Germany and Italy pics- Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall.

Italy:

http://photo2.walgreens.com/share/p=920301230649151040/l=25760525/g=3230505/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Germany

http://photo2.walgreens.com/share/p=284301230656386393/l=25761082/g=3230505/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Winter Break 2008- Berlin

Days 8,9,10 BERLIN!! 

Population: 3.4 million

BERLIN!!! Wow. I love love love Berlin and this entry will for sure be a million pages so I'll abreev like it's my job. Berlin arrive, find hostel in Charlottenburg area, go to Charlottenburg Palace (home of Sophie Carlotte wife of King Frierich grandmom of Fred the great...walk around, go to Museum Berrgreun collection of Picasso, Klee, Gioccametti the sculpteur of those skinny people, and Matisse. Walk around Christmas market there (Charlottenbergmarkt) get potatoes in a bowl and eierpunch (eggnog with Bailey's) keep the glass its cute you pay 2 euro downposit. See lots of german christmasy stuff- hats and scarves, jewelry, foodwise chocolate covered fruit on sticks, marshmallow mounds, sauerkraut, brats in tiny buns, potatoes and bacon, mushrooms in cream sauce, broiled meat and onions and vegetables, kinderpunsch, eierpunsch, apfelpunsch, glunwein...etc. Go back to hostel and get settled/check emails/read/sleep!

Day 9 BERLIN!!!  Up early early head to grocery store for provisions, metro to Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg, see the concentration camp which was the administrative headquarteres of the SS operations, it's a big triangle only the prisoners barracks part was conserved, big memorial in the middle with orange triangles on this giant pillar type thing, execution trench, shoe testing track, medical experiments here too, krematorium that was blown up so only parts remain of the foundations, commander's house still there, soviet special camp from 1945-50, its in the former GDR, cold, saw prisoners kitchens with drawings on the walls and latrings in teh barracks and the laundry house..walked from the train station twenty minutes same route prisoners took through the town, quiet neighborhood houses right up next to the camp. Camp shown off to Poles and army commanders since its right neat Berlin, kitchens have "fine meals" people downstairs peel rotten potatoes alld ay, watchmakers, counterfeiting operation there, klinterwerks brick makers hard labor camp oustide of camp, over 30 division camps, all throughout the area no longer exist but where prisoners were sent for labor each day, mainly a man's camp again until Hungarian jewish women came 1944. Back to Berlin for walking tour of city..excellent, learned all my german history and twentieth century stuff again, but the guide was amazing (annabel). Saw Brandenburg Tor, Unter Den Linden Street, Reichstag with new glass dome, Hotel Adlon, where Michael Jackson dangled the baby, the French and American embassies right in Parisierplatz in front of Brandenburg tor, setting up for new year's there too, saw Holocaust Memorial and stood above Hitler's bunker (they destroyed it), saw one of the few Nazi buildings still there all grey granite/concrete impressive, huge, over huge and was the air force ministry, somehow the allies missed it  (but they managed to hit the royal opera and destroy it twice, Hitler rebuilt it during the war because he loved opera so much), now the building has a giant mural of socialism at its best on its side and on the ground this giant glass plate with a picture of strikers from 1952 the first strike against socialism that was brutally broken up by Russian tanks, first and only of its kind until 1989 but east germany started the agitation against the USSR, saw what's left of the wall and lots of graffitied parts still intact, took pics with these cute bears kind of like Chciago cows all around the city, the giant Steiff bear at one of the souvenir shops, saw Checkpoint Charlie and the sign saying you are leaving the American sector, had cappucinos and croissants right near there at Aroma Café on Friedrichstrasse, their really upscale shopping street that was lit up very nicely, saw this giant chocoalte shop Faussner and Rausch that we later went in and it used to be the royal chocolatier and now makes sculptures out of chocolate (the brandenburg to, titanic, Reichstag) saw the square with the French Church and the exact same church on the opposite side called the German church and the Concerthaus, designed by Schinkel because it has lots of columns (Gendarmmarkt) saw this memorial that used to be the royal guardhouse and its roof is open so the weather comes in, it's a big room with a solitary statue of mother holding wounded son on battlefied in the center, very somber, saw royal armshouse/military building that's pink but now the german history museum, saw the Lustgarden where royalty would go take a stroll and the museumisland (with the pergamon museum which has lots of middle eastern artifacts and its going to be closed for the next ten years for reconstruction) saw St Hedwig's cathedral built for the catholic poles of Silesia when Fred the great gained the territory in 1760, one of the few cathedrals in Berlin, saw the gaping hole where the Royal palace used to be (torn down by the GDR in 1950) saw the royal library on the square with berlin on ice and across from the famous Humboldt Unbiversity where Einstein taught, saw the memorial to the bookburnings in 1933 (a room with white empty shelves underground you can see through plexiglass hole down), saw the radiotower put up in the GDR to show their technological strength but really heelped by Swedish engineers, saw the Travi cars that used to be the most popular in the GDR and now are only used for tourist "safaris" because they are so bad for the environment and just not good cars, saw lots of starbucks and mcdonalds and some burger kings...eventually the tour ended and we went to the jewish museum and inside to a Hanukkah market that was not too spectaculy, then over to the christmasmarket we saw on unter den linde across from the lustgarden and walked around for a while, got latkes and applesauce and leslie got paella, they had the usual stuff again, ate under heat lamps with music performers around us, went to Checkpoint Charlie museum but just read the brochure no go in, a lot of artifacts from escape attempts are there, then went home.

Day 10 BERLIN!!! Up early early again to the train station to Weimar, walk around Weimar for two seconds see interesting architecture, bus to Buchenwald camp, veru different than the others because the entire camp is still there, the quarry, all the SS houses or the land where they used to be (even the dog kennel), the armaments factory and industrial works, its also in the middle of nowhere in a forest, where Elie Wiesel was liberated, saw an art exhibit and the little history museum (the door on this one does not say Arbeit Mach Frei like all the other it says Jedem Das Seine (to each his own) confusing...very very cold there. Train back go to Tiergarten and the flea  market there see lots of doorhandles, candelabra, some random jewish stuff (made it seem like a german  market) and normal antiques/knick knacks, jewelry, etc went over to checkpoint charlie and got passport stampes from the GDR side of the checkpoint (so named because it's the third one in berlin, first is Alpha, then Bravo, then Charlie). Went to Reichstag to go in and climb the dome but the line's long, we'll be back tomorrow, instead go to St Wilhelm Kirche that has half a roof (its kind of like a space ship shape, very large, never restored after WWII bombing. Now a big shopping area in West Berlin called Europaplace. Also had a nice Christmas market. Tried kinderpunsch, got stollen bread (very dense, filled with raisins and dried fruits, much better and sweet than expected) back to hostel. Pack up to leave Berlin tomorrow, so sad!! We learned sooooo much history in the past three days and basically got inundated with information, we also put our bodies in burnout mode walking around so much, but it was totally totally worth it. Also, the Berlin mascot/symbol is a giant bear, which is clearly a sign, because I heart bears.

Day11 Berlin/ Loooooooooooooong train ride to Paris. Up early, get stuck on the lovely S Bahn system in front of Karstadt sports for an hour and some, finally make it to the Reichstag/Bundestag/Parliament and climb up the new glass dome with the dual staircase one up one down and you can see the whole city though its fairly cloudy and dreary today, there's a giant funnel thing in the center to funnel in sunlight to power and heat the building and its very shiny metallic, looking down you can see into the plenary chamber of parliament though no one's there today. leave, back to hostel stop at grocery store for food get Ritter chocolate, chocolate yogurt bars, musli, etc good train food, off to Hauptbahnhof chill out for a while in the cold train station and now we're on the train to frankfurt and then to paris (where as of yet we have no where to stay) very final tour. Turns out we got redirected Frankfort to Saarbrucken, who knows where that is, then paris. A little stressfu but we made it before the midnight bell on Notre Dame tolled and actually did manage to get beds in a hostel with a quick phone call, slept, up early for breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate, say bye to my travel buddy Leslie, and train to Aix. Have to smile to be back in this cute little city with so many good memories, even though I'll miss Leslie and Berlin and our whole journey. At least now I can take an amazing shower with a real towel, change clothes, and be in a stable location...for twenty four hours. 

