AAAAAHHHH MOTHERLAND!

Ok, to those of you out there who are actually my loyal followers... I'm so sorry this is taking a while to get to... I do realize Russia is what everyone has been waiting for, and I swear to you, I did in fact go to russia... it just happens to be that going to russia followed quickly by home and then school is not conducive to blogging. I also appologize b/c this is going to be a super long post. I'm just trying to divide things by city... but Moscow is taking up a lot of time...

Anywho, for those of you who don't know the title reference: The end of the world

So i rolled into the motherland on Sunday... and you've already heard about that... turns out there was no spa... at least not one anyone could direct me to, despite there being a number and a floor number... it just happened to be on a floor that didn't exist in my hotel. Yes, i tried to find it anyways.

The first night I ate alone. Sometimes this can't be helped... randomly showing up in russia is one of those times. I did recognize some people from the plane I was on b/c i loved the girl's jacket (it was a grey sweatshirt with colored circles)... later in life we learn that they are actually a couple on my trip. There was another single girl at a table in front of me. When she got up to leave i was just like... Hey, do you speak english... "yes"... "you aren't by any chance on the intrepid trip, are you", "why yes I am", "so am i", "excellent".... This was my new aussie friend, Cathy. We made arrangements to meet up the next morning and take on Moscow... cause like i said... big... not really the type of place to wander around solo your first day.

After more exploration for the spa, I ended up just heading up to my room to chill out. There were 2 english speaking channels: Russia Today, and BBC International. Let me tell you... in Russia, I got a completely different story about what was going on w/ Georgia and South Ossetia. On Russia Today, they were flashing the word "Genocide" and mapping out how Georgians has invaded the autonomous region predominantly inhabited by russians, and were forcefully commiting genocide against them and how the Russians had gone in afterwards to protect the innocent. BBC had a slightly different perspective. But in general by the time I got back to the US I didn't, and still don't have the clearest picture of what went on while I was there. And have now developed severe media trust issues.

So bright and early the next morning we hooked up at breakfast, and headed for the metro... ah, the moscow metro. Most cities build their buildings of marble... moscow keeps all of its marble underground.... its beautiful... and bomb shelter safe. The metro is fun b/c its all in cerilic... (i learned how to read basic cerilic by the time i got out of russia, it was exciting) The lights flicker, there's a yellow haze, and everything tells you the trains haven't been new in decades. The doors open and shut without warning... at one point people in our group got left behind b/c they couldn't get in fast enough, but i'm skipping ahead...

The first goal was to get to Red Square... that took a while... but we got there eventually, and we saw the Kremlin and St. Basils, and Red Square, and Lennon's tomb, (at least from the outside) we wandered through st. basil... sharing a head set... never share a head set when there are multiple inches between you and the other person. Of course it was sprinkling for most of the day... I had invested in yet another umbrella just before leaving hamburg... it was a cheap umbrella, and i paid for it by slicing a large chunk of my finger off while trying to close it. Lucky for me, I'm now always prepared... for everything... I even carry a first aid kid around with me for such situations as profusely bleeding finger in a church...the Cathedral of Christ our Savior... it was.. incredible. It was full of Icons... Russians love their Icons. As far as we can tell this is the biggest difference between Russian orthodox and Catholocism. They all had their rituals, and prayers, and incense... It was actually all very touching to be a part of.

We wandered around the city for a while longer, looking for a specific area that was supposed to be really trendy to eat in. Unfortunately it started to rain, then it rained a little more, then it rained hard enough to have us flee into the first resturant we saw open. A little Italian place, with fabulous food. Poor Cathy is allergic to wheat products. People with dietary issues that travel blow my mind. I mean, my dietary constrictions are no soy and walnuts... which, admittedly, i tend to ignore... but to have real constrictions, I couldn't imagine pulling that off. But Cathy was pretty inspirational... she had done all of her homework and managed pretty well all around.

So we kept walking around, and at one point we came to a street where there were kids with AK-47s... ok, not kids, they were in uniform... but they also had dogs... I have a few theories in life... one is, don't walk down the street where there are teenagers with guns and dogs... i don't care if its their job or not. So we turned and walked up the street, and just happened to look back to see this totally soviet building behind us, sort of like a prison, which explained why it was being guarded. This led to one of my favorite life lessons... never look back in life... unless you are traveling... because the view is always different, and you might miss something awesome if you don't.

So back to red square, we checked out the main museum, which is actually cut into two museums. You really need about 6 hours to do the whole thing properly. We did the second half or Russian history. Which was great, as a lot of it was a review of things I already knew. And I loves me the russian history. Of particular note was that they had a model of a room where philosophers and revolutionaries would meet, and actually mentioned that Belinsky would come to this particular room. While I'm not actually related to the russian Belinsky, I don't care, its still my name... if you don't know who i'm talking about click here--> Vissarion Belinsky
And I got my picture taken with a cossak... heehee

Sooo... after all that we had to hall it back to the hotel because it was time to meet up with our group. It was a tad on the girl heavy side. Me, Cathy, Michelle (US), Jill (Ireland), Petty (Aussie), Ian and Sue (Aussies, married), Emma and Roland (Irish, engaged), Maija (Aussie), Leila (Aussie), and Erin (USA) who was our tourguide.

So we met, we went back into town to eat at a fabulous little chain resturant called moomoo, wandered around red square by night, then a few of us went for drinks, only to have every russian beer be out of stock. So we paid far too much for import beers that that took over an hour to get. Ah life expereience... and my first real taste of how Russians handle service. As it turned out, Cathy and I ended up being roomies, which was awesome. And all this was just day 1!!

The next day, we got up bright and early to do one of the most exciting things ever... go see an embalmbed dictator. For those keeping track... this is embalbed dictator number two for me. As someone pointed out I have very odd measurments of accomplishment in my life... and you know what i say... so what... it keeps my world interesting. There have been a total of 9 embalmbed communist dictators: Lenin, Dimitrov, Choibalsan, Stalin, Gottwald, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Neto, Burnham, Kim Il Sung-- Of these Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham (in Georgetown, Guyana), and Kim Il Sung (in North Korea), remain on display... I've seen 2 of 5, not bad. See this blog, A letter from China: the pickled dictator, for more info on embalmbed dictators. The Lenin experience was a little surreal. I mean this is someone I've learned about for years. Studied indepth. Someone who had brilliant ideas, was smart enough to believe they wouldn't come about in his time, but ambitious enough to seize opportunity when it happend to fall into his lap. He comes second only to Robespierre in my favorite revolutionaries, and easily within my top five dead people i'd like to have tea with. Walking through the tomb is creepy. Its almost completely pitch black. I ended up losing the people I was with, and wandered through alone... mainly b/c once again, there were teenagers with guns indicating i need to do so. The tomb is made of black marble, without any lights besides the ones shining upon Lenin, which you only get to after tripping through a maze of steps and armed teenagers, who don't even let you keep your hands in your pockets as you are walking through. Lenin is a lot smaller than you would imagine him... and looks waaaaay too much like Adam. If you pause to long, they start to walk towards you... and then suddenly you are outside, and wandering past the grave of "great" commies, including Stalin, and the first cosmonats. Honestly, I couldn't tell which was Stalin's grave. I hadn't learned the ceryllic well enough yet, and there wasn't anything in english. oh well... he's not one of my favorites, kinda falls into the "truly evil" category.

There was a little time to kill after seeing Lenin, so I ended up crusing the market and checking out the GUM... all designer stores... I could never afford to actually shop here. We then all met up and went to the Kremlin. It was pretty cool. Got to see where Putin lives, where the Czars were crowned and burried... etc. There was one big ugly commie building in the middle, and we got to see the treasury.

