Last weekend was the final bank holiday weekend of the year in the UK, which meant it was the perfect time to fulfil a travel goal that has been high on my list for some time: Amsterdam! Which I have to admit is something that appeals to me less and less the more time goes by (read: the older I get.) So it was high time to take advantage and go.
Amsterdam’s reputation comes largely from its extremely liberal attitude towards, well, almost everything. The city is a miracle of what liberalism can accomplish: bikes everywhere vastly reducing traffic and pollution, power supplied by windmills along the coast, and an extremely tolerant atmosphere that even leaves London behind. The legalized marijuana and prostitution is simply just an extension of this overall attitude that is extremely refreshing.
The goal of our trip was very simple: relaxation. We weren’t out to run from tourist spot to tourist spot, we just wanted to take a nice deep breath and chill out in the middle of a very stressful work/move time. I started reading High Life, British Air’s inflight magazine, on the trip over and by the time we set down a mere 45 minutes later I was already much more laid back.
We spent the first night getting to know the area around our hotel, which was thankfully right in the middle of the city center, so we were never far from anything and could easily walk to everything we wanted to see and do. The high value of the Euro against the Pound was the only unfortunate part; the prices in Amsterdam were some of the highest we’d seen in Euros anywhere.
But it didn’t interfere with our fun. We found a great Mexican restaurant (itself enough of a rarity in Europe), had some Dutch pancakes, and simply sat and watched the world go by. We hit the Anne Frank Haus, where Anne and her family hid during World War 2, as sobering an experience as I’ve had. Amsterdam features two great art museums, the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, which we hit up as well to round out our cultural experience.
The city itself has an excellent vibe that’s difficult to describe. The leaning buildings, some five stories high, loom over the brick streets and wide canals and everything seems ultra-modern but relatively unchanged since it was built in the 1600s and 1700s (at least in the city center, outside it becomes far more modern.) Yeah, we walked through the Red Light District and it’s as sleazy as you might expect. The two main churches in town became victims of Calvinist reform and were stripped of anything ostentatious, leaving their base architecture to admire without any of the distracting trappings. There was also a really fascinating Catholic Church – Our Lord in the Attic – which is named because it was indeed in the attic of a house after the Catholics were forced underground (or high aboveground in this case.) Not something you see every holiday.
The trip was a great time and I’m glad we did it when we did. We’ve got a few more lined up in the future, some higher priorities than others. Hopefully we’ll get a few good blog posts out of it too.
And here's the slideshow:
Showing posts with label traveling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traveling. Show all posts
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Greece: What Can I Say?
'What can I say?' is an excellent existential declaration of resignation. It is second only to the Russian declaration that translates (roughly) to: 'how could it be any other way?' These phrases are often used to describe something commonplace but troublesome, or in this case something for which words can add very little value.
'What can I say?' is how I feel about my trip to Greece. Keep in mind this was almost two months ago so clearly saying something wasn't top-of-mind, but I want to chronicle this trip here so when the book is published at the end of our wanders abroad there won't be a giant missing chapter.
We decided to take a week at an all-inclusive resort on the island of Kos, which (for us) was a bit of a splurge: beaches, pools, and all the free food and booze you can eat and drink. Basically, heaven. The ocean was cold but apart from that there's very little you can do to complain about an all-inclusive vacation in a resort. In fact we only left once, to go to Kos town, and that was just fine.
We did manage to spend a couple of days in Athens beforehand seeing the Acropolis and walking the city a bit. Athens is possibly one of the coolest cities I've been to in Europe, not only for the food (ranging from touristy to excellent) but just the overall vibe of the city: it felt like a place people lived rather than something that was gussied up for the sake of appearances. To be honest we were almost too tired to appreciate it: the vacation was an opportunity to recharge, and our time as tourists was just a prelude to laying on the beach and doing absolutely nothing.
Maybe that makes me a bad traveller. It's certainly different from the backpacking days in hostels. But all you can drink on the beach is a pretty strong argument for working a dayjob.
