Stranger in a Strange Land

Germany - Berlin

9 September 2007

Today, we chased a train for the first time, and I discovered that it's not a pleasant experience, running with your bags on, willing a moving vehicle to stop -- and seeing it go on without you.

To start at the beginning, Andrew and I rose early and took the (doubledecker!) train from the Hague to Amsterdam, where we found that--contrary to what all of the train schedule had told us beforehand--there was no direct route to Berlin, and we had to take one to Amersfoort and then transfer.  We arrived on the platform just as that train to Amersfoort was departing.  As we stopped running and caught our breath, I turned -- and there was Megan, wandering up with a bag of chips in her hand and an equally puzzled expression on her face.  The three of us went straight back to the Information desk, where the woman said that getting to Berlin was very difficult today.  She told us to take a train to Amersfoort, a train to Deventer, a bus to Bad Bentheim, and then a train to Berlin.

'...Ooookay,' we said, and we hopped the first train to Deventer.  45-ish minutes later, in the Deventer train station, we were staring at a map and trying to figure out where to go when a Dutch railway attendant popped out of nowhere.

"You are going to Berlin?" she asked.  We stared, and nodded. "Down the stairs and to the right, there is a bus waiting for you.  Hurry!"

We're still a little unsure as to how she knew that we were going to Berlin.  Psychic abilities are part of the required skill set for Dutch railway attendants?

No matter how she knew, we believed her; we scrambled outside with some other people from our train and onto a touring-style bus, which took us on the highway through the Netherlands and just over the German border, to a town called Bad Bentheim.  The countryside looks largely the same as all of the countryside we've been passing.  Green fields, cows, sheep, the occasional small group of houses.

The bus dropped us at the Bad Bentheim train station, where the train to Berlin was waiting for us.  Megan realized that she had forgotten to mail a postcard that she had already put Dutch postage on; when she went back to talk to the bus driver and mentioned her problem, he offered to take it back for her and drop it in the mail.  I can't believe how friendly and accomodating the Dutch people we've met have been! That's not to say that I was expecting anything different; just that they've gone above and beyond the call of duty. The four hour train ride to Berlin went relatively quickly, thanks to iPods and food and card games, and we alighted (alit?) at Hauptbahnhof Station in Berlin, and called the hostel we'd been planning on staying in only to find that they were full up.  We tried a place called the Circus Hostel next; they had beds free, and to go to Rosenthaler Platz, and they gave us directions.  We hopped on the bus, where we stared in confusion at the bus driver for a moment and said, "How ... much?" and he waved at us impatiently and said, "Eh, on!  On!"  Alright, free transportation!  We got moving, passed a few stops -- and then we passed Rosenthaler. I said, '...uh, guys?'  But Andrew and Megan were sure that it was Rosa Luxemburg Platz that we were looking for, as that was what the hostel guidebook said.

When we reached the address on Rosa Luxemburgstraße, though -- slight problem.  There was a place called St. Christopher's Inn, not the Circus Hostel.  We went in, and apparently, St. Christopher's bought the location several years ago and the guidebook information was out of date.  They gave us directions to the other hostel on Rosenthaler Platz, but by that point, we were tired and shaking our heads at ourselves, and Megan was all about the other St. Christopher's hostels that she had stayed in before, and -- mostly, we were lazy.  So we stayed, unreasonably proud of the ridiculousness of the journey that had finally gotten us here.

That was the right decision; this place is probably the nicest hostel we've stayed in so far.  We were in an eight-person room with three guys who we never talked to.  The walls were bright and cheerful, it was well-lit, and generally really nice, and the hostel bar was ace!  We spent the night in, resting, having dinner, finding really cheap internet, and watching Andrew teach Megan to play chess. 

God, we're so cool.

10 September 2007

It's a really small world.

We woke up this morning, moved our stuff down into the luggage storage room, since we had to switch rooms for the second night, and we sat down to have breakfast in the hostel bar.  I caught sight of a guy, dark-haired and sharply-dressed but ordinary looking, out of the corner of my eye, and for a second, I thought he looked familiar.  'That's crazy talk,' I told myself, and I turned back to my typical European breakfast of ham, toast, and dry cereal. For the record, European breakfasts are seriously not made for people who can't eat cheese or milk.

Later, though, as we geared up to go out into the rain on a walking tour, I heard a voice from behind me say to Andrew, 'Hey, Brussels, right?'  Familiar Guy was the Australian from the testosterone table in the Brussels hostel.  How insane is that?  Not only is Steve in Berlin at the same time that we are, but at the same hostel, which we weren't even planning on staying at in the first place.

The four of us wound up spending most of the walking tour together.  It was a really great tour; Annabel, a cheerful Australian expatriate who was leading it, was enthusiastic and funny and seriously knew her Berlin stuff.  Unfortunately, it was, A) raining, and B) pretty impressively cold, while I was, A) lacking in a jacket; B) had lost my umbrella back in Amsterdam; and C) wearing a skirt.  Megan and I huddled together under her broken umbrella for the entire four hours. But, like I said, the tour was completely worth it.  Oh, and did I mention it was free? Score!  
I wish I could have taken notes; there was more information imparted than I could possibly remember, and it was all fascinating.

We saw so many places that I can't possibly write them all up, so instead, I'm going to go for a list.

Sites seen:
*-Brandenburg Gate
*-The Reichstag
-German and French Cathedrals and the Berlin Concert Hall
**-The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
-Museum Island -- Berlin Cathedral, the Old Museum, etc.
*-Checkpoint Charlie (a replica, not the real thing)
-the former headquarters of the Luftwaffe
*-Berlin Wall
*-Topography of Terror (former SS headquarters)
*-site of Hitler's bunker
-Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny

* = studied in the course that I took last year called Thinking and Remembering
** = wrote a paper on for the course that I took last year called Thinking and Remembering

Being in Berlin after learning about it in that class last year, where we studied Europe post-World War II and the intersection of history and memory, was absolutely incredible.  I did my homework on all of the cities that we went to, at least to the point of reading about their history, but I found myself grinning like an idiot repeatedly in Berlin as I saw things that I genuinely recognized.  Thanks to that course, I was able to explain the concepts of mahnmal and denkmal to the people around me; I had heard of most of the places that we walked to.  I even wrote an eight-page paper on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and heard the architect, Peter Eisenmann, speak at Hampshire.  That's the way to travel, with a broad knowledge base about your destination's recent history and its current issues.  This is the first time that I've been able to put something that I learned in college into very practical use, and it was such a nice feeling.  I'm struggling with putting into words just how amazing it was to be walking through the streets that I had spent a semester reading about.  Just know this -- it was amazing.  I wish I'd had more time to get in-depth with the history that we were seeing, to go inside the buildings, but that was my own fault for cutting a day from Berlin.

I know that I made a list up there, but I can't let this post go by without discussing the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  Its name is often shortened to the Holocaust Memorial, in English, but that's not really what it is, and it's certainly not what the lengthy German name means.  I have to admit, the paper that I wrote for class last year criticized the design.  I thought it was stupid.  A bunch of big gray stelae, organized in terms of size and shape, staggered throughout a field in Berlin?  I saw photos of people eating their lunches on top of the lower stelae; children running through them on beautiful summer days. 'That doesn't look like a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,' I said to myself.

Let me be the first to admit how wrong I was.

As you get farther and farther in the stelae become higher and higher and the corridors narrower, til you've lost sight of everyone and everything around you and you're being forced through tighter and tighter spaces.  The rain pouring down, everything wet and gray and cold, the ground tilting up at more of an angle under you the deeper into the field that you get -- it is honestly one of the eeriest things I've ever experienced.

The tour was fun, despite the weather misery.  There were three Americans (us), a couple of Australians, a bunch of guys from Ireland (they were funny; they were wearing straw Aussie hats, which did nothing to keep them dry, and the first chance they got, they stopped to buy umbrellas and beer).  A few older British couples were on the tour as well, but by and large, it was made up of young people.  The one incongruous part of the tour was that we stopped to eat lunch at Schlotsky's, which is apparently an American deli chain; Megan was excited to see it because it's originally from Texas.  I felt like we should be eating sauerkraut and schnitzel and wurst (wursts?) of some sort, rather than perfectly normal turkey club sandwiches.

After the tour ended, Andrew and I went to the Old Museum and saw the ancient Greek and Egyptian exhibits.  I saw the bust of Pericles, kourai and pottery and old weapons and statues.  I remember studying the types of Greek art in Mr. Brogan's world history class in my freshman year of high school, and wondering when I would ever need to know the difference between Classical and Hellenistic era figures.  Well, today was that day.  The museum had the exhibit set up in those very same categories that I had had to learn, from Mycenaean right up through Hellenistic.  I wandered with my audioguide dangling from my ears, having to resist the urge to stuff my fist in my mouth and squeal.