Afterwards, I decided to take on Moscow on my own. I wandered a few miles down river to Gorky Park... Which i thought was just a regular park with a few rides here and there. No... it was an amusement park. Not an expensive one, but still not a lot of fun to be in by yourself, and it wasn't really my final destination, i just sort of wanted to go in and check it out... and realized you need a whole day there... so I crossed the street to one of the places i've wanted to see since high school... the communist statue graveyard, or statue park, as its called. This place was pretty cool.... when communism fell, they took all the old statues and everything and dumped them in this park... but over the years, things had been picked up and moved around so that they were set up nicely etc. There's one part where they just stuck all the heads in one place (see pictures) overall the whole thing was really cool, and I'm very happy i made the trip out there.

I started walking back up the river and ended up on a bridge with trees and locks, where couples would come after they were married to put their locks on the trees, and then i ended up in a park full of locals just hanging out. I walked myself out of a potentially dodgy situation at one point, and saw what was clearly a mobster being driven chaufferd around. It was... an eyeopening side adventure.

So I met up with the group for dinner. As i was waiting... the most glorious of things was being sold at a stand. Granted it was warm... but i didn't care... I had walked like 9 miles, it was a Mountain Dew... the first I'd had since exams... it was glorious. We then headed into the trendy district Cathy and I had tried to get to the day before for lunch. It was pretty awesome. A pedestrian shopping area, and the resturant had fake trees growing in it, and a terrifying scarecrow. *I'm trying not to write about how awesome all the food in russia was b/c i've had complaints that i talk about food too much... but its really hard not to... the food is good.... ah well... this was then end of our time in Moscow. I didn't stay out this night b/c i was barely moving by this point....

The Last Days in Hamburg

Wow... I can't believe its been over 2 weeks... and sooo much has happened since I left Hamburg. But the last few days went by like all partings tend to. Too slow, but too fast. Involved lots of hugging cheek kissing... which we all know I love. And Me Tomoko, Demetri, and Paul went out to dinner on Saturday night. Just the pizza place Tomoko and I had ate at during the Germany/Turkey match a month and a half before. I had packed early for a change, and barely slept as I anxiously awaited my early morning taxi to the Trainstation. Public transportation was down... too much construction on the lines, so no way for me to make my train on time. I then rode for 5 hours down to Frankfurt Airport... Checked in, and stored my luggage, all without much of a hitch. Then I was off to Russia...

(I shall be updating this a bit at a time for the next week or so)

Its a hard knock life...

... for somebody else...

I'm usually pretty good about being modest... or at least not purposely bragging... but well... I'm currently staying in the fanciest schwanky hotel I have ever been in.  I'm in Moscow, Russia by the way... To my traveler's irritation, I don't think I'm anywhere near the main part of the city... to my self indulgent side... i'm debating whether to get a russian, turkish, or japanese bath... as my hotel offers all three... I remember being torn about staying here the night before my trip b/c of the cost... but then figured, well, do i really want to be running all around moscow changing hotels etc.  It is worth the money (or at least i keep telling myself that) and i can't help but wonder if this is the kind of place I will be staying during the whole tour?  Should be interesting to see.

On other notes... Russia is big.  Everything in Russia is big.  What i could only describe as "projects" sprout up everywhere randomly, so you don't really know if you are or are not in the city... b/c they just sort of come out of the woods or in the middle of a farm.  I'm guessing just b/c they look like projects, doesn't mean they actually are.  The airport was a bagillion miles away, so i got to see a good deal of country side, cows, projects, nuclear power plants, and a giant gold domed greek orthodox church.

I had to grab a cab as I didn't arrange private transport... and as you are walking into the airport, there is a giant red sign that says, "DO NOT TAKE PRIVATE TAXIS, THEY AREN"T SAFE"... I'm just like... ok... what else shall i do then?  Turns out they have these stands, where you tell them where you are going, prepay, at the stand, a set rate... then a cabbie come gets you and thats that... no overcharging, no fixed meters... its the most brilliant taxi experience i have ever had.

H&M, Ikea, Absolute... Oh my!

This last weekend trip to Stockholm was possibly one of the most stressful flip-flop back and forth decisions I've ever made. It almost made me feel like a politician. Here's the drama: Stockholm is far away. No really, its anywhere between 10-17 hours away by train. Seeing as I invested in a Eurail, I intended to use it for everything. But when you are at the last weekend of your trip, you just came back from Poland, and are heading to Russia in a week... this seems a little bit daunting. I have a Swedish family friend, Andreas, who had offered me a free place to stay and have as a guide through Stockholm. How often does that randomly happen? And initially my Cuban friend, Emil, was going to come with me. But he ended up pulling out. Now being me, I was starting to debate, ok, what is the responsible thing for me to be doing... maybe I will fly. So I looked at airline tickets, and they weren't half bad. Then I said, lets see how I feel post poland. While in Poland there was an air strike in Hamburg. Flights shot up 100 euro... but only the flight there. Reluctantly, I decided to cancel. Made the phone call and everything. I was worried about time, money, etc. So, I went to a going away dinner for my friend Lucio, and on the way home was talking to another friend, Bruno, who, it happened was leaving the institute and heading to Sweden the next day (this is Wednesday, same day I canceled) and I'm like, oh man. So lots of kicking myself the whole night for canceling, then getting to work the next morning to realize most of my friends had left that week or were sick, or stuck doing work b/c their computers crashed, there was no reason for me to be in Hamburg. (There were a couple of people that were just flat out missing... and i didn't learn till this week where there were or anything). So I looked, and during lunch, decided, I would go reserve a seat on the train for the way there, and fly back. This was the best impulsive decision ever... (ok maybe not the best, poland may have stolen that spot, but definitely one I'm very glad I made, or else I would always question whether I should have gone).

The train ride was long. There were two potential trains i could take, late and early... however the second half of the early train was full and the first half of the late train was full... the end result was that i had to split the ride in two and spend a couple of hours in Malmo, Sweden. Which wasn't bad b/c I got to grab food and watch yet another beach volleyball tournament going on in front of the town hall. During the second half of the trip I got the worst seat in a cabin... the middle seat w/ out arm rests or anything... and always in the sun. It was a long, hot trip... And I was quite happy to get to Stockholm.

By the time I got it, it was already pretty late, so we grabbed dinner, chatted and called it an early night. Andreas had another friend staying with him, Lena, who had just gotten a job in the area cataloging crawfish.

The next morning, I set off pretty early on my own. My goal was to grab a boat tour of the archipelago, but I missed the boat by literally seconds. I opted to take the next one, and wandered around the town hall to kill time. The tour was amusing. I learned all about Swedish industries, and how in all these different locations there used to be factories, and are now homes. The tour also played a lot of swedish pop music, including, abba, ace of base, and the cardigans.

I then proceeded to walk through an absolute downpour into the old city. Meandered around a church that housed the tombs of Swedish royalty; it was a lot more... British, and medieval than everything else I had seen during this trip, which I rather enjoyed. Then, I braved the elements and headed towards the castle. Where I saw 3 different museums, all very very nice. And I actually quite loved the inside of the castle.

Here I should point out, that getting around Stockholm for me was no the same as getting around Krakow. My theories for this include: 1) If i go underground (such as via train) i lose any and all sense of direction-- this also happens in Hamburg, 2) I only function directionally when there is sun, 3) I clearly never lived in Stockholm in a past life.

As I was leaving one of the exhibits at the castle, my timing was perfect to see the Changing of the guard, which I thought surely I had missed. For those keeping tabs, thats my second changing of the guard this trip. Its not something ridiculously special, its more just interesting to watch. As my time was winding down, I did not hit the 4th museum in the castle. But as I was leaving I could here the thump and rumble of bass... the distinct sound of... a night club... in the middle of the day in Stockholm. Well, I am a creature of curiosity, so I followed the "um-cha, um-cha, um-cha" and found myself in the middle of a gigantic gay pride parade. It was fantastic. A colorful mixture of people, banners, costumes, and floats... Combining stereotypes, in the best of ways, with serious political messages, and rocking floats that were basically discos on wheels. The whole thing went on for hours, and provided a very fun backdrop for my time in the city.

