Home again.

I'll finish writing out my thoughts and recollections of the trip, but for now, it's time to get back to real life and get a job. (Maybe not necessarily in that order.)

November 2-4, 2002

(Continued)

The real highlights of Salzburg (for me, anyway) are the Festung (Castle/Fortress) that looms over the town, and the Mozart museums.

First, the Mozart. When you enter the old city, one of the first things you see is a building labeled “Mozart’s Birthplace”, draped with the red and white banners that the Austrians love to hang on all national monuments (not always to the building’s advantage.) The birthplace is in a rather old building that fronts and backs into major squares. At the time the Mozart family lived there, the apartments were considered nice, but a bit downscale. (Interestingly, there are still people living in the building, only 1 1/2 floor of the building are dedicated to the museum. The real highlight of the space is a violin that Mozart was supposed to have played as a child. The space gives you some idea of both how refined and how crude middle-class life was at the time.

There is a second Mozart museum, the Mozart Apartments, or Mozarts Wohnung in German. This is across the river in the new town, also on a major square. The building is almost totally dedicated to the museum. (There is a restaurant on half of the ground floor, which is just there and has absolutely nothing to do with the museum.) These apartments are much nicer, with marble floors and richer wall finishes, in stark contrast to the wooden floors and plain plaster walls of the birthplace. This museum is much more interesting, as it features many period instruments, discusses the Mozart family and W’s relationship with his family.

It’s kind of ironic that the city that treated Mozart so indifferently came around so quickly once he was safely dead and his music stood the test of time. It really is an all-day, all-night Mozart orgy in Salzburg.

The old town of Salzburg is overrun with gorgeous churches, situated on squares so the can actually be seen. Perhaps this is an artifact of the place having been run by a Prince-Archbishop. Quite a trade-off for power and wealth – a very publicly scrutinized celibacy. While the churches are lovely, there’s nothing too unique about them. The Festung, however, is really quite spectacular. It looms over the old city on a cliff. In fact, the whole thing sits atop a rocky outcrop that makes it a natural for a castle. It was built by the Prince-Archbishops as a safe retreat, just in case things should get dangerous, which, inevitably, they did. The Festung is connected to the old town by a funicular railway, which was built at the end of the 19th Century. Very fun. There is an excellent audioguide tour of the castle that explains the evolution of the complex and visits some spectacular rooms, including the bedroom and audience chambers of the Prince-Archbishop.

On Sunday night, I was really desperate for some English-speaking company, so I popped into one of the inevitable Irish bars in the Old Town. This time, I met a slightly rampaging Irishman and his newly made Austrian friend. The Irishman had to leave because his flight was at 8 AM, so I hung out with the Austrians until about 2.

November 4-9 2002

Munich

In Munich, I stayed with friends of friends who live in the outskirts of the metro area, and who were kind enough to invite me to visit. Silke and Ramesh, my hosts, have a charming 7-month old daughter, Nalini, who was an absolute delight. This was also a great opportunity for me to recharge, so I didn’t see too much of Munich, or have any late nights, but I did leave feeling really rested.

Silke is a new stay-at-home mom, who is going through withdrawal from her professional life. We spoke pretty much entirely in English, and I spoke in English to the baby, who they hope to raise bilingual.

Munich is a really beautiful city, and is the most energetic place I’ve been to in the German-speaking world. I think that Bavarians are the New Yorkers of Germany – a little gruff, but genuine. Then again, with their passion for Trachtenmode, or traditional Bavarian dress (think Lederhosen, knee-high socks and those funny collarless jackets), and strong regional accents, maybe they’re the Texans of Germany.

On Wednesday, I went with Silke and the baby into the city to see Schloss Nymphenburg and to visit Silke’s friend Conny. The Schloss is much more interesting than Charlottenburg in Berlin, and was in use just a little bit later. The Bavarians still have a fair amount of independent identity apart from the rest of Germany, so the Schloss is part of the National Museums of Bavaria.

On Thursday, I visited the Pinakothek museum complex. The Pinakothek der Moderne just opened about a month or so ago, and is a really spectacular collection of modern design, architecture and painting. There’s also a sculpture collection, but it’s pretty weak.

The Neue Pinakothek houses painting from the 1800’s to the present and includes some outstanding Van Goghs and Matisses, along with the almost obligatory German Romanticists, like Kaspar David Friedrich. I only had a few minutes with the Alte Pinakothek, which houses all of the earlier paintings and sculptures, and unfortunately missed out on seeing a couple of Bosches.

November 9-12 2002

Zuerich

In Zurich, I stayed with Federica, from my German class in Berlin and her husband John. Federica is from Italy, and John is a Californian, from the East Bay. They have a nice apartment in Wiedikon, a relatively central district of Zurich. (Lots of Swiss place names end with “ikon” and “wil”. I guess that “wil” is a Germanization of the French “ville”, bit I’ve got absolutely no idea where “ikon” comes from.)

Zurich is just a little bit Disneyesque. It’s almost too perfect, and every square inch is trying to sell you something.

** More to come**

26 October 2002

Prague – wow, what a glorious mess this city is. Just try rolling off the train from Berlin at the city’s secondary train station, Nadrazi Holosovice, with only 20 Euros and $20 in cash. Bankomat (ATM)? Broken - undoubtedly by the rip-off moneychangers in the terminal.

