Paris

Well, this is it. My last night not only in Paris, but in Europe. Tomorrow, and actually in less than twelve hours, I'll be on a plane back to the US. This will most likely be the last post of this blog, unless the journey home is so eventful that it requires a post itself.

I got into Paris late Friday night, and found my friend's flat without difficulty despite the late night. I've been sleeping on her convertible couch, but it's been completely fine. She actually even has something of a view of the Eiffel Tower; only the top, of course, because there are buildings in the way, but quite a good location.

My first actual day in Paris, my friend and I went for a picnic in the Buttes Chaumont park, which was quite nice. I actually fell asleep for about an hour, making that the fourth park and fourth city in which I have fallen asleep -- London, Hamburg, Salzburg, and now Paris. Traveling is exhausting.

Saturday night I actually spent at the opera, seeing The Valkyrie, the second part of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung cycle. It was not at the actual Paris Opera house, but the Opera Bastille, a much more modern looking building, and of course it was sold out by the time I got there for all the seats so I had to get a standing ticket, but the standing ticket was not as bad as I'd been thinking it would be. There were backrests for us to lean against, or even hop up and sit on if necessary, and there was no one behind me for me to block if I did sit, so I frequently did. It was actually surprisingly comfortable, because I could stand if I needed to stretch my legs, and sit if I needed to sit, which is more than I'd got for any other theatre. And considering this was a show lasting five hours, I very much appreciated it.

I definitely enjoyed it, even though it was in German and I couldn't see the posted subtitles, not that subtitles would have done me any good because they were probably in French anyway. I still got quite a lot of the story, and looked up the summary later, but it was really good. Of course I was expecting that from Paris, but I'm glad my hopes were not disappointed. I actually like opera. Who would have thought?

Sunday was my day for Versailles, because Versailles was the one thing I knew I wanted to do when I decided on Paris as part of my trip. The day was more overcast than sunny, but that did not deter me, nor even the slight rain of the morning (early in the morning there'd even been a thunderstorm). There was no rain once I got there, at least. The line for the tickets was ridiculous, but I dutifully queued up and got my ticket, one for the palace and one for the gardens.

I did the palace first, and spent about two hours there. That was now the fourth royal residence in Europe I've seen, from Charlottenburg in Berlin to the Residence in Munich to Schoenbrunn in Vienna, but wow, there's a reason people tried to model things on Versailles. Every room I went in had ceiling paintings, most of them were quite full of gold, and the Hall of Mirrors was gorgeous. And this not even touching the grounds.

Because I spent the rest of the day on the grounds. Fountains everywhere, and because it was a weekend they were turned on and playing music for a couple hours in the afternoon. So many different groves and statues and avenues...I got rather a lot of pictures there. Amazing. I only left when it was just about to close.

I had dinner, then went back to my friend's flat, where we watched a movie. I slept in, because I am trying to screw up my sleeping schedule a bit for tomorrow. Hopefully I will get little enough sleep tonight that I will need a nap tomorrow afternoon, on the plane. I certainly do not want to be awake the entire time I'm traveling, because the time I get back to Reno will be roughly twenty-four hours after I'm going to try to get up tomorrow. That will be a lot easier to endure if I can sleep on the plane.

My only plan for today was to take a boat ride down the Seine. What I ended up doing was just walking to the boat, which was across the Seine and down a bit from the Eiffel Tower, which is within walking distance of my friend's flat. I did get a picture of it, and I'm glad, because my camera's battery was about ready to die the entire day and I couldn't find the charger. Hopefully I will be able to find it when I finally get to unpack everything.

Anyway. I took the boat ride, then walked up to the Champs-Elysees. I took a picture of the Arc de Triomph from a distance, but I wasn't intending to get closer, because I'd decided to go to the Ile de la Cite, which is in the opposite direction. I had crepes when I got there, because I've always wanted to have crepes in France, but while it was good, the best crepes I've had were actually in Galway.

After crepes, I went to Notre Dame. Outside it a family asked me to take a picture of them, and they must have noticed my American accent when agreeing, because they asked me where I was from, and when I said Nevada, they said they were from California. And not just from California, but from Chico. Chico! Small world. I walk around Venice with a girl from Seattle and take a picture in front of Notre Dame of a family from Chico.

I went inside and got a few pictures, and after that went to the Saint Chapelle. I've seen so many churches on my trip, but I'd heard about this one's windows, and wanted to see them. I spent the last of my cash getting in, and wow. Those are definitely the most amazing stained glass windows I've ever seen, in any church or out of one. Most of the walls were windows, and apparently they tell stories from the Bible, but I do not know the Bible well enough to know the stories the windows depict.

