind of city one should have a violent reaction to; it's very nice, but nothing exceptionally good or bad. Apparently, a French soap opera which Elsa's host-mom is obsessed with, called Plus Belle La Vie, takes place there, as did the almost as renowned story by a little known writer called Alexandre Dumas... perhaps you've heard of The Count of Monte Christo? Yeah. That took place there. And around there. You don't know the book? Well, then, you certainly remember the movie, don't you? The one with Mel Gibson's Jesus and Dumbledore? Look it up. Worth a watch. When I went to see it in eighth grade, I got my head stuck in the movie theater seat from hunkering down during a particularly intense sword fight. I can give no higher recommendation than that. But I digress.
We ate dinner at an Indian restaurant, which had literally the best samosas I've ever tasted in my life, and where we experienced a little bit of French immigrant culture; living proof that France is absolutely not the homogenous country of smelly men in striped shirts and berets that some people named Glenn Beck would like you to think it is. Usually, you would expect dinner at a restaurant in France to last for a long time, with plenty of time spent not eating, but just shooting the shit. Not so in this place. Elsa actually had to put her coat on outside, that's how fast they seated some other people at our table when we'd paid. This wasn't entirely impressive to me, because I personally enjoy the European way of dining better than the 'eat it and beat it' style favored by many Amuhricans, but the tikka masala was so good, I'll let it go.
We had originally planned to spend four days in Marseille, but circumstances lead to us being able to spend three days with some friends of my mom's from her time in France. They're pretty wonderful people named Christy and Pierre Marre, and they really reinforced my conviction that the best tour guides are real locals or pseudo-locals (read: college kids) who really love the place where they live.
Christy is an American from Chattanooga, TN. who went to France for study abroad when she was 20, met Pierre, and pretty much the rest is history, from what I understand. Christy is, in spite of 20+ years of living in France, pretty much still very American. Or maybe our presence brought that out in her, but it was fun to see how she and Pierre, who is very, very French, interact. Of course, they've been married a long time, so their interactions are those of people in that situation, but it was interesting to witness a mixed-nationality marriage in practice.
Pierre and Christy were wonderful hosts, and their house in Carnon is nothing short of incredible. You know how in the States you entertain that wistful fantasy of moving to the south of France and living right on the beach, walking barefoot along the sand and collecting sea shells? Yeah, they actually have that. It's a pretty sweet setup. And they were so generous in letting us stay there... do you know that it was actually the first time since leaving the United States of America that I slept in a room that didn't also have another person in it? It was weird, but it was refreshing, too.
The best part about visiting with Pierre and Christy (besides the amazing, delicious food in copious amounts, the proximity to the beach, the late-night viewing of French Kiss and hearing about the crazy shit my mom did when she wasn't yet my mom...) was getting to see the area around Montpellier with people who live there and who love it. Here are some of the highlights of what we did:
Nimes and Pont du Gard: I've lived in Rome. Sure, it wasn't for as long as I would like it to be, but still. I was there long enough for the Colloseum to get a little standard, and ruins of an empire long-fallen but not forgotten to become kinda situation normal. Pont du Gard blew me the frick away. You hear about aqueducts. You might even see the remnants of some if you're in the right place, but you ain't seen nothing like this thing. It's huge. And in the middle of this beautiful, windswept, rocky river valley, with the sun hitting it and olive trees all around. It's a miracle. I honestly think the most exciting part for me was how very impressed I was by it. I thought I had become one of those jackasses who can be all blase (no accent mark... sorry) about the miracles of human ingenuity and say "Eh. I've seen better." No. Apparently I retain my childlike wonder. It made me think of something Professor Gadeynne said in class one day: "If the Romans were tourists going to American today, the things they would go to see would be our superhighways." So right on. The people were engineers of the highest echelon. Higher. Go to Pont du Gard.
Saint Marie de la Mer: I think that it's pretty evident that I'm the type of person who, when she has access to it, watches way more History Channel than is good for her. As such, I have a vague list in my head of all the historically and, let's be real, mostly historically conspiracy-theory-related significant places that I someday want to go. These include DallasTexas, Jerusalem and wherever the heck the Mayans lived. But one of the big ones was definitely Saint Marie de la Mer. You've heard of it, or you will recognize it's significance, because of three little words that pretty much ruined the world: The DaVinci Code. Yeah. This is that place from that godawful book (that's completely, incidentally, ripped off from another godawful book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail) in which Dan Brown postulates that OMG Jesus had a kid, and her name was Sarah (you know it was Jesus's kid because her name means princess in Hebrew... compelling.) and she and her mom, Mary Magdalene, lived in the south of France and she mothered the line of Merovingian kings who eventually produced that chick from Amelie. Are you with me? So you understand why going to this town and seeing this church and this cool statue which have featured in so many hours of the History Channel was fun for me! I can check that one off the list of places I pretend to be disdainful of but am secretly absolutely ecstatic I got to visit! YAY!
La Camargue: Is beautiful, and looks an awful lot more like Ireland than I had any right to expect from France. Including the houses, and the extra-hairy horses, one of whom I named Elmer, because his bitchy attitude is going to end him up where all bad horses go. Or maybe I smell. I don't know. But it's beautiful, and there are indiginous flamingoes there. Go figure.
Saint Guilhem de la Desert: Looks exactly like you really want a French village to look. Well, what I want a French village to look like. It was literally built into a canyon in these beautiful, rocky mountains, and literally the light was all golden... we went in the late afternoon and wandered around for awhile, and then went to Vespers and listened to the nuns sing. Let me tell you something: you ain't no real Catholic until you've been to one of those things. And this one was in French. Oh my goodness. That was some very intense Catholicism. It was beautiful and moving, but mostly I was laughing at Elsa, who got thrown into the deep end of religion on her very first lesson. Giggles. It really was a beautiful service, and a great experience of the town. Loved it.
Montpellier: A very cool college town. There's a lot to see, and there's a lot to talk about, but mostly it's one of those towns that you just have to experience. So go do it. I'll wait. Say hi to that foxy waiter at the crepe restaurant for me.
But mostly it was just fun to hang out with them and hear all the cool things they've done and their experiences (especially Christy's) of making your life in a foreign country. It's something that I think about, so it was cool to hear the good and the bad from someone who has made that decision. They're delightful people and I was so happy to be able to meet them.
Off to Toulouse! La Ville en Rose!
Long story short: Elsa and I vegged out in Toulouse. We made an effort at being touristy one day by going to Carcassone, which is unbe-freaking-lieveable... it made me want to drink mead and joust something. I spent way too much money there. But I digress. Other than our amazing trip to beautiful Carcassone, we cooked dinner in our swanky little hotel/apartment, watched a lot of TV online, went to two movies, went shopping, ate at a delicious vegetarian restaurant and took a lot of showers because the water pressure at this place was amazing. And this was exactly what I needed. I can't speak for Elsa, who might think that I totally killed her vacation, but it was so much fun to just hang out and do all the stuff that we do at home that I am honestly not bothered that I can't tell you what the biggest tourist attraction in Toulouse is. This is maybe how I know it's time for me to come home.
Speaking of that: the day is fast approaching. It's this Thursday, in fact. I'll try to get in one more post about Florence: Revisited and Rome, who is going to break my heart, before I leave this continent indefinitely. But really, if you're at all interested, stay tuned, because I'm going to try and wrap this mother up with some re-entry observations that could either be entertaining or really offensive. Stay tuned.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Stuck in Neutral
...so, in conclusion: watches, chocolate, cheese. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Swiss.
But not really the efficiency that you hear so much about. The journey from Greece to Switzerland was necessarily an epic one... you can't cover that much ground without it being exhausting and, well... epic. But as far as crossing continents goes, this time wasn't really too uncomfortable.
The ferry I took from Patra to Venice was called the Ikarus Palace, which is a name that would have made me a lot more nervous if it had been a plane and not a boat. I was just glad it wasn't called the Kracken or something similar. I've had enough with ironic names to last me for awhile, thanks. This boat was serious business. Like, it had cabins in varying levels of fanciness, two restaurants and a pool (which was empty) on the back deck. It really didn't have to feel like you were on a boat at all, if you had enough money. Just a really swank hotel.
I am poor. My Eurail pass gets me literally the bare minimum of comfort in any mode of transportation, and I'm young and spry so this is never a problem. But in this case the bare minimum would be sleeping on the deck. Outside. Yeah, not such a good idea in February, anywhere in the Northern hemisphere. Luckily, the nice usher guy ushed me into the area full of airplane seats, stating that under no circumstances was he going to let me sleep outside. Then he laughed and told me how lucky I was, because I would have had to pay 40 euros more to sleep in here if it had been April. Lucky me.
The setup was just like in an airplane, with one key exception: you could sleep on the ground. I haven't tried this in an airplane, but I have a feeling people might get a little miffed if you whipped out a blow up mattress (like a few of my fellow campers) and blew it up in the middle of the aisle. That was totally okay here, and everyone kinda set up camp in their little corner of our large communal cabin. Since the ship set sail at midnight, I immediately went to sleep, with only my sheet and a makeshift coat pillow. This was roughin' it. But not really, since it was decently warm in there and everyone was fairly respectful of the hours when normal people are sleeping, so though I was sleeping on a floor with nothing but a sheet, they weren't the worst two nights of my life.
I had never been out on the open sea before, and let me tell you: America was right. The ocean is a desert with its life underground. It was possibly the most desolate, isolated feeling I've ever had, though not necessarily in an unenjoyable way. It was actually kinda fun, except for the 20 euros I paid for the one and only not-so-awesome meal I had on the trip. Captive audience, I guess.
When I got back to Venice, I had a reaction that worried me. When I got off the boat and heard people speaking Italian and saw the relatively familiar watery city, I had to repress the urge to fall down and kiss the ground. For a girl who is going home in less than a month, this very strong reaction to a place that she's only been once before, a reaction that smacked of a long-awaited homecoming, was very worrying. Returning to Italy was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders; a weight of unfamiliarity and uncertainty that I guess must have been with me since I left Rome the first time to go to Dublin. Being back in Venice, after living for two months in places I've never been before, and where I didn't know what to expect, was much more comforting than I would have ever imagined. It really was like coming home, sort of. I can only imagine what it will be like to go back to Rome. It's going to tear me up.