I did manage to keep from making too many embarrassing noises.  I could not, however, stop myself from saying, 'THIS. IS. SPARTAAAAAAA' when I saw a display of the familiar-styled helmets. You can take the girl out of the U.S., but you can't take the geek out of the girl.

Upstairs was the Egyptian exhibit, which was fantastic.  Busts, statues, sections of walls with hieroglyphics, paintings, papyrus, sarcophogi, burial shrouds, organ jars -- so good.  I've had a weird thing about ancient Egypt since I was really young, and this exhibit was basically like dropping a really squeaky blonde kid in a candy store.
I saw names that I recognized, like Hatshepsut, the woman-king, and her steward, Tutmosis, a couple of Rameses and Ptolemies, busts of Caesar and Cleopatra, more names that I (of course) can't remember now, and best of all -- So much stuff on Amarna, Amenhotep IV/Akhenaton, the pharoah who turned the Egyptian world upside down by declaring that there was only one god, and his wife, the queen Nefertiti. 

For context on why I'm talking about them as if they were rock stars, I did a project on Akhenaton and Nefertiti for the same freshman history class, and I have had a strange fascination for the pair ever since.  Apparently, German archaeologists were some of the first on-scene at Amarna, which would explain why the Ägyptisches Museum is so full of artifacts from the site.  Among the best-known of the artifacts in the museum is the famous bust of Nefertiti.  It had a room essentially to itself, hidden away behind glass in a display case, with people surrounding it on all sides.  Again, in Mr. B's history class, I drew that bust for that same project.  It's so strange to see it up close when I spent hours slaving over the shape of its jawbone, sitting on the living room floor in a small house in Maine six years ago.  I wandered into Schinkel's pantheon, designed by a German architect (named, you guessed it, Schinkel) and made up of statues of the pantheon of Greek gods, while waiting for Andrew to finish going through the museum behind me.

While still waiting for Andrew, I bought postcards and sat down at a table outside, on the upper floor of the museum, to write.  Naturally, now that the tour had finished, the rain was nowhere to be seen, and the sun shone bright and cheerful.  Naturally.  The view coming down the museum steps was gorgeous.

Andrew and I walked back to the hostel, where we found Megan and Steve and went to an Italian punk pizza place.  Yes, you read that right.  It was a pizza place owned by Italian punks.  The walls were coated with the signatures of some huge-name punk bands who'd played there.  I couldn't read much of the Italian menu, which doesn't bode well for Italy.  Andrew did better with the German; he learned some in high school.  Steve is a personable guy; in his early twenties, with a degree in finance or business or something like that.  The impression that I got from talking to him was that it wasn't that unusual for young Australians to take time off from work to travel extensively.  We've certainly met a huge number of Aussies on our travels already.  Andrew, Megan, and I struggled to understand his accent at times; he did some hilarious (and impressively good) American regional accents, all of which he said that he learned from TV and movies.  It was interesting to hear what he did and didn't know about the U.S. and American geography and culture.  It makes me excited to get to England, at the end of all of this, and see what the culture clash is like.

It was another chess kind of night back in the smoky hostel bar.

Holland - Amsterdam & The Hague

7 September 2007

I've never gotten dressed and packed so quickly or quietly in my life.  I nearly broke a toe with all the moving around on my toes, but it was worth it; Andrew and I got out of the hostel before Virgil had woken or moved a muscle from his bed.  With that load off my shoulders, the only one I had to handle was the literal load of my backpack as we took the long walk across the city to the Rijksmuseum, where we met Megan and walked to her hostel after the security guards informed us that we weren't allowed inside with our backpacks, not even just to drop them in the cloakroom.  Thankfully, her hostel was close, and we had no further trouble with Security once we got back to the museum (since we're such troublemakers and all). 

Am I incriminating myself to say that the three of us got into the museum for free?  I'm sure that's what Dutch museum officials do in their spare time -- troll the internet to find blogs where American tourists admit that they lied about their age in order to gain free admission.  There, I said it.  We pulled this a few times over the course of the trip; bless the Europeans and their discounts, and their trusting ways.  They didn't so much as blink at the Rijksmuseum when we said that we were 18; just waved us on through.  Score one for looking like I'm still in high school.  Everyone keeps telling me that I'll love it when I'm 40, but as I still have 20 years to go, I appreciate the occasional bone thrown my way.  Genial Bartender last night wouldn't believe that Andrew and I were 20 after we told him.  He kept saying, "It's alright, you don't have to lie, I'm still going to serve you guys; how old are you really?"  It was nice to be able to put those baby faces to good use today.

I liked the museum more than I was expecting.  Paintings never have had much of a hold on me, but I hadn't realized beforehand that the Rijksmuseum features much more than paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt (or, as my Red Sox-starved brain started referring to him as I sat in the galleries and watched the tour groups go by, Remmie).  There was a huge section on the Dutch East India Trading Company, cases full of old ornate weapons and silver, and these incredible dollhouses that you had to get on a ladder to see the entirety of.  I said that they were pretty damn cool toys -- and then someone pointed out the plaque that said these were not toys; these were exact replicas of the houses of Dutch young brides, each of whom then outfitted the dollhouse like a miniature version of her home.  Dutch ladies sure had a lot of time on their hands in the 16th and 17th centuries.

I wasn't especially excited about the rooms full of paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer, as my earlier comment probably suggested.  I wound up resting my feet on the large benches in the middle of the rooms while Andrew and Megan listened to their audioguides and studied the paintings.  It's such a strange culture we live in, jostling each other with delusions of politeness while lining up to slowly pass in front of a painting of a woman pouring a glass of milk, peering closely at it and making 'Ooh' and 'Ahhhh' sorts of noises.  What is there to ooh and ahh about? It's a bunch of paint on a canvas.  I know, I know, again: philistine, heathen, I don't appreciate the finer things in life, etc. etc. 

I felt for the guides who were taking the groups through.  If the art had any meaning at all to them in the first place, does it get drummed out after leading groups of tourists through and regurgitating the same information, all day, every day?  I couldn't help but think of the way that, if I say a word enough times in a row, it slowly warps until the meaning has fled my mind somewhere along the way, and I'm left wondering, 'What is "potato," anyway?'

Once Andrew and Megan had had their fill of paintings, and I mine of cool old weapons, we picked up our backpacks from Megan's hostel and had lunch in Vondelpark.  Andrew had been carrying around a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese for the past day or so, and the three of us had a feast of amazing bread and cheese that he'd found at a bakery or a deli or something along those lines.  It was a lovely park, incredibly green, and even nicer, there were people using it everywhere.  People walking their dogs, sunning themselves, eating lunch, napping on benches, walking hand-in-hand.  From what (admittedly, little) I've seen, Europeans really use the green spaces that they have.  After our lunch, Andrew and I said goodbye to Megan with plans to meet up with her in Amsterdam again a few days later, to travel to Germany together, and we took that long-ass walk back across the canals, through the crowds watching street performers, past the sex museum and the fry stands, to Centraal Station. 

When we arrived in the Hague (Den Haag, my soul cries out for me to use, but I said I'm going with the presumptuous Anglicized names and I'm sticking to my guns here), we were totally lost.  We had nothing but a GoogleMap printout and a vague idea of where we were, and we wandered the streets, looking helpless with said GoogleMap printout.  However, good fortune was ours.  We looked pathetic enough that a woman on a bike waiting at a red light called over to us and asked if we needed help.  We showed her where we were trying to get to, she pointed out which way to go and gave directions even after her light had turned green, and then we went our separate ways.  I was really surprised and completely delighted to have had a complete stranger offer to help us like that, and, even better, she turned out to be 100% correct!  We reached the hostel on the strength of her directions, with no further trouble.

I'll have to give more of an impression of the Hague tomorrow; I haven't seen enough of it yet today, and everything's closed for the night.  The hostel is grand; six beds, lockable cabinets in the actual room, a table and chairs, OUR OWN TOILET AND SHOWER-- The Hague is worth it already, just for the hostel.  There's a great view of the city from the window, too!  We ate at the bar, where  I continued my grand (legal!) Heineken tradition, and also my grand legal lightweight tradition, and then we went out to see what we could of the city.  We didn't get very far; just to a market to buy food and water, and I took way too many blurry, bad pictures.  When we got back to the hostel and were still the only people in the room right up until 8:30 or 9:00,  we began to have visions of spreading our stuff out across all six beds and the floor, but alas, it wasn't meant to be.  A key turned in the lock, and we met Neil and ... I'm going to go with Gerrish, but I'm really not sure that that was how you spell it.  They were cousins, Neil from Boston and Gerrish from Britain.  Boston-cousin had just finished his masters degree, and was going on a trip as a present to himself, with British cousin happily tagging along.  They're nice guys, really funny; I wish they were going to be here longer, but it's just the one night for them. 