After the Saint Chapelle, I walked along Pont Neuf, then headed to the Opera house because I'd forgotten to get a picture of it the first time I was there, and then from there I headed to Place de la Concorde, with its fountains and obelisk. There my camera died. Hopefully it took the picture of the obelisk, but I'm not sure.

I was tired by then because I'd been walking for most of the day, so I headed back for my friend's flat. On the way I bought her a bottle of champagne, which by complete accident (because I certainly don't know the difference) ended up being a rather good one. I'm glad, because she's been awesome enough to have given me a place to sleep and most of my meals for free, and I wanted to give something back. Her boyfriend even cooked a really good French meal for me tonight. She appreciated it, at least.

So, tomorrow I leave for home. I have my ticket for the metro and the bus to get me to the airport, so all I have to do is get there, check in, and make it to the plane. Then I change planes in New York, and then Dad picks me up from San Francisco. Eight hours on a plane, then six hours on a plane, then four hours in a car. It's going to be a rather long day, but it's just one day, and then I'll be home.

I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by. It seems just a few weeks ago that I was getting settled in London, but now it's over. It doesn't feel like I've been four months away from America.

I learned so much on this trip, though I think I won't know how much I really learned for quite a while yet. Still, I think it's definitely time for me to go to bed on my last night in Europe.

Nice

I'm in Nice. I had to take five trains to get here from Venice and I was a bit nervous because the last time I had to change trains several times I got stuck overnight in the middle of nowhere, but this time I managed it perfectly. There was almost a snag because I was supposed to leave Milan fifteen minutes after getting there, and the train from Venice to Milan was a few minutes late. The train started moving before I found my seat, but I did make it, and all the rest.

My hostel in Nice is great. Free internet, free towels, and even free wine. Red wine, so not my favorite, but maybe in France I'll develope more of a taste for it. Heh. Maybe.

I got here at about five, so the first thing I did, after dropping off my stuff, was to go looking for a swim suit. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of clothes stores in France, but none of them had a big selection of swim suits, much less ones I liked in my size. There was a mall, but none of the stores there were any better. It was getting late and I wasn't sure how late shops were open here, so I was afraid I might have to leave my swim suit for the next day, but finally I found something most like a department store at home, with an actual swim suit section, so I finally found something. It also had a grocery section, so I got enough food to last all my meals here but one, and for less than twenty euro.

I met some people in the kitchen/lounge area while making my dinner and talked to them for awhile, and a few hours later they invited me to go to the beach with them. It was after midnight, and I'd been up since before seven that morning, but I agreed, very glad that I did find a suit that day. So now I've been swimming in the Mediterranean after midnight, when the water was cool but not as cold as the Pacific, and I very much enjoyed it. The beaches in Nice are all rocks, not sand, so I did not enjoy that part, but I still had a great time.

I'd been basically intending to spend my days in Nice at the beach, but some of the people from the midnight swim invited me to go to Monaco with them the next day, and I agreed. How many chances am I gonna get to go to the second smallest country in the world, second only to Vatican City? We took a bus there, which was only one euro and half an hour each way. First we went to the Monte Carlo Casino, but there was a ten euro entrance fee for the casino proper and none of us wanted to pay that when we weren't going to gamble a lot. There was a smaller building off to the side with only slots and video roulette. The others gambled a bit, but I sat at a table near the bar and watched tennis on TV. I might have also gambled a bit if there had been tables and blackjack, but I had no interest in slots or roulette. I also really don't want to lose what money I have left. I've gambled in Vegas, and now I've been in the casino at Monte Carlo, and that's enough for me.

After that we really just wandered around. We tried for awhile to find the aquarium, but it was proving elusive, and eventually we just decided that it was getting late enough that we wouldn't have enough time there to be worth spending the money to go in. So mostly we just walked around the harbor and looked at the fancy yachts, and the fancy cars (one of the people there was a big car buff and he kept exclaiming at how amazing these cars were, and how one or two weren't technically even available for sale yet, which I guess says something about how stinking rich the people in Monaco are), and also the amazing scenery, because wow, the French Riviera is gorgeous. I knew it would be, but still, wow.

When we got back to Nice I went to the train station to try and make a reservation for the night train today, but the ticket machines were all in French and the ticket counters were only for trains for the day. That seemed weird to me, but I figured I'd just get my reservation today. Hah. I tried to do that this morning, and the night train tonight is all full. I had to make a reservation for an earlier train that gets into Paris late tonight, but I emailed the friend in Paris I'm going to stay with and she said it's all right if I get there early.

This did mean that I had less time for the beach than I'd wanted, so I went back to the hostel and packed myself lunch, and finally went to the beach. That was nice, once I found some fairly comfortable positions on the rocks. I spent several hours there, and I think I managed to avoid getting sunburned.

My train leaves in about an hour, and then tonight I'll be in Paris, my final stop!