What can I say?
'What can I say?' is how I feel about my trip to Greece. Keep in mind this was almost two months ago so clearly saying something wasn't top-of-mind, but I want to chronicle this trip here so when the book is published at the end of our wanders abroad there won't be a giant missing chapter.
We decided to take a week at an all-inclusive resort on the island of Kos, which (for us) was a bit of a splurge: beaches, pools, and all the free food and booze you can eat and drink. Basically, heaven. The ocean was cold but apart from that there's very little you can do to complain about an all-inclusive vacation in a resort. In fact we only left once, to go to Kos town, and that was just fine.
We did manage to spend a couple of days in Athens beforehand seeing the Acropolis and walking the city a bit. Athens is possibly one of the coolest cities I've been to in Europe, not only for the food (ranging from touristy to excellent) but just the overall vibe of the city: it felt like a place people lived rather than something that was gussied up for the sake of appearances. To be honest we were almost too tired to appreciate it: the vacation was an opportunity to recharge, and our time as tourists was just a prelude to laying on the beach and doing absolutely nothing.
Maybe that makes me a bad traveller. It's certainly different from the backpacking days in hostels. But all you can drink on the beach is a pretty strong argument for working a dayjob.
What can I say?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Forgot Paris
Not forgot really, just too damn busy to blog at the moment.
Paris was beautiful. Gorgeous. And I mean beautiful in the truest sense of the term, that the city planners and architects and residents took or take pleasure and pride in making things of an aesthetically pleasing nature simply because they can. Because it looks good.
Paris is also a place of expectation, especially if you're not from there. Are Parisians rude? No, no more so than people in any other large city. Are French people arrogant? Maybe, but no more so than anyone else I've encountered. The stereotypes are worthless. A gaggle of mimes isn't going to assault an American the second you step off the Eurostar. And a waiter isn't going to insult your wife in French (sorry Chevy.) Unless you do something to insult him or her first, I suppose.
It is undeniably romantic and there is more to see there than you could hope to see in four days. I probably could have spent the entire time in the Louvre and still not seen the entire thing.
Pictures are on my Paris set on my Flickr page, or helpfully embedded here.
Paris was beautiful. Gorgeous. And I mean beautiful in the truest sense of the term, that the city planners and architects and residents took or take pleasure and pride in making things of an aesthetically pleasing nature simply because they can. Because it looks good.
Paris is also a place of expectation, especially if you're not from there. Are Parisians rude? No, no more so than people in any other large city. Are French people arrogant? Maybe, but no more so than anyone else I've encountered. The stereotypes are worthless. A gaggle of mimes isn't going to assault an American the second you step off the Eurostar. And a waiter isn't going to insult your wife in French (sorry Chevy.) Unless you do something to insult him or her first, I suppose.
It is undeniably romantic and there is more to see there than you could hope to see in four days. I probably could have spent the entire time in the Louvre and still not seen the entire thing.
Pictures are on my Paris set on my Flickr page, or helpfully embedded here.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Iceland: Cold. Dark. Beautiful.
If you're looking for a good weekend travel break right now, there's probably few better than Iceland. Lastminute.com did me an excellent deal for three nights and a flight, and the exchange rate is extremely favorable while inflation hasn't caught up. Which doesn't exactly make Iceland cheap, but it's no worse than London and in some cases much better.
But enough of the advertising piece. I've always wanted to visit Iceland, which fits very well into my travel MO of 'remote places,' 'islands' and 'cold places.' Iceland fits two and a half of those three - it's not all that remote, only two and half hours from London - but for the price, I couldn't pass it up.
I arrived on Thursday around 4 in the afternoon and found Reykjavik to be more light and less cold than I imagined. The sun set around the same time as it does in London, so I figured the reports about daylight hours might be slightly exagerrated.
What I didn't realize is that it would be about 18 hours until I saw it again.
