Elisa's Bike Trip

2006-10-22T02:42:00.000-07:00

Istanbul, Day 6.

Parting Words.

Ha ha. You know, for a long time I had been thinking, to make a last post full of all these Zen-like koans that I thought up while riding along the backroads of Europe. Say, things along the lines of:

1. Uphills always end.
2. If you can, follow the river.
3. When things get seriously tough, there's no shame in taking the train.
4. Local wisdom has its merits....sometimes.

etc. etc. and other suchlike droplets of rather, in hindsight, questionable "wisdom". ;P. But then, back to normal life in huge, cosmopolitan end of your journey city, I realized that those things which seem to you so brilliant while you're busily pedalling like mad up some tough uphill on asphalt on a hot day, are actually, in reality, rather trite, in the end. So, and lucky for you, I will be sparing you those, and will not tell you. :)

Nor will I tell you, what it is I did once I arrived here in beautiful Istanbul, Gateway to the East, Pearl of the Orient, City of the World's Desire: the people I met, the colors I saw, the smells of spices that seduce your senses when you walk through the bazaars, the thousands of years of history detailed in its world-class museums, the awe and wonder of its architecture, the life, the veritable life, in its streets, its people, and children.

Nor even describe to you, that I deliberately did not cross the bridge to the other side of the Bosphorus with my bike, but did explore mainland Asia a few days later (bragging rights are important, you see) in a rather odd combination of foot, tram and ferry.

That, you see, is part of a different adventure.

What I will tell you is the answer to the question everyone has asked me throughout the start and end of this trip, from inside the airplane from Heathrow to Lisbon, through little villages in Spain, to border guards in formerly communist countries, to anonymous posts on web forums and email, the question, namely, of:

"How did you manage?"

:)

The answer, in fact, is quite simple:

One kilometer at a time.

Ha ha, you know, when I was passing by the fish markets in the harbor arriving in Istanbul, and then on to Sultanhamet, the bright and colorful city center, I was hit by a such sudden burst of energy, that I even thought: heck, were it not because I'm required to be back in Vienna by the 25th, I would've continued on pedalling!

{sigh} :). Oh well.

{shrug}

There's always next summer! :D.

2006-10-16T01:15:00.000-07:00

Çorlu-Silivri-Istanbul.

Trip dist: 119 kms. Time: 8 hrs, 15 min. Tot dist: 7,633 kms.

Full circle.

So, what's the first thing one does, the night before the very last ride on a long bike trip from the Atlantic to the Bosphorus?

Why, one goes to buy socks, of course (my old Lisbon ones badly needed replacing). :D.

For only 1 Turkish Lira (about 50 cents!) one gets some really beautiful, almost fluorescent orange socks in the downtown of Çorlu. So brightly colored, it can't be anything but good luck, right? And I that I had thought that my Lisbon blue and green striped European socks were pretty wild already....

The ride today was pretty hilly/flat (mesa-type climbing, you know, climb, go flat for a while, descend, at infinitum) and uneventful (though I did get to see--barely--a little bit of the Sea of Marmara!) until approximately 35 kms from Istanbul, where it suddenly turned into pure chaos. The traffic was unbelievable and at one point there is this maneuver you have to do, where, if you're riding on the right side shoulder of the road (and if you're on a bike on this crazy highway, you should), you then have to cross over to the left for three lanes and stick around there for a while, with crazy cars weaving every-which way as you try to do this at a comparatively snail pace, and trucks blowing smog right into your face and honking, and then, after about 700 meters or so, you then have to repeat this little trick in the opposite direction, in order to catch the correct turnoff to the city. So you cross left, three lanes, then ride a bit, then cross three lanes back.

Very stressful, that was. I just had to stop and take a break after that (also because that came right after a very tough and long climb, I guess). I also didn't have an Istanbul city map (I didn't have a Turkey map either, but I figured since I was only going to ride here 3 days it didn't matter), and if the city was anything like the road 35 kms before, I would most definitely be needing it. I bought one at the gas station where I stopped to rest, and at which point the guys at the station entreated me not to continue on the D-100 (the big 6 lane highway I was on) into Istanbul, but to follow the coastal road instead.

"Much flatter and no traffic!" the attendant had said.

"And how many more kilometers will that add? It looks like at least 15 from the map!" said I.

"Yes, no, only 6, but no traffic!" said the attendant.

O.K. Remember? Flat and longer is ALWAYS better than short and hilly. So I took this road.

I should start mistrusting local wisdom, though. First off, this highway took me all over the Istanbul suburbs, including a rather exciting ride right south of the Airport, where I was right on the path of approaching planes. Talk about stressful, when you see this huge bird shadow approaching you from the right, then you hear the horrible noise and look up, to see the steel belly of this huge Lufthansa Boeing that is landing just behind. Yikes.

Secondly, no traffic? Are they nuts?!? I was on a 4 lane avenue pretty much as soon as I came within 10 kms of the city! And, no shoulders, I was smack-a-dab in the middle of a lane (for you Boston folks: imagine a bit like driving along Storrow drive or Memorial drive, on a bike), travelling, again, comparatively like a lame mollusk, and cars swerving (while honking loudly) to avoid me.

Thirdly, no hills? Er....not in the suburbs. Granted, they were not as high as the ones I had had to climb on the D-100, but they were many, one after the other, as if I were on a roller coaster.

Fourthly, I got into the city late: the suburb promenade had taken almost 2 hours (I got lost a couple of times, too), it was not 6 extra kilometers, but 16 by my odometer, and then what with the swerving and not being able to tell exactly which way I was going (new big city at night) I headed for the sidewalk near the park flanking the docks (and what beautiful views of the harbor!). By this time it had started to rain, and traversing to and from the sidewalk/bike paths on the park flanking the harbor obbligated me (partly, too, because I didn't see it, being dark) to ride through some pretty thick clay-mud. It was hilarious, when I finally figured out how to get out of that muck mess, I had mud covering my tires 2 centimeters thick. The first thing I thought? "Oh, man! Now no hotel is going to take me!" :)

The solution: ride through as many puddles as possible. That worked, after about half-an-hour. The tires were clean but the brakes, of course, were covered up so much you couldn't even tell my bike was equipped with some.

But, I made it, in the end (after asking some soldiers with machine guns the way when I got lost in a huge park near Sultanhamet, the city center. It was amazing how non-chalantly they handled them: pointing every-which way, sometimes even at me, as they changed them from one shoulder to the other, then realizing how I was looking at them eyes wide and mouth popped open, they became formal again and started handling them properly. I rather suspect, then, that the guns weren't loaded. At least, I hope so). Ha ha. Not bad for a little more than seven-thousand, five-hundred kilometers, eh? :)

I ended up in a beautiful hotel with great views of the city and the harbor in their rooftop terrace. It didn't seem too expensive, and had a nice, spacious bathroom, whose shower I without hesistation quickly jumped in upon arriving.

2006-10-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Kırklareli-Babaeski-Lüleburgaz-Çorlu.

Trip dist: 118 kms. Trip time: 7 hrs, 23 min. Tot dist: 7,514 kms.

Conquers the World.

Heh, that map above? Those are the countries I've visited (you can make your own here). Not just the places where I hung out at the airports, mind you, but actually spent some time looking around in. Cool, huh? (And nevermind also, that all things considered, I haven't really done much travelling--the site says I've only seen 10% of the world, in terms of number of countries visited). Though looking at that map...it does seem a little....localized, huh? A bit like an epidemic spreading, maybe?

{shrug}.

The ride today to Çorlu was not particularly exciting (I had said goodbye to Françoise and Peter this morning as they wanted to stay in Kırklareli for a while before heading to Edirne, opposite in direction from me) . Pretty much like Jasper warned me, except that unlike him I actually had the wind in favor all the way to Babaeski, but as the road turned East (I was heading pretty much straight South before) the wind was hitting me on the diagonal, a bit against, and rather strongly. To Babaeski it was easy going 23 kms/hr. Then afterwards as I said there was a lot of winds, and quite a bit of up and down elevation, so it was slower going. Landscape, too, was a bit on the boring side, though I did pass by at least 15 textile factories, which was kind of mind-tickling. {shrug}.

Turkey takes very good care of its infrastructure. Its roads, even the old ones that have been since replaced by the motorway, are wide and smooth and kept in good repair (there are constantly sections being fixed, and the fixed section that I saw was as smooth as oil on steel or water on ice); all the cities/villages I passed by, though poor, had freshly painted houses, lawns mowed. I didn't see this even in Berlin. {shrug}.

Arriving into Çorlu, again, there was LOTS of commerce (see for instance the ads on the buildings), the city center is full of people doing...of all things...buying and selling, with the hustle and bustle and sounds that that produces.

However, there is something I don't get: if there is so much economic activity, as evidenced by an active (a highly active!) market, why does it seem that people here are still so poor?

Something....doesn't quite jive with A. Smith: I need to quickly find me a good book of Turkish history (Gurçan, any suggestions?)....

2006-10-14T05:52:00.000-07:00

Малко Търново(Malko Tarnovo)-Kırklareli.

Trip dist: 55 kms. Trip time: 4 hrs, 32 mins. Tot dist: 7,395 kms.

You know what the first thing anyone shouted to me was, as soon as I crossed into Turkey proper, when I was rolling by a little town not too far away from the border?

"Welcome!"

How nice, huh? :D

Anyway, there was a bit of a climb this morning, because the border (I learned posteriorly, thanks to Jesper, who after apologizing profusely for having lost me on the road to Burgas sent me an email this evening detailing all aspects of the ride all the way from Burgas to Babaeski and Lüleburgaz half way from the border to Istanbul, including things like: "after 30 kms from the 2nd hill after the border, there is downhill with strong headwinds for 15 kms, then the turnoff to city of Babaeski, but watch out for the three mean dogs about 3 kms off Kırklareli, they are very big and don't run away when you throw stones at them", and other very helpful details like that--with other precious gems like: "taking the road inland from Burgas to Malko Tarnovo is very tiring and very steep!" included--, because it was a little bit like having someone watching over you ahead of you, and telling you "careful with this" or "watch out for that", so it was nice knowing what to expect from here on to Istanbul) is actually at elevation 650 m. The climb up there wasn't too bad, but although it started out sunny early morning, I didn't leave until past 11, because I needed to change the brakes on the bike, as the old ones, which had been agonizing since the Carpathians, had basically died (no brakepad left, basically!) on the descent from the mountains to Nessebar, and I had heard (on the web) that there were some pretty steep descents into Kırklareli. What this long story means, actually, is that I arrived to the border with weather that was very cloudy and cold (it had just started raining by the time I left the hotel, and by the time I arrived to the border I was pretty much soaking), compounded by very wet clothes, high winds, and the altitude, made it so that I started shivering when standing, and had to even take out my winter jacket and ride with that for a while.

The Turkish border guards were very friendly, though. One of them upon seeing this offered to turn the heater on in the little cabin and asked if I wanted to come inside to warm up for a bit.

Anyway, the landscape changed almost as suddenly as I crossed the border. In Bulgaria it was mountainous and full of leafy forests, but within a kilometer or two into Turkey it was replaced by pines and much rockier mountains. Another thing that immediately changed past the border, a nice change, by the way, was that all those potholes from that bad low-traffic back road in Bulgaria were suddenly gone.

Another neat thing that happened was that not long after the border I ran into Françoise and Peter, the two Belgian cyclists that were also at Malko Tarnovo last night, in my same hotel, where I ran into them and made their acquaintance. They are a middle-aged couple who have been cycling from their home in Brussels, about 50 kms at a time, for about 3000 kms now. They had set out at 8 a.m. this morning, and now here they were, Françoise admiring the landscape while Peter finished changing the brakes on his bike, as well!

Good thing he did, too, because the web people were quite right: The descent 10 kms before Kırklareli was the fastest ever, allowing my record speed of 70.5 kms/hr for about a few seconds at the bottom of the hill, and would've been faster, had the road surface not been so bumpy (no potholes, but the asphalt was not perfectly smooth). Very exhilarating, (and a bit scary--silly mind always thinks things like--"imagine, if you fell right now without a helmet"-type scenarios which tend to ruin the fun!) that was. For a bit after that it was also kind of cool: you're riding in a ridge and the wind was in favor, a very strong gale that literally pushed you up the ascents at 20 kms/hr without you even having to pedal at all!

Anyway, on the windless ascents Peter and Françoise tended to go slow, (they had not been privy to the Catalan Antonio's advice--"On the uphills, use the preceding downhill to your advantage!"), even pushwalking the bike at times, so I ended up waiting at the top a bit more impatiently than I imagine Jesper must've done when he put up with me in Bulgaria (and that is probably why the time above is so high given the kilometer count). So, I guess, and especially given that wonderful road advice he then emailed me with, I forgave him, in the end. ;P

Françoise, Peter and I arrived into Kırklareli just as the evening call to prayer was floating out of the characteristic, needle-like minarets. Here in Turkey they are much more melodic, happier, even, than I remember them in Morocco (they seem to use the makams--which, by the way, I first encountered, long story, back when I was around 10 years old--a little more, for instance, while in Morocco they tend to be a little more monotonous). People are, indeed, very friendly here. As we came into the city center, kids followed us, asking questions constantly, wanting to know everything, but only managing: "What's your name?" in English, product, no doubt, of first lesson first year elementary school class. It was amazing, though, how versatile the phrase became in their hands, elliciting all sorts of responses, incluiding information on where Françoise and Peter were from, and how far we had travelled that day.

You know, Kırklareli, for such a small town, is bursting with activity: lots of commerce, the city center is teeming with people, a very lively town that gave us such a happy welcome into this new country.

2006-10-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

Бургас(Burgas)-Созопол(Sozopol)-Царево(Tsarevo)-Малко Търново(Malko Tarnovo).

Trip dist: 128 kms. Trip time: 9 hrs, 22 mins. Tot dist: 7,340 kms.

Right. So there are two routes to Malko Tarnovo. One, 64 kms long, through the mountains, reportedly (according to accounts on web from people who have cycled this before--and there are not that many) up to 11% grade at some points, the other, 124 kms long, through the coast.

I chose the coast.

It is good, sometimes, to pay heed to local wisdom. Additionally, if the last 37 kms from Nessebar to Burgas were any indication, one can pedal along this more than twice as fast, so even over twice the distance, the coastal road should get you there sooner. Furthermore, I have , uh...laboriously learned over the past 7,000 kms (some, in rather piercing lessons along the Sierra de Guadarrama, the Puerto de Contreras, the Siegtaler Radweg, and the Elbe Radweg), that gradual ascents are ALWAYS better than short steep ones, even if they do add an extra dozen of kilometers or two. So, all kosher now, right? Are you sure you're making the right decision, Elisa? Considered all possibilities? Anything you assumed incorrectly, any information you forgot to take into account?

You know, the ride along the coast was breathtakingly beautiful. The turnoff to the mountains was only 20 kms away from Burgas, and the highway followed it naturally. I had to make a deliberate effort, to get off it and find a way to backtrack, once I figured, 800 meters into the turnoff, that I was heading in that direction instead of towards the coast.

But the coast turned out not to be flat. Remember lesson learned only on the very 1st day of cycling: wishing that the pretty road were the right one does not make it so! There were just as many uphills and downhills hugging the coast as they were on the first 80 kms from Varna to Nessebar. Ah, how we fool ourselves into believing the magic of wishful thinking! By the time I arrived in Tsarevo (over 70 kms and more than 4 hours later), a pleasant little roadsign cheerily announced to me that my previous efforts over 74 kms of rocky coasts had saved me a grand total of...18 kms. The next 54 kms to Malko Tarnovo, you see, were inland, over mountains.

Those 54 kilometers took forever. I had thought there would be one ascent, a tough one, and that would be it, but no, it was one, after another, after another. For those of you folks in Mexico: do you remember the old road that goes from Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta, that makes any small child seasick, from the curves and ascents and descents? That's what this part of the road was like. And what's more, as soon as I took the turnoff to Malko Tarnovo, potholes appeared on the previously perfect road like holes on Swiss cheese. There was no way to pedal faster than 10 kms/hr even on the rare flat sections. I could not ride on the shoulder: the best bet was to try to ride in the middle. For this, I was lucky, this road had basically NO traffic whatsoever. Given the state of the road, though, I wasn't too surprised.

The effect of this, of course, is that it makes for a very lonely ride. You're in the middle of nowhere, in a country thousands of kilometers from home and family, in a potholed, treacherous, difficult uphill road that sees little transit, with the occasional car parked randomly along the side of the road, trees all around, with the occasional (always male!) parked car owner staring as you pass by. A bit eerie.

But to make a long story short, the other effect of this, not so unexpectedly, I supose, in hindsight, was that by 7 p.m. dusk falling and nighttime approaching vertiginously FAST, I was still 15 kms from Malko Tarnovo.

This, of course, not a big deal on a flat, highly transitted road.

Here, I was still climbing uphill (5-6 kms/hr, at best!), there was no transit and the road was not illuminated by passing cars (let alone road lamps, it was a minor, potholed road, remember?).

Darkness falls faster in the mountains than on flat ground. Between dusk (7 p.m., here) and the time I could no longer see very well, only 20 minutes passed. I was still climbing. I pedalled faster.

I saw something small and white move into the road from behind the bushes just to the right of me. The sound, of course, evidenced a small animal, but you know, when you find yourself in such situations, senses made more acute by the unfamiliarity and potential danger, your mind ends up working overtime. And since there's not really all that much to think about when you're busy just pedalling as fast as you can, it...likes to take some divagations into the realm of the fantastic.

You know what is the first thing I thought when I saw and heard that white fluffy thing, a skunk, in fact, moving towards the road in front of me? It was not, of course: "Oh, look, a skunk, how cute!", but rather:

"HOLY SH&^%T!! A ghost!"

Ha ha ha. :)

By now, the darkness was complete. I took out my little 4 white LED headlamp, parting gift from a good friend in California, which I had never had occasion to use before now (thanks Wendy, you saved my life!). Even at high setting, the light only illuminated 1 meter ahead of me. In the meantime, it got cold, I realized as my breath condensed in the cold night air. I started riding again.

And again, the mind works overtime: "What if Malko Tarnovo is not 15 kms away at all, but farther? And I that wanted to make it to Kırklareli today! Maybe I should've taken the other road after all! But shucks, now I'm here, and if Malko Tarnovo is not there, what do I do? Do I camp? Holy scripes! Another ghost! Oh, no, just a white sheet hanging off that old bus stop. It looks rather eerie. I guess I could sleep in a place like that in an emergency...oh no, nevermind. It is probably full of spiders. I HATE spiders. Shucks, the only reason I can't camp open air here is that I hate the idea of having some insect crawl on me. I guess I could just try to sleep like the horses. Stand under a tree, and just wait for morning."

And then, of course, the bargaining starts. No atheists in foxholes, remember?

"Oh, man, if You let me out alive of this one, I promise I'll never do anything as stupid again."

or

"Oh, God, please, please, please let there be a hotel in Malko Tarnovo."

or the classic:

"Oh God, please let the roadsigns be wrong, and let Malko Tarnovo be only 2 kms away instead of 9..."

etc. etc. etc.

Great ride, that was.

I guess since you're reading this it is clear that I made it to Malko Tarnovo eventually. At 9 p.m., in fact, but in spite of it being a very small village there were a lot of people walking about, which was a good thing, because no matter how hard I tried, I could find no hotels in this little town. Local rumor had it that there was one "near the hospital", somewhere, but though I could see the hospital, the hotel was nowhere in sight.

I went to a little grocery shop next to the hospital building to ask again.

"Hello, is there something I can help you with?" said a tall rosy-cheeked gentleman in his early 30s, in perfect English.

"Yes, I heard there's a hotel nearby?" said I.

"Yes," he grinned sheepishly, "in the hospital!"

"O.K., but where? I cannot see the signs."

The lady from the shop indicated something in Bulgarian.

I did not understand.

The gentleman smiled again, and said: "Here, I'll take you. You're lucky, you know," he added shyly, "I'm the only person in Malko Tarnovo that speaks English!". He said something to the woman at the shop, who appeared to be his mother or aunt, and after indicating that he would go with me, to which the woman assented in a relieved manner, for she appeared concerned that I couldn't find a place to stay, walked me over across the street.

The hotel was indeed in the hospital.

"After the government change, you see, the hospital was privatized. But no one in Malko Tarnovo wanted to come here, so they made it into a hotel instead."

Weird, huh?

Turok, my new friend, showed me inside, translated for me while I arranged a room (a double with a very clean private bath and shower, only 11 Euros), carried my bags and bike in-between short conversations about where each of us was from ("You come all the way from Lisbon? Wow! I am from Burgas. You were there this morning? More wow! You're a strong woman! How do you manage? Oh, yes, I'm in Malko Tarnovo because this is where I was born, but now I live in Burgas....thank you, yes, it is a nice city, glad you liked it, did you know there are two other cyclists here today at the hotel?" etc), and before parting gave me his cell phone number, in case I needed anything or got lost in city center. "Please," he had said,"call me if you run into trouble. Do not worry about the hour." And with that, a mild-mannered smile, and a small nod, he disappeared.

You know, I have said it once before and I'll say it again: never in Europe have I encoutered people more considerate, caring, and amiable than in Bulgaria. Turok even went out of his way, not concerned about any wasted time, to make sure I was settled in and safe, with such a gentle manner, a pleasant, sweet and cheerful demeanor that made me think:

Were I in complete, unrestrained freedom to choose my next closest and beloved friend, I would make sure he were Bulgarian.

2006-10-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

Бургас(Burgas).

Took a rest day today. Ran errands, phone calls to U.S. and Mexico, etc.

It was a pretty day, it would've been nice for riding, but my legs are sore for the first time in the whole trip (yeah, can you believe it? first time in over 6 months of cycling!), no doubt from the effort of trying to match Jesper's faster/stronger pedalling.

I can't figure out which route to take to the border: inland, or through the coast? Locals say "take the coast", but the map says that is twice as long. Still, if on the uphills I do 7 kms/hr, and at the coast I do 20, it would take less time through the coast and I would probably end up less tired...I don't know.

Also, should I cycle all the way to Kırklareli (in Turkey), or should I stop at Малко Търново (Malko Tarnovo), last town before the border, in Bulgaria? I don't know! My maps are not good and the people on the web who've cycled this before do not make things clear on their websites.

You know the algorithm's engineer default decision mechanism for these kinds of situations, right? :D. I'll probably end up just tossing a coin tomorrow morning right before departure....

2006-10-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

Несебър(Nessebar).

Visited the little fishermantown of Nessebar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, today. Nessebar is kind of cool because it is in a little island made into a penninsula by a bridge connecting it to the mainland, a bit like Sirmione is in Lake Garda in Italy. Nessebar was inscribed in the World Heritag list for its importance as an ancient Thracian settlement, and its also its preserved ruins from the Byzantine era.

Nessebar is so tiny, though, and has become so flooded with tourists (today it was cold, and it is also off season, so there were not as many as I'm sure there are in the summer, judging from the abundance of shops and restaurants concentrated in an area less than half a kilometer square), that it feels a little bit like walking into a Disneyland "Byzantinetown" type of thing, and in reality, the size and the state of the ruins and even the shops wasn't really enough to hold my attention for more than a few hours.

Even their archaeology museum, with its single room, was disappointing (especially for the admissions price). For such a well-preserved city, they sure have very few artifacts on display. Apparently, sadly, the main draw here for visitors seem to be the tourist knick-knack souvenir shops, which I quickly ran away from not too long after arriving.

2006-10-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

Варна(Varna)-Бяла(Biala)-Обзор(Obzor)-Несебър(Nessebar)-Поморие(Pomorie)-Бургас(Burgas).

Trip dist: 137 kms. Trip time: 9 hrs, 12 min. Tot dist: 7,212 kms.

Uuuygh, what a tiring ride. It was all completely uphill all the way up to 10 kms before Nessebar, very slow going, 6-10 kms/hr at best, but luckily, very much downhill after that, with wind in favor, so that the 40 or so kms from Nessebar to Burgas went by in less than 90 minutes (just in time to catch nightfall inside the city).

At midday I took a little pause in Obzor, where the highway was passing so close to the ocean, I couldn't help but stop, take my shoes off, and walk along the beach for a while as the wind combed my hair sideways. The agitated and cold, frothy tourmaline waters of the Black Sea reminded me a bit of Half Moon Bay, and brought unexpectedly with the waves, some rather......melancholy memories.

I fled my broodings soon afterwards (it does not do to dwell on such things for more than 5 minutes at a time, no matter how much you long for the beauty/honeyed part of bittersweet), and continued my lonely ride to Burgas (Jesper pedals faster, and for the past two days, I only met him at the top of the hills, where we chatted for a while, and then I lagged behind again. Today, as I said, was mostly uphill).

I had first lost Jesper, you see, shortly after coming out of Varna, on the very first ascent up a bridge only 2 kms outside the city. Up until today, he always waited at the top of the ascent for me to catch up, or sometimes even a few kilometers ahead, but this time, I did not catch up to him after 20, 30, 40, 50 kilometers, through my lonely melancholy stroll at the beach of Obzor, and eventually even all the way to Burgas....

..but mostly, though, I think....because I didn't really want to.

2006-10-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

Варна (Varna).

I wanted to stay here a for a day to catch up on small errands (bank, phone calls to U.S., etc) given that Varna is a respectably-sized city with lots of comforts (internet, laundry, etc), as well as one of the most well-known Bulgarian Black Sea cities. I wanted to visit the beach, too (it's been a while since that last toe-dipping in Montpellier!), and see the largest Archaeology Museum in Bulgaria, containing no less than 36 roomfuls of Thracian artifacts (as you know, Bulgaria was first settled by these Indo-European peoples).

I was once more, therefore, expecting to part ways with Jesper, since he's pedalling much faster (it is a bit of an effort catching up to him while riding) and as I mentioned before he's said to me several times in the past that he wants to cycle fairly uninterruptedly (i.e. without stopping for rest days), at least until Istanbul. But as it turns out, when I knocked on his door to deliver my goodbyes this morning, he said that he had gotten some sort of scratch on his foot while riding yesterday, so he decided to stay in Varna while it healed instead.

Uh huh. ;P

But at least that was lucky, for it means I get a riding companion to Burgas tomorrow, and possibly, even, into Turkey, where everyone I meet keeps recommending I do not ride alone.

Anyway, the Archaeology museum was closed (I had forgotten it was a Monday), so I went down to the beach, which was desolate and cold, in spite of all the restaurants and town fair-like amusement locales that were, though closed, still standing by the sand. It wasn't hard to imagine that this place would be absolutely packed in the summer, but as it was, today, it was a bit depressing.

So I returned to the hotel, where I happened to catch the men's team foil World Championships in Torino on TV (how cool is that? I wish TV stations in the U.S. would broadcast my beloved sport every once in a while. It is truly a lot of fun to watch!): France vs. Germany, which France, of course, won.

I then headed to visit the Cathedral of Varna, which was nice, and then leisurely strolled about the center, where I ran into Jesper, and hung out with him for a bit before sharing a lovely dinner.

Quite a relaxing, pleasant day, it was.

2006-10-08T06:02:00.000-07:00

Шумен (Shumen)-Варна (Varna).

Trip dist: 99 kms. Trip time: 7 hrs, 12 mins. Tot dist: 7,075 kms.

Celebrations VII/Black Sea, here I come!.

Ha ha. Today I shamelessly rode on the A2 (a motorway!) with Jesper. The locals said it was no problem for bikes and it was a nice road, with wide shoulders that even allowed for some good side-by-side riding at times, which made things far less lonely.

It should've been an easy ride: there's a 400 m net elevation loss between Shumen and Varna, but as it happens we constantly had the wind against and towards the end there were even some hills. We also got rained on: got completely wet, and then got dry not because of the sun (which not for an instant made an appearance throughout the day), but due to the strong wind, which, as I said, was relentlessly against us, for pretty much all of the journey.

2006-10-07T05:40:00.000-07:00

Шумен (Shumen).

Today I wanted to go to Madara, only 17 kms away, to see the rock paintings of the Rider, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, because it is supposedly a very fine example of Medieval art.

I was therefore prepared to say goodbye to Jesper yesterday, for given his time constraints he was planning on cycling on through Bulgaria without stopping, pretty much, except that upon arriving to the hotel at Shumen last night, he realized that he had left his passport at Russe. This was a rather interesting development because, while I arranged for my room quietly at the hotel for the night, he was left dealing with the very inexperienced receptionist, who spoke little English, and upon finding out that this strange bearded European had no passport, she promptly called the police.

Anyway, eventually (and I mean after a loong time of discussing/negotiating/arguing/getting nowhere/getting somewhere/then nowhere again/and general wheeling and dealing) things settled down a bit, for Jesper had both a copy of the passport and a driver's license, and not only that, the police was very nonchalant, told the receptionist to call the hostel at Russe where Jesper had left the passport, and upon confirmation that it was there and it was indeed the number written on the copy, he was allowed to stay the night at the hotel, police's orders, so the receptionist had no choice but to oblige, even though from the embarassment and the veritable big mess of things she had made, she really didn't want to.

But today, of course, Jesper had to go back to Russe to fetch it, which meant, that I would have one more day of cycling company tomorrow, which pleased me.

Anyway, back to Madara. I decided last night to instead go to visit the more interesting Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari (also a UNESCO World Heritage Site), which was not all that much farther away, because if you think about it, this one rock painting of a horseman is probably not all that less faded than the paintings at Ivanovo, and seeing tombs of long dead people is a lot more fun, right?

When I got to the bus/train station, though (it was 10 a.m.), it turned out that the train or bus to the nearest village to the tomb, Isperih (Sveshtari is too small to be served by public transport), left at 5:30 p.m. or 2:30 p.m., too late for me to then trek the 5 kms to Svestari and make it back to Shumen before nightfall, which kind of sucked, because by then I had also already missed the bus to Madara, as well.

So I stayed in Shumen, strolled about town and basically just rested, though next time, it wouldn't do too bad to visit Bulgaria by car.

{shrug}.

2006-10-06T02:21:00.000-07:00

Pyce(Russe)-Car Kalojan-Разград(Razgrad)-Шумен(Shumen)

Trip dist: 118 kms. Trip time: 7 hrs, 58 mins. Tot dist: 6,976 kms.

Jesper.

Started out the cloudy day climbing the deceptively flat ride to Shumen. It was very deceptive because you're actually climbing up and down some mesas: you climb, then it flattens out for several kilometers, then it descends, and you climb again to some flat sections, and on and on and on for the whole ride, so while it looks kind of flat, and you're thinking: "Cool! Fast ride today!", in reality, it takes forever (as evidenced above).

Anyway, a nice thing happened shortly after I left Russe. I was up climbing one of the slopes, when here comes some Caucasian guy pedalling faster, and passing me with a silent, broad smile. The first thing I looked at was his bicycle: he was carrying the panniers indicative of long-distance cycling. Now, no one cycles in Bulgaria unless they're headed for Istanbul, so I immediately called: "Where are you going?"

"Turkey!" he replied.

"Where?" said I.

At this point he stopped (success!!). I caught up, and we started chatting. He's biking through Turkey, to Iran, and as far East as he can manage in his month or so of vacation. But today, he's headed to Shumen (exactly where I'm headed!). Jesper is Swedish, a psychiatry nurse, and we're pretty close in age. Cool, huh?

So we rode together (or more or less together, he was faster on the uphills, so he pressed ahead and then he waited for me at the top) all the way to Shumen, through some very strange weather with a deep mist and dry landscapes, straight out of the "Twilight Zone."

Still, it was good to finally find some "same-way-headed" company, after all these months of solitude.

2006-10-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

Иваново (Ivanovo).

"Where ticket train?"

Wow. The Bulgarians are incredibly nice. I've got a very bad phrasebook (three pages at the end of the Lonely Planet guidebook instead of the usual actual phrasebook--could not get it sent from the U.S. this time), but it is surprising, what you can accomplish using just nouns.

For instance:

"Where can I buy a ticket to the train that goes to Ivanovo?"

becomes:

"къде билет влак Иваново?" ("Kade bilet vlak Ivanovo?")

or literally:

"Where ticket train Ivanovo?"

At which the Bulgarians smile, chuckle to one another remarking, no doubt, that I'm a foreigner, and who can understand how funny they speak, but then they put their hand on my shoulder and fatherly lead me to the ticket office, laugh with and explain to the clerk that I can't speak Bulgarian, then the lady at the ticket office extraordinarily helpful, patiently writes times and prices down, and when the ticket is printed (it is all in Cyrillic), points to the place in the ticket where it says the time of departure and the price and waits patiently again as I examine my coins and slowly choose the correct ones to pay, saying encouraging words like "Da!" (yes) whenever I pick the right ones.

I like these Bulgarians. The ticket lady at the bus station, too, before I found the train station telling me not only the bus schedules but the train ones too, and not only the ones to Ivanovo but something like 10 other neighboring towns, was very kindly also.

Anyway, headed over to teeny weeny town of Ivanovo because that's where the famous Rock Painted Churches, a UNESCO WHS, are. Getting to them requires you to trek 3 kms into a gorge from the plains where Ivanovo is, and today was rather hot. But it wasn't too bad: I found some interesting, deeply hued berries, which were kind of cool, and I must confess a lot more interesting than the churches themselves, whose paintings were rather faded, and therefore not particularly exciting.

The train ride back to Russe was, again, very friendly. Being the only foreigner in Ivanovo, I attracted a lot of attention: people knew I was a stranger and followed me with curious eyes and wide smiles, but without daring to intrude in my solitude.

I purchased a train ticket, on which the train time was written 2:20 p.m., at the guidance of a train attendant, at around 3:00 p.m. According to the signs on the ticket office, the next train would be at 4 p.m. Since I figured I couldn't ask much in Bulgarian, and this country probably worked a bit like Mexico, where things were often, shall we say, inexact, I simply bought a can of pear juice at the nearby snack shop and sat on a bench by the rails to wait.

