This post is going to be a bit more arduous than normal, because this keyboard (in France now) has the a, z, q, w, m, ?, , ; . : / ( ) @ and ! in different locations. Why can there not be some kind of international Computer Keyboard Council that enforces uniformity in these matters?
But then, as much as it is irritating, these kinds of small differences constitute half the fun of travelling. You arrive in a new country, and you go to perform some kind of mundane task that is normally no cause for comment, and somehow the inhabitants of wherever you are have contrived to make this thing in some sense foreign. It's nice - this will sound incredibly naive perhaps - to discover that foreign countries are still very different, down to the details; that they are not Americanized tourist playgrounds which only retain their traditions and differences as some kind of quaint funfair for people to come look at. In Austria, we saw people wearing lederhosen in downtown Vienna - not because they were paid to, but because it's just what they like to wear.
So to update, we have just been in Italy, and now we are in France. I liked Italy, largely because Italy seemed to like me. People were mostly incredibly friendly and very patient with my limited and mangled Italian.
Which brings me to another tangent:
the language issue. We met a nice French Canadian guy in our Vicenza hostel, and we asked him which language he thought would be the best to learn. He replied, 'english'. But I can't help feeling a little rude when I go in to a shop and immediately ask if the assistant speaks English. Even if it is so widely spoken, it seems a little chauvinistic to be so monolingual.
Anyway, Italy: beautiful, crumbly, religious. Very religious. We went to a church to look at the architecture, and it was full of people praying and genuflecting. There was some kind of holy thing - I have no idea what, it looked like some kind of metal plate - that people were touching and praying over. It was all very hypnotic and intense, and more than a little disturbing.
It's interesting that the Italian churches that we went to were the first we've seen that actually had people praying in them - the first 'living' churches. Everywhere else, we saw buildings that you could say 'used to be' churches, but are now simply historical relics that attract tourists. The most extreme example was St. Vitus' cathdral in Prague: crowds of tourists waited outside for the mass to finish, a few harrassed-looking believers trickled out just before 12pm and then the place was instantly flooded with people taking pictures, wandering around listening to audio guides, following tour groups, speaking loudly.
Interesting, and a little sad. While it's reassuring to see that the Church is losing its hypnotic grip on the populace, the influx of tourists in many places seems to destroy the character of a beautiful sacred space. And I can only imagine what the remaining congregations of these famous churches feel about the whole thing.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Constants and variables
Some things are the same in every country. These things include:
ducks (apart from Viennese ducks - crazy creatures)
pigeons
dogs (apart from Viennese dogs - very well behaved and pocket sized)
arcane underground rail systems
Australian backpackers
fat and/or stupid and/or loud American tourists
Some things are completely different everywhere you go, and it is confusing, and I am getting fed up with it. These things include the following:
light switches and their locations
toilet flushes
toilet bowl shapes
taps, soap dispensers, hand dryers/towels, and sink plugs. A note about these: there seems to be a competition running between airlines, train services and fancy eateries to produce the most bewildering combination of the above, which more often than not leaves your humble narrator struggling for ten minutes to activate the correct sensors or turn the correct knobs to get the whole arrangement to do its thing. More than once I have given up and walked away with unwashed hands.
computer keyboards
shower heads
arcane underground rail systems
service customs
beer
coffee
tea
A vast, overwhelming part of me just wants things to be normal again. I want people to speak English to me and sound like I do and make the same jokes and know what Marmite is. I want to eat Marmite. God, I miss that stuff more than I ever thought possible.
I want to see my friends, and other assorted people of import... I feel weird without them, like a piece of algae that used to be attached to a rock but got ripped off by the current and is now floating around with lots of longs trailing bits dragging behind. That was an incredibly inelegant analogy, but nevertheless accurate.
But things are good in other departments. We went to the hot springs at Bad Blumau, Austria, to the spa complex designed by Hundertwasser, which was gorgeous. We stayed at a farmstay half an hour's walk from the spa, with the incredibly hospitable Helga - mother of six, as well as running the farm and guesthouse - who was a beautifully typical jolly Austrian farmer's wife.
We stayed with Juergen, our Couch Surfing host, in Vienna. Time flew by as we talked and talked and laughed with him, and he took me out to see the sights at night on his motorbike. The next time someone starts talking to me about motorbikes, I swear that I will not glaze over and politely change the subject, for now I understand the thrill and sense of freedom you can get on these machines.
Now we are in Munich. So far we have been subject to leery men on the street and unexpected costs at the hostel (not to mention the broken washing machine), but I have faith in the place. Hopefully not misplaced.
Auf Wiedersehen meine freunden! Until next time.
ducks (apart from Viennese ducks - crazy creatures)
pigeons
dogs (apart from Viennese dogs - very well behaved and pocket sized)
arcane underground rail systems
Australian backpackers
fat and/or stupid and/or loud American tourists
Some things are completely different everywhere you go, and it is confusing, and I am getting fed up with it. These things include the following:
light switches and their locations
toilet flushes
toilet bowl shapes
taps, soap dispensers, hand dryers/towels, and sink plugs. A note about these: there seems to be a competition running between airlines, train services and fancy eateries to produce the most bewildering combination of the above, which more often than not leaves your humble narrator struggling for ten minutes to activate the correct sensors or turn the correct knobs to get the whole arrangement to do its thing. More than once I have given up and walked away with unwashed hands.
computer keyboards
shower heads
arcane underground rail systems
service customs
beer
coffee
tea
A vast, overwhelming part of me just wants things to be normal again. I want people to speak English to me and sound like I do and make the same jokes and know what Marmite is. I want to eat Marmite. God, I miss that stuff more than I ever thought possible.