OK, so it’s time to bite the bullet and change the 20 Euros into Czech Koruna – Yielding 530 instead of the 600 that would be more like the real value. C’est la vie. Next find the subway. Oops, the station’s closed for construction – construction that looks like a complete rebuild. No worries, there’s some footprint stickers pointing the way to the substitute service bus. (The trams that stop outside the station stubbornly refused to yield up the secret of their destination!) Hike, hike, hike, hike. This can’t possibly be right. Double back and pick up the trail of the signs. Aha! The bus stop, and lo and behold, a ticket dispenser. So it’s time to buy a ticket for myself and my suitcase, cost, 12Ck for me, 6Ck for the suitcase and haul myself up onto the bus and validate both tickets.

Of course, the bus goes only as far as the Florenc station, one stop short of the main rail terminal, Hlavani Nadrazi, where I need to pick up the tram. So, drag the suitcase off of the bus and down the steps into the metro to go one whole stop. Off the train and up the stairs at the main station. Of course, there’s absolutely no indication of where to pick up the tram. In fact, the most common signs in the station warned of pickpockets and taxi rip-off artists. So I wandered around the terminal for a while and found a working ATM. And… no luck, just a message that my transaction could not be completed.

By the way the main station is one of the ugliest I have ever seen. It makes the unrenovated Penn Station look like a marvel of elegance and good design. Apparently the Soviets hired architects who were influenced by discos and Logan’s Run to build the place.

So, I walked out into the park adjacent to the station (nicknamed “Sherwood Forest” by the locals because of all the robberies) and caught sight of the trams. Thankfully the metro service interruptions produced a clean, new set of maps on display at the bus shelter enabling me to determine which tram to take and where to get off. Two stops later, I got off the tram, unsure of the precise location of my hotel. I walked up to the corner and glanced to the right and there, shining like a beacon, was my hotel.

The building is a former theater and quite elegant, but the rooms are less so. They are a better-than-average version of a Euro-efficiency hotel, featuring some poor choices for carpeting and drapes but clean and nice. But I would like to sleep on a double bed again.

I decided to venture out again and try the ATM game still with no luck, so I went into a Pakistani restaurant across from the hotel and ordered a veggie curry, rice and a small beer for a total of about 250Ck, or about $8, more expensive than I would have thought. And it was bland, despite my asking for hot. At least there was some nice pickle on the relish tray.

At this point I was so tired, I went back to the hotel and turned in.

27 October 2002

Time to play tourist. But first, breakfast, which was included in the price of the hotel. Also, it seemed like a good time to grab my Fleet card and see if I could get some cash that way. I decided to have a particularly hearty breakfast, just in case I couldn’t get any cash until Monday. But, glory be, after my Wells card was rebuffed, my Fleet card worked.

I got off the tram at the first stop that looked historic, and plunged into the old city. The first thing I caught sight of was the Powder Gate and the adjacent Moderne masterpiece, the Municipal House. There were hawkers out front pushing a concert, but it looked more tourist driven than anything. They were asking 800Ck for a seat, an unheard of sum in a place like Prague.

I next found a former Soviet-era department store that had been converted into something more like a flea market, but with upscale goods targeting locals more than tourists – and a grocery store where I was able to buy water, some orange juice (labeled in German), some cookies and a couple of apples.

I quickly devoured one of the apples and drank the OJ – vitamin dosing to target my cold and plunged back into the old town, where I was able to easily follow the main tourist routes without being too crowded. The Astrological Clock is a gem, and the old city, with its well preserved/restored churches, synagogues and concert halls is a real treasure. Evidently, under the Soviets, the small alleys were deemed too backwards and inefficient (except perhaps for people fleeing the secret police) so many were closed off. Now they are being rediscovered and reopened, often to the great surprise of the locals who had forgotten about them.

Just off the old square, in a pouring down rain, I took refuge in a well-worn Irish bar with the unlikely name of O’Che’s. I figured that if I was going to pay high prices and be surrounded by foreigners, I might as well stop in at this obvious ex-pat dive. This turned out to be a very good choice, as the atmosphere was good, the barman was friendly and the prices, although high by Czech standards, were pretty low by American standards – a Shepherd’s Pie, two Murphy’s and a coffee for about 300Ck, or about $10.

The next, and most obvious destination was Prague Castle and the Loreto, via the Charles Bridge. The bad weather kept most of the hawkers off the bridge, so it was possible to see the statuary lining the bridge and enjoy the views over the Vltava River. The way up to the castle is steep, with many stairs, but can be avoided if you walk up a parallel street that takes you to just past the Loreto. It turns out that this street was used extensively in the shooting of Amadeus. At the top, there was a convenient little shop where I bought a few postcards, along with stamps, for a much lower price than at the bottom of the hill.

The Loreto is a fabulous baroque monstrosity, with more ornamentation per square inch than just about anyplace I’ve ever seen, complete with relics, allegories, shrines up the wazoo and a strict no-pictures policy. If you want to know more, drop by your local library (or big bookstore) and check out the DK Eyewitness Prague book.