At 3:30 a train arrived. I stayed put, not expecting my train until 4.

However, the Ivanovo locals had been watching me since I had arrived, and were, unobtrusively, taking care of me. An older woman turned to me, touched me on the arm, pointed to the train, and said: "Russe, vlak!" to me, and made signs for me to follow her and hop on.

I guess this was the 2:20 train, which had been delayed. But I thought it was nice how the locals, without my even asking, made sure I got to where I wanted. In small towns everyone knows everything about everyone, especially strangers.

And then, on the train, another older woman approached my compartment, said something in Bulgarian, which I assumed was along the lines of "Is this seat free?", to which I assented only. She then started a conversation, asked a small-talk question, which I tried to explain, that I did not understand. "Ne razbirem, turist!" I figured, would do the trick.

She smiled, clapped her hands, and was quiet for a minute or two.

But then a long conversation followed, that lasted throughout the train ride. She found out I was from Mexico, I found out she had an older son in England, she found out I had a brother named Carlos (and did you know, by the way, what the word for "brother" is in Bulgarian? It is brat, which I found very...evocative. ;P), I found out she had also a daughter, and Varna, apparently, was a place I should not forget to visit.

In-between, other things were said.

I of course, did not understand most of them, nor when I spoke, do I think, did she.

What I did understand though, was when she said: "Aaah, Elisa, Elisa, Elisa!", opened up her arms wide, and then drew both her hands to her heart, and smiled, saying something else.

To which I answered: "I too, am very happy to have talked to you, for Bulgaria, and its people, are among the most beautiful things I have encountered so far in my travels."

2006-10-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Bucureşti-Giurgiu-Pyce(Russe)

Trip dist: 84 kms. Trip time: 5 hrs, 5 min. Tot dist: 6,859 kms.

This morning I hapily set out from chaotic, noisy, dusty Bucharest towards the border. I soon encountered that old friend, the Danube.

Did you know that the Danube passes through no less than 10 countries? It is, in fact, the longest river in Europe. It would be cool, to take a boat and ride it from its source in Germany to its destination at the Danube Delta (UNESCO World Heritage Site, by the way) into the Black Sea. It really does pass through some very neat cities, as I've happened to find out first hand.

As soon as I crossed the border, the change was immediate: all the dust and dirt suddenly ceased, even though the traffic was as disorderly as back in Romania. The border guards were friendly and even when telling you that photographs were forbidden they still did it in a very calm, happy, nonchalant way, as if things didn't matter, but still without allowing you to get away with things, simply repeating calmly what you were and were not supposed to do, which was very much unlike in the rest of Europe, where even in the borders that will soon be vanishing (Germany-Czech Republic, or Austria-Slovakia), both sides seem more uptight.

Anyway, the Bulgarians seem like a friendly bunch. The border guard at Russe chatted quite amusingly at length with me ("You're going to Istanbul via Varna? There's a more direct route, you know". "The one full of mountains, you mean?" said I. "Ah," he smiled. "Of course, you're on a bike, I momentarily forgot."), but the very first thing, the first question he asked when he found out I'd been biking all the way from Lisbon was, as he leaned out of his little cabin window to look at my bike and panniers more closely and then pointed at my bags: "What do you have in there? I mean, what do you eat? What do you drink? How do you do it? Does it all fit in there?", which I thought was amusing, and a question I had up to then not heard before.

I got a bit lost at the outskirts of Russe. It gets a bit tricky trying to read all the signs in cyrillic, and also if you consider that even if you could read them you'd still not understand the language. So it took some asking around to find city center, but people were most helpful, and very curious and interested to help a foreigner. Some of them, even, would have long smiling conversations in Bulgarian with me, they didn't seem to mind that I did not understand.

:)

2006-10-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

Bucharest, Day 3.

Oh, boy. This morning I started the day with a screaming match with the Youth Hostel receptionist/manager over some laundry/pressing which cost 30 Euros (remember, the average monthly wage here is supposedly only 55 Euros!).

You see, the hostel's washing machine was broken, as I was informed two days ago when I arrived. Laundry facilities were the first thing I asked about upon changing hotels, and they claimed that the machine would be fixed "by Monday".

This was, of course, not so. I guess Romania, in these kinds of things, operates a bit like the famous Mexican "mañana", which never literally means "tomorrow", but actually means: "sometime within the next week, or month, maybe." (and the maybe is the key word, the one you really want to remember, the one that gives "mañana" its true meaning).

So seeing how I had to do laundry quite urgently, and the laundromat two streets away recommended by the hostel was actually only dry clean and pressing, no simple wash and dry, and therefore rather expensive (especially considering I had a full week's worth of clothes to do), I had asked the manager, yesterday, for a good place to do it.

She didn't know.

I asked "Could you look it up in the yellow pages for me, please? I'm not good in Romanian."

She said sure, looked for things, but apparently found only dry cleaners.

"Do laundromats not exist here in Bucharest?"

"Well, there are none listed here."

Strange. I looked dejected.

She then brightly offered: "If you like, we can send your stuff to our laundromat, where we send our linens. I'm sure they wouldn't mind doing your load as well."

"Wonderful," I had said. "How much do you think it would cost?"

She had no idea.

"O.K. but I just want wash and dry, no pressing or dry cleaning."

"Yes," said she.

"No pressing or dry cleaning, because for that I can just go to that place round the corner, the one you recommended to me when I asked you earlier."

"Yes." she said again.

O.K., yesterday I give them my clothes.

Today they come here dry-cleaned and pressed.

The bill? 110 Lei (about 30 Euros).

Are they insane???

Not even in the U.S. would a dry-cleaning bill run me that expensive!

I refused to pay. I explicitly said, twice, I did not want dry cleaning.

Their linens returned just washed and dried.

Why were my clothes pressed?

The lady at the hostel started screaming: "What, we press this for you and now you don't want to pay? Someone has to pay the laundromat!"

"It won't be me, I got a service I did not ask for. In fact, I got a service I explicitly did not ask for," said I.

More screaming: "In Romania it is like this, there are no laundromats, only dry cleaners."

I said I did not think that was true.

Yes it was.

Was it really?

"Yes, it is. In Romania it is like this."

"But I explicitly told you: no dry cleaning. You said yes."

"Well, THIS IS THE WAY IT IS!"

"I'm not paying."

[By the way, the more she is screaming, the more calmly and quietly I am repeating the same thing. This throws her to despair. She repeats the same thing over and over again, "this is the way things are in Romania". I let her finish, eventually there is a lull in the conversation.]

"O.K. May I speak now?" said I.

"Yes, you may speak now." says she.

"Yesterday morning, when you offered to send my stuff to your laundromat..."

"BUT IN ROMANIA IT IS NOT A LAUNDROMAT, WE ONY HAVE DRY CLEANERS HERE!" she screamed again.

I let her finish.

"May I speak again please? I already heard what you had to say, you keep repeating the same thing."

"YES BUT DID YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID?? IN ROMANIA IT IS LIKE THIS!"

Oh! Classic exercise in psychology. One will repeat the same thing until they're convinced that the other party understands. O.K. So I had to show her I understood.

"Yes, I understand. In Romania there are no laundromats, only dry cleaners. O.K., I got it."

"GOOD!" she said.

"But, now that I listened and understood, will you listen to what I have to say?"

She protested a bit, but finally let me speak.

"When I asked you where I could get my laundry done, I explicitly said I did not want it dry cleaned nor pressed. I did this twice, and you know I did, because you even recommended your laundromat after I told you that the one at the corner only did pressing. You knew full well I did not want it pressed, and you understood. If you knew that in Romania they only dry clean and press, not just laundry, then you, as a local in good faith, should've told me so before offering to send it to your laundry, which you made me believe would only do laundry, not pressing."

"BUT IN GOOD FAITH I TRIED TO HELP YOU, NOW YOU DON'T WANT TO PAY??", said she.

"You tried to help me, but in the end the place where you sent my clothes did not do what I asked, nor, probably what you asked either. They provided a service I did not ask for. I will not pay for this. If anything, you should at least pay half, because it is just as much your fault that I got this unwanted service, as anyone else's."

"OH, THE HOSTEL PAYS HALF, AND YOU GET YOUR CLOTHES CLEANED AND PRESSED. GOOD DEAL FOR YOU, RIGHT?"

"I don't care about the clothes. You keep them, if you want. The point is, I'm not paying 30 Euros for a service I did not ask for." And I made motions towards the door (I had already decided to switch to a hotel last night, after the snoring, and had arranged for new rooms--closer to city center--early this morning, so my bags were already packed and waiting by the door, I was just waiting for the laundry to come back so that I could leave the stupid hostel).

"YOU KNOW WHAT, I DON'T WANT TO ARGUE WITH YOU. TAKE YOUR CLOTHES AND PAY ME 15 EUROS, THEN."

I was so exhausted by now, I just had to then. But I left the place shaking with anger.

That's it. No more youth hostels for me. I'm sick of the snoring, the 3 a.m. drunken partying, the messy showers. By this point and after all the mountains of dust I've had to endure, I deserve (and can afford) some luxury.

Good that I had arranged a different hotel already. With its quiet, single room, TV, private bath and shower, it was a peaceful refuge, from this very confusing peoples.

2006-10-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

Bucharest, Day 2.

Uuugh. Stupid hostel has 12 beds in one room. I'm in a roomful of guys, in the basement, near the showers. Which means that the musty, damp smell caused by the location is exacerbated by the "male" smell of youthful hormonal travellers.

Icky.

Compound this problem, with the interminable snoring.

I had to move to the living room upstairs, to get just 3 hours of sleep last night.

Today I saw the Parliament building. With a floor area of 350,000 m², it is supposed to be the 2nd largest building in the world after the Pentagon. Very impressive.

I was very tired after walking there from the hostel. So then I just walked back and rested.

Bucharest doesn't really have all that many sights that interest me, you see.

{shrug}.

2006-10-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

Bucharest, Day 1.

As expected, the first thing I did this morning was change hotels. The Gara de Nord area is not particularly interesting and it is rather far from city center. Lonely Planet recommends a certain "Hostel Helga", promising free internet and laundry, but as you know the guide is several years out of date and the hostel now is actually called "Central Hostel". It is actually in a nice, quiet residential area about 3 kms from the actual city center, near the Belgian embassy, so it wasn't too bad.

Today I didn't do much. Strolled a bit about the center, getting used to where things were relative to the hostel, rested a bit, not much else.

I'm mostly very tired from the things of yesterday. The incredulity, the wonder, mostly, at having narrowly escaped things: the dogs, the collapsing off the bike out of hypoglycemia, the...motel. The whole transaction-based human interactions, too (I'm going to generalize a lot here, so please don't get offended if you think this does not apply), which I had never really gotten quite used to in the U.S., where they seem to be a common, matter of course occurrence, and thus not a thing to even notice, rather took me by surprise here. I guess I was used to the poverty in the "Latin-American" variety: people don't have much but they will offer you everything. Here, people don't have much, but they will try to get everything from you instead, it seems: you have to constantly be on your guard here. In the U.S. (I'm generalizing, of course), you know people only seek you if they're getting some sort of even mild selfish benefit as a side-effect. But here, it almost seems like you have to be on your guard not to have something torn off you, like you have to defend everything you have tooth and nail; relax a bit, and they will furiously clutch at you, no pretenses, even, to preserve some semblance of politeness, no effort, even, at deceit, at charm, at fooling or seducing you into giving up what they want, but blatantly grabbing as if it were for the taking.

Thinking like this put me, unsurprisingly, in a very bad and melancholy mood.

2006-09-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

Râmnicu Vâlcea-Piteşti-Topoloveni-Gaesti/Bucharest.

Trip dist: 115 kms. Trip time: 7 hrs, 40 mins. Tot dist: 6,774 kms.

Charmed.

Uurgh. I spoke too soon. The Carpathians, are, in fact, not quite over. I had to catch the tail end of them in what appeared to be one approximately 500 meter pass and two or three other minor ones for the first 60 kilometers up to Piteşti. Which took up most of the day.

A rather fateful day, as it turns out.

I knew things going to be a bit amiss soon after I started riding, not only because of the unexpected mountains that suddenly appeared where they weren't supposed to be, but also due to some rather...unpleasant encounters with some very...charming...dogs, who on this road, and this road only, would immediately start chasing me as soon as I approached. I didn't think much of it the first time this occurred, for as it happens that time I was riding downhill and the dog (a very small one), didn't stand a chance of catching me, and even if it had, the instinctual lifting of one's feet off the pedals and raising them almost to handlebar level to avoid any possible sudden appearance of teeth marks on one's calves, with the purported pain that would cause, plus its potential associated problems (i.e. having to explain, in Romanian, that you need to find a way to get some very pleasing rabies shots), produced no detrimental effects on the speed of the bike on the downhill.

After it happened 4 or 5 times, in fact, I started even getting used to it, even when the dogs, this time, had grown to medium size.

By the 10th time or so, I had even gotten used to it happening when I was pedalling uphill and the dogs could catch up to me, foaming at the mouth, no problem. It really does take this long to figure out that the dreaded loud, furious barks are a good sign: when the dog is busy barking and running at the same time, it hardly has the means to think about how to bite you, so your moving agonizingly slowly up the uphills in spite of your frantic, panic-fueled pedalling doesn't matter too much.

But no matter how many stupid dogs you've successfully passed by without incident up or down the hill, nothing prepares you for when three of them decide to chase you at the same time.

Holy ships!

Two on my right side, one on my left side, made it impossible to move the bike towards the center of the highway like one usually instinctually does to try to give the dogs coming from the right side a wide berth. Lifting your calf to avoid a possible bite doesn't work anymore because your downhill just ended, the dogs are now catching up, and you need to lift both feet up, because the dogs surround the bike on both sides. This of course, slows the bike precariously. So no hope but keep pedalling.

Freaked me out, that one.

Luckily, no bites. But I swear, I had at least 15 stupid dogs chasing me on this part of the ride all the way to Piteşti. I had not been chased by dogs in the whole 5 months prior to today.

Anyway, as if that weren't a sign indicating unmistakenly that I was drawing the attention of the fates today, there was another event that showed, that today, at least, I also had one or two of the friends of dea Fortuna on my side.

I started the morning ride without breakfast, I don't remember why, leaving late, probably, and without having had previously stocked up on water and provisions for the trip (I was expecting flat or downhill terrain, and there was sure to be a gas station within the next 30 kms or so, so I would have had plenty of time and ways to find snacks and drinks along the way), but as it happens, there weren't all that many places to stop to pick up things to eat on the road, in the end, and the climbs were draining most of my energy, combined, no doubt, with another cold I seem to have caught in the cold nights of Cluj or Alba Iulia.

I was going up one minor hill, in fact, stomach growling in mild pangs of hunger, when almost three quarters of the way up I started feeling a little woozy, you know, like you feel incredibly sleepy all of the sudden, as if all your blood drained out of your head and fell down to your feet, kind of thing, similar to what you feel when you're hypoglycemic. Just as I looked up thinking: "Uh oh, I better get off the bike here and stop immediately, something's going wrong...", I spotted, no less, a little old lady selling apples not 30 meters ahead of me.

Dea Fortuna is kind, and Mother Nature is wise. The perfect solution to my quandry: sugar, and water, all in one little fist-sized package. I got off the bike, walked the 30 meters required, and pointed to the apples with a huge sheepish grin and lifted up the index finger to indicate "one".

"Un kilo?" said the little old lady.

I couldn't help but laugh. "No," I shook my head. I took 1 apple and lifted my index finger again, to indicate one, and proffered the lady a 1 lei banknote (about 30 cents of an Euro).

She took the note, and then gave me another, tiny apple. I laughed, and took it, too.

She offered me another little apple (the little apples were about half the size of the original I had chosen).

I smiled broadly and shook my head: "No, just one."

She again made gestures indicating: "Take it!"

So I did.

She then asked me to choose yet another little apple.

I did, at which point she gave me a little plastic bag for the apples, and sat back down smiling under an unbrella by her little stand mid-uphill in the middle of nowhere Romanian highway.

The apples happily tied me over for a few more dog chases until the next real stop: a snack bar by a gas station at the bottom of one of the hills.

Anyway, in spite of all these vicissitudes I finally arrived to Piteşti, a rather sizeable town, at only 4 p.m., and therefore with at least 2 or 3 more hours of some good cycling possible. Since Bucharest was still a good day's journey away, I figured it would be good to press on a bit closer today, even though my map showed only some rather minor towns for the next 120 kilometers to Bucharest, and Piteşti was large enough to hold at least 10 of them, plus a multitude of internet cafes (always a plus, as you know).

Two towns, however, appeared sizeable enough to contain at least one or two hotels, Topoloveni and Gaesti, in particular, the most promising ones.

I passed by Topoloveni not 1 hour later (20 kms away, all perfectly flat land, easy to pedal over 20 kms an hour): there was 1 hotel in city center. Topoloveni is about half the size of Gaesti (or so says my map), so I figured I'd press onwards: Gaesti was only 20 more kilometers ahead, and that would leave some very pleasant, short 80 kms to Bucharest tomorrow.

I arrived in Gaesti at around 5:30 p.m., plenty of light, plenty of life in the town. I passed by one Motel. It looked o.k., it advertised a bar, a disco, a swimming pool, looked pleasant enough, but it was at the edge of town, and I preferred something closer to the center.

There were no hotels in the center.

Apparently that Motel at the edge of town was the only one here. So back there I went.

I walk inside the Motel. Owner doesn't speak English. I ask for a single room. They don't have any. I ask for a double. "Who is with you?" asks the owner. "Just me". "No double", says he. "Only single."

O.K., so they do have singles after all then. Weird.

"How much?" say I.

"60 Lei."

The price is acceptable.

"Well, do you have a room or not?" I ask.

He tells me to wait.

I wait.

He goes behind the bar area, calls me inside.

Remember, what I told you, back in Budapest, about sensing a vague feeling of dislike? Why does the hotel manager need me to go with him anywhere to answer a simple question that requires only a "Yes" or "No"?

Still, there were two young people about in the bar, a boy and his girlfriend, both in their late teens, playing pool nearby. I would be within sight of them. I followed the hotel manager to behind the bar counter, but without crossing the threshold, without passing the door to the back of the building, which was unlighted, and where he was standing. "Do you have a single room yes or no?" I repeated, feet firmly planted on the threshold.

"Yes," he finally said when he saw I wouldn't go inside.

I walked back to the bar area. "O.K. then, do you need my passport?"

"No need it." said he.

Again, a vague feeling of dislike. Most hotels demand to see your passport. Why not this one?

"O.K. then, can you give me the key?"

He chuckled.

"Yes?" said I.

"Come back later," said he.

Oh no, I start to suspect what kind of motel this place is, even though it does have a swimming pool and it seems teenager friendly.

"Come back when?" ask I.

"One hour," says he, and goes to the deck outside the front door to have a smoke.

I mull about the pool table area for a while. I don't like this. This cannot be the only hotel. I ask the kids at the pool table if there's another hotel nearby. Apparently not.

Let's think rationally. I arrive at the hotel at 5:30 p.m. It is a tiny town, of no interest to tourists. A normal hotel typically has at least 5-10 rooms for guests, yet this one has none available. The only single available is only free in one hour. It is 5:30 p.m. In a normal hotel, checkout time would've been a long time ago.

You see where I'm getting at?

I go outside, ask the manager point blank: "Why can't I get the room now?"

He laughs.

I repeat the question.

"It is occupied."

Aha. This is not good, not good at all. I need to find another hotel, quickly. But as I'm trying to sort this out, the manager asks questions, which I answer hastily and without thinking: "Are you alone?"

Me: "Er, no, I'm waiting for a friend."

But as I answer the default answer for the single travelling woman, I already know my answer doesn't sound believable: I already inquired for a single room.

"Are you married?"

"Engaged."

"Where is your husband?"

and so on and so forth. This hotel one won't do, I think as I remember the Budapest mantra: trust your instincts. I have also already exposed my vulnerable situation with my hesistant and confused answers. It is imperative I find another hotel now, I can no longer stay here, who knows who has duplicate keys to my room, and the hotel manager, though good looking, chuckles too much at the wrong places, smiles too much, I don't know. Soon, instincts are confirmed, it must've registered subconciously the first time I passed on the bike, caused me to seek another hotel in city center, but it only becomes rationally clear as I walk outside the gates of the motel: on the reverse, on the sign you'd see if you were travelling back from Gaesti to Piteşti, is the silhuette of a naked woman pulling off the underpants of another.

I stupidly ask this hotel manager if there's another hotel nearby. He gives me the name of a place, that as it turns out, upon asking a woman at a bakery shop in city center, is a town 3 kms north of here.

By now it is quarter past 6 p.m. I bike to this next town. There is no hotel. Dusk is starting to fall. I really do not want to stay at the other hotel. I slowly ride back, in spite of the approaching darkness, thinking....

I could just sit around city center, bus station or something, waiting for morning...but I did not see a bus station, only bus schedules to Bucharest....

Bucharest!

Of course! The bus from Piteşti to Bucharest passes by here at least every hour! I had just seen the schedules as I passed by city center--twice! If worst comes to worst, I could always just ride a bus to wherever all night. It would certainly be much safer than any questionable motel with a too charming hotel manager...

I happily step up the pace to city center, and after confirming there are two more busses to Bucharest I can catch (the next one leaves in half an hour), I stroll by the center, buy something to eat, find a restroom, and hang out before settling by a shop right under the bus stop.

A Romanian boy in his early twenties asks me, in perfect English, where I am from.

"Mexico," say I, a bit warily.

"Oh," says he pleasantly. "I knew you were a foreigner!"

"Oh?" say I, politely, though I fully know, of course, the answer to be quite obvious.

"Yeah," he continues, "I saw you pass by on your bicycle several times, I thought you were Chinese, maybe!"

I had to laugh at that one. For all the nationalities I've been confused with (British, French, German, Russian, ha ha, amazingly, Indian, and yes, even--can you believe it?--Dutch), I have, for rather...obvious reasons, never in my life been confused with an Asian. It put me in a good mood, that one, and made me continue the chat a lot more relaxedly.

"What were you doing, running around like that here in this little shit town?" he continued, "You should be careful, there are a lot of gypsies here, they will want to steal your bike. During the day it is o.k., but at night, no good hanging out here."

I smiled, a bit more sardonically, this time. I had heard of this great prejudice towards gypsies. "Oh, I'm just waiting for the bus to Bucharest," I shrugged.

"And you are going to put that--" (here he pointed at my bike) "on the bus?" said he.

"Sure," I shrugged. "Should be o.k., I think, right?"

He thought for a moment, discussed something with an older man standing next to him and following our conversation with curiosity and interest, and finally said: "Yeah, probably. You may have to pay extra, though. You know the bus is coming in 15 minutes, right?"

"Yes," said I.

"I'll talk to the driver for you. You don't know Romanian, right?"

"Nah," smiled I sheepishly. "Thanks."

"Say, this is my uncle, by the way," he introduced me to the other man, who was as friendly and kind and trustworthy as they come. We chit-chatted some more, about life in Romania, about "oh, you should've told me you were looking for a hotel, there's actually one only 2 kms from here near the highway, I would've shown you the way with my bike, but right now it is dark and I need to head home quickly, and by now you're going to Bucharest anyway...", about whether Mexico is a good place to visit, etc. etc. a very nice, pleasant, friendly chat, and the uncle with a smile that inspired in me a great sense of tenderness.

Shortly before the bus came, the uncle suggested the boy and I exchange email addresses in case he ever came to Mexico, perhaps he would give me a call.

I gladly assented, for it is common politeness protocol to invite people to visit one's home, back where I come from. Especially when you know that the people in question probably will never show up there anyway, so I was all for it and even produced pen and paper.

The boy, however, quickly said: "No, don't bother."

"Why?" said I together with the uncle, who was also a bit surprised at this.

"I will never go to Mexico anyway, what's the point?", said he.

"In case you ever do go," said I. "I would be glad to show you around." (This part, no longer courtesy, actually true).

"Nah," said he. "Nevermind, don't worry."

I found this very strange, and it left me with a mild bitter taste in my mouth.

The bus finally came. The boy helped me put my bags on the bus, loaded up the bike, and negotiated with the driver a good price for my bike: 5 lei (about 2 dollars) extra for it because it was "oversize luggage".

As I got on the bus, I shook hands with him, and thanked him for his help and a pleasant chat.

"Don't thank me," said he. "Give me 10 lei instead."

"What?" said I.

"Give me 10 lei. I helped you, now you help me."

The bitter taste I had felt just a few minutes before was now, again, rationally explained. This chat was not a friendly courtesy, it was a transaction. It should've been obvious to me when in spite of pen and paper already produced there was no interest in exchanging contact information, even as a polite, just a show, of courtesy.

I paid him, of course, but not without being able to restrain my naive, bitter muttering: "But I thought you and I were friends...."

I arrived in Bucharest, in the end, not two hours later, at around 9:30 p.m., with plenty of time to find a hotel near the Gara de Nord, a not particularly nice area, in a not particularly cheap nor wonderful hotel, with a turmoil of feelings (fear, exhaustion, wonder at having avoided a potentially very bad situation, and biterness at the interest-based friendliness of the Romanian boy) and with a bit of irascible regret at not having been able to bike the short 80 kms that remained to get here: having cheated, in other words.

But the most important part, the part that made things fine, and well, and good, was that for however strange and long the day had been today, I was, for now, at least, both healthy and safe.

2006-09-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Sibiu-Râmnicu Vâlcea.

Trip dist: 101 kms. Trip time: 5 hrs, 23 mins. Tot dist: 6,659 kms.

Ha ha ha!

"Mischief managed." :)

Crossed the Carpathians today. Child's play, really. :)

I set out 2 hours later than expected, even though I wanted to leave early to leave plenty of time for the Carpathians-crossing before Vampire hour (ha ha! Do you like it? I changed the name in honor of beloved local legend!), because it took no less than 1 full hour to clean the panniers and backpack from the mud of two days ago, and I am still not quite done (the mud sticks and if you use a moist rag to clean it off, when the "cleaned" surface dries, over half of the "clay", which is mixed with some shiny asphalt and glittery quartz powder, still remains). Then, it took another hour to do the back tire replacing, not because that took long in itself, but because I had to clean the mud and grit from the pedal cranks and gear sprockets, an impossible task, basically, without a strong-pressure hose (or even a rinky dink hose would do, at this point), which the hotel did not have. They provided me instead with a little bucket half-filled with water, and a tiny rag the size of a handkerchief.

If you consider that this mud/asphalt/clay/quartz/grit had gotten inside every single orifice and moving part of the bike, you can see why this was rather...time consuming. Towards the end the best I could do is just dump the whole remaining bucket of water onto the bike and hope that worked, somehow.

Even after re-oiling the chain and gears and with replacement tire my bike rode as if it had aged 10 years after those fated 2 hours of rain and dirt approaching gutted Sibiu.

Anyway, the 350 meter pass was a matter of no consequence, especially considering that Sibiu is at 411 meters (there was a bit of a descent, though, before the climb to the pass). After that, except for some minor sections, it was ALL DOWNHILL!! (see for evidence the short time the ride took!), with the road flanking a river and weaving in and out between the towering mountains all around. It was a very beautiful ride (were I to plan a bike race in Romania, in the style of the Tour de France, this would definitely be one of the stages, though I'd probably run it in the opposite direction, to make it a bit more challenging), especially because right after the pass you descend onto the most beautiful spot on Earth, the approach to little town of B--(?), which is not even on my map, tucked away in-between the mountains and the sun illuminating the Orthodox church spires. Since there's nothing around this village for tens of kilometers except the fields and the mountains, I couldn't help but wonder how places like this get settled in the first place.

I was thankful, too, that the road went flat for 90% of the ride, for once you enter the Southern Carpathians, it is mountains, mountains everywhere (360°) for a full 70 kms. Imagine, if I had chosen the Transfăgărăşan road....

Anyway, by the way, I think I saw some rich gypsies!

Yeah, they were having dinner at Râmnicu Vâlcea's McDonald's. What an odd sight. So far all the gypsies I had seen were at the edges of the highways, driving along on horse-drawn carts or selling indeterminate objects at the edges of highways, the women in their characteristic, color-clashing flower-patterned skirts and headscarves, the men in dark pants, white long-sleeved shirts and vests, all of them, rather poor. But this group of teenagers at the McDonald's, while they too had the characteristic, round cut patterned skirts, the fabric of these was lighter and silkier, vaporous, with gold and silver threading and shining brocades, the tops body hugging in modern fashion cuts, head scarves shimmering in luxurious patterns, earings long and of fine gold.

Râmnicu Vâlcea, by the way, in spite of Lonely Planet's claim to being an uninteresting industrial town, seemed to me instead rather pretty: clean with tree-lined streets, and at least all the roads were paved here.

But the best part of it all: no more mountains until I get to Istanbul! :D

2006-09-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

Sibiu.

I decided to make an unplanned stop here today, because yesterday, when passing by the old town square, once past all the mud and chaos making a ring around city center, Sibiu looked actually quite pretty. The hour and a half of sunlight still left was not enough to both enjoy it and find a place to stay at the same time (especially considering that the hotel took 5 tries).

Anyway, in the morning on the way to city center I just happened to pass by a bike shop that was open--a lucky occurence and a sign from the gods, for since yesterday I had started to get seriously worried about the back bike tire (remember I told you it needed replacing since all the way back in Spain? For whatever reason, I hadn't found the right time/opportunity/conditions to do so), for after the twice times 3 kilometers on very loose gravel going and returning to/from Câlnic, I could start to see the thread/cord webbing inside lining of the tire, and even thought of patching it up, if necessary, with that beloved panacea for all problems engineering related: duct tape, to prevent possible damage to the now precariously accessible inner tube. You must agree though: if things get to the point where you're genuinely considering this crass default solution, "just duct tape it", so nonchalantly abused by bad first-year engineering students, replacement can no longer wait, the problem has become solemn business indeed.

So I was happy I found the shop, where I even had my choice of replacement tires (I chose one a bit narrower and with less treads than the old one, which was still leaning more towards a mountain bike--these were more of the hybrid/touring variety--to make pedalling imperceptibly easier), and it only cost 18 lei (about 6 Euros)! Cool huh?

Problem and worry thus finally off my shoulders, I headed off to city center after dropping the tire off at the hotel. Funny, the city center actually looks very...."German". They've been freshly painting it and the city looks quite quaint.

Anyway, after the short stroll through the pretty re-painted old part of town I ended up again into the modern part of the city, with its dusty, muddy chaos, and where I strolled by its rather...different...shops.

These guys haven't gotten the hang of capitalism yet.

Take the gypsies, for instance. I constantly see them on the highways, near the edges of microscopic villages, or sometimes even at the gas stations, peddling wares to automobile drivers. But the things they peddle are useless to the typical motorist: so far, I've only seen them sell cut crystal wine glasses (in the roads) or knockoff men's cologne (at gas stations). And they ALL sell this. And ONLY this. (And believe me I have passed by countless gas stations and been on the roads for a while now). Now tell me. Were you passing by, would you think of buying this? Would any of this be useful to you? What's more, if you ever did want to go buy cut crystal wine glasses, or even knockoff perfume, would you even think of going to the middle of the highway somewere to get it? Methinks the gypsies would be far, far better off selling apples or watermelon, or even sodas, if they really wanted to make some money.

But anyway, back to Sibiu and Romanian towns. I may have mentioned already that their department stores are oddly set up: the floors are dirty, unpolished, things are arranged unattractively in half-open boxes helter skelter, and different vendors share space side-by-side in strange territorial overlaps with no delimitation. And in streetside shops, the wares are not specialized. Any given shop at random will sell both clothing, shoes, and teacups, there is no such thing as "the leather store", or "the hair accessory store", or even "the sock store", they all sell everything, and the store next door to yours is exactly the same and sells the same kinds of things (not too difficult, since they all sell everything that you cannot use).

The town is full of "minimarts" (I have not seen even one single supermarket in the whole time I have been in this country), where everything is behind the counter and you need to ask for it to the vendor. You cannot "browse" and in the rare places where perhaps there is half a shelf mistakenly or for lack of space fortuitiously placed in front of the counter, you are guaranteed to see at least one store attendant planted firmly at its side in an attitude of custody, following you with their eyes and even approaching you whenever you happen to pick up something to look at the ingredients (so that you don't walk out of the store with it, presumably?).

Weird, huh?

Anyway, tomorrow: cross the real Carpathians. Hope that relief map was accurate...

2006-09-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

Alba Iulia-Sebeş-Sibiu.

Trip dist: 80 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 13 min. Tot dist: 6,558 kms.

Oh boy. What a ride (and not in a good way!). Where to start?

The day started pretty promising, even though the road had a lot of uphill/downhills, through "hills" that were minor mountains. Montes, is the word for these hills in Spanish, something between a hill and a mountain, the word for which I cannot find in English.

I passed by a good part of Jules Verne's Carpathian route, detailed in his story "Le Château des Carpathes" of the series Extraordinary Voyages, (and which, in spite of being a Verne fan, I have not yet read, unfortunately), as the sign just outside of the town of Sebeş pointed out. If you think that, as it happens, his route goes pretty much the way I'm headed on my bike from Cluj all the way to Sibiu, well, it turns out that my proud "discovery" in the halways of a little old lady's pension in Budapest was not, after all, all that "secret". Esoteric, perhaps, only. :)

Anyway, all of this and a cool, cloudy (but not rainy) weather kept me in good spirits for the start of the ride, and what was my surprise when checking the map I discovered that, unbeknownst to me up to that point in spite of my rather careful marking of the 160+ UNESCO World Heritage Sites on my big map of Europe prior to departure from the U.S., I had missed the fortified town of Câlnic, which, as it happens, was only 3 kms off the E68/E81, the road I was on.