I checked into the hotel, grabbed my gloves and hat and set out to explore Reykjavik. I had a spotty WiFi connection in the hotel and a vague idea of where the one well-reviewed and inexpensive restaurant WikiTravel recommended: the Sægreifinn (Seabaron), whose Lobster soup is world-famous (it made the New York Times' restaurant guide in 2006) and who serve whale kebabs. I ordered both.
Whale tastes like beef that's been soaked in fish. Fishy beef. Nothing special, except that hey, you're eating whale. The lobster soup was amazing. Icelandic lobsters are smaller than their American cousins, slightly larger than jumbo shrimps, and taste about halfway between the two creatures. Not quite as buttery as a lobster, and not quite as, um, shrimpy as a shrimp. But they're perfect in the soup. So yes, Sægreifinn is highly recommended.
I walked around town for a while in the dark, stopped for a Viking beer - because hey, why wouldn't you - and made my way back for a good night's sleep.
Next morning I realize just how dark things are in Iceland. I woke up around 8.30 and it was still pitch black out. By 9.30, when I was showered and dressed and ready to go, it was a little light - enough to turn everything a strange and beautiful blue color, like you're trapped in a French avant-garde film.
Speaking of the shower, I should mention that hot water in Iceland works a little differently than you might expect. A lot differently. It's all geothermal, and there are hot water mains that carry pure hot water directly from the planet itself into a shower. It comes out smelling like sulfur and can get extremely hot if you're not paying attention. Here's myself, giving you a little demonstration of how it works:
By the time the sun was up, I was walking along the harbor. The economic crisis that made Iceland such an attractive place to travel was obvious only here, where the hulks of half-constructed buildings squatted, some of which might never be finished.
It didn't take long to explore most of Reykjavik; there are only about 180,000 people in the metro area, and the city is not like other European capitals in that it was only a small collection of houses until the 1850s. The national cathedral is little bigger than an English country church. The National Museum though has an amazing exhibit on the colonization of Iceland and its transition from a collection of farms and viking holdings to one of the most modernized, green nations on the planet with the highest standard of living and health care possible. By the time I made it back towards my hotel and the Hallgrímskirkja. The church was covered in scaffolding, like every other famous landmark you want to see, and I opted out of the ride to the top of the tower for the free walk around the church instead.
That evening, it was too cloudy for the Aurora so I turned in reasonably early to rest up for my tour into the countryside. A Nissan Patriot with 44" tires rolled up at 9, we picked up two other Americans and headed out of the city. Here's something interesting about Iceland: once you get outside of Reykjavik, especially if you aren't in another one of the (very small) towns, there is a lot of wide open space. The snow was blowing as hard as I've seen in any midwestern snowstorm, visibility damn near nil, and I asked our guide if we were driving through farmland. "No, this is wasteland," he said. Wide-open plains of volcanic rock and not a hell of a lot else.
We saw Þingvellir National Park, where the planet is literally coming apart at the rift between the North American and European tectonic plates. It was also the location of the first democratically-elected parliament in the world and home of Iceland's largest freshwater lake. Then on to Geysir, the geyser for which all other geysers are named. And Gullfoss, Europe's largest waterfall, a mass of churning glacial water.
Then it was up to the snowfields, where the other two in our group went snowmobiling (not my cup of tea) and the guide let me drive the Patriot around on 4m of packed snow; now I can say I've driven in extreme winter conditions.
Here's what it looked like up there:
That night, it was once again too cloudy to see the Aurora.
And the next morning I was on my way home.
This trip wasn't one about profound cultural experiences, or profound personal experiences; it left me more with a feeling of having been slightly farther off the map then I've been before, and a desire to go even further when I can. Iceland seems like one of the last places you can do that and still be a reasonably comfortable tourist. Much farther and you're into adventure territory. Not that I would have a problem with that.
It was also a hell of a way to kick off what will likely be my last year in London, travel-wise. Liz and I vowed to travel more this year and take full advantage of what we could, and this trip was the beginning of that: good exchange rates, proper timing, and just getting out there and doing it.
Gonna be a great year.
