To Sum Up the Sites and Views of Italia...

"What is that?  How do you get there?"
"You can't get there.  Somebody lives there.  That's their house.  They live there."
"Bitter?"
"You don't have to throw it in my face, Italy.  Right in my fucking face."

Goodbye Germany, for now, for good?

I speak German exceptionally badly.  This departure comes with a certain level of relief.

Eastern Metropoli

Having seen Budapeshhht...

We're still not really sure when we decided to come here, because eastward exploration was never part of the original plan, and if nothing else, we had the story of hurtling through Slovakia in the dark under the supervision of a dreadlocked and seemingly underage Hungarian train conductor with lazy speech.  But there was something else, and trumping Slovakia are the stews and the bridges and the glowing castle on the hill, and a favorable exchange rate that had us living like kings.

Czech Music Stories

Berlin Jazz

I Am a Child, Pouting In the Corner, Stubborn and Hungry

I am without ability or will to communicate except at the most basic level, which makes me want to be silent and still.  Germany, I wait for you to welcome me and bring sausages and potatoes unsolicited to wherever I may happen to be in your capital.

My Next Ikea Home

Sunday morning walk in Amsterdam. There's a smell, warm and not entirely pleasant, like old cooking oil. Cymri suggests a mix between chocolate chip cookies and wet dog. In any case, it's definitely a post-Saturday-night kind of smell. The city is still sleeping at 8:30, and everything is extremely quiet: the parks and streets are empty, the only things open are a grocery and a coffee shop. Just me and the ducks and the dog-walkers.

The best part of walking these streets is admiring the apartments on the canals. The Dutch seem to have a penchant for display, at least in Amsterdam. All houses facing the street have large picture windows, streakless and clear, providing a full view of an entire home (and its inhabitants). I can't imagine being so comfortable with that kind of public exposure, but then again my home doesn't look like these: stainless steel cookware, walls of books, flowers and bowls of fruit placed casually on a table next to the window. My first thought is that they are all restaurants. Then I think that maybe all these places are model homes for sale, with the furnishings tactfully suggesting, this is what your life could look like if you lived in Amsterdam and weren't such a slob.

But I did see a man last night watching TV on his couch, so I have to conclude that people here just don't mind living their private lives publicly, and that leads to all sorts of questions. Is constant exposure a way to show off wealth and status? Or to show you have nothing to hide? Or is it the kind of thing that brings people and communities closer together--offering your life freely to your neighbors and maintaining (in return) a certain level of cleanliness and order in your lifestyle? Maybe slobs are the weak link of society.

Normandie: Cheese, Beach, Freedom

Life on the road ends.  We go from living out of a car to living off the packs on our backs, from maps to timetables, from highway hazards and foggy roads to the warmth and quiescence of train cars.  We have relinquished control of our destiny to the rails, and say goodbye to small towns and shuttered villages.  We enter the world of the Easily Accessible.

Bog of Death

Oysters and French Children

Flying through Normandy at top speed, too fast to keep up with the map. It seems like every village and town is listed, no matter that they are only 500 meters apart and contain 10 houses and one church each. Within 20 minutes we've passed through Bonneville, Trouville, Deauville, Blonville, and Villers-sur-mer. Bam, bam, bam.

We had our "off" day in Deauville/Trouville. The towns are a famous seaside resort from the turn of the century, apparently escaping the heavy bombing that the other coastal towns got in the wars (such as Le Havre, completely destroyed). Now, it's peaceful and popular, especially for its seafood. The beaches are literally covered in THOUSANDS of shells--mussels, clams, scallops--if that gives you any idea.

Beach by our hotel in Deauville

They go "crunch" when you walk.

It was a sweet walk, excellent fish market. We ate fresh raw oysters with white wine next to the market stall rather than sitting in a restaurant. Followed it up with the signature fromages of the area, which we combined with dried sausage and apples, le pain et moutarde stolen from breakfast in our hotel room.

On the way back, I took some clandestine recordings. I couldn't resist the kids playing by the sea. Are French kids cuter because they speak French?

1. Girls play a hand game.

2. Brother and sister mimic the church bells in Deauville.


Yes. C'est comme ça.