Within ten minutes, Gerrish had offered us Jaffa cakes and said "cracking." It was the best thing ever.

Another pair followed shortly after the two of them; a Greek woman and a Greek-American man (or maybe it was the other way around; I'm not entirely sure).  She asked if Andrew and I were together, and there was this awkward pause, the kind that comes just before two people start laughing in your face, and she quickly added, 'Traveling together.'  They were friendly, too, and now the four of them have gone off (separately) for food, and while we can't use all the beds, Andrew and I have still had this place entirely to ourselves all day and night.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.  All caught up, now I sleep.

-- Except, wow, I can't believe I didn't write about this.  Maybe I'm trying to block it out of my memory?  I had Bank Drama today.  My account got locked because of some personal idiocy that I carried out right before I left the States (I called to make sure it wouldn't get locked -- and I didn't know the answers to all of the identity-verifying questions that the operator asked me), and I had two women trying to tell me that I could not unfreeze my account without setting foot in a My Bank branch.  I tried to explain to them that I was on a continent where there was not a single My Bank branch, and would be so until December, but they were Just Not Getting it.  Finally, after a great deal of crying and flailing at my mom, and an obscene amount of money spent on phone minutes, and some calculated crying at Bank Man on the phone, I got him to talk to his supervisor, who said that I just have to go to any bank here and get them to fax copies of two forms of picture ID, on bank letterhead, to Bank of Great Fail.  He gave me a fax number.  Here's hoping it actually works.

8 September 2007

Well, that sucked.

The Dutch bank that I went to this morning very politely told me that they cannot send a fax for me, gave me the immediate impression that it was an incredibly weird request, and said they did not know of any European bank that would do what my idiot American bank told me they would do.  They told me to send a fax from the telephone shop or to go to my bank (ha fucking ha).  My day has been consumed by this, mostly. 

Back at the hostel, which I had to return to after striking out with the polite Dutch bank, I spoke more with the Greek and Greek-American couple in our room.  They were very nice, indignant on my behalf after hearing some of my half of the conversations with My Stupid Bank, and Victor entertained me with stories of his crazy adventures in London until I felt un-furious enough that I thought I could stand to go out again.

I did walk down to the older section of town, which is lovely.  It's a modern city with wide streets, tram lines and all, but with old buildings.  I'm going to be sad to say goodbye to the canals, though I know I'll see canals galore in Venice.  I wandered through a marketplace and past Oude Kerk (there's one in every Dutch city?); it reminded me of Amsterdam, really, but less touristy and less packed.  The streets were a little more open.  The old buildings that I mentioned pop up here and there, unexpectedly.  I met up with Andrew, who had been getting his museum on, and he went on to Delft, a nearby village and/or town, while I settled in to nap and go to war with my bank, and update this.

I met our two new roommates; a British couple, our age, finishing their travels before getting to uni for their third year.  They've been all over the place for the past two weeks, and had forboding words about the frozen north that is Berlin.  They said that they're very tired of traveling, and very ready to go home.  I'm not sure how well this bodes for us, when we're traveling a week more.  Hopefully, they just have weak constitutions?

Wow.  I just budgeted out my entire trip so far, and, fudging aside and if I continue in these same spending patterns (which I won't; rail to the Czech Republic and back out again, Italy, Paris...), I'll be significantly under my budget for the trip.  I am a golden god!

* * * * *

I finally got the bank problem settled, with the able assistance of Mom and her ability to walk into a bank and talk people into things.  It's all set.  Cue me sighing a giant sigh of relief.  Quiet night in the Hague. 

Belgium - Antwerp; Holland - Amsterdam

5 September 2007

I need to start keeping:

A) better notes
B) better track of money spent.  Urk.

Today we got up, said goodbye to Megan with the possibility of seeing her again in Amsterdam, and we took the subway to the train station for the last time, and from there, went on to Antwerp.  Or, if you'd rather, Antwerpen.  I tend to like the idea of using a city's traditional name, but then I look at Prague, and as much fun as 'Praha' is to say (pretend like you're making an evil scientist laugh out of it.  PRAHA.  PRAHA.  see?  fun), I can't bring myself to avoid calling it Prague, and I am nothing if not consistent.  If one city goes with the presumptuous English-translated name, all cities go with the presumptuous English-translated name.

The train took about an hour, and at first, I was unimpressed with Antwerp.  It felt like any modern city.  It was incredibly gray, on a wet day, and I was carrying my heavy backpack, which I disliked for two reasons. One, mine was heavy for me.  Two, they marked us immediately as tourists and strangers. However, despite my existential issues with my backpack, we walked and walked until we turned a corner and saw the steeple of De Kathedraal rising over narrowing streets.

The McDonald's on the corner was kind of a drag.  Granted, it was a pretty McDonald's, set in and amongst the tiny midieval-looking storefronts on the cobblestone street, but it did wreck the ambiance.  You know, just a little. 

We ducked down a few streets in the mist and came out in a square, just in front of the cathedral.  It was soaring, incredible, even on a dismal day.  Inside, we paid the two Euro entrance fee and left our bags under the watchful eye of the bored security guard, and found that the interior was just as impressive as the exterior.  There were a few sections being renovated, so they were covered in scaffolding from floor to very high ceiling.  There were several enormous paintings by Rubens, who is apparently a very famous Belgian painter.  I know, I know, I'm fine arts philistine; what do you want from me?  What I liked most about De Kathedraal in Antwerp was the peace and quiet.  I picked up two postcards--from the giftshop inside the church, which struck me as a little odd--and sat in a pew in the back to fill them out. 

Once Andrew had had his fill of Rubens, we went back outside to find Antwerp's market, in a set-up that once again reminded me of Brussels', but less snazzy.  However, Antwerp's had a fountain involving a sculture with a man holding his own severed hand.  I don't know how Brussels could possibly have topped that.  Andrew got some Belgian fries--which did taste different than normal fries, though I couldn't possibly articulate why or how; all I know is that I really, really liked them--and we walked back to the train station.

Antwerp's train station, for the record, is absolutely stunning.  Vaulted ceilings, beautifully designed enormous glass windows, would have looked beautiful -- if it hadn't been heavily under construction.  How's that like my life?

I have little to no memory of the train ride to Amsterdam; my best guess is that I slept, which is something I've really been honing my skills at.  Drink cart! [Note: I have no idea what this means or what I was referring to.  My notes just contain the wacky interjection 'drink cart!']

Once we got to Amsterdam, we hooked a left out of the train station and started to walk.  It was a gray day, almost misty, but Amsterdam was still a hell of a sight.  There's a canal every time you turn a corner, with barges and tourist boats making their way through the city.  The sheer number of bicycles is overwhelming.  The streets are narrow, many cobblestoned, and lined with shops and populated by small cars, but they stop for pedestrians.The bikes do not. I fear for my life from the bikes.  The bike lanes are everywhere, and I have a particular knack for not noticing when I'm walking in one.  Cyclists seem to have the right of way over all. 

We walked for what felt like ages but probably took a half an hour to 45 minutes, and found ourselves at our hostel.  It's pretty standard; a lobby on the ground floor, a bar upstairs (I like the bar; it feels like a real one, looking out on a canal), and the rooms above that.  I was a little stunned when I walked into our room; there are 21 beds.  Thankfully, though, it seems to be set up well; each pair of two bunk beds (so four beds in all) has its own little section, and is partially walled off from the rest of the room.  Our neighbors in the two beds across from us were some loud English guys on their last night in Amsterdam.  I'm starting to realize that maybe the situation at the hostel in Brussels, where everyone was friendly and hung out together with ease, isn't normal.  These guys definitely weren't very friendly.  There's no real place to hand out besides the bar, which isn't open most of the day.  But the room is clean, the breakfast is free, and the window at my feet looks out on the canal.  Perfect.