But onto more entertaining subjects. I boarded a train from Venice to Milan, where I was then to get the TGV to Geneva. I was counting on the Swiss and their renowned efficiency to get me to Geneva early enough to find a hostel, as I hadn't booked one. I put my trust here, and that was where I got it wrong.
But to get away from the foreshadowing for a moment for a word about Milan. It's crazy. Like, women with chihuahuas wearing pink faux-fir parkas that match their dogs' pink faux-fir parkas. I was only around the freaky Fascist train station, so maybe it's different elsewhere, but the hour or so I was there gave me the impression that Milan is not a city that I would enjoy living in. I know it's not fair of me to pass that judgement based on less than an hour, but it honestly felt like one of your not so interesting Midwest cities, rather than the fashion capital of the world. Like... Cincinatti. Innocuous building with very little charm and some jackass people wearing way too expensive clothes. I wasn't sorry to leave.
The TGV to Geneva was an adventure. And not the good, validating, I Am A Strong, Capable Woman kind of adventure. No, this was more the kind of Train Breaks Down At The Border, Board Another Train To Some Random Destination, Then Another To Another Random Destination And Finally One To Geneva, Where You Walk Around At 11 At Night In The Freaking Freezing Wind To One Hostel Which Has No Beds And Then To Another Hostel Which Is Once Again Full Of Very Loud People Who Don't Seem To Understand That I Haven't Slept In A Bed Since Leaving Greece And I Will Totally Cut A Bitch If You Don't Shut The Hell Up adventure. Not actually my favorite kind.
But the bed in this hostel was nothing short of heavenly, even if the Brazillian women who came in after me felt the need to open the window. Isn't it like 100 degrees in Brazil right now? Shouldn't you be freezing your asses off? It's a mad world. But I woke up in the morning and helped myself to the complimentary breakfast, marvelling at being in a place where the winter tourist industry is just as if not more thriving than the summer one. There were so many French school children that I thought I was in a Madeline video... except with more eyebrow piercings and public displays of affection. Though most of the other people in the hostel seemed to be using it as a jumping-off point for all the cool winter sports Switzerland has to offer, I was using it mostly for laundry and a nice walk around Geneva before I headed off to the south of France.
Let me tell you, with the prospect of the south of France, which inevitably puts one in mind of beaches and mild, blue-skied sunniness before me, Geneva's bitterly cold and biting wind was all the more difficult to stomach. I braved it to walk around some, but that breeze coming off the lake ended up being more than intrepid ol' me could take. I sought refuge for awhile in two of my most frequent haunts: the art museum and H&M. I adore both of these places, and have become a connoisseur of each in its own right. H&M is giving me an unhealthy obsession with dresses. It's a problem.
But my usual haunts could really only last me so long before I had to give up the ghost and find something else to do that wouldn't involve subsequent defrosting. I found a theatre, a little art place that showed films in their original version. The one they were showing the day I came seeking shelter was Bright Star, a film about John Keats. It was absolutely wonderful; one of the sexiest movies I've seen in a long time, and one of the most beautifully shot. I'm pissed that Abbie Cornish didn't get at least a nomination for Best Actress... she made my heart hurt. And the storyline was actually something that's close to my heart, since one of my favorite refuges to read and write and think in Rome is John Keats' grave. These connections are everywhere, if you're looking for them.
A word about the Swiss: I don't know if it's having to do with living in a bi-lingual country, or their proud and long history of neutrality, but the Swiss don't really strike me as having much of a collective personality. They're very mild and non-confrontational, from my limited point of view (not one car honked it's horn the entire time I was there)... they actually reminded me a little bit of Canadians. They were all very friendly and nice, but just kinda... neutral. Maybe it's just that I am hyper-aware of their political position and ideals... I don't know.
I spent just the one full day in Geneva before meeting Elsa in Marseille to begin our adventures in France. More on that soon; it'll probably be one of the last posts that I actually write from Europe, so you'll want to get your copy signed or something. I don't know how that makes sense at all. It doesn't. Leave me alone.
But not really the efficiency that you hear so much about. The journey from Greece to Switzerland was necessarily an epic one... you can't cover that much ground without it being exhausting and, well... epic. But as far as crossing continents goes, this time wasn't really too uncomfortable.
The ferry I took from Patra to Venice was called the Ikarus Palace, which is a name that would have made me a lot more nervous if it had been a plane and not a boat. I was just glad it wasn't called the Kracken or something similar. I've had enough with ironic names to last me for awhile, thanks. This boat was serious business. Like, it had cabins in varying levels of fanciness, two restaurants and a pool (which was empty) on the back deck. It really didn't have to feel like you were on a boat at all, if you had enough money. Just a really swank hotel.
I am poor. My Eurail pass gets me literally the bare minimum of comfort in any mode of transportation, and I'm young and spry so this is never a problem. But in this case the bare minimum would be sleeping on the deck. Outside. Yeah, not such a good idea in February, anywhere in the Northern hemisphere. Luckily, the nice usher guy ushed me into the area full of airplane seats, stating that under no circumstances was he going to let me sleep outside. Then he laughed and told me how lucky I was, because I would have had to pay 40 euros more to sleep in here if it had been April. Lucky me.
The setup was just like in an airplane, with one key exception: you could sleep on the ground. I haven't tried this in an airplane, but I have a feeling people might get a little miffed if you whipped out a blow up mattress (like a few of my fellow campers) and blew it up in the middle of the aisle. That was totally okay here, and everyone kinda set up camp in their little corner of our large communal cabin. Since the ship set sail at midnight, I immediately went to sleep, with only my sheet and a makeshift coat pillow. This was roughin' it. But not really, since it was decently warm in there and everyone was fairly respectful of the hours when normal people are sleeping, so though I was sleeping on a floor with nothing but a sheet, they weren't the worst two nights of my life.
I had never been out on the open sea before, and let me tell you: America was right. The ocean is a desert with its life underground. It was possibly the most desolate, isolated feeling I've ever had, though not necessarily in an unenjoyable way. It was actually kinda fun, except for the 20 euros I paid for the one and only not-so-awesome meal I had on the trip. Captive audience, I guess.
When I got back to Venice, I had a reaction that worried me. When I got off the boat and heard people speaking Italian and saw the relatively familiar watery city, I had to repress the urge to fall down and kiss the ground. For a girl who is going home in less than a month, this very strong reaction to a place that she's only been once before, a reaction that smacked of a long-awaited homecoming, was very worrying. Returning to Italy was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders; a weight of unfamiliarity and uncertainty that I guess must have been with me since I left Rome the first time to go to Dublin. Being back in Venice, after living for two months in places I've never been before, and where I didn't know what to expect, was much more comforting than I would have ever imagined. It really was like coming home, sort of. I can only imagine what it will be like to go back to Rome. It's going to tear me up.
But onto more entertaining subjects. I boarded a train from Venice to Milan, where I was then to get the TGV to Geneva. I was counting on the Swiss and their renowned efficiency to get me to Geneva early enough to find a hostel, as I hadn't booked one. I put my trust here, and that was where I got it wrong.
But to get away from the foreshadowing for a moment for a word about Milan. It's crazy. Like, women with chihuahuas wearing pink faux-fir parkas that match their dogs' pink faux-fir parkas. I was only around the freaky Fascist train station, so maybe it's different elsewhere, but the hour or so I was there gave me the impression that Milan is not a city that I would enjoy living in. I know it's not fair of me to pass that judgement based on less than an hour, but it honestly felt like one of your not so interesting Midwest cities, rather than the fashion capital of the world. Like... Cincinatti. Innocuous building with very little charm and some jackass people wearing way too expensive clothes. I wasn't sorry to leave.
The TGV to Geneva was an adventure. And not the good, validating, I Am A Strong, Capable Woman kind of adventure. No, this was more the kind of Train Breaks Down At The Border, Board Another Train To Some Random Destination, Then Another To Another Random Destination And Finally One To Geneva, Where You Walk Around At 11 At Night In The Freaking Freezing Wind To One Hostel Which Has No Beds And Then To Another Hostel Which Is Once Again Full Of Very Loud People Who Don't Seem To Understand That I Haven't Slept In A Bed Since Leaving Greece And I Will Totally Cut A Bitch If You Don't Shut The Hell Up adventure. Not actually my favorite kind.
But the bed in this hostel was nothing short of heavenly, even if the Brazillian women who came in after me felt the need to open the window. Isn't it like 100 degrees in Brazil right now? Shouldn't you be freezing your asses off? It's a mad world. But I woke up in the morning and helped myself to the complimentary breakfast, marvelling at being in a place where the winter tourist industry is just as if not more thriving than the summer one. There were so many French school children that I thought I was in a Madeline video... except with more eyebrow piercings and public displays of affection. Though most of the other people in the hostel seemed to be using it as a jumping-off point for all the cool winter sports Switzerland has to offer, I was using it mostly for laundry and a nice walk around Geneva before I headed off to the south of France.
Let me tell you, with the prospect of the south of France, which inevitably puts one in mind of beaches and mild, blue-skied sunniness before me, Geneva's bitterly cold and biting wind was all the more difficult to stomach. I braved it to walk around some, but that breeze coming off the lake ended up being more than intrepid ol' me could take. I sought refuge for awhile in two of my most frequent haunts: the art museum and H&M. I adore both of these places, and have become a connoisseur of each in its own right. H&M is giving me an unhealthy obsession with dresses. It's a problem.
But my usual haunts could really only last me so long before I had to give up the ghost and find something else to do that wouldn't involve subsequent defrosting. I found a theatre, a little art place that showed films in their original version. The one they were showing the day I came seeking shelter was Bright Star, a film about John Keats. It was absolutely wonderful; one of the sexiest movies I've seen in a long time, and one of the most beautifully shot. I'm pissed that Abbie Cornish didn't get at least a nomination for Best Actress... she made my heart hurt. And the storyline was actually something that's close to my heart, since one of my favorite refuges to read and write and think in Rome is John Keats' grave. These connections are everywhere, if you're looking for them.