Winter Break 2008- Munchen

DAY 7: MUNICH!!, Germany

Population: 1.3 million

Munchen starts with a nap at our amazingly comfy new hostel beds. Breakfast downstairs and out into the dead city on Christmas day. Walk down through the old medieval town gates on to the main shopping street Sendlinger Strasse. Make it to the city's heart Marienplatz with the Rathaus (parliament building) in the center and a big column dedicated to the Virgin Mary, got a fre tour of Munich by our friend Tom from Australia. Tom first showed us the famous Muncih glockespiel, a bellower that at 11 and 12 plays the bells and it has its figures dance around, firsta t the mariage of Wilhelm and his wife and there's a joust between Lorraine and France and Lorraine (at the time German territory) wins. The bottom scene was a cooper's dance, coopers being those who make barrels, when the plague routinely came through munich they would lose all their busienss so they started doing this dance outside to show the people the sickness was past and they could come out and buy more barrels of beer, the king liked it so much he decreed that once every seven years the coopers should do their dance across Germany and they still do, next time in 2012. Onwards, we got a little history of Munich (became a kingdom from a duchy in 1806 thanks to Napoleon, the german gave him 36,000 troops to fight Russia and married his daughter to nap's stepson, it has always been one of if not the richest part of Germany, fused in 170 with thes rest of the country, named Munich from Municha which means monk and that's their symbol of the city, there used to be lots of monateries in the area brewing beer. Walked around the Frauenkirche, the largest church with two towers and copper bulbs on top built in the 1400s in only twenty years, story of a deal with the devil not to build any more windows and the devilw ould help build it in twenty years because from the front the inner main columns block all the large windows, you can't tell it has huge stained glass windows. We went in during mass, heard the organ, went out, walked around the old city saw Altepeter church which is another old brick church with a cannon ball stuck in the side form the Swedish invasion during the 30 years way (1618-1648). Used to be a cemetery on the premises and the tombstones of the rich which were put up on the church wall are still there, those who were not rich enough had theirs ground up to be part of the square's cement. Walked and saw a little memorial to Kristillnact at the largest department store that was owned by Jewish proprietors, saw the Hofbrauhaus (made 1589) the largest beer house in Munich, famous for many reasons one of which it being the seat of Nazi power, all of Munich really, had these big tables and ditches or drains underneath so you could just undo the flap on your lederhosen and pee sitting and drinking, no bathrooms, had walking sticks guide the bee to avoid backlash (yeah gross I know) buy ingenious, in the bathrooms have vomitorium to flush vomit down just the right height. Went down the fancy shopping street Maximilienstrasse, but today it looked like any other street, did find my Frey Wille jewelry store that I like (we saw it in Venice as well) learned that 85-90% of the city was destroyed by allied bombing so basically all the old stuff is new, even those first two churches were completely rebuilt after the way so they're not really ancient anymore but have history nonetheless, the people of Munich when they knew they were going to be bombed took pictures of everything, the tiles on the ground, the little statues, everything, so it was all replaced to the tee. In one church nothing was left and the people had taken pictures but the pics were in black and white so they couldn't replicate the portraits on the wall exactly so they jsut made them all black and while and now its the Black and White church. We didn't see it but it sounds cool. Saw the opera house, largest in Germany, in front of which is a square with a statue to that first Bavarian king, learned it was his son Ludwig who in 1819 gave his wife Theresa a field for her wedding and what to do with a field? They threw a party and invited all of munich (theresaviese) and had lots of wine and games and fun, so much that the next year they did it again and after the first seven years they said why import all this Italian wine we should just be using our own beer, so they brewed higher alcohol content beer to match the wine so everyone still got drunk and that's how Oktoberfest was born. Went down the street where Hitler's Munich beer hall putsch was put down and stood on the very spot where his bodyguardtook 11 rounds of bullets for him (he didn't even die) and saved his life. Apparently in the melee 15 nazis died and 4 policemen and 1 waiter, and during the Nazi regime there was a plaque up there across from the main government building saying all 20 were Nazis and the 4 policemen were shot in the back tring to join the opposing ranks and same with the waiter..the plaque was taken down but it also had two wreaths up that were changed daily and had guards in front to make sure passersby said the nazi salute in passing and lots just went down a side street to avoid this (though of course plainclothespolicemen were there too) and now there's a golden stripe in the bricks on the path as a small memorial to the silent resistance that walked down that street. Walked up to the statue area with two big lions where Hitler gave lots of speeches, etc etc...lots of history here. Rubbed the crests of three of the four lions flanking the entrances to the m ain state buildings for life, love, and luck in business (you can't touch all four or you'll get no luck at all). Next part of the day = Dachau. Dachau is really not out of the city, there were apartment buildings set up literally within fifty feet of the complex (ps- one of our maps had easy german sayings which aren't easy at all because there's not phonetic pronounciation, but we'll just spice it up and add these: ich habe nur meine Lederhosen vergessen (I just forgot my leather pants is the translation)...and mein Freund ist besoffen (my friend is drunk) :) excellent saying. Ich mag dich! (I like you) Logisch! (sure) okay great. Continuing. Dachau. So it started snowing at the end and got freezing and the whole foresty area around partrs of it rustled and you defnitely got the feel it was not a fun place to be at night. Or in the daytime but it was sincerely creepy t night. There was a ton of information to learn and a documentary about the camp and the Nazis in general and you walked through the main command center for the SS and there were 2 of the 34 reconstructed barracks in the back there were memorials to all the different groups taht were in the camp- jews and catholics and Russian orthodox and carmalite and protestant...and the crematorium and one of 3 still remaining gas chambers from the third reich, though the one here was never officially put into use and nobody knows why. Dachau was the "model" camp, in use for all 12 years of the third reich, had 200,000 people pass through and 34,000 deaths had 37 subsidary camps all around Munich (which aren't there anymore but imagine there are people living on that earth right now) and the first couple years it really was just a hard work camp but no uniforms and people ate "enough" albeit not nutritional, it changed in 1937-38 with an influx of jews and they built new barracks and new campgrounds and rules got stricter and stricter, but the whole camp was evacuated in 39-40 for ss training because all the ss had to come here to get trained before being sent to other camps. It was known to the community that a camp was here advertised for rehabilitation and reeducation, people coul dhave packages sent etc etc but life was hard all around, standard concentration camp conditions, the crematorium at the end didn't have enough coal to run so they built two mass graves and the stench the people around could see so they then knew how bad conditions at the camp were, there were small resistance groups around that tried to help and  the last day before the allies came (americans liberated the camp) they tried to stage a coup on the town hall with escaped camp mates but since a lot of the town was SS friendly and a lot of ss lived in munich, it being home of naziism and all, it was bloodily put down. There were death  marches sent out from dachau in the final months, dachau had a lot of medical experiments done at it, not under mengele but others- low air pressure, freezing temperatures, sulfanide pus bulbs and blood infections injected in and people had to take a pill every five minutes to see what it would do...always jews subjected to those conditions, lots of dissections of sick and dead prisoners..there was a brothel here where women from ravensbruck were made to be prostitutes in 43 and 44 for the prisoners to help their work morale, because the Nazis needed the munitions coming form this camp, the camp had a medicinal herb garden, rabbit hutches, an infirmary which really did nothing, it had the capo system, it shot russian prisoners of war (those statistics on how many deaths were not kept) its door said arbeit mach frei in smaller iron letters, the trains came right in and deposited the dead and dying, the camp was  mainly for men no women and children and lots of transport from here to other camps, especially in the east were common, the camp had barbed wire fences and then a trench and more barbed wire and after the war the US army used it as a base for a long time and then it was set up as remembrance but some government functionaries still use parts of the land, it took up 1.5 square kilometers which is a lot, so we only saw the part for prisoners and all the comandant centers are still buildings for one of the Bavarian guards. Its very hard to describe the conditions and the actual facilities and do it justice, I have pictures. I was very glad I got to come and see this place and glad to see how many others, even on Christmas day there were there. Fastforward to train station, we got pretzels and glunwein and apple strudel and ate, went back to the hostel and literally chilled on our comfy beds (although there was again a lack of heat in the room) until bed, now we're up early again on a train to BERLIN!!!