I want to see my friends, and other assorted people of import... I feel weird without them, like a piece of algae that used to be attached to a rock but got ripped off by the current and is now floating around with lots of longs trailing bits dragging behind. That was an incredibly inelegant analogy, but nevertheless accurate.
But things are good in other departments. We went to the hot springs at Bad Blumau, Austria, to the spa complex designed by Hundertwasser, which was gorgeous. We stayed at a farmstay half an hour's walk from the spa, with the incredibly hospitable Helga - mother of six, as well as running the farm and guesthouse - who was a beautifully typical jolly Austrian farmer's wife.
We stayed with Juergen, our Couch Surfing host, in Vienna. Time flew by as we talked and talked and laughed with him, and he took me out to see the sights at night on his motorbike. The next time someone starts talking to me about motorbikes, I swear that I will not glaze over and politely change the subject, for now I understand the thrill and sense of freedom you can get on these machines.
Now we are in Munich. So far we have been subject to leery men on the street and unexpected costs at the hostel (not to mention the broken washing machine), but I have faith in the place. Hopefully not misplaced.
Auf Wiedersehen meine freunden! Until next time.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Berlin
When you travel by train, you get to see some amazing landscapes. Even better, when you get in to a city you get to see some wicked graffiti.
There is a lot of graffiti in Berlin. A lot of buildings with broken windows, empty lots, general decay and the accompanying flowering of underground life. Unfortunately I didn't really get to see alot of it when I was there.
For a start, I was there for three days, one of which I spent in my hostel bed with a dripping nose and sinuses that felt like barbed wire implanted under my skin. Discovering the best places for street art and the coolest venues and cafes that only the locals go to takes some dedicated wandering. Of course, I could have taken the 'Alternative City' tour. For 12 Euros, I would be shown, according to the brochure, 'streets, squats and subculture'. Tempting. This is what attracted me to Berlin in the first place. But it seemed like such a lazy option, and (this may sound silly, I don't care) ethically dicey. I wondered what I would feel like if someone took tour groups through all of my beloved spots in Wellington; I wondered what would happen to those spots if everyone knew about them. After all, isn't the point of underground culture that it's difficult to find and hard to gain entry to? Anyway,I reasoned, the tour would probably not be worth the money (over 20 NZ dollars).
The sights we ended up seeing were the Sans Souci Palace in Potsdam (a heavily gilded Roccoco-era palace, with expansive and well-kept gardens), an exhibition of Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist paintings (I was so tired by this point that I skipped right past the room containing a work by Jackson Pollock without a glance back), an exhibition of Bauhaus works, the Brandenburg Gate, a wander past the Bundestag (parliament building), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Checkpoint Charlie, a former part of the Berlin wall.
The things we didn't see, which I am still agonising about: a Pierre et Gilles retrospective, the East Side gallery, Lego Land, and any nightclub, bar or gig.
Berlin has a strange relationship with its troubled past. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a sincere, profound experience, which manages to convey - as much as is possible in a work of art - some of the sadness, the immensity and the sheer heaviness of what happened in the Holocaust. But the same tour brochure that offered the 'Alternative City' tour made a tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp site sound like a funfair. They were also evidently making quite a lot of money off it, and off their Berlin wall tours, which to me feels a bit icky.
And in the Memorial for the Murdered Jews, people were playing hide and go seek (so did we. It was actually quite fun, and an ideal site for it). At Checkpoint Charlie, there is a museum - and a museum shop, presumably with fun souvenirs of Communist East Germany to take home to the rellies. There was a lunchbar across the road called Snack point Charlie.
Possibly my naive Antipodean eyes see things through a lens of too much idealism, but it seems like the pain, shame and tragedy of Germany's history is being exploited (by some) as a tourist attraction.
But maybe that's just how it goes in Berlin.
I"m writing from Prague, which is probably the most beautiful place we've been in yet. It also has the worst train station, which was practically Third World, and is the least tourist-friendly. And, like everywhere else, the hostel is full of Australians.
There is a lot of graffiti in Berlin. A lot of buildings with broken windows, empty lots, general decay and the accompanying flowering of underground life. Unfortunately I didn't really get to see alot of it when I was there.