Austria and Italy

I feel rather perpetually behind, but I've been feeling too tired to write a long blog post catching up. Let's see how well I do today.

Salzburg is easy to finish off, because my third day I just went to the old town (across the river Salzac from the new town), wandered around a lot, then went back to the Mirabel gardens for awhile and hung out. I did very much like Salzburg. Small enough to walk around in, but gorgeous countryside, bigger cities pretty close by, and still things to do.

The next day I left for Vienna. The countryside was not quite as beautiful as Munich to Salzburg, but still quite pretty. When I got out of the train station in Vienna, I got a bit lost trying to get to my hostel. I found the right street, but ended up going the wrong way down it. I knew the hostel was supposed to be close by, so when it felt like I went too far I turned around and decided to go back the other way, and then I passed the train station...and there it was. Definitely the closest I've been to a train station, even in Munich, or here in Venice. I felt a bit silly for having gone the wrong way, but at least I did find it.

After I checked in, I went to the Sigmund Freud museum, which was the building where he lived and practiced while in Vienna. It was small but interesting. I really prefer specialized museums unique to specific places to bigger art galleries or ethnology museums that I can find in almost all the cities I've been to so far.

After the Sigmund Freud museum I took a tram around the Ring Road, which is a ring around the center of the city and shows off a lot of its attractions, like the Hofburg Palace (and everything in it, including the Spanish Riding School and the Vienna Boys' Choir), the Museums Quarter, and the Parliament. Very cool. Lots of impressive buildings. I especially liked the Parliament building, though I think it ranks after Westminster in terms of impressiveness. So far the parliaments I've seen in order of impressiveness are London, Vienna, Berlin, then Edinburgh, but I'm looking forward to seeing the Paris government buildings.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, though it was raining and I got rather wet. Still, after Tacoma and London I'm pretty used to that, and it didn't bother me too much. My hostel gave me a map that included sights and restaurants/cafes they liked, so for dinner I decided to go to this pizza place that was advertised as cheap but good. And it was cheap but very good, but even better, the pizza was the size of a medium at home, rather than the one-person pizzas that are mostly what I've seen in Europe, so I had some to take back for lunch.

The next day I went to the cemetery, which seems to be a tourist attraction for two reasons: the famous people interred there, including the composers Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, and Beethoven, and the sheer impressiveness of the headstones. That's a word that I'm using a lot in relation to Vienna, but it really fits. Many of these graves were just so elaborate, filled with carvings and statuary...I didn't get many pictures, though. I did of the composers' graves (at least, the composers I recognized), but I didn't feel right about taking pictures of random graves, no matter how pretty and/or impressive they were.

I spent the rest of the day at Schoenbrunn Palace, which had been home to Empress Maria Theresa, and then later to Emperor Franz Josef I, and as befitting an imperial residence, it was...impressive. Hah, there's that word again. Likewise with the gardens, or even more so. Those are definitely the biggest gardens I've seen, with a lot of tree-lined lanes, fenced-off green areas, manicured flower beds, fountains, including a huge one in the middle, a mock Roman ruin, an obelisk, and a maze area, and those are just the places I went to. There's also a zoo and some other things I didn't get to, because it took me a couple hours to see the things I did. There was an adorable little train going all over the park, but I didn't take it. I did do the maze, though, which was fun, though fairly small.

This was Vienna, a significant city for music, and I did want to see something before I left. At Schoenbrunn I saw advertisements for Mozart's The Magic Flute at the marionnette theatre, so I got a ticket for that. And while it was marionnettes and not people on stage, I thought it was very well performed, and I enjoyed it very much, even though it was in German and I understood at most scattered words here and there. I still managed to get most of the story, at least. I'd been dubious about opera ever since that production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in London, which no one in my group liked, but this I really enjoyed. I think I'm going to see if I can go in Paris.

The third day I went and took pictures of some things in the center, like the Hofburg Palace and the museums and the Parliament. By the Hofburg Palace there's this statue of Mozart and in front of it is a grassy area with a flower bed in the shape of a treble clef. That was pretty cool. Also, I went to the Opera and took a tour of that. It was very cool, even if I wasn't going to be seeing a performance there. But I was glad that I saw The Magic Flute, even if at a marionnette theatre and not the Opera, because I haven't heard of the ones that were playing while I was there and I'm glad I at least knew something about the one that I saw.

My hostel offered free pasta in the guest kitchen, so I had pasta for dinner, then went to catch my night train to Venice. Twelve hours, gah. At least I was able to sleep through most of that, so it wasn't too bad.