Winter Break 2008- Venice

Venezia, Rome!! Day 6

Population: 280,000

Venice. On our way now. Early train again. we've seen a lot of fog in Tuscany (of which Florence was the capital) low mountains in the distance, some wooded areas, the uze. Venice was actually was favorite part of Italy, not so much for its "famous" sightseeing touristy places like St. Mark's Square, which, though big, was really not too different from other major European capitals, but for all of its more impressive yet non boastful demeanor, the winding little streets with three story ancient houses blocking your view, the little rivers and sounds of water trickling in everywhere, the random pathways that suddenly overflowed onto a nice stepping bridge and you found yourself going up and going down and getting easily lost in the streets full of shops and little street markets and bright lit colors. I was sort of sick all day so I didn't fully enjoy myself, and also after reading the guidebook I would love to go back and go to all fo the little islands because we just stayed on the main one, but apparently there's Lido island which is a beach resort and then two San something islands which one has a former insane asylum turned university and is a jungly climate and the other has temples to the gods and seems very beautiful, at least from the pictures. We didn't even take a water taxi (tourist trap!) so when I go back thats a need as well. Anyways, it was very cool we started off getting lost but seeing the old Jewish Ghetto set up in 1516 by a decree of the Italian duke ruling the area, and they've been there ever since, they expanded to two other parts of the isaldn and now I don't think many jews live there although there were a few shops selling jewish goods, a synagogue with a large exhibit for the public, and some memorials put up to the jews dead in the Holocaust. During the Holocaust the nazis didn't come until late 1943 to round up the jews in Italy and when they came a lot had escaped through the winding water routes, so there wasn't really a systematic evacuation of the ghetto, and the term ghetto applies to its classification from the middle ages. Jews were forced here and forced to be employed in some economic business which eventually led to commerce....not sure, sounds similar tot he Jewish european history trajectory learned in class. But the history of the ghetto was a peaceful one for the most part apart from the obvious fact of lack of freedom of movement. Past there we walked down some winding streets, passed tons and tons of shops and markets selling the masks for the carnival of venise not as many leather goods as Florence, some clothes and random as seen on tv merchandise like a quick cappucino maker and a fruit press, some bakeries and food shops but more so retail items, everyone had these boxed cakes panecote for Christmas, they didn't look super good but literally everyone had them there were millions of these panecote boxes everywhere. We found our way to the Rialto market of fruits and veggies as it was closing, found this square where a guy was selling hot pasta on the street and people were standing in the square drinking wine out of nice glasses..odd because it was freezing and their wine wasn't hot. Crossed the Rialto bridge, a big bridge with a nice view of hte boats attached to their wooden poles, some of which are decorated with rotating dual colored stripes like a barber's pole, also got a good view of the embankments of the grand canal, eventualy found St Mark's square and the Doge's palace, went in St Mark's it was again huge inside bery dark like a lot of churches but had mroe gold, the columns were a lot thicker and the archways where you crossed from one area to another had these bright gold tiles with giant saints arching above you kind of like angels flying because of their curved orientation, I liked it. The Doge's palace was a big rectangular structure looking right out onto the sea with the msot famous coffee shop in one of its little interior shopping ares (the Florian Cafe) very renaissance-esque with angels and cherubs flying everywhere. Speeding up this entry a tad, we walked along the water for a while but lots of fog so hard to see, and cold, eventually found a cafe and sat for a while then went back to the train station and crossed the 4th bridge, the newest bridge built last year its very spacey- futuristic and has a blue electric light on the bottom and curves up, cool though. Sat at the train station and watched "The Lives of Others" in preparation for Germany and got on a night train to Monaco (Munich in Italian- very confusing), put in a cabin with no heat, moved at 1:30 in the morning with our frostbitten toes and all to the entirely opposite end of the train to another compartment, slept in a haze until a knock on the door at 6:30 and we're in Munich. The guy took our passports for border security in Austria and Germany and gave them back at the end, a system I did not like and did not understand because we're all in the EU....these border rules are insane. Then we make it to......