But enough of the advertising piece. I've always wanted to visit Iceland, which fits very well into my travel MO of 'remote places,' 'islands' and 'cold places.' Iceland fits two and a half of those three - it's not all that remote, only two and half hours from London - but for the price, I couldn't pass it up.
I arrived on Thursday around 4 in the afternoon and found Reykjavik to be more light and less cold than I imagined. The sun set around the same time as it does in London, so I figured the reports about daylight hours might be slightly exagerrated.
What I didn't realize is that it would be about 18 hours until I saw it again.
I checked into the hotel, grabbed my gloves and hat and set out to explore Reykjavik. I had a spotty WiFi connection in the hotel and a vague idea of where the one well-reviewed and inexpensive restaurant WikiTravel recommended: the Sægreifinn (Seabaron), whose Lobster soup is world-famous (it made the New York Times' restaurant guide in 2006) and who serve whale kebabs. I ordered both.
Whale tastes like beef that's been soaked in fish. Fishy beef. Nothing special, except that hey, you're eating whale. The lobster soup was amazing. Icelandic lobsters are smaller than their American cousins, slightly larger than jumbo shrimps, and taste about halfway between the two creatures. Not quite as buttery as a lobster, and not quite as, um, shrimpy as a shrimp. But they're perfect in the soup. So yes, Sægreifinn is highly recommended.
I walked around town for a while in the dark, stopped for a Viking beer - because hey, why wouldn't you - and made my way back for a good night's sleep.
Next morning I realize just how dark things are in Iceland. I woke up around 8.30 and it was still pitch black out. By 9.30, when I was showered and dressed and ready to go, it was a little light - enough to turn everything a strange and beautiful blue color, like you're trapped in a French avant-garde film.
Speaking of the shower, I should mention that hot water in Iceland works a little differently than you might expect. A lot differently. It's all geothermal, and there are hot water mains that carry pure hot water directly from the planet itself into a shower. It comes out smelling like sulfur and can get extremely hot if you're not paying attention. Here's myself, giving you a little demonstration of how it works:
By the time the sun was up, I was walking along the harbor. The economic crisis that made Iceland such an attractive place to travel was obvious only here, where the hulks of half-constructed buildings squatted, some of which might never be finished.
It didn't take long to explore most of Reykjavik; there are only about 180,000 people in the metro area, and the city is not like other European capitals in that it was only a small collection of houses until the 1850s. The national cathedral is little bigger than an English country church. The National Museum though has an amazing exhibit on the colonization of Iceland and its transition from a collection of farms and viking holdings to one of the most modernized, green nations on the planet with the highest standard of living and health care possible. By the time I made it back towards my hotel and the Hallgrímskirkja. The church was covered in scaffolding, like every other famous landmark you want to see, and I opted out of the ride to the top of the tower for the free walk around the church instead.
That evening, it was too cloudy for the Aurora so I turned in reasonably early to rest up for my tour into the countryside. A Nissan Patriot with 44" tires rolled up at 9, we picked up two other Americans and headed out of the city. Here's something interesting about Iceland: once you get outside of Reykjavik, especially if you aren't in another one of the (very small) towns, there is a lot of wide open space. The snow was blowing as hard as I've seen in any midwestern snowstorm, visibility damn near nil, and I asked our guide if we were driving through farmland. "No, this is wasteland," he said. Wide-open plains of volcanic rock and not a hell of a lot else.
We saw Þingvellir National Park, where the planet is literally coming apart at the rift between the North American and European tectonic plates. It was also the location of the first democratically-elected parliament in the world and home of Iceland's largest freshwater lake. Then on to Geysir, the geyser for which all other geysers are named. And Gullfoss, Europe's largest waterfall, a mass of churning glacial water.
Then it was up to the snowfields, where the other two in our group went snowmobiling (not my cup of tea) and the guide let me drive the Patriot around on 4m of packed snow; now I can say I've driven in extreme winter conditions.
Here's what it looked like up there:
That night, it was once again too cloudy to see the Aurora.