So off I took a minor detour there, on a lonely, loose gravel road (see picture above) heading towards some valley in between the mountains, and no sooner had I started the descent from a difficult (not easy having good traction on loose gravel) prior 1 km ascent, that I found myself as if having crossed over to the "Twilight Zone".

Seriously. It was as if time had stood still, transported back to the mid 19th century. Approaching the little village I saw one or two people, an old woman with headscarf and dark-colored dress walking towards the village here, a little old man with a rough wooden walking stick walking away there, the only vehicles horse-drawn carts. But then as I entered the village, I was hit immediately with the silence, there were no people walking about, the few that were stopped whatever it was that they were doing (fixing a house façade here, picking up hay with a pitchfork there), including walking, to stare and follow my trajectory with the head, but without smiling or saying a word, adding more to the silence and the eerie feel of things.

I then approached the city center, and was about to veer towards where the fortress ruins were according to the signs, but as I approached I saw two kids no older than 7 or so in hostile attitudes: one of them held a long horsewhip which he emphatically started cracking as soon as I approached, thus "encouraging" me to pass by.

Passing by, however, soon led me to the edge of the village, which was less than 600 meters across, so I had to turn back, and besides I wanted to see this famous fortress: if it is a UNESCO WHS, it should receive visitors, sometimes, right?

So back to city center. I carefully avoided the boys with whips, who again, cracked them with silent stares as I approached, read the little blurb outside the fortress detailing how it was constructed (uninteresting information to me), and then went on to discover that it was closed.

So back for 3 kms on loose gravel it was. Total time spent in the village of Câlnic: 15 minutes.

Weird.

Anyway, as I said, then going to Sibiu the road got rather mildly mountainous, but with very beautiful views, until something like 40 kms before Sibiu, it started to rain.

This wouldn't have been too bad (I've biked in the rain before, as you know), except that here in Romania things are very dusty--there is loose earth and dirt everywhere. And you know what happens when you combine dirt with water, right?

Right. As it happens, at about 20 kms before Sibiu, the rain turned instead, for me, into a veritable mudbath. It was unavoidable, the dirt was everywhere! And right before Sibiu they were doing a lot of "road fixing". Except that here in Romania they tend to like to "fix" everything at once, instead of section by section, so you have very large stretches of unkempt and unpaved and dirt-exposing roads. Combine this with the splashing your wheels are doing onto your clothes and panniers. Combine this with the mud splashing the trucks are contributing to you every time they pass. And this dirt, this mud, was not just mud that is black and has this oatmeal-like consistency but then falls off or you can brush it off, clean mud, in other words, no, it was clay-like mud, made out of ochre-colored earth that sticks onto your tires and fingers and gets into your braking mechanisms and gears and pedal cranks. After 20 minutes of this, I had to stop at a gas station, and try to clean things as best as I could: the derailleur was no longer even shifting gears properly.

So I found a gas station and looked at myself in the mirror with much trepidation, for if the state of the crystal on my glasses was any indication, I must've been covered in mud head to toe.

And it was so! It was icky just to look at the state of my clothes, splashed about everywhere! Yuck.

So, cleaned things as best as possible (an effect that lasted, in the end, only 10 minutes after I once more started pedalling again), hoping that things would get better once I entered the city.

It was not to be. As it happens, they are doing some sort of MAJOR overhaul on the electrical lines of Sibiu. These lines are buried right underneath the sidewalk surrounding most of city center. Now, tell me. If you were a city engineer, and you were given the task to plan out the logistics of replacing all of the city's underground electrical cable, how would you do it?

Here, they have decided, apparently, that it is best to do it all at once. Which means, that all of the sidewalks and part of the streets surrounding most of city center have been jackhammered, earth uncovered, and opened up, to expose the electrical wires and guts to the city.

Even in no rain, it would not be hard to imagine the mountains of loose dirt that this would cause.

Even in no rain, it takes no stroke of genius to forsee the traffic jams it would produce, and the re-routing of incomming traffic it would require.

Multiply the chaos by 10, in the rain.

None of this, apparently, has been considered here. Unbelievable. The traffic: trucks, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians await in move at a speed of 2 cm/hr congestions cursing and honking interminably. The puddles: 2 or 3 meters long and 5 cms deep. The clayish, sticky, sickly ochre brown mud: EVERYWHERE. If I was expecting to somehow get cleaned up after arriving in Sibiu, I was gravely mistaken. It would've been like trying to fight the 7-headed hydra.

I have no doubts that my appearance was the reason why I was refused a room in 4 of the hostels I tried (I swear, I looked like I had just been pulled out of some Brazilian favela).

After dark, however, I found a hotel that was under renovation (lobby currently being whitewashed, at 9 p.m. at night, paint fumes flying, as I speak!), and therefore in as much state of chaos as my bike, clothes and luggage were. I guess the managers figured, my hair made stiff and coiffed by thin clay sculpting gel, I wouldn't much clash with the decor there.

:(

2006-09-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

Cluj Napoca-Turda-Aiud-Alba Iulia.

Trip dist: 100 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 13 min. Tot dist: 6,478 kms.

Ha ha, well, I discovered at least part of the reason why I was so tired upon arriving to Cluj. The pass, elevation unmarked in my map, leading up to Huedin is in fact something like 540 meters high. So that explains things at least somewhat...

And I that I had thought I had only "grazed" the Western Carpathians (a.k.a the Apuseni Mountains, for you geography freaks).

Right. So now, I need to somehow head over to Bucharest. This involves, as you know, somehow crossing the Southern Carpathians, also known as the Transylvanian Alps (what an ominous name, eh?). The ominousness of the name is not from the Transylvania part but the "Alps" part, for as it turns out, this mountain range has peaks up to 2,500 meters and one very famous highway, the Transfăgărăşan Highway, built during the time of Ceaucescu, for instance, passes between the two peaks at Moldoveanu and Negion at no less (er, sometimes less, but I meant "no less" as an emphatic figure of speech) than 2,000 meters of altitude!

Of course, I wasn't going to be climbing on that. ;)

So, which way to cross then? Most people cycling through Romania avoid the Southern Carpathians altogether by heading south to Timişoara, thus only barely catching the edge of the Southern Carpathians, then following the Danube eastwards, which I had not done, of course, by heading into the middle of Transylvania at Cluj (because I wanted to see Sighişoara). The ones that do head to Sighişoara on a bike (and I think they're nuts to do so, because the climbing and mountains I saw from the train windows heading there was no doubt a good part of the reason it took that train almost 3 hours to travel the short 150 kms to there), head south eventually through Braşov, and along the Predeal Pass just south of it with an elevation of about 1050 meters.

My cycling predecessors, however, were not lucky enough to stay at the rooms of a little old lady in Budapest. On the corridor right outside my bedroom door, there was a very nice, relief map of Hungary, with Romania all included. A beautiful, terrain map I could study for hours at my leisure and even...touch, thus feeling the elevation surface with my fingers where the eyes were easily fooled! And this map suggested that the 2nd lowest pass was at Petrosani, near Târgu Jiu (elevation, subsequently confirmed on good road atlas: 750 meters), a little bit southwest of Cluj, but the best place to pass, the lowest, where climbing was only 350 meters or so (and therefore nothing since Cluj is already at 300 meters itself!) was between Alba Iulia and Ramnicu Valcea: the highway passes right in between two of the Southern Carpathian mountain chains, weaving in and out of the edges of the mountains, in a deep valley following a river. The highway is so well hidden, at least on the relief map, that it feels like I've discovered a secret.

Or at least, that's the theory. At the Youth Hostel in Cluj, I've asked the various receptionists in turn, which is the best way to pass over to Bucharest. Most people drive by Braşov: it is the shortest route. But...most people also get there by car.

So I'm trusting my little old lady's map, and my Romanian road atlas published by the Hungarian company Cartographia for the actual elevation figures. Off to Alba Iulia I went, not without some chagrin, upon hearing from the receptionist, that the first 10 kms towards Alba Iulia from Cluj would be an unrelentless, merciless climb.

And he was right! But the rest was pretty easy, as you can see from the time it took (pretty flat after the climb, which took a little over an hour!) to get there. I arrived in Alba Iulia at 5 p.m., but then, as it turns out, the only pension in this small town was full, and there were only 3 other hotels--ALL with room prices of at least 50 Euros.

Now, if you consider that according to my Lonely Planet, the average monthly wage in Romania is only 55 Euros, you'll appreciate why this price is absurd. And, you'd think that with 3 hotels competing with each other, at least one of them would have a good price, but no, they all are within 1 Euro of each other. Lonely Planet, by the way, claims that one of them, Hotel Transylvania (ha ha!) costs only 22 Euros. This is not true. I check the date of publication on the guidebook bought just 1 month ago: it is the year 2002.

Anyway, finding all of this out took 3 hours of cycling up and down and around in Alba Iulia, and in the end, I had no choice, but to stay in this communist era Hotel Transylvania, which was, just like the others, at those prices, pretty much empty.

2006-09-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

Cluj Napoca, Day 2.

I'm still recovering from that cold. I feel very tired. Decided to rest today, and went to the movies with Youth Hostel friends Chris, a blond and blue-eyed gentleman from Norway, and Mike, a blond and blue-eyed gentleman from Australia.

We went to a horror movie (>;)), "Silent Hill".

It sucked.

Movies based on videogames should never be made.

Still, it was nice hanging out, sharing popcorn, shouting during anything resembling a half-suspenseful scene, and grabbing onto the nearest blond and blue-eyed cutie (I was sitting in the middle, of course :)) whenever things got too scary for poor little defenseless girl like me.

;)

2006-09-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Sighişoara.

So, Sighişoara is included in the UNESCO World Heritage site because it is a beautiful, fortified medieval town built by the Saxons.

Nowadays, outside the city center it is rather poor and bucolic, like most of the Romania I have so far seen, and inside the city center it is a billboard for Dracula souvenirs, also because this was Vlad Ţepeş' birthplace (Did you know, by the way, that Bram Stoker never visited Romania? And that his famous novel--I'm talking about Dracula, of course, which is a rather neat book to read, especially when you're alone at home and it is dark and rainy outside, really!--was originally to be set somewhere not in Transylvania, but in Austria? Cool, huh?).

However, there are some neat things that make Sighişoara kind of eerie:

1. It is very silent.

2. Today the weather was very cloudy (therefore dark) and cold.

3. The only sounds I could hear were the rooster crowing and the dogs barking ("Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!").

4. No, that was inaccurate, I am walking by an old 1800's cementery, with mostly German and some (few) Hungarian names, at the top of the hill behind the town, right by a church, whose bells are tolling solemnly, and the doleful sounds of the Orthodox chorus creeps over the tombstones like the overgrown moss and ivy with which they're covered.

You know, the little I've heard of Romanian (folk?) music is very sad: all in minor tones with lamenting melodies. I wonder, how much Romanian classical music took from that. Mental note: I should listen to some Enescou, one of these days.

2006-09-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Cluj Napoca/Sighişoara.

Probabilities, II.

Travelled today to Sighişoara. Took all day (it was supposed to be a day-trip, but the train comes into Cluj at 2 p.m. and arrives in Sighişoara at 5 p.m., making a day trip impossible. There is an earlier train, of course, but it leaves at 5 a.m., while the midday train at 12:00 p.m. arrives already at 3 p.m. There's nothing in-between the 5 a.m. and the 12:00 p.m. trains, so...day trip not practically possible. The bus schedules are even worse).

So, not much to report today, except that I expect to have something like 7 years of good luck following an encounter with an Icelandic guy in the Youth Hostel!

Why is that, you say?

Well, consider, that the population of Iceland is only about 300,000. The probabilities of you meeting someone that comes from this country at random are....well, you figure it out, it is pretty easy to calculate: assuming meeting any given person of the 6 billion people on the planet is equally likely, the probability that the next person you meet is Icelandic is less than 0.005 percent. Yes, that is, a 5x10^-5 chance!

Now, of course, we all know that that probability is way less if, say, for instance, you live in the countryside of, say, Senegal and you never travel, or if you work at an oil rig off the Gulf of Mexico which requires you to be on the platform for most months of the year, for instance, and conversely, it is much higher, of course, if you work at Heathrow Airport at the terminal where all the connecting flights from Icelandair arrive, or at the French embassy in Reijkiavik, for instance.

In fact, I once even spotted (but did not meet) 10 Icelanders, standing in line precisely at Heathrow (I knew because their passports looked a little unusual), once, and felt rather fortunate then, but tonight...TONIGHT! I had a veritable, real Icelander from Reijkiavik sitting accross the table from me and who was, no less, chatting with me good-naturedly.

Can you believe it?

When I explained it to him that these kinds of things do not happen every day, and asked for permission to rub his (very blond!) hair for good luck, he assented with a chuckle and a broad smile.

"Yeah, that's true!" he said, "there are so few of us."

"In fact," he continued, "you know how each country has these protocols, for how you politely get acquainted, or small talk, or whatever?"

"You mean like chatting about the weather, first?" said an Irishman sitting nearby.

"Yes," said our Icelander friend. "You know how it is in Iceland?"

"Tell us!" said I, fascinated.

"In Iceland, the first thing you do when getting acquainted with someone new, is to try to see how you two are related."

"Oh?" said the funny Irishman. "You mean like playing 6 degrees of Björk, kind of thing?"

"Yes! Exactly!" said he. "In Iceland, since there are so few people, everyone is pretty much related. So when you meet someone, you first start asking each other where they're from, and who they went to school with, and before long it will turn out that one of you will know one of the other's friends (or relatives), and so now suddenly you have friends in common, and you're not strangers anymore."

Cool, huh?

2006-09-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

Cluj Napoca, Day 1.

Switched hotels in the morning, to a Youth Hostel, as it was expensive and lonely in the hotel near city center. There's not all that much to see in Cluj, and besides the cold I caught somewhere in Hungary is killing me, I feel tired all the time. So today mostly all I did was hang out, rest, try some delicious pork stew with mămăligă (which is basically exactly like Italian polenta, and thus this dish reminded me of one of my personal favorites from home: ucellini scappati, minus the pork, of course, :P) read a bit, and chatted up the cute guys at the hostel all day, basically.

Yup, a very exciting life, I lead, these days. :)

2006-09-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Oradea-Huedin-Cluj Napoca.

Trip dist: 158 kms. Trip time: 9 hrs, 6 mins. Tot dist: 6,378 kms.

Wow, what a beautiful, beautiful ride! It was all pretty flat and boring for the first 40 kms or so (I guess I still was catching the end of the Hungarian puszta), but then....the Carpathians started.

Yup, and then there was a lot of uphilly-downhilly that in reality was not uphilly but upmountainy-downmountainy, so it was very..."fun".

Still, a small descent into Huedin (after a very tough ascent ;P) revealed such beautiful, bucolic landscapes, exactly like those 18th and 19th century romantic paintings, complete with haystacks and all.

Were I to recommend some bike rides through Romania, this most definitely would be one of them. It was tough, so one might shorten it, and start closer to Huedin, but oh, how wonderful the views, a well-deserved reward for the effort of the day!

2006-09-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

Oradea, Day 2.

Cluj-Napoca, my next Romanian destination, is 153 kms away. Assuming the terrain allows me to pedal at 15-20 kms/hr, I need to wake up at 7 a.m. in order to make it there before dark.

So this morning I woke up, to see it was very dark and rainy outside. I hadn't listened to the weather reports, but as I waited 1 hour, and then 2, for the skies to clear it became obvious (clear! ha ha!) that it wouldn't happen.

It really sucks to bike in the rain, so I decided to take another day off. For only 17 Euros a day (Youth Hostel prices!) I get satellite TV (and wow, by the way, remember those protesters I told you I simply avoided by taking a side street on the morning I left Budapest? Turns out, by Monday the protest had moved in front of Parliament, where they burned up some cars and clashed with police, and then they headed over to the TV station nearby, where they went ahead and stormed it. 150 people injured. The reason the mob was so angry? Because Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany publically admitted to lying "morning, afternoon, and night" about the state of the Hungarian economy. Yikes! This all not 2 blocks from where my Youth Hostel was! I guess I left Budapest right on time, then...), a single, very spacious bedroom with a queen size bed in a hotel that looks rinky-dink outside but with sparkling, look at myself in the mirror white and green marble floors, and very well kept antique furniture. The luxury! So it wasn't that hard to stay, in spite of there not being much to do in the city.

The rain throws things into chaos here. They are repairing the street in front of the hotel (which is the main downtown pedestrian-only street) which is now muddy and dirty. The more I think about Nadia Comaneci and the Olympics and those athletes who made it out of the country and saw the world the more I think how lucky they must've felt. Given that this was the only opportunity for most people to leave, the competition to get in and remain in these kinds of programs, not just for gymnastics, but for any kind of talent or ability: music, mathematics, science, arts, whatever (and note it is just kids, who joined as young as 10 years old or even less) must've been terrifyingly intense. Now I have a much greater respect (as if that were even necessary, because even without knowing and seeing where they came from they were already remarkable)....for some friends I made in college.

Funny, the coins are so worthless here, merchants simply round the prices off and don't even bother giving you exact change...

2006-09-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Oradea, Day 1.

Blech, legs a bit sore from 3 days of fighting the wind, decided to take a rest day (yeah, and you know that the fact that I'm making up the excuse means I didn't even believe it myself, but hey, subsumption rule #3: "there's no need to hurry" sort of applies, even if I am at least 2 weeks behind schedule and I'm racing the winter weather, by now).

There's not all that much to see or do in Oradea except see their Cathedral. I'd never been inside an Orthodox church before. They are very pretty, with a large, square-shaped central nave, walls all painted in bright reds, blue, and gold, and no places to sit. At the center of the vault under the dome hangs a chandelier, not very high off the ground, so perhaps it is actually a censer, I do not know. But it was very beautiful (see pics).

Otherwise, I rested and pretty much watched TV all day (this TV was satellite connected so I got several channels in German plus English films with Romanian subtitles, not to mention, can you believe this? "Rebelde", a well-known--and very addictive--Mexican "telenovela" series, so it was a dream!). And yeah, for those who read that statement with disdain let me remind you I'm no couch potato so I deserved it, won this day of TV lazy buming fair and square. Look at the kilometer count above.

What else? Looked at some shops. They had this very strange department store, it was very run down and unkempt. The floors were falling apart (i.e. cracked) and dirty, not shiny marble like they should be, selling old polyester low-quality clothing, lots of different vendors with things arranged helter skelter and without organization in a huge ugly, fluorescent-lighted building. It reminded me of the poorer towns in Mexico of 20 years ago. These guys are pretty scrod, I think.

Apparetly, the devastating effects of communism are a lot worse (i.e. they last longer, for one) than I thought....

2006-09-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Karcag-Püspökladány-Berettyóújfalu-Oradea.

Trip dist: 93 kms. Trip time: 5hrs, 19 min. Tot dist:6,220 kms.

Well, if you thought Czech city names where hard to pronounce....
;P

What a difference crossing into Romania! As soon as I crossed the border I was greeted with a very dusty, pot-holed highway, and trucks that drive like bus drivers in Mexico City (for those of you not "in the know", it means that they pass grazingly close to you). Everybody jaywalks here, cars don't stop at zebra crossings, and even proudly invade them to park on them, there are no qualms about taking the lane in the other direction if the current one is moving too slow, making U-turns in the middle of avenues is normal, and pedestrians unabashedly block the bike lanes (and in Oradea there was only one: it lasted 200 meters).

I can tell immediately I'm no longer in a "Germanic" country (Hungary, though poor, still operated with a very orderly, polite civic culture). It is chaotic, dirty, dusty, fast-paced, and with a certain "latinness" to it. The cars move faster, screech the brakes, there is lots of honking, giving it a...somewhat....familiar feel. I would even call it, dare I say it?....comforting, maybe.

{shrug}

2006-09-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

Szolnok-Törökszentmiklós-Kisújszállás-Karcag.

Trip dist: 74 km Trip time:4 hrs, 42 min. Tot dist: 6,127 kms.

Well, the Hungarian plains, the puszta, in other words, are rather boring, landscapewise. Very flat. Lots of wind against. Parched landscape with dead sunflower fields. I haven't even seen the famed horses that supposedly run wild in the plains. Oh well, I guess they like to avoid the fast traffic roads. ;)

Arrived in Karcag, which I would pick as the archetypical communist town. There are no shops (or very few), and they are all closed, and all the buildings are a shining example of what our handsome dark-haired and hazel-eyed guide in Prague called "brutal architecture": communist era high gray concrete apartment blocks. But the town, nevertheless, is still somehow charming, and the people here are very friendly.

The hotels were all closed, but after I finally managed to get a hold of the lady running one of them on the phone, she even drove me the full 3 blocks (!) to the nearest internet cafe/shop/hub, which I would've never found on my own, because as it turns out it was a video and DVD store, which happened to have two computers that people could come and use, a fact which was not advertised anywhere outside.

But the town itself was surprisingly rather nice, there were people strolling about with lots of children (come to think about it, it is perhaps this what lent this concrete-building city its pleasant, happy feel), one big garden near the town center, several teahouses where people sat down to chit-chat relaxedly, and surprisingly, in spite of the small size and understocked shops that didn't open, it wouldn't be too bad a place to spend a restful weekend.

Funny, as I approach the Romanian border (I will cross into Romania tomorrow), I start to feel the trip's end, and this comes, unsurprisingly, with a small, faraway pang of melancholy: a broken corner in the Spring of satisfaction.

:|.

2006-09-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Budapest-Üllő-Albertirsa-Cegléd-Szolnok.

Trip dist: 104 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 51 min. Tot dist: 6,053 kms.

Celebrations VI/Foreigners.

Blech, didn't sleep too well last night. I arrived at the hostel at around 10 p.m., when my two female roomies from Brazil asked me if I wanted to go clubbing. I had a long ride the next day, so I said, no thanks, and went to catch up on emails on the internet instead. I was thus engaged when I suddently noticed a man in his mid-30's wearing a dark suit, which I vaguely thought strange (who wears a suit in a Youth Hostel?), pacing back and forth in the lounge, and eventually staring at me (the computer was in a room adjacent to the lounge, and his pacing was spanning both rooms).

"Sorry, do you need to use the computer?" I asked.

"Er, yes, will you be long?" said he.

"Actually, yes, but if you need the computer, I can cut it short."

"No worries," he said, "take your time, I will just wait here."

"O.K. then," said I, and went back to my emails.

Shortly afterwards, though, the man started pacing again, and finally asked me, "The two girls that were here just a little while ago, you know them?"

"The Brazilian girls, you mean?" said I, distractedly.

"Uh, yes, them," he said.

Me: "Sort of."

Him: "Will they be gone long?"

Me: "What?"

Him: "Where did they go?"

Me: "Clubbing, I think, were you waiting for them?"

Him: "Yes, I was. Well, I guess they're gone. I'll just wait out here for a while, then, I was supposed to go with them, I guess maybe they'll come back in a little bit."

Now, there was something about this man that immediately gave me a sensation of dislike, right from the very first moment I saw him pacing about. It was not a strong vibe of something, just a vague feeling that this was not someone I would care to get to know, or go clubbing with, for instance, or even want to engage in a conversation. I don't know why. The suit-wearing in a hostel, perhaps? The slavic accent? The wrinkles drawn on his face? I don't know. Either way, I was busy, and thought nothing of it.

A triplet of Irish boys checked in to the hostel, and put their stuff in one of the rooms surrounding the lounge (remember, the lounge was in the next room to where I was), and then left (by the way, this is all taking place on the 2nd floor of the Hostel, the reception is on the first floor downstairs).

I saw the man pacing about again.

Later, two French guys staying at the hostel saw me on the internet, and as I knew them from a couple of days of staying there, we started chit-chatting.

The Irish boys came back, and go to their rooms. Suddenly, one of them walks agitatedly towards me and asks:

"Did you see anyone here?"

"What?" said I. "I saw you, and your friends, why?"

"Someone took my iPod."

Another one of the Irish guys joins us: "My wallet is missing!" he says.

Oh no. I quickly check my bag. When I came in to the hostel, I briefly had popped into my room to set my jacket down, but had decided to check my email while holding on to my day bag, where I put my wallet and telephone, camera and 4 GB of memory---my life, in other words, just this time by coincidence, since I usually just leave it in the room. My bag is, of course, safely strapped across my chest, with its wallet and everything intact. But I go to my room just to make sure, when the Irish boys indicate that that is their room also.

All my bags are unzipped. I never leave them unzipped. And...there is stuff in there that I really, really wouldn't want stolen. Luckily, though, it is not obvious what that stuff is or where it is kept, either, so it is safe, and so are all other things (clothes, mostly). Clearly the thief had had no time to carefully search for things, only things that were obviously within easy reach of a zipper or two were taken. I have been lucky, but the Irish boys have all lost electronics and money.

"There was no one else here?" says the Irish boy.

"Well, what about that gentleman in a suit? Where's he now?" said I.

We all look at each other. One of the French boys says: "Yes, I saw him, just 10 minutes ago! Is he a guest?"

Irish boys go down to reception. Receptionist (a male) comes up. No, he is not a guest. How does the receptionist know? He saw him pass by and wait outside in the corridor, he thought the suit was waiting for someone from our floor.

Yikes.

Right under our noses. And what is to be admired, how well executed and skillful and calm and cold-blodded: the information gathering to figure out exactly how much time he had. He knew the Brazilian girls wouldn't be coming back for a long while. He knew I was going to be busy in the computer for a long while. He saw the Irish boys just come in and then step down one floor to the reception. He then left inconspicuously, probably even waving me goodbye as he passed me staring intently at my web-browser.

Anyway, to make the long story short, the Irish boys were so depressed, they went out drinking. French boys were going out anyway, and I'm left alone in the top floor with the receptionist downstairs, and a thief in a suit that walks in and out of the hostel as he pleases, apparently. Did not make for very restful dreams. To top it off the Brazilian girls burst in the room at 4 a.m. and flick on all the lights to "find out what has happened here" and check to see if their stuff is gone. It is not, all of their luggage was locked. But it took them 1 full hour to figure this out, plus it then took them another hour to discuss, quite loudly, how it was that they were going to call a cab to catch their train to Vienna, so you can imagine that after going to bed after 1 a.m. a bit freaked and begging the receptionist to come check on the 2nd floor at least every hour to make sure no one has broken back in it was not a very relaxing night for me, not at all.

Curious, though, how this "sixth sense" business works. I had not liked the man right from the very beginning. But it was a very vague feeling, it was nothing strong and obvious, and most importantly I wouldn't be able to tell you why I didn't like him, that is, neither what it is that I had observed that seemed "odd" that gave me a reason to dislike him, nor what it is about him that I disliked in the first place. Still, good mental note: always trust your instincts. And, always keep your valuables with you, even in the hotels and hostels.

Anyway, I left rather late this morning from Budapest, avoiding a crowd of protesters that had seemed to gather in one of the main avenues just outside my hostel, battling a cold, and with the wind against me for the whole length of the very flat, boring landscape ride. There is nothing uglier than interminable fields of dried up sunflowers: it is a very depressing reminder of the ephemeral nature of beauty. They must've been breathtakingly pretty in the summer....

My maps, too, are rather outdated: road #4, which was the one I had chosen for riding, has since been replaced with a motorway, so at the advice of some folks at a gas station I took another road not even on my map, but which after a couple of kilometers revealed itself to be named road #400, and what my map called "road #4", was, in fact, a strange combination of real roads #40 and #400, the ones I actually took.

But anyway, I arrived, eventually, at Szolnok, just as dusk was falling, and stayed at a very friendly communist-era hotel (36 Euros a night, but was the cheapest thing I could find in the darkness), where the receptionist chatted to me good-naturedly about the foreigners who visit, my compatriots, he continued in Italian after seeing my passport, especially, who come to Szolnok to go on hunting expeditions in the neighboring areas, and just love to send the Hungarian hare and partridges they have hunted as Christmas presents to impress their loved ones in Italy.

"We sometimes get some Germans, too, but they like to come here for the mineral baths, but we never get any Japanese. Can you believe that? Never, in my 17 years working here, did I ever see a Japanese. Italians, yes, even back in the old days before '89, they really love the hunting, and after the hunts they always invite me to these great dinners they have with lots of wine and 6 or 7 courses..."

"Yeah," interjected I with a chuckle brought about by some happy childhood reminiscences, "long social dinners are a very Italian thing..."

"Yeah! You're right! And they always invite me to them, that they cook to celebrate, yes. Lots of Italians. But never any Japanese. Though I did see 2 Norwegians, once."

"Really?" said I, just to politely continue the conversation. "What are the Norwegians like? What do they think of Hungary?"

The receptionist smiled broadly at me for a few moments, to emphasize before replying:

"Like aliens."

"What?" said I.

"Yes, they come here, and look around them all spaced-out and confused, as if they were walking on the moon!"

We had a bit of a laugh over that, before he handed me my keys good-naturedly.

:)

2006-09-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Budapest, Day 4.

Today I declared a rest day. I caught a cold, so I didn't do much. Passed by Nyugati pályaudvar, one of the three Budapest train stations, where they have a super cool aerial photo of the city, and in which you are encouraged to take some little stickers pasted on some columns nearby and place them on the map, to express the areas of the city you are happy with, unhappy with, and give high or low ratings to. It is a pretty neat and fun concept and were I a politician I'd be sure to check this map every once in a while: as I point out in the movie, there are a lot of unhappy smilies concentrated around the area of parliament! (Most of the happy faces seem to be concentrated around the parks and public baths).

Anyway, I passed by the Nyugati train station because I was on my way to Margaret Island, where there's not all that much to see except a park, and where I sat down for a long time because the walk and the incipient cold I had caught somewhere made me very, very tired. It was good though, because the weather was quite nice, and I sat down in a pretty area over where the leaves on the trees were starting to fall, and....daydreamed.

I hadn't done that in a long while. :)

You know, there's a marked difference between the feel of the parks in the U.S. and the ones here in Europe.

In the U.S., the people in the parks are always busy--playing frisbee, soccer if in a group, reading or drawing/painting if alone. Couples are "together", but not quite together, because they do individual things not involving the other: one reads while the other sleeps, one paints while the other plays with the dog, etc.

Here in Hungary, pairs of same-sex friends sit down on benches and talk lazily to one another as they watch the people saunter by. Real couples, even elderly ones, kiss and stare languorously into each other's eyes, talking softly. Lone people simply people-watch. The sense in the park here....is a lot more relaxed and peaceful. The only busy ones in these parts are the children, who are running about and playing.

Parks here in Hungary are no sanctums for sport: there are no joggers or rollerbladers here, and bicycles, always passing slowly and leisurely by, are rare. It seems that parks here are more like places of rest and to be enjoyed. The Germans have a word for this: geniessen. {shrug}

In these parks, time really does stand still, while it travels vertiginously as always in the city that surrounds it just outside. One quick glance at the watch revealed that, from the time I had sat down and started daydreaming at this quiet island park, two hours had already passed.

2006-09-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

In Vienna for interview.

2006-09-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

Budapest/Vienna.

Trip dist: 0 kms. Trip time: 3 hrs, 15 mins. Tot dist:5,949 kms.

Diplomacies.

Heh. I have been summoned back to Vienna (ha ha! I say it as if I were someone important called by someone even more important! ;P): 2nd round of interviews for that little engineering company I told you about.

So not much to tell you about today here, except that I had a very amusing conversation with a Vienese gentleman (in his late 70's) on the train from Budapest. He approached my compartment shortly before departure (I was sitting alone up to that point), looked at me with piercing little eyes behind a pair of spectacles, and opened his mouth as if to say something, but thought better of it, and sat down in front of me instead.

[I thought this amusing. I concluded immediately this gentleman was Austrian. I don't remember exactly what was that hinted to this: his dress, perhaps, a book he was carrying, the demeanor, I don't know. But what was amusing was that it was obvious he was about to ask for permission to occupy the same compartment, except that he clearly had thought I most likely spoke Hungarian, which he did not, and thus not knowing what to say, decided against saying anything at all].

A Hungarian girl then joined us (she did ask for permission, in Hungarian, first, but with neither me nor the Austrian gentleman knowing what to reply, we merely simply nodded when she said what I assumed was "Is this seat free?"), and proceeded to have a very long conversation on her cell phone, and when that ended, 45 minutes into our journey (the train to Vienna from Budapest takes almost 3 hours), she then occupied herself with grooming her eyebrows on the compartment's mirror.

This was, of course, of no consequence or interest to me, except for the fact that it produced a rather amusing reaction in the little old man in front of me, who looked at her quite appalled, and just obviously bursting at the seams to say something.

Which he, of course, did not, since he didn't speak Hungarian.

Anyway, eventually the girl got off the train at some border town, and as there was still at least an hour and a half to go before arrival, I decided to test the little conjectures I had up to that point been forming about my train trip companion.

"Sind Sie Österreicher?", said I, to break the ice ["Are you Austrian?"].

"Yes, from Vienna," replied he (in German, of course. All of this conversation was in German, I'm just writing it in English from here on for you).

[Bingo on deductions 1 and 2: He is Vienese and does not speak Hungarian.]

Me: "Neat! Day tripping to Budapest?"

Him: "Yes, visiting a friend."

And so on and so forth, with small talk conversation lasting long enough to get us acquainted, enough to know where we each come from and go to and why, and puncutated with very quick, subtle (unlike my former German encounters) unobtrusive corrections to my horrible grammar, and a chat which was very pleasant and relaxing.

Soon, of course, the conversation took a more interesting turn (one thing that is true about these Germanic tribes is that conversations turn to serious matters--politics, current events, history, etc.-- very quickly. Small talk is not typically of much interest to German speakers, which is a happy coincidence, because nor it is to me). While talking about what Mexico is like and what Austria is like and eventually what the world is like, the gentleman in front of me suddently burst out with what had clearly been simmering for some time, for it seemed to be one of his fundamental life conclusions, brought about by over 70 years of reflection and experience, and it was (or was something like) this:

"All of the world's problems are caused by overpopulation."