Winter Break 2008- Florence

Day 5: Firenze, Italy

Population: 366,000

Made it on time, found our hostel, put our bags down, and went. Walked around the main city center, got lost, saw lots and lots of churches. All the churches here are built in a style unkonw to me. They're all faded brick, not really red more brownish orangy, and then the front facade is this huge slab of white marble, a lot of times with green or pink marbles wirled in, and the facade either is stripy white and green marble or just swirled and it ha a lot of little columns, a main lunette window in the  middle, and giant giant giant doors from the middle ages. Actually, it was cool because all the buildings were of a certain style, medieval I'd call it, but the doors were massive, witht he bolts and big knockers and everything. So we saw Santa Maria Novella church, another one, and the biggest of all Duomo/Campanile. Its absolutely huge and had a huge circular building in front of it that was decorated in the same style and it had a belfry, later we saw a similar outlay and in Italian the circular complex was called a battisteo, I'm thinking it m ight be a baptistiere (french, never learned the word in English) but either way it's huge for that purpose, and I can't imagine it'd be a second church or chapel. Anyways, duomo was huge, the white marble again, more ornately decorated than the rest, and inside it was a lot barer than most churhces we've seen because they took all of Raphael and Mihcaelangelo's works and put them in museums for people to pay to go see. Around one giant churhc (oh yeah, all these churches have huge domes, I think they're actually classified as basilicas) in front of this one was a huge market San Lorenzo Street Market. It was those little white tents again, this time a lot lot lot of them, and inside a large building was a good market similar to what i saw in Hungary, not as good, but they had a lot of fresh menat, little epicerie type places with pastas, and on the second floor fruits and dried fruits. Dried fruits have thier following here, the actual fruit seleection wasn't as good as in other palces, and theres a suspicious lack of boulangeris in all of Italy we've found. You can't really just go buy bread. Sad. Anyways, we got a selection of dried fruits, they even had dried honeydews and dried pears and really every fruit you can think of, dried sugared carrots...Outside they were selling a lot of leather purses and sachels in all different colors and the  mix of them together looked pretty, you could smell the leather too. Also tchotckes of course, eky chains, lots of scarves, soccer jerseys, statues of David. We kept walking and found more little markets, eventually hit Piazza della Republica, which surprisingly was not that special, then Piazza della Signoria which is the more famous one. It had a huge replica of David in it and a little mini statue park, a large converted church which is now a museum of some sort, and the marvelous raved about Uffizi gallery, florence's most important art museum. Prepaid tickets to skip the enormous previewed lines turned out to be completely unnecessary as there was absolutely no line, in fact all of Florence seemed pretty dead for a major town it was a little eerie. Uffizi was set up as two long corridors originally the collection of the grand duke Medici on the top floor of political offices (Uffizi), and his collection just expanded through the years. A lot of illuminations, then post-illumination Christ portraits (non golden), the main corridors had all these statues and portraits of famous patrons along the very top so you couldn't really see them well and the ceiling was by far the best part of the museum, they were gorgeously painted in a light motif with angels and vines and pastels. But the rest of the museum was not really special, there were Caravaggios, a few Michaelangelos and Raphaels and some other famous pre renaissance painters but I honestly did not see a lot of renaissance stuff, and there's a very famous painting of Eve with flowing locks of golden hair coming out of an oyster shell thats on all the covers of hte books there that we actually did not eve see. And the first floor had no art, they were taking down an exhibition. I will give it the fact that as it sits right on theRiver Tybe it had a grea t view. Other than that, not impressed. Leave the Uffizi, head over tot he river and the most famous bridge the Ponte Vecchio, also the oldest bridge in Florence. Built in the 1100s, destroyed, rebuilt in the 1300s, partly destroyed, rebuilt in the 1400s and its been there ever since. It has little houses on it and they used to be grocers markets and it was decreed sometime that they should be for gold sellers and jewelers so now they alls ell very fancy fancy jewelry. It's a sparkly bridge in any case. Across the bridge there were lots of cute shops, lots of cafes and bars with paninis and fresh pasta and desserts, there's this one type of cake it might be for Christmas called paneforte from Siena, it looks like chocolate cake with white nuts in it and its kind of expensive (its actually just nougat). Also for Christmas they do have these giant fruitcake like cakes in these big square boxes, they might ahve those in the US no sure they had them in France too. Anyways, across the bridge we find Palazzo Pitti, summer residence of the Medicis, not the prettiest palace but very big and outside it opens on the street but theres this huge tilted foreground that's just a raised concrete like there should be grass but its a concrete courtyard and a little strange to look at. Behind the palace there's huge gardens of Boboli which we did not see. We recross the Ponte Vecchio and walk over to Santa Croce, burial place of Michaelangelo, another giant white marble facade churh with a square in front of it, then walk up to Accademia Gallery where there's again no line and we go in to see David. The museum itself was again nothing amazing, fairly small, more illuminations, a statue room with lots of busts all in a row, a little special exhibition on musicians in the court and the instruments they invented (pianoforte) a real upright piano with the entire string operation like a chimney on top, old instruments that we don't use anymore today (hurdy-gurdy, serpent, and marine trumpet) and then there was David! David was worth it. He was huge, and Michaelangelo didn't make a cast mold he just carved into this huge block of marbe that was left abandoned at a cathdral in Florence and there's part of David that if he touched a little bit more would have easily fallen off, and David is from david and goliath, he carries a sling across his back, its a different david a more intellectual one, usually david's shown with the head of goliath at his feet but this is a david who is younger, who is looking out and not overjoyed with victory or full of pridebut a david who won rather by his intellect and wit, although of course he is very muscular as well. He really is very well done and very lifelike. You couldn't take pictures which was lame and it had a huge barrier ofglass around him because once someone chopped off three of his toes. Ouch. They were remade of plaster. Anyways, the entire tribune (like wing) was built just to house him, he was originally outside and then moved to the square outside the accademia gallery and then moved inside and there's two replicas of him around the city, one on piazza michaelangelo this big hill far out and one in piazza della signoria which we saw. Also upstaires there were these colelctions of Russian art depicting scenes from the bible, Christa nd his disciples, and it was very interesting mix of easter and western tradition. You couldn't really tell they were Russian except for the few words written on the wood carvings, theyw ere just little drawings of figurines. Onwards. Head back to the hostel for a sec and then over to the train station and we go to PISA!!!

One hour by train from Florence. Get to Pisa, take a really long bus route that took us around the tower but eventually made it to the piazza of miracles, inside the old fortified walls and to the giant Duomo of anotehr church, battisteo, and belfry, aka the leaning tower of pisa!! (tour penchant, torre penchente) it really leans! It was cool up close, its seven layers of white marble with each having these skinny columns encircling an open space, and on top there's a big bell inside the tower that you can't see. It was started in 1123, then left not finished for a hundred years for unknown reasons and restared in 1260 and finally finished int he 1300s and it was only on the third commencement of construction that the error was made in the positions of stones and it started to lean. Its been helped to stay up ever since, and now the EU is working on a reconstruction project that will be done in 2010, basically the problem is air particles get left on shielded parts of the tower and form these black crusts that erode the marble, also there's wind erosion on only one side, also water gathers up and causes erosions and rain causes unknown damages...lots of problems. But itw as really pretty and in the middle of this barren landscape with just the churcha nd it standing up tall (another enormous church) and there were a few little souvenir stands on the opposite walkway. Back to Florence, eat pizza, to the hostel, shower, bed, look up emails, etc. Now we're on to...

Winter Break 2008 - Rome

Stop 1- Roma, Italy

Population (city) - 2.7 million

Winter Break 2008. There's oh so much to say. Let's start from Leslie A's arrival. She comes and we spend one day in Aix, walking around the markets and shops and hanging out with Danny and Will and all the French roommates, my last night of IPN!! The end! Said bye to Chloe, Emilie, Patrick, and Luana, I'll see Fanny and Adeline and Reda again. And then up at 5 am, another sleepless night, and onto Marseille for a train to Nice and eventually Rome. Trains in Marseille were all late so we were going to miss our connection in Nice, but we figured it out and took a random sleeper car to Nice where we took a bus to Italy (courtesy of the French train strikers) then Ventimiglia to Genova to Rome. Stopped in Genoa for a couple hours, walked along the boardwalk saw this huge old ship with the bow of a gian god of Neptune, saw a giant Christoher Columbus statue outside the train station (I think he was born there) walked these little alley streets with little lights hanging above, then walked back. It was more hilly than expected but the boardwalk was great, there were guys selling D&G stuff and purses and such and a little market with white tents (which turned out to be a staple in Italy for the holiday season). Finally make it to Rome, after our five hour long train sitting next to Roberto the engineer at U Pisa who we never actually talked to, get pizza around the train station, bed. 

