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October 13, 2007 19:48 +0000  |  Italy 'Round-the-World Travel 5

I'd not meant for all of my RtW posts to be on days divisible by 5, but it would appear that fate has other plans for me.

I'm sitting on a map kiosk for tourists roughly 5minutes walk from my shitty hotel. I wanted a chance to write and frankly, the dim-lit "common room" in the building I'm currently staying just doesn't lend itself to light-hearted storytelling.

First of all, I would like to point out that my writing style seems to have been affected by reading so much Harry Potter. As I read my own text now, I hear a polite English woman's voice... it's rather disturbing. Incidentally, I'm currently on book 7 (can you believe I paid 27.50€ for the hardcover? I can). I just got to the point where it says:

The [omitted] has fallen. [omitted] is dead. They are coming.

It's really quite exciting. Seriously, if you haven't read the books yet, you should. I stand before you a man converted. The movies just don't do it justice. I have felt fear and longing reading Rowling's pages like I could never have imagined watching a movie.

The Grand Canal

As an aside, a neighbourhood cat just tiptoed into the bookstore nearby. They seem to do that here -- cats I mean... dogs too. People just seem to let their pets wander around and no one seems to mind where they go. I guess it's the fact that there's no cars around to hurt them.

So yeah, Venice. It's pretty cool -- if you're here for 2days. Stephen was right, this city is easily doable in two nights. Any more and you risk boredom and repetition. I however, due to my mad skillz of not planning my trip, ended up bunching everything into Italy and so this means more time here in Venice. But what to do?

I did the usual tourist thing and made the long, round-a-bout walk from the train station where my shitty hotel is, to Piazza San Marco. You might recognise it as the place in all the movies when they do a shot in Venice. It's where all the pigeons are. There were people paying 1€ for a small bag of dried corn that was then fed to the hordes of pigeons. They would swoop down from everywhere and land on the poor victim, waiting patiently for their dehydrated diet. It made for some funny pictures, but since I had no one with me to take pictures of my coated in birds, I decided not to participate. It was yet another example of why travelling alone can suck.

Kids playing in the pigeons

The bar down the street is full of people, spilling out onto the street. You see, there's a football game going on (England vs. France) and this is a really big deal. Somebody just scored because the street just filled with cheers. I'm not sure who Italians would prefer though, so I can't tell you who's winning.

Navigation

Venice is small, but incredibly complicated. The directions to my hotel, though really simple to follow, had me wandering for about 30minutes. What I hadn't realised, was that in Venice, as there are no cars, bikes or any land-based motorised transportation anywhere, the "streets" can really be as wide or as narrow as you like. My hotel for example, is situated on a narrow strip of cobble stone no wider than 2m. It looks like an alley from the wider, main street. But then, so does nearly every walk way in the city. Most are uneven and twisted, almost all are ridiculously narrow, and they randomly end with brick walls or yet another canal. If you're going to come here, bring a map, and a guide dog, and a GPS locator... you'll need them all.

Unfortunately, the big draw in Venice is really just Piazza San Marco. Outside of that, there's just the "fun" of getting lost in the city and paying the exorbitant prices. Everything from touristy masks (75€ - 500€) to internet (8€/1hr) to food (10€ - 15€ per meal) really puts the clamp on your carefully secured wallet.

A Canal

They scored again... whomever they are, they're on fire tonight.

Dietary Woes

While I'm on the topic of food though, I thought that I'd mention that I'm going out of my mind. Everywhere you go, and I mean everywhere, the food is not just the same, but identical. For breakfast, everyone eats the same thing: a few cold cuts, some cheese and a dry role of some kind. Lunch is probably pizza or soup, or both and dinner is pasta and or pizza and soup. Occasionally, if you can afford it, some people put in some kind of meat in there, but for the most part, that's it.

Now those who know me, know that I tend to dig simplicity in my diet. I like having the same things for lunch every day 'cause I get off on predictability. But this... this is insane. If you don't want dry crusty rolls for breakfast, tough shit. If you could do with something a little less Italian for lunch or dinner, I wish you luck. There is nothing here. I never thought I'd be so desperate for a Chinese restaurant in my life. I may not want to eat there, but at least the option would be available! Seriously, I'm going out of my tree. I'm just glad that I'll be in Rome tomorrow. I've heard that it's considerably more cosmopolitain.

Where we Lay Our Scene

So, what do you do if you're in a pretty, but kinda boring little European town for too long? Hop a train and go somewhere you've never been of course :-) Remembering Baz's Romeo & Juliet, I couldn't remember if it was filmed in Verona, Italy or in an American city, so I thought: "why not?"

The river running through Verona

Damn, they scored again. This is crazy. Maybe both team's supporters are in the same bar? I could be hearing cheers from both sides... I dunno

I wasn't sure about what to do in Verona actually. My Lonely Planet book didn't even have a map -- I guess it's not significant enough to bother. So when I arrived in the train station mapless and rudderless, I had arrived with a new quest: find Harry Potter 7 and find it costing less than 27.50€.

Now you already know that while I did find it, I couldn't find it any cheaper than the aforementioned price. The "quest" however made my venture into Verona something with purpose, rather than just blind strolling. I saw the coliseum, a pretty bridge, some nice countryside and I even ended up in the neighbourhood of Juliet's famous balcony. It wasn't until I was shaking with hunger (5pm and hadn't been able to bring myself to eat yet the same thing again) that I broke down and bought "The Deathly Hollows" at full price (I'd seen it in 3 other stores for 27.50€ so my guess is Rowling has a cadre of house elves engaging in price fixing and racketeering or something.)