I had to find a way not to fall off my chair laughing as soon as I heard that. With the most serious face I could muster, and as politely as possible, I instead asked....

"Er...why do you say that?"

"Well, look at all those poor people having 8, 10 kids. That's no way to live! That's no way to come out of poverty!"

Me: "Er, yes, I suppose that's true."

The gentleman then ranted away at how could people be so ignorant so as to think that by having more children they would somehow improve life for themselves.

Now, Mexico, as you know, is a rather poor country, and up until very recently, but especially in rural areas, the custom was, in fact, to try to have large families. There is, to some extent, some logic to this, which I attempted to explain:

"I think what happens is that in rural communities the view is that the more farmhands are available, the better. Kids are made to work and help out at the farm since they are very young, and obviously the more kids there are, the more help is available. So it does make sense, in a way."

"Yes," said the gentleman, "but with more than one or 2 kids, you cannot send them all to college. It is expensive! How can these farmers think that they can send 8 kids to college, or make enough money to send them off to school. It is unthinkable! So now you have 8 uneducated, unemployable children running around, what do they do when the father dies? How do they get a job and look after themselves? They don't! They end up in the streets, causing all the problems we see now in the world, street violence, drugs, etc."

Clearly, my companion had assumed that it was unquestionable, that the goal for every child born to a family, farmer or not, was to get a college education. Interesting theory, which I did not see the point to discuss (I was afraid I would be unable to remain polite at this one---oftentimes my disagreeing is not as diplomatic as it could be, and I didn't want to risk upsetting this, now turned very passionate, little old gentleman). Nevertheless, the other assumption: that street violence, drug use, poverty, and basically, "all the problems of the world" were caused by uneducated children product of 8 member overpopulated families was just something I could not let go off so easily.

"Well, yes, but take for instance, Europe. Europe's population is declining, yet it has the same problems of drug use and violence that we all know and love. We even see these problems, and even more so, in "rich" countries, like the U.S. Overpopulation, therefore, does not seem to be the probable cause."

"Yes," quoth he. "But Europe and the U.S. have immigrants from poor countries coming in. And these immigrants are coming in because their countries are overpopulated, and therefore poor. Places like Africa and India."

Uh oh. Back to some specious and circular reasoning. It reminded me a bit of arguing with an old friend of mine, that did. How to remain respectful, without pointing out that the reasoning was faulty, that some facts were being intentionally left out, that evidence was being ignored?

"Well, in the case of places like Africa, I believe that the reason some of those countries are poor is not because of overpopulation per se. If you think about it, Africa had been colonized, enslaved, opressed, and exploited by wealthier countries until well into the 20th century. Even after decolonization and the abolition of slavery you still had nasty things like apartheid rearing its ugly head until only a few years ago. And to top it off, after that you ended up with local corrupt governments that have done nothing to improve the lives of the people. I very much highly doubt that this is because Africa suffers from overpopulation, on the contrary. Perhaps this overpopulation is, as I said, a way to try to cope with a situation that is already not quite ideal..."

[Now, all of the above sounds very cogent and well constructed, of course, because I'm writing it several days after it happened. In reality, you have to imagine me trying to say this with my limited German vocabulary and while being interrupted every minute or two by the small grammar "corrections" from my interlocutor. No small feat, but anyway...]

And so on and so forth, but no matter what I said ("There are even plenty of countries that are poor but not overpopulated, take Eastern Europe, for instance"), I could not convince him. At 70, his mind was already made up, and the conversation, at this point, had started to turn a little boring, with him always repeating the same kind of thing.

Now, those of you who know me well know that when conversations start to turn boring for me, I tend to like to spice things up by needling my interlocutor. It is an evil thing to do, because at this point, I'm no longer interested in the conversation per se (it has already revealed to want to go nowhere constructive), but rather in pure mental entertainment: at this point the talk is no longer a friendly exchange of ideas that enable both participants to learn from each other, but simply a way for me to do some simple mental sparring: twisting logic, redifining words, abusing rethoric to support any and whatever viewpoint (no matter how irrational) a typical favorite exercise of mine (as you know). But in this particular case, I decided to surprise my interlocutor with an observation that he would not have expected, taking the risk of it being discovered as impolite, but still striving to preserve the apparent innocence of the statement (and for these kinds of things my trustworthy demeanor always seems to serve quite nicely).

You see, there is one thing that I have noticed about people over the past few years, and it is this: Tell me what that person finds important, tell me what someone values the most, and nine times out of ten, it will be something that that person does not have. Show me someone who thinks that the most important thing in life is "to be happy" or "to pursue happiness", and I'll show you someone who is unhappy. Show me someone who thinks money is important, and I'll show you someone for whom it will never be enough. Show me someone who thinks "love" is the thing worth living for, and I'll show you someone who does not currently have a significant other. It is uncanny, how true this is, and it is after all not really all that surprising: psychology and economics tells us that we will value those things that we find scarce or are difficult to obtain. The people who are genuinely happy and know how to value the things that they already have in abundance are truly rare finds.

But anyway, back to my little old gentleman and "Overpopulation is the source of all problems." By this point, he was ranting on and on about how it was unbelievable that these ignorant overpopulated countries did not have a culture that looked kindly upon birth control, and whose fault was that, the governments', but also the male's, yes, the males were to blame, etc etc etc.

At this point I just nodded and agreed to every single thing he said, until there was a lull in the conversation.

"Say," said I, after a pause, a short, warning peparation for my beat-attack.

"Do you have any kids?" I smiled innocently.

He waved away my question (from which I quickly concluded that the answer, as expected, was "no"), said something more about "overpopulation, think about it", to which I promised I would, and this conversation, at least, ended shortly afterwards.

See?

Anyway, the train ride was long, so that was not the end of our chat (though the overpopulation one, thankfully, had ended just exactly when I had wanted it to). Now it turned instead back to Austria and Mexico, and how those barbarous Mexicans had assasinated Maximilian I, when he had most kindly agreed to go govern them at their request, and how, had they really not wanted him, why not just put him on a ship back to Austria? Was it really necessary, to shoot him with a firing squad? Honestly! Whatever happened to common courtesy!

Again, I had to summon some superhuman strength not to laugh. It seemed very amusing to me, that he just could not see what to any Mexican would be shiningly evident and obvious: no one likes to be invaded. To have a foreigner come to govern your country as an Emperor is the greatest affront to national sovereignty.

I tried to explain.

"But he came at the Mexicans' request!"

"Yes," said I, "but he came at a time of some rather tumultuous times, politically. The Mexicans who requested him was a very small group of monarchists, and what's more, wasn't it Napoleon, who kind of pushed his going there? France had invaded Mexico just a short time before. What I'm trying to say is, he most definitely was not "invited" and most definitely it was not with the backing of the people."

"Well," he continued. "They shouldn't have shot him. If they didn't want him there, they should've just told him to go back home."

[Supressed a chuckle here again. Seriously, have you ever heard of an invader who politely leaves when the invaded country expresses their objections? Honestly!]

"You see," he pressed on, "When I was visiting Mexico City..."

"Oh, you've been there?", I was, to tell the truth, a bit surprised at this.

"Yeah, when I was visiting that Castle on the hill, what's it called? Chapatulec, is it?"

"Chapultepec," said I.

"Yes, anyway, the guide was telling us with great relish, veritable glee, of how the Mexicans had executed this tyrant. And he wasn't a tyrant at all, he was just someone who was offered this governorship, accepted in good faith, and look what happened to him. She didn't know I was Austrian, so when I tried to explain this to her, that he came in good faith, she kept telling me what you are saying, but how can they be so ignorant of history, not to know that he was invited, how could he not be welcomed, when he came at the Mexican's request?"

And here followed a side-rant about how tourist guides should be licensed, like they are in Europe, where they have to take a test, to prove they are knowledgeable in the history of the places that they are guiding tours in.

Again, I had to struggle not to laugh, and attempted to calmly explain.

"I believe it is not, really, that she was not well-versed in Mexican history. What happens, you see, is that, like in many countries, in Mexico, the history books in public schools are written by the government. The government, just like most other countries', has an interest in fostering a certain...pride in one's nation. Therefore, and consistent with 200 years of Mexican foreign policy, a sense of 'one does not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries' is inculcated into the Mexican mind from an early age, since these books are distributed starting in Elementary school. Mexicans literally bristle at the thought of having someone else meddle in how they should run their country. Maximillian's arrival, you see, was an unabashed affront on this Mexican pride, and still is. It is understandable, that they would continue to portray him as a tyrannical invader who well-deserved what he got. And he did, in a way, for he should've informed himself a little bit better as to what the political and social realities were of the country he was supposed to govern..."

But of course, I could make no headway on the view that: "Still, they should not have shot him. That is barbaric. They should've just put him on a ship back. What's more, they should be thankful, He built this beautiful Castle on the Hill, what other beautiful monuments are there in Mexico City? None! Tyrant, yeah right, but you Mexicans got this beautiful castle which you got to keep."

I smiled. "You are right, of course," said I.

The conversation then changed, of course, after I had thus purposely killed it. But amusement was not over, for now it turned to the famous headdress of Moctezuma II, which, as you know, is exhibited in the Museum für Völkerunde (Ethnology Museum) of Vienna, and which I, in spite of having passed by several times, purposely did not visit, because I knew it would make me bristle to despair seeing this very precious Aztec headdress exhibited there.

"Take that headdress of Moctezuma. Did you know, that just a few years ago, a Mexican delegation came to Vienna, to demand it be returned?"

I had heard something like that.

"Well, guess what the Austrians said."

"Clearly they said no, since the headdress is still not where it should be." (That is, in the National Anthropology Museum of Mexico City, where a copy is displayed, with a little caption indicating that the original was....er...."taken"....to Vienna).

"Where it should be? It is the property of Austria. Either way, the Austrians first said, 'O.K., we'll give it back, but in return you give us all of those things that Maximilian took to Mexico from his home here in Vienna', and the Mexicans said 'no'."

"Well," said I "the things that Maximilian took to Mexico should remain in Mexico, because they would not have been purposely taken there if he wanted them to stay in Vienna. The headdress, on the other hand, was not taken by its owner to Vienna, it just somehow..."appeared" here under questionable circumstances, and ..."

"No, it doesn't work that way. We Austrians, we were willing to give the headdress back, but what, you just want handouts like that? What do we get in return? It is only fair, that we get what belongs to us back, otherwise, no deal. Besides, do you think that headdress would've been so well-preserved if it had remained in Mexico? You should be thankful, because here you can see it, it is well taken care of, if it had remained in Mexico by now it would've been long gone."

"Of course," capitulated I, in words only, again.

"Of course," said he.

I smile every time I remember this train ride. Irony is....a very curious thing.

:)

2006-09-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

Budapest, Day 3.

Strolled over to Castle Hill in Buda this morning and started the day with a visit to the Hungarian National Gallery and its excelent collection of 19th century Hungarian Painters (entrance is, can you believe it? Free!), and where I spotted, of all things, a painting that someone who once knew me well has always claimed looks very much like me (and the whole collection is digitized on the website so if you have the patience and curiosity go ahead and see if you can figure out which one it is!).

I also saw, of course, lots of other very neat works (beautiful paintings spanning a full wall, for instance), and one, in particular, which I found very poignant: Gyula Derkovits' "For Bread (Terror)".

But anyway, the point is, very nice exhibit. Do not skip it if you visit Budapest.

After hanging out at the museum I headed over to the subterranean caves/limestone cellars, which the city of Buda has like many other medieval cities (i.e. Provins), but which are now made into a kind of interesting exhibit/fun game and called "The Labyrinth of Buda". Instead of making the visit a historic visit along the cellars, the Hungarians decided to make it a kind of entertainment attraction, for they lighted it in small but very warm, yellow lights, scattered about several mystic-like statues ( a la Olmec heads or Easter Island idols), bathed the facilities in some very eerie music, and even added a...can you believe this? A wine fountain.

Ha ha ha ha! Yeah, I was wondering where that vinegary smell was coming from. I twisted a corner, and I see a stone fountain covered up in vines spouting blood-red water, which it was not, in fact, as closer inspection revealed.

Get a load of that, you wine weenie freaks. Would be the talk of your next party if you popped one up on your balcony, eh? ;)

Anyway, this "Labyrinth" tried to make a statement, towards the end, about modern man, "homo consumensis", they called him comically, by showing the remains of the 20th century as if they were fossils, like someone from the future might see them, imprints, they called them, outlines cast in stone (or in this case plaster made to look like stone) of computers, cell phones, TV antennas. And then, they had quotes of what previous visitors had said, when reflecting upon what would remain after we were long gone---imprints such as these, perhaps. The comments were very sagacious and touching, for instance:

"These imprints, how ironic that they would be immaterial traces of the material."

or

"Humanity, unrestrained, advances towards....nothing."

and things like that.

Now, the whole of the labyrinth was organized into smaller sections, sub-labyrinths, each with their own theme, a bit like that garden at the Quinta de la Regaleira that I told you about when I was back in Portugal. One of these (apart from the "homo consumensis" one and the wine fountain one whose name I can't remember) was the "Labyrinth of Courage", where you enter in a chamber in complete darkness and you walk and find your way by following a cord that you grasp with your right hand.

If you wait for the visitors ahead of you to exit before entering, and with no visitors behind you, the effect of absolute darkness and silence is strong, not without a small trace of disquietude. But what I realized in those 10 minutes of darkness, was that while surely the roots of this unavoidable, faraway pang of fear must be different for everyone who visits (some may fear the unknown, others may fear what is lurking at the next corner, a tall person may fear bumping his head on the next rock or low ceiling of the chamber, etc), I realized, that without having anyone behind or in front of me, like the backpacker couples or the families with children that I had passed in other sections of the cellars, who entered this "dark chamber to test one's courage" laughing and joking to lighten up the inevitable trepidation or maybe holding on to each other in loving solidarity, mine, my faraway pang of apprehension made infinitely many times more distressing by the darkness and the silence, that unease that was only mine and no one else's, came from the resulting irremediable sense of....loneliness.

{shrug}

Towards the exit, there was a map of the whole Labyrinth cellars, and I looked for the so-called "Labyrinth of Love", the only one I seemed to have missed in my wanderings, on the map. But though the legend on the map had this Labyrinth written in big letters, it did not show up anywhere on the map itself. After scrutinizing the map carefully, still not finding it, and finally spotting my location near one of the exits, I finally saw a correspondingly-labelled arrow, pointing towards the edge of the map, through the exit out of the labyrinth structure and into the "real world": The "Labyrinth of Love"....is outside!

:D

I gotta hand it to them. These Hungarians have a very sophisticated....peculiar, but rather neat, sense of humor.

2006-09-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

Budapest, Day 2.

A happy day.

Budapest is a city that grows on you (one even starts to get used to the darker than usual streets eventually).

Today, being sunny and a Monday, there were more people on the streets than in the past two days: the city was vibrant and cheerful.

After changing rooms from the little old lady's guesthouse to a more youthful and social (and cheaper!) backpacker's hostel (which was very clean, very pleasant, and not too many people, plus, free internet!), I ran a couple of errands (had to buy new SIM card for mobile phone) and then finally wandered into the fantastic, beautifully decorated and delicious Central Cellar Restaurant and Wine Bar (1052 Budapest Vàci u. 11/a). I just had to rave about this fantastic place with fabulous decor and a delicious, not particularly expensive meal that started with a wonderful Hungarian Goulash soup that tasted a little bit like it was made with chipotle chiles, which was a bit weird and nostalgic (it reminded me a lot of my home country of Mexico), but very, very good.

After an incredibly delicious meal I started wandering eastwards along Andrassy Utca, one of the swanky boulevards of Budapest, heading towards City Park, when in my wanderings along a pretty side-street I stumbled upon the Hungarian Royal Academy of Music (though "stumbled" is perhaps not quite accurate, since when I fist heard the sounds of someone--not one, but two or three people--practicing concert-grade sequences, most definitely not your typical boring old music student excercise, on a concert-grand piano wafting from a window somewhere, my feet instinctively followed, to stop eventually at the entrance of this renowned institution), founded by no less than Franz Liszt himself.

Well, what was my surprise and nothing less than ecstasy when I discovered upon entering the building that the academy was currently hosting the 41st International Liszt-Bartók Piano Competition, with the final round to start in half an hour (can you believe it, Ian!?!!). I almost melted with joy, then, upon being told that the day's ticket cost only 1,000 Florints (that's approximately 5 bucks!), which gave you access to the full day of competition, starting at 3 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m., with 45 minutes per contestant with 15 minute breaks in-between, to come and go as you pleased throughout the day.

This was a dream come true! I had never seen a piano competition of this kind of repute and high caliber before, so of course I did not hesistate even a microsecond to cancel all my previous plans for the afternoon and settle myself for a very promising, terrific musical picnic. Oh, what luck! (And since I was half an hour early and there was general seating, I even got my first choice spot on the 3rd row just to the left of the piano, just like is should be, exactly like I wanted, for no spot could've been better). Oooh, lordy. This was absolute, perfect, bliss.

Anyway, as I waited around for things to start and glanced behind me to look at the audience, I noticed it was significantly "left-seating" biassed: 90% of the public had chosen seats on the left side. :). And, judging from the expressions on faces during parts of the performance, the tensing of the fingers of hands previously resting impassively in one's lap at key moments, the intent, concentrated, piercing look of the people in the audience, I concluded, too, that at least that percentage of it, was also composed of musicians.

There was a 2 hour break after the third performer (his name was Bernard Olivier, who performed the Liszt Sonata in B minor with a depth and beauty I had never heard anyone, not even on CD, play like before, so much so that it even brought tears to my eyes, so sublime that performance was. Oh, how wonderful!), so I headed over to the nearby (or rather, more or less nearby) City Park, which was of interest because it houses one of the biggest public baths in the city, and are just exactly like one imagines the Roman baths were way back when. It was kinda cool.

On my way back I passed by a bunch of older gentlemen playing, in true Eastern European tradition, chess, of all things, and of course I couldn't resist hanging out there for a while and observing a few of the games. It was not long before one of the gentlemen started a conversation with me, in Spanish, of all things (he had frequently visited Mexico and was glad to switch to Spanish from English when he found out I was from there), and, after comparing a bit what Hungarians are like and what Mexicans are like (we concluded they are very similar, the national character of both those countries is rather cheerful and light-hearted, and even our food has some similar features), the conversation turned back towards chess:

Me: "Say, is it true what I've heard, that kids here in Hungary have to take compulsory chess lessons in elementary school starting from 5th grade?"

(I had heard this from my Hungarian High-School Physics teacher, and had concluded, way back then, that were I to run the world I would make this subject a compulsory part of elementary-school education indeed. It is a wonderful way to teach people how to think through the consequences of their actions, to consider all possible scenarios and possibilities before making decisions, and to learn how to see a problem from your opponent's point of view--fundamental skills to have if you want to grow up to be someone who knows how to think and decide for yourself [and if you want to hear more about this and what subjects I think should be taught in schools apart from this one and instead of which others, all you need to do is trigger-topic me sometime]).

Older Hungarian gentleman: "Well, sort of. It is not compulsory, but it is an elective, and mostly only boys choose it."

Me (a bit surprised): "Huh. I see. Girls don't like it, or what?", I wondered.

Hungarian gentleman: "Well, it's not just that, here in Hungary a bit like in Mexico, I guess, we tend to think that maybe women ought to learn how to cook and take care of the home, first."

"I see..." said I. I was all too familiar with these kinds of attitudes, unfortunately, having encountered a lot of that myself back when I was younger, given that I didn't tend to exhibit your typical, boring, "girls are supposed to do it this way" type of interests.

"Say," said I, after a while, "Judit Polgar, right? She's Hungarian, isn't she?"

(For those of you not too familiar with these circles, Judit Polgar is the best female chess player in the world, and the 16th best player overall, having attained the Grandmaster title at only 15, and she's only 30 years old now! Not only that, but her sisters Zsusa and Zsofia are no chess weenies themselves...)

Hungarian gentleman (not quite knowing where I was getting at, beaming with pride): "Yes, she is!"

Me: "Say...do you think Judit Polgar knows how to cook?"

This took the gentleman a bit by surprise. He was so taken aback by this, in fact, that for a while he stared at me not quite knowing what to say, until I smiled broadly to make it clear it was just a joke. He relaxed and laughed then, and I with him, as he turned around to the rest of the gentlemen leaning over their chessboards, and repeated, in Hungarian, what I had said, whether Judit Polgar knows how to cook, which received some good-natured chuckles.

"Nah," he said finally. "She makes enough money being a chess champion. She doesn't need to know how to cook, she can just hire someone to do it for her."

{shrug}.

So it goes.

It was amusing, though, and the relaxing chat, the stroll through the park and the kids on skateboards and bikes practicing tricks (they were really good) on the plazas, the sublimely beautiful music, the weather, the charmingly sunny city and the nice meal, the good luck and general pleasantness of the day's events, in other words, all contributed to make today into one of the happiest I have had in a very long while.

2006-09-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

Budapest, Day 1.

Ha ha. Quoth Enrico Fermi (says the legend), renowned Italian physicist, when asked if he thought there was life in other planets: "Extraterrestrials do exist, and they live among us. They call themselves Hungarians."

:)

Ran errands today and mostly ran a reconoissance mission by wandering about town. Dropped by the Museum of Fine Arts, for instance (the exhibits were closed), a very nice building with Turkish-style interiors.

The curious thing about Budapest is, that it doesn't really seem to have a very well-defined center. There is no main square, or plaza, or place where everyone gathers, or where all the restaurants and shops, theaters and museums and government buildings are concentrated. Instead, the shops are spread about along one or two main streets, the government buildings like city hall and parliament are spaced several blocks apart, and so are the theaters. So it is a bit difficult going somewhere to just "hang out" and people watch, for instance. That, and the fact that Budapest is fairly large, makes for some very tiring walking. And, because nothing is concentrated in one place, you sometimes have to walk through some rather uninteresting/unkempt areas before you reach the pretty place you want to get to.

But it is very different from what I've been used to before in the West, and therefore very interesting, for your mind has to use some different sets of brain cells than usual, not just from "learning" a new city map, but deciphering the language (dealing with a Hungarian-only speaker little old lady last night to rent a room for overnight stay, for instance), and the customs, etc, which is refreshing.

2006-09-09T05:30:00.000-07:00

Komárno-Ezstergom-Budapest.

Trip dist: 118 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 21 min. Tot dist: 5,949 kms.

This was a pretty flat ride along the banks of the Danube. Again, I chose the Slovak side, of course (shorter and flatter). The fresh water smells and weather during the ride reminded me a bit of Cape Cod, a beautiful Saturday spent with two good friends from college years ago (Salut, Ken and Christian!).

The weather today was perfect: cloudy but no rain, and the approach to Esztergom was very impressive, with a beautiful view of the majestic Basilica as you cross the bridge from the Slovak side of the Danube. This Basilica, with an area of 56,000 square meters, is the largest church in Hungary, and has a reverb time of over 9 seconds. Cool huh?

Anyway, the bike roads in Hungary are constructed in such a way that after a number of years it produces lengthwise (i.e. across the bike path) cracks every 2.5 meters or so, which is rather unpleasant because the cracks have been either repaired or overgrown with grass, which makes the ride rather bumpy and therefore slower than it would've been otherwise. Still that did not prevent me from riding at a respectable, healthy 20 km/hr or so pace.

The arrival/approach to Budapest was very unexpected. I came in on the Chain Bridge in the late afternoon (i.e. 6:30 p.m. or so), with the setting sun illuminating the Parliament, in a view that was jaw-droppingly beautiful. Hungary/Budapest is most definitely underrated in the Western guide books.

The only thing I didn't like about the city is that it is very dark come night. The buildings are high and tightly clustered in Pest so by duskttime the sun is hidden behind them even though it hasn't yet completely set, and then at night they turn on these very sickly pale sodium yellow lights that are pretty sparse, giving it a very wintery, dark, and even scary feel, since lots of corners are not illuminated by the city streets nor do the people bother to light up the outside of their buildings, thus making it the ideal urban hiding place for anyone who wanted to appear inconspicuous.

I wonder what the crime rate is like here: under the cover of darkness and lonely streets, with no traffic passing after 8 p.m. or so and no police in sight, muggings should be an easy endeavour.

2006-09-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

Bratislava-Čunovo-Veľké Kosihy-Komárno.

Trip dist: 112 kms. Trip time: 4 hrs, 58 mins. Tot dist: 5,831 kms.

So, there are two routes to Budapest from Bratislava along the Danube. One, on the Slovak side of the river, shorter and completely flat, the other, along the Hungarian side, with a few hills with up to 200 meters elevation change and about 50 kms longer. Whether this other route is prettier or not is disputable, so which one does Elisa choose?

Don't worry folks, after 5,000 kms I've learned my lessons, and there is no point in wasting any time or letting any of the energy I miraculously still seem to have left after all this pedalling go to waste.

So I took the Slovak side. :)

Today was a nice, pretty, easy ride along the banks of the green Danube (sorry folks, but it is most definitely not blue like the Waltz says--unless you're color blind or have excess imagination, but anyway...), completely flat and aided by a generous, strong head wind that allowed me to easily pedal at 36 kms/hr (and surely even faster had I had a larger front gear) without much effort for the first 65 kms or so. As the radweg headed inland to avoid unpaved roads and to catch the N63, though, the wind turned not so cooperative and even outright recalcitrant, thus lengthening with its opposition my trip time significantly.

Komárno is pretty, but small. I arrived there at around 4:30 p.m., so after finding a hotel I decided to walk over to Hungary at Komárom right across the river, mostly because, how many of you can say: "Oh, yeah, yesterday I walked over to Hungary..." Hmmm?

Yeah, I thought it would give me some cool bragging rights, so up I went to Komárom, which actually used to be the same city as Komárno, until the 1920 Treaty of Trianon ceded the territory north of the Danube to Czechoslovakia, and the southern part to Hungary.

Does this arbitrary splitting up of a city at the end of some World War sound familiar to you?

Yeah. Thought so, too.

2006-09-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

Bratislava.

Strolled over to the Hrad (castle) today. The building itself was not too exciting nor were most of the museum's exhibits housed in there, except one of them, which was dedicated to the fujare (fujara in English), which is a kind of long wooden flute that sounds at times a bit like a French horn and a bit like a baroque flute at others, and produces scales in the Myxolidian mode. It sounds pretty cool, actually. Would be nice to see if anyone has written a concerto for it, or it would be cool to write one (Ian, get cracking! ;)).

Anyway, Slovak folk music sounds a little bit like that Polish CD I bought that I told you about just a couple of posts ago.

But I think it is kind of cool that these folk traditions are still kept alive (like at that folk festival in Brno), in spite of all the modernization going on in Europe.

{shrug}

2006-09-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Wien-Hainburg-Bratislava.

Trip dist: 72 kms. Trip time: 4 hrs, 7 min. Tot dist: 5,719 kms.

Today's was a very flat, rather boring ride over gravel roads. The ride was boring because even though the radweg was perfect: on an elevated road between fields, it was flanked on both sides by trees so you could see nothing of the river or the scenery except for the next short-distance, 60 year-old German cyclist in front of you, and you know how short-distance cyclists are(;P).

On the plus side, there was one rather....corpulent woman short-distance cycling only about 1 or 2 kms/hr faster than I was when she passed me, which was of course the perfect condition for me to tail her and allow her to cut the wind for me.

She didn't seem to like it, though, for she kept glancing behind her when she heard me, and then sporadically hitting the brakes, which made my tailing her a bit....difficult, if not annoying (requiring more concentration and attention than should've otherwise been necessary, which is the whole point of tailing someone--saving effort and taking it easy, not increasing your effort, even if only mental), until she finally after some very short time decided to head off with her husband to take a break to the many fast-food/Biergarten type establishments thoughtfully scattered every km or two along the bike route, thus spoiling my very leisurely 25 km/hr coasting I had just been enjoying (minus the times I had to brake hard because the woman had just to tried to shake me off). Honestly! Like tailing people were an unusual or impolite thing to do!

Anyway, not too long afterwards I passed and then got caught up with again by a rather nice German couple from Hannover (are all the German cyclists from Hannover?!?) who rode with me pretty much all the way from there to Bratislava, and with whom I had a very lovely chat in my traditionally horrible German about anything and everything. They were nice company, and the husband was terrific about finding the twists and turns of the radweg, even without a map, when the road was badly signposted.

I arrived in Bratislava in the early afternoon, having parted ways with the Germans about 20 kms before to stop to buy something to drink, so after finding my Youth Hostel I strolled over to city center and finally settled for a good dinner in one of the downtown restaurants. Well, what is my surprise that soon after finishing my soup the German couple spotted me at the outside tables from their streetside strolling and asked if they could join me.

Naturally, I said yes (dinner is always so much nicer with good company), so we had an enjoyable evening doing some more chit-chatting about anything and everything (like making fun of Austrians, wondering aloud whether Turkey should or should not join the EU, and variegated topics like that). Turns out, they own a pony farm back near Hannover, with 47 horses, and when I said that every little girl wants a pony, the wife, with characteristic, good-natured German humor replied: "Yes, that's true. But only until they turn 16 or so, at which point they decide they want a boyfriend instead, and the pony is forgotten!". Ha ha.

I rather liked this couple. It was refreshing and entertaining, talking to them.

:)

2006-09-05T02:23:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Day 6.

I had liked Vienna so much from the first minute I saw it, that, having arrived on Wednesday evening, by Thursday morning I had already thought: "Man, I ought to get me a job and move here!", and by that same evening I was already submitting resumes to some DSP-type jobs I saw on the web.

By Friday, I had incredibly luckily already received a reply, and so as it happens today I ended up interviewing on-site at one very promising small engineering company.

So spent most of the day doing that (and waiting for today is part of the reason why I had been prolonging my stay in the city for so long over the past two days), and then in the afternoon I ran the errands preparatory to the continuation of my trip: buying cycling maps at the Freytag-Berndt, for instance.

I've decided I'm taking the Danube Radweg all the way to Budapest. First of all, because cycling by the rivers is pretty, secondly, because this radweg goes exactly through Bratislava, and thirdly, because as it happens Esterbauer publishes the most beautiful maps of these kinds of radwegs in their cycline line (in English, too!). These little booklets are fairly cheap (only something like 12 Euros), and include not just maps but path descriptions with variants, sights with historic blurbs, photos, recommendations on places to stay, and places for eating and bike fixing. They are fantastic, and their Donauradweg, Teil 3 covers precisely my next stretch of road from Vienna all the way to Budapest (about 350 kms).

Anyway, so what did I do for my last night in Vienna?

I had a delicious, very buttery vitello tonnato at a nice restaurant with piano bar in the old city center. It was very turn of the century, nostalgic, romantic evening, appropriate for such a pretty, full of traditions city.

2006-09-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Day 5.

Vienna is a city full of music: I pass by some buildings in a quiet part of town....and the sounds of someone practicing cello reach me from an unseen window. I return to the Youth Hostel room in mid-afternon, someone practicess arpeggios on a piano. Not to mention, of course, the numerous street musicioans, concerts sold as if in a market, sheet music and instrument stores, and museums.

What a nice city for one's ears.

Strolled by the houses by Friedensreich Hundertwasser (remember him? He's the architect who built the beautiful Martin-Luther Gymnasium in Wittenberg that I told you about) in the afternoon. They are way cool. I would show you pictures but stupid Streamload/Mediamax destroyed them in their wonderful "forced upgrade"/migration/move. The best I can do is to show you one very short movie that unfortunately doesn't do the houses any justice.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: DO NOT USE STREAMLOAD/MEDIAMAX FOR YOUR FILE STORAGE NEEDS.

2006-09-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Day 4.

Woke up at 7:00 a.m. this morning (remember, it is Sunday, today) because I wanted to catch the Vienna Boys' Choir at the Burgkapelle (they sing there very Sunday at 9:15 Mass, but naturally you want to arrive early), but it looks like I was one week too soon: the season starts on September 7th, not September 3rd. Hmmm...I was 1 week too late for the Berlin Philharmonic, and 1 week too early for the Vienna Boys' Choir. I haven't been too lucky with the timing for good music during this trip, huh? :( Oh well.

Anyway, today I saw the Lipizzaner horse dressage exhibition (yesterday was just the tour of the stables, but the real dressage performance was today). See for instance the multiple videos I managed to sneak or sometimes even unabashedly shamelessly take in spite of the several personal warnings I received from the ushers as to the fact that such activity was explicitly forbidden. Oh well. My excuse is: once in a lifetime opportunity, you know? Besides, I wasn't using flash or making noise, nor will I use the photos for publicity purposes. Oh wait, I am making them public on the web. Forgot about that. You won't tell them, will you?

Now, the horses here are very pretty, indubitably, but honestly, Mexican "charreadas" are far more exciting: the horses move faster, the costumes are more colorful, and the feats look more dangerous and bold. Here, everything was so sober and disciplined and the hour and a half of Strauss and weenie Mozart to accompany (background music) the exercises made it....boring, after a while. If you think that both horse and rider go to school for 10 years for this....

Anyway, afterwards I headed over to the Leopold Museum at the nearby Museumsquartier where they apparently have a nice collection of Gustav Klimt and which I very much wanted to see, because he is my mother's favorite painter.

Now, Klimt is kind of cool not just because of his original, characteristic gold and colorfully ornamented paintings, but because, like Picasso, Klimt too started in the classical tradition, he was a painter first, an innovator later, and had the combination of execution and talent spark I claim you need before any of your creations can be called "art". But with Klimt (and unlike Picasso) even in his classic portraits his lines are loose, free: even in these early, traditional paintings you can literally see the spark of genius!

