Allison W. Good

I arrived from Strasbourg utterly exhausted and eternally grateful for a bed of my own in Kareen’s apartment.  The sky was blue that afternoon and I didn’t want to waste it, so after a quick shower I was up and ready to go.  I took the Metro to Notre Dame to see if I could climb the tower, but it was closed again and so I took that as a sign and just accepted the fact that it wouldn’t be a part of my trip.  I opted instead to wander around Île Saint-Louis, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.  The” salon de thé du jour” was Le Flore en L’Île, where I spotted someone with this scrumptious crêpe au chocolat:

Speaking of food (of course), I also some some nice-looking quiches and pastries as I wandered aimlessly:

Walking along the Seine, I eventually ended up at La Bastille.  On July 14, 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille, a medieval prison and fortress that represented royal authority.  The fall of the Bastille, which was also an armory, was the climax of the lead-up to the French Revolution, and Le quatorze juillet (July 14, or “Bastille Day”) is a national French holiday akin to America’s Fourth of July.  Not much remains of the actual Bastille, but this was part of its foundations, and a commemorative plaque marked part of its perimeter:

Also, before my camera died I got this great twilight shot of the Place de Vosges in the nearby Marais:

I didn’t want to stay out too late because I wanted to get up really early to go to Versailles the next day.  Now a wealthy suburb of Paris, Versailles was once the de facto capital of France.  Its main attraction is the Chateau de Versailles, built by Louis XIV, which served as the official royal residence and court from 1682 until the royal family was forced to return to Paris in 1789 at the beginning of the French Revolution.  The palace is a testament to the Sun King’s extravagance and extreme vanity.  The entrance and courtyard:

My tour began with the royal chapel, built at the turn of the 18th century, which I saw from both the ground and first floors:

A few rooms explained the history of Versailles and its royal family through paintings.  The first is a portrait of Louis XIV, and the second is an aerial view of the chateau and its grounds from the mid-19th century:

The Hercules Room showcased the various colors of marble used throughout the palace.  Le Repas Chez Simon by Veronese covered one wall and the ceiling, which depicts Hercules entering the kingdom of the gods, is the largest canvas painting in Europe:

Much like the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, most of the rooms in the chateau were named after Greek gods and goddesses, and the theme continued with the Diane Drawing Room, which served as a ballroom and featured a Bernini bust of Louis XIV:

The Mars Drawing Room, which also used to be a ballroom:

The Mercury Drawing Room was the ceremonial bedchamber (just for showing off) and features a clock by Antoine Murand from 1706:

French kings held official audiences in the Apollo Drawing Room:

The War Drawing Room is all gilded bronze and marble:

Next, the famous Salon des Glaces, or Hall of Mirrors:

After that, the king’s inner sanctum, his bedroom:

And the queen’s bedroom:

The Coronation Room, however, has nothing at all to do with coronations.  Louis-Philippe, France’s last king (1830-1848), made the room into a History of France museum.  Unfortunately, the obelisk that tells about Napoleon’s coronation is undergoing restoration, but the gigantic canvases by Jacques-Louis David were quite imposing.  The Coronation of Napoleon is a replica by David of the original that was moved to the Louvre, but La Distribution des Aigles au Champ-de-Mars from 1810 is a David original:

The apartments of the dauphin (prince) were reserved for the royal family’s inner circle, but their present condition corresponds to the period when Louis XV’s son, the future Louis XVI who would be ousted and guillotined during the French Revolution, lived at Versailles.  First, the library:

This dauphin’s large study:

And last, but not least, the dauphin’s bedroom, whose green motif was a nice break from the almost-blinding red of the king’s apartments:

Finally, I was done with the chateau and it was time to explore the grounds.  Unfortunately, Marie Antoinette’s “hamlet” which she built so she could pretend to be a peasant whenever she wanted to is closed during the winter season, and I decided to forgo the Grand Trianon, Louis XIV’s marble highway, because it was so cold outside and it didn’t open until noon, but I still walked around for about an hour before I thought I was beginning to contract pneumonia:

When I got back to Paris, I took a stroll around the Left Bank near the Latin Quarter with the intent of finding Rue Dauphine and the Hotel d’Aubusson, where I stayed with my grandparents way back when:

I also spotted some of Paris’ famous bouqinistes (used booksellers along the Seine):

My last stop of the day was La Défense, located at the west end of Line 1 on the Metro.  It’s a business district located almost in the suburbs at one end of Paris’ 10 kilometer-long Historical Axis which begins at the Louvre and continues along the Champs-Elysées, eventually ending up at La Défense.  The district has a very modern-technology look with lots of glass and stainless steel, and in addition to skyscrapers with offices it also has a few malls and a movie theater.  La Défense is worth visiting, however, because of the Grande Arche, an almost-perfect cube that’s 110 meters (360 feet) high.  Inaugurated in 1989, you can take an elevator to the top for a panoramic view, but it’s expensive and it was still cold, so I opted out of that.  La Défense and the Grande Arche:

Sure, the arch was pretty cool, but I will end with this really sweet photo that just melted my heart:

Coming up, my super Jewish Valentine’s Day adventure in the Marais!

Okay, so the beginning of the day wasn’t so awesome.  The Eurolines bus dropped me off at their stop in the middle of nowhere at 5 a.m.  There was a bus stop, but I knew the buses wouldn’t start running for at least another hour.  I was tired, and it was freezing outside.  I couldn’t see any signs that might point me in the direction of Strasbourg proper.  And so I did what desperate people do: get a ride from a compassionate soul.  I asked a couple getting off the bus if they would mind bringing me to the train station, and the husband said of course.  It was really truly lovely of them because they didn’t know me at all, except for the obvious fact that I needed a shower.  After waiting at the station for two hours, I decided it was perfectly legitimate to show up at my host’s apartment, which is what I did.

A few hours of sleep later, I was ready for a day out and about. I was so happy to be back in France, where I can speak and understand the language.  How good it was to return to the land of Monoprix and salons de the!  I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the rest of my travels, but there is something about being in a place where you know the language.

A lot of people asked me why I was going to Strasbourg, which is not exactly the most popular destination for the young budget traveler.  To start with, I had to get from Amsterdam to France somehow.  I could have gone straight to Paris, but Strasbourg was on the way.  My ancestors are from this region, Alsace-Lorraine, so it was important to me to visit if I had the chance.  It’s also so close to Germany that it has a very distinct culture that’s totally different from Provence and the Cote d’Azur, and I wanted to see as many different French regions as I could during this trip.  As for specifics, one of the cathedral’s facades is still decorated with its original statues of Ecclesia and Synagoga, which I had to see, especially after taking that class last semester.  These statues used once decorated many French gothic cathedrals constructed during the Medieval period, but I think the statues on the one in Strasbourg are some of the last remaining.  And, last but not least, the European Parliament.  My trip to Brussels only peaked my interest, and I happened to be in Strasbourg while Parliament was in session.

My host’s apartment was centrally located, so the first order of business was to go straight to the cathedral:

The cathedral’s construction spanned four centuries, from 1015 to 1439.  It gets its special pink hue from Vosges sandstone used to build it.  Ecclesia and Synagoga:

Then I went inside:

This is the famous 18-meter high astronomical clock (one of the tallest in the world), a fine example of Swiss artistry that dates from 1843:

Also, the Pillar of Judgment, a “masterpiece of Gothic architecture”:

After the cathedral it was definitely time for some tea.  I find France’s salons de the to be in a class all of their own, and after drinking cup after cup of tea in Europe’s various tea-drinking venues, nothing compares.  The closest place was the fancy Christian’s, and I really enjoyed the purple interior:

And I finally got a good picture of Napoleons:

On my way to Place Kleber, I spotted the French version of beignets, which look like America’s cake doughnuts:

Then I explored La Petite France, a neighborhood named so by its former German inhabitants not for its architecture, but because of the numerous prostitutes that worked there in the Middle Ages.  Prostitution was known in Germany at that time as “the French business.”  Why so many Germans in a French city?  This is probably a good time to talk about the tumultuous history of the Alsace-Lorraine region, a territory that has been either French or German depending on the historical period.  ….. The neighborhood lived up to my idealized/romanticized version of Alsace:

The Maison des Tanneurs, built in 1572 as a tannery, has since become a restaurant that supposedly has the best choucroute, or sauerkraut, in the country:

I myself stopped for lunch at Au Pont Saint Martin.  Though I didn’t sample Alsatian cuisine (most of them consist of weird meats/pork and sauerkraut), I did take this lovely picture of something that I’m sure is a local specialty because everyone was eating it:

A tourist couple ordered this pork-potatoes-sauerkraut platter:

Before I headed to the European Parliament (I wanted to be there in time for the session at 3 p.m.), I decided to stop at Place de Contades on the way to see the synagogue.  I didn’t think it would be an original pre-war building, and I was okay with the fact that it was not aesthetically pleasing, but I was really turned off when I went inside, asked to visit, told them I was Jewish, and the guy in charge told me no, even though the locals were free to come in and out as they pleased.  I was so put off that I didn’t even bother with the press pass or with begging.  Here it is anyway:

Finally, it was time for the coup de grace, my visit to the European Parliament.  I had painstakingly and repeatedly checked the internet for the day’s schedule to make sure I would be there for something interesting.  The website said that at 3 p.m. there would be debates about human rights issues.  Because  I was only at the synagogue for a few seconds, I arrived much earlier than that, which was good because it gave me time to explore.  I entered the press entrance, showed them my badge, and they waved me through security.  The really cool thing was that I had to fill out a form and get a special European Parliament press pass, which makes a nice souvenir even though the picture is awful.  It meant that I had access to floors that the general public wouldn’t see on a guided tour.  Thus, I present to you an exclusive look at the EP.  First, we start with the building itself, dedicated in 1999 by ex-President of France Jacques Chirac.  It almost looks like a modern Colosseum:

Inside the structure, but still outside, very much like the Colosseum:

This is a conference room for working groups and delegations:

The general interior:

I also stumbled upon the television press set-up:

This round table must be used for when several MEPs talk to the press all at once:

The Bar des Deputes, reserved exclusively for MEPs and their guests:

Before the session started:

Commissioner Reding addresses the EP (I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to take pictures during the session itself, so I got “scolded”):

I think this is a notice for some sort of group activity that’s meant to imbue MEPs with a sense of camaraderie:

Who knew that being an MEP came with perks like wine tastings?  I don’t think they do that in the House of Representatives, but I could be wrong.  This is a little store that sells lots of EU paraphernalia (including umbrellas and stuffed animals):

My souvenir, the EP press pass:

Now that you have the general idea, I can say that the first item on the agenda was a bill/resolution/something like that regarding Venezuela and President Chavez’s censorship of certain radio and television stations that don’t broadcast the entirety of his speeches, which qualifies somehow as a violation of human rights.  There were debates, which ended up with the more conservative/right-wing (capitalist) parties decrying Chavez and calling him a merciless dictator who’s out to destroy democracy and civil liberties and the liberal/left-wing (socialist) parties calling out the righties on wanting to get rid of Chavez because his economic program isn’t in line with their capitalist ideals and citing the fact that Venezuelans have repeatedly voted for Chavez in democratic elections.  I heard all of this through my headphones, attached to the seat, which have channels that translate everything said into each of the EU’s languages.  Very cool.

The European Court of Human Rights was only one tram stop away, so I thought I would go there just to take a quick look at the inside and then go back to Strasbourg’s city center.  Established in 1959, it’s an international court that rules on individual or State applications alleging violations of the civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.  The Court’s judgments are binding on the countries concerned.

A sign on the door said that visits were prohibited, and it looked like I couldn’t go inside unless I was part of a scheduled group tour.  I showed the guards my EP badge, they talked to each other for a few minutes, and told me to put my stuff through security and enter the lobby.  I didn’t know what was happening, but then one of the guards informed me that he would accompany me. He turned out to be one of the nicest people I’ve met on this trip, and he took me all throughout the entire building.  I saw the lobby, the press room, the library, a room reserved for the visits of Heads of State, the bar (yes, it has a bar), and he also pointed out the judges’ offices and some of the building’s interesting architectural features.  Even after I told him I was American (he thought I was British), he spoke to me exclusively in French.  He didn’t seem annoyed at all that some journalist just wanted to see the inside, and when he ran into a colleague he told him he was showing a journalist around and they smiled at me.  I could tell he really enjoys working there, and I felt like I was treated very well.  It almost made up for the fact that the EU’s stance on human rights is often anti-Israel.  Photography wasn’t allowed, but this is the exterior, designed by British architect Richard Rogers in 1994:

I did some grocery shopping at Monoprix after that, and on my way back to my host’s apartment I stopped at the Civil Hospital, built in 1393 and rebuilt during the 18th century.  There was a tourist information center close to the cathedral, and I had stopped there that morning to get another map, whose key mentioned that this hospital had a “historic wine cellar.”  I thought it was worth a visit.  The Hospices Strasbourg was founded in 1395, and 80 of its casks date from the 18th century.  In terms of wine, the cellar’s oldest is from 1472, a white that “never finishes aging.”  The store and cellar:

That was definitely enough for one day, so I headed back to my host, Miryam.  Miryam is French, but her boyfriend (whose name I can’t remember) is Australian.  They met I forget where, but he just moved to France a few months ago and they’re in Strasbourg because Miryam is studying film translation at the university there, and her languages are English, French, and German.  Her boyfriend teaches at the Wall Street Institute, a “school” for learning English that has branches all over Europe.  After seeing its ad campaign in every subway station on the continent, I had wondered who actually worked there and what it was really like.  Since I had to actually go to where he worked to get the key to the apartment that evening, I can say that it isn’t much.  Miryam was tired from school, so our evening consisted of a light vegetarian dinner and a mini-marathon of Friends dubbed in French.  I was tired as well and I had to wake up early the next morning because I wanted to do one more thing before I boarded a TGV back to Paris.

That one more thing was the Jewish cemetery, actually located outside of Strasbourg near the end of one of its tram lines.  I am one dedicated cookie, because the snow was at least 3/4 of a foot deep and I had had to throw out my UGG boots the night before because they had gotten wet so many times that they were smelling and I was afraid they would grow some sort of mold, so it was just me, my sneakers, and soaked jeans.  As for the people actually buried there, I noticed that a lot of them died in the early 1930s, which can’t be a coincidence.  However interesting Jewish sites are, I must admit that I didn’t think my visit to the cemetery was worthwhile until I came across this:

For a few seconds, I honestly couldn’t believe or understand what I was looking at.  Someone or a group of people had obviously desecrated the cemetery, but nothing was painted over the swastikas; they were just there.  I wondered how long ago this had happened.  I couldn’t remember hearing about anything, which would be because I didn’t exactly keep up with all the news when I was in Europe.  When I got to Kareen’s, I showed her all of my picture, including these, and she told me she had read not too long ago about an incident like this in a French newspaper.  I did some research, and it happened at the end of January.  The incident was discovered when two Knesset members went to the cemetery to attend a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Coming from a place where things like this don’t happen, it was very hard to see.

Wow. That might win for longest post on this blog ever.  More Paris coming up!

I’m in a foodie mood, so I’m going to start with the food.  Everyone’s had a Danish, right?  Well, they actually come from Denmark, surprise surprise!  There was no sign saying what these were, but they must be Danishes:

Looking for something a bit healthier?  Try a smorrebrod, an open sandwich, which consists of a buttered piece of rye bread with cheese and or meat/fish and “decorations”:

Those were taken in the airport, I’ll admit that, but everything in the airport looked gourmet.  That’s because Copenhagen might be the most expensive city in Europe.  It was definitely the most expensive place I went to during my trip.  I should have stayed for longer than 36 hours, but the truth is that even if I could have, it would have put a serious strain on my wallet (even though Amsterdam wasn’t much better).  “Fast food,” which is just another name for cheap ethnic cuisine, is recommended for budget travelers, so it’s nearly impossible to get a good European meal for a reasonable price.  And while the shopping is amazing in Copenhagen, those prices are also through the roof.  So be warned: If you go to Copenhagen, prepare to spend a lot if you want to really see the city, and don’t go if you’re worried about money.  Also, don’t go for such a short time like I did.

In Copenhagen I stayed at Sleep in Heaven, a hostel in a good location.  It was there that I saw for myself the triple bunk bed.  If you had the top bunk, you literally were sleeping in heaven.  I got the bottom, which was a godsend because I hate climbing bunk beds and falling out of one and breaking my collarbone in Europe would not be fun.  So at this hostel the doors to the rooms did not lock.  We were given lockers for our luggage just like at most hostels, but we couldn’t lock the doors.  This worried me, and when I arrived at 11 p.m. only to discover this I gave the guy on duty an angry speech about it not being safe.  Everything was fine as it turned out, but does it really cost that much to put locks on the doors and buy keys?  Anyways, here’s what I did in Copenhagen.

The first thing I did that morning was take the Metro to the city center and go on a walk to find the Little Mermaid, the famous statue by Edvard Eriksen from 1913 that immortalized Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale and subsequent Disney phenomenon, The Little Mermaid.  The statue is very small, and though it is on the water it’s concealed in a little park (that’s in a bigger park) that from some angles is surrounded by trees and plants, so I had to ask around a bit before I saw it.  I would like to dedicate this photo to the Levine family, lovers of all things Disney:

Until today, I thought the statue was real and genuine, so imagine my surprise when my friends, who also went to Copenhagen, told me that it’s a fake, and that the real one is on temporary loan to Shanghai!  I did some research, and this is indeed the truth.  Ultimate Copenhagen fail.