Andrew and I dropped off our stuff, and we went to the Anne Frank House.  The whole thing felt -- it was incredibly surreal, as I walked through what had once been the office, and made my way up into the annex through the narrow staircase.  I could not grasp that I was standing in the same place that Anne Frank once had; that she had written the diaries that would become the book that I read here.  It was hard to picture it as it was; the house was bare besides the exhibit materials.  There were no furnishings or attempts to make it look like it had.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I'm not entirely sure.  It was crowded, particularly with American tourists; some visitors were visibly moved.  One man walked through, reading everything carefully, carrying a single flower with tears streaming down his face.  I've never seen anyone cry in such a dignified manner.  I wished I'd felt even a fraction of what he did.  Am I inured to suffering by now?  Is it culture?  Is it all of the reading that I've done related to violence studies?  Or is it just that my feet hurt and I was cranky? Je ne sais pas.

After the Anne Frank House, we walked and walked in search of affordable dinner.  We finally settled on an Argentinean steakhouse, where they hauled people in off the street (sample conversation: "You speak English?  Yes, yes, you should eat here!  We make [this], [this], [this], and [this], all excellent, at very good prices.   Oh, you want to eat somewhere else?  But it is better here; come and have a meal with us," on and on and on until, more often than not, the prospective customer wound up becoming an actual customer).  I had amazing chorizo (spicy Argentinean sausage), and bread.  I'm going to explode from all of the bread, pasta, and French fries I've been eating, I think.  Possibly, I should look into this whole 'balanced diet' thing.

After dinner, we walked back to the hostel, where the discovery was made that I am horrific at chess, and then we started walking toward the infamous Red Light District.  Halfway there, my body rebelled against me, and I turned around and went back to the hostel to crawl into bed.  Once again, Enya has saved my life.  Shivering, shaking, nauseous, in pain, and feeling alone and far from home?  Listen to Enya.  Everything gets better.  Never fail.

I got the best night's sleep that I've gotten since arriving in Europe -- eight blissful, full, uninterrupted hours.  There were 20 other people in the room, but it was quiet, the street noises muted, church bells in the distance...

I am never going to underestimate the value of a good night's sleep ever again.

6 September 2007

Up at nine, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (or, more accurately, sleepy and fumbly), for breakfast with Andrew, and then he headed off for adventures in art, while I took the best shower ever.  Another thing that I solemnly swear to never unvalue again: showers.  Showers with good water pressure, hot water, and where you don't have to, A: hold the showerhead over yourself, or B: lean on a button because the water automatically turns off every 20 seconds.  I understand that that's conserving water and most of the time I'm all for it, but I appreciate environmentalism less when I'm standing in the cold with a head full of goopy conditioner.

After my gorgeous shower of happiness, I hiked 45 minutes or so south through the city, to the former Colonial Institute, now known as the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) -- Tropenmuseum.  See notes on Tropenmuseum map and on back of itinerary.  [Note: The Tropenmuseum map and the itinerary are currently hiding from me.]  In a nutshell, it was a strange experience.  There was a large exhibit on former Dutch colonies, with mentions of unrest and imperialist propaganda, but no discussion of the treatment of the natives at the hands of the Dutch settlers and Dutch government, or what caused said unrest.  It was interesting to look at it from the point of view of the outsider that I am.  Where did all of the artifacts in these nice, shiny cases come from?  They were "acquired" or "collected," according to the placards.  The whole thing felt very strange, walking through the aisles in a museum in Europe and hearing English and Dutch voices telling me all about the East Indies.  I wonder if the Smithsonian would feel like that now; we'll see about the British Museum.  I haven't been to enough American museums to be able to compare approaches, really, but it would make an interesting study.  All in all, it was a fascinating museum; I stayed for hours.

I slowly wandered back to the hostel, inordinately proud of my navigational skills for getting me there and back without so much as one wrong turn, and I ran into Andrew on the street long enough to say hi and bye again.  I went in a new direction, into shops; among ridiculous sex shops and stores with porn and whips in the display windows, I found a "tiny supermarket," as its sign advertised it.  "Tiny supermarket" sold only chips, drinks, bread, and chocolate.  Some day, I will find somewhere that sells fruit and tissues.  Some day. 

I'm taking a break in the hostel lobby now (after being asked directions on the street!  I apparently look like I know where I'm going!), and am unsure of where Andrew is.  I could walk in search of internet (it's 1,50 Euos for 15 minutes here; ridiculous), but -- feet hurt.  But need internet.

But feet hurt.

Decisions, decisions.

* * * * *

As usual, my need for the internet outweighed all potential physical discomfort.  I walked off the main street and found a little bar.  There were a couple of French guys there, a couple of British guys, the bartender, and me.  But it actually wasn't weird at all; the French guy on the stool next to me said 'hey' and then went back to minding his own business; the bartender was nice and helpful without being overly familiar or creepy.  I got a Heineken to pass the time while I waited for a guy to get off the place's only computer.  I'd drank half -- listening to the conversations around me, watching the French guys smoke pot, and trying to read a Dutch-language newspaper -- by the time I got the computer.  I sent a couple of e-mails and checked Facebook, and by that point, I was a little tipsy. 

A word of advice, kids: drunk-LiveJournaling is never a good idea.  Don't do it. 

Of course, I did it anyway.

I managed to get back to the hostel despite a wrong turn or two, grinning all the while.  It was okay, though, because I took a picture on one of the wrong turns that is totally going to turn out to my one of my best. [Note: I was right.]  I got back, made it upstairs, met the new guy in bed B1 across from us.  Virgil (note: this is not his real name), we figured out after several minutes of elementary English, has lived in Spain at some point in his life, so we switched over to elementary Spanish.  I think I understood some of what he was saying.  He's a construction worker in his forties, working on a building, he'd thought I was British at first, and he's resting now because he's been drinking for the past two days over a broken heart.  I think.  He was very nice, if shaky and a little incoherent in both languages, and we had a pleasant-enough chat before I headed off for a shower and sleep.  And here I am again in the hostel lobby, finishing off a cheap set of rolls from Tiny Supermarket (I hope those were poppy seeds and not mold) to get something in my stomach besides Dutch beer.  The rolls are gone, the water is very nearly, and I suppose I ought to figure out where Andrew is.

* * * * *

I went to the bar and had ... gazpacho-thing?  Goulash; Hungarian soup.  Andrew finally wandered in -- with Megan from Brussels in tow.  He'd met her at the train station and they'd been wandering Vondelpark, climbing trees, being poked with sticks by small children... The usual.  They split a pitcher of Heineken and we played darts.  I won a game, but in general, we sucked.  Andrew's foot nearly became a casualty of war.  Post-game, we sat at the bar and talked to the bartender.  He was a young guy, with curly hair and a friendly attitude, along with a killer sense of humor.  It was interesting to hear his take on Americans ("nasal and very loud" "I have an American accent.  I hate it, man, shit").  He kept teasing Megan, with her Texas drawl, and calling her farmgirl.  He didn't mind knocking us a bit, but in a good-natured way, which was nice.  He said that he found, the couple of times that he went to the States, that a lot of Americans think that Amsterdam is a country. 

Can you say, 'oh my God that's so embarrassing'?  I knew you could.

After a while, Virgil showed up out of nowhere, and sat down across the corner from me at the bar.  He asked if we could talk, and I should have known right there that this wasn't going to end well, but I made a fateful tactical error and said, "Uh, sure?"

He proceeded to move to the stool next to mine and get uncomfortably close.  Meanwhile, he was trying to talk to the friendly bartender, but he wasn't making much sense to the bartender, either; Genial Bartender asked him where he was from, just like I had earlier, and again, the response was completely incomprehensible.  He was like Fez from That Seventies Show, where no one knows where he's from.  It would have been hilarious if I hadn't been starting to get a creep vibe off the guy. 

Genial Bartender's response was pretty good, though. "... Uh huh.  Is it nice -- there?"

However, Virgil's attention was not to be taken from me for long, even though I kept trying to turn my back on him and get back into the conversation between Andrew, Megan, and Genial Bartender (GB for short).  Virgil kept touching my arm, even as I drew back, and kept complimenting me on my terrible Spanish. That's not a sense of false modesty; that's me being completely unable to communicate to him what I was trying to say, and him saying, 'Muy bien, muy bien!'  He repeated words in both languages, in something that wasn't quite a stutter but did manage to give the impression that he wasn't all there.  Finally, he asked (using usted, the Spanish formal form of 'you,' which put me on edge immediately), if I had a compañero.   Not quite sure what he was asking, but with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I pointed to Andrew, who was sitting obliviously beside me with his back to me and my incomprehensible problem.

Virgil's face fell.

I understood what he'd been asking.  I silently thought something along the lines of, 'OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GOD,' and I pointed hard at Andrew. 'Compañero,' I said quickly. 'Compañero.'    