It’s only footsteps from the Loreto to the main gate of Prague Castle, which is an enormous complex of palaces, churches and government buildings. Again, one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been. The climb up to the top of St. Vitas Cathedral’s main tower was well worth it for the stunning views of Prague.

Then back over the river, this time by tram. I popped off at Municipal House to see if the ticket price was now more flexible, and it was. What was 800Ck was suddenly, with negotiation, 300Ck. The concert was Mozart’s Requiem Mass, and the performance was quite good. The hall was absolutely spectacular – a true masterpiece of the Moderne style, with great acoustics to boot.

28 October 2002
Last real day in Prague, and the weather’s still looking threatening. Over breakfast, I pored through the Time Out guide I had brought with me to pick out a few destinations for the day. On top of the list was the Jewish Cemetery. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas, and they won’t let people in the cemetery if the ground is too wet. I did get a peek inside, though. So I decided to grab some lunch and check out a couple of English bookstores that are centers of the ex-pat community. The larger (and less well known), Big Ben, was closed for the National Holiday (celebrating the establishment of the Czechoslovakian state – never mind that it doesn’t exist anymore). So I popped onto the tram and rode over to The Globe, where I was able to snag a coffee, a beer and a copy of Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book I’ve always been meaning to read. And since I’m out of English reading material, it fit the bill. Plus it was only 330Ck – about $11. This is, of course, more than it would have cost at home, but less than in Berlin where it would have been about $15. (The book had an MSRP of 7.95GBP.)

Unfortunately, the holiday in concert with the miserable weather was playing hob with my not so well laid plans. Virtually everything except the tourist-oriented shops were closed.

After dinner, I popped back into O’Che’s for a beer or two and met a very nice English couple. We spent a couple of hours chatting, punctuated by two visits from a somewhat stoned Czech dude selling Saddam and Osama candles, and then it was back to the hotel. Interestingly, we agreed spontaneously that the local currency should be called “Checkies” not Koruna.

29 October 2002

Time to take my leave from Prague. I must say that as much as I enjoyed it, I was glad to be on my way. The degree of vigilance required there really put me off. And, getting back to the train station was no piece of cake. See above and reverse the directions, only with a better sense of where the heck I was going. This train was operated by the Czech railway, which owned the cars. There was a certain late-Soviet elegance to the train cars – lots of molded plastic and many flourishes that projected an almost maniacal desire to make the whole shebang appear modern.

The train ride was pretty uneventful, although I was once again surrounded by loud Americans. (On my way to Prague, five drunken, obnoxious Americans burst onto the train at Dresden and made a ruckus. I was really embarrassed by them, as were a couple of other Americans in our car. The hell-raisers weren’t bad people, they were just behaving inappropriately for a first-class rail coach.) This time, the loud Americans were an older couple plus two friends (or possibly relatives) from Houston. They were much nicer and more friendly than the group from Saturday, but still just a little embarrassing.

Oh, and speaking of embarrassing, I noticed that the Czechs don’t make any effort to teach their girls not to guffaw like hyenas; a minor, somewhat irrelevant, but nonetheless disturbing cultural difference.

Negotiating my way to the hotel was much easier in Vienna than in Prague (although not quite as easy as in Berlin.) I’m pretty centrally located, on the Landstrasse Hauptstrasse, just outside the Ring. There’s a beer hall in the building, which has a cobbled passage into the next street. The clientele turned out to be almost entirely Austrian, with a few foreigners thrown in just to confuse the staff. My waitress was nice enough to speak to me in German, and thanked me for clarifying to a nearby table just what Leberkaese is, and helping her avoid having an unhappy customer.

I was going to go to the Museum fuer angewaendte Kunst (Museum of Decorative Arts) which is open until Midnight on Tuesdays, but it turned out to be repurposed for a Vienna Film Festival party. Bummer. And I checked out the film festival schedule, but it turns out that all the interesting films were sold out.

30 October 2002

I got off to an early start, intending to visit a couple of museums, and that’s just what I did. I went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which has an amazing collection of European painting, roughly centered around the Renaissance (16th-18th Centuries), including a good number of Rembrandts, Titians, Canalettos and a cast of thousands. There’s also a nice little Egyptian collection (which I saw) and Greco-Roman Sculpture and Decorative Arts collections which were closed. The building itself is a real treat, ornate doesn’t even begin to describe it.

After the old, it was time for the new – The Leopold Museum, home to an extensive collection of Wiener Werkstaette art and furniture – that is to say, the place has a lot of Klimts and other members of the Viennese Secession. It’s pretty funny seeing a street and a major building both called “Secession”. It sounds like something you’d see in Richmond if the South had won the Civil War. (Actually, it’s surprising that there’s no such street there now!) The Leopold is in a beautiful new building – essentially a marble cube with good light and really nice galleries. There was a major exhibition of sketches and illustrations by Alfred Kubin – think Gieger meets Gorey meets Addams. Really, really interesting.