I didn't like the way the Leopold museum mixed-and-matched one room with Klimt and then the next one right adjacent to it with Schiele, though, it was a bit confusing: better start with one painter, stick with him and finish before you transition to the next, otherwise it rather feel like you just finished watching only 1 chapter of the "telenovela", and you're left in very cruel suspense!

Anyway, Egon Schiele lays down color with the palette/knife thingy (I don't remember it's proper name, when I think about it I'll let you know), then smoothes it with his fingers, it seems. He doesn't use a brush at all, only barely with thin diluted paint for outlines which he lays after using very thick dry paint for background.

As I was observing this a woman curator hassled me for standing too close to the picture even though I was standing well behind the thin metal barrier 30 cms off the ground. Supposedly, because my shadow would set off the alarm! What is it with German speakers? They seem to always find some very idiotic reason to get on my case when I'm visiting museums. {sigh}

Anyway, back to Schiele. You can tell he uses his fingers simply because there are fingerprint marks on the smoothed paint. But then in another picture, he lay the paint thick with the paddle, waited for it to dry a bit, and then run a little rake through it and used the cracks that thus appeared on the dry paintas part of the rock texture for the picture! Cool huh? So he was kind of "paint-sculpturing", that is, lay the paint thick, then sculpt it using fingers or other tools. Interesting.

Also, I'm afraid I cannot show you at the moment (I was unable to take pictures of this), but his signatures are like little artworks themselves, and they're never quite the same, though they're always rather encased in a square or hinted quadrilateral. His house paintings, too, use neat perspectives. See for instance his "Der Häuserbogen (Inselstadt) 1915" a.k.a "Crescent of Houses". The trees too (lower left-hand corner in the picture), are kind of neat: geometric, with lots of angles, the holes are triangles, no curves, the only curves caused by clumping of such constituent triangles. Way cool.

He tends to like orange a lot, especially around woman figures, and his palette is dominated by orange, ochre, brown, red, yellow, black earth colors, very few greens and blues and purples and when they do pop out the effect is incredibly eye-catching and refreshing, see for instance "Mütter mit Zwei Kindern II 1915" or the "Haus mit Schindeldach 1915" (sorry, the colors on the web pictures are not as bright as they are in real life, unfortunately).

You know, Schiele died at 28! And all that, so much work done already!

I think I rather like it when the painters just lay down the paint, then deal with it later, shape it by hand or brush, but such that the painting is no longer just painting but a painting and sculpture blend into one. Contrast this with the scientific, precise, thin brushstroke and deliberate placing of paint--makes more realistic-looking picutres, but the first way shows more...feelings. "The essence", that is. {shrug}

The New School of Vienna (Kokolschka, Blavensteiner, etc) is a bit like the French impressionists but a little bit more bold (with colors and the laying down of paint), unapologetic, uncontrolled. Texturizing becomes important. Take for instance Koloman Moser. For trees, he uses the texture of the canvas itself to give the impression of individual leaves! Now, Herbert Boeckl, he laid the paint so thick it comes up 2 cm from the canvas! He probably had to wait a looong time for the bottom paint to dry before he could layer more on. That man must've had a patience of steel, though from his careless outlines (see for instance his "Portrait of Josef von Wertheimstein") you wouldn't know it! Now, Egger-Lienz would've made a socialists' dream painter--a good part of his works seem to be about rural life or very flatteringly portrayed, with low perspectives from ground up and making them appear majestic, farmers at work!

Anyway, after hanging out for a bit at the Leopold, I headed right across the quartier to the Museum of Moderne Kunst, where I found nothing that attracted my attention for more than half a second except for this short film by Rashid Masharawi called "Waiting". They didn't show the whole film, just a 10 minute or so section in which he is trying to audition actors for an unspecified film about...."waiting." It is a very nice section, because he is sitting there in front of the camera, tells the actors: "O.K., for your audition, I need to see how you 'wait'", and then sits back and waits around for the actors to do something.

Now, the actors are obviously very interested in getting the part, so they ask tons of questions, like: "Yes, but what character am I playing?"

Rashid: "You are playing a character that is waiting."

Actress: "Yes, but what is the character like? Is she a mother, what is her personality like?"

Rashid: "She is a character that is waiting. Show me how you wait."

Actress: "But yes, but what is the plot about?"

Rashid: "It is unimportant now. I just want to see you waiting."

and so on and so forth, Rashid impassible calmly repeating always: "Just show me how you wait." until the actress finally and sits down on the chair provided and attempts to act "someone who is waiting" by humming and looking at her watch every 4 seconds (and therefore not doing a very good job).

Or another actress, who finally gives up, sits down, and lights a cigarette, offers one to Rashid, and they sit there for several long minutes in front of a static camera just smoking and....waiting.

Yet another [more experienced, and evidently very sharp/talented/clueful] actor:

"But what am I waiting for? Waiting for a lover is not the same as waiting for the bus, which is also not the same as waiting at a hospital for surgery. Which one am I waiting for?"

Rashid: "It doesn't matter, you pick, I just want to see how you wait."

Again, the exchange going nowhere for several minutes, until the actor finally bursts out with:

"Forget it! I don't want to wait! You wait! I'm leaving!!"

It was a very neat film clip and I have no doubt the full length ought to be just as good, which pleased me since it showed that at least this contemporary art museum's exhibit was not a complete waste of time like most of the others.

2006-09-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Day 3.

Today I took a tour of the Spanische Hofreitschule or in other words the Lipizzaner Horse Stables and Dressage School of Vienna.

Now, this school is very renowned and has a horse training tradition going back something like 430 years, ordered by no less than Emperor Leopold I, with also a very strong tradition of using the absolutely best, most pure Lipizzaner horses that are bred at Piber (in western Styria) and of which only the horses with most "potential" are sent to the school for training. Each of these horses has a bloodline that is well documented and goes back all the way to the times of the Imperial Court Stud of Lipica, we're talking 16th century here, no joke.

What's more, the training of the horses takes something like 10 years, and the training of riders takes no less than 4, and the riders get promoted little by little, from assistant/student doing menial jobs like cleaning the stables to trainer of young horses until finally you get to ride the horse you've trained yourself (you are in charge of 4 horses per year) and get it to perform some of the most difficult and rigorous dressage tricks in international exhibitions and the like.

The Vienese take this whole tradition thing very seriously. :)

I didn't do much else today. I was very tired. Could've been from the long walk from city center to Schönbrunn yesterday, or it could be simply that I may be catching a cold or something. {shrug}

2006-09-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Day 2.

Aaah, Vienna. Stunningly beautiful, pristine clean.

Hung out at the downtown for a bit for a taste of classical Vienna with tea and a cake for breakfast in the morning, then strolled over to Castle Schönbrunn, which is what makes Vienna a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Vienna is so clean and pretty, even the poorer areas look beautiful. Nothing is rundown, repairs to building façades are done immediately, public lawns are impeccably manicured, there is not a single cigarette butt on the sidewalks and streets, and there is no graffitti (or the very, very little there is blends impeccably with the city decor, such that it looks artistic, even, as if it belonged there, or was put in intentionally. You don't believe me? Take a look here).

Anyway, a cool thing about the Scönbrunn Castle exhibit is that they have stuff written in Braille and things you can touch, like sections of Ananas/Court damask which was put on the tapestries, or little pieces of wood panellings and wall stucco decor, which you can touch as much as you like. Cool, huh?

Then at the end if you stroll around a bit in the gardens they have little entertaining labyrinth gardens and finger labyrinths the movies of which you can see for instance here.

And to see the kinds of unusually talented street performers that gather in the main square of downtown Vienna after dusk, you can take a look for instance here.

2006-08-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Day 1.

Strolled over to downtown Vienna today, and you know what was the very first thing that hit me?

O.K., it wasn't the first thing, it was like, the 2nd or third, but the first couple of things that hit me: that Vienna was the cleanest city I've ever been to, and the one (or one of the ones, I forgot about Rome) with the most beautiful architecture clustered together in one place, was more or less, not expected, exactly, but rather what one imagined Europe to be, kind of, so it wasn't quite surprising, but rather...satisfying/vindicating, I guess, so it kind of just registered in the subconscious and doesn't really require much gushing about.

But anyway, the 3rd thing that hit me, or more precisely the first thing that consciously hit me was this super cool University bookstore right at the edge of the old town, with tons and tons of books about law (there must be a very good law school here), business law, and economics, but most importantly LOTS and LOTS of excellent books on the EU: policies, regulations, history, treaties, comission reports, you name it, everything you wanted to know about the EU, they had it in a book: its how it was formed, its economic policy, effects of migration on wages, dossiers on labor laws, studies on the liberalisation law's effect on the service industry, I literally mean everything, and both in German and in English. I could've spent hours in there.

Isn't it a delight, to find a freely available and easy access treasure-trove repository of information?

{sigh}

And then what happened: right across the street just as soon as I lifted my head as I (very regretfully, I tell you) walked out from the University bookstore, what do I behold?

The Freytag-Berndt bookstore.

Oooooh. Oh my God!!

Now, for those of you who may not know, Freytag & Berndt is a very renowned Austrian map company, publishing not only atlases (roads, biking and hiking), but holds an extensive collection of GIS raster data and Geodetic info, etc, and basically they are not just your "buy your tourist maps here" company, but mean serious business with users in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry. Anyway, this bookstore, though, was the "for the vacation trip planner" consumer, as it was stocked and its shelves filled to the hilt with every possible tourist guide to any country in the world published by pretty much every possible tourist guide publisher you could think of (Lonely Planet, Let's Go, Michelin, Guide Routard, Hungarian-published guides, etc), and in several different languages (German, French, and English the most common, of course, but also some in Czech, Italian, and Hungarian). And the maps? Sure, and what was nice they were not just the F&B maps, but maps by other companies like (my now very much disliked company) EuroAtlas, Cartographia (pretty good Hungarian company), Michelin, etc. AND, not just road atlases, but cycling and hiking maps, and even nautical maps. Not to mention, of course, the phrasebooks and "learn Chinese in 5 minutes a day"-type books and CDs, plus the non-fiction travelogues, and coffee table exotic location photo books. Oh lordy!

What a beautiful city, Vienna. :)

The day today was rather rainy and dreary, winterlike, even. I had to buy me a jacket (if the weather is to be like this when I cross the Carpathians I will definitely need it!), but even in spite of the autumnal darkness and cold, the city still looked beautiful.

2006-08-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

Brno-Mikulov-Vienna.

Trip dist: 124 kms. Trip time: 7 hrs, 22 min. Tot dist: 5,647 kms.

Hmm...today's ride felt a little bit like being in one of those anime cartoon movies, a la Hayao Miyazaki. Intermittent rain and sun bathed the scenery in some rather eldritch light, and it got soaking wet and then completely dry only to get soaked again in a process that repeated itself several times, and once nearing Vienna I could actually literally measure the speed of the approaching rain cloud, for my front wheel was just behind its shadow, and could never quite catch up, so going back to the anime theme, it was as if I was literally racing the cloud and running away from the rain (or chasing the sun, for you optimistic types ;)), for it was raining behind me (and rain clouds brought with them strong winds and cold), but just 30 cms beyond from where my front wheel reached it was still sunny and warm. Very strange.

I had miscalculated the distance to Vienna, too. The 60 kms I had told you about before was not 60 kms from Brno, but it is 60 kms from Brno to the border. So the point is, thinking I had a short ride I started rather late. Still, I was happy approaching the border (in spite of the very dark ominous cloud chasing me, which was of course an interesting extra incentive, apart from the late start, to pedal faster). It is very comforting knowing that you will once more be able to speak again! Prospect of loneliness thus reduced, I couldn't stop humming "An der schönen blauen Donau" by Strauss all the way to Vienna. :)

I arrived, as it turns out, at the outskirts of Vienna at dusk and to get to the YH you need to traverse the whole city, so it soon fell into nighttime, and therefore I didn't see much during my approach to the center, though the building outlines looked pretty against the night sky.

The Vienese are nice, though. No one scolded me, even though I didn't bother to take out the front and back bike lights required by law for night biking, and at the roads during the day the cars would stop in the middle of the highway, just as in Germany, but not to scold me this time, but to offer me a "ride" instead (funny, ha ha. Or scary, depends. It was daytime, so it was more on the amusing side). But this, the "ride offerings", the "cloud from" fleeing, the capricious and changeable weather, the dusk-turned-to-night arrival, the Strauss soundtrack that wouldn't stop playing in my head, all contributed very peculiarly to the whole "anime" feel.

{shrug}.

2006-08-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Brno, Day 2.

Had to change hostels yesterday because the one I was currently at is actually a school and since the term was starting today they kicked all the travellers out.

Which was great because as I mentioned in the movie from yesterday I ended up staying in this dorm for university music students (it just slightly pricier than the Youth Hostel, but not by much) across the street, and which is so luxurious: you get a suite with two rooms housing 2 people per room, with shower and bathroom shared between only the 4 people in the suite, it comes with ironing board and closets, and each 2-person room has a fridge and a TV! Had I only known this sooner....would've saved myself the two nights I had to sleep in the benches of an empty room at the YH due to the cacophonies of snores inevitable product of housing 12 people per dorm room (I have a very light sleep and as you know sounds of any kind tend to occupy my full attention--to the point of distraction---when awake).

Anyway, caught "Das Perfekte Dinner" on German TV this morning (oh, did I forget to mention? In this dorm the TV is no ordinary TV, it is cable, so you get channels from all over Europe, including CNN, plus the usual popular American shows like "Crossing Jordan" and the like. Again, had I known this sooner...{sigh}). It is a type of reality show kind of like "blind date". Basically, you have these 6 strangers and each week one of them prepares dinner for the 5 others, and at the end of 6 weeks someone votes on which the best dinner host was.

Today was the first episode and we got to see this 43 year-old guy prepare dinner for the 5 unknown guests (after that, the guests are known to each other and obviously the audience---the cast doesn't change week-to-week). He took his job very seriously and we got to see how he went shopping for quality ingredients, how he planned the menu, then cut to what the guests thought they could imagine the cook to be like based on the menu choices, etc, then cut back to the cook to be doing more cooking, etc. blah blah blah.

But anyway, in-between the food preparing, the "table decorator" arrived. That's right. If this sounds odd, keep in mind this is for a TV show so it is a bit understandable if our German cook calls up some sophisticated guns to prettify the flower arrangements and make a good impression on these unknown guests, for they could be pretty much anyone (he doesn't get any information a-priori on the guests, and funnily enough, one of the women happens to be a hippie vegetarian type, which of course forshadows some interesting scenes when the lamb chops arrive, but I digress), right?

But what I found uncanny, very...."German", if you will, was when the cook guy protagonist pops out the tablecloth and lays it on the table, puts his hand to his chin as he ponders which way to orient it, then leaves the dining room for a minute and returns with....can you believe this? An iron.

The guy was ironing the freaking tablecloth!!!

I nearly fell off my chair, laughing at that one! :D

Anyway, ran errands today. My silly picture hosting company did a stupid forced "upgrade" (you couldn't opt out) so the internet uploading of pictures was excruciatingly, torturously slow and frustrating. Again, folks, think twice about using streamload/mediamax for your file storage needs.

Afterwards I headed over to the Villa Tugendhat, which is what makes Brno a UNESCO World Heritage site, but it was closed (it is only open Wed through Sun), which was a pity, because it is one of the few UNESCO WHS that are modern. But here's a linky to their website. Oh well. At least I got to see a bit of the Brno suburbs, which look rather like the poorer villages of Mexico, except near the villa, where it looked just slightly more affluent, as it was cleaner, had more flowers, and they had houses instead of concrete ugly-collored apartments.

2006-08-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

Olomouc.

Zmrzlina.

Visited the beautiful historic centre of Olomouc today, where I had a nice lunch, no less, in the house where papa Mozart stayed with Wolfgang and Nannerl in 1767. Neat, huh? (Ian, you jealous? ;P).

By the way, do you know how you say "ice-cream" in Czech?

Zmrzlina.

What a happy-sounding word, isn't it? :D

You can almost hear the shimmering of the ice-crystals in it. How appropriate. :)

2006-08-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

Telč/Třebíč

Today I day-tripped to teeny-weeny UNESCO WHS villages/towns of Telč and Třebíč.

It was a bit of an adventure buying the bus ticket from the station at Brno, since no one there spoke English and though I tried to read things off the script in my phrasebook my pronounciation was so bad no one understood a single thing I said. But then of course one eventually concludes that simplest is best so you just approach the window and say nothing more than:

"Prosim Telč" or "Prosim Třebíč"

and in reply the very sharp ticket clerk gives me back a piece of paper with the numbers: 20 and 15:30 or 31 and 10:30 and you figure out it is bus number 20 at 3:30 p.m. or bus 31 at 10:30 a.m., so off I went.

Anyway, Telč is a very tiny village with not much of interest other than its main square, which you can see in under 1 hour, visit to the castle (zámek) included. Most of the morning, therefore, was just waiting around for the connections of the bus to Třebíč on the way back to Brno and the super short visit to the city center after the castle tour which lasted 45 minutes and the 20 extra I had left between the connections was more than sufficient to walk across the town square and take the necessary pictures.

I arrived in Třebíč by mid-afternon and submitted myself to a horribly/unnecessarily long tour of the UNESCO WHS Basilica of St. Procope before heading over to the old Jewish quarter which is one of the best preserved ones (and now very lavishly restored and cleaned up) of its kind in this country, and where for the first time, I think, I saw what appeared to be Roma gypsies, who have since (i.e. after the Jewish WWII deportations) settled in this quarter of town. I was rather curious to catch a glimpse of them since I'd heard a lot about them so far, and found them to look a bit like some of the peoples of Mexico, especially the little girls, with beautiful dark hair, large brown eyes and bronze skin.

The Jewish cementery was interesting, all the captions were in German even when the names had Czech derivations. No surprises there: Bohemia was part of Austria-Hungary, as you know, until the end of WWI.

2006-08-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Brno, Day 1.

What was my delight and surprise this morning when I stepped out of the Hostel to walk right into some kind of streetside folk music and dance festival. 'Twas fantastic! Basically these groups of kids aged 10-18 do a couple of dances at one of the main downtown street corners and then head off to the next corner, while at the corner they were previously at another group quickly comes to take its place, and they bring their own musicians (kids, too, same age) playing violins, contrabass, flutes, and singing.

And how colorful the dances are! Playful, happy, flirtatioius, tender, romantic, and cheerful like all peasant dances are.

The music and its harmonies are interesting. When I got a Polish folk music CD years ago I thought it was unlistenable. But seeing this music ("seeing", ha ha, but it is true!) in the context of the dances, that perception really changes, and you can ever start to see the feeling behind the melody (see the green "gypsylike" movie where it seems to be about someone getting married, perhaps? Look at how the man looks at the girl, what a tender look! Would make any girl melt! {sigh!}).

What a lucky day. :)

2006-08-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

Havlíčkův Brod-Jilhava-Brno.

Trip dist: 123 kms. Trip time: 8 hrs, 52 mins. Tot dist: 5, 524 kms.

This should've been an easy and short ride but wasn't. Even though from Jilhava (elev 524 m) to Brno (elev 241 m) there is a net elevation loss of almost 300 meters the road is so hilly that it made the ride vey tiring and slow going, in spite of the favourable wind.

Also on the downhills (steep ones, at that) near the cities (the Czechs seem to like to build their cities on valleys surrounded by mountains/hills) there was a lot of stop and go traffic so it was a bit of a wear on the brakes.

But glad I'm in Brno (and it is kind of cool to say it, let it roll off your lips as you lengthen the traffic jam of consonants at the beginning: "Brrrrr....no" :) Hey. Don't make fun of me. I live for these kinds of simple pleasures, the sounds, the feeling of the word as it vibrates off your tongue and draws a little circle on your lips...{shrug}). Only 60 more kilometers to Vienna, which I've been looking forward to, perhaps to even catch the tail end of Mozart's 250th Summer Festival.

2006-08-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

Prague-Kolín-Havlíčkův Brod

Trip dist: 118 kms. Trip time: 8 hrs, 3 min. Tot dist: 5,401 kms.

This was a very tiring, boring ride, with a net elevation gain and with lots of hills. The countryside in some parts was a bit reminsicent of Italy, with poplar trees lining the landscape at some points, which was the only nice, nostalgic thing about it. At the gas stations one still gets "service with a snarl": one woman even shouted at me when I asked her to repeat things since I only know 3 words in Czech (always, when travelling to a foreign-language speaking country learn first to say: "Please", "Thank you", and "Hello!". You'd be amazed at how much you can get by with simply that, usually! :)).

But one must've led a very unhappy life, if it makes you this cranky at nothing.

{shrug}.

2006-08-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Prague, Day 3.

Hmm...

I didn't accomplish much by way of sight-seeing today. Mostly I hung out near the Charles bridge (I really like seeing the people) and Mala Strana again, then towards the end of the day went to the Mucha Museum, which, disappointingly, consists of only 1 room housing a few paintings of renowned Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha, and with a rather overpriced ticket, at that.

But again, as I said, for such situations, there's always the internet.

{shrug}.

2006-08-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

Kutna Hora.

Hmm...did you know, that the only bombing that Prague sustained (and the reason Prague has such a well preserved center is precisely because it was one of the few cities that sustained almost no damage during WWII) was one American bombing mistake, where they were meant to head over to Dresden but, goes the story, the skies were cloudy, they got confused, and ended up bombing Prague instead? Funny, ha ha.

Do you hear me laughing, though? :|

Anyway, headed over today to Kutna Hora (UNESCO World Heritage Site!) on a nice tour guided by a very handsome gentleman in his early thirties (dark hair, hazel eyes, carmine lips and pale ivory skin...oooh!), and while we were driving on the bus we passed by an old Cistercian Monastery, which was turned into a tobacco manufacture by Josephus II, and which is now owned by Philip Morris, who now uses it to build Marlboros in what used to be a beautiful, peaceful old building designed for meditation, work and study. Funny, ha ha?

I'm not laughing yet, either. :|

Anyway, one of the interesting things about Kutna Hora is its ossuary, which is unique from all the others I've shown you is that here the pretty bone patterns are more elaborate. Now, in that shield in the picture, do not miss the little "joke": the bird skeleton pecking at the skull's empty socket where the eye used to be.

Anyway, Kutna Hora is a sleepy little town, though its cathedral of Santa Barbara is way cool, with its art nouveau stained-glass widnows which I cannot show you, since pictures are not allowed. Though we did get a complimentary picture CD with the tour package so I may try to link to that when I get to a better equipped and more relaxed computer facility. :)

Our handsome guide then took us to a nice restaurant where we had some delicious Czech food, I had a nice steak with cream and berry sauce. It was sweet and therefore a bit unusual, but it came with those delicious bread dumplings so typical of this country and which I have been gladly eating for the past two or three days. Besides, David the guide was sitting across the table from me so the views were pretty nice also. :D

In the evening back in Prague, I catched a show of the very strange, absurdist Black Theatre, which is rather cool: you go in and it is pitch black onstage, and then you see all these fluorescent-painted figures (i.e. fish, flowers, actor's faces) floating by on the black background and doing flips since the stage is actually lighted by UV lights ("black" lights, as you know) which makes white things brighter and this kind of paint glow, and it doesn't matter that you don't speak Czech because the actors speak little and the little they do is made purposely to be gibberish so even a child can "understand".

And I put "understand" in quotes because with fish flying and flowers doing backflips in response to an actor's funny face expression, the plot doesn't typically make much sense anyway.

But it is a bit like walking into someone else's dream, and that's kinda cool. ;)

2006-08-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

Prague, Day 2.

Ha ha. Well, the Prague Opera is definitely the place to see and be seen. Why, the opera boxes have strategically placed half-mirrors positioned in such a way that you can have a nice view of the rest of the theater, of the boxes, that is, that would be normally obscured by your angle of vision to the stage, so that even with your head turned towards the performance, you can easily check out what the object of your affection seated several boxes away from you is doing by a quick glance at the looking glass.

Neat, huh?

Anyway, the reason I went there tonight (if you know me in person you know full well that I hate operas) was simply because they were giving a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni using original period costumes and set designs just like when it was premiered in Prague back in 1787 (to great success, I might add). But so what, right? Elisa doesn't like the opera anyway, nor does she like Mozart much, either. But I figured I had to pay my respects to Mozart year 2006, in honor of Mozart's 250th anniversary.

;P

In the morning, I went across the river (it is the Vltava river, not the Elbe or Labe in Czech anymore) to see the Castle, seat of the Prague government, and St. Vitus' Cathedral (which is inside the castle complex).

They're pretty, huh? :)

Anyway, I had a very nice morning stroll across the Charles Bridge which with all its artists was a bit reminiscent of Paris' Montmartre, and Mala Strana, the part of town near the castle with all its shops and host to all the consulates and embassies.

There are so many people here, lots of tourists and youngsters and kids and everything, it is a very cheery place, the old quarters of Prague.

2006-08-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Prague, Day 1.

Ran errands in the morning (i.e. find internet cafes, nearby tearoom and bakery for morning breakfast, find supermarket/post office, etc).

In the afternoon, I headed to Josefov, the nearby Jewish quarter (my hostel is very nicely located only 1 block away from the main center square) where I admired the amazingly beautiful Spanish Synagogue built in moorish style and its insides decorated with golden arabesques. Incredible.

Now, pretty much the whole of Josefov in Prague has been made into a museum, you can buy a combined ticket that lets you in most of the monuments (cementery, a couple of synagogues, exhibits, etc), which is not, by the way, all that cheap. Only one building is excluded on this combo ticket, and it is the Old-New Synagogue, which is the oldest Synagogue in Europe that is still in use.

Now, if you thought it a bit odd that one has to pay to visit a "church" (I've always thought that worship should be a free exercise, and admiring where others worship should be free too, as it is a kind of "worship by proxy", but anyway, I am not here at the moment to talk to you about politics...), imagine what I thought when I discovered that the price to visit this particular one was no less than 200 Czech crowns, which is a little over two thirds of the price of the admissions ticket to all the other Jewish Museum (i.e. Josefov) buildings and exhibits combined (and for you currency conversion weenies let me point out that 200 CZK is almost 10 bucks--nine, to be exact!).

Well, the Old-New Synagogue must then be a jaw-dropping sight then, right? Even if the exterior is deceptively...ascetic?

Nah. The interior is just as barren and featureless as the outside. There is only 1 dilapidated room you can visit, and on the outside, a stone or two ruins of the older parts of the building. My advice to you? Skip it. The ticket price is unabashed unarmed robbery.

Anyway, in the evening I went to listen to the Dvořák Symphony Orchestra play the Prague/NY master's 5th (a.k.a. the 9th, or in other words the sublimely beautiful, "From the New World", probably my favorite symphony, a fitting performance for this wanderer's travels in Prague, you'd agree), which prompted my unvoiced remarks:

"Hmm...how old is the director of the Dvořák Symphony Orchestra? So young, and in so much of a hurry...."

Honestly, this has got to be the worst performance of the 9th I've heard, and that includes the uncoordinated and oft out of tune Guadalajara Symphony. The concert hall provided very good sonority, though (as you could tell by the overwhelming brass and the woodwinds, whose monotone counterpoint easily drowned out all of the strings during what should've been beautiful violin melodic passages and cello fugues). Oh well.

Luckily, for such situations there's always the internet.

2006-08-19T03:59:00.000-07:00

Litoměřice-Mělník-Prague.

Trip dist: 71 kms. Time: 4 hrs, 50 min. Tot dist: 5,283 kms.

Street hawkers.

Wow. I rolled into Prague this afternoon (short, fairly easy/uneventful ride along the national roads--ditched the Elbe Radweg shortly after setting off from Litoměřice, too much pain in the neck trying to figure out the sineage, and car roads are much faster) to discover that every single church near the city center is hosting a concert this evening, and some even twice a day (6 p.m. and 9 p.m.).

The competition for classical music performances is amazing here, so much so, that peddlers on the street hawk "Concert! 6 p.m. so and so church!" to passerbys as if they were selling crockery wares or something.

My kind of paradise. :)

Except that unfortunately this competition doesn't really do much to lower the price of a ticket: at an average of about 15 Euros this is approximately what you'd expect to pay for a church concert in the U.S. {shrug}

Ha ha, and I, that had been even thinking of cutting the trip short in Berlin, what with the dissapointment at the lack of music up to that point, can you believe it? :D

Glad I didn't. ;). And you betcha I'm listening here in Prague to all that I hadn't been able to listen to over the past 4 months [gets dreamy-eyed...]. Aaaah....{sigh}.

2006-08-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

Dresden-Pirna-Bad Schandau-Děčín-Litoměřice

Trip dist: 126 kms. Trip time: 8 hrs, 59 min. Tot dist: 5,212 kms.

Well, just in case you were wondering, how do I quickly type all those special characters on top of the consonants in the names of the towns above? Simple! Cut and paste from the Czech webpages! (yeah, it is a pain dealing with the html stuff since Firefox doesn't even read it correctly anyway unless you use the numerical symbol number, and who has the time to look all of them up anyway?)

Anyway, I decided to head towards Prague on the Elbe Radweg, though I wasn't particularly looking forward to the extra 50 kms (as I've said before, one of the many drawbacks of the radwegs is that they tend to meander a lot more, and in this case, the river meanders quite a bit), because as it happens, there is this great German National Park only about 30 kms from Dresden known as Sächsische Schweiz, which has really pretty mountains, awesome sandstone formations perfect for rock-climbing, and in general lots of very nice lancscapes, and as it happens the Elbe Radweg cuts just right across it, and judging from the rave reviews this park had gotten in the Youth Hostel at Dresden and the pretty pamphlets I had seen at the reception advertising the hiking tours to Bastei peak, well, it seemed like the park was something not to miss.

So I very much enjoyed the ride today, in spite of the fact that it started raining right after my little breakfast/lunch break on top of a hill at the entrance of the park, where I had no canopy cover, and which you can probably tell if not from the misty pictures at least from my frizzy hair (see for instance picture above ;P), and the fact that the ride was extremely tiring (the bike path signals say you need to take the ferry at one point and head for the shore on the opposite side of the river, then continue there for a while before eventually crossing back over a bridge, but engineer Elisa hates these kinds of "inneficiencies" so I tried to continue along the bike path even after, though it had started paved, it turned to gravel, then dirt, and eventually....an uphill path cum wooden staircase for hikers. Pushwalking the bicycle up that became out of the question after two hikers coming down said that the trail peaked in about an hour's hike uphill, so back to the ferry station it was. After arriving to the ferry station where all the short-distance/touring cyclists were sitting around waiting for the ferry does Elisa now take the ferry? No, she tries to cut across on the minor auto roads marked on the car road atlas to try to catch the bike path after the bridge crossing, without knowing, of course, that this requires an 18% slope climb which the road atlas, having no gradient markings, does not show. Imagine climbing up that when you're carrying 30 kgs of panniers and the oily road is wet and slippery from the rain, and your sneakers give you no traction from wear and use. Yup. A group of 4 German cyclists--1 male and 3 women kindly took turns helping me push the bike from behind for half of the slope, which I found most kind, and they most comical. Oh well. Luckily the 18% climb lasted only about 1 km or so. I did save myself what...like 2 kms of riding with this little "shortcut". But obviously I probably saved something like negative 40 minutes, in terms of time, waiting for the ferry included. :P. Lesson learned: Elisa, after you've decided to follow the radweg, then follow it to the hilt, no "shortcutting" or "brilliant variations". That only works when you're playing chess, and then only if you're Kasparov. :))

Anyway, there were lots of short-distance cyclists on the bike path today, which was comforting, because not knowing the language can make one very lonely.

2006-08-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

Dresden, Day 2.

Visited the Protestant Frauenkirche today. It is that church that got squashed to the ground by a direct hit bomb during the (infamous) RAF raids towards the end of WWII. The reconstruction of the church has just recently been completed using some of the original bricks as I tell you about in the movie I took yesterday, and looks very beautiful from the outside.

Now, judging from the amazingly long lines the visitor must submit himself to prior to visiting the interior (longer than any I've ever seen to visit any church, including St. Peter's), one would think that it had to be amazing inside.

And sure, it is quite beautiful, being brand new, but as it is kind of re-built and a Protestant church at that (which tend to be known for avoiding excessive ornamentation) it wasn't all that much prettier than any other Cathedral in any other big city.

I guess my point is: the interior, I don't think, justifies the long lines, and the extraordinarily obnoxious behavior (i.e. pushing, stepping on people's toes, etc) of the crowds inside. {shrug}

Anyway, so. Tomorrow: should I go the 150 kms to Prague on the Bundestrasse 170, or take the Elbe Radweg for 201 kms instead?

What do you think?

2006-08-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

Dresden, Day 1.

So. Dresden is divided into two sections, the Altstadt (old part of town), like most European cities, and the Neustadt, across the river from the old part of town. I'm staying in the Neustadt and it is pretty nice: its streets have lots of shops, pubs, ethnic restaurants (can you imagine? Cuban and African restaurant here in Germany! What a welcome surprise that was!) and bazaars, that give it a rather warm, "bohemian" feel, not very unlike the Haight and Ashbury over in San Francisco. Probably because there are a lot of immigrants in this part of town.

Anyway, today was errand day. Bought a map of the Czech Republic, watched a movie, and went a-hunting for a place to get my hair cut. It has been 4 months since my last haircut and things are getting unruly (ponytails every day can be so...boring!). And, it HAS to be done here, in Dresden. It just HAS to.

Why?

Try explaining: "Take four centimeters all around, front bangs to just below the chin and fading to length, slightly layered on the back" in Czech.

:P

2006-08-15T03:25:00.000-07:00

Finsterwalde-Elsterwerda-Meissen-Dresden.

Trip dist: 92 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 15 min. Tot dist: 5,086 kms.

Celebrations V.