Virgil said, 'Que lastima.  Oh, si estás sola,  yo sé que este ropa no está muy bueno, pero voy a comprar ropa nuevo y traerte a cena, y entonces--'*

I cut him off quickly.  I said, nope, got a compañero, he's sitting right there, and then, like an idiot, I felt bad.  I said, 'Me gusta hablaba con tu, pero -- eso.'**

He said, '¡Amigos!'

I said, '...Sure.'

He asked me about the US, asked if everyone there was like me; asked how he could get there, what the situation was like for immigrants, if he could get a job.  And then, he said he had a big question.  I was, by this point, resisting the urge to run screaming, because he was still getting more and more into my personal space, and between hitting on me, he was telling me how he always gets drunk and violent and into fights and arrested, and he looked like a guy who could kick somebody's ass.

He asked if he could visit me in the United States.  By then, I was having to try really hard not to laugh at the absurdity and cry at how pitiful it all was, and also just at how uncomfortable he was making me.   I deflected the question with growing horror, saying that I would be in grad school and didn't know where I would be living.  I started trying to nudge Andrew harder, but he didn't get it. I turned to him to ask when we would be leaving, nudge nudge wink wink, and his response was, 'Oh, soon.'

I caught Megan's eye over Andrew's shoulder as Virgil said, 'What are you talking to him about?' I turned around and he was leaning in, his eyes steady on me and unblinking.

I said, 'We leave soon.'

'Ahhhhh!' He chuckled knowingly. 'Often, when I say I leave bar soon, I really mean two or three hours, ha, ha, ha!'

I shook my head hard. 'No, I mean soon.' I turned to Andrew again, and said through gritted teeth, 'Andrew, how soon?'

'Eh, fifteen minutes,' said Andrew, and he went back to laughing with Genial Bartender.

I turned back to find Virgil grinning at me.   But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andrew getting up.  I asked if we were leaving now and was told 'yep,' and I got up as fast as humanly possible and snatched up my purse.  Virgil looked, no lie, like a kid who was about to have his favorite toy taken from him.  It was impossibly creepy, and, what's worse, he looked as if he were about to get up and do -- I don't know what.   Thinking fast, I went for the handshake, hoping to keep him sitting and in the bar.  I said, 'Adios,' and went to pull my hand back.

Here's the thing: Virgil wouldn't let go of my hand.

Here's the thing: When I tried to yank it away, he started pressing my hand to his face, saying 'Where are you going, where are you going.'

I froze, looking desperately ahead for help, but Andrew was already out the door and not looking back.  Megan looked back and saw me.  She hurried back, grabbed my arm, hauled me away from Virgil, and said, 'We don't know where we're going,' and we booked it.

Outside, I told Andrew and Megan the story of what had been happening while they'd been talking to GB.  Megan apparently saved me; she's the one who caught that something wasn't right, and she's the one who told Andrew, no, we leave now.  Andrew thought it was hilarious and not in the least bit creepy until I got to the point about Virgil wanting to visit me in the States, which is when it became 'still hilarious, but a little creepy.'  Megan made jokes, too, but I think she understood that I was genuinely rattled, especially by him grabbing me.  It was a little frustrating.  I think it's hard for guys to understand where we're coming from (straight guys, at least; I have no idea where it stands for gay guys).  The implications aren't at all the same for a guy when a girl comes on too strong and/or is creepy.  Similarly, when we would reach the Red Light District later that night, Andrew wouldn't notice the utter lack of females on the streets until Megan and I pointed it out, and he laughed at us a little when we said that we wouldn't have wanted to go without someone of the male persuasion with us.  Some of that is Andrew, I think, who seems fearless sometimes, and who throws himself so strongly into everything that he does.  But some of it is male vs. female, and the culture of fear that we live in that men don't always think about.

Me rescued by my lady in shining armor, we walked out onto the streets at ten P.M.  There were tons of people everywhere, with the bridges over the canals lit up.  We wandered through the maze of fry shops and sex shops and bars and cafés, the strong smell of vast quantities of marijuana wafting into the street from some places.  It was too early, still, to go to the Red Light District; absinthe was considered (if not by me, because I am a wimp), but beer was settled on, and we sat in a cloud of smoke in a sports bar and watched a football game (or soccer match, if you're so inclined).  At 11:15, we went back out into the buzzing streets and found Oude Kerk, a church that Andrew had been looking for all day.

Standing in the square, looking up at the steeple, I suddenly heard Andrew mutter, 'Whoa, 6:00.'  I turned.

There was a window behind us, better classified as a door made entirely of glass, with a red light over the top.  A heavyset, scantily-clad woman sat inside.  I realized, suddenly, that there were more red lights over glass doors all the way down the street, dead across from the church.  The women varied.  Some were trying their best to be sexy; shaking their breasts, sitting with one leg up, smiling out at passersby, tossing their hair.  Others looked tired; sad.  Inside a few windows, groups of women in lingerie stood together, talking.

We went up and down the narrow twisting streets, packed in like sardines with people.  I didn't know how to react.  I didn't want to stare, so then what, study the cobblestones?  I don't know if Megan or Andrew knew quite what to do, either.  Every few seconds, one of us was nervously laughing or babbling.

We saw one balding, middle-aged man walk up to a window, get greeted by the woman inside, and the curtains close.  One woman had her door open, and she was ruffling the hair of all men who passed within arm's reach.  One door was open, the woman standing outside and talking to a friend.  She was young and beautiful, slim, Asian, with thick black hair, a silver thong-and-bra set, and caked-on makeup.  She winked at people as they passed.  I saw every type of lingerie imaginable.

Andrew said it best.  "I thought I was for the legalized system [of prostitution], but now...'

I felt sad, mostly.  This was how these women had to make a living: shaking their breasts for gape-mouthed tourists and darty-eyed businessmen?  Putting their bodies on display like material goods; like the regular stores beside them with pyramids of marmalade in the windows? It was disorienting and surreal and ultimately sad. 

We were unanimously ready to leave pretty quickly.

We walked Megan back across the city to her hostel, afterward, passing strange little roadside stands involving herring to-go.  It was a beautiful night; cloudy, but no rain, and just warm enough to be warm without being hot.  Andrew and I got lost on the way back to our hostel, but we made it, where we found Virgil asleep on the bottom bed  across from mine, when he was supposed to be in the top bunk.  Andrew and I swapped beds, and then, well, I guess I can't mock Mom for making me take a portable air horn to Europe anymore, because I slept with it under my pillow.  On the one hand, I might have been overreacting, and on the other -- I had looked into this guy's eyes, I had felt how strong he was when he proved that he had no compunctions about grabbing me, and I wasn't about to take any chances.

That was a pretty sleepless night.

* Rough translation: "What a shame.  Oh, if you were alone, I know that these clothes aren't very nice, but I'll buy nice clothes and take you out to dinner, and then--"  It is, for the record, terrible Spanish, thanks both to my memory and his difficulty in speaking the language.

** I was trying to say: "I like talking to you, but -- that's it."

Belgium - Bruges & Brussels

4 September 2007

Rob and Marissa woke me this morning as they were leaving for Bruges; I went back to bed and, like a smart girl, slept through the free breakfast.  Once I did actually tumble out of the bunkbed, though, Andrew and I took the subway to the train station, and we're on the train to Bruges now.  I've come to the decision that it's pretty rude to go for English without even attempting the native language.  I saw an English couple walking around the platform at the train station, asking everyone they passed if they spoke English.  Asking in English, naturally.  I've seen a lot of things like that since we hit Brussels.  Is it really hard to learn how to say 'I'm sorry, I don't speak French; can you help me?' in French?  I know how to say it.  I can't spell it, naturally, and my accent is atrocious, but I can say it.

The Belgian countryside is lovely.  Pastoral, red-roofed houses and barns, horses and sheep and cows, lots of greengreen grass and trees and bushes, the occasional church steeple.  It looks quiet and sleepy, like the sort of town you'd set a low-budget horror movie in.  I keep half-expecting to see a blood-and-brain-drenched zombie stagger out from behind a haystack, dragging its busty blonde prey by the ankle.  Or maybe the hair.  I haven't decided yet.

There's no way I'm actually going to type this and put it into my blog.