From there I walked back towards the city center and passed by Rosenborg Slot, a castle built in the Dutch Renaissance style in the early 17th century.  Though Denmark is still a constitutional monarchy, the castle has not been used as a royal residence since around 1710.  However, it still has guards that change on the hour:

After some more walking around, I happened upon this cathedral tower and climbed it:

On my way to the Danish Design Museum, I found Hans Christian Andersen right next to Tivoli Gardens, a famous amusement park that I’m sure is very fun when it’s actually open:

The Danish Design Center is a museum and store that showcases works of Danish design in both permanent and temporary exhibitions, and the main attraction when I was there was this exhibition about sustainability and sustainable design:

There were also some interesting fashion designs:

They also had these silk paper Danish flags to take for free:

What’s Scandinavia without the Vikings?  I honestly couldn’t tell you, but I wanted to get my fix and so I went to the National Museum, which charges no entry fee and showcases some really cool prehistoric stuff from the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages.  Humans first settled in what is now Denmark about 14,500 year ago, and never have I seen so many ancient human skeletons in one place.  I saw a lot, but here are some highlights.  First, engraved sparkling amber pendants from the 9th or 8th century BCE:

The Chariot of the Sun, from the Early Bronze Age, about 1400 BCE.  The sun was a major pagan Scandinavian image, and this artifact it illustrates the idea that the sun was drawn on its eternal journey by a divine horse:

Next up, lur horns from 1200-700 BCE.  These distinctively Nordic wind instruments were used to crate an atmospheric background of sound for Bronze Age rituals.  Definitely the most interesting exhibit I saw:

During the Viking period (8th-11th centuries), the practice of erecting rune stones in memory of the dead began to spread out over Denmark.  The runic alphabet was used to write various Germanic languages prior to the adaptation of the Latin alphabet.  I was sad to see that the museum’s runes were undergoing some restoration, but you can still see the writing under the plastic wrap:

And, last but not least, from more modern periods, the Baroque interior of a 17th-century bourgeois residence:

By the time I was done with the museum, the sun was out and it was time for a little trip to Christianhavn, a hippie commune established in the 1970s that still exists as its own entity within Copenhagen.  This is the entrance, and also the inside of a sort of art gallery space/restaurant:

The real attraction there, however, is Pusher Street.  Pusher Street is exactly as it sounds within the hippie commune context: lots of people standing on the street pushing drugs, on both sides and in the middle.  It was quite the experience, and I also went inside Woodstock Cafe, one of Christianhavn’s more notorious hangouts.  No photography is allowed on Pusher Street because they’re afraid if the government sees them that they’ll really come crackdown, but this is Woodstock from the outside:

Christianhavn also has its own common law:

I was done with Christianhavn and it was still light outside, but it was so cold that all I wanted to do was find food and go back to the hostel, which is exactly what I did.  So that, in a nutshell, was Copenhagen.  Strasbourg is up next!

What’s a displaced member of the Who Dat Nation to do come Superbowl Sunday?  Thanks to Denise Levine and a phone call just to make sure, I had a plan.  When I was in contact with my roommates who I met up with in Amsterdam, I told them that on our first night I had to leave wherever I was by midnight to be in a bar by kickoff at around 12:35.  We went out for drinks that evening, but as the clock inched closer to the moment of truth I was ready to go.

I wasn’t in New Orleans, I wasn’t in the French Quarter, and I wasn’t with my family.  It was not ideal, to say the least.  In the Copenhagen airport en route to Amsterdam, I had thought about how if I boarded a plane to New York I could still be home in time for the game.  And I was homesick.  And I really wanted to be there.  But I wasn’t and couldn’t be and I’ve had an awesome time in Europe, so I made my own experience.

I think it was a hostel, but maybe it was a hotel, but it was called The Globe, and it had a bar that was showing the Superbowl.  Amsterdam has a ton of bars, a lot of them Irish, but most of them didn’t broadcast the game.  On one side of the room were these Americans in Steelers jerseys, rooting for the Saints, and then up front there were also Americans, maybe college students, and then on the other side some Colts fans, and next to me this expat from Los Angeles who’s been living in the Netherlands for about 16 years.  Every year, he takes his Dutch friends with him to watch the big game, and he explained everything to them.  They were also on the right side.  The Americans in the Steeler jerseys were super drunk, and while they managed a “Let’s go Saints,” there was no “Who dat.”  But that wasn’t so bad, because I represented in just one of the many items in my black and gold wardrobe.  Still, I wished I had brought my flag with me.  The weird thing was that the version that was broadcast was the UK version.  I had no idea that a UK version even existed.  The commentators for the most part were ex-European NFL (yes, such a thing existed back in the day) players, and instead of Tim Tebow’s anti-abortion commercial I got lectured on STD testing and Domino’s Two for Tuesdays deal.

There’s no need to describe how I felt when Thomas Morstead made that Ambush (onside kick), or when Tracy Porter intercepted the ball and returned it for that touchdown.  Or even when Peyton Manning threw the ball that got intercepted.  I think I saw some pouting there.  But the whole game seemed like it wasn’t really happening.  I can still remember the Aints, the days of the paper bags.  And then we won, and got the Lombardi trophy, and the media took that adorable picture of Drew Brees holding his son that I set as my Facebook profile picture.  And now we’re champions.  My mom and sister went to Drew’s house to put a sign on his gate, and there was a parade, and maybe I’m shallow but this means everything to me and these guys are my heroes for life.  It was 4 a.m. and I was groggy, but there was sobbing involved.

I will never have enough sappy stuff to say about the Superbowl or DEM SAINTS, but I must move on to Amsterdam.  First, my hostel.  Shelter City is a Christian establishment.  There are Bible discussions at 7 p.m., evening prayers at 11:30 p.m., and you can listen to Christian rock music in the cafe while you eat breakfast in the morning.  I am not Christian, but I chose the hostel because I knew it would be quiet.  It turned out not to be so quiet since it’s currently under construction, which the hostel neglected to mention on hostelworld.com, and it’s also in the middle of the Red Light District (an important fact which it also failed to mention on hostelworld.com).  The first time you see the windows and the prostitutes it’s a sort of novelty because “only in Amsterdam.”  The second time, it’s gross and disgusting.  And the third time, when you only have to walk five steps from your hostel to the nearest window, it’s plain ridiculous.  Also, that area is dominated by “coffee shops” (where you always smoke marijuana and never drink coffee) and fast food that’s either slathered in buttery soy sauce (Wok to Walk) or comes from a vending machine (FEBO).  It’s not the hip and sophisticated Amsterdam of real cafes, European cuisine, and good shopping.  While the Red Light District and its surroundings are certainly something to see, I would strongly caution against staying there.

None of this stopped me from having a great time with my friends.  First, some general Amsterdam scenes, since you’re probably tired of my ranting (yes, that house is leaning):

On our first day we went to the Anne Frank House first to beat the tourist crowds.  We got to see the Secret Annex, but the Diary Room is under renovation so the original diary is not currently available for viewing, which disappointed me because is it really so hard to show the diary in another room?  My frustration was only exacerbated when I spotted the new Jonathan Safran Foer book in the museum shop that they only had in Dutch (probably the residual crankiness from staying up until 4 a.m.).  Still, it’s an excellent museum and it’s very important that people keep going there.  If you’ve read The Diary of Anne Frank, it’s all the more a must-see.  The house (the one with the black bottom floor) and the museum complex:

Then we rented bikes, because if you don’t ride a bike in Amsterdam then you can’t say that you’ve actually been there.  We did this even though it was cold and very windy.  It wasn’t the best idea, but we knew we had to.  After cruising through Vondelpark, we rode around aimlessly and ended up at McDonald’s, where we clandestinely munched our grocery store lunches.  On the subject of bikes, I saw some pretty cool ones.  I couldn’t get over the cliche of the guy in wooden clogs who rode around on his floral creation, but I failed to understand the other one:

After that we met up with Steve, which made the Winnipeg:America a 4:1.  Then we walked to a park that has these infamous gigantic letters that say “I amsterdam.”  It’s a photo-op waiting to happen:

My friends were staying in an apartment belonging to an Israeli cousin who had given them the key before they left for their trip, so we went back there to make dinner.  I did a bit of cooking in Berlin, but it was the first real home-cooked meal I’d had in almost a month, and it was wonderful.

The next day, we did more Jewish stuff.  First, we went to the Portuguese synagogue, a Sephardic establishment near the Jewish museum.  It cost I think 5 Euro to enter, so my friends waited for me while I went in for free courtesy of the press pass.  Sephardic Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal in the 16th and early 17th centuries founded a community in Amsterdam that became known as the Jewish Quarter, and they finished this synagogue in 1675:

The Jewish Historical Museum, however, is housed right across the street in the city’s four former Ashkenazi synagogues, which were constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Amsterdam’s Jewish community has 15-20,000 members, only about 600 of which are Portuguese/Sephardic.  The first Ashkenaz Jews to arrive in Amsterdam came in the mid-17th century to flee the Cossack rebellion in Poland during the Thirty Years War.  As far as Jewish museums go it was quite good, and this is one of the synagogues:

On our way out of the Jewish Quarter we passed by a flea market, and I couldn’t help but notice this cafe on wheels:

After a schwarma lunch and some more walking, it was finally time to say goodbye to my friends, after which I headed straightaway to Museumplein to get my Van Gogh fix.  The Van Gogh Museum has over 200 of the artist’s paintings, making it the largest collection in the world.  It traces his different periods and phases, from his early realist-inspired works like The Potato Eaters to the Japanese and Impressionist-influenced Sunflowers and Irises (my favorites):

Across the street was the Rijksmuseum, which has Dutch masterpieces like Vermeer’s The Kitchen Maid (definitely in this trip’s top 10 list), which is much more amazing in person because of the way the light reflects, and the museum’s most famous piece, The Night Watch, by Rembrandt:

What a masterpiece.  My bus to Strasbourg the next day didn’t leave until 6:30 in the evening, so I decided to go to the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, a city known as the center of International Law.  My reason for going, however, was to see Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.  The train ride was only an hour, and if there’s a Vermeer or Monet within reasonable training distance, I will go to see it.  So I did, and it was totally worth the two hours in transit.  By just walking around The Hague a bit I also came upon the Peace Palace, which houses important international legal institutions like the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration:

Upon returning in Amsterdam I had time for one more thing.  I wanted to see an old canal house, so I went to Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, which was built in the 17th century.  Amsterdam’s second oldest museum (open since 1888), it translates into “Our Lady of the Attic” because it was also a church.  In 1578 a “bloodless revolution” known as the Alteration turned Amsterdam from a Catholic city into a Protestant one.  Catholics were persecuted in its wake, so wealthy Dutch merchant Jan Haartman built a secret church in 1663 inside his house.  The house is currently undergoing renovations, but the church remains active.  Some of the rooms and the church:

So this is the end of Amsterdam, meaning that it’s the beginning of my return to France.  It also means that I went out of order, because I went to Copenhagen before Amsterdam.  I’m a real stickler for putting these kinds of things in order, but I’m tired and exhausted and just felt like writing about Amsterda. But I do promise interesting things about Copenhagen!