A word about the Swiss: I don't know if it's having to do with living in a bi-lingual country, or their proud and long history of neutrality, but the Swiss don't really strike me as having much of a collective personality. They're very mild and non-confrontational, from my limited point of view (not one car honked it's horn the entire time I was there)... they actually reminded me a little bit of Canadians. They were all very friendly and nice, but just kinda... neutral. Maybe it's just that I am hyper-aware of their political position and ideals... I don't know.
I spent just the one full day in Geneva before meeting Elsa in Marseille to begin our adventures in France. More on that soon; it'll probably be one of the last posts that I actually write from Europe, so you'll want to get your copy signed or something. I don't know how that makes sense at all. It doesn't. Leave me alone.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Greece is the Word
Ah, Greece. It is a country, as I am sure you're aware, that is famous for a few things: being home to the civilization that laid the foundation for Western society as we know it, big fat weddings, and spinach pie, this last being perhaps better known and better loved than the first two.
Spinach Pie: An Ode
Oh! Thou flakey crust of phyllo which dost flake into my shirt! Why art thou so annoying and yet so undeniably delicious? Couldst thou not but hold it together, for love of me who bought thee? Thou costed but one euro and eighty, and arrived in my hand yet warm from the heat lamp, given me by a dark-browed Greek god, a Prometheus of iron-rich leafy greens! Oh snack so misleadingly healthy-sounding! Could I not but partake in thousands and more of thy golden-brown brethren with fain a thought for the butter teeming through their rich crusts? Nay, I shall cast mine eye upon the spinach, not the cheese which overtakes it in both calorie and taste... for spinach dost make thee far healthier a sustenance than I, who hast lived but on cocktail peanuts for lo these two months, have partaken in for long and longer. But must we be parted so soon, not four days e'er we first met? I shudder then to think of leaving Greece for want of thee, my cheesy flakey darling, though the country lack in charms compelling me to stay for their sake. May one then eat the Acropolis? Pick lovingly the crusts of the Parthenon that fall into the clothes? Nay, say I! They have yet their attractions to them, but I shall not ache and pine for them when this ferry boat doth take me hence as I shall for you, O Spinach Pie. My love rests then with thee for longer than these ruins may yet stand.
Spinach Pie: An Ode
Oh! Thou flakey crust of phyllo which dost flake into my shirt! Why art thou so annoying and yet so undeniably delicious? Couldst thou not but hold it together, for love of me who bought thee? Thou costed but one euro and eighty, and arrived in my hand yet warm from the heat lamp, given me by a dark-browed Greek god, a Prometheus of iron-rich leafy greens! Oh snack so misleadingly healthy-sounding! Could I not but partake in thousands and more of thy golden-brown brethren with fain a thought for the butter teeming through their rich crusts? Nay, I shall cast mine eye upon the spinach, not the cheese which overtakes it in both calorie and taste... for spinach dost make thee far healthier a sustenance than I, who hast lived but on cocktail peanuts for lo these two months, have partaken in for long and longer. But must we be parted so soon, not four days e'er we first met? I shudder then to think of leaving Greece for want of thee, my cheesy flakey darling, though the country lack in charms compelling me to stay for their sake. May one then eat the Acropolis? Pick lovingly the crusts of the Parthenon that fall into the clothes? Nay, say I! They have yet their attractions to them, but I shall not ache and pine for them when this ferry boat doth take me hence as I shall for you, O Spinach Pie. My love rests then with thee for longer than these ruins may yet stand.
Do you get it? Spinach pie is delicious. But there are other good things about Greece, too. It's just that very few of them are in Athens. There is that big, gorgeous hill surrounded by the amazing green gardens and the incredible view of the ocean and the city around, and then the mountains, but once you get back down into that city, it's kinda a different story. It's actually pretty sketchy. Like, as in the guy at my hostel made it a point to warn me about going out by myself at night. So, I did not.
There wasn't actually that much GREECE, as in blue skies, blue waters, white sand, white houses (blue and white being the national colors for a reason) in Athens. It's a city without much of the cliche personality that you want to immediately be inundated with upon entering the country of Greece. Oh well. There was an excellent museum, and while it rained a little while I was there, it was sunny and warm for more of the time, and so I hiked around in the olive tree-covered hills around the Acropolis and shopped in the area surrounding the hill on both days I was there.
Do you ever have those moments where you stop, take a look at where you are (disregarding completely the sketchiness seething below you) and just think "holy crap. How did I get lucky enough to end up here?"? That's kinda the impression I got while walking around for about a cumulative seven hours on the Acropolis. The sun was glinting off the marble, which was wet from the recent rain, the sea was blindingly bright with that same sun, and everything smelled like plants and rain, and not the vaguely fishy body odor smell that I came to associate with at least the quarter of Athens in which my hostel was located.
I tried very hard to resist the urge to sing, but the place reminded me so much of Gethsemane from Norman Jewison's celebrated (particularly by my mom and me) 1973 musical Jesus Christ Superstar (music by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber) that I just couldn't help myself, and I sang "Heaven on Their Minds" in full voice. It was okay though, since I was pretty much alone up there, it being February and all.
And so, even though I probably wouldn't recommend Athens as your one stop on any future Grecian excursions, it was worth it just to see the place where, for fifty years ages and ages ago, a bunch of guys wearing sheets laid the foundations for the way we see the world today. The Acropolis and its environs are worth the hype.
I will not, however, recommend a certain bit of cuisine which I tried in a taverna where I decided to treat myself on a bright Sunday afternoon to a bit o' Greek food. Which is, by the way, pretty delicious, if you don't count the goat. Yup, goat.
Not so good. Kinda tasted a little like licking a pine log. Which isn't as tasty as it might originally sound. But the frites were good, as was the tapenade, and the guys kept plying me with free, very cold water, which I appreciated at the time and took full advantage of, but later regretted as I scurried from street to street looking for a McDonald's. But eventually the emergency was averted and I returned to my hostel, and the next day made my way to Patra to take the ferry to Venice.
It was then on to Geneva, and then Marseille, Carnon and Toulouse with Elsa and some old friends of my mom's, Christy and Pierre. More about all these adventures, plus my soon-to-come trip to Spain and triumphant return to Rome (all returns to Rome are traditionally triumphant, you know) soon!
There wasn't actually that much GREECE, as in blue skies, blue waters, white sand, white houses (blue and white being the national colors for a reason) in Athens. It's a city without much of the cliche personality that you want to immediately be inundated with upon entering the country of Greece. Oh well. There was an excellent museum, and while it rained a little while I was there, it was sunny and warm for more of the time, and so I hiked around in the olive tree-covered hills around the Acropolis and shopped in the area surrounding the hill on both days I was there.
Do you ever have those moments where you stop, take a look at where you are (disregarding completely the sketchiness seething below you) and just think "holy crap. How did I get lucky enough to end up here?"? That's kinda the impression I got while walking around for about a cumulative seven hours on the Acropolis. The sun was glinting off the marble, which was wet from the recent rain, the sea was blindingly bright with that same sun, and everything smelled like plants and rain, and not the vaguely fishy body odor smell that I came to associate with at least the quarter of Athens in which my hostel was located.
I tried very hard to resist the urge to sing, but the place reminded me so much of Gethsemane from Norman Jewison's celebrated (particularly by my mom and me) 1973 musical Jesus Christ Superstar (music by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber) that I just couldn't help myself, and I sang "Heaven on Their Minds" in full voice. It was okay though, since I was pretty much alone up there, it being February and all.
And so, even though I probably wouldn't recommend Athens as your one stop on any future Grecian excursions, it was worth it just to see the place where, for fifty years ages and ages ago, a bunch of guys wearing sheets laid the foundations for the way we see the world today. The Acropolis and its environs are worth the hype.
I will not, however, recommend a certain bit of cuisine which I tried in a taverna where I decided to treat myself on a bright Sunday afternoon to a bit o' Greek food. Which is, by the way, pretty delicious, if you don't count the goat. Yup, goat.
Not so good. Kinda tasted a little like licking a pine log. Which isn't as tasty as it might originally sound. But the frites were good, as was the tapenade, and the guys kept plying me with free, very cold water, which I appreciated at the time and took full advantage of, but later regretted as I scurried from street to street looking for a McDonald's. But eventually the emergency was averted and I returned to my hostel, and the next day made my way to Patra to take the ferry to Venice.
It was then on to Geneva, and then Marseille, Carnon and Toulouse with Elsa and some old friends of my mom's, Christy and Pierre. More about all these adventures, plus my soon-to-come trip to Spain and triumphant return to Rome (all returns to Rome are traditionally triumphant, you know) soon!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Macedonia
I flatter myself that, at least in the last few months, I've seen quite a bit of the world. Of course, it's not even a tiny fraction of what there is to see, and not even a blip on the radar of all the experiences this world offers, but still. For a 21 year old kid, I feel like I'm doing okay. And really, I have the rest of my life to travel the world. I intend to.
When I went to visit Conor and Kacey, who are in the Peace Corps in Tetovo, Macedonia, it was without a doubt one of the biggest learning experiences of my life. In just about three days I saw more of the world than I have in the last 20 years put together, and I realized some things.
The world has problems. Deep-rooted, systematic problems that will not get fixed because we put band-aids on them. They have to be solved by single people working in single locations, making progress in inches, not miles. They will only get better with the sustained effort of people who are dedicated to a larger idea, yes, but more dedicated to the people they are helping to make the world better for themselves.
What struck me most about Macedonia was not the poverty, although it is painfully visible in the stray dogs running around, the litter, the half-finished buildings and the use of corrugated aluminum as a building material. It was not the corruption, although to hear Conor talk about the political situation in the country, and specifically in his municipality, seemed (to my privileged American mindset) the sort of thing that hasn't happened in the world (my immediate experience of the world got an awful lot larger after my visit to the Balkans) since Selma in the '60s. It wasn't the certifiable chaos of Kacey's school, where the kids run unsupervised through the hallways while the teachers congregate in the lounge. All of those things opened my eyes much wider than I ever thought they could go to life outside our bubble, and I'm so grateful for that. But none of these things struck me as much as one thing: the potential.