* * * * *
In Bruges, we walked from the train station into the town.  I wasn't sure about it at first; the long walk along a canal was pretty, sure, but it seemed to be mostly path and grass.  There were insane bikepaths and amounts of bikes; a very cycling-friendly city. We walked through the outskirts of town, along narrow cobblestone streets, mostly residences rather than businesses.  Just as I was beginning to despair ever finding civilization again -- BAM, we turned a corner and hit tourist central.  Not exactly what I had in mind when it came to civilization, but it, I decided, would do.  We got lunch, in the form of pasta bolognase in a long cup from a tiny pasta shop, and sat in a square to eat and watch groups of elderly tourists congregate.

Breakfast/lunch over with, we walked farther into the town to find, big surprise here, the tourists swarming.  It was easy to see why, though.  The little cobblestone streets alongside canals, brightly colored flowers in all the windowboxes, and then, suddenly, a cathedral.  It was enormous, from rising among the low-lying buildings and twisty streets, and stunning.  We went inside to find vaulted ceilings, a cavernous space that was remarkable for its relative quiet, considering its space and the numbers of people inside.  There were signs in numerous languages calling for silence.  It affirmed my faith in humanity a little bit that people actually obeyed the signs' request.  We saw a statue by Michelangelo, one of the very few to make it out of Italy.  Andrew was pretty into that.  For me, it was the cathedral itself that took me by surprise.  It was incredible.  The hush, people wandering quietly; old paintings and carvings and statues tucked into dimly-lit alcoves, some with rows of candles burning in front.  Piped-in French choral music sounded like the proverbial choirs of angels singing, I shit you not. 

I dropped the suggested Euro donation into a box and lit a candle in front of a bust of the Virgin Mary, and I said a prayer.  I can't remember the last time that I said a prayer.  I'm still not entirely sure what drove me to it.  I felt awed, I felt humbled and really tiny.  There was a sign in several languages.  From what I remember, it said, 'Welcome, citizen of this town or pilgrim, you are welcome here in this house of God, for He loves all His children of the world,' and for a second, just a second, I felt close to God in a way that I haven't since I was a little girl.  I believed in Him.  I wanted to capitalize His name (and look at me, I'm still doing it now).  I felt something fill my chest and I blinked a couple of times.  I sat down and stared up at the ceiling and the moment passed; I saw drunk Irishman from last night walking down the aisle, and I waved to him.  I found Andrew at the entrance and we moved on, but outside, the steeple rising high above the rooftops still brought a lump in my throat.

There was another cathedral in town, too, but for whatever reason, the second didn't elicit the reaction, that second of warmth and understanding, that the first had.  I can't begin to speculate why.  We found the Grote Markt of the town, which was essentially a giant town square, closed off to vehicular traffic.  There was a huge statue in the middle, which we sat at the base at to catch our breaths, and I took a look at what was surrounding us.  It reminded me of a small-scale version of the Grote Markt in Brussels, with a clock tower, tourists swarming across the square, and the addition of the horse-drawn carriages that we'd seen all through town, which apparently picked up and disgorged passengers here.  We were pretty done, by that point, so we headed back toward the train station.  I stopped into a shop along the way to pick up a couple of postcards, and the shopkeeper made my day by assuming that I spoke French after I said 'bonjour' to him.  I would have gotten away with it scotfree, too, except that he asked me a question in French, and I had to pull out the patented 'oh God, oh God, are you talking to me?' blank stare, and he immediately switched into English long enough to tell me that he'd thought I was Belgian, and to have a nice day.

The train back to Brussels was uneventful; I closed my eyes in Bruges and opened them in Brussels, where we went to the Comic Strip Museum, which I was disappointed in.  I stupidly missed the 'strip' part of the title, so I went in first expecting to see comics by Miller and Moore and Vaughn, X-Men and X-Wing and X-Something else, I'm sure.  After realizing that this was a comic strip museum, I was Shocked and Appalled (not really) to see that there were no "Peanuts," no "Cathy," and certainly no "Family Circus" or "Prince Valiant."  Here's a shocker: the Belgian Comic Strip Museum was, gasp, mostly about Belgian/European comic strips.  A large section of the museum was given over to Tintin, who's apparently an iconic and famous Belgian comic character (who I had never heard of; Andrew was horrified).  What made me happy was the display on the Smurfs, who were apparently a Belgian invention.  Who knew!  But I still have yet to receive the answer to a question that has plagued me since I watched Saturday morning cartoons: How did the Smurf race survive with only one Smurfette?

The museum had some interactive exhibits that looked like a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, there was this thing where I, A) didn't know the characters, and B) can't read French or Flemish.

Exhausted, we wandered back to the hostel, where naps were had and I cemented my friendship with new roommate Megan, an accountant from Texas traveling on her own for four months, by blowing out her power adaptor with my surge protector.  Thankfully, my surge protector exploded as well (pretty spectacularly, actually; there were popping noises and wisps of smoke and everything), so at least I managed to destroy my own electronic gear along with hers. As there were no hard feelings, Andrew and Megan and I wound up talking at a table in the hostel's bar for a good, long while before bed. 

Talking American politics and baseball scores in Brussels felt very weird.  Also, I'm not quite sure how I managed to wind up traveling with the most enthusiastic Yankees fan I know, but we haven't killed each other yet!  That counts for something.

Belgium - Brussels

3 September 2007

Jo woke us this morning for breakfast (toast and jam and stewed apples and blackberries, oh my!) and I couldn't figure out the shower to save my soul (idiot), and we settled our laptop bags and suitcases into a corner of Marthe's room and got our backpacks ready to travel.  Jo continued to be brilliant and dropped us at the train station, and we trained it in to Waterloo.  It was a nice ride; I love watching the row houses and lines of chimnies and aerials pass by.  It finally felt like I was in London.

Fifteen to twenty minutes later, we pulled into Waterloo.  All I could think of was Mom singing that stupid song with the lyrics "Waterloo, Waterloo baby" whenever we used this train station when my family was in London years ago.  After a quick jaunt through the train station and security, we hopped on the 10:43 Eurostar train to Brussels, and boom, here we are now, on the train making its way through France on the way to Belgium.  The woman across from us is having a conversation in rapidfire French; the pair behind us are talking in what I'm pretty sure is Mandarin (the things you learn from A) half your friends taking elementary Chinese courses and delighting in speaking the language to everyone who will listen, and B) Firefly).  I love this whole language and accent thing.  It's so much more interesting than what I hear on a daily basis in Portland and in Amherst.

It's cloudy and overcast in France today, and we've already passed a few classic-looking French villages (cluster of little houses surrounding a tall church spire) set back among the fields.  Nothing more to write about until we've actually gotten somewhere; time to try to learn some French, since it would be nice if at least one of us could say 'hello,' 'thank you,' and 'where is the toilet.'

/ 1300 (French time!)

* * * * *

We're in Brussels.  I had a little too much to drink with dinner, I think.  Legally.  In a restaurant.  So fun to say!  I probably won't be making a habit of the drinking, though; even the littlest bit tends to make me feel sick.  But I'm getting ahead of myself, as usual.

We got off the train at Midi Station in Brussels, and immediately hopped the subway for a few stops and got off at Boutique de Kr...outon (I can't spell this name to save my soul).  We wandered, lost, for a little while, which wasn't a great time; heavy backpacks, hot hot heat, hard to breathe, harder to read the signs in French (and you can forget about the Flemish), middle of the city, me wanting to stop and look at maps, Andrew wanting to walk til we found the right direction.  He got his bearings and found the hostel, though, after a detour through a local park and this huge, old, abandoned building that used to house botanical gardens.  The hostel isn't so bad; 30 Euro for two nights, small dormitory-style room with eight beds and a sink, free breakfast and a bar and a patio.  We checked in, dumped our stuff, and headed out to explore the city.

We walked through a large park, first.  It started to sprinkle.  I immediately cursed whatever had made me agree that no, I didn't have the space to bring a waterproof jacket and yes, I'd be completely fine without it.  Suddenly, over the sound of our voices and our feet crunching on the gravel, we heard a woman's voice, singing.   Andrew and I exchanged a glance.  He asked if I wanted to see what it was.  I said something to the rough equivalent of "fuck yeah," and we followed the soprano to an open-air gazebo deeper within the park, where a young woman dressed in black stood, singing opera in Italian.  This is the part of today's notes where I geek out singing-style, because she was amazing.  She had a full-bodied, rich voice, incredible pitch, the high and the low in her range, and damn but her voice carried.  People wandered in, two or three at a time, to sit on the rows of benches in front of the gazebo and just listen.  The singer stood with her hands clasped in front of herself, seemingly oblivious to the couples sitting with their arms around each other, the four twentysomethings paused with briefcases in hand, the guy playing with his dog. 

Impromptu opera in a park on a rainy afternoon in Brussels.  Not such a bad way to start off the Grand European Adventure.