My fifth day in Berlin was relatively low-key.  Claire and I started off the day with a trip to the DDR Museum in Alexanderplatz, which shows what life was like in the GDR.  Unfortunately, its hands-on and interactive exhibits also make it a great fieldtrip for German schoolkids, and the place was mobbed and noisy.  It’s a weird museum in that it’s almost a nostalgic novelty, and its English translations were often too brief and gramatically incorrect.  You could tell they were trying really hard to create an atmosphere with the decor.  General photos of the inside:

In addition to “driving” a Trabi, looking at your average GDR female citizen’s closet full of synthetic 60s and 70s rags, and listening to East German rock music (which actually wasn’t so bad), you could also play house:

Sure, everything in the museum looks kitchsy and the section about the Stasi is small and concealed in a corner, but despite its attempt to portray a romantic daily life that was “normal,” the DDR Museum can’t negate the fact that the government was repressive and that lots of East Germans didn’t believe in the GDR’s version of communism and wanted to live in the West.  The museum wasn’t so great, but I didn’t have to pay (thanks, press card) and some of the hands-on stuff was more amusing than it was educational.

In the afternoon I went by myself to the Stasi prison museum in Berlin’s Hohenschonhausen area, i.e. not a place tourists set foot in unless they visit the museum.  While it was interesting to see a more residential part of the city, it wasn’t exactly beautiful.  Originally established by the Soviet NKVD (forerunner to the KGB) in 1945 as an interment camp, the camp was closed in 1946 and the cellar was converted into cells and served as the main detention and interrogation center for dissidents and other undesirables.  The Stasi took it over in 1951 and used it for unsentenced suspects also as the central detention and interrogation center.  There are sixteen prisons like this in East Germany.

The museum’s German-language tours are actually given by former inmates, but because I don’t know any German I was forced to do the English one which was led by someone who works there.  My guide was good, and she had a sort of personal connection to the place because her father was arrested in East Germany as a teenager and put in a prison for I think a few or several months.  She knew her stuff, and I learned a lot.  The front entrance:

How it worked was that the police would pick up people and bring them to the prison; when they arrived, the prisoners had no idea where they were.  No German citizen knew the prison even existed.  The inmates called it the “U-Boat (submarine)” because it had now windows:

An isolation cell:

The prison had group cells as well that could hold 12 people.  Conditions were horrible; there was no ventilation, no toilet (just a bucket), no blanket, and awful food.  All the isolation cells had were wooden beds.  The light was on all the time, and the prisoners were only allowed to sleep during the appointed hours.  Guards checked the cells every several minutes to make sure no one was sleeping when he/she wasn’t supposed to.  At this point, interrogations were often held at night to disorient the inmates.  In order to force confession, officers used methods including water torture, sleep deprivation, standing cells, and beatings.  A standing cell (not the room inside the “doorway,” but the “doorway” itself):

Physical torture was banned after the death of Stalin in 1953 and replaced by psychological torture.  The Stasi even had a special “university” for interrogators.

In 1961, all prisoners were transferred to the new building, which had 103 cells and 120 interrogation rooms (the U-Boat only had 20-30 cells).  In winter the courtyard is completely covered in snow, but it’s actually a rose garden that officials could enjoy during their breaks:

The interrogation rooms had windows, and after 1960 interrogations took place during the daytime.  Interrogations were the key to the remand prison, and if inmates made it out alive after the 3-year maximum period of imprisonment, they undoubtedly suffered from psychological trauma.  One of the more extreme interrogation techniques used during this period involved x-rays.  Officials would take x-ray pictures in the prison’s documentation center, and months later these inmates would die of blood cancer.  The method was reserved for dangerous political prisoners.  An interrogation room:

Suspects would be picked up in a generic Barkas truck that would be disguised with a slogan like “Eat more fish.”  There were five individual cells within the truck and the guards would sit on the big red bench:

When prisoners arrived they undressed and were given old army tracksuits, and were known by cell number.  One interrogation technique was to call the inmate by his or her real name to make them feel like a person again.  A cell in the new building:

We also saw the Tiger Cages, the outdoor cells.  Prisoners craved time in the Cages, and another interrogation technique was to deprive them of this “privilege”:

Prison guards were unarmed, but the Stasi installed an alarm line throughout the building  If a guard was walking with a prisoner and felt uncomfortable at any time, all he had to do was pull on it:

The Stasi was dissolved completely in 1990, but the guards that worked there weren’t punished.

After that super-depressing tour I needed something light, so I met up with Claire and Leah at a second-hand shop in the hipster Kreuzberg neighborhood.  Though I didn’t buy anything, I was entertained by the store’s coffee machine:

A great sushi dinner (craving Asian again) was the perfect finish, and I only had one more full day left in this magical city.  Only one more day left.  Which was why the next morning we went to the Jewish Museum, definitely the best Jewish museum I’ve ever been to.  Though it opened in 2001, the postmodern structure that houses most of its collection wasn’t completed until 2007. Architect Daniel Daniel Libeskind called his project “Between the Lines,” and it is best described as a zig-zag.  From the website: “The design is based on two linear structures which, combined, form the body of the building.  The first line is a winding one with several kinks while the second line cuts through the whole building. At the intersections of these lines are empty spaces – ‘Voids’ – which rise vertically from the ground floor of the building up to the roof. Libeskind imagines the continuation of both lines throughout the city of Berlin and beyond.”  The Voids are the building’s central element; they have concrete walls, are not climate-controlled, and barely have any light.  The building and a void:

I found that the section on Medieval German Jews was extensive, which was my favorite part because a lot of the exhibits solidified what I had learned about in my class last semester.  I also enjoyed some of the interactive stuff like the videos and surveys, which is meant for adults as well as kids.  Since the museum chronicled German Jewry up to the present day, at the end there were photos and personal anecdotes from today’s German Jews.  I found them quite interesting, because it’s hard to believe that a place like Berlin has a Jewish community, especially after most of its institutions were destroyed during the war.

I only wish we had had more time there.  We got there at about 11 in the morning and only had until 1:30 p.m. because we had to make it to the Alternative City tour meeting point in time.  My advice is to plan to spend at least three and a half hours there if you go.  Still, I felt like I saw a lot because we could skip the Life Cycle part.

The Alternative City tour followed the history of Berlin’s street art movement, which it’s known for internationally.  This meant that everything I learned on the tour was totally new to me, since street art doesn’t really have a presence in New Orleans.

We started off at Tacheles, which means “plain” or “honest” in Yiddish.  This artists’ collective took that name because because in the time of the GDR, censorship limited the freedom of expression.  The artists occupied the building in 1990 in order to prevent its demolition by the German authorities, and they got it registered as a historical landmark and were successful.  Today, it houses galleries and even a few bars:

Since we were in Mitte, Adam also took us to a place really close to the hostel that Claire and I had wandered into the day before, a sort of alleyway:

He pointed out examples of the different types of graffiti art.  At the bottom of the food chain there’s tagging, which is when you just raw your initials or letters.  Next is bubble, which is the bubble letters that originated in Brooklyn.  Sticker art and stencils are a step up from that:

Sticker art is popular because since graffiti is in many ways illegal in Germany, pasting a sticker onto a surface can be done very quickly.  Stenciling was made popular by British artist Banksy.  His real identity is not known, and apparently his mother still thinks he’s a house painter.

From there we took the Metro to Kreuzberg to see Schwartzer Kanal, an artists’ squat near the river.   It’s a gay and lesbian caravan that’s not on the power grid.  They use solar panels and other green “technologies” to maintain a sustainable community. We didn’t take pictures because its residents are living there illegally.  The artists were kicked off the land only two months ago by the government, and they’ve just started to come back.  There is a factory incorporated into the squat that has some cool graffiti art inside.  How do I know?  Adam told us he’s broken in there a few times to see it.

Then we went to the most infamous illegal squat in Berlin, Kopi:

It has an interesting story: A few years ago, this plot of land was estimated to be worth 3 million Euro.  However, no one wanted to buy it because everyone was scared of the squatters.  Then, some people bought it for 800,000 Euro.  They hired a fake CEO to figure out a way to kick the squatters out to make it available for investors.  The squatters caught wind of this plan, lawyered up, and told the owners that they would expose this shady operation unless they signed a deal.  Naturally, the owners were so desperate not to be found out, so they signed without reading carefully enough, and apparently this piece of paper makes Kopi a legal squatter community for about the next 20 years.