Ok, I think I've got it, they're not cheering because somebody scored. That can't be the case 'cause goals just aren't that common in football. No, I bet they're just getting excited about every little save etc.

Cathedral de San Marco, Venice

Anyway, Verona was pretty and I had my book. I read 132pages before I got off the train in Venice, went up to my room, got my laptop and came here.

A Last Pigeoning

I just wanted to mention before I close up here though that I did in fact end up going back to Piazza San Marco and bought the pigeon food. They know it as soon as you approach the vendor and will swoop down before you've received your change. It was actually kinda scary, being surrounded by live birds all waiting for you to feed them. Given my less-than-muggle disposition, you'd think I'd dig the whole live animals thing, but I've never really dealt with them well (cats and some dogs a rare exception). It just wigged me out. It's just too bad I didn't have company at the time.

Alright, the game appears to be over and tomorrow I'm off to Rome, where I'll probably be uploading this post since internet in my shitty hotel is worse than the decor. If I have time, I'll also post my Venice and Verona pictures as well.

October 10, 2007 09:25 +0000  |  Italy 'Round-the-World Travel 3

I've left Florence now and am now writing this out in my crappy little hotel in Venice. Internet is only accessible from downstairs though and costs a fortune so I'm not sure when I'll be posting this. Before I go out and see what Venice has to offer though I thought I'd write a little about Florence and the rest of Tuscany.

Florence

You might remember the tour I mentioned in my last RtW post. I had a reservation for Monday morning but got the times mixed up resulting in my missing the bus. Thankfully, I didn't pay anything for the trip or I would have been pretty pissed. It's probably better that I didn't go though 'cause I'd stayed up too late the night before watching Veronica Mars and was operating on just a few hours of sleep that day.

The river going through Florence and a bridge in the background

Due to the above, I didn't do much of anything that day. I walked around town, read some Harry Potter in the park and did some more laundry. Later that night I went out for gelato with a couple of girls from Bath and had a very nice time chatting about where we've been, and how great Bath is etc.

All was not lost on the bus tour though. If I couldn't make the Thursday run, I could still make it to the Monday tour, and so I booked another seat on the bus and took the following day to see David and the Pitti Palace. The line to see David was pretty short, as I was smart enough to hit in the morning, but the 10€ price tag was generally unwelcome. However, it was worth it. David is a brilliant work of art, well worth all of the fanfare it receives. No pictures were allowed however so you'll either have to take my word for it or go check it out yourself :-)

The Pitti Palace on the other hand will have to remain a mystery to me though. The palace, built by the Pitti family in an act of ego to best the Medicis was quite beautiful on the outside, but as it housed a museum within, cost 9€ to enter. Similarly, they massive gardens behind the palace were an additional 9€ and balking at the price, I chose to skip it. I'm sure there are pictures somewhere on the Internet.

That night, after chatting with the other hostel-folk and listening to the city's reaction when Florence beat Rome at a rugby game (you could hear the cheers from every window in the city), I was smart enough to try to get to sleep early and woke up with plenty of time to try and find the bus for the Tuscany tour. Turns out that I needed it 'cause it wasn't where I thought it would be, but I found it anyway. Our first stop was to be Sienna.

Sienna

The roof of the library in the Duomo

Sienna's a tiny town with beautiful architecture and a long, rich history. Our tour stopped there first and then our guide walked us through town describing the way the city works. First of all, the city is broken down into (I think) 17 districts. Each district is named after an animal and is decorated as such as you move from district to district. Babies born to families living in that district become part of that district for life and even retain that membership if they move to another area and marry someone of a different district. So for example, a boy born in the goose neighbourhood can move to the rhino neighbourhood, then meet a tortoise girl and move to the Aquila district where they have a kid of their own. The boy will always be a goose, the girl will always be a tortoise and the baby will forever be an Aquilla.

Why do they bother with these distinctions then? Because while there's not much of a social divide between districts, they are competitive. Every year, there's a horse race in the centre of town: 17 horses and jockeys for 17 districts. Winner gets bragging rights for the year and there is, of course lots of partying.

Sienna's hospital has an equally interesting history. Apparently, it used to be so common for people to abandon their babies that the Santa Maria D'Alla Scalla hospital created a special system in which to accept the children. People could drop off the kids in a little half-cylindrical box built into the wall of the hospital, rotate the box to bring the kid inside which would then ring a bell and tell the hospital workers that there was a new baby at the door. As the children were often abandoned without names, any child being raised there would then be given the surname "D'Alla Scala" or just "Scala". The name is kinda popular in Italy nowadays.

The hospital is also host to the most beautiful painting I've seen yet and I don't even know what it's called and I wasn't allowed to take pictures. I just sat there for a good 15minutes looking at it: floor to ceiling, behind the altar... it was just plain pretty.

Lunch on the Farm

The fields around the farmhouse

The next leg of our trip found us at a farm house about 45min outside of Sienna. The bus pulled up to a tiny little house on a massive acreage of olive trees and grape vines on top of a hill overlooking the rural countryside. Have you ever seen Under the Tuscan Sun? Well it was just like that. Lunch included pasta with fresh ingredients, bread, cheese and meat as well as salad and wine. The wine and olive oil were organic, picked and bottled on-site. The olive oil was very good, but the wine still tasted like vinegar to me. I tried all three: red, white and a desert wine with almond biscuts.