And the next morning I was on my way home.
This trip wasn't one about profound cultural experiences, or profound personal experiences; it left me more with a feeling of having been slightly farther off the map then I've been before, and a desire to go even further when I can. Iceland seems like one of the last places you can do that and still be a reasonably comfortable tourist. Much farther and you're into adventure territory. Not that I would have a problem with that.
It was also a hell of a way to kick off what will likely be my last year in London, travel-wise. Liz and I vowed to travel more this year and take full advantage of what we could, and this trip was the beginning of that: good exchange rates, proper timing, and just getting out there and doing it.
Gonna be a great year.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
To Canterbury We Wende
Whan that July, with his shoures crappy
The droghte of dust hath perced to the roote
And bathed every Jason in wanderlust,
Of which vertu engendred is the truste;
Whan Elizabeth eek with her sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge Ja-son
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, (WTF?)
And smale foweles maken melodye, (birds)
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen Jason and Liz to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende!
So this last weekend to get the hell out of London we took a pilgrimage (slow train ride) to Canterbury, home of Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of Thomas a Beckett, England's best-known Martyr, and destination for pilgrims since medieval times, when Chaucer wrote his famous tales. We didn't tell stories on the way - we had our usual Sunday chat instead - and didn't see much of Canterbury apart from the high street and Cathedral, but I'm told there isn't a hell of a lot to Canterbury apart from those two things so I think we did alright. The Cathedral is probably my favorite in the UK aside from Durham, as it's an amazing Gothic construction, impossibly huge and beautiful in a way no other Cathedral is. Even with all the Cathedrals we've seen here and across Europe, there's something about Canterbury that's different. It's one of the few that feels warm on the inside, whether it's from the lighting or the choice of stone. It feel like what I've always believed God's house would be like. It's a strange, homely feeling at once historical and immediately present.
I admit that I'm biased to Canterbury based on my first experience there almost ten years ago, but returning this time with just a little time before it closed and the rain alternating between annoying sprinkle and outright downpour it still held its magic. There's very few things I can say that about, especially after so much time has passed. It was a strangely refreshing trip, even if it was just for a few hours. And just what we needed to get out of the city.
Flickr set here.
The droghte of dust hath perced to the roote
And bathed every Jason in wanderlust,
Of which vertu engendred is the truste;
Whan Elizabeth eek with her sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge Ja-son
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, (WTF?)
And smale foweles maken melodye, (birds)
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen Jason and Liz to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende!
So this last weekend to get the hell out of London we took a pilgrimage (slow train ride) to Canterbury, home of Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of Thomas a Beckett, England's best-known Martyr, and destination for pilgrims since medieval times, when Chaucer wrote his famous tales. We didn't tell stories on the way - we had our usual Sunday chat instead - and didn't see much of Canterbury apart from the high street and Cathedral, but I'm told there isn't a hell of a lot to Canterbury apart from those two things so I think we did alright. The Cathedral is probably my favorite in the UK aside from Durham, as it's an amazing Gothic construction, impossibly huge and beautiful in a way no other Cathedral is. Even with all the Cathedrals we've seen here and across Europe, there's something about Canterbury that's different. It's one of the few that feels warm on the inside, whether it's from the lighting or the choice of stone. It feel like what I've always believed God's house would be like. It's a strange, homely feeling at once historical and immediately present.
I admit that I'm biased to Canterbury based on my first experience there almost ten years ago, but returning this time with just a little time before it closed and the rain alternating between annoying sprinkle and outright downpour it still held its magic. There's very few things I can say that about, especially after so much time has passed. It was a strangely refreshing trip, even if it was just for a few hours. And just what we needed to get out of the city.
Flickr set here.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Insert They Might Be Giants Lyrics Here
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Me: Let's go somewhere.
Beautiful Competition: OK, where?
Me: I dunno, what's good on Last Minute?
BC: Here's a trip to Istanbul for dirt cheap.