Day 2/3 Rome!! We have this tiny tiny hostel with as  many beds packed into it as possible so moving around's a little dificult, but they did have free breakfast that was not half bad at all, then we're out. Walk over to Piazza Republicana this big square taht was very open, nothing too special, then metro to Colosseum. Colosseum tour, learn a bunch, it's huge! Seated 50,000, was never called the colosseum by the romans it was always the amphitheatre and Colossus was this giant statue of gold of some emperor that was right in front of it (the giant background stone hub for it is still there so you can get a sense of how tall it was, 150 feet, then some king  melted down the face to put his own on it, and then in the  middle ages it was melted down and hte name given to the amphitheatre. It has a lot of holes in it because it was supported by metal pins and they were taken out for building materials progressively over the middle ages after it was put out of use. The platform where fights would occur wasn't there anymore so you could see under it to all the niches and tunnels and little cages in the ground where they used to keep the animals and the gladiators used to come up on these pulley system elevators. Outside there's a giant fountain that was the victor fountain, the dead had their own exit (the modern day one). It took 3  minutes to get all 50,000 people in and out, also called the vomitarium because it vomited people in and out, and everyone had wooden tickets that plebians got for free and aristocrats had to pay for, and slaves could even come and sit in the top rings, and there were 76 entrances each archway was an entrance. etc etc. There's lots of history there. It was built in the 1st century AD and actually a lot of its not there anymore, it was reconstructed with bricks, which is very sad, but still cool that a lot of it is there. oh yeah other cool thing, there are big square holes in the very top where they used to place wooden beams that jutted out at 90 degree angles to form a sort of awning or roof for the spectators. Ingenious, no? Okay good tour, then walked down to Circo Massimo, where they used to have chariot races and now it's jsut a park for runners, then had another tour of the Roman Forum, stood on Palatine Hill wher Romulus founded Rome 754 BC, saw Emperor Demission's palace on Palatine Hill (the foundation of it anyways) his private stadium, the banquet room, a lot of columns that were half destroyed or on the ground, the throne room, a foot of a giant statue with a toe that was as big as someone's leg today...again everything was decorated in marble and the marble was taken, a lot by the Vatican to build Vatican City, and now its just ruins. Well preserved ruins, but still ruins. Fast forwarding, roman forum was cool because its this valley of ruins all temples, the first ever botanical gardens and aviaires, and this one temple of Nero it's circular with a green door and red porphyria marble colums (emperor's amrble, they exhausted the vein of marble and you cant get it anymore, the Vatican has over 85% of it now..) and the locks and everything still work and they're from pre-0. Saw the only 3 of 35 arc de triomphe's that are left in Rome- Arch of Constantine, arch of Titus, and one other at the very end of the forum, also got a great view of Rome. Then walked up and Piazza Campidiglio, there were a lot of wedding couples taking pictures all around which was cute, saw the Altar of the Nation which has the tomb of the unknown soldier, this giant building with angels riding chariots on top, it had a little exhibition on the Italian civil was of 1870 (risorgimento) but it was all in Italian, on top we ate at a little cafe and also got another great view of the city. We passed up the Imperial Forum (the street leading up to Altar of the Nations) saw the big column Traiana, built for an emperor to celebrate his victories in 107-8 AD but then the statue on top was replaced by St Peter's later on. Across from that there was this semicricle construction in Italian called Mercati Trainei, it used to be the markets and its super well preserved, thenw e kept walking Via del Corso the main street, saw the Pantheon (not the Parthenon as I thought) it was a giant circular dome with the largest domed roof made of brick in the world, and that from 1st centruy AD, it had a giant hole in the middle on top, and inside it was essentially a basilica, the tomb of the second Italian king whose name beings with a U (Umbert?) was there (King 1844-1890 weird years for a second king), kept wakling to Piazza Navona which used to be where the emperors had battleship fights for entertainment. Now it's this giant plaza and it had a huge Christmas market, candy, toys, balloons, chreche figurines, performers (guys juggling fire on a uniycle, creepy old guy with can can finger puppets) found the Fontaine de Trevi and lots of little shopping areas, went up to the Spanish Steps area, these big steps leading up and at the bottom its all high class shopping and millions of people in the streets, giant Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci stores, made it to Piazza del Popolo at the top of Via del Corso for yet another small market, then turned around and went back. Got Italian cappucinos (very very good, beats the French by all means) and gelato pistachio and nutella. Also went in this cathedral of St Ignatius of Loyola that had frescoes covering the entire ceiling and saw a women's choir singing in the street which was nice, lots of squares had typical roman fontains with the obelisk that you see in Provence a lot, then at night we made friends with some guys in our hostel from UConn who were on our tour of the colosseumand we ended up playing cards until bed.

Day 4 ROME! Up early, metro to the Vatican, St Peters basilica (huge) and there were masses going on everywhere the most priests in uniform I've seen anywhere ever, and the guys giving mass were in dark pink cloaks and they'd come up from downstairs at all the random altars and have a group of people following them. It had this amazingly huge altar. Four pillard construction in the middle with vines creeping up it, and it seriously looked like ten churches combined, cherub statues as big as elephants, swiss guards in ridiculous romantic period costumes/uniforms protecting the place with staffs and berets and capes and silly boots, then walked around the huge outer wall of the city that sloped up from the base to form a wall with towers (craineaux) to the Vatican museum, no line! (this would be a trend) We walked around the entire thing waiting for the Sistine chapel and its all the way at the very very end (but there were signs saying Sistine chapel this way since the beginning) so it was a little confusing. It you stand in front of each piece there for a minute you'd be there for 15 years, I'm not sure what they consider pieces because literally every open space was taken up by paintings or statues, the ceilings were all decorated and every wall had an Italian wooden cabinet or some giant fresco. Saw the Map room, Signature Room, Egyptian Museum, jewish stars on the floor of one of the rooms in tile which was trange, lots of Raphael's and Bernini's works, the Sistine chapel of Michaelangelo, (huge for a chapel also very full of tourists also cool to see thathand picture finally although it was super high up. It's part of a series, first god making the earth, making light, water, then adam, then eve, then original sin, then three panels of noah and the flood. Back ourside, saw a Christmas market, had this one stand called pimp selling very colorful underwear (Ross I thought of your hanukkah present) then onto Caste San Angelo this castle that was originally a fortress and was restored by teh popes in the middle ages and has a lot of rooms done by Michaelangelo (our fave)and other famous painters. It was closed on Monadys, but the outside was very cool a very old brick building, round with lots of additions and another giant angel and chariot on top. Also right on the Tybe River, crossed Pont Sant Angelo with lots of statues on it and walked forever near the riverside, passed another market with free samples and honey cough drops, reached the old Jewish quarter and saw this Jewish school and lots of kids running around, ,lots of falafel stands, a little bit of memorabilia on the walls like this marlbe menoral or candelabra and jewish star in one of hte walls but not much, I also couldn't find any bakeries for just plain challah, but still an interesting vibrant area. Up to a fresh fruit  market in Piazza Campi a littler square, then all the way back to the riverside quick stop for pizza and on to the Spanish Steps where I finally found the bumblbee earrings I've been wanting the entire semester! Garnet stone sin them. Excellence. After that we roamed around, climbed all the Spanish Steps, saw the Villa Medici which is now the National Academic of France, walked to the Place of 4 Fontains which is an intersection with four fountains, sat in this little park with palm trees and then went back to the hostel, passed some more giant buildings that weren't marked on the way. There's a whole little chinese area around the hostel which reminds me of ABC trading company times a million. In terms of Rome as rome, yes there are lots of vespas, yes they have good gelato everywhere, people are super nice (I mean waiters and service people, they always smile and say hi even if you're just walking by, we even had guys bow down to us to try to entice us to eat at their restaurant) and they have these little Italian crepes which look like giant fluffly donutes, lots of little snackbars, everywhere, good all around. At night got Italian pasta and more gelato (this time mint chocolate chipa dn lemon) and hung out at the hoste. Tomorrow up at 5:45 for the first train to Florence!!!

Aix Update - Christmas time!

Did you know Jesus was  born in Provence?

Aix en Provence at Christmas = Santon fairs, cotton candy stands, amsuement park rides on Cours Mirabeau, gaufres and churros stands, hot wine, lots of lights, christmas wreaths and green stars above the streets, christmas cabins selling every gift you could ever want. Sister city fair, thirteendesserts fair, calissons, ble de l'esperance on the three plates, advent calendars with Mie-oh-ko candies, christmas carols in Provencal, lots of Christmas spirit......bliss.

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Paris pics- There really ARE M&Ms in the Aix TGV Vending Machines!

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How Many Metro Stop Does it Take to get to the Eiffel Tower?

Location = Paris

Population = 3.5 million ish?

Coolest place EVER! Also my future home come Fevrier.

Since we are in crunchdown mode here in Aix, with a mere 7 days left, I am going to go through this trip in little tidbits. It was very fun but I did not do that much sightseeing because I knew that I would be back soon so I preferred to just hang out with friends and go with the flow. 