San Gimignano

A medieval town complete with huge city walls and lookout towers, San Gimignano is really just a tiny town in a sea of the Tuscan countryside. It was host however to a little ice cream shop that supposedly won an award as part of "Team Italia" in the world gelato championships. They claim to be the best in the world, so I had to have some... I can't say that it was any more impressive than anything else to be honest :-)

The city also seems to think that toilet seats are not required... ever. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Pisa

The Duomo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

You may have heard this from other people, but I'll just repeat it for those who weren't listening. Pisa is lame. There's nothing there except an overpriced cathedral and the leaning tower. The rest is just sprawling suburbs. I got a couple good pictures of the tower though, and some dirt for my Mom's collection. We didn't have a hell of a lot of time there and climbing the tower was 15€ so I didn't try to make the trip.

And that's about it for Tuscany. My hostel, "Emerald Fields" was fabulous. Antonio, the caretaker there was super-awesome and friendly and the people I met there were also really nice. If you're going to Florence, you should really check them out.

I have a few more things I want to say about Florence, but they don't really belong here. I should have put them in my first Florence post, so I'll edit that one instead. I'm going to go downstairs now and see what's involved in posting this stuff online. Expect my next long post to be about Venice :-)

October 05, 2007 12:38 +0000  |  Italy 'Round-the-World Travel 3

It's occurred to me recently that I'm not in a hurry. Unfortunately, this realisation came a little late or I might have spent more time in Berlin or Amsterdam but... o well.

Anyway, I have a little over 3weeks left in Italy before I head over to South Korea and only 3 places to visit... including where I am right now so I'm trying to relax a bit.

The Duomo in Florence

For the most part, my time in Florence has been me wandering around the city. My first day consisted of intentionally getting lost with my camera in-hand, and yesterday I took a 25€ walking tour to learn more about the history. Today I'm doing some laundry and relaxing on the balcony and maybe later I'll make my way over to the pretty merchant's bridge on the other side of town.

Tomorrow should be exciting though, I'm taking a bus tour through Tuscany. For those of you who don't know, Tuscany is the name for the region in which Florence, Pisa and Siena reside. The tour will take us around town, give us a chance to see the tower, take pictures of pretty things and then eat some lunch. It's a full 12hours so that should be interesting.

I also haven't seen Michaelangelo's David yet (though I saw a replica placed where the original used to be). Frankly, the replica wasn't that impressive, but I'll probably go see it anyway on Sunday.

That's it for now. The pictures of Milan are up, so if you're interested, you can check that out there. Melanie has requested that I write some comment code for the images so I'll see if I can find time to do that on the trip from Florence to Venice but for now, if you have comments on pictures, please just post them here.

September 30, 2007 19:10 +0000  |  Italy 'Round-the-World Travel 4

Geneva++

So despite my dislike for the city, it turns out that I'd booked three nights in Geneva and not two. This came a great surprise to me when I tried to check out Wednesday morning and the woman at the desk said, "...but we have a booking for you for one more day. Are you sure?" Confused and worried that I might have booked two places at once, I checked my laptop. Thankfully, I'd just gotten my days switched up and no one was waiting for me in Milan that day.

A castle in Nyon overlooking lake Geneva

However, now I was stuck with a new dilemma: what am I going to do for another 24hours in Geneva? I asked the woman as much, but another guest at the hotel answered for me in perfect English (I think she was American): "You should go to Nyon!" she said, "It's quite beautiful and only a short train ride away!"

Nyon

It seemed like a plan to me, so I tossed my stuff back up in my room and headed back out to the station, bought a 15€ ticket and hopped on a train. Exactly 15minutes later I got off the car in a tiny little town on the shores of Lake Geneva. The woman was right, it was beautiful. Imagine the Okanogan, but without the sand, dust and underbrush. Greens and blues and the sky came all the way down to the mountains, the mountains to the lake. It was absolutely stunning and a considerable change from the hole that was Geneva.

I wandered around for a few hours, looking for something open... not much really. This was a phenomenon I would run into a lot from this point on. I strolled through the town, encountering an old castle that had been converted to a museum, walked down to the water to get some sand from the shore for my mom, and then walked back into town looking for food. I found a nice little crepe place and had some tasty strawberry & whipped cream crepes for lunch. Then I wandered around some more, looking for some chocolate or ice cream (but hoping it wasn't too pricey 'cause I didn't have too many Swiss Francs left) and when I was done, hopped back on the train... there isn't much to do in Nyon other than that, but it's worth the trip if you can get out there.

Piazza Fontana, as seen from the roof of the Duomo

The Trip to Milan and the Train Station from Hell

As appears to be a habit with me, I met a pretty Italian girl on the train who was happy to chat about Milan. Celine spoke perfect English, with a slight Australian accent, since she'd lived near Melbourne only a few years ago. She taught me how to say "I don't speak Italian" and briefed me on the transit system in Milan. She also warned me that seeing The Last Supper was a difficult task and that it was often booked upwards of two months in advance. Her advice was to get in on a tour that has pre-set tickets otherwise I'd miss it. It was good advice. The other thing she said was to be very careful in the central station as there were thieves everywhere.