I got to Venice at about eight-thirty in the morning, and this is seriously the most confusing, illogical city I've ever been to. I definitely got lost trying to find my hostel, but that's because the address on the hostel website, which I'd used for googlemaps, was outdated. Apparently what I'd needed to do was go across the first bridge I saw and down the street, and there it was, a good two minutes from the train station. Instead I wandered across Venice with all my luggage for forty-five minutes, until finally some helpful Venetian managed to get me to the original address, and someone there directed me to the right place.

But then I got to my hostel, which is the most adorable place ever. My room is like a little apartment, with its own tiny kitchen. It has an outer door and then a courtyard and then my room, and there's another courtyard out the window, and it's really cute. Definitely a nice place. Anyway, I dropped my stuff off and, armed with the map given to me at reception, wandered out into Venice.

Maps are the most useful things ever. Venice has a ridiculous number of long dark alleys it tries to call streets, but thankfully I have a good head for maps, so once I had one, I had no problem getting around. The guy at reception marked this loop that would take me to most of the sights in the city and then back around to the hostel, so that's what I did the first day. I didn't really go in anywhere, but I saw the Rialto, and the Piazzo San Marco and Basilica di San Marco, and quite a lot of churches. This city has the highest concentration of churches I think I've ever seen.

Day two I went to Murano, a little island just off Venice proper, because that's where the famed glassmaking is. It was an adorable place in itself, but somehow I managed to spend four hours there just looking at the glass. In some shops, the shopkeepers would just be casually shaping glass behind the counter. I've been to the Tacoma Glass Museum several times and have seen people making glass before, so I didn't spend that long watching, but Murano had so much more variety than the museum gift shop in Tacoma. Unsurprisingly, hah. But yeah. Beautiful glass.

After that I just looked around Venice some more, then went back to my hostel and talked for about an hour with a roommate from Brazil. I went for dinner after that and had a caprese salad, because that is one of my favorite salads ever and I enjoyed having on in Italy. Then I just went back to my hostel and stayed in the common room for awhile, talking to people. At around nine some people were really hungry and decided to go for pizza, and I went with them but only had a couple slices. Just spent a lot of time talking to my fellow travelers.

Today one of my roommates and I decided to catch some sights together and also find me a dress, because I've been wanting to go dress-shopping. We took the bus (basically a ferry, because of course people don't drive here, they walk or take boats) down the Grand Canal, which was very pretty, and got off at Piazzo San Marco. We decided against going in the duke's palace because it was expensive, but the Basilica was free. She couldn't go in because she was wearing shorts and sandals, but I had jeans and proper shoes so I went in. And of course I would expect this from a basilica, but it was definitely one of the prettiest and most impressive churches I've been to. The floor was all mosaic and the ceiling all gold and pictures, and though we're not supposed to take photos I did anyway.

I found a dress I liked after that, and it wasn't very expensive, so whoo! Something nice to wear in Paris, especially if I do manage to get to the opera. Now all I need is a bathing suit for Nice, because I didn't bring one, and then I think I'll be done with accumulating things, for which my luggage will thank me, I'm sure.

I have five mosquito bites right now. I will be very pleased if I manage to make it out of this mosquito-ridden area with only five.

I made seat reservations for my journey to Nice, which will be something of a hassle. The Eurail timetable I have implied that there's a train from Venice to Nice, but apparently there's not just one. I have to take five trains tomorrow, three of them for less than half an hour, so that'll be...fun. At least once I get to Nice, I'll have just the train to Paris left. And then, just the two flights home.

I have very much enjoyed going to all these different places, but traveling so much is tiring, and not being settled in one place for longer than three days at a time. I was happy in London, but though I definitely appreciate everything I've done since getting to the continent, I will be happy to go home.

Salzburg

Right now I'm in Vienna, though tomorrow I take a night train to Venice, so I suppose this was my last full day in the German-speaking countries. I can now recognize some amount of German, even if this is limited to things like "exit", "price", and various things having to do with trains. Pretty much the only thing I've consistently been able to actually say is "thank you very much", though.

To catch up from my last post, for some of my last few hours in Munich, Maddy and I went to the Augustiner-Brau brewery for dinner, and we sat in the beer garden, and I had one of those huge liter mugs of (very good) beer. Well, Munich is well-known for its beer and beer gardens -- of course I couldn't leave without properly experiencing that! :p We just sat there for a few hours and talked, which was a nice relaxing way to end what had been a fairly intense day.

On Monday she went back to Hamburg and I left for Salzburg, which I guess is even closer to the border of Germany than Reno is to California. But anyway, I checked into my hostel there, and went to watch The Sound of Music, which I guess they were showing once or twice a day there. XD I did manage to watch that movie most of the way through all three days I was there, but I think I'm gonna be at saturation point for The Sound of Music for awhile after that and the tour I did.