You have to remember that I was only there for literally three days, and so my perceptions are inevitably skewed. I haven't experienced the culture as Conor, Kacey and the rest of the PCVs have, and so I may be way off in making these observations. But, having been brought up to always see the good in things, I feel like I should say it anyway.
The teachers I met at Kacey's school really love her, and value the effort that she's making to improve the education they can give to their students. They were so welcoming to me when I went to school with her, but it was the kids who really floored me. People are pretty skeptical of miracles for some reason these days, which always confuses me, since I think you witness one every time you hear a little kid start to read. Or write. Or express what they're feeling with words.
And put all of this into a different language, a language which is the kids in question's second or third, and how can you deny that it's not a miracle to hear them read to you? The kids I met at this school have grown up in an educational system that, by American standards, might not even merit that name. And yet, with some good instruction, they're writing thank you notes to people who have donated books to their new library, in English, and teaching me how to say apple in the three languages they had to learn before this one. If the human mind isn't capable of miracles, then they really don't exist.
Seeing the brightly-painted room filled with bookshelves and CD players that was not too long ago a storeroom but is now a functioning library only reaffirmed for the first of many times during this visit that there is potential in human beings to overcome the most adverse circumstances, especially when I got to see it in use by the students. The little girls who excitedly showed us around the beautiful Painted Mosque in Tetovo, proudly displaying their own Qur'ans and inviting us to see the balconies for prayer made me think a little resentfully about the inequality that women the world over, and not only Muslim women, face. But these little girls made me think that devotion to one's faith may, slowly but surely, be becoming seperate from one's dictated place in the world. I really hope so.
It's slow going, for sure. From what Conor and Kacey told me, there's a lot of racism in Macedonia, which, by virtue of being a country cut out from a larger political entity in Yugoslavia, has a very mixed population, especially around the borders. Conor and Kacey (as you should be aware if you're reading their blog) have had to learn two different languages, Albanian and Macedonian, to work in Tetovo. This incredible feat they've accomplished only makes me believe more in the potential of the human mind, and the fact that they interact with everyone completely seperate from their ethnic identity makes me hope that someday the citizens of Macedonia might be able to start to do the same thing.
Conor and I spent a day with another PCV, Karen, at her home beside Lake Ohrid, which is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. It's crystal blue, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and breathtakingly lovely Byzantine churches... it's idyllic. I wish more people knew about it. Look at the New York Time's "Places to See in 2010", and then book your plane ticket. There's so much potential in this place to boost the economy of a country where a huge portion of the population is unemployed... if only the world knew about it.
It was wonderful to see my cousins, too. Of course. First of all, the human contact probably saved me from going stark raving mad from solitude, but it also meant that I got to hear their impressions of their lives right now and talk about life in general. It's people like them, like Karen, like their friend Ronan, and Vjosa and Alex who make me sure that things can get better, even in somewhere that's incredibly fraught with problems. Their efforts make me sure that, with the same level of commitment, awareness and action, each of us can make a difference to the world around us. It may not make the morning papers, but if it helps the people around you to make a better world for themselves, and they in turn help others... that's how things get done, right?
I don't want to be all sunshine and rainbows about this, because I think it's incredibly naive to minimize the sufferings of people by saying that with hard work it can get better. I believe that, but I also believe that the process can be hugely frustrating, and that's why the world still has the inconcievable problems it does. The way I have to see it is this: you feel better when you help other people. That selfish reason alone should be enough to make us keep doing it.
A little story about what happened after I left Conor and Kace:
I boarded a train for Thessaloniki, in Greece, planning to spend the night there before going on to Athens in the morning. It was dark, getting late, and the train stops at the border station, Gevgalja (forgive my spelling). And that's all she wrote. I wait for a few minutes before an engineer comes along and gestures me off. I don't speak Macedonian, it will surprise you to learn, and I have already said that it was dark and late... I was terrified. I honestly had no clue what was going on or what I was going to do. I just kept going up to random people asking "Thessaloniki?" with this scared, pathetic look on my face, and getting incomprehensible replies in languages I don't know, or shrugs.
Finally, I found what appeared to be the station manager or something, and asked him. He thought for a moment before the word came to him: tomorrow. This station appeared to me to be out in the middle of not very much, and so I wasn't sure what was going to happen now. I didn't have a plan, an inkling of how to ask for help... I started hyperventilating. This guy took pity on me, brought me into his office, made me tea and patted my arm. He and I cobbled together a conversation in which he asked me if I needed a hotel by drawing pictures and a game of charades, and I said yes. He then called me a taxi.
As we were waiting, we talked in our little language, and I learned that he has a ten year old son and a wife, and they live about 30 km outside of town. When the taxi arrived, he helped me get my stuff in, shook my hand and reminded me that I needed to be at the station at 10.00 the following morning. I never even asked his name.The taxi driver spoke English. He took me to this lovely little hotel, acting as my translator to get me a room there. He helped me take my stuff upstairs, asking where I had been in Macedonia. I told him Tetovo and Ohrid, and we bonded over how beautiful Ohrid is, and how more people need to know about it. He told me good luck and goodnight. I don't know his name either.
These two guys who didn't know me from Adam helped me out of a potentially dangerous situation (young American girl by herself in country where she doesn't speak language is always a little dangerous) out of the goodness of their hearts. They had no obligation to me at all. They were just good guys.
It's this kind of thing that makes me sure that things in the world will get better. Again, it's going to take awhile, and it's going to take a lot of work, but some of that work will just be being kind to strangers and helping people out when they need it.
That can't be that hard, can it?
When I went to visit Conor and Kacey, who are in the Peace Corps in Tetovo, Macedonia, it was without a doubt one of the biggest learning experiences of my life. In just about three days I saw more of the world than I have in the last 20 years put together, and I realized some things.
The world has problems. Deep-rooted, systematic problems that will not get fixed because we put band-aids on them. They have to be solved by single people working in single locations, making progress in inches, not miles. They will only get better with the sustained effort of people who are dedicated to a larger idea, yes, but more dedicated to the people they are helping to make the world better for themselves.
What struck me most about Macedonia was not the poverty, although it is painfully visible in the stray dogs running around, the litter, the half-finished buildings and the use of corrugated aluminum as a building material. It was not the corruption, although to hear Conor talk about the political situation in the country, and specifically in his municipality, seemed (to my privileged American mindset) the sort of thing that hasn't happened in the world (my immediate experience of the world got an awful lot larger after my visit to the Balkans) since Selma in the '60s. It wasn't the certifiable chaos of Kacey's school, where the kids run unsupervised through the hallways while the teachers congregate in the lounge. All of those things opened my eyes much wider than I ever thought they could go to life outside our bubble, and I'm so grateful for that. But none of these things struck me as much as one thing: the potential.
You have to remember that I was only there for literally three days, and so my perceptions are inevitably skewed. I haven't experienced the culture as Conor, Kacey and the rest of the PCVs have, and so I may be way off in making these observations. But, having been brought up to always see the good in things, I feel like I should say it anyway.
The teachers I met at Kacey's school really love her, and value the effort that she's making to improve the education they can give to their students. They were so welcoming to me when I went to school with her, but it was the kids who really floored me. People are pretty skeptical of miracles for some reason these days, which always confuses me, since I think you witness one every time you hear a little kid start to read. Or write. Or express what they're feeling with words.
And put all of this into a different language, a language which is the kids in question's second or third, and how can you deny that it's not a miracle to hear them read to you? The kids I met at this school have grown up in an educational system that, by American standards, might not even merit that name. And yet, with some good instruction, they're writing thank you notes to people who have donated books to their new library, in English, and teaching me how to say apple in the three languages they had to learn before this one. If the human mind isn't capable of miracles, then they really don't exist.
Seeing the brightly-painted room filled with bookshelves and CD players that was not too long ago a storeroom but is now a functioning library only reaffirmed for the first of many times during this visit that there is potential in human beings to overcome the most adverse circumstances, especially when I got to see it in use by the students. The little girls who excitedly showed us around the beautiful Painted Mosque in Tetovo, proudly displaying their own Qur'ans and inviting us to see the balconies for prayer made me think a little resentfully about the inequality that women the world over, and not only Muslim women, face. But these little girls made me think that devotion to one's faith may, slowly but surely, be becoming seperate from one's dictated place in the world. I really hope so.
It's slow going, for sure. From what Conor and Kacey told me, there's a lot of racism in Macedonia, which, by virtue of being a country cut out from a larger political entity in Yugoslavia, has a very mixed population, especially around the borders. Conor and Kacey (as you should be aware if you're reading their blog) have had to learn two different languages, Albanian and Macedonian, to work in Tetovo. This incredible feat they've accomplished only makes me believe more in the potential of the human mind, and the fact that they interact with everyone completely seperate from their ethnic identity makes me hope that someday the citizens of Macedonia might be able to start to do the same thing.
Conor and I spent a day with another PCV, Karen, at her home beside Lake Ohrid, which is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. It's crystal blue, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and breathtakingly lovely Byzantine churches... it's idyllic. I wish more people knew about it. Look at the New York Time's "Places to See in 2010", and then book your plane ticket. There's so much potential in this place to boost the economy of a country where a huge portion of the population is unemployed... if only the world knew about it.
It was wonderful to see my cousins, too. Of course. First of all, the human contact probably saved me from going stark raving mad from solitude, but it also meant that I got to hear their impressions of their lives right now and talk about life in general. It's people like them, like Karen, like their friend Ronan, and Vjosa and Alex who make me sure that things can get better, even in somewhere that's incredibly fraught with problems. Their efforts make me sure that, with the same level of commitment, awareness and action, each of us can make a difference to the world around us. It may not make the morning papers, but if it helps the people around you to make a better world for themselves, and they in turn help others... that's how things get done, right?