After getting lost for about the bagillionth time that day, I finally managed to catch up w/ Andreas and Lena, and we wandered around old town a bit, checking out old cafe's built in cellars, and swinging by H&M (this was a must, as i needed to be involved in some way in Swedish consumer culture in some way. Afterwards, though was a major highlight of the trip.

We went to the Absolute Icebar Stockholm. You may have heard of the Ice hotel or at least seen it on the traveling gnome commercials... well, cut from the same glacier and shipped down to Stockholm, is the Icebar... A bar made of Ice. Where they give you special coats, and you are allowed a whole 45 minutes to stay in. Drinks are all made w/ Absolute vodka (another swedish product)... and they are served in glasses made of Ice (also shipped down from glacier). This place was awesome. In the corner there was a statue of a guy doing graffiti and many people had left their marks on the ice. There were some plants frozen in some blocks... and Tv's frozen in others. Fur lined the ice couches. Overall, incredibly awesome.

That night, I got a slice of Swedish culture... a Swedish Fish Party!!! hahaha, ok, not really a Swedish Fish party, but rather a Traditional Swedish Crawfish party. Andreas' friend Jonas came over, as did his cousin and his cousins' wife, who, I apologize to, I can not remember their names to save my life. I got to try all sorts of traditional Swedish foods... I even ate crawfish... yes ladies and gents, I actually ate a new type of seafood, and did become ill from the en devour (well... not from the actual eating of the crawfish i should say). About every 5-10 minutes or so, there would be a drinking song sung, and shots of schnapps. I learned valuable lesson... I do not drink like a Swede. But it was riotous good fun overall.

Next morning involved a large breakfast, and more or less laying low, till it was time to catch my bus, to grab my plane. And then another bus back to Hamburg, which, managed to break down just as we reached the city limits.

While it was a very very very short trip, I have to say I had a ton of fun, and definitely hope to go back at some point in the future.

Up and Away

So as you may have figured out by now, there are a lot of new posts this week. It isn't to say I sat and did them all at once... more that I've been working on them at home... and Poland took a lot of time. I also did something I've never done before... I started editing my pictures... making them better quality etc... or at least thats what I've been telling myself... its rather time consuming... and not something I do at work.

I also did manage to pick up a new adapter, that works for everything including my phone. Which means I'm sitting at home right now doing a lot of writing. I also expanded my Online photo storage, so should be able to post all of Sweden's pictures as well.

But this is just a quick post here. Every so often when I walk out of work there is something new that just pops up in the area. One week it was a circus. During this last week I walked out to what appeared to be a giant bouncy castle... (this wouldn't surprise me at all seeing as earlier i looked out my bedroom window to a giant bouncy castle suddenly in my backyard...) As I approached there were two more structures being blown up... Turns out they were hot air balloons!! Massive ones. One regular, one in the shape of an Ice Cream cone... and one in the shape of a fork lift. It was pretty cool.

Robin Belinsky-- As American as Apple Pie

Which is to say, not as much as you would think… And for those of you who are completely lost on the joke, “Belinsky” is a very very very Polish name… Which, if you happen to be in Poland, people like to point out to you… a lot… and then they believe you should be able to speak polish, then they question why your parent’s didn’t teach you to speak polish, and then they try to guess when your family moved to America… Its all very odd… But even odder is the Polish claim to apple pie… go figure…

Before we even get started, I just want to say, I don’t think there is any way for me to actually portray how awesome Poland really is or how much fun I had traveling there solo… Its not a place you can go into w/ expectations, b/c its not somewhere you’ve seen tons of pictures of (well you hadn’t before you looked at my blog)… you go in relatively clueless, but w/ excitement and high expectations… and are not disappointed.

So riding the overnight train from Berlin to Krakow I met a fabulous girl, Shiva… Shiva is a doctor form LA, also happens to be an Iranian Jew… Making her probably one of the most interesting people I have ever met, particularly since she lived in Iran until she was 16, so she had some very interesting stories to tell. She also contributed to our trip through Auschwitz. And she took me to an orthodox Jewish service on Saturday, which we wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. I didn’t stay for the whole thing… actually we were there, I ended up leaving for a bit b/c nothing was really going on, until as we were about to leave a bunch of Israeli kids on a trip showed up… apparently the service wasn’t starting till they got there. I wandered about for a bit and met back up w/ Shiva and she took me into the service again, this time it was in full swing. Men and women were separated by different rooms with windows that had lace curtains in between. The Rabbi’s were in full dress… very beautiful to watch, though I Had no idea what was going on… and so we stayed for a few songs, and headed out again.

But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Krakow—Friday, Saturday

Ok, so at this point, I grabbed a train Thursday night from Berlin, where I met Shiva, and we hit it off, and she hadn’t booked her hostel yet, so she ended up staying w/ me at mine. And we headed to Auschwitz, which you should have already read about… but when we got back we were hungry hungry girls. And went in pursuit of a restaurant that my Polish friend at the institute told me about… unfortunately by the time we got there, it was done serving dinner… so we ended up at a fabulous Italian place… that was incredibly beautiful. Then we wandered about for a little while, and saw that Krakow’s nightlife is actually pretty happening. The whole old quarter just comes to life, full or bars, and late night cafes, and night clubs. We ended up popping into the oldest chocolate maker in Poland’s place, E. Wedel… most delicious chocolate ever… no one got any as souvenirs as I don’t think it would have made it home, so I didn’t even try. We didn’t go out out on Friday… as we were pretty tired to begin with, so we just headed back to our hostel for some sleep.

The Hostel was incredible… possibly the best I have ever stayed at. It was called Goodbye Lenin! Its tucked away in the ally, a little bit far from the main area, but it meant that it was quiet to sleep, and central between old town and the jewish quarter. It had a fantastic bar, (with one free drink, including shots of vodka… and Poland is known for its vodka), excellent breakfast… I now eat lunch meat… this is a great milestone in life… and generally just good atmosphere (free internet as well).

Shiva kept poking fun at me the whole time we were in Krakow b/c it was a lot like I know my way around. Which is really rather true… that’s exactly what it was like. I almost never needed the map except to double check names. I always knew which way to turn, how to get back to places, etc. It was really really really, kind of on the creepy side. Past life? Polish intuition? Who knows?

In the morning I easily navigated us to the Jewish quarter, where we found the Market… too early ironically enough as we were late according to the times we were told. We did the Jewish service, and I wandered around and got myself lost in the neighborhood. I was trying very hard to find a bagel place… apparently bagels are also polish… but no one knew what a bagel was nor had they heard of the bakery I was referred to.

Post Jewish district we did breakfast back at the hostel (free breakfast) then headed out to explore old town during the day. Extremely lovely. Krakow is one city in Poland not destroyed during the War… so everything is old and original… and that is Krakow’s appeal. We did a bit of shopping, and took coffee in the main square, which is the largest market square in Europe… Just behind us a stage suddenly went up, and the next think you knew we were listening to polka music, and it turns out there was a whole polish folk festival going on behind us. There were dancers and bands from all over the world. After watching a few songs, we decided we wanted to do a walking tour of the city.