The area around the river is quite contentious.  Squatters have been known to settle there, but the government is really cracking down in the name of economic development.  Companies like MTV and Universal have recently opened high-rise offices on the bank as Berlin has become a European cultural epicenter.  Our last stop highlighted street artists’ very strong feelings of dislike for these big corporations and “the man” as epitomized by the “masterpieces” of Blu, an artist from Italy:

That would have been the end of everything worth saying about Berlin, but the next morning I had a different type of experience.  I went to this vintage shop near the hostel that I had been in the night before.  There was a purse I liked but hadn’t gotten because I needed to sleep on it overnight.  When I woke up, of course, I knew I needed that purse.  I took my time because I was exhausted and had to go to the airport later, but when I eventually got to this place there was a guy with a really nice and professional-looking camera standing outside next to a young boy who also had a camera.  I asked them what was going on, and they told me Ke$ha (yes, Ke$ha) was inside.  I waited outside for a while, didn’t see her, went inside to get the bag, went to look at the shoes in the shoe room, and there she was trying on black studded motorcycle boots.  She was totally rocking the train-wreck glam rock look with bronze sequined leggings and one of those awful shaggy fur coats.  After buying the purse I waited outside some more to see if I could get a picture of her coming out of the store, but she didn’t leave and so I left because I still wanted to walk around some more.

And that is it for Berlin!  I just got to Paris today, but look out for Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Strasbourg!

No, I didn’t plan on doing the four Berlin walking tours in four consecutive days, but I did.  This tour started in the afternoon, though, so I had the morning to do as I wished.  I wasn’t leaving Berlin without climbing the dome on top of the Reichstag, so I thought it would be a nice thing to do before the tour.  Fortunately, the line to get in wasn’t too long when I got there at noon, but it can get very long, so if you do go be careful about timing.  It’s open I think until 10 p.m., so going on the later side or early in the morning when it opens is probably best.

And now a bit about the Reichstag.  The Reichstag as a parliament dates back to the Holy Roman Empire, and the building  looks pretty old.  While the original was completed in 1894 to house the parliament of the German Empire, the current structure only dates back to the end of the 20th century.  Our story goes like this: An arson attack on February 27, 1933 burned the Reichstag’s interior completely.  The mystery as to who perpetrated the crime has never been solved, but the popular theory is that the Nazis did as a power grab.  After the fire, the police searched the building and found a drunk on the street nearby, a Dutchman by the name of Marinus van der Lubbe.  His communist ties were “uncovered,” and fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that the Communists were beginning to plot against the German government.  Hitler, who had been sworn in as Chancellor just four weeks prior, convinced the old and decrepit German president, Paul von Hindenburg, to pass an emergency decree to combat the communist threat.  Civil liberties were suspended, the government instituted mass arrests of communists (including parliamentary delegates), and with them gone and their seats empty the Nazis became the majority party and Hitler was able to consolidate his power.  No real effort was made to restore the Reighstag building until after the Cold War and the fall of the Wall, but these days it’s looking very neoclassical:

It was time to go inside the dome, which represents the reunification of Germany:

I got some great aerial views on the way up.  See if you can spot Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust memorial:

On my way out I could see the assembly room through the glass:

Even after that I still had some time left, so I walked around the Gate area and happened upon a Mercedes-Benz “gallery” of sorts that was showing off this 500k Cabriolet B:

I wasn’t the only one inside the gallery snapping away; there were also a few elderly men.  It was quite the touristy thing to do.

Right before the tour I dodged into a random restaurant to get lunch, and I couldn’t help but notice this businessman who was enjoying an ice cream sundae during his lunch break, complete with a metallic pink decoration:

Barry was our guide that day.  With his very heavy but understandable Irish accent he was what made the tour a great experience.  He told us that he studied politics/international relations in Paris for a year during university, and that he specialized in totalitarian regimes.  He really (really) knew his stuff.

The first stop on the Third Reich tour was the Reichstag.  Barry took us to the front of the building and then to this metal thing that looked like an artsy bike rack, which is not a bike rack but actually a memorial to the members of the Reichstag that Hitler had either killed or deported to concentration camps:

After that we visited the Soviet World War II memorial.  It wasn’t worth the space on my memory card, but the Soviets built it there in 1949 to commemorate the soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.  I couldn’t tell because of the snow, but it’s also a military cemetery.  It’s very big and imposing just like the Russian embassy, and done in the same style.

Then came the Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism, which only opened in 2008.  If you look inside the window you see a video of two men kissing:

Apparently there’s been some controversy because people began to ask why the video wasn’t of two women kissing.  Historically, lesbians as a group were not targeted by the Nazis, but a decision was recently made to alternate the video every six months.

Naturally, we also went to the Holocaust memorial.  I didn’t know this before, but these memorials are a part of a “triangle” to remember the three main groups of people targeted by the Nazis: Jews, homosexuals, and Gypsies.  Construction on a memorial to the gypsies is currently underway.

That was it for memorials, at least for a while.  Hitler’s bunker was also on the tour.  When we stopped there, Barry emphasized that when it comes to the  the Third Reich and the Nazis, the history really is in places like parking lots and abandoned plots of land because Germany really made an effort to destroy most remnants of that regime.  Then we walked around the corner to a little museum that had this in front of it:

These stones are all that remain of Welthauptstadt (“World Capital”) Germania, Hitler’s projected renewal of Berlin and part of his vision for post-World War II Germany. His plan called for the city to be reorganized along a central boulevard known as the Avenue of Victory, which would have run through the Brandenburg Gate; it would have replaced the street on which the Soviet war memorial is located.  Towards the southern end of the avenue would lie the Arch of Triumph, to be three times as large as the one in Paris.  The fait accompli, however, was supposed to be Grosser Platz at the other end of the avenue, an area of around 350,000 square meters surrounded by the Fuhrer’s palace, the 1984 Reichstag building, and the Third Reich Chancellery.   On the north side would stand the Volkshalle, the plaza’s centerpiece.  Designed by Hitler himself, it would serve as his “arena” for making speeches.  The architectural plans were ambitious, and some of the projects begun in the 1930s were abandoned even before the war (like the new Olympic stadium).  The stones above are the “foundations” of the Third Reich Chancellery.

Finally, it was time for the break.  Barry took us around the corner to Angela Merkel’s favorite kebab place, and it definitely lived up to the hype:

We passed the Luftwaffe on our way to the Topography of Terror, an exhibition that’s open air until the building is finished.  The exhibition space was made accessible to the public in 1987, and it stands on the remains of the central institutions responsible for the repressive and criminal policies of the Nazis, like the SS headquarters, the Gestapo “house prison,” and the Secret State Police administrative offices.  The exhibition was comprehensive and followed the rise of the Nazis all the way through the Holocaust, and it included photographs of what used to be on the grounds.  Central headquarters of the SS Security Service and the editorial offices of the Nazi Party daily paper/Berlin SA (Stormtroopers) Group Leadership:

Current excavations:

That was the first ending point of the tour, and if people wanted to they could continue on with Barry to the Jewish Ghetto to see some of those sites.  Of course, I elected to stay on even though it was snowing and really windy and much better to be inside.  We took the Metro to Berlin’s oldest Jewish cemetery, the second-largest in Europe, but it was dark and the snow was so deep that we couldn’t see anything.

The Neue Synagogue was our next stop.  Built in the mid-19th century, it was the main synagogue of the Jewish community and still serves as a community center.  Though badly damaged during the war, it survived Kristallnacht (the night in 1938 that Nazis set fire to Jewish businesses and institutions throughout Germany) because a local police officer arrived the next morning and ordered the Nazi mob to disperse on the pretext that he was holding a note in his hand from Hitler that demanded the synagogue’s protection as a historical landmark.  The people listened, and his claim that it was the law allowed the fire brigade to access to extinguish the fire, which saved the synagogue from destruction.  That piece of paper the officer held in his hand was blank.  The building is grandiose to say the least, and you can see the dome from miles away:

The last part of the tour was the site of a former synagogue, which is now a park with a nice memorial sculpture.  That synagogue was turned into a sort of holding cell for Jews, who were then sent to the camps.  At one point it imprisoned Jewish men who had gentile wives because the couples refused to get divorced when demanded by the Nazis.  These women did not stand for this and each day went to the building to protest and scream at the officers.  This sort of public spectacle was not so good for the Nazis, and so they eventually released the men.  A few were even caught en route to Auschwitz.  This was heroic on the part of the women, but Barry asked the question of why then, why did they only choose to act when it was their husbands.

That story was the end of the tour, but while I’m on the subject I’ll mention the Stolpersteine, or “stumbling blocks.”  A project of the artist Gunter Demnig, these small memorial blocks commemorate those deported and killed by the Nazis.  There are over 20,000 throughout Europe, but the first were installed in Cologne and Berlin in 1995.  They are placed close to the former residences of the victims, so there were a lot in the Jewish Ghetto:

An entire family:

Coming up next, a day without a walking tour.  I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for this.