When we arrived at the Central station, I started on my usual process of find map, find hotel on map, get to hotel and ran into a number of problems. First of all, "the tourism office" appeared to be an old lady who spoke only Italian in a newspaper shop. She sold me the worst map ever (fluorescent pink!) and 1€ transit ticket. The map was enough though for me to find where I needed to go and what trains to take. It should have been as easy as putting the ticket in the machine and getting on the train... not so much.

The Duomo

I found my way down into the underground station, passing dozens of merchants all selling the same crap off a white towel on the floor, as well as some obvious thieves, some beggars and some reasonably slick con men with decent English. I evaded all of them, walked right up to the machine, put in my ticket, saw the green light and... the turnstyle wouldn't move. I pulled out the ticket with at "wtf" expression and tried again, this time receiving a red light and still, the turnstyle wouldn't move.

Figuring I'd bought the wrong ticket, I walked over to the nearby ticket booth, bought another 1€ ticket and tried again with the same result. Frustrated and sweaty from carrying my backpack through the hot, crowded, noisy and dirty station, I marched back upstairs looking for an information booth. Surely, in a city as large as Milan, there would be someone who could explain this stuff to me.

There wasn't. The "information booth" is nestled under the stairs and the friendly man behind the glass spoke just enough English to understand that I had a subway ticket. "Downstairs!" he smiled, pointing the way. I wanted to transform into an Ugly American, smash on the glass and yell "I know where the fucking train is, you idiot! Why doesn't my ticket work?", but instead, I threw my hands up in the air and walked back down into the Underground.

I had a new plan. I would stand idly by and watch other people do it. There had to be something I was missing. I followed a guy from the top of the stairs, watched him buy a ticket (the very same one I'd bought), and walk over to the machine. I held my breath, what had I missed?

The Duomo sanctuary

He slid the ticket in the machine, the light turned green, he removed the ticket, waited a beat and went through. You won't find that tip in any travel book: in Milan, the turnstyles wait 'till you remove the ticket plus a half second before you can go through... sigh.

The Really Awesome News

After that I found my way to the hotel with few issues. I purchased 24hours of internet, got clean, checked my mail and called my dad to talk for about an hour. We had a lot to talk about since he'd managed to book a flight to Rome for the last week I'm there. That's right, my Dad is coming to visit me in The Eternal City and I'm really excited. Doing all this alone has taken a lot out of me and it'll be great to spend some one-on-one time with my Dad before landing back in BC. He's asked me to "do all the religious stuff" before he gets there, so I'll likely visit the Vatican and protestant cemetery in my first week. The two of us will likely hit all the big spots like the Coliseum etc. It's going to be great.

Milan

A pretty statue in the Duomo

Milan is a lot like Geneva actually. I mean this in the sense that it's dirty, noisy, built for cars and Lonely Planet is right when it calls its city centre "charmless". The transit system is cheap (1€/75min going anywhere) and convenient, but dirty, crowded, sticky, noisy and sports (a TPSC favourite) ads that talk on the waiting platform. I can't help but think that if they doubled the fare to say, 2€ they could get rid of the ads and clean up the station in no time... who the hell runs this city?

There are some nice things about Milan though. The tree canopy is a lot more impressive than even Vancouver's in some places. You can tell that someone, a long time ago, set about making sure that Milan would have a healthy amount of shade in the summer. It's not everywhere, but some of the streets are quite impressively designed. Then there is of course the Duomo, a massive church in the city Centre that took nearly 600years to build. Trust me when I say that the pictures I have (inside and out) do not in any way do it justice.

The City Tour

Celine was right. Trying to book a chance to see The Last Supper is pretty much impossible unless you're wiling to wait about 2months. The only way around it is to book a 3hour, 50€ tour that runs every day at 9:30 except Monday. Of course I only found out about this on Sunday afternoon and I have to be in Florence on Tuesday so... I booked a tour for Tuesday and I'll be hopping on the train not long after I've seen Da Vinci's work.

I'd like to point out here by the way that CitySightseeing Milano sucks. I had some free time today and for 10€ it seemed like a good idea to ride around on a bus with a multi-lingual guide. Well the multi-lingual guide is recording triggered by the intersection you're going through. You don't slow down enough to see what the voice is talking about, the "guide" often can't tell left from right and it regularly got cut off and then restarted when we came around a corner. 10€ wasted really. Yes, I'm bitter.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Fooding

I've been pretty excited about the food here. Frankly, Germany (well Berlin at least) doesn't have much to speak of in terms of local food. In fact, I often ended up eating Italian while I was there. However, here in Italy, nearly everywhere you go, if there's food, it's pizza, some pasta. I had considerable trouble with the menu reading though, so I blew 8€ on a dictionary and now I'm ready to try and read one on my own. Just remember: pizza margherita = good, pizza bizmark = bad.

Something else I found kinda odd but understandable once you see the prices is that just sitting in the restaurant costs you anywhere between 1.50€ - 3.00€. The bill is for "cover charge" or pane coperto, the theory being I suppose that you don't have to stay, you can just get take out. The restaurant across the street sells a margherita pizza for 5€ and it's roughly 17" around. However, once you buy a drink (3€) and pay for pane coperto (2€) the total is 9€ ($13.50CAD) which is pretty good considering the size of the pie :-)

I'll likely not be posting 'till after I've settled down in Florence, and by then my Nyon & Milan pictures should be up. Here's hoping Florence is nicer than Milan, or I might just have a break down.

September 25, 2007 23:39 +0000  |  'Round-the-World Switzerland Travel 3

I'm just about to pack up my stuff and go to bed so I can be on an 11am train to Milan tomorrow. Geneva isn't really worth a longer stay and I certainly can't afford it anyway.