Brussels is this fascinating mix of old and new.  I tried to reflect that in the pictures that I took, but we'll see how they come out.  The heart of Brussels' Lower Town is the Grote Markt or Grand Place, this town square surrounded by incredible, huge buildings (baroque and Gothic architecture) on all sides, spires reaching to the skies, with statues and shining gold embellishments, all surrounding the wide, cobblestone square.  Flags fluttering in the breeze, narrow cobblestone streets leading off in every direction, the tourists were swarming.  There were tons of Asian tour groups, like everywhere else we've been so far; I have to wonder, do you see big groups of Western tourists like that in Asian countries?  The buildings were guildhalls, built over what was once marshland.  There was the Gothic Hôtel de Ville (the town hall, built from 1401-1459), along with La Maison des Boulangers, La Maison des Ducs de Brabant, La Maison du Roi, and a number of buildings named after animals; Le Cornet, Le Renard, Le Cygne.

We wandered the streets after that; there were such random things.  A Tin Tin store, cartoon-style murals here and there, the "iconic" Wee Manneken Pis (30 centimeter-high statue of a little boy peeing in the street; underwhelming, and surrounded by tourists) -- like I said, random.  We stumbled across Cathédrale Des Sts Michel and Gudule, an astonishing (Brabant Gothic architecture) cathedral named for Brussels' male and female patron saints; tall, graceful, reminded me of Westminster Abbey.  My favorite part, though, was the building next door.  We could not figure out what it was, but it had corporate logos on the front and the sides.  It had clearly been built with its neighbor in mind, from the long vertical lines running up the building to the metal spires crowning it.  It's the best example of Brussels' old-new aesthetic that I've seen.

Directly in front and across the small courtyard and the street, on a huge screen covering the face of a building that was being renovated, there was a huge drawing of a human fetus.  Significance?  We couldn't figure it out.  We wandered a little while longer, though similar streets (old connected buildings, windowboxes in upper stories, cafes or little stores on first floor), searching for a restaurant that Andrew wanted to go to, called Chez León.  We found it eventually, and had dinner--turkey steak, fries, and the cheapest beer on the menu, something called Maes.  Andrew ordered first, in English, and then I tried in piss-poor French.  The waiter responded to both of us in fast, flawless French and went off.  When he returned with the drinks, I managed a pretty decently accented 'merci,' and Andrew said 'thank you.'

The water kindly chose to speak to me in English from then on.

It's been very interesting to me, seeing how we're received.  We got pegged immediately as English-speaking, and maybe even as American, everywhere we went.  I want to see what happens when Andrew wears a plain T-shirt, rather than one covered in English writing extolling the virtues of some beer.  When I went one or two places by myself and didn't say much besides s'il vouz plait and merci, I don't think I got pegged; the shopkeepers were friendly and easy-going, and spoke to me in French.  It was nice.  I've never especially liked feeling like a tourist, peering in at other people's lives with a bucket hat and a fanny pack and a camera, and I know how I feel about tourists at home (I loathe them), so I do try to be polite, courteous, quiet, and generally unobtrusive while in other places.  It's nice to be mistaken for a local once in a while.

After dinner, we walked back to the hostel and, along the way, found that not only do the Belgians apparently not believe in street signs or predictable driving patterns, but they also don't believe in grocery stores.  We wanted to make dinner tomorrow in the kitchen, but we couldn't find any food.  While I've mentioned wacky driving, there aren't many Brussels drivers, especially compared to London or New York, but the ones who are on the road?  Well, they drive--permit me this one obscenity--like motherfuckers.  It's nuts.

At the hostel, there were a couple of guys sitting in the courtyard with drinks as we came in; two Canadians, an Australian, and an American.  Andrew got a beer and me a water, and we sat down just inside.  It's been sort of fascinating to watch the gender separation in here.  First one guy sat along at a table, then two more started talking to him and joined them, then Andrew joined them, and then another couple of guys sat together.  They flock together.  Meanwhile, there's another table of guys drinking and playing poker, me sitting alone writing, and another girl sitting alone reading.  All the other girls staying here?  They're out in Brussels, or inside the rooms.  Out here has become a kind of boys' club, with smoke and beer and pool and poker and loud voices raised about 'in America' this and 'in America' that.  So far, I've already heard conversations about a whole lot of things that I never needed to know about these strangers and their sex lives.

That's all, folks.  Bruges tomorrow.

/ 20:30

* * * * *

It actually turned out to be fun.  I got dragged over to Testosterone Land by Andrew and Ben, the Canadian ballet dancer, where a good portion of the table was fairly trashed.  Ben told me all about how studying evolutionary biology is cool because the way that the apes communicated was like the first dance.  Drunk Irishman was very nice to me, despite the drunk part; he was the one who had insisted that Andrew stop 'abandoning' me (it was less that Andrew abandoned me, and more that I was writing up my notes and thought it'd be easier without a lot of beer and smoking guys) and come to fetch me, and he commended me for keeping travel notes.  He also said I reminded him of my cousin, which was when things got a little weird.

Ben told a story about how the girl he loved had moved to Rotterdam from Toronto when he was in New York, so he'd been unable to say goodbye.  After his show in Berlin, given the choice between eastern Europe--which he and his friend really wanted to go to, and where he had family--and Amsterdam, he chose Amsterdam because it meant that he could go to this girl.  He went to Rotterdam, saw this girl, told her he loved her and he'd come to the Netherlands to say goodbye -- and she said she didn't believe him.

So he went to Belgium and was getting drunk.

The conversation, at that point, devolved into whether or his his buddy could have had sex with an Israeli girl in Rotterdam.  I felt like I was in a raunchy teen comedy.

Two other guys, Brett and Nameless from Colorado, got to Brussels by hitchhiking from Slovenia, speaking nothing but English.  They were full of praise for eastern Europe and Prague in particular.  They said it looks like "a fucking fairytale.  Like Cinderella's fucking castle, man."  They were traveling for six months, and were offended that Andrew and I were spending only two or three days everywhere that we were going.  Of course, they were also drunk and stoned out of their minds, so I didn't pay too much attention to any judgments that they passed.

Testosterone Land, minus Andrew, migrated to a bar, and I went to our room and met two new arrivals -- Rob and Marissa of New York City.  They were funny and personable, in their mid-to-late twenties.   Andrew and I had a drink with them and talked to them for a while, and then went back to the room to get ready for bed.  I introduced myself to the two roommates who'd been in the room all night, speaking Spanish to each other and thwarting all attempts to go to bed.  I did so in Spanish and was immediately answered in flawless English; I felt very inadequate.

Made new friends, made people laugh, dropped my purse multiple times on Andrew's head ("That's the Belgian way of saying 'I love you' ") -- all in all, successful night.

Houston, we have liftoff

My name is Lynne, I'm a college student in the northeastern United States, and I'm studying in London for the semester.  Those are the basics. The other important thing to note is that I'm horrifically slow when it comes to doing things that ought to be done, sometimes, which is why I'm setting up this blog a full month after I regained internet access, and two months after I left home.  This first flurry of entries is going to be made up of material from my notebook, covering 1 September through 17 October (look at the way I wrote those dates; I'm assimilating already!), with the eventual goal being that I catch up with current time so that I'm not blogging in the past anymore. 

1 September, 2007

And we're off!  Or I am, anyway.  Months of planning, weeks of frantic packing, and hours of teeth-gnashing while on hold with Virgin Atlantic have culminated in this: me sitting on an Amtrak train on my way to New York City.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

I applied to Goldsmiths University in February of this year, and found out in late April/early May that I had officially been accepted as a visiting student for one semester. My friend Andrew also applied and was accepted, and the second that we found out that classes don't begin until October, we knew what we had to do.  The summer was spent e-mailing back and forth about hostels, airfare, train tickets, and general plans for a three-week Travel Extravaganza around continental Europe.

Today, I'm finally on my way. 

My parents woke me at the crack of dawn (okay, 5:30.  that sounds dawn-cracky, right?) and we piled my suitcase, backpack, and laptop case into the car.  I promptly put a pillow up against the window and slept the whole way from Portland to Boston.  We sat in South Station for a few hours, until I could finally board my train around 9:15.  Hugs were exchanged, goodbyes were said, and I bolted for the train and my reserved seat.

Once the train had left the station, I settled down to serious business: taking notes from Europe for Dummies (thanks, Mom! your confidence is appreciated, as ever) and watching my fellow travelers.  A number of people (including a group of women headed to Foxwood's, a girl who looked like a college student, and a blind man) got on in Boston and off in Connecticut, but I'm still holding down the fort.  Or the car, as it were.