Note to self: If at all possible, try to avoid planning routes through towns with names starting with "Ober-" (i.e. Oberelda) or "Hohen-" (i.e. Hoherleipisch). The name prefix is no mere caprice, indeed, as the name suggests, arriving into these places will, invariably, no exceptions, guaranteed, by necessity involve some sort of steep hill climbing.

Anyway, hmm. The 5000th kilometer anniversary was...well, it happened, you see, very shortly after I left Finsterwalde (only 6 kms, as you know), just as I was getting the hang of pedalling, so to speak, and to top it off, it had just started raining right after I left the main town square, so I didn't really stop for the traditional, required celebratory ice-cream, which was a bit anti-climactic.

Still, the rest of the ride (apart from the initial rain, that is), wasn't too bad. Took a small "indirectour" about 15 kms north of Dresden to catch the Elbe Radweg, which follows, as the name suggests, the Elbe River and which one can catch from as far up North as Cuxhaven, all the way up in the North Sea right close to Denmark, all the way down southeast to Dresden, thus traversing the full length of Germany, and finally straight into Prague.

People seem a lot friendlier here on this radweg. Some of them even said "hi" to me before I did. So in response to this of course I invented a little game to amuse myself during the boring part of the bike ride: when you sense people are about to say "hi", quickly say "hello" first. It tends to throw them off (and I still win every time). :)

So, Dresden is my last German city before I head off for the Czech Republic, but I find that I am not so nervous about switching countries as I used to be before this time. The real reason, I think, is because I know that Czech Republic can't possibly be worse than here in terms of the scolding I keep getting, but another good part of the reason is that, whereas before I would get nervous about the language, and how my rudimentary skills would barely be sufficient to make myself understood, and the worry always persisted, of whether I would understand them, and would they understand me, etc, now that question no longer exists, because the questions: "Will I understand the language? Or will they understand me?" I can already easily answer with a categorical, 100% certain, undeniable:

No.

So that's one less thing to worry about. :)

2006-08-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Berlin-Luckau-Finsterwalde.

Trip dist: 119 kms. Trip time: 8 hrs, 7 min. Tot dist: 4,994 kms.

Die Sorben.

Today was a pretty ordinary ride along the flat lands of Niederlausitz (southern Brandenburg), smack right in the middle of Sorb country.

The Sorbs are a group of European "natives", who still live by their traditions, and are protected in Germany a bit like the indigenous peoples are protected in the U.S. or Mexico, getting their own self-government and schools and everything.

And, as is typical, they (or their culture) was used a bit for propagandistic purposes back in the GDR days, for they were representative of the farm-working, "volk" ideal.

How do I know this, since I didn't even see a single one of them in the fields I was riding through today? Because I did a report on them for German class back in school. ;P

Anyway, as I said, the ride was not particularly exciting. The houses did start to look a bit like the ones in Poland, though (I am indeed not too far from the border, probably 80 kms or less): 3 storied and with very sharp inverted "V" roofs. But mostly it was kind of cool knowing I was riding through a place of people I had up to then only read about before, especially because I knew "a priori", not "a posteriori" as it happened to me when I rode through Charlemagne's birthplace Herstal, so I could appreciate the significance of things a bit more.

What else? Everyone speaks to me in dialect. It was kind of funny (it is funny that they speak so to me, clearly a foreigner, considering I am not as blond or blue-eyed ["as blond", ha ha!] as they). A bit difficult to understand, though.

Then I arrived in Finsterwalde, which appears to be the barbershop singing quartet capital of Germany (except they do not call them barbershop quartets here, of course). That too was a bit funny.

Finsterwalde was rather quiet, though. And cloudy and rainy. Wouldn't be surprised if it rained tomorrow as well.

2006-08-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

Berlin, Day 5.

This morning I awoke to the unmistakeable sounds of heavy rain. This is not good for biking, not good at all.

I had changed hostels yesterday, I was now in a very comfy, clean, friendly place (staff German!) with no rules and what's more, no roommates, so I decided to take the day off from biking. "Punting", we used to call it at my old university. :D

So I slept late, showered at midday, read some Adam Smith (he has a delightfully funny take on Columbus's meanderings in discovering America), and later in the day when I got bored of staying indoors (it was still raining outside) I headed over to Berlin's Jewish History Museum.

Now, I had visited this museum a couple of days ago, but had arrived just 1 hour before closing, which did not give me time to see half of the most excellent exhibit there. The whole building itself (i.e. the architecture) is part of the exhibit, and what's more, the things displayed there, and the way they are explained, is extremely well done, and is the best museum of its kind I have ever encountered.

Take the architecture, first. The building was designed by Daniel Libeskind, who, by the way, won the commission for the master plan for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center. You can take a look about how the architecture contributes to the "statement" that the building makes (not just its contents) in the words of Libeskind himself here. But the point is, that walking through the building does, indeed, invite some reflection, which is precisely what he was trying to accomplish. A visit to the Holocaust Tower, in particular, is rather poignant.

Speaking of which, one of the things that makes this Museum so wonderful, I think, was the fact that it does not focus on the Holocaust per se. There...are enough places that do that already, and the quiet, understated way in which it is mentioned here, only towards the end, after showing the thousands of years of Jewish history frm Roman times to the present, you arrive to a little quiet workspace with a desk, with bookcases behind, holding the archives, of the names and birthplaces of all the Jewish people murdered, and which you can peruse at your leisure be it for research or personal reasons.

But most importantly, the rest of the exhibit, tracing the development of Judaism right from the beginning, is incredibly clear, engaging (lots of "Write your name in Hebrew here!" or "Listen to the sounds of two Yiddish merchants talking here!" and other suchlike fun interactive multimedia exhibits, for instance), and informative. It really does do a great job of showing the cultural richness, the treasure inherent in these peoples and culture, and which again, ties in with the "blanks" left intentionally in the structure of the building by Libeskind to make the point, understated elsewhere in the exhibit, of all that was lost during the Holocaust.

But what I enjoyed the most was discovering all the good things that are inherent in the Jewish culture. Their values, for instance, emphasizing education. The strong and intelligent women this culture has produced. The beautiful tradition of passing down the sweet-smelling spice boxes at the end of Havdalah ("separation"), to mark the end of Shabbat and to start again the week in an uplifted, happy, tone. The humorous and ingenious personalities, which value wit and resourcefulness more than the superficial qualities our modern culture seems to do too much, for instance:

Goes the story that Moses Mendelssohn (grandpapa of musician Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, whom I've told you quite a bit about before), a reputedly very ugly man, won his beloved over with the following story:

"When a baby is born in Heaven, they tell him who his future wife is going to be. They told me my wife would be a hunchback. 'Oh God,' said I, 'A girl that's deformed easily becomes hard and bitter. Please, let me have the hump, so she can be pleasant and beautiful instead.'"

It worked. :)

Moses Mendelssohn was such a remarkable personality (he was well known thinker of his time), that there is even a Jewish saying:

"From Moses to Moses there's no one like Moses"

or, in other words:

"From Moses to Moses (Maimonides/Isserles?) there's no one like Moses (Mendelssohhn)".

Cool, huh?

Here's another one:

Mendelssohn (grandpapa) was invited to court in Potsdam in 1771. On that day, it was a Jewish holiday, and as no one was working he had to walk to the gates of the palace. He presented his invitation to the guard, who, as it was rather rare to see Jews in court, asked Mendelssohn his profession. The answer: "I do magic tricks."

:)

Anyway, do go to this museum if you are ever in Berlin. It is one of the neatest things I have seen in this city.

2006-08-12T02:11:00.000-07:00

Potsdam.

SAT Verbal: Analogies.

Pop Quiz: Potsdam is to Berlin what Versailles is to....?

Headed off to UNESCO WHS town of Potsdam today (I had passed it on the bike on the way to Berlin a few days ago but didn't have time to stop then). There are 4 main things to visit near the Palace:

Schloss Sansucci (Palace) --- 8 Euro for guided tour (cannot visit without tour).
Bildergalerie (Painting Gallery) --- 2 Euro.
Damenflügel (Lady's Wing) --- 2 Euro.
Schloss Küche (Palace kitchens) --- 2 Euro.

Quick: How much does this add up to?

The day pass, which gives you access to all of the above, costs 15 Euros (pass valid for two consecutive days).

Again, how much does the above add up to, if you buy the tickets individually, as opposed to buying them in the packaged day pass?

I, of course, wanted to see everything, so I asked the ticket counter woman for tickets to each (did you say the total for that comes to 14 Euros? Because if you did, you'd be correct). But just as I said: "1 ticket for the palace, please. Then 1 ticket for the Bildergalerie and one ticket for the Damenflügel. Oh, and one ticket for the kitchens, also, please," (all of this in German, of course), the ticket-selling woman actually asked me (I kid you not!): "Would you like to buy a day pass?"

I of course said no.

"It gives you access to all of the above," said she.

Man, either these people are so dense that they really miss the obvious, or they are so smart that they think that everyone else is so dense that they miss the obvious. So I said:

"Yes, but if I buy the tickets separately without the day pass, it is cheaper."

She nodded knowingly (ah, so they really are too smart then): "Yes," she said. "It is 1 Euro cheaper."

Me: "Separate tickets, please."

Honestly. I wonder how many stupid tourists they dupe with this one? I mean, does it really work?

Amazing.

Anyway, I had a couple of hours to kill before my tour was scheduled to start, so I went off to the town, had a nice snack of the obligatory bratwurst with bread bun and mustard, played around on the internet, then started heading back. But just as I arrived to the Palace gardens a half an hour before my tour I realized I had left my memory card reader and 2 GB worth of photos in my memory card at the internet place, another half an hour's walk away from where I currently was.

So I had to go back.

I hadn't eaten much, and to be frank the past few days had me in a rather cranky mood in general, so even though I luckily did find the memory card, in the end, I no longer felt at that point like going back to at least see the kitchens and the lady's wing or the paintings, which required no guided tour and one could go whenever one pleased. So I ditched my Potsdam day. Sat under a tree for a while. Looked at the old people passing by. Maybe with a friend the whole day's events would've produced much laughter and pleasant memories. As it was...it just kindof sucked. {shrug}

Back to Berlin.

Do you know what is the first (or one of the first) thing(s) that happened after the Wall fell?

The Wall got taken over by a private company so that they could sell the chips of it to tourists.

What a triumph of capitalism. :|

I haven't finished visiting all of the sights of Berlin. But all of its square-tiled checkered sidewalks are driving me insane (it is impossible to stop thinking about chess knight move patterns on the diagonally-arranged 25cm x 25cm brick slabs as you walk over them in every street). So I'm fleeing this city tomorrow.

Blech.

2006-08-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

Berlin, Day 4.

Godwin's Law.

Holy smokes, Batman! Will this nightmare never end?

Today I had to change rooms at the hostel. These guys have never heard of good computer algorithms because they have the registry of guests all written out by hand, and if you ever want to extend your stay and someone else had a reservation for your room it is apparently impossible to send them to a different room so that you can stay in yours, but you have to move instead so that the person with the reservation gets the room they originally placed them in.

Silly, I know, but this is not such a big problem, except that when I came downstairs in the about half an hour before checkout time to ask for my new room key they said they could not give it to me until 2 p.m.

O.K., could they at least tell me what room it is?

They thought this strange, asked me why I wanted to know that.

"Because," said I a bit exasperated at having to explain the obvious, "that way I can move my luggage into the new room."

"Ah, no problem," they said, "just bring down your luggage and we will keep it in the luggage room. After 2 p.m. you can come pick it up and move it to the new room."

When you have to carry 2 panniers and a backpack that weigh, combined, about 30 kilograms up and down 5 flights of stairs, you can see why this was a very unappealing prospect. I would 10 times rather carry it up one or two flights or maybe even none if the new room is on the same floor. Additionally, consider, that I had already stayed in the room in question for 4 nights, and after such a long stay, one tends to "settle in" a bit: things are unpacked and strewn around the room, towel left to dry by the windows, books on the table, toothbrush in the bathroom, etc. Re-packing would require a half an hour at least. Not the kind of thing I like to waste my time doing.

So I tried to explain: "My luggage is very heavy, I would rather not have to carry it up and down if possible."

The receptionist gentleman: "Sorry, that's the way it is."

Me: "Why?"

(Always ask these rule-obsessed people "why". It is interesting, how it invariably throws them for a loop.)

He hesistated. I could tell he was trying to do some really fast thinking, from the frown that followed. Finally, he brightened up and said: "We need to keep the rooms clear for the cleaning staff."

"I see," said I. "Moving my luggage to the next room will not disturb the cleaning, as I will leave it in the lockers provided. May I have the key now, please?"

He did not expect this. He was at loss for words, for a minute. Another receptionist approached (British woman, but clearly having lived in Berlin for a while), asked what the problem was. He explained. She said: "Yeah, sorry, not allowed."

Me: "I understand what you are saying. However, my luggage is very heavy, and it would be of a tremendous help if I could just move it to the new room now. If you will not give me the key, could you at least please tell me what room it is?"

Him: "But how is that going to help, if I tell you what room it is now or at 2 p.m.? I will not be able to give you the key until 2 p.m. anyway."

Me (again, I hate having to explain the obvious): "If you tell me what room it is, I will go ask the people in the room if it is o.k. with them for me to move my luggage in right now."

Her: "What, and wake them up this early?"

Me: "It is 9:30 a.m. It is half an hour before checkout time. Someone in the room should be awake already."

[In case I didn't mention it before, in Youth Hostels the rooms tend to house between 4-8 people in dorm-style bunks]

Her:"But you cannot just go into a room and disturb the people there. How would you like it if someone did that to you?"

Holy scripes! Some people really are obtuse, I thought. "I will not disturb them. I will ask politely if they mind if I leave my things there. I will not wake any still-sleeping people. Naturally, if I had the key, it wouldn't even be necessary for me to make any noise at all, but you will not give it to me. I will therefore simply knock on the door. So, will you tell me the room number, please?"

Him: looks at her. She stares at him. "No" she finally says.

Intransigent, eh? I tried to the old trick of getting them to care: "Please, my luggage is very heavy, and I cannot come back here at 2 p.m. today..."

Him: "But it is the rule...."

Ha ha ha ha!! Here we go. I have a lot of patience, but this just riled me up, and besides it had been clear from the past 5 minutes that the conversation was going nowhere. I couldn't resist, at this one....

Godwin's Law is a little "meme" from the old days of the usenet discussion groups. It basically states that the longer a usenet discussion lasts, the probability of one of the parties being called a Nazi or compared to Hitler approaches one. Usenet lore has it, that at this point, a thread can therefore be declared as "has been going on for too long", that the discussion has degenerated into a flame war, and there is no more point for discussing any longer. Invoking Godwin's Law is the automatic thread ender, by convention.

So, why shouldn't the automatic usenet thread ender be used in this particular conversation, that as I said was going nowhere, and particularly, because the trigger words that very nicely summed up my German experience in my brief sojourn in this fascinating country: "But this is the rule!", are words that I cannot, as someone who thinks with her very own two brain cells, suffer as the justification for anything?

Me (smiling sweetly and shrugging): "It is just a stupid rule. What, if the rule says 'Kill the Jews', will you follow that one also?" [and here I braced myself for the new level of conversation I had just so rashly and mischievously propelled the three of us to by gripping the counter of the reception I was leaning on a little tighter, because, you see, calling an American, or a Mexican, or anyone else a "Nazi" will probably produce some incredulous laughter, but, doing this to a German would most surely touch an exposed nerve, for obvious historical reasons...]

I needn't have worried. At my "It is just a stupid rule...", before I had had a chance to even finish with the second part (the fun part!) of my phrase they had already started talking above me at the same time each of them saying fragments along the lines of: "...cleaning staff...", "the rules are there for a reason!", or "what if we did this for everyone", and other fragments I couldn't catch as I was busy preparing myself for the explosion of my statement, however, it seemed that due to the disordered interruption at my remonstrations, the second part, the explosive part of my comment....had gone unheard.

Or ignored, which was just as likely. I did say it loud enough that at least two people nearby could overhear.

Eventually, when the two receptionists finally stopped talking at the same time, the woman sighed and left (went to the hostel bar to attend to something or at any rate returned to where she was before she "joined" this conversation), leaving the gentleman with an, admittedly, rather helpless look on his face.

At about that time two fellows approached the reception desk, checking out or some other rutinary hostel request. The remaining receptionist started attending to them, and stopped looking at me.

I waited with a pleasant smile on my face, because it made me chuckle (a chuckle I supressed, of course), the idea that by simply pretending I wasn't there would make the issue go away.

After 10 minutes, the fellows left. I smiled at the receptionist, who returned my gaze with a cold, very angry stare.

I smiled even more.

He kept staring.

And then I decided to try a different approach (thanks to A.C.T. in San Francisco Acting I teacher Jeffrey, for this very wise piece of advice: "When you are trying [i.e. in Theater or acting, etc] to get someone else to do something, and this something is important enough, it is intrinsic in human nature, to try different things. If yelling doesn't help, try being quiet. If pleading doesn't help, try commanding."). And, remembering another acting teacher's advice: (Marvin, Acting II teacher: "In dialogues where you're fighting, it is very boring, very uninteresting, just to yell, and it accomplishes nothing. Even when you're fighting...find the love in things."), I then softened all my features, relaxed my stance into a welcoming position, as if about to receive an embrace, and in the sweetest, most affectionate voice I could find, as if cuddling a lover, I said:

"Come on." [tenderest smile] "It is not a big deal...."

A long exhaling sound followed as he placed the key to the new room on the counter and said: "Oh, alright then, fine.".

:o

Honestly! The kinds of things one must stoop to to get what one wants! Amazing....

(Still, it was a good trick to stumble on, must keep for future reference)

Anyway, after dealing with the Hostel people I headed over to the Bundestag again to try to finally catch the insides of it (including, possibly, seeing the promised "democracy in action" much promoted in the brochures for tourists that I told you about before). Not surprisingly due to the morning events, I arrived there not as early as I had hoped (only half an hour earlier than three days ago), but luckily today there were no lines outside the building at all, so I was able to get in fairly quickly no problem. After heading up to the top floor to see the beautiful and modern Glass Cupola I asked at the information desk (in German, of course. I only adress people in German here, except at the Youth Hostel, where the staff, except for the gentleman this morning, is British) if I could join a guided visit to the plenary session hall. The information desk gentleman (he was in his late 40's or 50's) replied to me with a complicated schedule and times for guided visits that went from half an hour past the current time (it was 10 a.m. at the moment) all the way to 5 p.m. I asked politely if he could repeat slower, please (I had just been the victim of a barrage of very fast, supernumerary information, and I only needed to once more catch the first part of what he had said).

Can you believe it? He replied, that the visits were led in German, and that they would speak as fast as he just had (this was, of course, not my question nor incidentally the reason I'd asked for repetition. The list of times had simply been too long for me to remember which one came the closest to 10 a.m., the present time). Honestly! As if it were the tourist's fault, not to know the schedules by memory inside out, somehow.

{sigh}

Nope, it was not over. During the actual Parliament visit (they take you to the upper floors of the building, where you can sit down to a very nice view of the Plenary Hall), and where they tell you lots of rather uninteresting details about the building of the glass cupola, instead of what I wanted to know, which was more along the lines of German politics (but I recognize that on this one I was probably expecting a bit too much from a simple tourist guided visit). But as if this weren't exasperating enough, when she opened the floor for visitor's questions someone (most of the visitors were German, of course) started asking cum arguing with her about the details of the date of the construction of the cupola. She had said it was 1999 when the cupola was completed, but she had also said something about 1957, which was when reconstruction of the whole Reichstag building had begun, but apparently the tourist had misunderstood, and he was arguing with her that: she had first said that the glass cupola had been completed in 1957, and how could that be right, if Norman Foster (who designed the cupola) only won the design in 1992? So then it couldn't have been 1957, right? No, said the guide, it was 1999, but then, said the tourist, what about the fact that you said in 1957, and so on and so forth, going on in a very polite but very tense (and incredibly boring!) discussion that lasted no less than 20 minutes, until the guide finally said: "Let's give someone else the opportunity to ask questions!". But all in all, very unpleasant. As if these details were so important. So the guide is wrong? Keep quiet then, then look up the facts in the encyclopedia for your own satisfaction, it is not necessary, I think, to both embarass the guide and waste the time of 50 other people who do not care that you are right and she is wrong or vice-versa.

Strange things, that these people find important.

{shrug}

Anyway, after that I headed over to the Philharmonic. I needed some cheering up. Find out if they were playing at all (though I didn't have my hopes up for this one, as it is August, and most orchestras are on vacation during this time, as I've said), or at least how much tickets cost during the season, or how pretty the building is, etc.

So I arrived, and the first thing that struck me was the building of the Philharmonic Hall. THIS is the Philarmonic??!? This garish, icky yellow, corrugated metal building is the host of the most renowned orchestra on the planet?!??

I hoped it was prettier on the inside.

I couldn't really tell, though, because, as expected, the Philharmonic was not in session in August: I am 11 days too late (the rage, Ian! I should've pedalled faster!).

With nothing left to do now, except slowly circle the neglected, abandoned, lonely dilapidated Philharmonic building, the culmination of my 4 month-long trip, the much awaited high point, geographically and culturally, of my journey, helplessly taking the obligatory pictures of this oh so highly reputed building with its oh so highly reputed music inside that I would not be hearing live, I realized suddenly (or rather, over a period of 4 months converging in this instant) that this much touted Europe, the First World, was not really all that much different from my own country, and what's more, with its own share of absurd problems to solve to boot, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the irony.

And as the tears of frustration, helplessness and anger welled up in my eyes, not at the the clichéd "Wizard of Oz" realization that "there's no place like home", but rather: "Everywhere is like home," that everywhere is the same thing, with variations, and there is no running away that will make the bad things disappear, because in the end there is nowhere, really, to run to, that there is, in the end, no such thing as "better", I realized that without my consent, my heart had settled for the latter.

One....should not visit Berlin without a friend.

2006-08-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

Berlin, Day 3.

Visited the Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse today. At the entrance you have to check your bags through x-rays and pass through a metal detector as if it were an airport. The security reminded me of the obnoxious security measures at American consulates in Mexico. Strange that this would be necessary in a Church. These guys are obviously afraid of....something. They must've had vandalism or threats in the past, surely.

Once inside, though, the people were very polite and friendly. Though you do have to pay 3 Euros for the entrance ticket (2 Euros for the synagogue proper and 1 Euro if you want to go up the tower).

The main part of the Synagogue was not particularly exciting. Much of it was destroyed during Kristallnacht(1939) and during Allied bombing in 1943, and it was then demolished in 1958, so what you see now is basically new. But the main room itself is pretty small and the exhibits/displays not particularly interesting, in my opinion.

Anyway, since I had already bought the ticket to climbing up the tower to the moorish cupola, I headed up there next. I thought it was a bit odd that there was nobody to check my ticket as I headed up the stairs, especially given all the security hullaballoo at the entrance of the Synagogue itself. This was soon explained, however, upon my arriving to the top of the stairs (several floors up, no elevator), right inside the cupola, there was a man checking tickets. To tell you the truth I felt a little annoyed that the ticket checking came so late. What if you didn't know you had to buy a separate ticket for the cupola? Then you would climb up inadvertently, and nobody would tell you you needed one until you were already at the top, with all that wasted effort if it later turned out you didn't really want to see it (there was not much to see). So I asked the ticket checker, why didn't they just check the ticket downstairs?

He replied: "Why check it downstairs?" (ha ha. Nice rethorical device: when you don't feel like answering a reasonable question, turn the question around to the questioner, have them answer it instead). So I explained my annoyance: you check the ticket downstairs so that people who forget to buy a ticket don't have to climb up 5 flights of stairs before finding out that they are not allowed inside. If you check the ticket downstairs, you save these people some effort.

He then pointed to a little cash register by the table. "If the people climb up the stairs with no ticket, they can then buy the ticket here. After climbing all those steps, they will think it more worthwhile to buy the ticket at this point than they would've downstairs."

Aha. Sneaky tactics, eh? Interesting economics/psychology experiment: would people without a ticket be more likely to buy one, after already having spent the effort of climbing, than they would be if the ticket were checked downstairs? Having a cash register at the top seemed to bank on an affirmative answer. Nevertheless, my intuition on human nature (which I basically figure as follows: A. I am a normal, average person. B. I was annoyed at having to have the 5 flights of stairs without having had my ticket checked first. C. Had I not bought a ticket downstairs, finding out I would have to buy one only after I already climbed would annoy me so much, that I would purposely not buy the ticket at the top, I would rather not see the cupola at all, and especially not, given that what you can see from the entrance to the ticket check, is not that impressive, and D. Since my sentiments are those of a normal, average person, it follows that most normal, average people will share similar sentiments) said the contrary.

But why, then though I, just leave this as a conjecture? I could already hear some people climbing up the stairs. Let's see, thought I, if my conjecture is true, and let's see, if the next people that climb up here have no tickets, whether they will buy them.

I didn't have to wait long before a family of 4 popped up the stairs. They had no tickets. "Would you like to buy one?" says the ticket checker. Family members look at each other, take a quick look around the room (there is not much to see), then say "No, thanks." and turn around back down the stairs.

Next, a man (Middle-Eastern?) pops up the stairs (his wife was half a flight behind, and very exhausted-looking). He had no ticket, either (lucky data points so far! :D). He asked the ticket checker how much they cost. "Two Euros fifty," came the reply.

I was puzzled. My ticket had cost only 1 Euro downstairs. The sneaky tactics include charging more? And is this part of economics, would people be willing, not only to pay after spending the effort of climbing, but to pay...more?

I waited with baited breath. Especially because my sense of engineering justice suggests that charging more at the top is a very sneaky thing to do, because it takes advantage of the fact that the consumer, not knowing that the price of the ticket downstairs is only 1 Euro, is now paying a lot more than he ordinarily would've.

The gentleman balked. "Two Euros fifty to see what, this?!?", as he pointed around the cupola room (it is a small, plain room, and the view of the city through the windows is not interesting at all).

At this point, the wife of the gentleman arrived, huffing and puffing. The gentleman turned to her and said something in what sounded like Arabic, to me (he had been speaking to the ticket checker in English, I had been speaking to the ticket checker in German). He then turned to the ticket checker again, and said, in English: "What is there to see here?"

The ticket checker (in bad English):"Don't understand."

The gentleman: "I want to know what there is to see here before I spend two and a half Euros, is this it?"

The ticket checker: "Two Euros and fifty cents."

Gentleman: "But what is there to see here?"

Ticket checker: "I don't understand. German please."

The Middle-Eastern gentleman, turns around, says something to wife, they start walking down the stairs.

A party of 3 reaches the top. They too, turn back upon finding out they need to buy tickets.

Satisfied, I start going down the stairs.

But something annoys me. When the ticket checker kept saying: "I don't understand English", it sounded fake to me. He can say "Two Euros and fifty cents." with perfect pronounciation, but cannot explain there is only "this" to see in the cupola? And what is it with the charging of so much extra, one-hundred and fifty percent extra?!?

Heck, I was bored, let me make some waves and practice my German elocution skills. I turn back upstairs. I ask the ticket checker, "I'm sorry, I'm a little bit confused, how much do the tickets cost here?".

The ticket checker seems taken aback by the question. It takes him a little bit of time to answer. My sixth sense starts ringing alarms, something doesn't seem quite right..."The tickets cost 1 Euro 50 cents. A student ticket costs 1 Euro."

Me: "Aha, I see. But I just heard you say two Euros and fifty cents to the gentleman that was just here. How come the tickets cost more here upstairs?"

The gentleman's posture stiffens. "Yes, they were two people, so it is two Euros and fifty cents...."

I stare at him frowning, looking innocently puzzled, as if thinking "Hmmm....the wife of the gentleman didn't look like a student to me" (and besides, I know for sure, because I made a point to observe the occurences carefully, that the woman did not pop up to the top flor where the ticket check gentleman was, until after the ticket checker had already quoted the price to the husband)

The ticket checker continues:"...Er, yes, two people, it should've been at 1 Euro 50 each, it should've been 3 Euros, I just gave them a discount..."

I nod. Head back downstairs.

Another party of two gentlemen reaches the top as I reach the first landing, where the ticket checker can no longer see me. I wait in the landing for the gentlemen to come down, as predicted by human nature (they had not bought a ticket previously either, and did not stay to buy one at the top). As the first one reaches me, I ask him, "Excuse me, do they sell tickets up there?"

"Yes." comes the reply.

"And how much do the tickets cost?"

"Two Euros."

I head back to the bottom, thinking.

Every person I saw going upstairs turned round without buying a ticket (I had been the only one who bought one downstairs). Downstairs, there is no indication that you need a ticket to go up (I only knew, because the cashier at the bottom had asked me if I also wanted a ticket to the cupola when I was buying the ticket to the synagogue). Not only that, the prices upstairs are higher (no pun intended) than they are downstairs. How well does this economics reasoning of making a little profit out of the already expended 5 flights of stairs climbing effort work, if no one buys tickets at the top, in the end? And what about the....odd feel I got from the ticket checker gentleman above? Why the whim-like ticket prices, the pretending not to understand English, the stiffening features?

By the time I reach the first floor, I have decided. I am bored, and this annoys me. Let me ask downstairs, why this practice of changing prices as if it were a stock market.

I go to the cashier downstairs, and innocently ask: "Hi, quick question, I was curious. How come it costs more to see the cupola if you buy your ticket upstairs than it does if you buy your ticket here?"

"Whaaaat?!?" comes the reply.

Uh oh. At that instant, I realized what I had just started doing. No, it wasn't a super clever scheme by economics-minded businesspeople designed to optimize the revenue from synagogue visitors at all. At that moment, I suddenly realized I had just irreparably kickstarted the process of getting someone into trouble.

I repeated my question.

The other cashier just heard me, too. They are both incredulous. They asked me to explain my question. I related what I just told you above. One of the cashiers tells me: "Wait here please", as she dialed some number on the phone. I shifted my feet. I cannot take back anything I said now. I start feeling guilty, for after all, what I had witnessed didn't affect me nor did it affect the people I saw climb up to the cupola (nobody bought these overpriced tickets in the end). A security guard comes to the counter.I didn't mean for anyone to get in trouble, I was just bored, I berate myself inside my head.

The cashier relates to the guard, in German, what I said to her (I had spoken to her in English). There is an error in her account, which I correct (lucky I can understand some German): the gentleman to whom the price of 2 Euros 50 cents was quoted did not buy the ticket, as she related. None of the people bought the ticket, I clarified. They were only quoted higher prices, but no one bought. I made sure to emphasize this.

"Thank you for telling us," says the cashier. I am now free to go.

Ooops, then, I guess. I do not feel proud of what I just did. I should've just kept quiet, I keep telling myself. I try to shrug these musings off, but as I walked out the door towards the crisp air of the streets of Berlin, I couldn't help thinking, that the gentleman upstairs, he better have a good explanation for what I heard....

The rest of the day went by like the preceeding ones in Berlin. Strange, unknown, fremd, is the word in German.

Berlin has got to be the city with the most graffitti I have ever seen (even more than New York, if you can believe that!), especially in the area around Prenzlauer Berg and away from city center, which contributes a bit to this...malaise of feeling.

And then, yet another strange thing happened in the afternoon. I was sitting at a restaurant, in the outdoor tables. A couple (wife and husband in late 40's) approached my table and as I instinctively looked up from the book I was reading in response to this to see what was the matter the woman extended her hand and took the menu from my table (I had left it flat to my right-hand side after ordering) without a word or look or any other sort of indication of asking for permission. I stared at her as she leafed through it and opened my ears as wide as I could to try to guess what nationality this boorish tourist could possibly come from, because as far as I knew this kind of behavior is not acceptable in any of the places I've ever been to. She then said something to her husband. It was in German. To this I opened up my eyes wide in incredulity, because the Germans have ALWAYS been impeccably polite to me (yes, in their peculiar way, but always polite). When she was done with the menu she placed it back on my table and turned around and left. No "Thank you" or "Excuse me" or "Entschuldigung" or any other kind of acknowledgement that I was occupying and eating at the table she had just so lackadaisically invaded ever for an instant crossed her lips or eyes.

Please wake me up now? I learned my lesson, I promise to be good. I take back what I said about dreaming. Please?

2006-08-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Berlin, Day 2.

Headed to Museumsinsel in the morning. Three of the 5 museums there are open to visitors at the moment (the other two are closed for renovations), but luckily the Pergamon Museum (probably the most famous one of the bunch) was one of them, and so here I headed for first.

Now, the Pergamon Museum is well known because of its fantastic architecture collection. Yup, inside the halls of this museum you can see entire walls, gates, facades of not just buildings, but entire cities: the stunning Gate of Ishtar only one of the most famous ones here.

How exactly is it, than whole sections of buildings from faraway lands end up indoors in a hall? Plundered as conquest trophies, perhaps, like Napoleon did for France? If this is so, it is then shameful, and exhibiting them in the plundering country is no cause for pride.

But in the case of many things on exhibit at the Pergamon, is the history of rich yet poor countries like Mexico: rich in history and culture, but too poor to find resources to fund excavations. Going back to the Gate of Ishtar, for instance, it was discovered by a German excavation of Babylon throughout 1899-1977 (and as you may know many of the excavations in Mexico--especially in the Yucatan penninsula--are being done by US Universities these days). And then somehow, Germany kept the discovery, and no less than took it home. If the effort is to preserve and reconstruct, it would've been more beautiful, to leave it at home in Iran, take the museum to the art, not the art to the museum. But then again, maybe there is no glory in a job like archaeology, if the archaeologists cannot keep what they find, and if there were no foreign teams excavating your poor country, your poor country may remain poor culturally as well, since there are be no means of funding your own excavations and thus giving you the possibility to discover neat things about your ancestral culture. Tough quandry.