This was a fabulous idea (at least for me… b/c I love wandering around for hours listening to guides tell stories… no I’m serious… it goes hand in hand with my love of piles of rocks). I can’t remember for the life of me what our guide’s name was… but he was fabulous… though a bit on the enthusiastic side right to the end where he was like… ok, normally the tour ends here, but I want to take you to see this one last thing… I thought it was great. We wandered all around the old town, visited the University, where Copernicus and Pope John Paul studied…we hit up a Franciscan Church, where a wedding was going on, which we actually walked in the middle of a bit… sort of odd, as our guide walked ahead of us, and we all just sort of stood there and stared like, “are we really supposed to follow him????”… Then I got to do some Pope stalkin… for those of you new to my world, I have a reputation for Pope stalking… at least the old pope, not the new one… it just happened to be whenever I show up in Rome, the old pope would be out there blessing people… and I got pictures, etc. so… pope stalker. Seeing as he was from Poland, I got to do a bit more pope stalking… There were memorials and statues set up everywhere. It turns out he even used to teach classes at the Uni. Could you imagine wandering into class one day and the Pope being your professor???? I would have totally studied in Krakow if I got to have the pope as my Prof. We headed up to the castle, though didn’t go inside… It was pretty nice… the king at one point had an Italian wife and built her a court yard in Italian style to make her feel more at home. Oh and while we were there, there were soooooooo many weddings going on, and couples doing pictures, etc. It was very romantic, even for the single women running around.

The tour lasted a little over 3 hours, ending with the old fortress. By that point Shiva was rather tired of walking, and I volunteered to run back to the tour office to grab our jackets and some bags (it had gotten rather hot, and they had a place to keep our stuff)… we had picked up a guy from our tour, Steve, and Aussie that had been living in Scotland. We agreed to meet back up at the restaurant that we had tried to eat at earlier… on the way, I ran into a bunch of break dances… on the way back I ran into a shoe store… We had plans to go out that night, but according to my guidebook… sneakers and sandals were a no no… and as I only brought sneakers, shoes were a necessity… *hush you laughers*… necessity I tell your… and I’ve gotten many compliments on the shoes and their awesomeness since. Dinner was fabulous, traditional polish food… downstairs was unfortunately booked, and set up in the style of 18^th century bourgeoisie, upstairs was styled like a stable… we got to eat in the stable… it worked. We then agreed to meet up w/ Steve later to go Dancing!

And dance we did. We went to a club called Prozac… which had multiple rooms, dug into a cave like basement, a hookah bar, and light up dance floor. Turns out Shiva and Steve are both big into trance music… I just like to dance. Here was a very interesting situation though… it was all guys on the dance floor. Now, this wasn’t a gay bar, it just happened to be guys. And while this might be something every girl going dancing may have dreamed about, the fact is… its really awkward to just have a dance floor of boys… actually dancing… with each other… But we ended up having a fantastic time for most of the evening… though both Shiva and I were harassed a bit by some over enthusiastic guys, but by then it was around 3am, so we decided to call it a night… particularly since I had a train at like 8:30 am to catch.

Warsaw-- Sunday, Monday

And so my great Poland adventure continued on to Warsaw. 3 hours of sleep is not the best way to do this kind of trip, but at the same time led to one of the most interesting nights ever… but as usual, jumping ahead. So after I got to my hostel, I learned check in wasn’t till 3… it was around 10 or 11. So I dropped off my bags, and headed towards old town. Now Warsaw was basically flattened during the war. And Rebuilt afterwards. When you first get off the train you just go… wow, this is big… and it is… the first building you see is a giant soviet sky scraper… the palace of science and technology or something like that is the name… the roads are wide… for soviet parades and tanks. Then in the distance you see the modern skyscrapers… totally glass, springing from the skyline in fabulous modern design. So the last thing I was really expecting as I walked up the road was to find myself in Baroque Europe. But there it was… with bright colors on a bright blue sky… beyond picturesque. I wandered around for a few hours, and ended up at a hole in the wall restaurant specializing in … pirogues. Now I have objected to the existence of pirogues for years… the idea of potato inside noodle is well… unnatural.. real pirogues however is a different story. For instance I had a baked pirogue w/ cheese and pumpkin seeds… mmmmm… and the best beer… it was Honey beer… wow.

I wandered around a little longer, then headed back to the hostel. The Okie Dokie hostel. It is probably one of the more famous hostels… each room is designed by a different Warsaw artist. My room turned out to be the Communist room… woot woot… sigh… I should have brushed up on my commie knowledge before coming out. I used to be so good… Anyway, as I’m standing in line, the girl in front turned around, and it was Tanya, who I met during our Auschwitz tour. Small world. But she was going to see her room and I was in line. After I got settled in I went to look for her with no luck. And then… I made the fatal mistake of lying down for the first time all day… and totally passed out for couple of hours. I awoke to the sound of a new person coming into the room ( I stay in co-ed dorm style rooms… cheapest, best way to meet people). Once coming through a little bit, I had a rare moment of boldness and asked if the new kid wanted to go do dinner. Turns out he had just gotten in, and was also hungry. And he does have a name, Cyril, from Lyon, France… 24… engineer. To my relief he also spoke pretty decent English. So off to dinner we went.

We just randomly picked a little Italian place… and to my overwhelming amusement he ordered my food for me. I’m about 95% sure, no one has ever… I mean ever, ordered me my food… hilarious. So the night goes on, and just as we’re about to head out to find another place to grab drinks, the couple next to us starts talking to us due to the overwhelming slowness of the wait staff. After we paid, they insisted that they buy us drinks. About 5 hours after we went to dinner, we finally rolled back into the hostel. The couple, Stephen and Victoria, nearly got their very own blog post. They are a British couple, who had been living in Poland for some time. Victoria’s daughter was about our age and living in South Africa. They had been married for a few years, and reminded me more of brother/sister-best friends than your normal married couple. Steve had done more or less everything from leading tours for famous people in Italy, to being the economist who brought Ford to Poland. He seemingly had knew everyone in Warsaw, with connections everywhere. They bought us drink after drink, and were incredibly nice. Unfortunately, this might be why you aren’t hearing more about them… When we got back to the hostel we headed to the bar, which has cheese graters for lights… there were a bunch of Canadians there and Tanya… but as we sat for one last drink, they were headed out to the clubs… mind you, its after 1am at this point. So we just chilled out, until it was closing time.

Next morning I woke up early, ate breakfast… Cyril came out as I was near finishing so I opted to stick around for a bit longer. His plan was to pick up a friend at the airport and I wanted to really tour the city and do the castle and museums etc. And so, we parted ways. *side not to Mom—this is debatable as to whether or not I blew him off, its not like we had plans to see things together, and I wasn’t about to sit around the hostel “hanging out” when there was a city to see…*

And see it I did… The castle is free on Mondays, which was awesome. Of course none of the stuff is entirely real… which is amusing, but it was still pretty nice to see people’s ideas of what should have been there. I explored all the churches, Chopin’s old hang outs, etc. Once I was exhausted I jumped on the tourist bus, No guide, just riding around seeing things. This was great, b/c really… Warsaw is huge. By bus you can see the whole contrast of old and new.

I ate more perogies for lunch… and had some fabulous Balkan food for dinner…where all the waiters were like, “you are here alone?” My train didn’t leave until 11:30 pm… and I learned a valuable lesson about checking, double checking, and using visuals such as a calendar when booking tickets in other languages for night trains… as it turns out my ticket was for the next day… but managed to change things around w/ out too much trouble.

And thus ended my grand Poland adventure!

Extreme Technical Difficulties

Ok,
So as things are winding down here, things tend to go wrong. Things such as I have used up the capacity of my online picture storage, so cant upload anymore without paying (which i think is totally lame, especially since they decided to count my asia pictures)... also, today, I managed to blow both my power converter and my adapter... meaning i cant charge any electronics or plug in my computer.

So what this means for the blog... Most of my pictures are uploaded, just not posted yet, except for half of sweden... I plan on emailing myself what i have written in terms of posts later today or tommorrow using what i have left of battery power on my lap top. Seeing as i was working on the blogs at home and trying to wrap up researching here, I wasnt planning on writing much more... mazbe ill just post pictures for now... stories later... its also hard to write using stupid german key board im not used to. our IT people are currently out till monday, so no one can give me another adaptor... i give scowling face to those of zou laughing at me now.