I went for a walk around the city in the afternoon, but by that point I was rather tired and just wanted to spend most of the day relaxing in the hostel, so I did. Of course, that's when my power cord decided to die, so there went the reliability of my favorite relaxation method. Once of my roommates was kind enough to let me charge my computer on her cord, so I could still use it in Salzburg, but once I got to Vienna I had to use the hostel's computers because my computer's dead now. Bother. This means that I can't charge my iPod, can't charge my Nintendo DS, and can't transfer pictures from my camera to my computer. Thankfully, I haven't used my iPod since I last charged it, so hopefully it'll be fine for the plane rides home, and I still have over 300 pictures left before the memory card on my camera is full, but I'm going to have to be careful with all three things now.

For my second day in Salzburg I wanted to do the Sound of Music tour, and there was a deal going on with doing that and a tour of the salt mines close by, so I decided to do that. I would have rather done the Eagle's Nest or Bavarian Lakes tours, but they didn't have the deal with the Sound of Music tour. And it ended up being just as well, because the salt mine tour took me almost to the Eagle's Nest, so I could still have a rather amazing view of the Bavarian Alps, and I saw three different lakes with the Sound of Music tour, so I was very pleased with my choice.

For the salt mine we ended up actually going back into Germany. We were only a few minutes out of Salzburg when the tour guide pointed out where the old border post was, which I guess is gone now because of the EU. He dropped the salt mines group off at the mine, and we had to get dressed up in miner's coveralls; I got someone to take a picture of me in mine. We went into the mines, which were fairly cool. Whenever we had to get to a lower level we took a miner's slide, which I enjoyed, and at one point we took a barge across a small lake and they did light shows across the water. The mine is still a working mine, but they've really figured out how to appeal to tourists, I guess.

After the salt mines the bus picked us up again and we went to go pick up the people at the Eagle's Nest and stopped at the parking lot below it for about ten minutes, which is where I got some amazing pictures of the Bavarian Alps. Then we went for lunch in Brechtresgaden, a small, picturesque town, and then went back to Salzburg just in time for the Sound of Music tour in the afternoon.

One of the first things our tour guide there mentioned was that there was actually a bar (of sorts) on board the bus. Then he asked us a trivia question, saying that the first person who got the answer right would get a free beer, soft drink, or bottle of water. And of course I only mention this because I was the one who won. The question was what was the name of the mountain Maria is on in the beginning of the movie, when she only mentions the name once, also in the beginning. I haven't actually seen the very beginning of the movie in a long time, but I knew the answer because it was the main big mountain in Salzburg and my salt mines tour guide told us the name, so I only had to remember from the morning, not from the movie.

It was a pretty cool tour. We stopped by the lake that was supposed to be near the von Trapp villa, except that apparently the lake and the house where it was filmed are not in the same location, so filming scenes that involved both the back of the house and the lake must have been fun. We saw the gazebo, where our tour guide told us that people aren't allowed inside it anymore after an 82-year-old woman broke her hip trying to dance like Liesl and Rolf did. We also headed out of town to Mondsee, which is where the cathedral where Maria and Captain von Trapp got married is, and on our way there is where we passed all the lakes. We had some free time in Mondsee, so I saw the cathedral and then went down by the lake and stuck my feet in for a while. That was so nice, because my feet are starting to form blisters, even though I've only been wearing my most comfortable shoes.

The tour was over when we got back to Salzburg, and I went to the Mirabel gardens for a picnic dinner of stuff I bought at the local supermarket. The Mirabel gardens are very pretty, and also where they filmed most of the scenes for the Do-Re-Mi song, so I got lots of pictures of places I recognized from that.

I'm getting pretty tired now, so I'll finish up Salzburg and talk about Vienna either tomorrow or in Venice.

Dachau

So, probably the most important thing to mention right now is that one of the most annoying things that could have happened to me, computer-wise, just did. Yesterday my power cord stopped working, which means that whenever I use my computer, my battery will run down. Right now a kind roommate is letting me use her power cord, but I can't count on that everywhere. This means I save my battery for when I really need it and only use my hostel's computers. I haven't exactly been spending all my time on the internet lately, but this means even less than usual, so I will probably be even less punctual (than usual :p) when answering email and updating this blog.

Anyway. Sunday was my last full day in Germany, and I spent a lot of it at Dachau. I'm...not really sure what to say about it. My tour guide asked us on the way there to think about why we were going -- why, when we could have done so many other things in Munich, we decided to go to the site of a former concentration camp. There were rather a lot of different answers for me. I've seen so many Holocaust exhibits and memorials since coming to Europe that I wanted to see one of those camps with my own eyes. They're so important to Germany's history that it felt wrong to leave Germany without seeing one when I had the opportunity. The tour guide said we could have gone to a beer garden or something more cheerful, but I felt that I couldn't just see the happy things and ignore the horrible. There was even a bit of feeling about how I'm mostly German, even though we've been American since before the National Socialists came to power, and it feels sort of like a part of my history, even though my only German connection is really in my ancestry. I don't know if I can explain better than that, but in any case, I really felt like I had to go to Dachau.