I also took a little time to go shopping. Grocery shopping, that is. Yesterday, I went into a Billa, a major chain here and was truly appaled. It made the miserable SuperSpar in my Berlin neighborhood look like a Wegman’s. Lousy selection, few sizes, few choices, and apparently whole categories (e.g. bottled water) missing. Today, I got off the U-Bahn one stop further out and walked away from my hotel on the Landstrasser Hauptstrasse and encountered a small mall with a SuperSpar. So I went inside and found a lovely supermarket, much nicer than the one I used in Berlin, and bought the things I needed. Most things are pricier here than in Berlin, although .75l bottles of water were only about 40 euro-cents each, about half of what they cost in Berlin.

On the whole, Vienna is a lot more expensive than Berlin. The museum admissions were 9 euros each, compare to 10 euros for a 3-day museum card in Berlin! Lunch in the museum cafe was 11 euros. Dinner in a medium-speed Japanese restaurant near my hotel was 14 euros, just about what I’d expect to pay for a tempura bento and a glass of juice in California.

31 October 2002

Halloween in Wien. (Hallowien, anyone?) Today’s itinerary included a quick jaunt out to the train station to reserve my train to Salzburg, a stroll through the chunk of Vienna between the Ring and the Gurtel, and the catacomb tour at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. There’s something very appropriate about seeing piles of human bones on Halloween. It was a little surprising to see the huge jumble of bones of those who died of the plague just lying there down a hole. Evidently, the catacombs were closed and cleaned in the 18th Century simply because the stench had become so bad that the Cathedral was unfit for human habitation.

Vienna is a real city – it’s got a sense of energy that Berlin seemed to lack. Not shabby for a city of only about 1.5 million.

I dared to get a haircut today – something that I really, really needed. Because I had neglected this basic bit of self-maintenance the whole time I was in Berlin, it was as if I had sprouted wings of fluff on the back of my neck. (Not pretty.) Having walked up and down the Landstrasse Hauptstrasse, I was able to scope out the alternatives and settled on a wash, cut and dry place that charged a flat 20.90 Euros. I went in and managed to communicate effectively with the haircutter, although we did run into a couple of logjams where we simply couldn’t understand each other. (German prepositions of direction at work again!) I did walk out with a pretty good haircut, though and felt like a new man. Or at least like a man who looked less like an absent-minded professor.

November 1, 2002

All Saint’s Day. At home, it’s merely a holy day of obligation, and only an issue if you’re an observant Catholic. Here, it’s a blinking national holiday. Everything’s closed. The shops, most of the museums. Grrr. Are there any other major Euro-holidays between now and the 13th?

So, I went out to one of the few places that would be open and busy on All Saint’s Day – the Central Cemetery, or Zentralfriedhof. It was packed with ordinary Viennese, paying their respects to their deceased forebears and to important national figures. The composers grouping of graves (plus the Mozart monument) were left to the tourists.

It really is a pretty impressive place. The euros have an approach to gravestones that you don’t often see in the states. Very artsy. Several mayors of Vienna have very impressive memorials right next to the main chapel.

There were folks in uniforms collecting contributions for something called the Austrian Black Cross. I have absolutely no idea what it’s all about it, so I declined to donate. Who knows, it could have had something to do with the FPO – the local right wing party.

I also took a quick jaunt out to the Prater to check out the Riesenrad – the giant Ferris Wheel featured in The Third Man, the Orson Wells Classic. I didn’t ride it, though. I just couldn’t cough up $12 for a ride.

I also took the streetcars around the city in a more-or-less random fashion, just getting a deeper feeling for this dynamic city.

On a different note, I’m starting to get used to saying ”Gruess Gott” instead of ”Guten Tag” for “Hello.” Austrian accents are pretty obvious and slightly amusing. Most German words are accented on the firs syllable, but Austrians add a little extra stress to final vowels, producing a variety of German that sound a little bit like trying to speak German with a Swedish accent.

November 2, 2002

Ahh, Salzburg. Mozart, Mozart and more Mozart. And Rain, Rain and more Rain. This city also has a certain Late Medieval, Early Renaissance charm – and everywhere you look, there’s Mozart this and Mozart that. And a never-ending supply of Mozartkugeln, the local confectionary specialty. In fact, there are whole shop windows dedicated to the cult of the Mozartkugel. There is, or course, a touch of irony involved, as Salzburg had pretty much rejected it’s most famous scion until well after his death.

The Mozart birthplace and the Mozart Apartment are both museums, so I chose to visit both of them. The birthplace is in the old city, just inside the main gate. (You can’t miss it – the front of the building is adorned with multi-storey banners in the colors of the Austrian flag and the facade is emblazoned with “Mozarts Geburtsthaus” in giant gold lettering. The apartment itself is unremarkable. The most interesting thing on display is a child’s violin that is claimed to have been Mozart’s.

The apartment, on the other hand, is a much more interesting museum. This is where the Mozart family lived while Mozart Sr. was the Prince-Archbishop's Kappelmeister.

_More Later...*

E-Mail Issues

For those of you who have tried sending me e-mail, I have had a small snafu with my Excite account, but it is now working again. You can email me at lsbrennan@excite.com or lsbrennan@yahoo.com.

All OK. I've been having a great time in Prague, Vienna and Salzburg but have had no luck in finding a not-expensive direct connection for my laptop. Maybe when I'm in Germany or Switzerland things will be easier. Right now, I'm sitting in an internet cafe in the old ciy of Salzburg, only footsteps from Mozart's Birthplace (eat your heart out, Paul!). The weather has been pretty miserable, but otherwise I have really been enjoying myself.