I don't want to be all sunshine and rainbows about this, because I think it's incredibly naive to minimize the sufferings of people by saying that with hard work it can get better. I believe that, but I also believe that the process can be hugely frustrating, and that's why the world still has the inconcievable problems it does. The way I have to see it is this: you feel better when you help other people. That selfish reason alone should be enough to make us keep doing it.
A little story about what happened after I left Conor and Kace:
I boarded a train for Thessaloniki, in Greece, planning to spend the night there before going on to Athens in the morning. It was dark, getting late, and the train stops at the border station, Gevgalja (forgive my spelling). And that's all she wrote. I wait for a few minutes before an engineer comes along and gestures me off. I don't speak Macedonian, it will surprise you to learn, and I have already said that it was dark and late... I was terrified. I honestly had no clue what was going on or what I was going to do. I just kept going up to random people asking "Thessaloniki?" with this scared, pathetic look on my face, and getting incomprehensible replies in languages I don't know, or shrugs.
Finally, I found what appeared to be the station manager or something, and asked him. He thought for a moment before the word came to him: tomorrow. This station appeared to me to be out in the middle of not very much, and so I wasn't sure what was going to happen now. I didn't have a plan, an inkling of how to ask for help... I started hyperventilating. This guy took pity on me, brought me into his office, made me tea and patted my arm. He and I cobbled together a conversation in which he asked me if I needed a hotel by drawing pictures and a game of charades, and I said yes. He then called me a taxi.
As we were waiting, we talked in our little language, and I learned that he has a ten year old son and a wife, and they live about 30 km outside of town. When the taxi arrived, he helped me get my stuff in, shook my hand and reminded me that I needed to be at the station at 10.00 the following morning. I never even asked his name.The taxi driver spoke English. He took me to this lovely little hotel, acting as my translator to get me a room there. He helped me take my stuff upstairs, asking where I had been in Macedonia. I told him Tetovo and Ohrid, and we bonded over how beautiful Ohrid is, and how more people need to know about it. He told me good luck and goodnight. I don't know his name either.
These two guys who didn't know me from Adam helped me out of a potentially dangerous situation (young American girl by herself in country where she doesn't speak language is always a little dangerous) out of the goodness of their hearts. They had no obligation to me at all. They were just good guys.
It's this kind of thing that makes me sure that things in the world will get better. Again, it's going to take awhile, and it's going to take a lot of work, but some of that work will just be being kind to strangers and helping people out when they need it.
That can't be that hard, can it?
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Slow Down, You Crazy Child...
Good advice from Billy Joel. But Billy Joel is a rich bastard who can make it to Europe whenever the heck he feels like it, and do it in a helicopter made out of gold. I cannot. And so I do not slow down, even if Vienna waits for me.
Vienna. Vienna is more than disgusting little nuclear-bomb resistant sausages and Hapsburgs. But really, the Hapsburgs are a big part of it. I didn't see any sausages. Vienna is, as those of you who have not been living under a rock since the reign of Gilgamesh will know, about Music. With a capital M. Mozart, Haydn, Joel... they're all part of the music scene here. Empress Maria Theresa was once quoted as saying that the further one gets from Vienna, the deafer one becomes for want of beautiful sounds. Well, the traffic noises are as annoying here as anywhere else I've been, but in one sense, she was right.
I did a lot of walking in Vienna, of course, and saw some beautiful things. But I'm always writing about the beautiful things I come upon while walking, and it probably gets really old if you're reading this. In Vienna I also did something different; something that I literally have never done before in my whole life, and which I'm glad I saved for the Music Capital of the World.
I went to the Opera.
Yeah, you heard me right. The Opera. That thing with the viking hats and the very large people in very large costumes... and also the stuff that's going on onstage.
What in the heck were you doing at the Opera, Maggie? You may ask. A legitimate question, considering that my current wardrobe consists of spandex, two increasingly threadbare pairs of jeans and Patagonia thermals... I'm not really fancy enough to be going to the Opera, right?
Actually, it seems that the city so renowned for its music has a rather large tourist industry having to do with... music. And so I wasn't the only sweaty, muddy tourist who decided to make a night of it at the grand ol' opera. But the opera is something like a lesson in class warfare. It's the only venue which I can immediately think of (although I'm sure there are plenty of others) in which social stratification is not only acceptable, it is implicitly part of the experience.
There's a concept you might have heard of called standing room only. In the States, we use this little bit o' jargon to connote an immensely popular happening, at which people literally have to stand in the back because there just aren't enough seats. In the Vienna Opera House, it's a different story.
Here's the tale of my standing room saga: I inquired of a man in a cape standing outside the Opera House where I might find the standing room tickets. He instructed me to go around to the back of the House (see the class warfare in action) and I would see a door that said STANDING. This I did, and I went inside, to find a pen full of cattle waiting to be led to their last final bit of culture before heading off to that big George Foreman in the sky. Or at least that's what this line felt like. We waited for about forty minutes in line, and then were herded up to the counter, where we expressed our preference of ground floor, mezzanine or balcony. The first option was going for four euros, the other two for three. Given the advice of the woman at my hostel, I splurged.
We, the citizens of the ground floor, were then herded through some more corridors, until we came to a door, where we queued for a few minutes before being instructed to remove a piece of clothing (woah! this isn't what I signed up for!) and tie it to the bar to mark our place to stand (oh.). We were then set free for the remaining forty minutes until the Opera began... more like free range chickens now than the cattle we had been. I celebrated my freedom with an correspondingly elegant dinner at Chez le Roi de Burger. I then made my way back to my alloted space of brass bar, where I stood among the other Plebians as the show began.
For those of you who have never experienced the opera, it's something else. The melodrama of the 'acting' itself would give you a nosebleed, but then you've got this chorus of a million people wailing and dancing and booming out music in some largely incomprehensible language... it's a little bit of an overload. Luckily, the plot was one I am familiar with: Othello, by Verdi. I consider Othello to be Shakespeare's most heart-wrenching tragedy, and Iago to be one of literature's most perfect baddies. He's just so despicable in every way that you want to punch him in the jaw and then make him a soprano with a well-aimed kick. Well, you could try that with this Iago, but if he sat on you, you'd basically go the way of Desdemona.
I understand the physicality of opera, and I know that blowing people's faces off with your voice causes your lungs to expand, subsequently broadening your rib cage... but it's still fun to see a fat guy singing opera. Who doesn't love a good cliche?
While I was reasonably comfortable with the plot in it's general sense, one of the best thing about the play is how heart-wrenchingly sad the build-up is, with Iago's elegantly worded speeches and Cassio and Desdemona's accidental escalation of Othello's anger... it's all just really beautifully written.
And so you can imagine how pumped I was when I noticed the little screens running across the bottom bar, translating the Italian back into English... it loses something in the translation to the operatic format, I guess. Iago's soliloquies are more trite... they talk about the devil a good deal more, and he feels the need to point out ("See, he is drunk as a lord!") what the other characters are doing. At all times. He becomes less a quintessential example of the depths humans will sink to for revenge, and more that girl in your sixth grade class who had to exclaim "EW! Johnny's picking his nose!" in the middle of a movie about the Holocaust. He's almost evil in how annoying he is. So, I stopped reading the subtitles and let the music do the talking.
I'm sorry to those of you who love the medium, but the music wasn't really any more moving than the stupid words for me. When I read Othello as Will wrote it, it gives me a pit in my stomach, like Desdemona and Othello were real people, and my friends. Or at least the Brad n' Jen kind of celebrities that you love to live vicariously through. I feel for them. I hate Iago. I feel so sorry for poor, oblivious Cassio. I laugh at Rodrigo for being a complete tool. They are people, and I care about what happens to them. In the opera, I was so distracted by the odd quality of their voices (me being used not to operatic theatre, but musical theater... which is not even in the same gene pool) that I totally forgot to be sad. And I got the church giggles when Desdemona temporarily awakes from death (I do this in the play, too, but this was funnier) and sings her final epitaph. It's funny, because she's just been strangled. Like, died from lack of oxygen. And then she sings this really freakin' high note. It just doesn't compute.
And so, I admit it. I am a Phillistine. I just didn't get the appeal. I'm not going to lie, I went into the thing kinda expecting, given my romantic disposition, to have one of the Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman moments where my life changed completely... but while she was in a gorgeous red dress and sitting next to the beautiful Richard Gere, who kept whispering in her ear, I was in muddy jeans and damp shoes and standing next to a rather large German lady with impressive BO. So, I guess it's not exactly the same thing. Maybe when a stupidly rich, very attractive man flies me somewhere on his private jet and borrows me jewels from Harry Winston, I'll like the opera better. Still, the experience is something I wouldn't have traded for the world.
That was the highlight of my time in Vienna, which also included visits to the art museum (duh), the Belvedere and Schonbrun palaces, and creeping around the Spanish Riding School, hoping to see a Lipizanner. Nope. Couldn't do it. But the Opera was certainly the most notable part of the stay. On to Budapest!
Hungary. It's full of Hungarians. Regrettably, I only got to stay there one night before heading on to what ended up being absolutely my favorite part of this adventure thus far (the part where I was not talking to myself all day), and it was definitely not enough. Especially given the less-than-favorable circumstances. The entire country got absolutely dumped on the day that I got there... we're talking like, two feet of the white stuff. I, being the intrepid explorer I am, nevertheless went out and tried to see some of the city via my usual method. But Budapest is one of those inconvenient cities that is not all located in the same ten feet of real estate. Like Rome, for example. And so seeing all the things you're supposed to in Budapest proved a lot harder than it would in other places.
I finally gave up after about two hours of trudging through the (unshoveled) snow, and went to partake in the part of Hungarian tourism that I was most looking forward to: the eating. The Hungarians have literally some of the best food on the planet, if you're forgive my superlative. It's just really good. And you have to remember that I'd been walking around in the snow, so I could have eaten a cardboard hamburger at that point, but instead I got to eat pork tenderloin with mustard sauce. Mmmm mmmm good.
There was another girl in the restaurant who kept regarding me curiously. As we were both single diners, of course. She came over and introduced herself as Sonja, and asked if she could sit with me. This all being in English, of course, since I haven't learned to speak Magyar yet. It's on my list. Right along with every other language that makes me look like an idiot. Currently Greek. Moving on.