Me: Hey, that's cool. Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine and later Ottoman empires? In Turkey? Why not.
And then we book tickets and go.
We didn't exactly time this trip perfectly since it was the weekend after a bank holiday weekend with miserable weather, but it worked out fine. We got up early on Friday and trundled out to Heathrow, boarded a plane and in about four hours were in Turkey.
This is significant for a lot of reasons for me. It was my first visit to a Muslim country. It's the furthest east I've ever been. And it was within spitting distance of another continent: Asia. Which brings the total of continents I haven't laid eyes on before to two, Australia and the cold one.
We planned the o'dark thirty flight so we could get in and have some time to get a feel for the city, since we realistically only had two and a half days to see anything. We made it to the Hippodrome, the chariot racing course built back when the city was the Greek colony of Byzantium, poked around a bit, and had a laid-back evening with delicious and amazing food.
Although I'm not sure we're conscious of it, we tend to fall into a nice rhythm when we travel: sleep in a bit, do most of our heavy touristing before lunch, eat a smallish meal, meander for a while, head back to the hotel, nap for a couple of hours, then have an enjoyable and relaxed evening. We weren't trying to cram as much sightseeing into our trip as possible this time around; it was intended to be relaxing and it was. If I sound defensive it's because we saw very little outside the main, top tourist attractions but that's OK.
Saturday was up early and hit the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is basically the world's first indoor shopping mall: a large structure (really a series of structures) that house shops of various types, divided roughly by what they sell: carpets, jewelry, leather, clothes, and so forth. We found some artwork we liked, haggled and bargained for it, and ended up getting ripped off I'm sure but had a great time while we were at it.
Traversing this press of humanity and hitting the book bazaar and spice bazaars took most of our day. It's a very different environment, where there are no prices and it's even considered rude to accept the first price a shopkeeper tells you. Many of them spoke English but not all, so you have to resort to pointing, grunting, putting numbers into a calculator and so forth.
The next day we hit the tourist attractions (rather than the tourist traps), which are luckily clustered within about a mile of each other. The Blue Mosque was the first, an incredible huge mosque that takes its name from the blue tilework inside. It was built to attempt to rival the nearby Aya Sofia (or Hagia Sofia) and came pretty close. The Aya Sofia was completed in 567 and for nearly 1000 years was the largest and grandest Christian church in the world. It is huge on a scale difficult to imagine, especially considering it was built as Europe was slipping into the Dark Ages and is a marvel of architecture that hasn't been rivaled since.
Topkapi Palace was our next stop; at this point we were hungry and getting a bit tired and kind of missed some parts of it. The best summary I can think of is 'the Alhambra if it hadn't been allowed to go to pot,' although there was much more modern work at Topkapi since it was the seat of the Ottoman sultans until early in the last century.
Istanbul wasn't a narrative trip, even though I tried to create one above. It seemed to me very much about feeling: the warm sun, the Mediterranean air, the sound of the calls to prayer echoing from minarets across the city, the taste of Turkish tea and coffee, the smell of Turkish tobacco in nagrileh, shopkeepers trying to entice you in with outlandish questions or statements, and all of the things that make traveling so wonderful that you only start to notice when you're on the plane ride back.
Also, Istanbul was a very cat-friendly city. There were cats everywhere, obviously cared for. I'm not sure if this is because the cat is respected in Islam, or if it's a beneficial relationship to have them on pest patrol. Can someone enlighten me?
Edit: check out the pics on Flickr, including one of the Beautiful Competition in a headscarf.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Back from Prague
After the Beautiful Competition damn near worked herself to death for her major event, we knew it was going to be time to take a little bit of, well, time. So we booked a trip to Prague on lastminute.com and spent the last three and a half days there. Just what the doctor ordered.Prague's a city of contrast. More appropriately, it's a city of expectation and reality, and it's interesting the number of ways those intersect. Prague has kind of been turned into a bit of a myth by the Western world - both among travelers who remember the good old days right after the fall of Communism when you could eat and drink and stay for fifty bucks a month, and among fantasy aficionados who quite appropriately regard it as a beautiful Gothic and Baroque gem where legends can live. The reality is that it's somewhere between those two things, but intersects with them enough that you get that big grin on your face you get when you know you're experiencing something cool.