I'm also starting to have my first pangs of homesickness, and the get-back-to-work bug is starting to buzz, but neither of these is putting a damper on the trip.

I'll have a really long update as soon as I can get a direct connection.

Today is my last full day in Berlin. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by. And, boy, am I ever beat. Tomorrow morning, I’m off to Prague and all I want to do is sleep. I’m not sure why, but I suspect that the great unshakeable cold I’ve had for the past couple of weeks is playing a part.

I posted a couple of new pictures on the web, mostly of my German class. An interesting bunch.

I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to update my blog, as I don’t know what I’ll find in Austria. (I won’t even try in the Czech Republic.)

Woo-hoo! Here there be pictures! http://homepage.mac.com/lsbrennan

20 October 2002

Anti-Americanism has reared its ugly head. We were doing a unit on money in class, and we were asked to debate, in German, whether or not larger personal fortunes were acceptable. Immediately, all the Americans, the Brit, and one of the Italians found their way to the Pro-wealth camp and the rest were anti. So, we proceeded to speak very passionately about why personal fortunes can help advance economic development. The reaction was “Oh, how American. Now let us teach you about how evil your system is.” This even applied to sayings over money, such as “Time is Money” and “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. The instructor commented “Oh, very Protestant-American,” but the Americans in the room were me (not terribly religious, but Catholic-identifying) and a Jew; the Brit is the daughter of African immigrants. Yeah, really Protestant.

At dinner last night, we got into another heated discussion about how Europe is living in an economic fantasyland and is due for a shake-up. And how scary we found the rightist European parties. Oh, and Seth, who was just as adamant about this as I was, is an actor and by American standards pretty leftist.

One person in our party was going on about how there’s no Social-Democratic party in the US, so the next discussion was the New Deal and the Depression.

On the bright side, we were all able to hold our own in German during these discussions.

18 October 2002

The wind whirls on. Today, I booked a hotel for Prague, based mostly on the assumption that I’d be better off in a proper hotel there and that I can look to save some money in Vienna, which is a little bit less of the Wild, Wild East. Besides, the room was relatively inexpensive.

Oh, and as I sit writing this, Wer wird Millionaer? (Who Wants to be a Millionaire? – in German) was playing in the background, and a very personable musician just won a million Euros. Seeing the program in a language that you only understand 30-40% of really strips the thing bare and you can see the entire little psychodrama play out before you. (And, by the way, who ever thought of TV programs that end at 9:10?)

So, tonight there’s a party, tomorrow, another field trip with my host, Ralf and Sunday museums and the opera. Then four more classes, a free Friday and then off to Prague.

Yesterday, I went out with Ralf, and he showed me a theater that he had designed the lighting systems and auditorium appointments for. The theater site has two historical parts, one was a 1950’s theater and the other is an old brick horse-drawn streetcar depot. At one time, there was an elevator that carried the horses up to their stables, above the streetcars. The new theaters are very modern and well designed.

Next we walked around Prenzlauer Berg and had a beer at a bar in the Kulturbrauerei (yes, that does mean Culture Brewery) which is an old brewery brought back to life as an arts and nightlife complex. Then we went on to Ralf’s girlfriend, Yonggi’s restaurant. She owns a very snazzy sushi bar and served us an excellent meal. Then we were off to a bar for a nightcap and a cigar. All in all, a nice evening.

17 October 2002

This has been a fairly busy couple of days, and my last weekend in Berlin is fast approaching. For me, this is a really comfortable city. The people are fairly friendly, although they display a typical German reserve. The pace of life here is fairly relaxed. You can sit all night in a restaurant if you want to – and the food prices are cheap. Someone please explain the economics of this to me. Either the raw materials, taxes and labor rates are really low here, or everybody’s losing money hand over fist. Oh, and the beer is quite literally cheaper than water.

Last night was a late night. On Wednesdays, the Goethe Institut has a stammtisch at a local pub. We hung out until a bit past midnight, and then a bunch of us went on to a club with the unlikely name of Delicious Donuts. (Disturbingly, both Donuts and our regular bar, Cafe Zosch, are both written up in Time Out Berlin.) So, by the time I left Donuts, it was about 3:30 AM. (Berlin has different time standards than the US, or the rest of Germany. There are lots of clubs here that open at 10PM and close at 7AM, and most restaurants serve until well after 10. Very nice.) Thankfully, I didn’t have too much to drink so I felt fine when I got up at 9AM.

Tuesday night, we were supposed to meet at a theater to see a screening of Der Himmel ueber Berlin which literally translates as “Heaven over Berlin” but was released in English as “Wings of Desire”. It’s one of my absolute favorite movies, and now that I’ve been to Berlin, I may just like it more. Unfortunately, my classmate who gave out the directions got the location totally wrong. He thought that the theater was in the Potsdamer Platz, on Leipziger Strasse, which starts there. Unfortunately, it was on the other end of the street, about two miles away. (In Berlin, the building numbers start at 1 and run up one side of the street until the end, then they cross over and run up on the other side back towards the start of the street. So, in Berlin, number 1 is next to number 2, and the highest number on the street is directly across from number 1. I knew I was in trouble when I walked a fair distance to find a building with a number – 12, and it was across from number 100. The first couple of blocks of Leipziger Strasse are empty because the wall once stood there.)