But I still don't know what to say about it. I was there, but I wasn't THERE. I could see the "work will set you free" sign on the gate, but not know the despair of the people working in the camp and not being set free at all, except in death, until finally the war was over. I could see the outline of the "no smoking" sign in the administration building, put there as a taunt to the prisoners who were not allowed cigarettes, and the shelves in the barracks for inmates not allowed to have possessions to put on those shelves, but I can't even imagine what they felt and what they went through. I have no personal framework for that. And of course I'm glad that I have no personal framework for imagining, much less understanding, but I could only feel the dimmest reverberating echo of their anguish as a visitor sixty years later, and it still only seems slightly more real to me. I saw it, and was horrified, and incredulous that this could have existed at all, but I could not be there as they were there. I do not regret that, and yet I do. I don't know.

I saw the gate, and the roll call square, and the administration building, and the barracks. The bunker built only for torture. The watchtowers and the fence. The road to the crematorium, and the plaque bearing the words "think about how we died here". And I saw the vibrantly green grass and the trees with branches thick with leaves, and wow was that incongruous, except that the Nazis used that to their advantage, because in the beginning the world could not believe the horrors happening there.

I'm just about done with my time on this computer, which is just as well. Let this post stand on its own. I'll talk about the rest of Munich and Salzburg in my next post.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

I'm in Munich now.  My computer is having difficulty with the hostel's wireless again, so I'm writing this now and will post it when I get the chance.

It's hard to believe I'm most of the way through my trip to Germany.  I have tomorrow here in Munich, and then I leave for Austria on Monday.  Wow.  Anyway.

Day two of Berlin was spent partly doing things and partly trying to get places.  Though it was not so much that I got lost as that I underestimated how long it would take me to get places.  The first thing I did was go to Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace, named after the first queen of Prussia, Sophie Charlotte), which is at the end of what would have been a very pretty drive had it not been raining and muddy and full of puddles.  I explored the palace for a few hours, which I think is actually the first stately home I've been to in Europe.  Well, I've been to castles, but most of them have been in some sort of ruin.  Charlottenburg did get bombed during WWII, but they've recreated the rooms that had been destroyed.

Charlottenburg is also apparently known for its gardens.  I did spend some time there, but it was raining, and I would have gotten more pictures, but my camera was about full up.  So after I was done at Charlottenburg, I went back to my hostel to dump pictures from my camera to my computer.  By then it was mid-afternoon, so I decided to take one of those bus city sightseeing tours, so that I could decide what I most wanted to see the next day and to see something of what I did not have time to go see ordinarily.

I enjoyed the bus tour.  Outside the Jewish Museum is the most random statue ever, of Superman plummeting towards the ground...and his head getting splattered.  I went back later to take a picture of it, because that was a big-time eyebrow-raise.  Also, somewhere along the river Spree is this stretch of Wall that's left over, that people have painted on, and now it's the longest open-air art gallery in Europe.

On Wednesday I went to the Reichstag, their parliament building.  In the middle of it there's this dome where you can climb to the top and have a great panorama of the city, and it's free to the public, so I decided to do that.  It was quite a long queue, though, and the guy behind me was wearing a shirt making a Nazi joke.  I didn't say anything, but I was inwardly raising an eyebrow and thinking, wow, that's in such good taste.  Seriously, wearing a shirt making a Nazi joke in Berlin?  To the parliament building?  Probably the only worse place to wear such a shirt would be Poland.  At least once we got into the building the guards made him cover it up.  And it was a nice view of the city, but it would have been nicer had the sky not been so cloudy.

After the Reichstag I had a bratwurst for lunch on Alexanderplatz, then went to Checkpoint Charlie.

I found myself...surprisingly emotional.  I mean, I was barely two when the Wall opened, so it's not like that had such personal relevence.  But I don't think I ever really appreciated how important the World Wars and their aftermath were until I got to Europe.  The World Wars are such a part of the national consciousness of both Britain and Germany, and I knew a lot of objective facts about them, but being here really brings it home, I guess.

The Brandenburg Gate, which I saw my first day in Berlin?  Big-time national symbol?  Was in the middle of the border no-man's-land when the Wall was up.  This hugely important symbol was shut away where no one could get to it.  I walked through it like it was nothing, but thirty years ago I couldn't have done that.  It's amazing to be there and really realize that.

Checkpoint Charlie had so many details of people's escape attempts from the GDR, and along the Tiergarten were crosses with the names of people who died trying to cross the Wall.  I saw so much, and found myself feeling so much as well.