As for work, it looks like ill be handwriting notes, and photocopzing books for two days. I did try the media mart electronics store... thez onlz had european adaptors-converters... so i will trz to pick something up in the frankfurt airport, otherwise ill just have to buy regular battereis for my camera, use my watch as my alarm clock, and live without music and phone for 10 days.

ah well... such is life as a traveler.

Auchwitz-Birkenau

This is one of my more serious posts. Though not as graphic as the one from last year dealing with the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields… The topic of Auschwitz is just as grim, if not more so.

On this day, it rained… it shifted back and forth between thunder showers and a constant drizzle. Appropriate weather for where we were going. We opted to take a private tour, as we figured it would be cheaper and more informative in the end… and faster to get there. Which was very true… as we learned, b/c the driver sped the whole way there. At one point I looked out the window to see a camel. Yes I said a camel… a real one, just sort of chilling out in someone’s back yard. I was there with my friend Shiva that I met the night before (and I’ll talk about more later)… when we got there we had to wait for the English speaking guide, so we had time to take coffee. I took a Turkish coffee, as Shiva said she would read my coffee grains… [ strong woman, married 2 kids, need to leave my past behind, attachment to Egypt]… We met another girl from slovakia I think… I’m not sure, she was a teacher named Tanya. [quasi important later]… then we got our headsets… brilliant idea… give the guide a microphone and everyone a headset, so everyone can hear as you are wandering around. And then we began…

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi death camp. Originally just a concentration and labor camp, where polish intellectuals were sent, the camp was extended to Auschwitz II, where the primary purpose was death, especially towards the end of the war, where it was used for mass exterminations. Something around 1.2 million people died here. 90% of the individuals here were Jews, others included Poles (intellectuals), Soviets, Gypsies, and Homosexuals.

We took a tour through the camp; first the original camp, with its brick barracks… deceptively nice for someone passing by, as they were in fact, originally built as military barracks. But as you go through you hear the history. You see where prisoners lived, their faces staring back at you from the walls where their photos hang. Nazi efficiency, cataloging the people. At least in the beginning… when the camp turned to just an extermination camp, and as the Nazis where pulling out, they destroyed records, and the gas chambers so that people wouldn’t know what they had done.

As you go through the rooms, you see where individuals were tortured, or punished, and where people were experimented upon. The courtyards where executions took place. There are whole individual rooms filled with luggage, shoes, brushes, glasses, hair. Hair is the worse… it has an odor to it. Some still has some color to it, and they are all in braids. They even had an example of what the Nazi’s did with the hair: the sold it to be used as blankets and the lining of uniforms. Tests of these linings showed residue of the gas used during executions.. indicating the hair was shaved afterwards. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the rooms… I don’t really think that anyone would want to.

The Second part of the Camp was huge. There is a video below to show how far it stretched. To my surprise there are houses not all that far off. And I couldn’t help but wonder how people could live and wake up everyday to see this place on the other side of the road. But at the same time, the memory of living just a few blocks from Toul Sleng prison in Cambodia, and eating regularly across the street comes creeping into my head.

Overall, the experience was a bit on the surreal side. Touching, solemn, but definitely worth while.

Berlin part II

So, here are all my pictures from my spontaneous trip to Berlin along with the pics from the Obama rally and video of a very enthusiastic older gentleman.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Ok, so maybe I’m obsess over Kennedy’s famous speech just a little too much, and really I just wanted Obama to say it, just once, in jest, during his own speech in Berlin. For those of you who are completely clueless for whatever reason, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, literally translates to, “I am a jelly doughnut.” See below for original speech clip and a full explanation from Eddie Izzard.

But anywho, why am I talking about Presidents, candidates, and doughnuts? Because something deep inside possessed myself and my other American friend here, Jodie, to head out on July 24 to hear Barack Obama’s unprecedented speech in Berlin. Before I jump into that though I’ll give you some background of the day. Jodie and I left early on Thursday morning, along with one of Jodie’s friends from Cambridge, named David, who is an Aussie, living in England who is/was a television producer, who took time off to get an MBA. In commemoration of the epic day, I did in fact purchase us a few jelly doughnuts for the ride. Once in Berlin, we met up with a few more of Jodie’s friends, Shannon and Paul, also Americans. We had a picnic, took a boat ride, and generally just had a rather chill day in Berlin… which worked for me as I was carting along my whole bag for my weekend in Poland.

Obama-mania sort of filled the air while we were there. In fact, as we got off the train in the Hauptbanhof, (which to my irritation is not the same as it was 4 years ago… I mean literally not the same, the built a new one closer to the Reichstag).. we were walking up to the chancellor offices, when there were just masses of people standing around and large scale amounts of security. It didn’t take all that long to figure out what was going on, but opted not to sit around and wait to see a few cars drive by… so we kept walking… only have an even better view a few seconds later… enough so to get a pretty up close view of Obama as he went by. His little caravan more or less seemed to be where ever we were going, and his cars were followed by people on bikes following him around. There were supporters, and people who were just curious, and one old guy with an umbrella w/ McCain written on pieces of paper taped to it. There were lots of people… germans even, wearing Obama t-shirts and hats and things. I have to say its nothing that I would ever of imagined seeing. It just seems well, odd… even to the strongest of Obama supporters. Really… what business does a presidential candidate have in campaigning abroad, and what was the draw? And boy was it a draw….

By the time we headed over to the Victory Column, the first entrance into the area we tried to get in was closed. There was an estimated 200,000 people in the crowds… I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. We ended up standing in the street way far in the back where we couldn’t even see. The Victory Column was chosen after a good month of rather heated debate here in Germany. Originally, Obama was to speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate… a rather historical monument, where Reagan made his own famous speech, “tear down this wall”… However, chancellor Merkel stepped in and said, no way… that’s reserved for presidents (never mind that they hold all sorts of events including fashion shows at the gate)— all sorts of conspiracy theories went around here about how Bush had asked Merkel to step in, etc. I actually think it may have had something more to do with the construction going on in front of the gate where they were putting in new piping… but that’s just me.

I’m not entirely sure what people were expecting to hear… that he’d change the world, and this is how he was going to do it? It was a bit of an awkward speech, and you could sort of tell that he felt awkward giving it. The subject matter was broad and idealistic. He said everything that a liberal international affairs oriented individual would like to hear. End war in Iraq, save the environment, stop genocide (and he did say genocide) in Darfur, end torture, stop nuclear proliferation, do something about Zimbabwe, focus on Afghanistan… etc. etc. etc. It was all very nice ideas, and well, gives you sort of the warm fuzzies to hear someone talk about it. He wants to see the world unite and walls of the world torn down. It was about at this point that one of the people in our group asked, “Yes, but how does he plan on doing any of this?” Good point. There was no logical plan put out in the speech. You could see if it were a speech given at home, the plan would be something like, “And we can do this if you elect me president”… but here, it was more like someone stating the obvious.

I might just be a bit too cynical here. After all, everything he said makes perfect and clear sense to me as to what the U.S. or indeed the world should be focused on, but then again this is what I spend my time studying and looking at. Maybe the rest of the world needed some sort of reassurance as to what the goals and priorities of a potential next president would be. Just looking back at the laundry list of things I’ve listed you can make a comparison to the current administration and sort of see that the world may really have reason to have some concern. Look at the past 8 years and Bush’s stances on Kyoto, nuclear proliferation treaties, and Gitmo. When looked at from that perspective Obama’s speech radically flies in the face of recent U.S. foreign policy. And I think these are the things that people wanted to hear. Maybe the speech was made a little bit too early, maybe it should have been saved for if he becomes president. But at the same time I think that the speech shows that Obama really does have his hand on the pulse of foreign affairs. He said what people, especially Europeans wanted to hear, more or less blowing away the concept that he’s out of touch with the international community. The real question then becomes, from a realistic perspective, could he actually pull these ideals off? And what should this all mean for the everyday American?