Recap: Thursday we leave, take our fave TGV train to Paris Gare de Lyon (not, contrary to popular belief, the train station of Lyon as the name would suggest). Get to our fancy hostel in the 4th arrondissement (Le Marais), walk around a tad, we're right on the Seine it's a great location and Le Marais is awesome, it's where the Jewish quarter is so there's all these jewish boutiques and this one street where everyone wears kepas and they have falafel windows and bakeries with bagels (unheard of in France!) and in Le Marais there's also lots of good shopping in general, and it's near the Bastille which is a great going out area with bars and such. So we stop off at a Chinese place to eat lunch, then head to Pont Neuf for a bateau-mouche ride around Ile de la Cite and Ile St Louis, then head off the La Perla margarita bar for strawberry and peach margaritas and the famous made in Paris Vanilla Margarita. meet up with the group for our "Thanksgiving Dinner" at a french restaurant- 3 course meal including chocolate mousse = delicious but very un-thanksgiving like. Off to Eiffel Tower which is unfortunately closed, snap some pics, head back to hotel. Up in the morning for complementary breakfast of baguette and croissant (oh how the french love their carbs) Walk around Le Marais and see The Place des Vosges, La Bastille tour, walk along the seine and Ile St Louis then over to the Louvre for our three hour tour (we got in free because we're "art students" my specialty is apparently art renovation and conservation but others were music and archaelogy and random things. After the Louvre we went apartment hunting for next semester and saw the 15th arrondissement a little bit, tried to go to the Catacombs but of course they were closed too, back to La MIJE and then out to dinner at this creole place where Snoop Dogg has eaten which had zebra print wallpaper everywhere and lots of funny knicknacks, then out to La Bastille to an Irish pub and eventually a Scottish pub and crepes at 2 am with nutella from this vendor outside in the freezing, very freezing cold (yum). Day 3: breakfast, meet up with George and Katie from high school at Les Deux Magots a famous cafe that Sartre and De Beauvoir frequented in the 6th arrondissement (St Germain des Pres). Got cafe creme talked about Sciences po where they both go now, living in Paris, etc etc, it was SOOOO much fun to catch up with them!! Before that I'd walked around the area a little, seen a lot of haute couture shops, St Sulpice church although it's being renovated, and Les Jardins du Luxembourg where a ton of people were doing yoga and tai chi type moves in the freezing cold on a Saturday morning and some kids were having tennis lessons and there were lots of joggers. Then passed the Assemblee Nationale (which looks across the river to the Madeleine church and their facades are mirror images) and on to Musee d'Orsay for another guided tour, they had a special exhibit on Manet and Picasso (Le Petit Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe) which was cool, not to mention all the Impressionists who are housed there permanently that are some of my faves, and the Degas dancers and Caillebotte's Raboteurs de Parquet which I had forgotten was there but used to be my absolute favorite Impressionist painting. Afterwards I followed the group of boys who were obsessed with the idea of getting Pizza Hut that they'd seen the day before, so we went to Les Halles for pizza hut (a fancy one, sit down ooh la la) and had a "boy chat" which I listened to with great interest. Then we went shoe shopping for hours, literally, Carrément , who knew boys liked shopping so much? And all the boys got PSG soccer scarves and new Adidas jackets and shorts and an illegal version of Ludacris' newest CD and no one actually bought shoes, but eventually we all ended up at the auberge. After a short pitstop at Starbucks (there are a TON of them in paris, yum but expensive and they have this new drink for the holidays Cerise Griotte which is like dark cherry chocolate and its amazing. Also danny tried a white m ocha and fell in love (thats why you try new things my friend ) so we have a new proud starbucks convert. Back at the auberge, rest up a little, steal some bread and flan from the caf, get ready to go out and head off to the Eiffel Tower, but since I didn't have adeuate time to look at the Paris map before we hopped on the metro we took a realy roundabout way and we almsot didn't make it up, but no worries we did, and it was super cool at night lit up blue and the white lights sparkle and go off on the hour and it look slike its shimmering. Since France is president of the EU now the tower has a ring of twelve golden stars on either side for six months. At the top we took lots of pictures, saw the city lit up, and Danny proposed to me (and i said yes!) it was an excellent joke and people even believed us, and more importantly its a great story. We then raced down the tower on the stairs and saw it lighting up right at 11, from there we walked to the Champs Elysees whcih was also lit up the trees had lots of string lights and teardrop lights that blinked on and off and the Arc de Triomphe was standing tall with a giant French flag and giant flag of the EU in the middle. We ate at this Italian place on the Chanmps Elysees second floor looking out and it started snowing and it was awesome, then rentréed back to MIJE for some sleep. Last day up, walk around but its Sunday so everything's closed, saw St Eustache jsut from the outside, met up at Sainte Chappelle for a guided tour and then walked over to Notre Dame and we got to climb the towers!!! That might have been my favorite part of the trip because I've never climbed the towers but I felt like quasimodo we saw the big bell ( Le Boudron, it weighs 16 tons!) and it was the greatest view of Paris ever, right at the heart. And it was also super super super cold we were essentially outside for three hours and I was not a happy camper, but afterwards we went in Notre dame at high mass and saw them finishing up and heard chants which was a very , mm, magical almost experience, magical not being the right word. They had a creche set up inside that was like a multimedia production with lights lighting up certain parts and telling the Christmas story. Then we walked back to Le Marais for falafels and challah (we got some challah converts too and some challah virgins  who found love at first bite- I'm so proud) and then we took the train back. I tried to continue the Bueno bar tradition on the train but everyone was tired so it wasn't as good as on the other trip, but I still have faith in Bueno. Back in Aix, first thing we did = Pizza Capri. Delish. Then sat down for some major homework time and haven't looked up since. PARIS JE T'AIME!!

Arles et Les Baux de Provence Day trip + pics

Saturday, November 22. Arles et Les Baux de Provence.

Population Arles: 52,600.

Arles is this little town about an hour outside of Aix that is known for its pictoresque views of the countryside and many Roman ruins from the first century BC. I went with three friends from the group and we got to walk around and see the highlights of the city, while bearing the freezing cold Mistral wind (you think its nice and sunny outside but you're dead wrong). There was a huge Saturday market set up with lots of clothes, jewelry, gifts, and all sorts of food so we walked up and down the length of the main street for a while admiring all the nice great things to buy, Danny got a coat (he even bargained down the price) and we all got donuts, paella, clementines, crossiants, etc mini samplings that were all good. The market is a lot less touristy than the one in Aix, which follows the fact that the town in general is a lot less touristy, so prices were cheaper and things weren't as commercialized as we're used to, we got to see the locals doing their Saturday shopping. Anyways, Arles is a lot like Aix-Hotel de Ville square with an obelisk in the middle instead of a fountain (Aix gets to keep the fountains as its unique specialty), but also the market, there was a carousel right in the middle of another part of town, the streets reminded us of Aix a lot, little winding cobblestone roads with apartments going up four or five stories, windows with shutters closed or open dotting the alleys. We saw the Arles museum which has lots of roman statues in this courtyard, the Chappelle of St Trophime which is famous for its cloitre, which is where the monks would work and live, and its belltower which is a mix of Roman and Gothic architecture but is the most famous one in Provence. It had a little statue of some god on top of a cuppola shaped tower, different than the others I've seen. Hotel de Ville square had its three main facades as old Roman buildings and the obelisk in the middle was remade out of the stone from the original one (it had a big crack down the middle where it was refastened). Also learned that the Chapel of St Trophime is a UNESCO world heritage site-yeayea!  Then we walked on to another square where there was a big statue of Frederic Mistral, and Le Cafe La Nuit, the cafe that inspire Van Gogh's painting which I think in English is called The Night Cafe? Maybe. Anyways, Van Gogh resided in Arles when he was in France, it was here that he cut off his ear and was hospitalized, so there were  a fewmonuments to him and you could see his old bedroom (we opted not to). Lauren bought a santon, these little painted figurines for the creche that are typically provencal because they're characters only found in provence, for example Le Mistralier, the guy who's outo n the plains holding his hat and staff hunched over against the Mistral wind (thats the one she bought). There was  a store that only sold santons-which are mad expensive. Back to the tour, we saw the old theatre of the Roman period and the amphitheatre which they are restoring so its looking brand new instead of like  aruin (they still use it for bullfights and big events) and it was out of use for  a couple hundred years until the 1800s and when they decided to reuse it they had to destroy 212 houses and 2 chapels that had been built inside the oval shaped dome- it had sprouted up a little village all to its own. We climbed up to this other little church where behind it was a great view of the countryside, we could see windtowers and towers from castles/an abbey of Montmajour, and all the curved tile rooftops of Arles. We walked up to the Rhone which was another amazing view of the water, saw the Thermes of Constantin, then sat down in a little cafe for lunch and it was time to go. Next we stopped quickly at the moulin (windmill) that was the inspriation for Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de Mon  Moulin, his most famous work, and we saw where he lived (we learned about him in Provence history class just a few days before) and then we went to Les Baux de Provence, another perched village town with a big castle coming out of the rocky cliffs right at the top. It looked a lot like Gourdes so I heard (I got sick so I missed Les Baux :() and then we returned home. Yay for Provence sightseeing! and two quotes of the trip: "I would love to usher a child into the world right now, Connor Gabriel Winter, WELCOME!" and "So America was going to buy secrets from Hitler too but then...YEAH BUT...just wait until you're on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and you lose!"