The thing you have to remember about Switzerland is that they're intentionally independent. Surrounded on all sides by countries united around a common currency and a common international political position, and Switzerland is perfectly happy to just be Switzerland.

The United Nations

As a result, this is the only leg of my trip where I have to worry about currency differences. Where everyone else uses the Euro (1€ = $1.42CAD), the Swiss use the Swiss Franc ($1CHF = $1.16CAD). So basically what prices you see, is what you pay... but what you see is a lot higher than usual. My less-than-impressive hotel has cost about $220CHF/night... not fun.

For the most part, Geneva is pretty ugly. As I mentioned earlier, it's loud, dirty and car-ridden. The cycling infrastructure is shit, but still better than what you might find in Canada (how sad is that?) and the transit system is kinda neat (though the doors are mean... I got caught in them twice in one trip).

It's not all bad though. I had some fabulous icecream from a local vendor and their chocolate is pretty good as well. Though stay away from the chocolate yogurt, that stuff is nasty.

The reason I came out to this place though was the UN. In nearly every sci-fi story out there, for some reason, the world courts and/or governments always seem to be hosted here, in this tiny Swiss town... I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I took the guided UN tour and sat in the very room we see on TV where our world leaders speak. I walked the same halls walked by peace makers and peace keepers from dozens of generations. I saw where the League of Nations rose and fell and rose again as the United Nations. It's a hell of a thing, and well worth the shiny coins and coloured paper it cost me to come here.

As an aside, I should mention that all my pictures taken to date are now in my imager. You can follow the links from here to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Berlin, Nuremberg, and Geneva or just go to the imager and look around.

September 25, 2007 08:43 +0000  |  Blogger Geek Stuff 'Round-the-World Switzerland Travel 6

Pavel will appreciate this, but the rest of you might wanna read this anyway. I've added a single thing to my site that *should* fix the problem some of you have been running into when trying to post comments. For some reason, when some people tried to post a comment with a non-ASCII character in it (like curly quotes or non-English characters) the post would get truncated. I *think* I've fixt this by adding a charset definition to the HTTP headers. Apache will do this transparently when you add this to your VirtualHost.

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

So, don't necessarily go about trying to break my site by posting fake comments, but if you post something and it doesn't come through exactly as you intended, please email me what you sent and I'll try to figure out what broke.

Oh, and I'm in Geneva today. So far, it sucks. The town is small, noisy, dirty and kinda ugly. No snow, not much in the way of mountains, just cold. I'll be going up to the UN headquarters today as well as the Red Cross museum though. That should be interesting :-)

September 22, 2007 11:54 +0000  |  Germany 'Round-the-World Travel 4

ANNIE IS GETTING MARRIED TODAY!

I'm half a world away, but I wanted to wish her good luck... or congratulations, or whatever you do for weddings. I'm so happy she's happy :-)

The Old Wall surrounding Nuremberg

I've decided that while Nuremberg may be a new city to me, it's exploration can wait a while. I'm taking the day off to lounge about here in the Starbucks, catch up on emails, upload my 300mb of pictures and then do some shopping.

Nuremberg is really quite small, the main downtown core surrounded by an old stone wall. This makes car traffic in and out of the this area rather difficult and so, for at least a couple square kilometres, the whole area is largely pedestrianised.

While the buildings and city design are rather old though, the stores inside are anything but. There are hundreds of shops around selling designer clothes, cellphones and sports gear etc and a remarkable number of manicure shops. I swear, the ratio of restaurants to nail speciality shops is about 1:1 here... it's unreal.

A pretty bridge

I took advantage of the shops around the hostel in which I'm staying last night to go out in search of a book store. I had, after all finished Harry Potter 3 and wanted to fill myself in on what happened in books 1 & 2. I found a nice big book store and luckily, they had a small shelf devoted to English books, among them: the entire Harry Potter series.

I took the book to a restaurant, had some food, then went back to my room and read a little over half of it before I went to bed. I might need to buy Goblet of Fire before I leave town :-)

I'll post some pictures of town when I have some, so this post will likely change in the next day or so, but if I have new content, I'll post a new one.

September 22, 2007 10:14 +0000  |  Germany 'Round-the-World Travel 7

A lot has happened in the past few days, and strangely enough, putting this off hasn't made writing it any easier.

Routing

If there's any piece of advice I could give to prospective European travellers, it would be to sit down, plan and book your trip a month or two advance. Freaking out about where you're going to sleep in a crowded, foreign city two days from now is not the best way to manage your trip... it sucks, and it has the effect of rewriting your plans for you.

The Brandenburg Gate at night

So with that in mind, I'm sure that you all understand that I had to drop Prague from my list. I'll go, I promise, just not this trip. Trying to figure out the routing between Berlin and Geneva was going to be a bloody nightmare and it was just easier on my brain to work this out. So, the new plan is:

Frankfurt » Amsterdam » Berlin » Nuremberg » Geneva » Milan » Florence » Venice » Rome » Seoul

I had to do Florence before Venice because securing a place to sleep there that week was really hard. The Florence leg looks cool though, as I'll be staying at a hostel that does an 8hour day trip to Tuscany -- a place I wanted to see but didn't think I'd have the time. I've now booked a place to sleep in all my host cities except Rome, where I'll be staying 14days and the hostel there is telling me that I can't stay for more than 6days.