Anyway.  After Checkpoint Charlie I went for a boat tour along the Spree, which I enjoyed.  It was very scenic, and had lots of information.  Apparently Berlin has more water and bridges than Amsterdam, Venice, and Paris combined.  I never would have guessed.

That was basically it for Berlin, and that evening I took the train to Hamburg.  The first thing I learned about taking trains in Europe is that while I don't technically need seat reservations with a Eurail pass for most of my trips, they are a good thing to have.  At least then I will be able to go to my seat and not need to find a non-reserved one, with my bag blocking the aisle and many people (including train staff) not speaking English.  And plain seat reservations, as opposed to tickets, do not cost very much (around five euro or so, from what I've seen), so I think that will make things easier.

I did get into Hamburg fine, and met Maddy at the station.  It was almost ten at that point and I was getting tired, so we just went back to her place, talked to her landlady for a bit, figured out what we wanted to do the next day, and went to bed.

I only had one day in Hamburg, but it was enough, even though apparently Hamburg is the second biggest city in Germany.  We went to the archeology museum, which was interesting, though only in German, so I mostly just looked at cool things and knew nothing about them.  We stopped by the planetarium because I thought a shop in a German planetarium would be a nice place to get something for Linda, but they had a measley shop, so we left soon.  Then we had lunch and went to the ethnography museum.

Museums in Germany have given me a new appreciation for London museums, because most of London's are free.  I miss that.  It was a big incentive to actually go to them.  But since I've been getting burned out on museums, having to actually pay for them is an excuse not to go. :p  Of course, I have been to the ones I've been most interested in, but I definitely miss the free ones in London.

After the ethnography museum, we went to the lakes, where I ended up taking a two-hour-or-so nap in the sun.  I don't seem to have burned, but though it was nice, I don't want to make a habit of that.  And I definitely need to get some sunscreen before I go to Nice, and preferably before I go to Venice.

Maddy and I took the night train from Hamburg to Munich, which was not as bad as I'd been dreading.  I remember I couldn't really sleep at all on the flight to London, and I only reserved a reclining seat on the train because that was cheaper.  I managed to sleep fairly well on it, though.  Enough so that even though I woke up at 5:30 this morning and it's 8:30 at night, I'm still showing no signs of crashing.  It was quite cold, though.  What I think I'm going to do is get a beach towel before my next night train (Vienna to Venice).  A beach towel can do triple duty as beach towel (for Nice), regular towel (because I've been renting from hostels), and blanket.  Now I just need to find where to get one.  I might try to get to a department store tomorrow.

We got into Munich at about eight this morning, dropped some stuff off at the hostel, then wandered to Marienplatz, Munich's central area.  Marienplatz has this building that looks like it's an old church or small castle, but is actually the town hall, and was only built in 1908, just built to evoke that sense of actual age.  From there we walked up to the Munich Residence, which is where the rulers of Bavaria lived until 1918.  That was pretty cool, though extremely big and I got a bit lost more than once.

We went for lunch at the Viktualienmarkt, aka the food market.  Very impressive place, rather reminiscent of a Renaissance Faire.  It has that same press of people, many of them drinking and carrying beer around, with so many different stalls selling both food and crafts, and just a general faire-type feel.  I had German beer in Munich and thoroughly enjoyed it, both because it was as good as I'd expected, and just for the experience of drinking German beer in Munich.  I may not be able to be here for Oktoberfest, but at least I have that.

After lunch we checked into our hostel.  Hostels like this are a lesson in booking far enough in advance, because all I could find for both nights was a 40-bed dorm.  That's not that bad, but the bathroom doesn't have very good showers (just a row of stalls with curtains covering them), so while I think it's doable, it's definitely not ideal.  It also does not have a very comfortable lounge area in the lobby, very few power outlets, and is currently having internet issues.  Sigh.

This afternoon we took a three-hour walking tour of Munich.  I mostly enjoyed it, and learned a lot, but at the moment don't want to talk a lot about it because my feet and legs are still hurting. XD  Maybe next time I post I'll have a bit more detail, because it really was very interesting.

Munich is currently going crazy because of football.  There were so many people on the street today, singing and drinking and preparing themselves for the match going on right now, which is apparently the final for some big European cup and Munich is one of the teams (Milan is the other).  So though the hostel people called someone to do something about the internet, they don't think he'll come because he's probably busy watching the game.

Tomorrow we're going to Dachau.  This is not really something to be excited about, but I am glad I'm doing it.  I wouldn't feel right about leaving Germany without having seen a concentration camp.  I expect tomorrow to be a fairly depressing day, though, and not just because it's my last day in Germany.

Guten Tag!

Hello from Berlin! My computer is being temperamental about the wireless in my hostel, so I'm using one of the hostel's computers, with its freaky German keyboard. Y and Z are switched around, I have no idea where the at symbol is, and I have to press the shift key to get to an apostrophe. It's even weirder than the British keyboard, which I thought disconcerting enough.