Pics:

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It's Not for Girls, but I am! Pics from Merrie England.

London Pics:

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Tales from LONDON BABY! My life is not complete without Caspar from Harrod's.

November 14-16, 2008

Shortest trip to London, England ever, but still excellent.

London Population: Over 7 million!!! The largest city in Europe!!!

Tales from London:

Roll into Gatwick Airport (me, Lauren, and Dave) and Tube it to our hostel in Hammersmith. Awesome British names for everything: Hammersmith, Baron's Court, Earl's Court, Southgate, Wellington, Gloucester Square, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus, Tower Hill, Monument, Liverpool Street, Portobello Road, Notting Hill, etc etc etc. Put our affairs down in this awesome hostel that's really like a hotel, its a converted nurses quarters turned masonic lodge turned hostel, really random. 

First stop, Sloane Street (haute couture as Dave says) window shop lots of fancy names and marvel at British taxis that look like their from the first half of the 20th century, the red telephone booths, the streets with Look Left, Look Right spray painted on them, the police with high oval hats like you see in films, the mantra Mind the Gap repeating over and over in the Tube underground. Up to Harrod's, dont worry, even with my cool yellow Moroccan shoes I can get in, we go to the Egyptian room and Egyptian escalator (the lamps are these huge head busts of pharoahs with big hats, and the whole thing is marble and granite and ornately decoarted but not grandiose, its very intimate wihtout being cluttered, very cool, )and fancy watch room and candy shop, toy shop, explore all the cool rooms for a while.  On to Leicester Square, hot spot for theatre and movies (there were three giant movie theatres in the same square, movies for students by the way are the equivalent of $20!!) yeah, the pound is not cheap, that's for sure. It's also a really fat, really heavy coin compared to the Euro. Anyways, eat at this nice restaurant Maxwells, appetizers, main course, dessert (sticky toffee pudding, and this vanilla ice cream/toffee/caramel creation), tea and coffee, yum.  We see people really dressed up, some girls dressed up as in dressed in barely anything, and we have a very cute waiter who is I'm sure making millions of girls cry as he is of the male preference...Dave learned that when asking for his recomendations for night clubs...aww Oliver. Learn that guys in suits speaking English with the British accent are practically irresistible.  We were in this area that during the day is a big market, it used to be an apple market and something else not sure what, at night its a lot of pubs and restaurants, pubs where people take their beers outside and stand on the sidewalk talking if the pub is too full, so there's lots of activity and people everywhere. Walk to Leicester Square from there which is full of people, guys on bikes pulling those littles carts that'll take you around the town. Heres our consensus on Britain- not only are things expensive, people somehow manage to look good all the time, the girls are always dressed up to the nines, look very chic, high heeled boots , tights, skirt, guys sweater and jeans, but really it was remarkable they were almost more fashionable than the French. Walk around for a litte, then return to our hostel and sit at the bar for a while, play some pool and watch soccer on TV. Next day, we really see britain, we only had one day so we tried to cram as much in as possible. Up early, go to Notting Hill (like the movie!!) where there's Portobello Street Antique Market on Saturdays, browse and peruse the amazingly amazing antiques of all shapes and sizes-engraved elephant tusks, lots of silverware, magnifying glasses, pocketwatches, jewelry, handbags, handmade garments, really pretty compact mirrors, soccer memorabilia, tin plaques of all sorts, Beatles paraphernelia, old books, block print letters like they had in printing presses, and a ton of other cool stuff that I can't remember. We bought some cool going out tops that were from stores before the actual antique market-I'm excited to wear it out its this tank top with this flowery stuff on the back. We went into this one store with a rather rude woman who told us that, "If Americans have the money, they always buy from me" in reference to her one of a kind vetements, this after I commented in a fairly loud voice that one of the jackets looked like  Ron Wealey sweater (HP fans get that reference bien sur!) There was also a food market after the antique market with lots of international food and of course fresh fruits and pastries and such. Also side note, learned what a cornish pasty is, its like a fast food type thing like a hot pocket filled with minced vegetables and meats. Lots of funny british names for things. Also there are a TON of Starbucks in Britain, not just one in the major plaza, no, but really maybe every four blocks instead of every one like in the US, there's a Starbucks, and they're popular, we saw lots of people with the throwaway cups.  Continuing. so the antique market was awesome, if I lived there I would go every Saturday. Then we go to Hyde Park, a nice little park with the Wellington Arch in tribute to Duke Wellingont in the center, and we meet up for a tour of the city. How small a world is it that on this tour with thirty five people one of them is this girl I went to high school with?!?! So I recognized her and we said hi, she's studying in Barcelona. But really, that was quite quite quite random (quite is a very British term so we learned, in addition to right, brilliant, CHEERS!, rubbish, uni). So this tour took us to Buckingham Palace and we saw the changing of the guards, then we saw Prince Charles house, the old Palace (St James?) that is now the official residence of the queen, where you'd address a letter to, and Diana lived there when she divorced Charles. We walked down the street there that is famous because most of the houses are royal residences but I forget the name, saw Nell Gwyne's house (King Charles II most famous mistress who was loved by the people because she was not Catholic and not French, unlike his wife) who lived in the 1600s, then we went to this intersection with some big statues that our guide didn't explain but there were a bunch of Old Boys clubs there, the one we saw was Athena, and it really wasn't open to women, they couldn't even step onto the premises until last year! On to Trafalgar Square, where the National Portrait Gallery is, and Trafalgar Square has a big monument to Nelson who won at the Battle of Trafalgar with these four giant lions at the base (the sculpteur had never seen a lion before so he modeled them after his dogs, but they look like real lions so far as I know), and a big statue of one eyed one armed Napoleon, a little stab at the French (our guide pointed out a lot of these, but for all that there were a ton of French tourists there). Actually the lions are supposedly made out of melted down canons of the French artillery (Napoleon's Column is Paris is made of melted down English cannons, so it works both ways) there was also this big Arch where royal processions come through (the name's escaping me) and there was a random nose in the middle of one of the arches that legend has it is Napoleon's nose, and anytime the army marches through the arch they give it a little squeeze. Nelson died in the battle of Trafalgar, taken out by a sniper who easily saw him because he insisted on going into battle with all of his medallions and his colonel/commander gear. Anyways, his body was transported back to England in a giant barrel full of rum of some drink because it was good for preservation, but the soldiers and sailors on the ship were celebrating their victory and tapped into his barrel and drank half of what was in it, so he wasnt really preserved at all and all the guys on the ship "drank" a dead body soaked beverage, gross. That was really the only little anecdote we got on the tour, it wasn't as informative as the other one I did from the same company in Amsterdam, but still good. We ran into another funny character one of the guys who organized the tours but wasnt our guide, completely hung over, blood shot eyes, Lauren thought his long fingernails were gross, but he was actually pretty cool we offered him some of our granola. On the tour we did some French/English guessing games, its hard!! but the french do have their signature look, there was this one guy (Healy Hanson jacket) who looked so typically french (in a good good good way), but we didn't talk to him and couldn't figure him out because his friend who was clearly american was speaking to him in english, and we couldn't hear his responses.  Our only interaction, unfortunately, was me brushing a ladybug off his back and saying sorry you had a ladybug on your back. Lame. 