But the saddest part of all: when you, as the reigning Sultan Abdul Hamid II, give away part of your country to another to exhibit for the masses: in this case, the entrance Façade of the Palace at Mshatta, given as a gift to Kaiser William II. What is this? An attempt at expounding how rich your country is, "Oh, don't worry, we have so many of these cultural treasures, that one won't be missed?". What a way to steal from your own people. How....angering, really.

By the way, I was in the middle of these musings, writing some notes in my journal, when I got scolded yet again by these Germans with their rules. My crime? I was leaning my shoulder against an unpainted, drab, not part of any exhibit cardboard-like plaster wall of the museum, right next to the restrooms (i.e. part of the restroom's wall structure). Leaning not allowed, apparently. Amazing. Honestly, probably the guards have nothing to do and they have the most boring job in the universe, if they pick on people for things like this.

Anyway, moving on to the rest of the exhibit, random notes:

1. Cuneiform writing looks kinda cool. Seems very practical.

2. The scale of the Temple of Marduk in Babylon---huge, judging from a diorama at museum. How many steps were there to the top?

3. Neat to see the excavations of Uruk (remember? this is the city where Gilgamesh came from. We had to read sections of the story of Gilgamesh in translation for Spanish literature class. Yeah, our Spanish lit curriculum that year was kinda cool. :)). Neat to see that those mythic-like places actually existed. Cool also, the round tiles making colored patterns decorating the walls of Uruk.

4. Take a look at the placement of the flowers painted on the glazed bricks of the Gate of Ishtar. Since glaze needs to be baked in an oven, it had to be placed on the bricks before they were laid to make the wall. Now, since the flower petals do not always fall on the same brick every time (see for instance, in the pic, the third flower center, the yellow part, falls on two bricks, while on the other flowers, the yellow center is completely included in one of the bricks), because the spacing of the flowers is not a nice integer multiple of the length of the bricks, then it follows that one had to know where each brick would be placed on the wall before the glazing was baked. In other words, you had to keep track of which brick went where on the wall, before, and after glazing the design onto the bricks. Or at least, that's what it seems like to me, unless I'm missing something (unless the glaze was done later, and then fired/baked at height, but that seems complicated given the height of some of the designs). These complicated trains of thought were in fact what required me to lean my shoulder on the plaster museum wall with the unpleasant consequences I just related to you above. But moving on....

5. It would be cool to visit Iran...

6. Someone should build a city from scratch using only all modern architecture a la Calatrava or Frank Gehry, etc. Wouldn't that be kinda cool?

7. Faith in humanity restored! How much we have learned from all those cultures that are so different from us! May it remain so.

8. But even so, in this museum a latent cloud of darkness remains, a bit of a "Spring with a Broken Corner", if you will. Yes, humanity creates, but humanity also steals away, gives away, devalues and much of what humanity creates is with the purpose to subjugate another (i.e. technological progress through weapons development, religions used as excuse for wars, etc. and on and on and on). {shrug}.

9. But, so long as people still visit museums (which are living libraries!), there is hope, that we can grow, and learn, and strive for greater and nobler things. :)

10. Quote (from whence I don't remember): "Science teaches us how to think. Art teaches us how to feel".

Visited the other open museums at the Insel. But in these last two hours, I got scolded no less than....5 times, to wit:

1. It was hot inside the museums. Took my sweater off and hung it off the straps of my purse. Got scolded by museum woman guard. I should put the sweater inside the purse or check it at the coat check, according to her. "Why?" I asked (hey, I figured, if the rule is absurd, question it. Maybe you're missing something and there is a good reason). Didn't understand explanation. I said can you repeat the explanation a bit slower, please. Spoke louder and faster and about something else, then repeated the prohibition. "O.K., can I tie it round my waist, then?". "No, put it in the bag.". So I did. These Germans sure are strange.

2. In the 3rd museum (the Nationalgallerie), I had to check the bag (i.e. I was not allowed inside the exhibit upon presenting my ticket due to my bag not being checked--another scolding). Why? Because it was apparently too bulky. This was, of course, due to the fact that I had to place my sweater inside (it is a fleece sweatshirt and folds up bulkily). Nevermind that I had had no problems with the size of the bag before, and had had no need to check it at the other two museums I had just visited. Fine. Here you now have me carrying: my sweater, my notebook, the Lonely Planet guide, the Museum guide, my wallet, the camera, a pen, and coins in my bare hands now (my pockets were too small to fit most of these items). Will this thrill with rules never end?

3. Since I was carrying so many things due to the bag check, I put my sweater draped on my shoulder. A guard on the first floor wanted me to tie it around my waist (so, the first guard says it is bad fashion to tie it round your waist, to put it in the bag instead, now this guard says it is bad fashion to carry the sweater, to please tie it round the waist instead). "Can I tie it round my shoulders?". "No. Please tie it around your waist," says the fashion police now. "Why?" "In case you come too close to a picture, your sweater can disturb the paint". "I see." I look around. I see a lot of other people with a)bags, and b) at least 2 other women with sweaters tied round their shoulders. No one has hassled them. Obviously this (bags and sweaters round shoulders) is a fashion statement allowed only to those older than 40, then. Interesting.

4. I approach a painting (A Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the "Annunciation" It is a cool picture because he even painted the dirt on the tile floors!). I like looking at some paintings up close, as you know. Gives you opportunity to observe the brushstrokes and therefore deduce how the painting was painted: how the colors were loaded, what was outlined first, are there charcoal or pencil marks, is there texturizing going on, was the paint laid thick or thin, etc. Immediately a guard starts walking towards me and stands behind me about 2 feet away. Obviously afraid I may touch something, or worse, I am carrying a pen on my right hand, for note-taking, of course, especially when looking at pictures up close. Perhaps he is afraid that I will scribble on the picture. But take a look at me. Do I strike you as a vandal, someone who would scribble in blue ballpoint pen at your precious National Gallery paintings? Hmmm?

Nah, I didn't think so either.

Given that all these scoldings have by now ruined my enjoyment of the museum, I now purposely try to push rule boundaries, to annoy them only, on purpose. Seeing the gentleman "don't touch the paintings guard" approach me, I come even closer to the painting, so much so that my nose is only centimeters from it. Guard realizes what I am doing, takes a few steps away from me. I take a few steps away from the painting. Repeat the process for all the paintings in the room. He finally gets the hint, stays at his designated corner. But he watches me closely, ignoring the people taking photograps in the other corner of the room, in spite of the signs at the entrance forbidding this.

I mean, they can't be picking on me, can they? Do they have a prejudice against teenagers, perhaps I look too young (I've been told that before), and my behavior cannot be trusted? A person that takes notes in museums, perhaps, is that so rare, that one needs to be suspicious of such behavior? Do I smile too much? Enjoy myself too much at these boring exhibitions for the norm? Or do I smile too little? I don't know! I just know, that other people are not being picked on, and in 2 hours, only 2 hours! I have been scolded no less than 5 times!

I mean, what is so valuable here? Not even at the Louvre, were they so uptight!

{sigh}.

In the afternoon, I head over to the Berliner Mauer Dokumentazionszentrum, on Bernauer Straße. I arrive there late, near closing time, so right at closing time I head for the exit door. Just when I am about to open it, right at the time my hand had barely touched the handle and was about to push the door, I see the curator rush vigorously at me and in a loud, almost shouting voice exclaims: "No, no, no, no!". He then approached the door, displacing me, and said, in an angry English: "PUSH, not PULL!!", as he opened the door for me.

I didn't quite get why he was so angry. It is just a door, after all. {shrug}

Anyway, since I couldn't really look at anything displayed at the Dokumentazionszentrum I headed over across the street to see the remains of the Wall (see pic above) and the Jewish cementery, but as I headed there I couldn't help thinking, that with all these memorials and monuments, there's a bit too much of a cult of "death" here in Berlin. Enough already! Look to the future, now! If you ever lose hope, it would be good to simply remember: in the end, the wall fell. Erfreut dich!

Blech. To top it off, heading back towards the city center, where my hostel is, I discovered that the Berlin Metro tickets cost no less than 2 Euros and 10 cents for a single trip. How depressing in itself.

All in all, a strange day, today.

{shrug}.

2006-08-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

Berlin, Day 1.

Well, this morning the first thing I did at the recommendation of my guide book (Lonely Planet this time) was head over to the Reichstag building. The guide recommends you get there early but by the time I walked there from the hostel it was already close to 11 a.m. and there was a huge line to the entrance. Luckily, these things being as organized as all German things are, they distributed very well written and informative pamphlets about how the Bundestag (that's the German parliament) works here to very easily keep you entertained for the over an hour wait that the line promised.

The Bundestag has a nice varied composition (especially compared to the U.S. Congress). According to the pamphlet, in this Bundestag there are:

4 students.
30% women.
22% lawyers.
20 engineers and scientists.
70 teachers out of a total of 614 members.
15 members under the age of 30 (wow! that's a lot!)
youngest age: 22
average age: 49

One can serve in the Bundestag since the age of 18. I think this is both a good and a bad thing, and again, compare to the U.S. (serving age I think is 30 or so, if I remember correctly). I wonder how well this (that is, allowing such young people to serve) works, though. Must ask a local, I suppose (Torsten, any comments from my favorite Berliner?).

What is kind of neat though, is that it would appear that with such diversity (as reported, at least), this comes closer to the democratic ideal: a lawmaking organism that truly (or fairly closely) represents the people (in the U.S. I think few people know their representatives and surely the group tends to be more homogeneous, in terms of age, education, and background? Take, for instance, the fact that currently, only 15% of it is female, 1% African American, only 8% is under the age of 40--with only ONE, yes, just 1, senator under the age of 40--and 39% of Congress is composed of lawyers).

Anyway, one of the things I found kind of interesting was how the speaking times in the Bundestag depends on how much percentage of the house your party has got. That seemed a bit weird to me. My sense of fairness suggests that everyone ought to have equal voice (since clearly voting should depend on the percentage of the house you control--control more, your vote counts more, makes sense, but speak more? That intuitively seems odd, I think), but then again, I'm probably just thinking like an engineer. They probably have a good reason for it, I hope.

Anyway, the pamphlet makes a big deal (that is, they mention several times and in several ways) about how the architecture of the Reigchstag is used to reinforce the concept/ideal/(propaganda?) of "transparency" (i.e. the glass cupola). But the cool thing that I haven't seen anywhere else before is the fact that apparently people, ordinary people like you and me--even tourists--, can come and sit in the Bundestag plenary sessions. How neat is that? That is super awesome. The pamphlet then goes to emphasize that this is a way for the public to be able to see with their own eyes what their representatives are up to. Though this method, I think, is a bit useless given that as an observer you probably can't make much noise if you find something fishy going on....or could you? I dunno. Might be interesting to try to get in one of these sessions and find out.

Anyway, I didn't really find the patience to sit through the rest of the line so I resolved to come earlier in the subsequent days (and perhaps even catch a live session) instead of waiting around for the line to move a few more inches, so I headed over to the nearby, newly-completed (just a little over one year old) Jewish Memorial instead.

The Jewish Memorial is very....evocative. As you walk the ground sinks and the square stellae get taller, engulfing you, and you feel like you're sinking a bit deeper and deeper in desolation and confusion....until the effect is ruined by a pair of 7-year olds laughing and jumping about between the stones and playing hide and seek behind them.

Remember the painting, "Then and Now" that I told you about before? Maybe...there's a bit too much of a cult of death, with these things sometimes. Either that, or come to the memorial at dusk during wintertime, when happy cheery children are less likely to be found, if you feel contemplative, I would say.

Anyway, somewhere at the bottom and in the middle of the grounds is the information center, which does a very good job of humanizing the victims and giving you an idea of the unfathomable scale: the Holcaust victims came all the way from Greece, Lithuania, Denmark, Austria, Estonia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Macedonia, the Mediterranean coast, Ukraine, Romania, Yugoslavia, even Norway, Turkey, and North Africa (!) not to mention the obvious Poland, Checkoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and even German allies Italy and Hungary.

Reaction during exhibit: anger, despair, helplessness.

How easy to forget that the victims had a life, illusions, goals and projects, that they had a family (many of them who died as well), parents and children, some who kept looking for them unavailingly for many years afterwards (some who still do), that they are not merely numbers and statistics. Remember this, the next time you're in favor of your country dropping a bomb somewhere.

Anyway, after this sobering wake-up, I headed over towards the nearby Potsdammer Platz, with its übercool modern architecture. Ha ha. Can you believe it? In Potsdammer Platz, Berlin is just like I imagined it (from all those movies, I sort of had thought it was all full of skyscrapers and modern architecture. Not quite true, as it turns out: as I saw yesterday--approaching from the outskirts one can see more than if one just arrives all tourist-like into the airports--Berlin doesn't seem to be too well maintained--grass on parks and lawns is several weeks long, many buildings are run down with paint peeling, even on the Western side, etc. No city upkeep, it seems....).

In the afternoon I headed over to Checkpoint Charlie, but following the Jewish Memorial with a visit to the House at Checkpoint Charlie (a privately sponsored, rather propagandistic museum dedicated to the history of the Berlin Wall and the spectacular escapes from the GDR, which tried to advance a lot of the greeny granola liberal views of the owner, towards the end) left me a bit depressed and almost drained of all faith in humanity.

Do you know that joke about the physicist, the engineer, and the mathematician, who are having a contest, to see which one of them can enclose the largest area of a field with a given length of wire and a set of some wooden poles? The physicist, an empiricist, immediately starts trying things, hammers away, ties up some of the wire here and sticks some poles to the ground there, finally comes up with the widest, slightly mishappen circle possible given the materials provided. The engineer, on the other hand, first measures the total length of the wire, figures out the radius of the circle that would result with such a length for circumference, counts up the poles and calculates at how many degrees from each other they should be posted apart, and finally builds a perfect circle the exact same size as the physicist. Finally, the mathematician comes, and after scratching his beard for a while the pile of wire and poles he's been provided with, takes up a few of them, surrounds himself with them, and proceeds to build the smallest possible circle fence around him that will still allow him to barely move. He then announces: "I declare myself to be on the outside!"

The building of the Berlin Wall, it seems to me, was a little bit like my mathematician. The absurdity!

Anyway, I'm choosing a more uplifting program for tomorrow. Perhaps a visit to the Museumsinsel (which is what makes Berlin a UNESCO Heritage Site) and closing with a visit to the Berlin Philharmonic in the evening, if they're still playing (as you know most world class orchestras tend to go on vacation during the month of August, but maybe I get lucky!), may restore a little bit of perspective. It might do good once more to be reminded, how humanity can invest its talents in efforts to create instead of to destroy.

2006-08-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

Wittenberg-Potsdam-Berlin.

Trip dist: 94 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 28 min. Tot dist: 4,876 kms.

Berlin Philharmonic, here I come!!

Well, I had procastinated on fixing the flat and left it to last minute (this morning right before departure, that is), mostly because I was not looking forward to the re-packing that fetching the bike repair book from the bottom of the panniers would've required.

But I'm an engineer, right? Who needs step-by-step instructions? How hard can repairing or changing a flat be? So in spite of not managing to wake up any earlier than usual I went ahead and fixed my flat no problem. Took only 20 minutes. And I didn't even have to use the spiffy "tire levers" included in my bike tools bag. Not bad for a newbie, huh? :D

Anyway, wow. Berlin looks A LOT like Mexico City, especially from Bundestrasse 2 through the Strasse der 17.Juni (I came from the West, through Spandau), all the way to the Brandenburg Gate, where I constantly had to remind myself, what country I was in. My promenade through these avenues, I swear, was like deja vu of driving along the Paseo de La Reforma, complete with Angel de la Independencia (here it called the Victory Column), and Hemiciclo a Juárez (tanks flank it here--they do not pop out in this picture--, for here it is a Soviet War Memorial). Uncanny, huh??

Anyway, Berlin sems pretty cool. After dropping the bike at the Hostel I strolled a bit towards Alexanderplatz along the famous big avenue of Unter den Linden, and found that you can hear any language that you can imagine spoken in the streets of Berlin: Spanish, English (even the street advertisements for beer, perfume, etc are doubled-up in English), Dutch, Italian, Polish, but I hardly hear any German. Again, had to constantly remind myself what country I was in, for it was simple matter to convince yourself you were elsewhere.

Hmm...Berlin is exciting....

2006-08-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

Wittenberg.

Berlin, so close (only 80 more kilometers!) and yet...

Have to stay a day here in Wittenberg to see why it is a UNESCO World Heritage site (in spite of my hurry to get to Berlin, the culmination and northernmost point of the trip, the halfway point, the city I have heard so much of, of rich history, of fantastic museums and excellent music, well, I should stop gushing and get back to telling you about Wittenberg).

So I went in the morning and droped by the Haus der Geschichte which deals primarily with how Wittenberg was during the GDR times, and was all furnished in 60's and 70's type furniture. It was exactly like walking into the set of the movie "Goodbye Lenin!", complete with the cans of those pickles that the young man in the story is constantly looking for to give to his mother. Very strange.

Anyway, later I headed over to the Lutherhalle (Luther Museum) which is at the house in the Augustinian monastery where Luther lived first as a monk and later with his wife while he was teaching at the university, and which he made available to students and friends for guest staying and general discussion.

But before I tell you about the excellent exhibits there (they are much better than at any of the other Luther places I visited here in Germany, having been renovated and spruced up to the tune of something like 2.5 million Euros back in 2003), did you know why Martin Luther became a monk in the first place?

No?

There was a thunderstorm, he freaked out, and scared to death he prayed and promised to St. Anne that he would become a monk if saved.

"No atheists in foxholes", the old saying goes, ha ha.

How ironic, too, considering that later Luther rejects all Saints since, according to the new Luther reformation views, the veneration of Saints violates the 1st commandment of Jesus Christ as the only path to salvation.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Let me start from the beginning.

If you for a moment take a Christian mindset, and look over his 95 theses, they seem quite reasonable (gosh am I turning Protestant now? That would be the last straw, wouldn't it? ;P), written justly by someone who obviously takes the matter seriously, sees the absurdity and hypocrisy in the whole practice of indulgences, and questions authority. Very commendable.

But, did you know, that indulgences, in reality, though marketed as "pardons for the sinners" and sold to the poor supposedly to help fund the construction of St. Peter's in Rome for the greater glory of God (which is what Luther was questioning), were actually being used for paying the debts of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Albrecht von Hohenzollern, which was the fee he had to pay Rome for the accumulation of religious offices and titles (Hohenzollern had also acquired the arch-bishopy of Mainz)?

Luther, apparently (according to documentation in the exhibit, at any rate), didn't know this at the time of the 95 theses. So here we have a great thinker acting in good faith but also being terribly naive, for the "wickedness" and "ignorance" he was condemning in his writings was far, far cleverer and insidious than he could've possibly imagined. And see, how it is the story of humanity, that the powerful take advantage of the uneducated sheep (the people who fearfully buy indulgences in this case) and use the educated, the naive, but educated (like Luther and his monks) as pawns to suit their purposes?

Aye.

The ordinary citizen needs to learn to see, where what is sold to him as "humanitarian", or "the war for peace", or "making the world safe for democracy", or "final solutions", or "getting rid of evil" or any other of such blathering nonsense is actually going. Remember what I said about why critical thinking skills are important?

Anyway, moving on. This exhibit did a good job, too, about showing the not so good aspects of Luther's work and character. Luther did many very good remarkable things, but he was a man, and did many terrible things also. Take, for instance, the peasant revolts of 1525. Luther sides with the princes, results in Münzer's (German pastor and peasant rebel leader) decapitation, in spite of seeming to support them at the beginning. Or take his anti-Turk and anti-semite pamphlets of 1538, where among other things he said that their mosques, synagogues, and schools should be burned and that their houses should be crushed and destroyed as well, and which, wasting no time, were even used as inspirations for the well documented World War II disasters, and which even prompted, in 1983, an apology from the Luther World Federation (text transcription from exhibit quote):

"We neither approve nor excuse...the awful anti-semitic writings of the Reformer...we find with great regret that Luther's name had to be brought in during the Nazi period to justify anti-semitism, and that his writings are suited for such abuse."

But not just the Nazis, then the GDR. According to the exhibit, while in West Germany the Luther celebrations were uncertain and with some embarasment, in East Germany Luther was touted as a "bourgeois revolutionary" in view of his role in the peasant revolts (I assume while he apparently supported them, nevermind that he did not support them when they turned exciting later) and the reformation, so he's a hero according to Soviet thought.

The perils of being famous/changing the world: your message, inevitably, will be bastardized and prostituted to suit the aims of the ruling classes.

No doubt, though, that a good chunk of Luther's writings should be a worthwhile, edifying/insightful read.

Still, in 1982, Gerhard Ebeling (Protestant theologician) said:
"Measured against this [Luther's understanding of freedom in his biblical theology], today's enthusiasm for Luther is suspected of ignorance concerning the strangeness of Luther."

Interesting parting words to the exhibit, they kept me company for the rest of the day.

Oh, the picture at the top of the post? A Wittenberg High School (the Martin-Luther Gymnasium), designed by architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He's like a way much, much cooler Gaudi. Wished he had designed some of the buildings at MIT. A dorm by him would've been nice. :)

2006-08-05T03:37:00.000-07:00

Leipzig-Wittenberg.

Trip dist: 90 kms (plus 10 extra for "forgetting" notebook in the Youth Hostel). Trip time: 5 hrs 37 mins. Tot dist: 4,781 kms.

Ho boy. This was a rather sucky/lucky/unlucky ride. There was a bit of foreboding as I was approaching the Leipzig outskirts town of Wiederlitzsch. As you know in many of these little towns the street names have the name of the next town where the street leads to. So I am cruising through Wiederlitzsch and I start seeing, one after another, one block apart, street names of: "Buchenwald Strasse", or "Dachauer Strasse", etc. Thought it was a bit odd, because as I said before the streets with names like "Leipzigerstrasse" and so forth typically lead to the corresponding places, but these were small side streets that ended, where I was passing, onto a big avenue, and on the other side, onto a residential apartments section, which, unless the street then turned to make a 180 or 90 degree turn, would not be leading to where these places actually were, but the direction opposite.

So, why these kinds of macabre street names? Is it some kind of attempt to remember? Geez, think of the bad feng shui of having to live in a street with a name like this.

Anyway, when I stopped to make a note of this I found that I had forgotten my notebook in the Youth Hostel in the morning (terrible considering that I am about 20 days behind in blog updates, so recreating those from memory is impossible). I was already 5 kms away from Leipzig. So, go back to fetch it, right?

Didn't find it back at the Hostel. Color drained from my cheeks. Started the process of just about to kick myself. Double check the backpack.

There was the notebook. 1 hour and 10 kms wasted. Oh well, at least it appeared!

The day, too, was cold, cloudy, dark and rainy. By the time I arrived in Wittenberg all my books and the road atlas got soaked through the bags. My socks were wet (wet enough to have a significant dribble upon wringing). My T-shirt was wet. My underwear was wet. It kinda sucked (not least of which also because I got scolded first by a driver--who stopped the car without warning in the middle of the national road(!) 50 meters ahead of me, then waited for me to near the car, and when I ignored his beckonings--woman solo traveller safety concerns--then advanced the car 100 more meters to repeat the process and finally tell me that I should take the bike path to the side and this was not the right road to Wittenberg, and then by a police officer, when I was turning to take the bike path, asking me why I was on the wrong road ("It was a mistake, my map is not very good."), and actually shouting, yes, shouting at me--he was standing only 2 feet away--, that I should not be heading in the direction I had already stopped heading 10 minutes before.)

The lucky part, though, and cause for celebration and joy: I got my first puncture! Luckily, it happened just as I arrived to final destination for the day Wittenberg, only 700 meters from the Youth Hostel. This is fantastic, because given that I have absolutely no clue how to repair a flat tire, having to do this while on the rainy, muddy road would've been quite unpleasant, not to mention the logistics of popping out the soaked-through "Bike Repair Bible" which I carry at the bottom of all my luggage would've also required some serious packing rearranging (puncture culprit? A piece of glass that had cut through the treads of the back tire--remember I told you it needed replacing since way back when I was in Spain?). So I pumped up the tire, and pushwalked the bike to the Hostel (process had to be repeated once: the panniers and backpack are heavy enough--especially when wet--that the air drained out of the tire pretty quickly), where I settled in for the evening.

The tire puncture repair? Meh, there's always time for that tomorrow.

2006-08-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Quedlinburg.

[Ed note: Folks, I apologize if the blog lately has seemed flaky or not often updated. There has been some trouble with my image hosting company who decided to do one of their famous "upgrades"/service changes and all hell broke loose. So, the point is, I am currently unable to upload images reliably or even reliably view what I did upload in the past, so if the movies/image links in previous posts have not been working, this is why. So, think twice about going to Streamload/Mediamax for your file storage and hosting needs, folks. I promise I will update the posts with the missing images as soon as (that is if) things get to normal with them, so please check back through from the August 1st posts onwards in a few days when you have the chance. My sincerest apologies. Anyway, continuing with the usual program, minus the images....]

So. Remember what I said about the Germans and their rules? No, I'm not paranoid, it wasn't just a first impression or a case of simply misunderstanding the language or local customs.

This morning, in extending my stay at the hostel, I paid my extension with a 20 Euro bill. It was a rather newish bill, but had been a bit crumpled up in a tight stay in my small zippered wallet (which also holds all my coins, thus explaining the crumpling). When I extended the bill to the receptionist, she pointedly looked at me and said: "Ooops!"

I of course had no idea what had just happened so I scrutinized her face for clues to figure out what exactly she was "oopsing" about.

She then showed me the bill, and made a point of uncrumpling it and straightening out the corners on the table, a production that lasted a full (I kid you not!) two minutes before she put the bill away in the register, while the other receptionist (a guy) "tsk tsk tsk"ed at me and made ironing motion mimics and sounds with raised eyebrows.

So, kids, learn your lesson: It is improper to crumple up your 20 Euro bills.

Yikes.

Anyway, visited the pretty town of Quedlinburg, with its Fachwerkshäuser Altstadt and the Castle and Church of St. Servatius. The Church, of course, like all important churches, is custody to a small treasure, carefully detailed item by item in the visitor's guide you receive with your church entrance ticket.

The treasure, unfortunately, is incomplete, for not unlike many other such treasures, some pieces went missing throughout the years, but especially after the 2nd World War, and this (the missing artwork) has apparently made the "Quedlinburgians" a little bit upset. Here's the textual, word-for-word quote from the English visitor's guide:

"Economic and financial difficulties from the 16th century forced the community [of Quedlinburg] to sell individual pieces from the treasury. In 1812 King Jerome of Westphalia ordered the treasure to be taken to Kassel. It was only returned to its original location in 1820 thanks to the perseverance of Superintendent Fritsch.

Most of the [Church treasure] losses occured at the end of the 2nd World War. The treasure was stored in 16 chests in bombproof caves near Quedlinburg until the American troops occupied Quedlinburg in April 1945.

When the treasure was returned weeks later the chests had been opened and ransacked. Twelve pieces were missing, including 2 valuable gospel books, the relic-box and ornamental comb of Henry I, six rock crystal flacons, a small cross-shaped reliquary, and an Agnus Dei capsule. They were considered lost for more than 40 years.

The American lieutenant Joe Meador had stolen them and sent them to his hometown Witewright (Texas) by military mail. The art theft was only discovered after lengthy investigations when his heirs tried to sell the Samuhel Gospel.

According to Texan law this crime had expired by prescription [E's note: statute of limitations?]. A judicial settlement with the Meador family resulted in the return of 10 of the stolen works to Germany in the spring of 1992. A small cross and rock crystal flacon are still lost in the U.S. and remain on the list of stolen artworks."

I have no comment on this one.

[shrug]

Let me tell you a little more about this King Henry I, though. Henry I (a.k.a. Henry the fowler) was the duke of Saxony (back in around 912 or so), and is considered the first king of medieval Germany, for he unified several of the then existing duchies, some by inheritance, and some by military campaigns. He also successfully defended this German confederation against several Magyar invasions and annexed onto his kingdom a section which used back then to belong to Denmark. In Quedlinburg he is particularly well liked, not just because the town was donated by him but also because it was there where his wife founded the famous "Frauenstift", a type of women's college or school where they could go learn all sorts of useful medieval skills like weaving and the like. No wonder, then, that both he and his wife are buried in the castle cathedral.

But what is really interesting is how this well liked and popular historical figure was used for nationalistic propaganda starting with the (in)famous "Heinrichsfeier" of 1939, where in impassioned speeches adressed to a chapelfull of SS soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder celebrating the 1000th anniversary of his death, King Henry I was touted as an example of German courage and strength and how people should look up to him and how we should build a nation like his and blah blah blah.

Clever, huh?

[And if you don't mind reading in German, you can find the transcription of the original 1939 speeches here.]

2006-08-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

Dessau.

Day tripped to Dessau since it is a UNESCO WHS (together with Weimar, remember? because it is the site of the Bahaus school of architecture) today. Dessau is an eerily quiet city, for a minute there I had to double check to make sure I hadn't suddenly lost my hearing, for I was downtown at 11 a.m. and could hear NO cars, the people were walking by silently, without greeting or talking to each other, even in the marketplace.

As I further walked along this town I also started noticing that people do not smile here, and the natural/default expressions are not neutral but actual frowns. There are no unruly laughing toddlers or teenage skateboarders noisily jumping and invading the sidewalks, most people are over the age of 70, and I'm getting some really bad vibes about this place. Glad I don't have to spend the night here.

Anyway, I visited the Bauhaus buildings. While I wouldn't really say I like Bauhaus style architecture (it has some nice features, like these windows, but it is otherwise too boxy and plain and reminds me a lot of Mexican public school architecture--"Escuela Secundaria Tecnica" style or even "UAG" style--which if you know what I'm talking about is ugly architecture indeed), but I think it is neat that finally some modern stuff is protected as World Heritage (good to protect old Gothic churches, but humanity's modern heritage should be protected for posterity also!).

Unfortunately, a good chunk of the Dessau Bauhaus Meisterhäuser (the houses where the Bauhaus Masters lived, like painters Klee Kandinsky and Feininger, musician Kurt Weil, architect Walter Gropius, etc) are mostly rebuilt (they were destroyed in the War), so the UNESCO here is protecting something that is not original. A copy, if you will. That, I am not too happy with. Still, it is probably in the "spirit" of Bauhaus, right? What with all the quick built, prefab, all-houses-look-alike-like-shoeboxes-put-together-except-every-second-one-of-them-rotated-by-90-degrees-so-the-repetition-isn't-as-obvious-one-house-could-stand-for-another-including-a-reconstruction Bauhaus style?

Anyway, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, these Meisterhäuser are very utilitarian, all have low ceilings, little furniture, drab colors, would be o.k. for a student dorm, but I can't imagine artists like Klee/Kandinsky/Weil being happy here. Or maybe the companionship and college-like atmosphere made up for it, I don't know. Or with nothing to feast their eyes on (drab white and black walls), they were therefore forced to create in their works from the imagination. Granted, these houses do inspire a very healthy work ethic, I would think (i.e. no pleasant distractions). I wouldn't want to raise kids here, though.

Bauhaus architecture, though, gotta hand it to them, does know how to do windows right. A lot of light does come into the buildings. Too bad with the low ceilings and drab colors inside then the light has nowhere left to go!

Anyway, tonight coming back to Leipzig while strolling along Grimmaische Strasse I had a stunning revelation! With so much music, literature, and history, I don't care what Dalí says, it is not in Perpignan, IT....is Leipzig.

Yup. That's right. And I haven't even been to Berlin yet. ;D

2006-08-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Eisleben.

Ha ha. A little amusing story from last night. Here in Leipzig I have a Taiwan roomie at the Youth Hostel (she's spending a couple of weeks doing some sort of summer course at the renowned Mendelssohn Musikhochschule I told you about). On the second night after some chit-chat about our respective summer plans and what good concerts were currently going on in the city she suddenly asked me: "When you are in Europe....what do you eat?"

:D.

In her defense, she usually prepares her own meals at the Hostel. Ramen-style noodles, from what I've been able to gather. Considering the dearth of Asian-style marketplaces nearby I assume the ingredients must be either hard to find or need to be direct imports. And considering they need to last her 2 weeks, direct imports would probably require a small luggage bag themselves. Curious, that she apparently would not seriously consider partaking in the local cuisine. In my opinion, a good part of the enjoyment of going to Europe is the food!

Anyway, went to Eisleben today. This is an important city because Martin Luther both was born and died there (the two houses are open to visitors and they're not that far away from each other). Much of this city is simply dedicated to Luther this Luther that and this is the Church where Luther gave 10 (or 20 or 53 or 197 insert-whatever-number-you-care-for-here-since-I-wasn't-really-paying-close-attention) of his sermons. And here is the tavern where Luther once drank a beer. And this is the fountain where he once washed his hands, blah blah blah kind of thing. Otherwise, Eiseleben is not particularly picturesque or exciting. Rather small and lonely.

But, some of the museums/houses/exhibits were informative. For instance: Luther's translation and the subsequent printing of the Luther Bible in German was not so much important because the text was finally made available to the public (back in 1524ish how many people could read anyway? and besides, there were German Bibles available already), but because this was the first real step taken in standardizing the German language. This, of course, accomplished, firstly, due to its wide diffusion, and secondly, because in translating it Luther made a point to choose a language that "could be understood by everyone: the children on the street, the men in the marketplace, the mothers at home, etc", thus doing a bit for German what Shakespeare did to English or Dante did to Italian.

Neat, huh?

Anyway, returning back to Leipzig in the afternoon I took a stroll over to Felix Mendelssohn's house (and museum), which was rather neat. From the location, size, family trip records, and belongings on display I deduced that Mendelssohn came from a rather affluent family. But that's not really what made the visit neat or surprising, or worthwhile. What was super cool about Mendelssohn, that not too many people know about, was the fact that he was also a talented painter. His watercolor paintings, for instance, are stunningly precise and beautiful! And what's curious, his paintings are not passionate and lyrical like his music, but expressive more of a very scientific, journalistic realism type of talent, the contrast which I found rather neat, and a very exciting and pleasant discovery.