So, instead of seeing the movie, I got a chance to walk the length of the Leipziger Strasse through block after block of East Berlin mid-rises (about 12 stories or so). These buildings were supposed to be really hideous, but they didn’t seem too bad to me – a bit reminiscent of the Lake Shore in Chicago. Later that evening, my host Ralf told me that most of them had not only been gut renovated, but had new facades as well and really were pretty ugly during the bad old days of the DDR.

I met a couple of my classmates along the way, and we decided to go out for German food, a rarity here in Germany. There’s a nice little Bavarian place not too from school, so we tried it. Very good. Not nearly as good as Paul’s Mom’s cooking, but quite good.

I also visited the newly rebuilt Reichstag, which normally has a two-hour line. But, thanks to the magic of the group entrance, we were able to whisk by all the (other) tourists and go right in. The exterior was built in 1834. The interior was burned by Hitler in 1933, and then bombed to smithereens by the Russians. The interior was rebuilt in the late 1960’s in a modernist style and then demolished for the new interior, which is really an independent building integrated into the old facade and the surviving perimeter rooms. On the whole the building is pale-white, 1990’s modernist revival boring, but the dome on top is spectacular. It has two ramps that wind up to a viewing platform on top. The platform rests at the top of a funnel-shaped structure covered with mirrors that serves to direct light down into the glass-roofed assembly hall. Very modern, but very nice. It really outclasses the rest of the building. A recommended stop, but try to hook up with a tour so you can skip the line.

Went to Cologne for the weekend, and noticed that the train stopped in Wuppertal, which is the site of one of the world’s most famous monorails. So, I decided to jump off the train (rail passes are a great thing) and check it out. I knew it would be near the train station, as it was nearly parallel with the tracks for quite some distance. (I had no idea it was so long.)

So, I found my way down from the main train station to the nearest monorail station, only to discover that it was closed for maintenance. (Something they do for two weeks each fall and spring, presumably to keep the cars from falling off!) So I took some snaps of the structure and wandered around town for a while.

Wuppertal is almost entirely modern, although they did try for a more historical look in the main shopping area. So I grabbed a quick bite and hopped back on the train for Cologne.

When you get off the train in Cologne, the first thing you notice is that it is a BUSY city. Far busier than Berlin, anyway. Saturday turned out to be the only weekend day all year that business were allowed to stay open till 9PM. What a mob. It was as if the entire population of Germany was given only one day to shop! It was far worse than any Christmas Eve I’ve ever seen. They really need to relax their shop-opening hours rules here. There’s so much pent-up demand that simply extending store hours might give Germany’s moribund economy a boost.

The cathedral in Cologne is, of course, magnificent. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Unfortunately, it’s sandwiched in the midst of some of the most truly hideous mid-70’s architecture I’ve ever seen. Yuck! What were they thinking.

I also visited a couple of museums, including a truly excellent collection of Roman era artifacts, mostly from the vicinity of Cologne. I also generally explored the city, and stopped at a street fair for a couple of Koelsches (the local beer variety) and an inevitable bratwurst. There was a cover band playing entirely American music, and they were OK until they tried their hand at REM, which was just short of hysterical. (But the Germans seemed to like it.)

I’m trying to upload some pictures, with only moderate success. So far I’ve only gotten my class picture (taken at a restaurant last Friday) uploaded. Check out this link: http://homepage.mac.com/lsbrennan for updates.


October 11, 2002

Well, time for a quick update. The past few days, I have been drowning in relative pronouns. I always get them all jumbled together because you need to develop an instinct for German grammar to use them in everyday speech. And when you get verbs that come bundled together with prepositions (e.g. pass by, pass up, pass through in English) you need to know not only which verb-preposition combinations mean what, but also what case the object of the verb takes because many prepositions can take two different cases. Put that together with the fact that German has a whole bunch of verbs that form an infinitive in combination with a preposition, and sometimes the verb and preposition stick together and sometimes they break apart and the preposition goes off to live a happy life in another part of the sentence (and can potentially change the whole meaning) things can get pretty complicated.

I’m still really enjoying Berlin. A couple of nights ago, one of my classmates played at an open-mike night in Prenzlauer Berg and most of us stayed out until about 3 AM. The next night was a weekly get-together at a local bar. I left at about midnight. Needless to say, I’m not in my 20’s anymore and a couple of late nights in a row can really knock the stuffing out of me.

This weekend I’m going to Cologne to see the cathedral. I’m actually kind of looking forward to a night in a Hotel.

Oh, and last night I met on of my Ralf’s (my landlord) friends, an actor who is the German voice of Wesley Snipes. That’s how it works over here. Usually there’s a one-to-one mapping between actors and their dubbed voices.

And a small world moment. At the pub (or kneipe) I met a guy who is the son of one of my prof’s at Fordham. He’s also hit the pause button on his career, which I gather has been a not-too-uncommon phenomenon recently.

Brandenburger Tor Uncovered!