Sonja and I finished our meals together, and then decided to go out for coffee. She's a German student working in the field of renewable energy, which is apparently a huge one in Germany. We talked for a long time about global politics and how hard it is to bake in a country that's not your own... basically everything. It was one of those nice random experiences that makes you remember that friends aren't built in to your life... in order to make any, you have to put yourself out there. It was also an awesome exercise in listening to the world through the point of view of a different culture. I like those exercises.
I headed to Beograd the next day, and then on to Tetovo, Macedonia to spend time with my cousins. This was easily my favorite part of the adventure, and I'll try to do it justice. Stay tuned!
Vienna. Vienna is more than disgusting little nuclear-bomb resistant sausages and Hapsburgs. But really, the Hapsburgs are a big part of it. I didn't see any sausages. Vienna is, as those of you who have not been living under a rock since the reign of Gilgamesh will know, about Music. With a capital M. Mozart, Haydn, Joel... they're all part of the music scene here. Empress Maria Theresa was once quoted as saying that the further one gets from Vienna, the deafer one becomes for want of beautiful sounds. Well, the traffic noises are as annoying here as anywhere else I've been, but in one sense, she was right.
I did a lot of walking in Vienna, of course, and saw some beautiful things. But I'm always writing about the beautiful things I come upon while walking, and it probably gets really old if you're reading this. In Vienna I also did something different; something that I literally have never done before in my whole life, and which I'm glad I saved for the Music Capital of the World.
I went to the Opera.
Yeah, you heard me right. The Opera. That thing with the viking hats and the very large people in very large costumes... and also the stuff that's going on onstage.
What in the heck were you doing at the Opera, Maggie? You may ask. A legitimate question, considering that my current wardrobe consists of spandex, two increasingly threadbare pairs of jeans and Patagonia thermals... I'm not really fancy enough to be going to the Opera, right?
Actually, it seems that the city so renowned for its music has a rather large tourist industry having to do with... music. And so I wasn't the only sweaty, muddy tourist who decided to make a night of it at the grand ol' opera. But the opera is something like a lesson in class warfare. It's the only venue which I can immediately think of (although I'm sure there are plenty of others) in which social stratification is not only acceptable, it is implicitly part of the experience.
There's a concept you might have heard of called standing room only. In the States, we use this little bit o' jargon to connote an immensely popular happening, at which people literally have to stand in the back because there just aren't enough seats. In the Vienna Opera House, it's a different story.
Here's the tale of my standing room saga: I inquired of a man in a cape standing outside the Opera House where I might find the standing room tickets. He instructed me to go around to the back of the House (see the class warfare in action) and I would see a door that said STANDING. This I did, and I went inside, to find a pen full of cattle waiting to be led to their last final bit of culture before heading off to that big George Foreman in the sky. Or at least that's what this line felt like. We waited for about forty minutes in line, and then were herded up to the counter, where we expressed our preference of ground floor, mezzanine or balcony. The first option was going for four euros, the other two for three. Given the advice of the woman at my hostel, I splurged.
We, the citizens of the ground floor, were then herded through some more corridors, until we came to a door, where we queued for a few minutes before being instructed to remove a piece of clothing (woah! this isn't what I signed up for!) and tie it to the bar to mark our place to stand (oh.). We were then set free for the remaining forty minutes until the Opera began... more like free range chickens now than the cattle we had been. I celebrated my freedom with an correspondingly elegant dinner at Chez le Roi de Burger. I then made my way back to my alloted space of brass bar, where I stood among the other Plebians as the show began.
For those of you who have never experienced the opera, it's something else. The melodrama of the 'acting' itself would give you a nosebleed, but then you've got this chorus of a million people wailing and dancing and booming out music in some largely incomprehensible language... it's a little bit of an overload. Luckily, the plot was one I am familiar with: Othello, by Verdi. I consider Othello to be Shakespeare's most heart-wrenching tragedy, and Iago to be one of literature's most perfect baddies. He's just so despicable in every way that you want to punch him in the jaw and then make him a soprano with a well-aimed kick. Well, you could try that with this Iago, but if he sat on you, you'd basically go the way of Desdemona.
I understand the physicality of opera, and I know that blowing people's faces off with your voice causes your lungs to expand, subsequently broadening your rib cage... but it's still fun to see a fat guy singing opera. Who doesn't love a good cliche?
While I was reasonably comfortable with the plot in it's general sense, one of the best thing about the play is how heart-wrenchingly sad the build-up is, with Iago's elegantly worded speeches and Cassio and Desdemona's accidental escalation of Othello's anger... it's all just really beautifully written.
And so you can imagine how pumped I was when I noticed the little screens running across the bottom bar, translating the Italian back into English... it loses something in the translation to the operatic format, I guess. Iago's soliloquies are more trite... they talk about the devil a good deal more, and he feels the need to point out ("See, he is drunk as a lord!") what the other characters are doing. At all times. He becomes less a quintessential example of the depths humans will sink to for revenge, and more that girl in your sixth grade class who had to exclaim "EW! Johnny's picking his nose!" in the middle of a movie about the Holocaust. He's almost evil in how annoying he is. So, I stopped reading the subtitles and let the music do the talking.
I'm sorry to those of you who love the medium, but the music wasn't really any more moving than the stupid words for me. When I read Othello as Will wrote it, it gives me a pit in my stomach, like Desdemona and Othello were real people, and my friends. Or at least the Brad n' Jen kind of celebrities that you love to live vicariously through. I feel for them. I hate Iago. I feel so sorry for poor, oblivious Cassio. I laugh at Rodrigo for being a complete tool. They are people, and I care about what happens to them. In the opera, I was so distracted by the odd quality of their voices (me being used not to operatic theatre, but musical theater... which is not even in the same gene pool) that I totally forgot to be sad. And I got the church giggles when Desdemona temporarily awakes from death (I do this in the play, too, but this was funnier) and sings her final epitaph. It's funny, because she's just been strangled. Like, died from lack of oxygen. And then she sings this really freakin' high note. It just doesn't compute.
And so, I admit it. I am a Phillistine. I just didn't get the appeal. I'm not going to lie, I went into the thing kinda expecting, given my romantic disposition, to have one of the Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman moments where my life changed completely... but while she was in a gorgeous red dress and sitting next to the beautiful Richard Gere, who kept whispering in her ear, I was in muddy jeans and damp shoes and standing next to a rather large German lady with impressive BO. So, I guess it's not exactly the same thing. Maybe when a stupidly rich, very attractive man flies me somewhere on his private jet and borrows me jewels from Harry Winston, I'll like the opera better. Still, the experience is something I wouldn't have traded for the world.
That was the highlight of my time in Vienna, which also included visits to the art museum (duh), the Belvedere and Schonbrun palaces, and creeping around the Spanish Riding School, hoping to see a Lipizanner. Nope. Couldn't do it. But the Opera was certainly the most notable part of the stay. On to Budapest!
Hungary. It's full of Hungarians. Regrettably, I only got to stay there one night before heading on to what ended up being absolutely my favorite part of this adventure thus far (the part where I was not talking to myself all day), and it was definitely not enough. Especially given the less-than-favorable circumstances. The entire country got absolutely dumped on the day that I got there... we're talking like, two feet of the white stuff. I, being the intrepid explorer I am, nevertheless went out and tried to see some of the city via my usual method. But Budapest is one of those inconvenient cities that is not all located in the same ten feet of real estate. Like Rome, for example. And so seeing all the things you're supposed to in Budapest proved a lot harder than it would in other places.
I finally gave up after about two hours of trudging through the (unshoveled) snow, and went to partake in the part of Hungarian tourism that I was most looking forward to: the eating. The Hungarians have literally some of the best food on the planet, if you're forgive my superlative. It's just really good. And you have to remember that I'd been walking around in the snow, so I could have eaten a cardboard hamburger at that point, but instead I got to eat pork tenderloin with mustard sauce. Mmmm mmmm good.
There was another girl in the restaurant who kept regarding me curiously. As we were both single diners, of course. She came over and introduced herself as Sonja, and asked if she could sit with me. This all being in English, of course, since I haven't learned to speak Magyar yet. It's on my list. Right along with every other language that makes me look like an idiot. Currently Greek. Moving on.
Sonja and I finished our meals together, and then decided to go out for coffee. She's a German student working in the field of renewable energy, which is apparently a huge one in Germany. We talked for a long time about global politics and how hard it is to bake in a country that's not your own... basically everything. It was one of those nice random experiences that makes you remember that friends aren't built in to your life... in order to make any, you have to put yourself out there. It was also an awesome exercise in listening to the world through the point of view of a different culture. I like those exercises.
I headed to Beograd the next day, and then on to Tetovo, Macedonia to spend time with my cousins. This was easily my favorite part of the adventure, and I'll try to do it justice. Stay tuned!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Czech It Out! Bavarians!
Prague is an amazing city. In a lot of ways, but in one way that stuck out to me in particular: it's Florence. Like, literally. Take Florence, construct it during the Baroque period instead of the High Renaissance, and add some latitudnal degrees, and you've got Prague. The resemblances are uncanny.
Prague is built in the hills on a beautiful, wide river. It's got beautiful bridges and spires pushing up towards the sky from everywhere around the city, and churches around every corner you come across. It also has a lot of sculpture arbitrarily stuck around the city. All of these are also characteristics of Florence.
Also, just as Florence had a historical moment where everyone who was anyone, the Real Men of Genius, were all living there. Prague had the same phenomenon, a lot later. Like, with Kafka and... well, it did have a Renaissance of it's own, with intellectuals and stuff, but I don't really care about the world post-Titian, so you'll forgive me if I ask you to Google instead of me having Google and then pretend I just whipped that info out of nowhere. But really, the cities are alike in more than just orientation.
I amused myself mostly, in my very abbreviated sojurn, by walking around Prague's Old Town, which is a beautiful example of Baroque architecture in it's most ornate and fully-developed form. I found this hilariously witty, since I, the Rome-phile, consider anything above Padua to be completely devoid of Baroque design and lacking the aesthetic to effectively pull it off. Basically, Prague blows my thought right out of the water. It is one of the most architecturally homogenous places I've ever been, though it still has room for some decidedly northern influences, too.