In an extraordinarily vague nut shell, international cooperation good and easier to achieve when everyone works for the same things… and for the more pessimistic, you can also add in more bargaining chips… Good in terms of economics, development, and of course, security.

I think if I were Obama I’d have made that last point to be more clear… Unity will improve the world economy and security. Another point he left weak was when talking about how Europe and the U.S. relied on each other… He started off strong, but ended on just talking about how Europe needed the US for security. He should have pulled it back together… while he may have been showing off U.S. feathers, at the same time some people will look at it as a one sided relationship that the U.S. doesn’t necessarily need. And it would have been good for the European audience to hear how the U.S. needs Europe.

Admittedly, it was hard to judge who exactly Obama was talking to. Was he really addressing Berlin and the international community? If he was, did they find it patronizing to get a run down history of Berlin, and how the U.S. played a role? Or was that merely to educate joe six-pack American who doesn’t realize how closely tied the U.S. has been in European development for decades? But then again, outlining what the U.S. should be doing internationally sounds a lot like shelling out more money, and taking on more international responsibilities than the U.S. already has, which doesn’t really play well with your average Americans.

So I guess from a strategic perspective, I don’t think it was the best of moves. However, from the perspective of a relatively liberal American living in Europe… it was a pretty awesome experience to go and check it out.

Ok, for now my pictures from the event aren't posted... I was going to put them up tomorrow, but turns out I'm going away. So, check back here after I post again. Also, I'll have up pictures and posts from Poland. And hopefully throw up the Sweden pictures as well, and be caught up before I go to Russia... wow time is going by fast here!

Prost!

Welcome again to the latest edition of your weekly robs update!

Ok, so clearly I may have been watching waaaaaay too much CNN, but it’s the only channel I have in English, and I just started getting it two weeks ago (I’m not counting the random reality tv shows on MTV that they don’t dub over)… And what a two weeks to get the news… especially for someone interested into international criminal and human rights law… I mean seriously exciting things going on. But hopefully, you all know this and so I don’t need to go about spouting my opinions on all the world going ons. But something you may have missed is the brewing conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over a small patch of land at the base of the Preah Vihear temple. I’ve decided on taking a rare stance in the blog and actually dedicate a blip to outside affairs. *I’m not an expert on all this and my be wrong, its mostly just opinion.--- If you arent’ interested, just skip down to the next bolded heading…

Preah Vihear has recently become a world heritage site… this means things like funding, etc. The temple itself has been in conflict for several decades. When France moved out of the region they gave the land to Thailand, but a Court decided that this was wrong and in fact belonged to Cambodia. And this more or less makes a lot of sense. The architecture of the temple along w/ the people and culture in the area most closely resembles Khmer. The temple is the same style and time as Angkor. Unfortunately, the Khmer haven’t had the money to do things like build a decent road to go up to the temple. I can’t remember whether I blogged about this last year, but it was really frustrating for me as it was one of the number one places I wanted to visit here, but due to my lack of experience on a dirt bike, the levels of mud, and rainy whether, it just wasn’t a possibility for me to go up. However, on the Thai side of the mountain there is a road that tourists can go up, but once up, you can’t cross over to the temple (I think that’s how it works). So Cambodia applied to have it labeled a World Heritage site, but some Thais think that they should also have claims to the temple and so it should have been a joint application (and joint money)… So then 3 people decided to take back the temple for Thailand… via planks of wood over the barbed wire border, they were captured, soldiers called in… and things have generally degraded from here. While last week things seemed to have settled back down again, the news today says that both sides are building up militarily, and they are prepping for conflict. Land and money… land that if I’m right is still covered in a lot of mines, so its only use is getting to and from the temple… seems rather ridiculous… especially for Cambodia, who right now has been building up their infrastructure like crazy and really should only be concerned with stabilizing conditions to promote foreign investment, something that really hasn’t happened since the last bit of fighting 11 years ago. (in other words, there’s still no McDonalds or any other major western business taking route in the country) It’s a bit ironic that the country with the most claim to the area, is also the one with the most incentive to back down. Sorry, on now to back to a more regular robin update.

The Weekend

For a change, I really did stay in Hamburg… ALL weekend… be shocked! Friday night Jodie (USA II), Lucio (Portugal II), Rafael (Brazil II) and I (USA I) had a lovely dinner at the Hofbrauhaus… let me tell ya, that brings back memories of 4 years ago… or at least fuzzy visions of where memories should be. ;-) In case you don’t know, the Hofbrauhaus in Munich is probably the most famous bier hall in the world… While the one in Hamburg wasn’t exactly the same, it was still a pretty good time… and a definite must for a German experience, even if not in Bavaria.

Saturday, unfortunately was a bit of a bust. It basically pored cats and dogs all day long, and by evening the big plans to hit up the Reeperbahn for some all night dancing had collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. But this didn’t stop us (Jodie and I) from going and still grabbing some drinks. Holy rediculousness… w/ in 2 minutes of being out of the train station I Had seen guys in fake prison uniforms with balls and chains attached, been serenaded by passing singers of drinking songs, and ran into some people that had clearly just stepped out of the matrix {movie not club version}… basically the whole street was over flowing with people in a giant party, w/ outdoor stages set up for no particular reason, a night market in the middle, and all the “specility” stores, discos and casinos in full glory. It proved to be the perfect opportunity to just sit and people watch while sipping on drinks.

Sunday was a day of culture. Again it was, Jodie, Lucio, Rafael, and myself. We first had lunch at a very very very old restaurant with a view of some of old buildings not destroyed during the war. It had some pretty incredible traditional dishes that matched the atmosphere. Afterwards we headed to the art museum to see the Mark Rothko Exhibit. Now I’m not usually the biggest fan of abstract art, but I do still try to appreciate it… but it turned out to be pretty interesting, and Jodie and I got to make all sorts of commentary which was a lot of fun.

Monday

Monday was the big summer festival here at the institute. I’ve never seen more rain… ever. But lets rewind a second. We were all supposed to make some sort of BBQ dish from home… this is really difficult living in another country. Its actually established that while I can handle staying somewhere for a few months, if I had to actually live somewhere else permanently, I would get really frustrated trying to cook regular meals. But anyways… what is really American that you can make that won’t be compared to European food? And I have no oven, so baking is out of the question. I decided upon Deviled eggs. I went to go grocery shopping on Sunday… this doesn’t work as every grocery store is closed. So I got up early on Monday morning, trekked down to the store, in the rain. But everything is in German, and they have no idea what I’m saying when I ask for ingredient X , which is ironic as I thought it was actually german [due to the nature of family secrets when it comes to recipe’s I cannot actually say what ingredient X, or any other ingredients really are]… in the end they didn’t have 3 of the ingredients I needed for deviled eggs (which actually have a total of 6 ingredients… betcha didn’t know that, eh?)… anywho, I made one substitution, and somehow managed to make pretty good eggs.

Everything kicked off with Konzil, where 3 people presented their research. Unfortunately, the first two people presented in German… I only sat in on the last part of the second speech… which even though I didn’t understand a word of what was going on, I’m glad I did mainly because he was an incredibly good speaker, probably one of the best (from what I could tell) that I’ve ever heard. The last speech was actually in English and done by my friend Guillermo (Chile). I’ve learned some basic things about myself since I’ve been here… one of the most important life lessons is how much I really just don’t care about most private law… and the area of corporations, and security law, totally goes over my head. So trying to listen to someone giving a presentation about the subject matter… basically has the same effect of me listening to someone giving a speech in German.

The party itself was a lot of fun, met tons of new people… lots of free German beer, wine, and champagne, and great food.