October 3, 2002

Today was German Unity Day (Tag der Deutschen Einheit), celebrating 12 years of a united Germany. It’s rather hard to believe that Germany has been one country for only twelve years. I remember sitting up late, glued to the TV, watching East Germans stream into West Berlin. Now, it’s rather hard to find where the wall was. The best indicator is a western area that’s a bit down-on-its-luck directly adjacent to a sparking new development, which is almost certainly in the former East.

Today, I randomly met one of my classmates, who was planning on going to see the unveiling of the newly cleaned and repaired Brandenburg Gate, so I decided to tag along. We were two Americans, one Brit and two Italians. We had dinner in a cafe on the Unter den Linden that featured the WORST service I have ever seen in my life. I had to go and retrieve a waitress after we waited about 20 minutes. Then they forgot to make one of our meals. Simply forgot. There is a lot to be said for our tip system. In fact, Eve, the Brit in our group, said that we’re spoiled by uniformly good service in the States. Now I agree.

After taking 2 hours to have a bad meal, we pushed our way down the Unter den Linden towards the Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate, hoping to get a glimpse of the fireworks and the ceremony, which featured Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, the Germans don’t seem to have a clue with regard to crowd control. No wonder they have riots here!

So we decided to undertake a tactical retreat to a coffee house where coffee cost much more than beer. I paid five euros for a latte. Admittedly it was a very good latte, with the coffee and the steamed milk served in separate carafes waiting to be mixed at table. Again, we had a terrible time getting a check. What’s up with this? One of the Italians lives in Switzerland, and she said that it was even worse in Zurich. I said that I was surprised because the Swiss are supposed to be very punctual. She answered that they were punctual, but very slow.

The night before, I had gone to the Under den Linden simply because I wanted to take a look at the covered gate and found a street fair. I had some very nice roast pork with onions and a couple of Paulaner Weissbiers for only ten euros total. They had an American singer who was very like Patti LaBelle (and could very well have been for all I know) hosting and performing. She actually read (or perhaps spoke) pretty decent German. I couldn’t help but think that if the Russians had won the Cold War (God forbid), would Russian singers have been leading the festivities in the Pariser Platz?

Tomorrow, I’m going to try to buy a ticket for the Sunday trip to the palaces in Charlottenburg. (Today, I simply walked through the gardens.) On Monday, we’re going to the Jewish Museum. It’s funny how it’s impossible to walk through the streets of Berlin and not think of the war and of the Holocaust. It’s actually a bit draining emotionally.

German Class

October 1, 2002

Well, this is a bit like waiting in line to drink from a firehose. The quality of the instruction seems pretty good so far. There’s a large focus on speaking, but there are so many accents in the room that some people are hard to understand. Today, I spoke in German with people from Norway, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Japan and Korea, as well as with a bunch of other Americans. (Americans make up about 40% of the course participants – who says that we don’t make an effort to learn other languages!?!)

Sometimes, when speaking with another student, there is a gap in our vocabularies. We all know the same basic things, but many people used words I didn’t know, and I used a few that were new to the people I was speaking with (e.g. entwickeln or to evolve or develop). This means that we spend a great deal of time explaining new words to each other. Sometimes the temptation to switch over to English is strong, but I have mostly resisted.

The class has a large age range, from college students to college professors. So far, the other students seem quite friendly. I expect that I’ll come away from this with a raft of new acquaintances, and possibly a couple of friends.

Tests, Back Pain and Starbuck’s to the Rescue

September 30, 2002

Today was my first day at the Goethe Institut. Everyone had to be evaluated so that they would be in the right class. I placed exactly as I expected, in Mittlestuffe 1 – which means that I have an OK command of the language, but still have a long way to go before I’m anywhere near fluent.

While I was taking the short test, I was in absolute agony. Sitting appears to be the worst thing I can do – a complete contrast from a few days ago, when sitting was the best thing I could do. So, I found my way to the local Apotheke (Pharmacy) to buy some Naproxen Sodium, aka Naprosyn or Aleve. I first tried Naproxen Sodium with the Pharmacist, but she didn’t understand, and I didn’t think to check my dictionary (Sodium = Natrium). Next, I tried Aleve, with no luck, then Naprosyn, which she understood, turned around and reappeared with a box of Aleve. I just didn’t ask with a German pronounciation – Ahl-LAY-fuh. So now I know. And the stuff’s EXPENSIVE here! $6.25 for 20 tablets!

I have also discovered “belegte broetchen” or filled rolls, aka sandwiches. Very cheap and very good. The falafel is OK here too, but there is no such thing as hot sauce in Germany.

I walked around the neighborhood, which is the old Jewish Quarter of Berlin. The Neue Synagogue, which was burned on Kristallnacht, is only a few blocks from where I’m staying. The facade is all that remains, along with a newly restored dome. There are also a couple of kosher bakeries and restaurants in the neighborhood, each with its own police officer permanently installed in front. We are not too far from a heavily Arab area, and I think the Germans are more afraid of local Arabs making them look bad through petty acts of hatred than they are of a real terrorist attack.

The Neue Synagogue, as well as the largest congregation in Berlin (in the Rykestrasse in Prenzlauer Berg) and the adjoining Ronald Lauder Center for Jewish Studies have many, many very seriously armed police standing guard, some of which appear to be federal.