First, I’m going to talk about the hostel, Wombat’s.  It’s sort of a chain, with others in Austria and other parts of Germany, but I think the one in Berlin is the nicest.  My room was spacious, the facilities were clean, the bar was a good hangout spot, the kitchen was awesome except for the fact that it lacked salt and pepper and cooking oil, and it was really easy to meet people there.  The lobby:

But what, you may ask, is a wombat?  The sign on the front of the building gives you a general idea, but I really didn’t know anything about it.  As I wondered this out loud, my new Aussie friends were surprised because wombats are apparently all over Australia.  From Wikipedia: “The wombat is a marsupial…It lives in the Australian eucalyptus forests…It is a medium sized animal that makes a burrow by digging holes in the ground.  Wombats are usually around a meter long when they are fully grown…They are nocturnal”:

I really loved the hostel, but if it wasn’t already quirky enough, it had a Louisiana/Cajun/Creole-themed restaurant attached to it, Louisiana Kid.  Hostel guests could get a cheap buffet breakfast there each morning, but for lunch and dinner it served real restaurant fare.  At the front desk I inquired as to the nature of the restaurant’s concept and who made that decision.  I was told that the cook spent some time in Louisiana and learned some Cajun cooking.  This may be true, but my friends and I ate there one night when we were too tired to go out properly, and despite what it says on the menu the dishes themselves are only mildly influenced by Cajun cuisine.  Yes, it is possible to get gator and blackened catfish in Berlin, in case you were wondering:

BUT (and this is a big “but”) Leah’s chicken and sausage gumbo looked like paella, the Spanish mainstay rice-and-chicken/meat/seafood/veggies dish.  There was barely any roux, and rice was yellow, not white.  Only two (a measly two!) pieces of okra found there way in to the dish, and I doubt there was any real Creole seasoning involved (unless the restaurant imports Tony Chachere’s).  I decided not to ruin my penchant for blackened catfish and stick to a basic salad with tuna, which was actually quite good.  But seriously, me and that hostel must have been meant for each other.  Now back to the real Berlin.

I really enjoyed the Red Berlin tour that I did on Monday.  Our crew (minus Leah who had to go to school) went back to the Starbucks at Brandenburg Gate for a tour of East German and Cold War history that was absolutely fabulous.  Our guide, Paul, was much better than our guide the previous day, which was weird considering that the guides giving the free tours only make money from tips whereas all the other tours require a fee of 10 Euro.  The 3.5-hour Red Berlin tour was definitely worth more than 10 Euro.  All of the guides are young, some only a few years out of undergraduate programs, but their passion and expertise really shows and you can tell that they truly enjoy sharing their knowledge with tourists.  Paul had family that lived in East Germany, so his interest in the topic was genuine and he told us all sorts of random facts and stories.

We started at the Brandenburg Gate and then moved on to the Russian Embassy, originally the Soviet Embassy.  Built in the 1950s, it’s of the Soviet “wedding cake” neo-classicism style, which is very similar to totalitarian architecture.  You can’t see it in this photo, but Paul said the building is still a bit controversial because it’s still decorated with hammer-and-sickle and other communist symbols:

On our way to the metro we passed by the Palace of Tears, a Berlin colloquialism for the former border crossing station at the Friedrichstrasse railway station.  The name comes from the fact that it was the site of tearful goodbyes when visiting citizens had to say farewell to their East German relatives and friends that were not allowed to travel to the West.  It’s not in such good shape, but Paul said it’s being made into a sort of museum/memorial:

The metro station we used to travel to our next stop was a “ghost station” during the Cold War.  After the border between the two Berlins was closed in 1961 and the wall was built, underground connections still existed between the two city halves; two U-Bahn (underground subway) lines and one S-Bahn (commuter rail) line traveled beneath the old city center of East Berlin on their way from one section of West Berlin to another.  The trains did not stop at the stations located in East Berlin, so the West Berliners named them “ghost stations.”  They were heavily guarded by policemen and soldiers to prevent attempted escapes, but a few people were successful.  Paul also told us that it got to be really bad for the guards.  People from West Berlin would throw things at them as they passed by the stations, so the GDR eventually had them stand in protective booths.  Today, there’s an explanation/exhibit in the station.  Just goes to show you that everything in Berlin has a history:

This tour also took us to the Berlin Wall, but to a different stretch in a much less touristy area of the city:

The camera is looking from the inner wall over the Death Strip to the Wall:

Another of Paul’s “highlights” was the Church of Reconciliation.  Originally a neo-Gothic structure completed in 1894, it survived World War II, but when Berlin was divided in 1945 it found itself within the Soviet occupation zone even though most of its parishioners were in the neighboring French zone.  When the Wall was constructed in 1961, it ran directly in front of the church, preventing access to everyone except the border guards, who used its tower as an observation post.  The GDR destroyed the church in 1985 to “increase security,” but it was rebuilt and consecrated in 2000.  It has an outer wall with slats as a sort of reminder and memorial:

Then it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty: a former Stasi (Ministry for State Security) interrogation center.  The Stasi was the GDR’s secret police, headquartered in East Berlin.  Founded in 1950, it relied mainly on informants to root out opponents of communism; 1 in 60 German citizens worked for the Stasi.  I’ve been putting it off until now for good reason, but now I must mention the famous TV tower standing in Alexanderplatz, the huge square full of shops, restaurants, and a gigantic pink eyesore they call a “mall”:

It was said that if you were invited to the spinning restaurant inside for lunch it meant that you were being recruited to work for the Stasi.  The topic really interested me, and so a few days later I went to the Stasi remand prison, the “mothership.”  More on fun interrogation techniques in that post.  It’s a shame that this really nice 19th-century building played a part in a very dark chapter of German history:

The logical question, of course, is what goes on in the building today.  Apparently, it’s the center for dog licensing, because in Germany you have to have a license for your dog.  I think they have to get a chip or something.  It only further proves the stereotype that Germans are very organized and orderly.  But hey, if Israel did this with its cats I’m sure it wouldn’t have such a bad stray cat problem.  Still, I found this whole dog-licensing thing a bit strange.

Our second-to-last stop was Karl-Marx-Allee, formerly Stalinallee between 1949 and 1961.  The GDR’s flagship building project during its reconstruction efforts following the war, it was completed in 1960.  The avenue was used for East Germany’s annual May Day parade, and you can still see that Stalinist wedding cake architecture today:

The Red Berlin tour ended at the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall at 1.3 kilometers.  Approximately 106 paintings cover this “memorial for freedom” and make it the longest open air gallery in the world.  First painted in 1990, it was repainted last year because there was so much graffiti on it.  The artists were asked to come back and either repaint their works or offer up new interpretations of their original ideas.  Some examples:

We walked the entire length of the gallery, so now I present to you my favorite panel (a Berlin version of Picasso’s Guernica) and the one that really caught my eye:

I will leave you all to ponder that flag “mash-up.”  The Red Berlin tour was indeed worth all the slush and wet sock-ness.  I didn’t know much about East Germany before, but I came away with a better understanding of the post-war division of Berlin and of the GDR in general.  Also, major props to Paul the tour guide.  He was excellent.

Now for the ending: WHO DAT, WHO DAT, WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS!!!

The afternoon I arrived in Berlin was cold and windy with a bit of snow, so I confined myself to a walk around the hostel’s neighborhood.  This happened to be Mitte, which means “middle,” and it really is a good location.  Unfortunately, it’s also very hip and chic with an emphasis on vintage when it comes to shopping, so going in and out of the stores was only wishful thinking and no buying.  Still, I got a flavor for local fashion.  I cooked that night, and in the kitchen I met three wonderful girls from Australia who were in the same room: Emma and Taby from Sydney, and Claire from Melbourne.  As it turns out, Claire and I have some mutual friends because she was involved in Netzer Australia, the country’s version of NFTY.  After Emma and Taby left, Claire and I hung out together for most of the week with Leah, an Irish girl (half American and part Mexican) who was also in their room.  Claire is traveling Europe after spending a semester studying in Spain, but Leah was in Berlin to take a language class for a few weeks, and she eventually wants to move to Berlin.  I got really lucky at this hostel, and it was nice to have a few friends.  More on the hostel itself later.

On Sunday, my first full day in Berlin, I did the free walking tour with the girls from Australia.  This tour is world-renowned and shows up in all the guide books and travel websites as a must-do.  It was a great introduction to the city, and I couldn’t have seen all of it without a guide.  Berlin is huge, and I wouldn’t have known where to start.  Also, the city’s history is so rich, complex, and contemporary that I really did need a guide to provide me with the context.  If you’re going to Berlin, the walking tour is definitely the best thing to do first.