For a start, I was there for three days, one of which I spent in my hostel bed with a dripping nose and sinuses that felt like barbed wire implanted under my skin. Discovering the best places for street art and the coolest venues and cafes that only the locals go to takes some dedicated wandering. Of course, I could have taken the 'Alternative City' tour. For 12 Euros, I would be shown, according to the brochure, 'streets, squats and subculture'. Tempting. This is what attracted me to Berlin in the first place. But it seemed like such a lazy option, and (this may sound silly, I don't care) ethically dicey. I wondered what I would feel like if someone took tour groups through all of my beloved spots in Wellington; I wondered what would happen to those spots if everyone knew about them. After all, isn't the point of underground culture that it's difficult to find and hard to gain entry to? Anyway,I reasoned, the tour would probably not be worth the money (over 20 NZ dollars).
The sights we ended up seeing were the Sans Souci Palace in Potsdam (a heavily gilded Roccoco-era palace, with expansive and well-kept gardens), an exhibition of Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist paintings (I was so tired by this point that I skipped right past the room containing a work by Jackson Pollock without a glance back), an exhibition of Bauhaus works, the Brandenburg Gate, a wander past the Bundestag (parliament building), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Checkpoint Charlie, a former part of the Berlin wall.
The things we didn't see, which I am still agonising about: a Pierre et Gilles retrospective, the East Side gallery, Lego Land, and any nightclub, bar or gig.
Berlin has a strange relationship with its troubled past. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a sincere, profound experience, which manages to convey - as much as is possible in a work of art - some of the sadness, the immensity and the sheer heaviness of what happened in the Holocaust. But the same tour brochure that offered the 'Alternative City' tour made a tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp site sound like a funfair. They were also evidently making quite a lot of money off it, and off their Berlin wall tours, which to me feels a bit icky.
And in the Memorial for the Murdered Jews, people were playing hide and go seek (so did we. It was actually quite fun, and an ideal site for it). At Checkpoint Charlie, there is a museum - and a museum shop, presumably with fun souvenirs of Communist East Germany to take home to the rellies. There was a lunchbar across the road called Snack point Charlie.
Possibly my naive Antipodean eyes see things through a lens of too much idealism, but it seems like the pain, shame and tragedy of Germany's history is being exploited (by some) as a tourist attraction.
But maybe that's just how it goes in Berlin.
I"m writing from Prague, which is probably the most beautiful place we've been in yet. It also has the worst train station, which was practically Third World, and is the least tourist-friendly. And, like everywhere else, the hostel is full of Australians.
A bit more of Denmark
We stayed with Frede and his wife Angiuk for 3 or 4 days. Frede is a friend of my Dad's from about 40 years ago, and it's been about the same amount of time since they've seen or had contact with each other. As such, it was amazingly hospitable of them to invite us to stay with them, feed us amazing meals and not ask us to help clean up, show us round everywhere and (perhaps the most helpful thing of all) translate for us.
Angiuk is the first and probably the only native Greenlandic person I'll ever meet - unfortunately she couldn't speak a word of English, but she did show us many photos from her homeland, as well some traditional clothes made of seal skin and fur, figures carved of whale bone and walrus tusk and beautiful, colourful beadwork. I now know more than I ever thought there was to know about Greenland and its people - for instance, did you know that it's not necessary to tan seal leather in Greenland, because the air is so dry that it never decays? Also, did you know than untanned seal leather that has been kept in the damper climate of Denmark for several years and is starting to rot has just about the most disgusting odour you've ever inhaled?
I sure didn't.
In Denmark, we conquered: The Odense Domkirke (a really really old church), the Hans Christian Anderson Birthplace Museum, the Viking Ship museum in Roskilde (which has several preserved remains of Viking ships as well as modern day reconstructions, one of which has sailed to Ireland and back), the Roskilde Cathedral (where most of the Danish Royal family has been buried - most of the dead ones that is, haha, oh gosh that was terrible), and Rosenborg Slot (a palace in Copenhagen containing thousands upon thousands of Royal treasures in a Baroque-era interior).
My feet, they did hurt, and I did make this known to my august travelling companion, who was largely unsympathetic due to having contracted a flu, which was to fell me several days later in a hostel in Berlin. But that is another story.
Angiuk is the first and probably the only native Greenlandic person I'll ever meet - unfortunately she couldn't speak a word of English, but she did show us many photos from her homeland, as well some traditional clothes made of seal skin and fur, figures carved of whale bone and walrus tusk and beautiful, colourful beadwork. I now know more than I ever thought there was to know about Greenland and its people - for instance, did you know that it's not necessary to tan seal leather in Greenland, because the air is so dry that it never decays? Also, did you know than untanned seal leather that has been kept in the damper climate of Denmark for several years and is starting to rot has just about the most disgusting odour you've ever inhaled?
I sure didn't.
In Denmark, we conquered: The Odense Domkirke (a really really old church), the Hans Christian Anderson Birthplace Museum, the Viking Ship museum in Roskilde (which has several preserved remains of Viking ships as well as modern day reconstructions, one of which has sailed to Ireland and back), the Roskilde Cathedral (where most of the Danish Royal family has been buried - most of the dead ones that is, haha, oh gosh that was terrible), and Rosenborg Slot (a palace in Copenhagen containing thousands upon thousands of Royal treasures in a Baroque-era interior).
My feet, they did hurt, and I did make this known to my august travelling companion, who was largely unsympathetic due to having contracted a flu, which was to fell me several days later in a hostel in Berlin. But that is another story.
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