I've made friends with my seatmate.  He's an older gentleman who got on in Connecticut with no visible luggage and a book in hand; it's fun to see someone who actually dressed up to travel, in the day and age of the yoga pant and flipflop.  He sat down beside me with a nod, and he saw my Europe book and asked if I was going.  It turns out that he's flying out of New York later today, headed for points Prague and Vienna, where he'd been stationed when he was in the service as a young man.   We had a pleasant conversation, and chuckled later over fellow passengers, as a little boy tried to shove past a man waiting for someone else to pass in the aisle.  The man made the most hideous 'good GOD' sort of put-out face at the kid. 

We laughed. "People in this world need to learn to tolerate each other," my seatmate said.

"Or learn to be patient," I added.  It's a nice thought, a world where people tolerated each other and each other's differences rather than causing conflict because of them.

About an hour out of South Sation, as I raised my head and looked out the window for the first time, it finally hit me: I AM OUT OF HERE!  I'm on my way to Europe.  It's a crazy feeling.  I couldn't stop grinning at the window. We were crossing a bridge; the blueblue water sparkling as far as I could see, a number of small boats zipping past underneath, a Coast Guard sailing vessel in the distance in front of several islands, sea grass -- beautiful.

New York, here I come! 

P.S. - Writing on trains is an acquired skill.

I don't think I've acquired it yet.

/12:30 PM

* * * * *

I reached Penn Station early in the afternoon. I said goodbye to my charming elderly seatmate, whose name I never caught, and he kindly helped me with my overwhelmingly heavy luggage, and we wished each other safe trips.  Andrew met me at the station, and we took the subway back to his aunt's apartment in Soho. 

Once I'd dropped my things at his aunt's apartment (tiny, adorable, and covered in all kinds of fabulous world travel souveneirs), Andrew and I met up with his friend Jessi and her friend Tal, and the four of us walked up to Washington Park.  We wandered around and took an incredibly long walk through Soho toward the financial district. I don't know how long we'd been walking in the sun and the heat when we saw a huge, fenced-off construction site, and a tour group standing on the steps of the Brooks Brothers store across the street, taking pictures. 

It wasn't a construction site, of course.  It was Ground Zero.

I didn't figure it out until I turned to Jessi, puzzled, and asked why the tourists were swarming all around us.  She told me that it was the World Trade Center site, and I belatedly understood why there were enormous American flags flying.  It left me with a funny taste in my mouth.  This is how we memorialize?  Fence it in and drape it in the flag?  And all those people taking pictures of the site where people died, where people spent their last horrible minutes having to decide whether to burn or to leap from a window -- it felt weird.  It felt disrespectful.  [Note: Looking back at this is both strange and hypocritical, after I took pictures at Sachsenhausen.  More on this when catch-up posts reach Germany.]

We continued on, and I wished I'd brought my camera.  It was so strange to be fenced in on all sides by buildings, to have to crane my neck to see the sky.  It was strangely beautiful, shafts of light streaking through gaps between buildings.  We wandered past a few New York University dorms, where students were moving in.  I was and remain very excited for Europe, but I was jealous that they got to have their stuff, their friends, get settled, while I was leaving behind all of my things, all of my friends, the possibility of a fall in my favorite place in an apartment with my favorite people.  We made our way through the university section to South Street Seaport. 

New York was something of a surprise, in that I was expecting diversity, but I wasn't expecting to hear so much not-English.  It seemed like every other conversation was in another language.  I heard Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and multitudes of others that I couldn't even place.  We walked through the Seaport, me listening to the conversations going on around us, watching the tourists watch the street performers and duck in and out of shops.  The Brooklyn Bridge was visible from that street, and we walked to and onto the Bridge.

The view was absolutely incredible.  I can't believe I didn't bring my camera.  Brooklyn ahead, Manhattan behind, the harbor and Governor's Island and the Statue of Liberty to the right, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building rising out of the skyline behind us, the setting sun reflecting in the shining city, the iconic spires and cables of the bridge surrounding us, cars below -- amazing.  We walked all the way across and back.  It took an hour or two, and by the end, I hurt from my hips to the soles of my feet, but it was worth it.  We hopped the subway back to Soho, and the four of us and Andrew's dad went to dinner at a tiny Cuban restaurant.  It was set down just below street level, with low lighting, the windows and doors thrown wide open, the hip regulars at the bar.  After dinner (the best chicken soup I've ever had in my life, chosen thanks to how sick I was feeling by that point), we said goodbye to Jessi and Tal and went back to the apartment to sleep.
 
It was strange, listening to all that noise in the street below, when the only thing I'd heard all summer at night was the sound of my own breathing, the fan, the crickets, and the occasional car coming down my eleven-house dead end street.  Laughing, shouting, music, cars -- it was fascinating, but also not conducive to my headache and nausea.  Sleep didn't come easily, and it was fitful.

2 September, 2007

Woke at 4:20 AM, got dressed, gathered my stuff, came very close to puking my guts out, sweated out the ride to JFK International Airport and again came very close to throwing up, but didn't.  My 'almost got sick but didn't' skills are getting a serious workout.  New York City at four AM on a Sunday morning is a strange place.  There were lots of drunks, lots of people still staggering home, carrying bottle in paper bags.  We said goodbye to Andrew's dad at the airport, got inside -- and boom.  I immediately felt better.  Maybe it was nerves.

Either that or the aspirin I took at the apartment.

Either way, happily feeling better, I got all checked in with Andrew, checked our bags, and got into the line for security.  There were big groups tearfully hugging and waving goodbye.  The saddest was a young woman, tears streaming down her face as she kissed a baby in a stroller on the head, and then let a woman who looked to be Grandma wheel her away.  Dignified and heart-rending.

Once we (finally; it took ages) cleared customs and were onto the concourse, we were home free!  Early morning in an airport always feels like home to me.  I am eternally grateful to my parents for having given me the opportunity to travel early and often, and for having taken me on planes all the time.  I'm really comfortable with flying, whereas Andrew is (and was) a little more nervous.  We didn't have long to wait before boarding, and off we went on Virgin Atlantic flight 26 from JFK to Heathrow.  It was a good flight.  It took off late, but the flight was smooth as glass and the seat backs had those mini TV monitors.  I watched movies and the time flew, forgive me the pun.  The adorable four-year-old girl sitting in front of me and the games of peekaboo that we played between the seats also helped pass the time.

Upon landing, after circling Heathrow for a while and making me increasingly nervous about the amount of fuel left, Andrew and I spent an hour in the longest ever customs line from hell.  Adding insult to injury, it took approximately 15-20 seconds for the people at the desk to deal with us.  How was the line possibly that long if they were moving people through that quickly?  It was interesting being in that customs line; we were the only two Americans, from what I could tell.  I haven't heard a single other American accent since I've gotten here; it's fantastic.  Post-customs, we got ahold of our bags and I spoke to my friend Marthe's parents, Tom and Jo, and worked out where we would meet Tom.  We moved on to the Underground.

I love the London Underground.  The 'way out' and 'mind the gap' signs are iconic to me, and I love how huge it is, and how cool and cosmopolitan I feel being on it.  (Also, 'mind the gap' makes me smile every time, now that I've read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, with the gap-monster that lives down there and grabs people's legs when they're too slow getting on trains.)  We hopped on the Picadilly line and in a few stops were where we needed to be.  Up a few flights of stairs--and seriously laboring, at this point, as there had been enormous stretches of ground to cover in Heathrow, and my bags were heavy--and Marthe's dad was there with the family van.  We introduced ourselves and piled our stuff into the car, and zoomed off through London.  The family lives in an area that isn't in central London (and while I know how to get there on the Tube, don't even ask me where exactly in London it is), and it was night.  But I still grinned madly for the course of the entire ride, watching Tom drive on the left side of the road and the lights streak past on either side.

The family house is fantastic.  It's been in the family since the '30's and it's literally right on the Thames, so much so that the river comes up to the top step at high tide.  There's a nearby railroad bridge over the river built in the 17th century.  The view from the back of the house is stunning, especially at night, as Tom showed it to us.  The area didn't feel like we were in London.  It was gloriously quiet.  Tom and Jo were great; they fed us, talked to us, set us up to sleep in Marthe's empty room, and were generally amazing. As for the house, as I was saying before I distracted myself with discussions of how much Marthe's family saved our lives, it just -- it's one of those houses that feels like it has history to it.

Andrew and I repacked for the trip, and crashed hard and happy, because -- finally in London, baby.