The semester is now over. I finished and turned in my last paper and we had our end-of-term tea party. I had my last dinner with my host mum, and my last day out in London, where I finally saw the Changing of the Guard (though not from a very good spot, as I'm guessing most of the action took place behind the gates of Buckingham Palace, and I wasn't close enough), and ate my lunch in a park near the Victoria Embankment, took some more people to the Doctor Who shop and small museum, then finished my paper and wandered around a bit before seeing Legally Blonde, my last show in London. It was a lot of fun, especially seeing how things get adapted from movie to musical. I very much enjoyed it.

Saturday was when I left for Cardiff with some friends, fellow Doctor Who fans. Getting to Paddington, however, was a public transportation fiasco. The bus that goes right past my homestay either came too early (meaning more than five minutes early, which I really don't think buses should do) or just didn't come at all, so instead of taking ten minutes to get to the station from which trains run frequently, I had to walk twenty minutes to get to the station from which they do not run as frequently. One was leaving just as I was walking up, so I had to wait ten minutes for the next one. Then when I got on that, there was a defective train at the next station, so we had to wait for that to leave. When I got to Baker Street, the next line I'd intended to take wasn't going to Paddington at the moment, so I had to take the longer route. I left the house at 7:15 for an 8:45 train in what should have been plenty of time because Paddington is fairly close, but I ended up getting to the station just as the train left. Then I had to buy a new ticket all together, because the one I had was for that particular train only. At least my friends waited for me and we got to Cardiff together.

Our hostel was not very far from the station (though that's not really saying much, since Cardiff is small enough that we could walk from the north end to the south in just over half an hour), but it was an awesome place. Best hostel I've been in. I'd originally booked us three beds in an eight-bed dorm for twenty pounds a night, but somehow we got a three-bed private room without a difference in price. Really nice place.

From the hostel we walked down to the Doctor Who Museum, near the Millennium Centre and Cardiff Bay. The museum was very cool, having original props and costumes and just some really neat stuff. Then we hung around Roald Dahl Plass for awhile, looked out on the bay, got a lot of pictures. But Cardiff is small and there is really not all that much to do, so we went back to the hostel for dinner, and for watching the newest episode of Doctor Who as it aired. That was pretty awesome, to watch the show in the place where it's filmed.

Our hostel had a pretty nice bar, so we stayed there for a bit, then went to an O'Neill's (chain Irish pub). Around midnight I was feeling tired and wanted to go to bed, but my friends are more into partying and they stayed out later.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. We slept in (them more than me), then walked around Cardiff on a Doctor Who tour of the places where it was filmed. It was pretty cool to walk around a place and recognize it from the show. Then we went back to the bay and took a boat ride around the bay. Hah. 'Boat ride' sounds so tame. The boat basically sped us around the bay at roughly 85mph, including taking us in tight circles and riding the waves so hard we got jostled. I was not expecting that, but it was very fun.

We went back to the hostel and watched a movie in our room until dark, when we went back to look at the Millennium Centre and Roald Dahl Plass all lit up at night, which was quite cool. But again, not much else to do, so we went back to the hostel for an early night.

Monday we took the train back to London, then I went back to AHA to pick up the stuff I stored there, and we met again at Victoria station for the train to Gatwick, since my friends were going to Amsterdam from there. I got on my flight to Berlin, which was thankfully a very easy flight, and got here and made it through customs (easiest customs ever--they didn't even ask me how long I was going to be here), then caught the train into the city center and made my way to my hostel.

Berlin is smaller than I'd thought, because today I walked across what looks like about half of it. My hostel is near Alexanderplatz, and I walked from here to the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz without difficulty. The Brandenburg gate is very cool, and I got some pictures of bits of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, and saw the Memorial for Murdered Jews in Europe. Right above the memorial is the Field of Stelae, tall rectungular concrete blocks set out in rows and columns. I walked into them, and they got gradually taller, and I felt like I was walking amongst rows of sarcophagi. Very appropriate, but also very creepy.

Tomorrow I intend to go Schloss Charlottenburg (a palace), the Reichstag (Parliament building), possibly up the TV Tower for a view of the city, and maybe for a boat and/or bus tour around the city. I'll figure out the rest from there.

It's been very interesting being here, alone in a big city when I don't speak the language. Everyone I came across in Oslo spoke English, and I was with someone then, but not everyone speaks English here and I've been having to get around and figure things out completely by myself. I've been fine so far, but it's definitely an experience. At least English is a Germanic language so there are some things I can figure out, Austria also speaks German, and Italy and France are Italic languages which I have some familiarity with. It may take a bit of time, but I can figure things out!