Also, for some reason, everyone here seems to want cash. Visa can say they're accepted everywhere as much as they like, but I tell you: it's just not true. Even some of the hotels I've stayed at have been cash only. Financially, this could get ugly for me.

Other Travellers

What's left of the wall

Since my last post, I've run into a lot of other (English-speaking) travellers. Americans for the most part, nearly all of them have been "good Americans". There was, however one group of "ugly americans" on the train from Duisburg to Berlin. They were on their way to Munich in a few days for Oktoberfest and they were loud, crass and just generally impolite. While I've met 7 other Americans on this trip who have been both polite and friendly, I can't help but think that these ugly ones are solidifying that lasting image that Americans get around the world. It's no wonder the tour guide I met in Berlin sometimes tries to pass for Canadian.

Some of the other cool people I met include Simone, an Austrian woman in Amsterdam on business staying at the same hotel as I was. She spoke 5 languages and we had some great breakfast conversation. I also met two Canadians (from Toronto no less!) on the Amsterdam » Berlin train who were visiting family in Germany. They knew enough German to be able to let me know that I'd gotten off at the wrong stop (!!) which was super-helpful. Lastly, I met a very nice girl named Vivien on my last day in Berlin. She had a Canadian flag on her backpack, as she'd spent a few months in Canada and was now returning home. We went to the Lego pavilion at the Sony Centre and then hung out at the Reichstag 'till the sun went down munching on German chocolate and talking about all things German from politics to the educational system. Fun stuff. She comes to Canada from time to time, so I might even see her again at some point :-)

Touring Berlin

The glass dome of the Reichstag

I stayed in two different places during my time in Berlin. The first was a really pretty hotel on the South East end of the city called the Park Plaza Wallstreet Berlin. The rooms were gorgeous, the bathroom massive and the Internet incredibly overpriced. I stayed there for a couple nights before I moved to my secondary home which was actually an apartment in a central area of town called "Potsdamer Platz". The "Inn-sight Apartments" buy or rent apartments from Berliners and the rent them out to tourists as hotel rooms. The rates aren't cheap, but you do get to see what it's like to live in a city like a resident. My flat had a kitchen, and huge living space/bedroom with amazing floor to ceiling windows that opened up wide. It really was a beautiful place to live for 3 nights.

Unfortunately, my new digs didn't have any internet access though (not even some wireless I could steal from the neighbours) so I ended up forking over €30 to T-mobile to pay for 30days of internet access at any Starbucks in Europe... Given my past trouble getting a place to jack in, I figured it might be a good deal. We'll see.

On my second day of touring, I was sitting at the Starbucks in front of the Brandenburg Gate when I overheard someone giving a guided tour of the area in English to a bunch of young English-speaking types. I followed a bit, enquired and found that the tour was free (you tip the guide) and I decided to get in at the start of the tour the following day.

Our tour guide, Jared

If you're going to tour Berlin, this is the way to do it. Our guide, Jared, a young man in his late 20s had been living here for a few months and was living off tips for tours like this one. His knowledge was extensive and both academic and anecdotal. He showed us around, bringing us through the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, the book burning memorial and the Berliner Dome. He filled in the large gaps in my understanding of how Berlin worked and helped me to understand just how amazing the fall of the wall was. That tour was really the best part of my trip.

When the tour ended, I wandered into East Berlin and visited the Fernsehturm, a CN tower-like structure overlooking the city that was decorated as a football for the World Cup a few years ago. The view is pretty damn impressive and of course, I took lots of pictures. On my way back home, I stopped by the Karl Marx & Friedrich Engles monument and took some pictures including one of me trying to look as Soviet as possible :-)

My last day in Berlin was when I met Vivien, and we had a lovely time until she had to catch her train out of town. She left me to see the Reichstag alone and I reached the top (a very long line) by nightfall. I got a lot of nice pictures both of the glass dome and of the view from it. They'll be in my imager soon.

What's Next

Vivien

Now I'm on the train to Nuremberg and I'll likely be there in an hour or so. Since I've finished my Harry Potter book (Azkaban), I'm hoping I can find an English copy of Philosopher's Stone or Chamber of Secrets while I'm in Nuremberg, but I'm not holding my breath. For now, I'm just enjoying the train ride (seriously, this is the only way to travel) and hopefully, my next place to crash will have something I can plug my laptop into :-)

Snippets

My time in Berlin's been tough. To be honest, I'm having a really tough time dealing with the loneliness and that feeling of exile that comes with being surrounded by Babel. There were a few times this past week that I've considered just abandoning the trip, but on the whole, I'm glad I haven't. Here's some stuff I noticed while I was gallivanting:

  • "WC" means "bathroom". This is important to know since WC is the symbol for it in the train stations and there's often no English (or German for that matter) to go along with it.
  • Bathrooms cost €½ and in the Amsterdam train station, they're co-ed.
  • My train trips have taken me across the rural areas of Germany and this area has wind turbines everywhere. Interestingly though, I saw a group of 9 turbines huddled around what looked like a slag heap in the distance. I can only assume that they were being used as a source of power for mining.
  • All new buildings in Berlin are built to a much tougher code than the ones we use in Canada. Doors and windows are designed to withstand draughts, and hallway lights are off by default, automatically turning on as you enter the hall. To Germans, this is normal and our leaving them on all the time appears wasteful to them. Similarly, the toilets all have two buttons to flush to control water waste.
  • A lot of hotels and apartments in Germany use a different kind of window design (apparently) designed in Germany. They allow you to open the windows wide, like doors, or open them just at the top. I have pictures in my imager to better explain.
  • The Reichstag, seat of parliament in Germany is not really where the power sits. Despite the new design setup to allow Germans to peer down on their government's decisions, (the dome over the Reichstag), the President and the other high-ranking types actually work in another building near the Reichstag. According to Vivien, that's where the real power sits.
  • The entire wall is still there... sorta. Throughout the city, as you walk down the street, look down and you'll find that in the path of where the wall was, the city has laid a series of bricks, two by two to mark where the wall was. Some people living there actually suffer from a condition that doesn't allow them to walk over this line. The wall was up so long, that for some, it's like it's still there.
  • The headquarters for the Luftwaffe (the Nazi airforce) still exists as it survived the bombing during WWII. After the war, the Soviets turned it into the Ministry of Ministries, a sort of meeting place for all the Ministers that ran the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
  • Smart Car makes a coupe.
  • When you ask someone here if they speak English the response is almost always "Little bit" accompanied by their holding their index finger and thumb together as if they were attempting to squish your head.
  • Any attempt to speak German however is very welcome. Thanks to Margaret's phrase book, I was able to tell the waitress that I just needed the bill in German: "Die Rechnung, Bitte" and she was delighted.
  • The logo [DB] (Deutsch Bahn) is everywhere. It means "German Railway", but they appear to own a little bit of everything.
  • T-Mobile appears to be Germany's Bell. They have all the phone booths and a large portion of the wireless network.
  • Berliner Pretzels are awesome.
  • The Canadian Embassy in Berlin is unremarkable and I walked past it three times before I realised what it was... so I went to visit.
  • My appetite has dwindled considerably since I left. I blame the jet lag, but I'm hoping it picks up soon.

September 17, 2007 16:31 +0000  |  Germany 'Round-the-World Travel 4

I hope I have the day number right. I might just give up on this numbering thing and start counting the days in the cities. In that case, this would be Berlin Day 2.

Fragments of the Berlin Wall

My hotel (The Park Plaza Wallstreet) is really gorgeous. My room is stylish, the staff are friendly and English-speaking and the bed comfortable. My only complaint is that the internet (provided by Swisscom) sucks ass. Not only do they cap the download rate at 50kb/sec but they also limit downloads to 400mb for a 24hr period... and the cost for this? An additional €17 on your bill. REALLY lame.

So with the above in mind, I only have 2hours of online time left (well about 1.5 now), so I'll be brief.

I went exploring today, deliberately ignoring all the important spots I wanted to visit in the coming days. More importantly, I wanted to get an understanding of how Berlin works, as well as find where I'm staying tomorrow night (I'm only at the Plaza 'till tomorrow morning). Turns out that I'll be staying near Potsdamer Platz, a major train station and public square riddled with history and now home to the new Sony Centre (I'll have pictures later). It's also where I saw what's left of the Berlin Wall. Words cannot express the feeling of being so close to something that's been the source of so much pain. I swear I could feel tears bleeding from that concrete slab.

That's about all I have to say about today. Tomorrow will be the Brandenburg Gate as well as the Reichstag and maybe the Fernsehturm as well. But first, I must charge my camera.

September 15, 2007 20:02 +0000  |  Netherlands 'Round-the-World Travel 5

I've had a very nice time in this city, but it's time to move onto Berlin. Since my train leaves early tomorrow (10am) I'm going to try to make this short (fat chance).

Buddhists and Red Lights

Bike lanes and more bikes!

Yesterday morning I headed out in search of the Guan Yin Shrine, a Buddhist temple erected in the downtown core around 2000. I was prepared this time: this time, I had a map... it only helped a little. The big problem with Amsterdam is that the roads aren't straight. You turn left, then left again, and you've gone in a circle, and the laneways are so narrow that they're easy to miss. I'd been wandering for about an hour when I found myself in an alley with half-naked women behind glass banging on the door to get my attention... I'd ended up in the Red Light district.

Obviously, I'd intended to visit the area (it'd be a shame not to) but it's one thing to go there expecting it, it's another to be propositioned by a chick in a bikini on your way to a Buddhist temple. I kept on walking and found the temple: it was on the edge of the district -- would have been nice to know that before I left :-)

There wasn't much to the place though as much of it appears to be undergoing maintenance. A few bits of art were encased in glass, there was incense, a donation box, and a place for prayer. A very pretty, peaceful place, right in the middle of crazy downtown.

Red Lights and Nieuwmarkt

With the temple visited, the next item on my list was the Sex Museum. In the heart of the Red Light District, the sex museum doesn't so much chronicle the act of sex throughout history, but is rather a collection of sex art along with a sex history lesson. It was fascinating. From the John Lennon originals on the first floor, to the really creepy Snow White and Tarzan cartoons on the 3rd floor, to the female Mannequin urinating on the ceiling in bondage gear, to the graphic pictures of why you should use a condom, it was the best €5 I've ever spent.

New Room

The tram lines here are nearly paralell with the ground at stops.

As we'd discussed on the phone when I booked the place, the hotel had to move me to another room for the final two days of my stay. What I didn't know was (a) the view from this spot wasn't nearly as pretty, (b) the bathroom was private, but was in the hall, and (c) the internet connection was unavailable in this spot. All of this, coupled with the stark realisation that I still did not have a place to stay in Berlin (or anywhere else for that matter), made for a stressful evening. I collected my laptop stuff and headed downstairs to the garden where I could surf and get some bookings and... make a phone call from my laptop.