Tuesday

Tuesday was one of those days you aren’t really expecting… Its starts off relatively normal, though surprisingly pain-free and well rested after the long night before. Then disaster struck… I was walking to lunch and my heal got caught, tearing off the bottom. Unfortunately I had to keep walking for some time afterwards, wearing down the nail (sorry boys the dynamics of heals is probably going right over your head right now)… so it looks like they won’t be able to be fixed… I’ll need to go buy a new pair of brown heals now to match my things… oh darn.

The heal incident was almost immediately followed by my first ever bee sting (to my knowledge at least)… Those things really really hurt…But I’ve learned I’m not allergic, and its just a little pink and itchy today, not so much pain.

After work, Jodie, Georgious (Greece), and I went out for coffee downtown. Now one them for the day for Jodie and I was that everywhere we went to eat was either closed or soooo crowded we had to find somewhere else—this happened at lunch, coffee, and dinner. But we ended up taking coffee on the water, which was very nice. We then headed over to Sternchanze to meet up with Tomoko (Japan I), and a couple of other people from Japan… Professor Saurada (Japan II) is a very well known corporate professor, and was Tomoko’s professor’s professor (grand professor?)… absolutely hilarious and very nice man. Eriko (Japan III) is Tomoko’s friend from Japan who came over for two weeks to visit. And Manabu (Japan IV) is another PhD student that was just here for the week, and we were all out b/c it was his last night here. The end result was yet another very fun night of drinking. There are two drinks I must tell you about... they are called Alsterwasser and Elbewasser ( Alster water and Elbe water), as Hamburg is situated on Alster lake, and the Elbe River. Alsterwasser is beer with lemonade, and Elbewasser is beer with cola. They are surprisingly very good drinks, especially if you aren't intending to drink a lot, or if you aren't used to drinking. It reminded me a lot of the Austrian ColaWeis-- Wine and Cola, which we drank to save money and survive drinking games.

And that more or less wraps up the last week. Tomorrow I head off to Berlin where we’ll go and see Obama speak, followed by my most anticipated trip out to Poland…

Oot and Aboot

So clearly even if I say I’m not doing any traveling for a weekend, I’m still doing something… and well, last weekend was no different. I finally got around to touring around Hamburg, followed up by a day trip out to Lübeck (ok so I lied, I did travel, but not far… only about an hour).

Friday

Friday night after work Fathi (Turkey) took me and Tomoko out to “the city of Altona”… which is really just the neighborhood outside of downtown Hamburg, kind of like Oakland in Pittsburgh. But it was a new neighborhood for me and a lot of fun to wander around, and we ate some of the best döner kebab I have ever had. The area has a nice pedestrian thoroughfare with lots of little shops and things. I learned later this week with Jodie that it also has a lot of little happening bars during the middle of the week.

Saturday

Saturday was a long day with bipolar weather… It was sunny one minute, downpouring the next, both hot and cold… with just enough humidity to totally kill my hair. My day started with heading downtown for the first time. [this isn’t entirely true, my day really started with heading into the village and enjoying some breakfast and coffee at the one of the local bakeries] my first stop was the Rathaus [town hall] where, in the middle of the square was the European Beach Volleyball Championship Finals… so of course I had to go in and watch for a bit, until the rain very suddenly started hammering down on us… They passed out ponchos in an attempt to get people to stay… but really, it just wasn’t worth it (but hey, I got a free poncho). So I just started wandering around the city, which is actually just another major shopping area, full of pedestrian areas, and indoor mall like passageways (a lot like Singapore… but less so… hard to explain)… The best part was finding possibly the largest H&M I’ve ever seen directly across from a Lush store. I got all the way down to the Hauptbanhof (main train station) turned back around headed back to the Rathaus, ended up taking a tour of the interior, then headed over toward Sankt Nikolaikirche (Saint Nicolas Cathedral), which is the bombed out ruins of what is left of an old church. Its really very neat; rather than rebuild the church they have left it the way it was after the WWII bombings, and they have added an elevator to the top of the cathedral tower to see a panorama view of the city. After that I headed off to the warehouse district [Speicherstadt], which is basically an entire community of old fashioned brick warehouses and canals. While I did pass by the Hamburg dungeon and miniature wonderland, I restrained myself from going into either in hopes of bringing some people with me [I really am just a big kid]

From here I made my way to the symbol of Hamburg, Sankt Michaeliskirche, [St. Michael’s Cathedral]. Just outside the Cathedral was a little community festival with high school bands and a classic car show etc. [It really is just a fantastic fluke of fate that I got to see a volleyball championship and classic car show all on the same day]. Again, I got take another elevator trip up the steeple to see the city… I LOVE that Germans believe in elevators rather than making you walk bagillions and bagillions of steps, especially considering by that point I had been walking for about 5 hours. I ended my little jaunt by checking out a street set up for the widows of tradesmen, and seeing the main harbor Landungsbrücken… There is a relatively famous tower here, its on all the post cards, unfortunately it was under scaffolding when I got there, so I just jumped on the train and headed home.

Sunday

Sunday is the sunniest day I’ve seen since I was in France, so I seized the opportunity to head out to Lübeck… which claims to be the home of Marzipan and quite possibly the creepiest city I have ever been to… EVER. It is a world heritage site, known for its red brick buildings, and one of the only places (if not THE only place, to have an entire downtown labeled as a historical site). Unfortunately, what this means is that all the buildings are sort of shifty… as in literally shifty… the bricks are starting to break down so nothing is quite standing straight up. This is pretty neat looking until you go into your first building… apparently I get a bit queasy in slanty buildings… it didn’t help that the first slanty building was the museum, so I was trying to read the history and things… and everything was very legitimate… until the last room… which was the torture chamber… out of no where, and totally not in theme with the rest of the museum. They also have one of the largest puppet museums in the world… but not just puppets, marionettes… which I also find to be uber creepy, and decided not to go in mainly because I wasn’t sure how much time I had before things closed as it was Sunday. So I dropped into my first church… Everything is completely white washed on the inside… no pews… and a black crucifix… and 1940’s jazz playing in the background… now beside reminding me of a Torchwood episode…the whole thing was… well… I took video, you’ll get the idea. The other thing was that all of the buildings I went into had a dank musty smell to them all, which didn’t help the atmosphere at all.

At the Catholic cathedral all of the artwork was very morbid, lots of skulls (in general this was true in all the churches along with lots of clocks). But then in the back they had an art exhibit… the first thing I saw was a guy being crushed by a rock, followed by lots of bloody dark, horrific pictures. Turns out it was an exhibit on Depression.

I then just strolled around, hit up the Marzipan store, etc. The whole place was very very quiet, despite lots of people. But also very pretty. It only took me about 5 hours to see the whole city and do all the things they recommended (they actually had a tourist map with path to walk along to see everything… along with a mini history of each bit… the only hitch being that I had to pay for it, *it’s the first time in Europe I had to pay for a tourist map… and they knew w/out it you’d be more or less screwed so it cost near 3 euro – that’s like $5 right now)

Monday

Back in good old not creepy Hamburg! After work I met up w/ Tomoko and one of her friends from Japan and we went to Sankt Jacobi for an organ concert. Now this turned out to not exactly be what any of us expected. It was all music composed between the 1950’s- 1980’s… so it was kind of like old school sci-fi music, which while it works in old-school corny sci-fi movies… when put to an organ concert, its just weird. And they never introduced the songs or anything… They just started playing, paused, switched songs, and then ended… somehow the rest of the audience knew they were finished… how, I’m not so sure. It was pretty weird, but yet another event I can check off under amusing experience.

Other random things:

So basically the last week has been all about getting into Hamburg. I’ve also been doing some exploration after work w/ Jodie, and you really get to see that this whole city has more dimensions than most places I’ve ever lived. Though we’ve both agreed that it might be too “hip” for either of us.