The entirety of the Old Town in an Unesco World Heritage Site, which means that you can basically frolick around the place and know that, even though you only have essentially twelve hours in which to explore the place, you can rest assured that it will continue to look almost exactly the same the next time you find yourself in the Czech Republic.
I amused myself by walking around during the evening I arrived, window shopping for the garnets that the Czech Republic is apparently renowned for, and discovering a lovely little treat which goes by the name of Spiced Wine. I am not a seventy year old man, and to the best of my knowledge I was born after the reign of Henry VIII, but for some reason this drink just made me really happy. I bought my first cup from a street vendor, and liked it so much that, gawl darnit, I wanted more. I figured that I deserved a nice meal, considering my frugality over the previous few weeks (subsisting on rolls pilfered from the breakfast bar in Oslo), and so I set off in search of some good Czech food.
I found a fun little tavern-type place with a promising looking menu and one of those guys standing out front who tries to seduce you into eating there. Generally, I avoid these guys, because I, like other Americans, hate to be solicited at dinner time. Which is inevitably when they call, isn't it? But this guy was sweet and gave me a cupon for 20% off the already reasonably priced menu, so I went for it.
One of the things this place did was set alcohol on fire. Professionally, and with much pomp. I didn't get any fiery alcohol, since I really enjoy my eyebrows, but I saw several groups of people get more and more ferschnockered, holding snifters literally bigger than their heads, which the skilled wait-staff continuously filled with booze, warming it over an open flame and then lighting it on fire. I was incredibly impressed, but content to just sip my mulled wine and leave the X-treme boozing to others.
I did do some (for me) X-treme eating. Now, I'm not a PETA activist by any stretch of the imagination. I am all for the ethical treatment of animals, but I also enjoy a good hunk o' cow now and again, if you get my drift. But eating a bunny... I've always drawn the line there. Chickens are dumb, I was raised in Montana, so cows have always been associated with food, and basically my favorite dinner ever is pork tenderloin, and I'm not about to give that up. I'm good with most of your normal meat products. Bologna excluded. That's not normal. But I've been telling myself in each new place I go that I should try one thing that I never have before. Be it Swedish design or herring for breakfast or inhaling putrid THC fumes... and when put next to those things, rabbit with cream sauce and potato dumplings seemed pretty safe. And depressingly enough, it was delicious. The experience of this little Czech tavern and this food was possibly one of the highlights of the trip up to this point. It was just warm and cozy, and I really enjoyed myself. Some of that was definitely the wine, but I think there was legit enjoyment there as well.
I amused myself the next day by walking around the Unesco Site, gawping. I hiked up to the cathedral, which has an astonishing view of the rest of the city, and walked around in the palace grounds for a bit. It was a surprisingly mild and sunny day, so I took advantage of it by being outside. I got attacked by pigeons when I tried to spread my infectious good will by sharing my final stale Norwegian roll with them. That's what you get for being generous.
Prague was wonderful. What little I saw of it makes me sure that I have to go back at some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. I hopped a train that afternoon and headed to Munich.
Munich was cold. Germany in general was freezing when I was there, but then again it was January, so I guess I can't blame it. I stayed at a hostel called Wombats... it's run by Aussies, and overrun by them, too. All of my roommates in the eight person dorm were Australian college students on their summer break. I laughed my ass off when I heard that. And the best part about all the Australians was the fact that the time I was in Munich happened to include Australia Day, which is, I gather, something like the 4th of July.
Imagine being in a hostel full of Australians, who are not in Australia, on Australia Day. There's a word for this: shitshow. We as Americans do the same thing: we get really excited about our national holiday and want to share our excitement with others, even when we're not in our own country. I remember being in Paris on the 4th and lighting sparklers and singing "America the Beautiful" on a bateau-mouche as we passed the mini Statue of Liberty. It was something like that, except with lots more beer and instead of 18 high school girls and two chaperones, it was something like two hundred college kids and no chaperones. Do that math.
Walking around towns cannot be well-described in words. Or at least I don't feel like putting the effort in right now. So you'll just have to go there yourself and see what I mean when I say that I think Munich is more of a summer city. It has a ton of parks, one of which, Englischer Gardens, is larger than Central Park. The Glockenspeil is very, very cool, but I think it would be cooler with a warm summer breeze blowing in your face as you gaze up at it rather than a frigid wind that makes you feel like you just swallowed a scoop of ice cream whole.
I loved walking around, don't get me wrong, but it seems to me that Munich will be much more hospitable in about two months, when it's thawed out a bit. I did eat a pretzel though, so you can relax. I've got the complex carbs under control.
I'm sleepy now. I'm going to try really hard to account for everything and everywhere here, more for my own sake than because I think you're waiting with baited breath to hear about Vienna and Budapest, but still. More soon. Sleep now.
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Belgians Share a Border With The Dutch... and the Germans, Actually.
I'm not racist against the Dutch, like Nigel Powers, but having grown up with some pseudo-French influences, I might have a little predisposition to lump the Belgians in with the North Dakotans and the Ohioans. But going to Brussels made me appreciate some of the truly wonderful things about the Belgians: waffles and chocolate.
Admission: I was only there for about three hours. Prohibitively expensive hostel prices and a lack of really important art museums, etc. meant that I didn't give Brussels the consideration it deserves. Here's my thinking on this: I speak French. Not really well, but I do. This, plus the fact that France is home to some of the most important art in the world, indicates that I'll probably be back in that part of the world before I get a chance to go back to Budapest, Prague, Tetovo... so I made a sacrifice.
It wasn't actually that big of a sacrifice, since I did achieve the one thing that people are going to ask me about when I say I visited Belgium. I ate a waffle. And it was delicious. That doesn't actually do it justice, but since they honestly can't be made as well anywhere else in the world, I'll let you go to Brussels and discover what I mean for yourself.
I mostly just bopped around the center of town with my waffle, window shopping for lace and chocolate. They're really not joking when they say that's what Belgium is known for. Of course, I was right by the beautiful, if very touristy, Grande Place, and so it's a given that most of these shops were capitalizing on the tourists walking around, exclaiming at the admittedly mind-blowing, gilt-encrusted Baroque-ish buildings of the square. It was a good way to spend a morning. And, of course, it makes me eager to go back there when I have the chance to spend more than a few hours, but in this case, Berlin awaited.
Immediate impressions of Berlin: freaking Arctic. Literally. By this point, I have pretty much been to the North Pole. I mean, I was in a place just a few days before where they had REINDEER on the menu. (Okay, so that's probably not PC at the real North Pole, but still. Stockholm and Oslo are pretty far north.) But Berlin was SO cold. At first. I got in late at night, and it was as windy as anywhere I've ever been (and I come from Great Falls) and so I wasn't particularly favorably impressed at first, thinking I might just scrap this whole part of the trip and head directly to Greece.
But when I got to the hostel, I decided I was moving in. The Grand Hostel Berlin is amazing. Like, with fluffy white duvet covers and internet in the rooms. I wanted to stay there forever.
One of the people I was sharing the room with was a guy from Melbourne, Austrailia named James. He and I got to chatting about how unfortunate it is to be an English-speaker who can't speak German when you're in Germany, but how it doesn't really matter anymore, since English is literally a global language.
A quick word on this phenomenon: I am the daughter of a language teacher. As such, I have been raised with the idea that language is the key to culture, and that culture is the key to understanding how other people operate, and if we understand how other people operate, perhaps we wouldn't blow each other up as often. And so the fact that in each new country I visit, it's not required of me to even learn the rudiments of the language because everyone I encounter speaks English better than I do is something of a mixed blessing.
The wonderful part is that it's made it possible for me to connect with a lot more people and get their opinions of the world, which is so much smaller and more closely-knit than it used to be. It's encouraging for me to talk with people from Germany, Korea, Austrailia, Brazil and find that their opinions of a lot of the most pressing issues that we as a generation are going to have to face are very comparable to mine. The fact that we all share a common language has been enormously helpful in letting me get familiar with other ways of thinking and reasoning and how people's opinions are influenced by their upbringing. That the common language happens to be my native one is just very lucky.
The guilty part is: given the respect that both of my parents have for other cultures, and the mentality that they've raised me with that going to another culture means accepting the differences of that culture, language included, means that I feel really awful when I have to speak English when that is not the native language. Growing up in Bush2 Amuhrica, as a Democrat, I've grown used to thinking that the rest of the world thinks that we are a bunch of loud, violent, inconsiderate cowboys who want everyone else to do what we say is right to make it easier for us. From what I've encountered in some places here, it's not really that far off the mark. Or maybe I'm hypersensitive to Ugly Amuhricans. I don't know. But the fact remains that I feel like I'm playing into this stereotype every time I have to ask something in English.
My solution: British accent. I'm really quite pahssable aht tawking with a British accent, and since hanging out with James for pretty much the entyah toyme Oy was een Buhleen, I'm pretty good at Austrailian, too. I figure the Aussies and the Brits can afford to look culturally insensitive more than we can, at the moment. And so I never use an American accent when necessity dictates I have to speak English.
It really is quite amazing that essentially the whole world speaks English, though. I mean, most of the people I encounter are in the service industry, and so it's basically a necessity, but I'm beginning to get the impression that English is really the language in which the world is conducted. And that is giving me this whole new interpretation of America's place in the world, and Great Britain's place before us. To be so powerful that the whole world basically defers to your language as the one in which business is done... that's an awful lot of responsibility. I don't think we, the civilians living our private lives in the States, have any conception of just how influential we have been politically in the last century. Like, really. That might sound arrogant, but the fact that I can go up to basically anyone on the street and say (in my Brit or Aussie accent, of course) something in English, and they will answer me in English says a whole lot about the state of the world today. It also indicates just how careful we should be with the power it connotes. Or connoted. I think the United States of America is in a weird position globally right now.
