Memorial- Berlin

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, takes up over 4 acres of Berlin with over 2,000 concrete slabs (shaped like coffins) the grid is arranged in a sloping field so that when you walk from the street where they are flat with the ground, into the middle where they are far above your head you have a sense of sinking into it all. the slabs undulate slightly so that the sense of symmetry is never found.

Underneath the memorial is a "Place of Information" listing all names of known Holocaust victims.

A city of faces

Everywhere you turn in the labyrinth that is Prague there is a sense of being watched,

door knobs, corners, columns... it seems like everything had a face

Does it bring comfort? Does it produce paranoia?

To have the very walls watching over your every move...

Czech words...

Here is the extent of my new Czech vocabulary;
Ano- Yes
Ne- No
Dobre Den- Good Morning
Dobre Vecher - Good Evening
Prrosim - Please
Pardon - Pardon
Chesky - Czech
Angliky - English
Je Quee - Thank You
Yden - One
Pivo - Beer
Kava - Coffee

Not so very impressive considering I even got a language CD to work on before getting here... My new German vocab is much better... but then again it is oddly more familiar and much closer to English. Here in the Czech Republic I can read signs three times a day (like the words for exit and transfer) and they slide right out of my head like warm jell-o.

Easter Market Dancing...

Geld*

Look at how much money I have in my wallet today! Seriously though... what is this worth? 1200 Czech Krouna is worth about $72.

You see this;

The three coins here add up to 17 Krouna, which is currently about one US dollar.  What can you buy in Prague with one US dollar?  You can buy;
A Banana and a trip to the bathroom
OR
A single postage stamp (to be used within the Cz. Republic, outside postage is 21ck)
OR
well, honestly nothing much else (I've been looking)

The smallest bill here is a 100ck Bill which is the equivalent of aproximately $6.  Most things here cost at least 100ck.  Goulash; 99ck, Beer or Cola is 50ck, a full meal is closer to 300ck-500ck, ($20-$30).  Sadly it is hard to find anything that is free to do... so I'm mostly walking around and doing the public transit sight seeing.  I spent way too much money on a lack-luster concert last night... I hate obsessing over money like this, but I think that the main reason that the Czech Republic has not switched to the Euro is because then it would be horrendiously apparent at how grossly inflated their prices are compared to everybody else.

*Today's German word means Money... because I'm more interested in returning to Germany than to Bohemia I'm working on my German.

Currywurst-Berlin

Berlin's specialty; Currywurst. It is like street food, very akin to the bacon wrapped hot dogs sold in San Francisco's Mission District. However most places are real establishments rather than hot dog carts... and they are all over the city. Some are more trust worthy than others.

First you get a bratwurst cooked in what is clearly very healthy grease;

Then they cut the bratwurst into smaller chunks, cover it in curry powder, serve with fries and your choice of ketsup or Mayo... the dish is to be eaten with a tiny plastic fork while standing up.

It was rather good, and I felt full for pretty much most of the day. I'm sure there was more than a full meal's worth of calories involved.

nahoru*

Prague is maddening and beautiful and intense. The whole place comes with a sort of claustrophobia and it always requires you look Up Up UP! There is just about every type of architecture here and all jumbled together like a mad architect's dream world, streets converge randomly and others just go on and on, up and up with nowhere to turn. It is Easter weekend and warm so it is also crushed full of people local and not. I kept finding that I could not just take pictures becuase I would be taking them in little pieces only to try and tape together later. There is no room to take it all in and the whole city seems to crush in on you. Some buildings have intense Neo-Gothic decorations but are only five or ten feet from the next building. This video is of the old town square, one of the largest spaces by far.




*Today's Czech word of the day means "Up"
--although frankly I am still struggling with "thank you" and "I don't speak Czech"

Verloren*

Crossing over the Czech border, a sense of panic grasps me. While we huddle together in a train nearly out of an old movie about British India (no people on the outside of the train, but just as packed inside) I realize that the announcements are no longer in German. Everything is suddenly in Czech. My only hope for understanding the announcements is from a Bavarian woman who barely speaks Czech or English, while I barely speak German. She tells me we need to transfer now because there is "a problem with China" or so I understand. The houses along the country side stop looking quaint and begin looking more and more like Baja California. Crumbling houses in need of repair, clotheslines hang on ruins, broken windows abound. I did not stop to take pictures. I quickly became so over-whealmed by the fact that we were not even hearing German (much less the occasional English or Italian that you get in Germany) that all sense left me and I just forgot everything but English and 'crazy monkey pointing'. Pils (as in Pilsner Beer) looks like Detroit after the apocolypse, I cannot believe this is a functioning train station and this is where we must transfer... I follow the crowd and cannot even tell what the word for 'platform' must be... worse yet I am looking for Platform 2 but they have written out the word for 2 rather than used the number.