Otherwise things are good… I’m reading a book that is soooo not up my ally that I have to finish it just to say I have, and thanks to Bryan, I’m catching up on the latest season of Dr. Who (for those of you have to watch via regular TV, I laugh at you and the suspense your must be going through each week).

"Take the Long Way Home"-- Supertramp

Soooooo…. This weekend turned out to be quite the high powered adventure through central Europe. I met up with one of my GSPIA friends, Chansonette, in Strasbourg, France… we then headed out to the country side and visited Selestat and Comar. That was followed up by a trip to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, and from there we parted ways and I stopped off in Koln (Cologne), Germany. The reason for the post being the long way home was that I was supposed to get back into Hamburg at around 9 on Monday morning… I looked all the trains up and had it all planned out rather well… what I didn’t look up was lay-over times… turns out that if I took the overnight train I wanted to take, I would have been stuck in Cologne from midnight to 6am… so rather than blow off Luxembourg, I opted to stay the extra night, and got to see Cologne the next day… which, while being the long way home, was a great decision on my part.

Strasbourg, France

I rolled into Strabourg just after 1 in the afternoon on Friday. The train ride hadn’t been half bad, and I got a lot of much needed sleep after only 3 hours the night before. (There was another stammtisch, and I didn’t get home till about 12, and needed to be up by about 4:30 to catch my train at 6… plus pack at some point in there). Strasbourg is the capital of the Alsace region of France, and also one of the three cities that makes up the governing bodies of the European Union. You may recognize Alsace from your world war history. It’s the region between Germany and France that has been passed back and forth between the two for several hundred years.

The architecture is a mix of both German and French; this was an aspect that both Chansonette and I both noticed. For me as soon as I got there I was like, “this is sooooo French,” she on the other hand found everything to be very German. We got a full view of this mix of French/German… Old/New… atmosphere as we took a boat tour through the city. This, was an excellent idea. We saw everything, got a good dose of history and lots of random anecdotes… things like how one bridge was where they dunked people, and when they became more humane, they started using cages, and the women would come and mock the prisoners while doing needle work (because these prisoners were adulterers and prostitutes). We heard about the sauerkraut factory that was turned into a theater, and about how sauerkraut is originally from China… Or about how there was a fire in a hall with only a window as the way out and 20 people died b/c a fat monk couldn’t fit through the window and got stuck… and we saw the house where spinsters and widows were kept… There were lots and lots of these amusing tidbits during the tour… lots of them sort of caused your jaw to drop open. I would recommend the tour to anyone going to Strasbourg.

We of course did all the touristy things… cathedrals, cathedrals, more cathedrals… and ended up in a cathedral listening to a live organ concert. Followed by crepes (not just desert crepes, but the kind you can eat for dinner)… and bottles of wine of a game of cards.

Selestat and Comar

Saturday we headed away from Strasbourg down further south into wine country. The original goal was maybe to do a wine tour… Personally I liked the one that talked about riding horses through the vineyards, Chansonette had some objections to this. But it turned out wine tours were expensive so, we just grabbed a train to Comar, which at one point Chansonette was like, lets get off here, so we did… b/c you can do that when you’re on a random adventure. The area we were in had a ton of castles in the distance on top of every little hill. And the actual village of Selestat was very picturesque.. a lot like wandering around Bush Gardens w/out the rides.

From there we went to Comar… with several goals in mind. First, we wanted to get to the tourist office, second, we wanted to see Voltaire’s house, third, we wanted to see (or I should say I wanted to see) what the House of Heads was. We’re easily distracted, by things like… food. Comar was even prettier than Selestat, making for more great pictures. Voltaire’s house turned out to be a private residence… that you couldn’t go in… in fact it turned out to of just been a house that Voltaire rented two rooms from at one point… with a plaque outside. The House of Heads, turned out to just be a really old hotel… I didn’t even take a picture. By the time we got to the tourist office, it was getting late, and most things were starting to close. But we did do a wine tasting. Just a little shop, and not so much wine, as schnapps and liquors. The woman just kept asking if we wanted to try another, and then another… all for free, though I did end up buying some.

Luxembourg

Early morning Sunday, we headed out to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. It was an appropriately grey and cold day… appropriate for two reasons really, first b/c Luxembourg has more of a medieval feel to it, and dark and dreary works for that, and second b/c I was in a skirt and tank top… it can’t be hot and sunny when I’m in a skirt and tank top…it would violate the Murphy principles. There was a marathon going on when we got into the city… but it just seemed like people were running, walking, or Nordic walking everywhere and not really in an organized manner. After dropping off our stuff we hiked our way up a giant hill (as hour hostel was in a valley) and started crossing into the town. On the way there, there were these Casemates, which is basically old underground fortifications of the city that you could climb through… with lots of random passageways, and twisty staircases (climbing through caves also falls under murphy’s law when wearing a skirt)…

After some time we wandered the city, saw the sights, opted not to pay a fortune for a city tour, found a museum that went through the whole history of Luxembourg and how it developed. Random tidbits, Luxembourg has its own language… not quite French, not quite german. They use French for business, German for media, and then Luxembourgish for everyday things. The city is protected by a fairy/siren/mermaid. The founder fell in love with her and asked her to marry him, which she did on the condition that she get one day a week where she wasn’t to be bothered. Years went by, they had kids, built the city, etc. but the king got jealous, and peeped through a key hole into his wife’s room on her off day, where he saw she had scales for legs, gasped, scared her, and the rocks came and ate her, with the key to the city in her mouth. Lesson: Give girls their space when they ask for it. I learned all this from a rather bizarre museum exhibit… but it wasn’t as strange as the exhibit about tourists… and what the characteristics of tourists are and things like that… I can’t even describe it right. It seemed very tongue in cheek, seeing as I would think mostly tourists would go to the museum… Oh and then there was a room that had mirrors on the floor and walls… also inevitable when wearing a skirt…

Later that evening we headed to a free concert in the main square, Rock um Kneudler. The first band we stayed and listened to was a African cover band… who played the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and lots and lots of Led Zeppelin. Which was great for me. Then the second band came on… now I knew I know the name, Supertramp (actually it was just the singer songwriter from supertramp, Roger Hodgson) but couldn’t for the life of me remember what they sang… He opened w/ Take the Long way home… and followed it up with other popular songs you’d recognize like: Give a little Bit [of your love to me], The Logical Song, Dreamer, Take a look at My Girlfriend, and … I love free random concerts.

Cologne

Not much here, we headed off early in the morning on Monday. We were headed in the same direction, so we took the same train until I jumped off in Cologne. While there I wanted to check out the Dom, one of the most famous Cathedrals in all of Europe… probably one of the most visited ones in the world. I had studied it back in my Medieval Art and Architecture class. Lucky for me, it was literally just outside the train station. Now we had been walking for 3 days straight now, but something possessed me to climb the 509 stairs to the top… Oy… and the way down… spiral staircase (w/people still climbing up) It built “character” or at least that’s what I told myself, and gave me a chance to grab some nice pics. I didn’t do the rest of the city, mainly b/c I didn’t know what else there was to see… judging from my guidebook, I didn’t miss much except a chocolate factory. But it had been a long trip and it was time to head back home.

Other Random Updates…

Just a few things to report. I caught a cold, but thanks to some uber strong meds was only out of it for about a day. I also now have another American here. Her name is Jodie, went to Harvard for university and Columbia for law school, where she was journal editor, and is now on the tail end of a Fulbright that she used to do research in Cambridge, England… despite the background she’s one of the nicest people I’ve met here, and to my amusement has no idea what she wants to do w/ her life… we click. I don’t have any big traveling plans for the next two weeks, if I do anything it will probably be locally (no more than an hour or 2 away)… so don’t be expecting too much in terms of posts… w/out football things have sort of slowed down around here…