I tried pretty hard not to think too much about what went on around here 60 years ago, just so that I wouldn’t lose it in the street. (Although I would not have been the only weeping American on the Orienburgerstrasse.)

This really is a city full of history. There are places that you can see the scars left by the wall, and the scars left by the war. Many buildings are still pockmarked from bullets and shrapnel.

This afternoon, I found myself sitting in the square outside the Hackescher Markt S-Bahn station talking to an ex-skinhead street person whose English was much better than my German. He was more than a little drunk, but he was still interesting as he was sort of the archetypal Ossi (former East German) who had fallen off the map.

Oh, and what about Starbuck’s. Well, it turns out that they have T-mobile Hot-Spot service here too, and it’s free for the next couple of months. So now there’s a reason to pay †2.40 for a coffee. BTW - compared to Starbucks or Peet’s, German coffee is surprisingly weak. (Although much, much less expensive.) So, the coffee isn’t a big draw to a possible terrorist target (second only to McDonald’s) but a free wireless internet connection using my own computer is.

Getting There and Getting Around

September 26 – September 29, 2002

Whew! What a stressful few days it has been! On Thursday morning, while I was clearing my stuff out of Scott’s basement, I managed to pull a muscle in my back. *&*(&$$#!! is all I can say about that. So I found myself unable to organize Scott’s basement as well as I wanted to, and left him with more of a mess than I thought I would.

The flight from Newark to Copenhagen was uneventful and quite comfortable. I even met a couple of people who might be interesting to know. One runs a golf and garden vacation company. As soon as I get access to e-mail, I’ll put him in touch with David, who might be able to help him with his website needs.

On the plane, I met a Swede who was working for a small startup that was doing something with Bluetooth, which is evidently more successful in Europe than in the states. I’ll drop him a note as soon as I can. Interestingly, they had built their own development environment entirely from freeware and open-source tools. (I asked how he felt about GPL, and he said that they were being careful to keep it from infecting their code.)

I even managed to sleep quite a bit on the flight. The seat was fairly comfortable and had enough lateral support so that my back didn’t hurt too much. I think SAS wins some brownie points for treating passengers like something other than cattle.

The EU is a strange thing. I went through passport control in Copenhagen, where I managed to collect 6 kroner in change. (I bought some OK sugar-free licorice, which I will eat rather sparingly due to its effect on one’s blood pressure.) I then flew to Frankfurt, where I went through customs, which was one big joke. No forms to fill out, no nothing. Not even a sidelong glance from the inspectors. Doesn’t the EU keep any records of who comes and goes? Of course, the US now has an exit form for US nationals, which asks for an emergency contact – a bit of understandable post 9-11 paranoia.

In Frankfurt, it took me a few minutes to find my way to the ticket counter for the Deutsche Bahn to have my pass validated and to get a new reservation to Berlin. The train was quite nice, despite my reservation being in the smoking car. I could have moved, but my back hurt and I didn’t want to move my luggage, so I stayed put.

When I got to Berlin, I had to figure out how to get to my temporary accommodation in Prenzlauer Berg, a trendy section of the former East Berlin, which I accomplished by taking the S-Bahn (sort of a commuter rail / subway combo) to Friedrichstrasse, and then a streetcar out to Prenzlauer Berg. To American eyes, the apartment was, well, a bit ratty, but for 21 euros a night, it was OK. The building was five very high stories, and was built in the mid to late 1800’s, with a large interior courtyard. The bathroom had a door that was probably about 5’8” high – just low enough to reliably bang my head on a couple of times. It also featured an old-fashioned German toilet – one that has, for lack of a better description, a stool-inspection shelf, where your waste sits until you flush, a process that can be quite lengthy.

There were a few long-term boarders in the apartment, but I only met one very briefly. The landlady was a painter of somewhat indifferent, somewhat derivative post-expressionist canvases. My room and the bathroom were clean enough, but extremely Spartan, and the whole place reeked of smoke. Again, not to bad for 21 euros a night and only for two nights.

On Saturday, I tried calling my permanent landlord, but he wasn’t home, so I started to panic a bit. Thankfully, I reached him on Sunday morning and was able to move in by afternoon. My room at the new place is much nicer. The landlord/host is an architect, and my room is bright, sunny and clean. And coming and going is much easier as I don’t have to walk through a dark courtyard (I couldn’t find the timer switch on the way in) and up two flights of creaky stairs. Instead, I can go right into the hallway and up only one flight – an altogether easier proposition.

A few observations on Berlin:
* Everything is under construction – even the Brandenburg Gate!
* The food is OK, but bland, bland, bland. Tonight’s Palak Paneer was way too flavorless, even though I asked for it hot (or scharf, as they say here.)
* The transit system is excellent, but there are lots of service interruptions. (They are better announced than in NY or SF, although there is no effort to increase service on the alternate routes, making them extremely crowded.) The Berlin Marathon was on the 29th, so that may have had something to do with the streetcar interruptions.

Net-net, things are going well so far – if only my back would stop hurting!

Welcome!

This blog will contain my musings as I travel across Europe on my personal sabbatical. Until I get there, you can check out my current blog.