We started at Pariser Platz, which is important for several reasons.  First, it’s bordered on one side by the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s last remaining gate that was commissioned by King Frederick Wilhelm II of Prussia as a sign of peace and finished at the end of the 18th century.  The gate survived World War II and was used by the Nazis as a party symbol:

Second, it’s bordered on another side by the Hotel Adlon, which is frequented by celebrities and diplomats/heads of state.  This is where Michael Jackson infamously dangled his son Blanket out the window in November 2002.  Our guide told us that the hotel’s current high-profile guest was President Shimon Peres, who was in Germany for Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 28 (must be a German or European one because Israel’s is in the spring) and the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  The facade of the hotel where Blanket was dangled and almost dropped, and the lobby:

After passing through Brandenburg Gate, I could glimpse the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, through the trees:

There was a cobblestone path on the street that Brian pointed out to us, which is where the Berlin Wall once divided East and West Germany:

About a block away was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by architect Peter Eisenman in finished in December 2004.  It cost 25 million Euro and I think my guide said it’s the largest memorial in all of Europe.  The 19,000 square meter site is covered with 2,711 concrete slabs/stelae arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.  Apparently, when asked about the symbolism of the memorial Eisenman responded that it’s not supposed to mean anything, and that you’re supposed to come up with your own interpretation.  At first glance the stelae looked to me like a mass grave or camp barracks.

Before the memorial was completed, however, there was a scandal in 2003 because a Swiss newspaper reported that the company that was producing the anti-graffiti substance used to cover the concrete blocks had a subsidiary that produced the Zyklon B gas to kill death camp inmates during the Holocaust.  The decision to keep working with the company was highly criticized.

We were given a few minutes to walk through the memorial, and I found making my through it to be confusing, a kind of maze  By the end, I just wanted to get out.  I suppose this is the type of sentiment its meant to provoke:

As a student of Political Science, I was happy to see that Berlin had named a street after one of my favorite philosophers:

Next, we came to these Soviet-style high-rise apartment buildings with red tile roofs, which the East German government built close to the border between the two Germanys as propaganda to show West Germans and the world that East Germany really was a nice place to live in:

Under the parking lot, however, lies what used to be Hitler’s bunker.  It has been destroyed, and there is no memorial because the government does not want it to become a sort of shrine or place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis:

Then we passed by the Luftwaffe, the old Nazi air force headquarters.  It’s the city’s only remaining Nazi building that is still used today (I think he said it’s the tax office or something), and serves as a good example of totalitarian architecture, which is supposed to look big and imposing and make the people feel small and afraid; that’s why the windows and doors are so huge:

Finally, we got to a preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall.  Germany was divided after World War II into 4 occupied zones, and the Soviets got East Berlin.  The German Democratic Republic was declared in 1949, and East Germany became a socialist Soviet satellite while West Germany developed into a Western capitalist country.  Up until 1952, the lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places, but the inner German border officially closed that year.  It meant that East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate so easily.  Families were separated and people in the east were cut off from their jobs in the west.  Our guide told us a particularly disturbing story about a guy whose girlfriend was stuck in East Germany.  You could buy day passes to go into West Germany if you had enough money, so he seduced a woman that looked like his girlfriend and bought passes for both of them.  In East Berlin he drugged her, met up with his girlfriend, gave her the other girl’s identity papers, and they crossed back into West Germany.  The drugged girl eventually woke up, and because her father was well-connected she was able to cross back.  The guy didn’t serve much jail time.

The first phase of the Berlin Wall was a wire fence erected in 1961, and it was built slightly inside East Berlin to ensure that it did not encroach on West Berlin at any point.  The next year, a second, parallel fence about 100 meters farther into East German territory was built.  Known as the Death Strip, it was covered with raked gravel which enabled the officers to see footprints, and it offered no cover.  If someone trying to escape East Germany was caught in the Death Strip, he would be fired at immediately.  The second and third barriers were an improved wire fence that lasted until 1965 and the concrete wall that replaced it until 1975.  The Berlin Wall as we know it today is the fourth phase, begun in 1975 and finished in 1980.  Constructed out of about 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, it’s 12 feet high and topped off with a smooth pipe that intended to make it harder to scale.  There were also mesh fencing, barbed wire, anti-vehicle trenches, dogs, 116 watchtowers, and 20 bunkers.

The wall came down on November 9, 1989 after a GDR spokesman read a note about new regulations for the wall that he wasn’t supposed to read in public, which said that East Berliners would be allowed to cross the border with proper permission but gave no further instructions on how to handle the information.  Someone in the audience asked when the regulations were supposed to take effect, and he had no idea, but he said “immediately.”  Upon hearing the broadcast, East Berliners went en masse to the wall and demanded the guards to open the border; they eventually yielded, and that was that.  So without further ado, the Berlin Wall (the road in front would have been the Death Strip):

After about 2 hours, it was finally time for the break.  On the way to our break spot we Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point.  Unfortunately, it’s been Disney-fied to the point that I had no interest in spending my money to get my passport “stamped” or take pictures with the “guards,” and everything there is a reproduction:

On the curb were some Trabis, the most common vehicle in East Germany.  They don’t perform so well, and are seen as a symbol of the failed GDR and of the fail of communism.  You can rent them (probably for an exorbitant price), but after seeing someone pushing one to get it started it didn’t appeal to me:

Right next to Checkpoint Charlie, however, was our meeting point for after the break, which is where most of us ended up going to sit down and have a snack:

The Aroma was on the map I had gotten at the hostel because it was the tour company’s map, and the free walking tour always stops there for its break.  I was skeptical at first, but when I saw the place for myself I knew it had to be the one and only Israeli chain.  Of course, this one isn’t kosher and they’ve incorporated German cuisine into their menu as evidenced by the hot dog sandwiches that many people on my tour ordered.  Unlike the Aroma in New York City, no Israelis work at this one, which was disappointing.  I thought it was quite ironic that a tour company that also does tours of Third Reich Berlin (which I did) and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (which I didn’t do) would make a deal with the only Israeli restaurant in the city that brings in all the tour groups after they’ve seen things like Hitler’s bunker and the Luftwaffe.

The last part of the tour brought us to Bebelplatz, where Nazi students burned nearly 20,000 books by “subversive” authors such as Heinrich Heine and Sigmund Freud (both Jews, Heine being an apostate-turned-Christian) on May 10, 1933.  Bebelplatz is bordered by Berlin’s first Catholic church built after the Reformation (damaged during World War II just like everything else in the city and rebuilt), the Deutsche Staatsoper (one of Berlin’s three opera houses), and Humboldt University, Germany’s most prestigious university, whose graduates include Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Karl Marx:

In the center of the square, there’s a memorial underground.  It’s supposed to be empty bookshelves:

Because of the snow, we couldn’t see the plaque on the ground engraved with Heine’s 1820 German epigram: “Wherever they burn books, eventually they will burn people too.”  Today, Humboldt University sells cheap books (mostly secondhand) on the sidewalk in front as a sort of gesture to compensate for what happened in 1933:

The tour ended with the statue of Frederick the Great, the king of the Prussia during the second half of the 18th century.  And he really was great: a supporter of “enlightened absolutism,” religious tolerance, modernization, he built the Sanssouci palace in Potsdam, and he corresponded with Voltaire.  That’s about as good as you could get with a monarch at that time.  Here he is on a horse:

We were walking back to the hostel when we saw a store that sells Ampelmann paraphernalia.  Ampelmann is the guy on Berlin’s traffic lights, created in 1961 when traffic psychologist Karl Peglau introduced the first pedestrian signals to GDR capital in response to the growing threat of road traffic accidents.  Berliners respect the Amplemann, and no one crosses unless he is green.  I am so used to New Orleans/New York City/Jerusalem, where people cross streets whenever they feel like it regardless of the traffic lights.  Anyways, this is the Ampelmann:

The store sells all sorts of things, from Ampelmann gummies to tote bags (which I couldn’t resist for 4.50 Euro each) to bottle openers and cookie cutters:

After so much Italian food I was ready for some (you guessed it) Asian.  It turned out that there was a really cheap Korean place a block from the hostel.  I’d never had Korean, but I ordered some sort of tuna-tofu-vegetable-kimchi soup and it was delicious.  Also, the restaurant was called YamYam, which was totally cute-sy.  Claire, Emma, Taby, and Leah; Claire and I:

Wow, that was much longer than I meant it to be.  Coming up: more walking tours, German chancellor Angela Merkel’s favorite kebab, and wombats!

During the off-season, a tour of Venice by gondola costs about 80 Euro for 30-40 minutes, and around 120 Euro for an hour.  This is not exactly feasible for the lone budget traveler, which is why I was so glad to randomly meet up with 3 others after I went to the Accademia.  Matthew, the only guy in the group, had his heart set on doing one even if it meant going alone, so when he mentioned it we all thought it would be a good idea to do it together and split the cost.