Fed up with the lack of ability to test my stuff with Vbuzzer, (why can't they at least have a test number before they ask me for money?), I threw $20CAD at Skype which I knew I could get to work with some tweaking. Then, when I had it all going, I placed a couple calls and realised how nice it was to hear friendly (English-speaking) voices again. It's only 4days in and I'm already homesick.

My Last Day in Amsterdam

The Nemo Science & Technology Museum

I started today off with some "business". I sat down and plotted out where I should stay for the remainder of my trip and made some scary realisations (more on that later), then went back down to the garden to book some more time in Berlin. I now have a place to sleep in Berlin from the 16th to the 17th at the Radisson, and from the 18th to the 21st at a hotel I found online which I hope doesn't suck. Then I hopped the tram (light rail, streetcar) to the main train station where I chatted up some American professors while in line for train ticket reservations. For €9, I now have a seat from Amsterdam to Berlin with a transfer in some German city I don't care to look up at the moment :-)

After leaving the station, I headed West, looking for something less touristy. There's no sense in wandering through a city if all you see is the same stuff on everyone's postcards. Jordaan is a pretty area, formerly working-class, but it's been gentrified for the rich folk now. I found a cool smoke shop where I bought a cannabis lollipop and some cannabis tea, then found my way to a local grocery store for lunch.

One thing I had to do while I was here though was rent a bike and go for a ride. For €5, you can rent a "Yellow Bike" and ride for 2hours, and for €10, you can have it all day. I chose the former and went for a quick ride around town. The bike was a rickety old thing, but in pretty good shape (like most of the bikes around Amsterdam), but had a few quirks like no gears to change, and a backpedal break. It took me a while to get used to it while I rolled up and down laneways and alleys. Lots of fun I tell you, every city should look like this one.

The world's largest bicycle parkade

When I returned the bike I asked the rental guy why so many bikes around town were "not expensive" was the terminology I used. I'll paraphrase his response from memory: "Bike theft is really common here. Mostly the junks. They steal from the students, then sell the bike for €10. You can almost always find a junk selling €10 bikes... this is why everyone rides these shitty bikes.". I assumed he meant "junkie" but since I didn't ask for clarification, I guess I'll never know. Needless to say, that while the city is made for bikes, 99% of them are rickety old things.

The last big deal of the day was a touristy boat tour. They have these long, slow motor boats here that wind through the canals of the city with a quad-lingual recorded voice telling you what you're looking at. I got some OK pictures and enjoyed the trip. It's kinda neat to see the city from beneath the sidewalk.

I headed back to my hotel and stopped at McDonald's for "dinner". I thought it might be neat to visit McDonald's in every country I visit, but the food was so bad, I couldn't finish it. What's worse, I lost my credit card while I was there (tucked it into what I thought was my money belt, turned out to be my actual belt, and it fell on the ground). I recovered it after about 5minutes of panicking (it was on the ground outside the restaurant) but it was pretty scary. I mean, I can it in as stolen and live off my debit card, but I only have the one credit card here. Very bad.

Anyway, I thought I'd close out this post with two lists. I might just use these lists for all my big posts... we'll see.

Things I've Learned

  • There's no General Mills here, but there is Kellogs.
  • Special K has a chocolate flavour
  • According to one woman I spoke to, while there are no recycling bins in the city, all the city garbage is sorted in a plant in the suburbs and then recycled. I find this hard to believe since extracting glass from that process can't be easy, but without any additional information I just don't know.
  • When taking a shower in the hallway bathroom, remember to bring a towel before taking off your clothes and getting wet.
  • Ordering food is downright scary when you don't understand a word of what's on the menu.
  • The Dutch can't cook American foods very well. Stay away from hamburgers, and the ketchup here is nasty.
  • The longer you travel in a non-English country, the fewer signs you read and/or ads you notice. It's both relaxing and disturbing.
  • Getting drinking water is a bitch. Restaurants don't serve tap water for free and a small bottle is likely to run you €2. The best plan is always to hit a grocery store and buy a 2L bottle.
  • The default language here is English. That is to say, people open conversations with strangers with English even though that may not be their first language. The assumption is that if you don't know Dutch, you probably know English.

Things I've Seen

  • Women riding bicycles in high heels
  • The world's largest bicycle parkade. Right next to the train station.
  • Half-naked women banging on glass doors to get my attention.

Next Steps

I'm off to Berlin tomorrow and thanks to some last-minute mad-booking, I have a place to sleep there for at least six days. After that the new, new, new route I have in mind is: Prague » Salzburg » Geneva » Florence » Venice » Rome » Seoul. I had to redirect to Salzburg despite it not being covered by my Eurail ticket because staying in Munich would be impossible at that time due to Oktoberfest (sigh). I'm only in Salzburg for 3 days though, and then I'm back on the original track.

The bookings I've made over the past couple days have made me suddenly realise how long this trip is going to be. It's only day 4 and I'm already exhausted. I miss English and more importantly, food that I'm not afraid of. I miss my friends, my family, my country... and it's only day 4. By the time I get to Korea I will well be beyond frazzled.

For now though, I must book rooms in Prague. I also have to check with a train station ticketing person to see if my routing is realistic. You never know, I might have more re-routing to do. I'll keep you posted.