We spent 99% of our time in the old city (technically, the "old city," the "new city," the "lesser quarter," the castle, and the Jewish quarter - but it's all really the old city.) Prague is walkable and there's stuff everywhere that caters to tourists, but it's still authentic enough that it doesn't matter. The Astronomical Clock is a little underwhelming, but the city itself is the attraction - the Baroque buildings and churches, the amazing Gothic spires and the cathedral, and the overall vibe of a place that's quiet and still trying to figure itself out after it threw off Communism almost 20 years ago.
In fact we started with a tour of the sites important to the Velvet Revolution, so called because it was mostly bloodless except for the massacre that instigated it and it was lead by intellectuals rather than the military. Any right-wing mouth-breather who thinks intellectualism is the cornerstone of the evils of the godless communist oppression need look no further than Prague and the Czech republic to be proven wrong in a grand fashion. It was a good indication of the importance the Czechs placed on art and their history when we received far more fliers for classical music concerts than we did for dance halls, techno shows or even strip clubs.
After treading the pavement where hundreds of thousands of Czechs assembled to end Communist oppression (attach any political message you want to that, but in my opinion they wouldn't have a memorial to the victims of Communism if it wasn't oppressive in some way), we tread the pavement walked by Kafka during his time in Prague - back through the Old Town Square and into the Jewish quarter, which (like the rest of Prague) was mostly spared during World War II. I mean the buildings, not the residents - of some tens of thousands of Jews who lived there before the Nazis invaded, there may be about 5,000 there now.
Somehow Prague managed to escape the devastation inflicted on so much of Europe during World War II, and this authenticity certainly adds to the feeling of history there. The Jewish Quarter is no exception - you can (and we did) visit the Synagogue where Rabbi Low kept his Golem, the mythical Jewish monster meant to protect the Jews against threats. I also got my first yarmulke so I could cover my head in the Synagogue. Pretty nifty.
The next day, we hit Prague Castle which is actually the original castle but built-over by a lot of Baroque palaces, so there isn't really much castle-y about it. The awesome St. Vitus' Cathedral is up there, probably the best pure Gothic cathedral I've seen apart from Canterbury, and the palaces are all pretty nifty. They're also the current seat of the Czech government so they're functional as well as cool to look at.
The last night we kind of just took it easy - had a few beers, drank some hot mulled wine as we walked around and just enjoyed ourselves. Charles Bridge looks pretty sinister at night with the soot-covered statues glaring at towering over you as you pass. It's not hard to see why Prague takes on just a bit of the sinister at night, and why you could imagine coming face to face with a vampire as easily as you could a tourist who's had too much to drink.
Oddly enough, outside of the city center Prague starts to look a lot like many American cities, especially a little further out when it becomes brand-new apartments, housing developments and office complexes. On the way out, there were several times I could have sworn I was in Dallas if the signs weren't in Czech.
So yes, expectations and reality clash. I didn't meet any vampires or Golems, but that's not to say I didn't expect to see one at any time. Maybe I should have stayed out later. I'll look for 'em a little harder next time I'm there.
Update: Pics here.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
A German Diversion
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| Bier ist Gut |
Hamburg was unseasonably warm, and I spent most of Sunday afternoon wandering around without a jacket and enjoying the awesome weather. Sunday evening landed us in a restaurant where I enjoyed the above beer, which was like every good Bock/Amber I've ever had all rolled into one. And compared to London prices, unbelievably cheap. I can't wait to go to Prague in two weeks!
I didn't get to see a whole lot more since I was in a conference room most of the time, but we did manage to hit a club on the 20th floor of a building by the harbor which afforded some awesome views of the Elbe river, the ships, all veiled by a cool winter fog. Flickr stream here.
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