I pray; God oh God please don't let me get stranded in Pils.

*German word of the day is Verloren; lost.

(this is not the station in Pils... this one actually looks a little less run down)

6:20am

I missed my train to Prague.  I went to the ticket booth to see what could be done... the woman at the counter apologized profusely that she could get me to my connection but from there out all of the buses are all booked.  To get me to Nurnberg and then let me hope for a bus would cost 70Euro... Or I could get a direct route to Prague for 42Euro... Wait.  What?  That's what I wanted all along but couldn't get online for any price. Perhaps there is some secret about the glory of riding a bus for four hours that I am missing.

Ok then... so now we wait.

müde*

It's my last day in Munich, my last day in Bavaria... what to do? Yesterday I saw the Residenz Palace of Ludwig (pronounced Ludvich) the second.... I'm pretty sure he was the second, and the Haus de Kunst, which was not as impressive as I was hoping for. I walked and walked and frankly tired myself down for little reward. The Residenz was indeed amazing, but everything after that I was running on nothing. Solo travel in a foreign language is already exhausting, to get lost and find that (although I wasn't so lost the first day) I was very glad I brought a compass. Up was down, in was out and I was mostly spinning round and round. I slept in today. I shall endeavor to stop and eat lunch today. I shall endeavor to walk as very little as possible. Stairs? No! I shall take the escalator and ride it, like an old person. I thought about taking another walking tour today but it looks like a lot of the information will be a repeat of my free tour and I'm not sure I want to walk for three hours at a clip. Today I sit and stroll.

The great question of the day; can I buck up for a real Bavarian style meal? It is mostly a plate full of meat. Salad on the side costs a full 5 Euro extra and most people don't get that... my stomach couldn't take it yesterday, partially because of the walking and partly because of all the cigarette smoke. In Berlin there wasn't so much smoking, but here there are vending machines everywhere and smokers everywhere, it turns my stomach and makes me ever so cranky. I hear that Prague is going to be worse in that aspect (Heaven help me).

*German word of the day means Tired

Munchen cover up

You'll notice that the right side of this building looks a little odd... that is because it is all under construction. In Munich and also in Berlin all construction must cover the scaffolding with what the building is going to look like so as not to detract from the beauty of the city. I rather like it.

Let's play a game

Who can guess what kind of building this is on and what the second from the right symbol means?

Dienstag

Munich Calling

Berlin was amazing.
Apologies for not updating... wi-fi was not easily available and I would rather spend time with Alex than with the internet so that is what I did. It is processing.
                                                                                 Berlin is complex and poetic.
Berlin was so much more than I expected and at times surprised me by being exactly what I expected... Perhaps at the end of the day when my feet are about to fall off I'll be ready to start talking about it.

When I got into Munich yesterday afternoon I took a train up into the English Gardens for a breath of fresh air.

I then walked South, counterintuitive since all of the water runs in the "wrong" direction by my perception.  Somehow my sense of direction is not dictated by the direction that water flows and instead of being completely turned around by it's contrary actions I just felt that it was doing something unnatural. The air is oddly muggy and looking out over the meadow there is a faint white haze that turns everything into a pastel but is so subtle that it never looks like fog.
This is the place that Mozart makes so much sense.  I put Eine Kline Nachtmusik on the ipod and it seemed like I was walking through a music video for Mozart. Everything smoves in time with his music.

  Alex warned me about the air pressure, there is a name for it and I forgot it... something about a high pressure system that is unique to Bavaria, it gives you headaches and makes you feel sick... it does feel odd I must say I'm glad for the warning because otherwise I might think I was getting sick or old quickly... I walked and walked and my legs started to feel all wobbly... the English Garden is HUGE.  Finally I wound up by civilization, the Haus du Kunst and the Subway... above the subway is this amazing building,

but at the moment I was so exhausted that I just looked up, took it in, took a picture and went to find my train back to the hostel.  Today I will find out what it was.  Now I am off to do the most touristy thing I can bear to do: the walking tour.  Perhaps I will buck up and have a drink at the Hafbrauhaus but I'm not so sure... for now, adieu and good night to the West Coast, I am off to enjoy my Deinstag (Tuesday) and try to increase my German skills (eep).

An omonous trip to the summer palace.

1^st Full Day in Berlin... I spent mostly outside of Berlin.  We took the train to a small town just outside of Berlin called Potsdam to see the summer palace of Frederic the Great... and the less known side of the Brandenburg gate (not nearly as historically important or as pretty as the famous half).