Anyway. Berlin. It's... functional. Well, if you think about it, the whole city was bombed the crap out of less than a century ago, and so obviously there are not a whole bevy of pretty old buildings the like of which I have become accustomed to. It's a very modern city, and it's huge. I'm fairly used to cities where you can walk from place to place without feeling like you're Forrest Gump (he ran, but you get my point), but let me just say that it's totally plausible for Berlin to have been divided into East and West little more than twenty years ago. There's certainly enough room.
My favorite residual little quirk from before the wall fell happens to be East Berlin's jaunty little traffic guys. They're hilarious... Google image them right now. I'll wait.
Aren't they funny? And they're also really handy, for when you are walking around, in orienting yourself with the past, as to what side of the wall you would have been on if you were there in 1988. I mean, if you're an American, you would be on the West side, or you would be dead, but the thought remains the same.
That was really the most striking thing about Berlin: the immediacy of it's history. I mean, each and every place I've been to has some big historical significance, and you've heard me rhapsodize about Rome and how replete with world-changing history it is, but Berlin changed the world while people I know were alive. I mean, I guess if I'm feeling crazy I could say that I spiritually know Michelangelo or something weird like that. But, I actually know people who are now and were then functionally alive when Germany brought the world to its knees. Walking past the Brandenburg Tor and the Reichstag brings to mind haunting, frightening images of Nazi soldiers goosestepping, of Hitler orating, his creepy side part sticking to his head with fervent persperation... it's all very real. And it all happened a very short while ago.
Berlin isn't a place that dwells on the past, though. Sure, the reminders are all around, even in the absence of something. In areas where there are large swaths of new-looking buildings, you know that a bomb was dropped. The lack of the wall has its own substance, consisting of plaques and flowers and memorials and curious people gazing from one side of an invisible void or the other.
But Berlin is a thoroughly modern, incredibly cosmopolitan city with a huge population of really diverse people. James and I had dinner at an Indian restaurant that was literally some of the best food I've had in a good long while. We walked through the museum island, where the natural history, fine art, history of Germany and other museums are located. It was a fun way to spend the day, especially with a new friend with whom I shared a language but absolutely not a culture. I forgot how revelatory asking questions of someone can be. Did you know Austrailians, as a people, hate Dr. Pepper? Neither did I.
From Berlin I headed to Prague, then Munich, Vienna and Budapest. Tomorrow I'm off to Beograd, from where I will head to Macedonia to visit my cousins Connor and Kacey, who are in the Peace Corps. Excited! I can't believe how fast the days are going; it seems completely improbable that I will be back in the States in less than a month. I'm just trying to soak it all up as much as I can until then. I guess, in a sense, going back to the States after all this time and all these new perspectives will be an adventure all it's own. Onward! More soon.
Admission: I was only there for about three hours. Prohibitively expensive hostel prices and a lack of really important art museums, etc. meant that I didn't give Brussels the consideration it deserves. Here's my thinking on this: I speak French. Not really well, but I do. This, plus the fact that France is home to some of the most important art in the world, indicates that I'll probably be back in that part of the world before I get a chance to go back to Budapest, Prague, Tetovo... so I made a sacrifice.
It wasn't actually that big of a sacrifice, since I did achieve the one thing that people are going to ask me about when I say I visited Belgium. I ate a waffle. And it was delicious. That doesn't actually do it justice, but since they honestly can't be made as well anywhere else in the world, I'll let you go to Brussels and discover what I mean for yourself.
I mostly just bopped around the center of town with my waffle, window shopping for lace and chocolate. They're really not joking when they say that's what Belgium is known for. Of course, I was right by the beautiful, if very touristy, Grande Place, and so it's a given that most of these shops were capitalizing on the tourists walking around, exclaiming at the admittedly mind-blowing, gilt-encrusted Baroque-ish buildings of the square. It was a good way to spend a morning. And, of course, it makes me eager to go back there when I have the chance to spend more than a few hours, but in this case, Berlin awaited.
Immediate impressions of Berlin: freaking Arctic. Literally. By this point, I have pretty much been to the North Pole. I mean, I was in a place just a few days before where they had REINDEER on the menu. (Okay, so that's probably not PC at the real North Pole, but still. Stockholm and Oslo are pretty far north.) But Berlin was SO cold. At first. I got in late at night, and it was as windy as anywhere I've ever been (and I come from Great Falls) and so I wasn't particularly favorably impressed at first, thinking I might just scrap this whole part of the trip and head directly to Greece.
But when I got to the hostel, I decided I was moving in. The Grand Hostel Berlin is amazing. Like, with fluffy white duvet covers and internet in the rooms. I wanted to stay there forever.
One of the people I was sharing the room with was a guy from Melbourne, Austrailia named James. He and I got to chatting about how unfortunate it is to be an English-speaker who can't speak German when you're in Germany, but how it doesn't really matter anymore, since English is literally a global language.
A quick word on this phenomenon: I am the daughter of a language teacher. As such, I have been raised with the idea that language is the key to culture, and that culture is the key to understanding how other people operate, and if we understand how other people operate, perhaps we wouldn't blow each other up as often. And so the fact that in each new country I visit, it's not required of me to even learn the rudiments of the language because everyone I encounter speaks English better than I do is something of a mixed blessing.
The wonderful part is that it's made it possible for me to connect with a lot more people and get their opinions of the world, which is so much smaller and more closely-knit than it used to be. It's encouraging for me to talk with people from Germany, Korea, Austrailia, Brazil and find that their opinions of a lot of the most pressing issues that we as a generation are going to have to face are very comparable to mine. The fact that we all share a common language has been enormously helpful in letting me get familiar with other ways of thinking and reasoning and how people's opinions are influenced by their upbringing. That the common language happens to be my native one is just very lucky.
The guilty part is: given the respect that both of my parents have for other cultures, and the mentality that they've raised me with that going to another culture means accepting the differences of that culture, language included, means that I feel really awful when I have to speak English when that is not the native language. Growing up in Bush2 Amuhrica, as a Democrat, I've grown used to thinking that the rest of the world thinks that we are a bunch of loud, violent, inconsiderate cowboys who want everyone else to do what we say is right to make it easier for us. From what I've encountered in some places here, it's not really that far off the mark. Or maybe I'm hypersensitive to Ugly Amuhricans. I don't know. But the fact remains that I feel like I'm playing into this stereotype every time I have to ask something in English.
My solution: British accent. I'm really quite pahssable aht tawking with a British accent, and since hanging out with James for pretty much the entyah toyme Oy was een Buhleen, I'm pretty good at Austrailian, too. I figure the Aussies and the Brits can afford to look culturally insensitive more than we can, at the moment. And so I never use an American accent when necessity dictates I have to speak English.
It really is quite amazing that essentially the whole world speaks English, though. I mean, most of the people I encounter are in the service industry, and so it's basically a necessity, but I'm beginning to get the impression that English is really the language in which the world is conducted. And that is giving me this whole new interpretation of America's place in the world, and Great Britain's place before us. To be so powerful that the whole world basically defers to your language as the one in which business is done... that's an awful lot of responsibility. I don't think we, the civilians living our private lives in the States, have any conception of just how influential we have been politically in the last century. Like, really. That might sound arrogant, but the fact that I can go up to basically anyone on the street and say (in my Brit or Aussie accent, of course) something in English, and they will answer me in English says a whole lot about the state of the world today. It also indicates just how careful we should be with the power it connotes. Or connoted. I think the United States of America is in a weird position globally right now.
Anyway. Berlin. It's... functional. Well, if you think about it, the whole city was bombed the crap out of less than a century ago, and so obviously there are not a whole bevy of pretty old buildings the like of which I have become accustomed to. It's a very modern city, and it's huge. I'm fairly used to cities where you can walk from place to place without feeling like you're Forrest Gump (he ran, but you get my point), but let me just say that it's totally plausible for Berlin to have been divided into East and West little more than twenty years ago. There's certainly enough room.
My favorite residual little quirk from before the wall fell happens to be East Berlin's jaunty little traffic guys. They're hilarious... Google image them right now. I'll wait.
Aren't they funny? And they're also really handy, for when you are walking around, in orienting yourself with the past, as to what side of the wall you would have been on if you were there in 1988. I mean, if you're an American, you would be on the West side, or you would be dead, but the thought remains the same.
That was really the most striking thing about Berlin: the immediacy of it's history. I mean, each and every place I've been to has some big historical significance, and you've heard me rhapsodize about Rome and how replete with world-changing history it is, but Berlin changed the world while people I know were alive. I mean, I guess if I'm feeling crazy I could say that I spiritually know Michelangelo or something weird like that. But, I actually know people who are now and were then functionally alive when Germany brought the world to its knees. Walking past the Brandenburg Tor and the Reichstag brings to mind haunting, frightening images of Nazi soldiers goosestepping, of Hitler orating, his creepy side part sticking to his head with fervent persperation... it's all very real. And it all happened a very short while ago.
Berlin isn't a place that dwells on the past, though. Sure, the reminders are all around, even in the absence of something. In areas where there are large swaths of new-looking buildings, you know that a bomb was dropped. The lack of the wall has its own substance, consisting of plaques and flowers and memorials and curious people gazing from one side of an invisible void or the other.
But Berlin is a thoroughly modern, incredibly cosmopolitan city with a huge population of really diverse people. James and I had dinner at an Indian restaurant that was literally some of the best food I've had in a good long while. We walked through the museum island, where the natural history, fine art, history of Germany and other museums are located. It was a fun way to spend the day, especially with a new friend with whom I shared a language but absolutely not a culture. I forgot how revelatory asking questions of someone can be. Did you know Austrailians, as a people, hate Dr. Pepper? Neither did I.
From Berlin I headed to Prague, then Munich, Vienna and Budapest. Tomorrow I'm off to Beograd, from where I will head to Macedonia to visit my cousins Connor and Kacey, who are in the Peace Corps. Excited! I can't believe how fast the days are going; it seems completely improbable that I will be back in the States in less than a month. I'm just trying to soak it all up as much as I can until then. I guess, in a sense, going back to the States after all this time and all these new perspectives will be an adventure all it's own. Onward! More soon.
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