If I close my eyes, this butter sandwich will taste like food

Where are the French? Where do they work? We wandered through the streets for an hour in Paris just admiring the apartment buildings, with their shuttered windows and cute little Juliet balconies. It's like walking through a movie set. So if we hadn't been hungry, it might have taken us longer to realize that all the shops and restaurants were closed. The French are Catholic, and are closed on Sunday. Later we found out that they are also closed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on days that end with Y.

I'm joking. Kind of. Throwing out a completely unresearched but possibly accurate statistic, I'd say that 75% of the stores I saw in France, in any city, any given time of day, were locked up. The rest were open between 10am and 5pm (except for Mondays and sometimes Wednesdays, and occasionally by appointment only). I'm wondering how anyone in this country makes money. A full time job must come out to 1000 hours per year. Actually, it wouldn't be so bad. I would also love to live a little more slowly--have two hours for my breakfast every morning (espresso and a croissant), take weekends off, read a book during my 3 hour lunch break. If only I could manage to stop being so hungry.

We've concluded that the French survive on bread and occasionally cheese, which explains both their svelte figures and their ability to make a living. Never before have I been so aware of America's super-size culture. I expect three full meals a day, and I expect the food to be fast and plentiful. If I order a small, it should be large. If I order a large, it should be obscene. And I don't even eat that much!

In Europe, small means small. At the hotel breakfast, I modestly place one of each item on my tray, and turn to face a cafeteria of people eating a crumb with no butter. Even my condiments look ridiculously greedy. It's hard not to feel self-conscious, especially when I'm also trying to pack croissants and yogurt for lunch, and full meat sandwiches for dinner.

A Parisian Lunch

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Nov 20th:
I adjusted to the bread and cheese diet after a few days, but that all ended with the All-you-can-eat ribs in Bruges. Now I'm back to being hungry all the time, but in Germany where it is cheaper and easier to resolve. Currywurst, bitte?

Tips for Eurostar and UK Regional Trains

Eurostar
Book early, three weeks is best. Also, look out for holidays! There is a French school holiday tomorrow and all direct trains to Paris were fully booked. Luckily for us, there is an alternate route from London to Paris via the Paris Disneyland, which nobody ever talked about. From Disneyland it's just a short (45-minute) subway ride into the city. We couldn't use our Eurail pass discount, but it was still cheaper than traveling direct.

UK Regional Trains
I can't really understand this one. All I know is that there are major price differences based on any number of arbitrary factors, possibly including:

• date purchased (in some cases, same-day is better than advance booking)
• peak hours (This is very important--hundreds of pounds difference)
• the line you are traveling (big city or rural/commuter vs. passenger trains)
• whether you buy at a computer kiosk or from the ticket office, even at the same station.

I have no idea how it works, or how everyone manages to get the best price.

My Bed Has Curtains

No sleep
Six hour layover
Train to Palmer's Lodge
No "War Horse" today
breakfast next to Bloch store
(poor Stortos, uneaten and wilting)
extra plane food
V & A
sleep-deprived delirium
poor, poor me

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That's a poem I wrote after the 24 hour trip from Honolulu to London. Or I'm calling it a poem now...it has a nice shape to it, and an appropriately poignant ending.

We're staying at Palmer's Lodge this time around, a hostel in north London. It's no Passfield Hall. Palmer's Lodge is like going camping, where every new discovery reminds you what a nuisance it is to go camping (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible). Bunk beds with wooden beams hammered at random diagonals, requiring you to stoop constantly or bump your head every three seconds; showers with no door or ledge; showerheads that only spray for 20 seconds. And yet, I am clean, warm, comfortable. So far, so good.

We are way, WAY up in the attic.  Room 302 is up three flights of stairs, through the bathroom, up two more flights, then down a short hallway leading to a spacious area under the roof where 12 bunks are stuffed into whichever corner they fit. Small, public, and no storage space.  That being said, it's a beautiful old Victorian house, and I can imagine this to be the servants quarters, which gives it a little charm. And even if have to be a servant, walking up and down four flights of stairs is much less painful when you have a carved bannister and a suit of armor on the landing.

It is now 4:30pm, I have finished my roast beef, and there is no energy left for anything but packing and then sleep forever.

Take Two

Onward again, with alterations in packing list, route, and outlook. Fewer clothes, more food for the plane. New words to carry. 