2006-08-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

Leipzig.

Ah, Leipzig. Bach spent his best years here. So why are the street musicians so adamant on obstinately playing only Mozart?

One of life's great mysteries.

Anyway, visited Leipzig's St. Thomas Kirche. Bach was Cantor and Music Director here. The tomb of my idol Bach is also here. I also saw the famous Bach Organ, whose construction was supervised/approved by the musician himself.

The Bach Museum here in Leipzig is so much better than the one in Eisenach. It includes more details about the composer's life and even has an interesting blurb about his second wife Anna Magdalena, relating such details as to how she managed after his famous husband died (she had stopped singing when she became Bach's wife and mother of 13 kids--most died in childhood). Basically, she made do for a while by selling some of Bach's autographs, but eventually died poor as an "Almosenfrau" (i.e. a woman living from charity donations). Sad, huh?

There were also some very interesting blurbs about his kids. They were all pretty remarkable. Wilhelm Friedemann, for instance (eldest son of his and Anna Magdalena), studied Math, Philosophy, and Law at Leipzig University before becoming the Organist and Music Director at Halle, and he was well known as "the best Organist and improviser in Germany". Wow. High achiever, huh?

The museum even has some CD listening stations with examples of some of Bach's Motets, Cantatas, pedagogic works, and examples of baroque flute music (the Brandenburg Concertos, of course), for instance. AND, the museum is right next-door to a remarkably well-stocked sheet music shop. Cool, huh?

By the way, did you know, that for something like a full 5 years, Bach composed 1 cantata a week as part of his job during his time in Leipzig? Yeah, of course you knew. But think about this. Were you to listen to just one of his cantatas a day, it would take you almost 9 months before you had to listen to a repeat. How cool is that? (For an exact list of his surviving cantatas--over 200 of them, about 100 or so more were lost to us, as you know--you may want to take a look for instance here).

{sigh}

Anyway, another great thing about the exhibit was that it spent quite a good number of panels explaining Bach's influence on later romantics like Mendelsohn and Schumann (Mendelsohn for instance gave regular performances of his organ works in the same Church in Leipzig that the Master did), and how they routinely gave concerts and recitals (Clara Schuman too, who was a rather renowned pianist in her day also) featuring his works, and included displays of some of the original recital programs and concert advert flyers.

Back on the side topic on who should fund Art, by the way, if at all. Had Bach not been funded by the Church (and way back then Church and State were very incestuously intertwined), would he have composed as much? Can you imagine a Bach without the St. Matthew's Passion? Without the Mass in B minor? Of course, the Cantatas? Interesting food for speculatory thoughts.

Anyway, in the afternoon I headed over to the GDR museum (Stadtgeschichtliches Museum). Then to the Stasi Museum. I have more to tell you about this but at the moment they're closing the internet cafe so I'll have to leave it as a TBUL. My apologies. But check this entry in a couple of days, I'll add the updates on this same post.

2006-07-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

Weimar-Naumburg-Weissenfels-Leipzig.

Trip dist: 103 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 18 mins. Tot dist: 4,692 kms.

Ah. With all this day-tripping I had been doing from Weimar I think I forgot to tell you why this city is so important.

Weimar is inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list no less than twice. Together with the city of Dessau, Weimar was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list for the first time in 1996, for the role it played in developing the Bauhaus school of architecture, which was founded here back in 1919 before it (and its great exponents Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Vassily Kandinsky, et al.) moved to Dessau. Some examples of this kind of architecture can be found near Weimar city center.

The second time, in 1998, the UNESCO inscribed "Classical Weimar" in the list for the city's important cultural flowering in the late 18th through early 19th centuries: the German literary giants Goethe and Schiller lived and produced some of their best work here, for instance, but not just them, but several other well-renowned German poets, like Wieland and Herder, as well (for you musicophiles, by the way, I don't think I need to remind you, especially you who are familiar with some of the Schubert Lieder, or the Brahms, or some of the Beethoven--the 9th, for instance--many of them are musical versions of Schiller and Goethe poems). Weimar's beautiful Anna Amalia Bibliothek (couldn't visit, unfortunately, but here are some pictures from the web) still holds some of the original Goethe and Schiller manuscripts, and you can also of course visit both Goethe's and Schiller's houses (now museums dedicated to the masters' work).

Neat, huh?

Anyway, the ride today to Leipzig was fairly ordinary. The cool thing about German town street naming conventions: Ever get lost in the middle of some town center because you just lost sight of where the Bundestrasse B87 or whateveritsnameis was supposed to go once it got blended in with the other main town streets as you approached the city center and marketplace? Not to worry, simply follow the streetnames: Leipziger Strasse will lead you to Leipzig, Marburger Strasse, either comes from or goes to Marburg, etc., and this is so true and comfortingly predictable that without any other information you can pretty much ask the next passerby: "Excuse me, where is [insert-name-of-next-town-you-want-to-get-to-here]er Strasse?", and you will soon be on your way, as it is guaranteed it eventually merges with the appropriate National road. Cool, huh?

From the outskirts of Leipzig to city center there is something like 10 kms, with very sparse lands, a building here or there but many empty lots before you get close to the more urban area. Some parts even looked a bit like Mexico City's area of Las Lomas (it is a very nice and rather affluent area), only Leipzig is a little bit more unkempt (lots of overgrown grass and as I said a fair amount of "empty space"), and I even thought: "Hoy, for a 3rd world country, at least in comparison to this 1st world country, Mexico is not doing all that bad at all!". But anyway. Aside from the outskirts (which as I mentioned are rather....lonely looking), Leipzig city center is one of the most beautiful ones I've seen, and I rather wonder how much of it has been reconstructed. I also wondered, too, why Leipzig is not in the UNESCO WH list, for it certainly seems to deserve it, in terms of beauty. There are lots of 1700's style buildings, and the street musicians play things like Mozart's Clarinet Concerto throughout the center-town side streets. No wonder: Leipzig has one of the most reputed music traditions in all of Europe, not least of all the Musikhochschule founded no less than by Felix Mendelsohn himself.

I think I'm rather going to like this city.

:D.

2006-07-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

Bamberg.

Visited the pretty town of Bamberg today. It is included in the UNESCO World Heritage list because of its fantastically well-preserved town centre, its architectural influence on nearby regions of Germany (lots of Fachwerkshäuser here, for instance), and even town of residence of famous philosopher Hegel.

The funny thing here was the Bavarian accent. :). Sounds a little bit like a Scotsman speaking German, with its markedly rolled "r"s and strongly-defined vowels(a bit like Spanish, where the vowels are well-defined, always the strong sound, and never "dipthongated"), and with the Scottish intonation/singsong. That still didn't help me understand the language any better, so the details about the Residenz and the Bamberg Museum which were guided in one and written in the other were to me rather sparse, since my German is rather fluent when I speak it (I don't really have much to say when travelling--"Where is the Youth Hostel?" or if more complicated conversation with a German Youth Hostel roommate is required, perhaps a "How do you like this city?", which is not very complicated stuff, you see), but understanding it when the answers come is another matter, as there are many words I do not know (and I suspect that many times people reply to me in local dialects, which makes things a bit more tricky, and which I found odd, given that from my horrible grammar it ought to be fairly clear that I'm a foreigner...), and unlike French, where you can deduce the meaning from the similarities to Latin, Italian and Spanish when it's written, this trick won't do in German (one like me needs a dictionary in this case). Besides, from the little I could gather, the heavily Bavarian-accented guide was speaking mostly about the palace mirrors. So you're not missing much by my limited language skills. Still, I must confess that listening to the guide was rather enjoyable, truth be told. In a good natured, amusing, purely acoustic pleasure kind of way. ;)

{shrug}

2006-07-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Würzburg.

Day-tripped to visit the famous Würzburg Residence (UNESCO World Heritage Site!), which is like most palaces in Europe, but what made this one kind of cool was its super high ceilings and multitudinous windows immersing the interior in light and spaciousness (and probably also giving it some nice acoustics to boot). Unfortunately, one is not allowed to take pictures inside, for I'd show you otherwise (in the meantime pictures of the outside will have to suffice).

The Würzburg residence was designed by architect Balthasar Neumann for the Prince Bishops and the very first thing that hits you as you ascend the beautiful staircase (I took the picture before I found out they weren't allowed, in my defense) is the huge fresco by Tiepolo, which is supposed to be the biggest one in Europe, in terms of surface area. Neat, huh?

Inside, it is very tastefully decorated, very clean and shiny (much of the Würzburg residence was damaged during the War, and restoration is still going on to date), and some of the rooms are decorated in a really cool pale mint with silver stuccoes, which looks rather nice. It (the room whose pic I just showed you in particular) reminded me a bit of my grandmother's home in Mexico City, for some reason. Could be because she used to have chairs in the same Louis IV style and color, I think.

Given how much of it was destroyed in the war, however (quite a bit), I rather wondered who funded the restoration....

2006-07-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Weimar/Buchenwald.

This morning I strolled over to Buchenwald, which is only about 10 kms away from Weimar city center (well, I took the bus, I didn't mean to imply I walked there). I wanted to see one in Germany, you see, because though I had been to Auschwitz before, and the sickening feeling there was overwhelming, I wanted to know, if in Germany they would say the same kinds of things, or whether they would be soaked in an apologetic tone, or in a matter-of-fact tone, or what.

So off I went.

About what I saw there, there's not much I can to tell you. In terms of buildings, there's...not really much left to see, anyway, and the stuff the've reconstructed looks so clean and shiny...it is a bit hard to believe....that such things ever happened there at all, almost. And of the other things I saw there, the absurdly detailed documents on what went missing and who said what to whom at what minute past 9 a.m., or of the sardonic: "Jedem das Seine" at the entrance of the camp gates, or of the happy family photograps of the people who never appeared in another one like that again, etc, to tell you about it, I mean, would be rather pointless and trite. There's not all that much to say, you know, and what's more, unfortunately, what happened there is not all that much different, you see, from any of the other camps spread almost every 100 kms apart back in Poland.

What I did not know though, was that between 1945 and 1950 this camp was used by the Soviets to keep something like 28,000 German prisoners (including about 1000 women) accused of having taken part in the Nazi war horror, in what became known as "Special Camp No. 2", and in conditions not very dissimilar to the camp they had just liberated. And "accused" is the correct word here.

The marker you see in the above picture is above one of the mass graves at Special Camp No.2. It was put in after Buchenwald became a memorial site.

The deaths in this Soviet Special Camp No.2 were, officially, something like 7,000.

How quickly we repeat our same mistakes.

2006-07-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

Eisenach-Erfurt-Weimar.

Trip dist: 83 kms. Trip time: 5 hrs, 3 min. Tot dist: 4,588 kms.

Man. I'm ditching the radwegs. Every time I get on one I end up either: a)pushwalking the bike and its 30 kgs of panniers over sloped gravel, b)scratching my head at an unmarked 6 or 7-way intersection in the middle of a wheat-field somewhere, c)bumping along on stone-paved road whose vibration loosens every single screw on the bike and would even loosen the ones in my brain if I only had one still left to loosen, or d)between 2-10 kms away from where I need to be at any given point in time judging from my road map. So I guess I'll take the angry shouting when I ride the Bundestrasse instead. That's what a good set of headphones and some relaxing Chopin in the classical music station is for.

I have another "funny" road story for today. I arrived in Erfurt (pretty city, was passing at that moment precisely through a street where the houses reminded me a lot of the ones one finds in downtown Guadalajara, the big, beautiful antique houses with a garden surrounding them, along Av. Vallarta--most of them are now made into restaurants or offices, but picture this, this street in Erfurt was full of them, so you can imagine how pretty it was).

Anyway, it was a rather hot day, so at one point I stopped in front of a pretty house, on the sidewalk where there was some shade, propped the bike by its kickstand, and proceeded to retrieve some water from my bright yellow thermos bag. I was just in the middle of drinking when from across the street I see a tall, approximately 70-year old gentleman purposefully approaching me.

"Oops," I thought. "I'm about to get scolded again. I wonder what I did this time. Surely stopping in front of houses to drink from one's water bottle is not also forbidden?" and I started putting my bottle away in preparation for leaving, as it seemed would shortly be required of me.

"Hot day today, isn't it?", said the gentleman, as he approached.

Ah. Maybe I won't get scolded. I relaxed a bit, opened up the bottle again. "Yeah," said I.

"Do you come from very far?"

"Eisenach," said I. (One never tells people one comes from Lisbon, or goes to Istanbul. People....tend to treat you with suspicion when you say that, because they don't believe you. So they become overcautious because they can't figure out why you would make up such a kind of story, you see....)

"No," said he. "But originally? You're not German?".

"Ah!", I laughed, good naturedly. "Nah, I'm from Mexico."

"Really?", said he. Then he switched to Spanish. "Mexico is pretty, right?".

"Ha ha, yes it is. Your Spanish is quite good. How is it that you speak it so?" said I.

Turns out, the gentleman had lived for some time in Tenerife. We then had a rather pleasant 20 minute or so chat (half Spanish half German), where we talked about all sorts of things, where he had travelled, that he had lived both in the FDR and the GDR, and did he think things were different between the two, and are they still, and why is there more unemployment in the former GDR even now as compared to the former FDR, etc, and what is Mexico like? Is there a lot of unemployment there?

I said, well, yes and no, the official unemployment rate is low, but that's because even though something like 20% of the people are not formally employed (in a company, for instance, or in a service job, etc), since the government gives no unemployment benefits one has to figure out a way to make some money, so they become "self-employed" in small temporary businesses: secondhand repair shops, trade/sell/barter, cleaning staff, etc. And when the polls come along, people fill in the "self-employed" box and although they are formally unemployed, the figure doesn't count towards the official unemployment rate, you see.

"Yeah, that's good, you see. Here in Germany since the government gives out unemployment benefits it is sometimes more worthwhile to just not work. Because people think 'If by working I get only 100 Euros more, why bother?', you know?".

"Yeah." Said I.

"And in Mexico, is it true that it is very poor?"

"Well, yes. The statistics say that something like 80% of the population in Mexico is poor." (I kept things simple here. No use going into what this "poor" actually means, but if you're curious, it basically means that 80% of the people in Mexico are below the international poverty line, though different sites quote different numbers, and of course as with all statistics it really really makes a difference how you count things and how you conduct your surveys. In fact, the official international number is 40% or so--look at the stats on the web, the CIA factbook, for instance--, but the official national number, the number the Mexicans are told about on their news and textbooks, is around 80%. Don't ask me why these numbers are different).

"I see...".

And so on and so forth. The conversation continued. Where was I headed today? Weimar. Ah, I see. And do you stay in hotels, or do you camp, or what? I stay in Youth Hostels, they're fairly cheap, you see, I smiled.

"I used to bike around too, you know." he said.

"When I was younguer, staying in the Youth Hostels cost only 5 Marks!!".

"Aha." said I.

"Can you believe it?"

"Cheap." said I. I figured that was the correct response, but in reality, I have no idea of how much a Mark compares to a Euro, much less how much 5 Marks was way back when this gentleman was young, especially since I had no good feel for how long ago that was anyway. But the answer seemed to please him, at any rate.

We exchanged a few more brief pleasantries, until I told him I must be on my way, to which he most kindly gave me some directions, and we parted.

I was in the outskirts of Erfurt about 25 minutes later when I saw a squeaky clean dark blue rather large car (Mercedes? didn't pay close attention) signal towards me and take a side street I had just crossed and stop and honk at me. I turned to see the gentleman I had just been having a conversation with earlier. I figured from the honking that he was going to correct me on the directions, perhaps I had taken a wrong turn, so when he beckoned towards the car, I resignedly braced myself for some more of this German "help".

To my surprise, he rolled down the window, and proferred me a 50 Euro note.

I jumped two steps back and shook my head as I hastily returned to my bike.

"Wait, no..." said he.

"Sorry," said I.

"Take it", said he.

"Sorry, no." said I.

"It is a gift. I just want to make you a gift."

"You're most kind, but no", said I, as I climbed onto the bike.

"No, wait, you don't understand. I don't want anything. It is just a gift!" said he, visibly chagrined at the fact I might have gotten the wrong idea.

I chuckled as I shook my head.

"But why?" said he.

But why, indeed. As if..."future favors"...you know?...and if not that, then as if a conversation with me could be purchased with pecuniaries, and if not that, as if this Mexican were so poor that a 50 Euro charity would make a difference. Ha ha, thought I, chuckling, as I pedalled off to Weimar, just exacly as poor and affluent as I had been in the morning:

These Germans sure are strange, aren't they?

2006-07-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

Eisenach.

Visited Warburg Castle, which is what makes Eisenach a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was really hot today so hiking the 2 kms up the hill was rather slow-going. Anyway, the castle is famous because here is where Martin Luther hid for a while when he got in trouble with the Catholic church for being a bit of a "hell raiser" (ha ha ha! I love my bad puns!) and translated the Bible into German. The Bible had been translated into German before but the innovation that Luther did on this one was that he translated it directly from the Latin and Greek.

The Castle itself was not too exciting, a bit small, but I've seen better (Malbork Castle in Poland just one example), and the guided tour was too long. Or maybe I was in an impatient mood due to the heat, I don't know.

After getting back down into the little 1600's architecture-style town of Eisenach I visited the Bach's House museum (not in his original house, which no longer exists, but in the same general village quarter), but it was a bit disappointing because there were no real displays (the sheet music/scores for instance were always facsimiles or copies only, or pictures of facsimiles, etc.), maybe an old violin here, and a lot of lithographs of Eisenach from the 1700's. The exhibit also did not focus at all on Bach's music, just his life, which other than the fact that he fathered 20 children (most died in infancy), was not particularly exciting or as interesting as his music. I would've preferred a more musicological focus including for instance some mention of why his works were so innovative at the time (one reason for example was his frequent unabashed use of the augmented 4th, also known as the tritone, or also known as the dreaded "devil's interval"---kinda neat given that Bach made a career of being church organist, church composer, and choirmaster!, or his unsurpassed polyphonic contrapunctual technique, or his brilliant "teach by example" treatise The Art of the Fugue) and why his works are so important even to this day (influences on Mozart, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, and Schönberg to name just a few).

The museum's claim to fame lies in a little 30 hour didactic concert/demo where some of Bach's works are played on original instruments live. It was a pleasant little diversion that was good enough for tourists, but the pieces were not particularly choice pieces (mostly two or three of his easier Little Preludes, some Anna Magdalena Bach, and the simple Prelude No. 1 from the Well Tempered Klavier. Funny too, all works were in the baby-can-play key of C major--except the minuet in G of the Anna Magdalena, the most trite, overplayed, and by virtue of this rather dreaded--for me at least--of all of Bach's ditties), and the interpretation, as well, fair but not concert quality (my fault on expecting more from that one. Eisenach is a teeny weeny unknown town smack in the middle of nowhere, pretty much). What was worse, of course, was the fact that although the original instruments were kind of neat, the choice of pieces did not effectively showcase them, let alone scratch the surface of the depth and sublime beauty of Bach, which was too bad.

No, I'm not done. If this is the museum in the spot of Bach's birthplace, you'd at least expect a decent gift shop. This one was equipped with perhaps 15 CDs for sale. Anything exciting? No, a small repertoire of rather obscure works, only the Brandenburg Concertos and a secular Cantata here or there excited a mildly interested second look, but several of them turned out to be recorded by local (Eisenach) performers (i.e. not the most professional editions, that is), no Glenn Gould or any of the major German orchestras, so, what's the point?

The saddest part of all: no sheet music for sale. Looks like I'll have to wait until I get to Berlin for that one....

2006-07-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Marburg-Kirchain-Alsfeld-Bad Hersfeld-Friedewald- Gerstungen- Eisenach.

Trip dist: 155 kms. Trip time: 9 hrs, 46 min. Tot dist: 4,505 kms.

Today's ride was o.k. but long, though especially pretty was the ride through the Turingian Forest and the descent into Eisenach. I don't have pictures for you today, unfortunately, because my memory card got full and I could find no internet for the past two days in the little villages, and even if it hadn't been by the time I got to the forest darkness was threatening so I was in too much of a hurry anyway.

A strange thing happened to me almost as soon as I crossed into the former GDR. While in West Germany people were really trying to help me and would go well out of their way to do so (in their strange ways--Just today I had a gentleman in his 30s at a stoplight direct me out of the main road I was in towards a bike path--one I didn't want to take because it went uphill over a tall bridge that the car path went under--, and after ensuring I got on it--waiting until he saw me get on it, that is, not 1 km later caught up to me in the car as well, rolled down the window, and explained to me that it would've been "too dangerous" to stay on the car road back where he...ah....encouraged me to get off. He then proceeded to give me detailed directions--again going for at least 10 minutes and through several of the future towns I was to pass--on how to go towards Alsfeld which was where I told the gentleman I was headed next, even getting out of the car to show me on the map I had confusedly popped open after hearing names of towns I had not for once seen while planning the route in the morning, and then happily wished me a safe trip before getting back inside his car and speeding off), here the people seem to be a bit more...mistrustful.

I arrived into Eisenach (what a pretty city! Birthplace of J.S. Bach, too! [Ian, you jealous? ;P] Still looks like it was preserved in the 1600's style) near dusktime and asked a gentleman in his 40's with his wife how to get to the Youth Hostel. He pointed me to the large map displayed next to the bus stop and said I could look it up on the map myself (the map was only of city center and the Youth Hostel, on the outskirts of town, was not on it: I had checked prior to asking him). It was a bit unexpected, given the experience with other people's "help" up until now. {shrug}.

Then later, when I arrived at the Youth Hostel they claimed they didn't have a place and were overbooked, even though the Hostel sounded very quiet, it was a Tuesday (hostels tend to get crowded more on weekends Thrusday through Saturday nights, in my experience), and let's face it, Eisenach being such a small city is rather off the beaten path for tourists. I asked the young man at the reception if he could recommend another nearby hotel. He could not. O.K., did he know of any other hotels in Eisenach? He did not. O.K. then. Left reception to check the Lonely Planet guide and call some hotels. No replies on most of them. Started to get worried. Went back to reception. Could the young man please help me find a hotel? He produced a phone book for me. I stared back at him incredulous, tired, and at the end crestfallen. I asked him helplessly and in a tiny voice if there was an area code (the phone numbers in the book looked a bit short) to dial first. Finally, it clicked. Just like U.S. customer service, you need to turn on the switch so that the customer service people start to care. He offered to call them up for me. Finally, thanks. But turns out they had no place, either. Look sad and crestfallen again (this time a bit more studied, but hey, whatever works, right?). It was close to 10 p.m. already, the sad studied face was masking the real feelings of anxiety and worry, should I ask him if I could at least crash in a service room, a basement, a couch, a lounge, something? "O.K.," he finally said. "There is someone who made reservations but since it is already 10 p.m. and they're not here, I'll just give you the room. By 9:00 p.m. you lose your reservation anyway." I exhaled a sigh of relief. He gave me the keys, I parked my bike and walked with my bags upstairs to my designated dorm room.

I was the only person in a room for 6 people.

2006-07-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

Siegen-Dillenburg-Herborn-Gladenbach-Marburg.

Trip dist: 88 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 3 min. Tot dist: 4,350 kms.

Corrections.

Blech, the ride today was not fun. It had a lot of some rather steep uphills like the one you see here, and what's more when they ended they didn't result in a later downhill but simply masked another climb right behind. Blech.

The Germans try to help me constantly.

At the Siegen hotel the first thing the lady in charge said to me in the morning was "When you pick up your bike, you need to go through this door, then park here [she walked with me to the exact spot where it should be done and walked me carefully through the steps, even demonstrating some of the required door locking procedures as she was speaking], then close this door, then exit through this other door.

When you're hauling 30 kgs of panniers that you need to pack up on your bike quickly in the morning, believe me, the last thing you want is to go through two sets of doors, obstacle-course through the furniture at the reception bar, load the bike in the "parking spot" in the Biergarten, only to then have to roll the bike through very loose gravel (no traction) in order to get to the front door 70 meters away, where the road you want is. So after listening carefully to her instructions and waiting for her to leave me (studied pleasant innocent smile frozen in my face), I simply parked the bike outside the front door and exited through there (only 1 set of doors), left the keys where she said, and saved up about 70% of my energy nevermind some kilobytes of brain cells in not having to remember the precise instructions either. You won't tell, will you?

No sooner than I arrived to the city (the hotel in Siegen was about 3 kms on the outskirts---long story), I was checking my map next to a construction site, when an elder passerby gentleman (in his 80's I would guess) said to me: "At the corner, you must take the road." I of course had no idea what he was referring to, he couldn't have possibly read my mind and answer the question that I had posed in my head just a fraction of a second before, which was: "Which way to Dillenburg?", that would be a rather...extraordinary coincidence and I haven't been getting three soccer balls in a row in my McDonald's tickets lately, so I asked him for directions, just to be sure.

He replied most kindly, and in great detail (his directions went all the way through several left and right turns through the next 3 or 4 towns and which I couldn't possibly remember in one short breath), and added at the end, again, his earlier commentary: "When you turn this corner, you must take the road, the sidewalk near the construction site is too narrow."

Ah. Right then. I thanked him, of course.

Not 10 minutes later, I was on the road after turning the corner, when a lady in her 50's approached me in her car, coming close enough to my bike to make me uncomfortable for my safety, and then slowed the car to keep pace with me for a while as she shouted to me: "You must watch out for your bags!", before accelerating and speeding off (here the operative verb is the German müssen, which in English translates precisely as "must", not "should" or "ought to", for which there are other German verbs). Admonished with such imperatives, I stopped the bike to see what was the problem. Something fell out? Bungee cords loose? Nope. Turns out my yellow thermos bag was sticking out of one of the panniers a little, making for a lopsided outline as seen from behind, and that was surely the cause of the bother, nevermind, of course, that the thermos bag was secured by clip to the panniers, as always, which are also secured by clip to the bike frame, as always.

I know. They're just being polite. But with all these rules and unwarranted protections and cautions here, and all of them in a row within 30 minutes of each other, even when uncalled for and unnecessary, even when I know full well the intention is simply to help, I couldn't help feeling like a scolded child.

2006-07-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

Köln-Niederkassel-Hennef-Eitorf-Wissen-Siegen.

Trip dist: 158 kms. Trip time: 9 hrs, 16 min. Tot dist: 4,262 kms.

Stereotypes.

So. This is a sight-seeing biking trip, not a sports-cycling gotta get there as fast as I can trip. So which route does Elisa choose to Berlin?

Not only that, I also decided to try to ride on the bike paths, especially because to Siegen, they followed two appealing looking rivers, the Rhine southwards from Köln, and then the Sieg eastwards to Siegen. The problem is that to catch the Siegtaler Radweg, which is the bike path on the Sieg, you need to head southwards almost all the way down to Bonn. This was a 36 kilometer detour (or, "indirectour", since a detour implies a waste of time or at least going in wrong direction). But I wasn't sorry. The ride along the Rhine was well worth it, and I would very much recommend it. Would be nice to ride even further south all the way down to Switzerland this way. Next trip. Or the one after the Mosel trip. ;)

Catching the Siegtaler Radweg was tricky though. At around the junction between the two bike routes several other bike routes (and as I said Germany is chock-a-block full of them) intersect as well, and having only a roadmap, not a bike map, I predictably got a bit lost. Took an extra 5 kms and a lot of asking passing riders for directions to sort out the correct route. But the Siegtaler route was kind of neat: there are parts of it that look just exactly like the hiking paths at Castle Rock (on Highway 9 near Saratoga, California), the ones near Goat Rock, with all the rocks and cliffs to one side. Definitely a technical mountain biking section, that was. Imagine me having to pushwalk through these rock and root infested 1-person narrow pathways with 30 kgs of panniers and the river 10 meters below. (!). Luckily that section was rather short. ;)

Another funny encounter happened to me today. I was biking along the bike paths in one of the little villages, when I quickly approached a young family, husband and wife in their mid 30s, and two 4-7 year old children leisurely riding along the bike lane in front of me. I reduced my speed and started riding right behind the leftmost and last person of the party, the husband, and patiently waited until someone would hear the sounds of my bike and either move to the side or turn around wondering what the noise was so that I could ask for permission to pass.

The wife, finally, did see me, and motioned to her husband to move away, to which I said, as I started pedalling a bit faster in order to pass them, a quick "Entschuldigung, Danke!" ("Excuse me, thanks!).

No sooner had I said this, that the woman said after me (I still had to pass one of the little kids in front, so I was still close by): "Wenn sie ein Klinger hätten, wäre es natürlich wunderbar." ("If you had a bike bell, it would be wonderful.").

By this point I had just finished passing the little kid, so I lifted my hand palm up and shrugged to convey a meaning of "Oh well, pity," as I turned and gave her a crooked smile.

"Sie kosten nur drei Euros. Sie sind nicht teuer.", she said after me, a lot louder this time, as I was already farther along the path ("They cost only 3 Euros, they are not expensive").

I couldn't supress a laugh at that one (by then I was far enough away they couldn't hear, I hope).

Yup, my friends. Life would be better if only those crazy foreigners would just buy the silly bike bell. After all, they only cost 3 Euros!

You know, the thing about Germans being a little bit too obsessed with rules has a little ring of truth, I think. Nobody jaywalks. Nobody (not even bikes or pedestrians!) ever run red stoplights. There are never any bicycles on the main roads, only on the bike paths. The correct way to address a stranger on the street is by starting with an "Entschuldigung" ("Excuse me"), otherwise, there is absolutely no response or acknowledgement of having been heard (no, my friends, a "Hello" doesn't seem to cut it!). One must start conversations, otherwise they won't start. They have 4 different bins for recycling and 3 different ones just for glass (white, brown, and green). Empty plastic bottles must be returned and to encourage this there is a returned bottle deposit of 15 cents (you get them back if you return the bottle. But carrying the bottle is, at least to me, more of a hassle than the 15 cents are worth--it seems to me that encouraging plastic bottle recycling would be much more easily, effectively, and cheaply accomplished by simply scattering more plastic recycling bins on street corners), one "drives with a bike", not "goes with the bike", as a gentleman I was conversing with in the Youth Hostel in the morning pointed out to me....20 minutes after I made the grammar mistake, only after the conversation had reached a lull, and there was an uncomfortable silence to be filled (The French, you see, correct you quickly and immediately and then continue as if nothing had happened, thus minimizing the error's importance. They simply repeat your phrase correctly without going through the whole uncomfortable business of having to explain the obvious "One does not say 'so and so' in French, one says 'this instead'", and thus remain charming even when subtly pointing out your mistake. My interlocutor, on the other hand, had very politely tried to ignore my garish error for a full 20 minutes, but it was clear that it had bothered him, for the correction could not have been done without and had to be taken care of, obviously, and what's more, only during an uncomfortable lull--so as not to interrupt the ongoing conversation, presumably--, where it had no choice but to be explicitly clarified, that "By the way, one does not say...." etc, because there was nothing else thought of to say by way of real conversation instead), and finally, if one is riding (or more correctly "driving with", as I quickly learned) a bike, one needs to buy one of those bell ringer thingies that only cost 3 Euros.

So remember this next time you're packing, kids. Don't forget the bell. ;)

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm sure she was trying to help. Maybe she really did think that this silly foreigner didn't know bicycle bells existed. After all, she couldn't have known, that I deliberately don't buy bike bells because I prefer to slow down and wait for people to hear me and silently move on their own, or if that doesn't suffice and I get impatient, that I think a quick "Excuse me, I'm on your left" suffices. She couldn't have known, that I think a ringing bell insulates you from the others, takes away the necessity to speak, to greet and say thank you, as if the pedestrians blocking your path were simple obstacles, not even worthy of a simple "Entschuldigung."

2006-07-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Trier.

The train ride from Koblenz to Trier (Koblenz is a bit to the south of Köln, from where the train ride actually started) was mostly flanking the beautiful Mosel (Moselle) river. It would've been delightful to bike along the river (it meanders too much to make it part of a long-distance-I'm-behind-schedule-and-in-a-hurry bike trip like this one, but it would be perfect for a relaxing week of wine tasting and boating and little village sight-seeing), as you can see from some of the pictures with the pretty villages, etc.

Now what? Tomorrow after Trier I need to be headed for Berlin, and there are two possible ways to do this: head northeast towards Essen and Dortmund along the Ruhrgebiet and its Route der Industrie, of which Zollverein is just one stop, and which hits lots of former chemical factories and power plants and other interesting factory campuses (obviously very industrial, but flat and uncomplicated and through several sizeable cities--more comfortable stays and internet access guaranteed), or southeast through a multitude of hills and meandering rivers, smaller villages, a more roundabout route but with prettier landscape and what looks like more things to see (looks like may hit more UNESCO WH sites as well, though those could be reached from up north as well relatively easily by train if necessary)?

Arrived in Trier with such preoccupations in the back of my mind, which I shelved in the back-burner as I visited its nice Cathedral and the Basilica (now a Protestant church) which also used to be the throne room of Constantine, as well as its various Roman ruins which make Trier a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Trier, by the way, was also the birthplace of Karl Marx, so they named a street after him and turned his house into a museum. Towards the end of the day and with nothing much else left to do or see (a stroll up and down between bridges across the Mosel was pretty but lonely), I wondered whether to take the time to visit it.

Now, I don't know much about "Capital". It is supposed to be a very good book with some rather sharp and careful analysis of 19th century economics, but I haven't read it yet (though it is right at the top of my reading list as soon as I finish with A. Smith), so I can't comment. But his and Engel's "Communist Manifesto" reads like it was written by two dancing monks on crack, so I decided instead to head towards the city center and spend the rest of the day before my return to Köln engaged in some very capitalistic window-shopping.

Ha ha. One friend of mine would be proud. ;)