In the process of searching for and bargaining with gondoliers to figure out the price range, we wandered into the lovely Caffe al Ponte del Lovo.  As we sat down to pastries (or, in my case, marzipan), we didn’t know that the cafe is actually kind of famous.  Apparently, Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni and his friends from St. Luke’s theatre company used to meet there every day, and he even mentioned the cafe in a play he wrote in 1775.  The cafe still retains its 18th-century atmosphere, and the pain au chocolat looked nice as well:

We were pretty close to Piazza San Marco, so we went there to see about a cheap(er) gondola.  We got the 80 Euro for 40 minutes deal (bargained down from 90), and off we were in our gondola!  Our gondolier was Diego, who was really great about telling us the historical significance of the places we passed by.  His father was a gondolier, and it’s something that’s passed down from generation to generation within Venetian families.  A lot of training is involved; there’s a written test (about the history, etc.) as well as a road test.  There are no more than 10 companies that operate gondola tours, but only these companies are licensed to do it.  All of the gondoliers know each other, and Diego chatted with every other gondolier we ran into on the canals.  Diego, our boat, and the view from our point of departure:

The first place of historical significance that we passed under was the Bridge of Sighs, which connects the old prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge’s Palace.  Built in 1602, the view from the bridge was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment.  Lord Byron gave the bridge its name in the 19th century, which comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice out the window before being taken down to their cells.  The bridge is currently undergoing a massive restoration over a period of a few years, hence the annoying blue stuff.  I looked it up on the internet, and the bridge is actually quite small, so I think this is all of it.  Also, Matthew and I after going under it:

Some general snapshots from the tour:

One of the best parts was seeing the Ponte di Rialto from the water.  Me, Anna, and Lilie:

Other highlights included the house were Marco Polo lived and this building I thought was neat:

When we got back to Piazza San Marco it was almost twilight:

We ended our day with a glass of wine at some random cafe, and that was definitely enough for me.  Here’s a bit of Venice at night:

The next morning, I headed over to Piazza San Marco first thing to see the basilica and the Doge’s Palace.  Some general shots of the piazza, and what the Basilica Cattedrale Patriachale di San Marco looks like when its not being restored:

Consecrated in 1094, the basilica wasn’t completed until 1617.  It’s Venice’s most famous church and, as you can probably tell, it’s also a very nice example of Byzantine architecture.  The interior is based on a Greek cross, unlike the Gothic cathedrals I saw in France and the rest of Italy.  There’s a lot to see inside, but most of it requires separate fees of 3 or 4 Euro each, so all I did was walk around for a bit:

Next up was the Doge’s Palace, which is right next to (and maybe connects to?) the basilica.  The current palace was constructed from 1309 to 1424 in the Gothic style and was the seat of the Doge of Venice, the city’s chief magistrate and leader for over a thousand years.  The office was first instituted around 700, and the doge usually ruled for life.  At the end of the 12th century the election of the Doge was entrusted to a committee to curb the tendency towards hereditary monarchy, and in 1268 restrictions were placed on his power so that he was constantly under surveillance.  The last Doge abdicated in 1797 when Napoleon took Venice.  Palace exterior and courtyard:

The visit began with an exhibit of the various types of columns and capitals used to build the palace.  Capitals depicting the deadly sins and the creation of Adam:

Then I explored the Doge’s apartments, the palace’s administrative buildings, the armory, and the prison.  The Golden Staircase leads to the apartments and state government chambers, and it gets its name from the rich decoration of the vault in white stucco and 24-carat gold:

I did see lots of pretty and interesting things, but the museum guards were watching people like hawks, so I didn’t have much of a chance.  The elaborate fireplaces and Venetian glass chandeliers were recurring features in the Doge’s apartments, so I got photos of both in the Four Doors Room, the formal antechamber to the more important rooms in the palace:

I liked the Senate Chamber in particular because it’s decorated with frescoes and paintings by famous local artists.  The Senate, founded in the 13th century, used the room to make foreign policy decisions:

The palace’s prison cells at times held notables such as Casanova, the Venetian adventurer, author, and infamous womanizer.  He was arrested because his gambling, sexual escapades, and other “immoral” activities basically branded him a threat to the Christian religion.  I must say that the prison didn’t look so friendly:

That was it for the palace and man, did I need a breather from 15th/16th-century art and architecture, which is why I saved the best for last: the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, housed in Peggy Guggenheim’s former home on the Canal Grande.  Basically, an oasis in a desert.  On display are both her private collection of 20th-century American and European art as well as contemporary pieces.  The house/museum:

Her collection included Magritte, Dali, Pollock, and Picasso, and I’d never been happier to see them. Pollock’s Eyes in Heat and Dali’s Birth of Liquid Desires:

There was also a nice mobile by Calder and a silver bedhead he made for Pegy Guggenheim:

I leave you with this last image of one of the contemporary installations:

And that was all I had time for in Venice.  I’m sure by now most of you know that my train to Prague was actually the previous night, and that upon returning to the hostel I checked my ticket again only to discover this.  One of the guys who works at the hostel was really great and comforted me and gave me great advice, and told me not to say anything about being on the wrong train unless they checked my ticket or if I absolutely had to say something.  It turned out just fine, and I told one of the guys on the train that I had a ticket but that I didn’t have enough time to print it out and all I had was the credit card I paid for it with.  He was really nice and gave me a couchette cabin all to myself (I told him I had reserved a couchette when I had really bought just a seat).  And then I did a crazy thing: once I got to Munich I had to go to Nuremberg to transfer to a bus to Prague.  I was tired of traveling, and because I had messed up with the dates going to Prague for just one night and then taking a 4-hour train to Berlin the next day wasn’t worth it.  The train to Nuremberg’s destination was Berlin, so I just stayed on the train all the way there.  I called the hostel, they said it was fine to come a day early, and the guy checking tickets on the train must have been really nice and overlooked the fact that my ticket was only to Nuremberg because on the ICE trains the destination appears on a digital screen above your seat when they scan your ticket.  This is how I ended up in Berlin.  More on that later!

Venice was absolutely fabulous, and even more so because I made friends with some nice Aussies at my hostel.  For Australians, this is their summer break, so they’ve basically taken over Europe until they all go back to university in late February/beginning of March, and they’re all really nice.

I had a lovely first afternoon just wandering around and exploring this city of canals, the city of Marco Polo, of Cassanova.  There are no cars in Venice, just boats, and everyone walks everywhere (well, unless they’re rich enough to have a private boat).  In case you wanted to know, Elton John has a house there, too.  But watch out, because if you don’t have a good map (or a private boat and gondolier) you will get lost quite easily, and it’s hard to find your way back.  This was my first impression:

Just to give you an idea about how Venice truly relies on boats for transportation, here is a Venetian ambulance:

As I walked along some of the more commercial streets, I noticed that preparations for Carnavale, the Venetian version of Mardi Gras (please refer to my PoJo article in the A.Good Journalism section), were underway, and one of the very touristy things to do is buy a mask:

And what would a day in Italy be without going inside a church?  Let’s Go recommended the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, built by the Franciscans in the 14th century in the Italian Gothic style.  The exterior was quite plain compared to the other Gothic churches I had seen, but the interior was quite intricate:

The basilica is also a treasure trove of Renaissance art.  Bellini’s Madonna and Child, Titian’s Assumption, and a really cool 17th-century clock that deserves an honorable mention:

Just as I cannot ignore a nice piece of Renaissance art, the bakery window displays were just as enticing.  The puffy green cookies are Pane de Doge, which I think must be a local specialty because the Doge’s Palace is in Venice, and in other bakeries I saw signs with variations of the same name.  Also, I finally got a shot of some canoli:

Don’t think I forgot about the pizza; the savory is just as important as the sweet.  The spinach and feta looked heavenly, but the most intriguing was a pepperoni-and-french-fry concoction.  And, after having been to Foccacia Bar in Jerusalem a number of times, I was equally fascinated by the real foccacia:

My destination was the Ponte di Rialto, which spans the Canal Grande.  Venice’s public transportation only follows the Canal Grande, and you can only cross it at 4 bridges, which isn’t a lot when you think about it.  The Rialto is the oldest, completed in 1591, and has always been a marketplace:

Today, the bridge’s most famous residence is Rivoaltus Legatorious, which has been selling hand-sewn, leatherbound journals for 30 years, all of them made by the owner:

My first trip there I bought one of the smaller journals with the paper cover, and the second time I got a small brown leather one:

Like I said, I went there twice.  Put me in a store like this and I’m in heaven.  I spent quite a few Saturdays of my childhood years perusing the journals in Barnes and Noble, I used to keep journals, I love to write, etc., and so I was happy to splurge on these.

It got dark, I didn’t want to get lost, you know the story by now, so I went back to the hostel for the night.  The next morning I went to the Accademia, Venice’s foremost art museum, which is located on the Canal Grande next to the Ponte dell’Accademia:

Founded in 1750 as a school of painting, sculpture, and architecture, it now exhibits pre-19th-century works, the most famous of which is da Vinci’s Virtuvian Man (the drawing of the guy with his arms spread out).  More about that later.

One of the first things I saw was a huge Titian fresco:

My favorite room contained paintings that depicted live in Venice during the Renaissance.  It was interesting to see what the main tourist attractions like Piazza San Marco and the Ponte di Rialto used to look like:

What really got me, though, was a whole room of different versions of the Madonna and Child all painted by Bellini.  My breaking point, so to speak.  I’d seen every medieval and Renaissance artists’ depictions of the Adoration of the Magi, the Assumption, and too many other New Testament scenes; enough was enough and I felt like I was suffocating.  I bumped into a hostel friend while at the museum, who I later learned was interested in Dutch and Flemish art, and we commiserated about the unfortunate fact that they all tend to blend together after a while to the point of becoming tortuous.

When we learned that the Vitruvian Man wasn’t on display, that it had been taken down and put away the day before (museums in Italy don’t display every piece all the time), we were really bummed.  I whipped out the press pass and tried to persuade them, but it didn’t work.  And so it goes.  On our way out of the museum, we ran into someone else from the hostel, and from there we went to meet up with someone that one of them had met on the train the day before.  After that, we began our search for a gondola.  More on that in the next post!