In September, I posted this quote about obstacles, anticipating difficulties on the road. I just rediscovered it today and am amazed at how differently it reads. The words have changed and new parts strike me with more meaning, though the metaphor is just as applicable as before. And reviewing this blog and our imminent departure, I'm seeing new light in our journey, even though life has taken a completely different turn. So before I become annoyingly poetic, I'll let Tom Robbins speak again:

“Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light.

For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irritable; the petty is mean. Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside.

Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a nine thousand pound granite boulder, the surprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes. Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality.” 

Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The United Kingdom: It Takes Longer to Get Around Than You'd Think

I just felt like I was on a lot of trains, and that they went on for a long time, and that the distance traveled was insufficiently fulfilling to justify the hours lost from my day and the number of platforms down which I had to carry my things.  The destinations were not unsatisfying, exactly the opposite, and the journeys not unpleasant, but I guess sometimes my relationship with time becomes contentious, and the UK was just not a good place for us, me and time.

Taking a Turn About

Welcome to Stratford

Though Washington, D.C. is loved by all
(A great metropolis, to speak the truth)
And though New York is fairer in the fall
Than any city witnessed in my youth,
Aye, even though we have with brightest eyes
Seen palaces and monuments sublime
In London, where the Eye is giant size
And Tower walls have have stood the test of time,
A city girl must towards all this remark
That every street begins to look the same:
The hotel, shopping center, city park,
and Starbucks dominate my visual frame.
But I have yet to find a sweeter haven
Than quaint and cozy Stratford-Upon-Avon.

London People, London Sounds

Trying to be inconspicuous with a digital recorder sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. I got yelled at a few times. But it'd be a shame to pass up a beautiful or interesting sound, whether it's coming from a cathedral or from a man playing American folk music on a double-bass outside the Kensington subway stop.

Two more "interviews"...
We were undecided on whether or not to see a show in London, but ended up with the Royal Shakespeare Company's Indian-themed "Much Ado About Nothing" (amazing). On the way, we met two more wonderfully nice people who helped us on our quest to find some dinner. Our box office ticket seller pointed us towards pasta in Covent Garden, and a man selling magazines on the street recommended a place in Leicester Square. Incidentally, we ran into the Magazine Man again the next morning. He asked if we had found a cheap place to eat, and if Ahnya had gotten her smashed potatoes.

Blundering Through London

Let's get this straight. They speak English in England. English is my native language. We speak the same language. So there should be no reason for my complete inability to order a coffee from Starbucks without babbling like an idiot.

"I'd like a black regular drip regular coffee please with..." What do they call it? Is it cream here? Milk? Half-and-half? Do you even order that at the counter, or is it self-service? "...milk for room, I mean for cream. Please."

I am the reason the English have signs like this in their pubs:

There was also the unexpected difficulty of finding a public telephone that actually worked. In the end, a man from Birmingham overheard our plight in Starbucks and lent his cell (ahem, mobile). In return he got our first gift of macadamia nuts, which I awkwardly passed to him across the table, saying "We're from Hawaii. These are special chocolates. We've been looking for a phone for two days."

On the bright side, being tourists means we get to indulge in a little silliness. Who else could get away with it, after all?

Defense training

Somewhere in there, Neville is missing a toad.

Respects to the Queen

Cheers,
The North American

We Out

It is a good day for Adventuring.  So off we go.

Eyes on the Prize

When one is 40 hours from departure and has yet much to do but can think of nothing but sleep, there is no option but to put on another pot of coffee and pop in the Bourne Identity and study how to climb down the side of a building in Zurich.  I must encourage alertness and a sense of productivity in this moment, and anyway you never know what you might be called upon to do, and I don't want to be stuck four stories up in Switzerland one day, regretting a midnight nap I took in a moment of weakness.

Matriculation

The London School of Economics, our new digs, home to preeminent student economists,
social scientists, philosophers, rhetoricians, and three unemployed American bums.

Our motto:  Rerum cognoscere causas - "To Understand the Causes of Things"    (Google image.)

Please Enter Your Destination

D-minus-12 and the path is chosen and though we go where many, many, many have gone before sometimes I feel like parts of the chart are giant blocks of nothing and the corners read Here Be Dragons.