There are many beautiful buildings that are either next to old crumbling communist buildings or that are next to (or part of) construction. 

I vaguely remember seeing photos of this palace and the gazebo in an art history book, but it didn't make much of an impression.  All of the buildings on the grounds are painted in this beautiful Naples Yellow (my favorite shade in my goash  paints)  and there are hundreds of sculptures all over the grounds.  Every building is inspired by the Romans, or the “Orient”.   Below you can see the palace vinyards (they grew a lot of the grapes behind glass so that they don't freeze.

At one point today the sky rather suddenly rumbled and turned a dark grey.  Heavy cold rain burst and we ran for cover in a structure that I thought was rather squarely hideous, Alex thought it was “tasteful” .  Artistic differences aside we both agreed that the gardener who continued to water the flowers in the middle of the downpour was hilarious.

Taking photos inside the palace (on the tour) was somewhat forbidden... so I kept the flash off and took a couple on the sly... I must try to find some photos of my favorite room.  Most were decorated in gold fillagree and somewhat poorly done Rococo paintings (with the exception of two that I think were actual Watteau's) .  The final room was decorated in carved cherry wood sculptures of over-sized flowers, parrots, monkeys and birds, all painted with full color.  This final room was a guest room with a bed sitting in a wall niche.  I wonder how creepy it could have been to wake up in the middle of the night to catch a carved monkey in the side of your vision.  

Tomorrow we are going to a Bach concert... what else?  We shall see... It's supposed to rain so probably something somewhat indoors.

 Internet is somewhat slow, so photos will be a little sparse for a while... Plus, the Z button is where the Y should be... it's trippz.

I've landed in Berlin. I spent nine hours in a plane from SFO to Paris in a somewhat disoriented state from rushing all morning and managing to get through security and gate check in with about twenty minutes to spare.  Found myself on an AirFrance flight where although the flight attendants where all bilingual, my fellow passengers were mostly not.  I wound up using my extensive knowledge of the French language, mostly gleaned from French cinema...  perdone moi, excuse moi, misure, madam, un eau see vous play... oh yes I can say “excuse me I'd like a water” and point like a monkey just fine.  As  I got further and further into my book of choice I became sadly aware of how poorly written it was and I began to try and analyze the passengers around me.  I had the fellow behind me who so badly wanted to be left alone and never have anyone ask him to move or have food or anything that involved moving... perhaps he was hung over or petrified of flying.  I had the nice French couple next to me who I would talk to in English and dance like a monkey and they would in turn talk to me in French and dance like monkeys as well and somehow we could understand pretty well. The woman to the front and right of me I decided in my head was from a communist country.  She was very concerned that she was being treated the same as everyone else and was constantly watching what the flight attendants were doing  (as though they would forget to serve food or drinks to our side of the plane or that someone would get a better meal than the other). I tried to sleep but it was for naught.  I just wound up sitting very still with my blanket on and my sleep mask on listening to the white noise around me.

We had a stop over in Charles De Gaulle airport where there were a lot of  “Bonjour, perdone moi, oui,  and un eau petit see vou plays” and that is about all I could manage... new stamp in the passport... and a wait to get on the next flight.  CDG airport is beautiful, unless you are actually there.  It was full of narrow passage ways and unclear sineage, also it was oppressively hot and humid.  The plane ride had already tired me out and dessicated every cell in my body but CDG was a cigarette scented sauna. 

Happily I landed in Berlin and my oldest and dearest friend was there waiting for me.  There is nothing better than getting where you are going to be greeted by people you love. 

Choosing travel companions

It’s too soon to pack.  I am packing in my head.  Checklists scroll through… passport, check. Netbook, check.  Power cords, check.  Sweater, shirts, jeans (which jeans?) shoes (which shoes)… and more importantly what books shall I read on the plane?  Today I decided on books, all unread from my bookshelf.  I have three that I chose for different reasons.  I wonder if you can guess any of them from their beginnings…

1. It was on a Sunday morning in the loveliest part of the spring. Georg Bendemann, a young merchant sat in his room on the second floor of one of the low, lightly built houses that extend along the river in a long line, differing, if at all, only in height and coloration.

2.”We need you to kill a man.”

This stranger glanced nervously around us. I feel that a crowded restaurant is no place for such talk as a high noise level gives only limited privacy.

3. They found the body in a tuft of floating forest a half-day’s swim from ringsol six.  Daven was the first to see it, Rache the first to recognize it for what it was.

This week has been insanely busy and next week will likely be the same.  My next day off may yet be the day that I am sitting on a plane, unavailable, isolated, packed with only my books to keep me company for my eighteen hour journey.