So our tour moves on, we saw Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives, the National Calvary Museum and this world war II bunker covered in red ivy next to it, St James Park which was gorgeous with this big lake in the middle of it and it used to be the zoo but the zoo was moved and they only left two giant white pelicans which are still in control of the lake and sometimes you can see them eat pigeons in the park, then we walked up to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben right on the River Thames, next to the Houses of Parliament and we heard the story of Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night, we could see the London Eye on the other side of the Thames which is this big ferris wheel where you ride it and can see a good view of London, we also saw Winston Churchill's World War II bunker which is now part of the Imperial War Museum, and then the tour ended. So fun fact, Big Ben refers to the sixteen ton carillon bell inside the tower. From there we undergrounded it to the other side of the river (it was very complicated because there were planned engineering closures on the tube and lots of stops we wanted to go to were closed, so we had to take indirect routes) Once there we went to a fish and chips place and ate lunch and walked along the Thames, crossed the London bridge (its jsut a regular old bridge nothing special at all, it was special because the original was the first bridge across the Thames but it fell down and it was moved a little upstream, some of the original stones are still farther downstream and other parts of the original were moved to this bridge in Arizona, so the newly reconstructed London Bridge was built in 1973. Crossed that, walked around the egg building which is really pretty new glass structure that looks like an easter egg (farther upstream theres another building that is rounded and also looks like an egg, also modern but more fat and not as tall, a squashed egg maybe, also cool. Then we walked up and found the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, which actually is decorated and has two big towers and some ornamentation on the brige in red and blue crosses.  The Tower of London is not an actual tower we came to find out, it's more of an old fortress that was the London mint until the operations became too large, it was also of course a house of torture and the highest prisonary chambers, it was also and still is house of the royal crown jewels, basically, its a free for all. it's surrounded by two walls of protection, medieval style, and inside the court there are a few different buildings and passages. It's right on the border of the Thames by the Tower Bridge and you get a good skyline view of the southern half of London. 

Then we searched for an open metro stop for quite a while, finally found one, and went to The British Museum!! Home to a million and one objects from the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, basically paying homage to Britain's days of colonization (Greece is still in major dispute with the museum in regards to some friezes that came off the Parthenon and the British took and refuse to give back) The museum itself is huge, it looks like the entire world. You walk in and there's this giant silver statue of a body with arms that are wings, that stretch out for maybe thirty feet like airplane wings, and then past the entrance is this grand hall with a giant circular building in the middle that's the archives and library and the ceiling is arched, way high up, it looks like the sky its a dark blue with silver railings criss crossed the length of it. So we go up to the Egyptian rooms and see all these mummies, the boxes that they were stored in, learn about how the wooden boxes all have different types of designs based on the era they were made in, there was also a cool case from when the Romans took over the Egyptians and it had the Roman leader's head with his wreath of olive branches painted on the top of the box, then we walked around the Korea rooms and some of the more modern acquisiton rooms, one of which had this giant face on its side that was oddly lifelike, with a five o clock shadow and everything, I think its famous because Lauren said she'd read an article about it and there was a big crowd of people around it, also in the mummy room we saw a fully preserved human rom thousand sof years ago, they used to bury regular people in these big sand dunes and the dry air preserved the skin and made it dry out so the body was this charred black color curled up in a fetal position but the skin was still intact...it was scary. And there was a mummy of an eight-to ten year old but the coffin/box looked like it could hold a three year old by today's standards.  Then we went to the Ancient Greece rooms where we saw the friezes and some grecian and roman ruins, we also saw the Rosetta Stone (stele) which was super super cool, it was the stone that helped researchers decode hierogylphs in the 1820s, it has a code written in hierogylphic, the language that common Egyptians used (demotic) and then classical greek.  Then we also saw these huge parts of anicent Egyptian statues that were giant carved stones of marble and they reminded us of that ancient wonder of the world that was a statue of a  man at a port on the mediterranean with one foot on each island, so boats could pass through him (well that part's disputed)..its called the Colussus of Rhodes. Okay, so we walked around some more and then they kicked us out at 5:30 so we left, bought some postcards at a cornershop (another british term) where they had all these cool Cadbury candy bars that they dont sell in France or the states, and Toffee flavored rolos, and these bars made by Nestle called Yorkies with a byline "It's not for girls" and a picture in the O like a traffic sign with a women crossed out in red. So i go to buy it just to spite the system (female empowerment, I'm wearing the yellow shoes!) and the guy goes, "its not for girls, but I am for girls" and i go "yeah I'm for girls too! plus I like breaking the rules" and pay, then we walk out and Lauren informs me that I just declared my sexual preference as a lesbian and he probably assumes she's my partner. Awesome. It's even funnier because a similar thing happened earlier that week in Aix. But the candy bar turns out to be just chocolate made out of pure fat essentially.  We meet up with Dave, go to MacDo britain (where the handwashing machines in the bathroom are super cool, its this console and you push one button for soap, another for water, and a third for the dryer, but its all from the same hole very efficient) and then head back to the hostel. We walked soo many miles we were dead tired, then we woke up and made it to Gatwick. Oh yeah, we also stopped at our fave store Harrods again (they apparently close down the whole store at a phone call's request if you're "somebody famous" though I never found out how famous you had to be to qualify) and we bought some souvenirs to say we'd been there from an extremely young but nonetheless adorable british boy with the excellent british name of Caspar (I told him we really liked his name). Excellent sejour a Londres, must go back to see a play sometime, and go to stonehenge and bath and cambridge/oxford and of course return to the antique market on Notting Hill.

Ana be-heh-bek, Ana o-hei-buk, Tanger.

Je t'aime = I love you, Tanger style.

Pictures from Tanger, Morocco:

http://photo2.walgreens.com/share/p=94791226238930314/l=25575433/g=3230505/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Out of Africa-We put the Rock in Morocco.

November 7-9, 2008 Tanger,  Morocco

Population:  + 700,000

Tanger, Morocco. Where's that, you say? Well, its on the very northwesternmost tip of Africa, right below Spain, and its where Ryanair goes cheap from Marseille. It is also where me and two of my friends spent an amazing three days this past weekend. Here's a recap:

So we get on this plane, early, as usual, to go to Tanger, fifth largest city in Morocco, second largest industriel city after Casablanca. It's near Spain so we hear everyone speaks Spanish, some French, and Arabic of course, maybe english?  Turns out everyone speaks Arabic, just arabic, and you have some people that know elementary french and even more elementary spanish, so communication was a little difficult, but I think we had the most native experience of any of our trips which made it soo good. We stayed at some guy's house that we found through couchsurfing, this 27year old sociology student who lives with his family a few kilometers out of the center city.  But to backtrack- Ryanair is my hero,we get there twenty five minutes ahead of schedule (coming back we got home like thirtyfive minutes ahead of schedule and everyone starts clapping five times over and they're reeling off the names of the captain and crew and where they're from and it was very very funny, like the end of a play. So the airport's nice, clean, you have guards in the same uniforms as policemen you'd see in the street monitoring traffic, these really formal suits with pilot hats, black boots, etc, and you walk out of the airport and see palm trees and blue sky and plains that are really pretty greens and misty orange. Theres really no public transportation, one bus that goes a little ways out of the city, but from the airport we took a taxi that was a put put car, you jostled everytime we hit a bump and could hear the otor going put put, no door handles, reupholstered several times...you get the idea. So we give the guy the address and lo and behold he has no clue where it is...not such a good start. On top of which the host doesnt pick up his phone, so we drive around for a good hour and a half, picking up friends of the taxi drivers and asking them where they think it might be, finally arriving to the proximity of the house and finding his friends who agree to take us off the taxi driver's hands and show us around. We pay the driver double what the normal rate is in dirhams (he told us to) and get out, meet up with two of our host's friends who show us to one of their homes which is connected to his tailor shop-this little storefront with torn out pics from magazines of guys in suits, a little stereo to listen to music, a workbench, and lots of woodshavings on the floor that we have not clue from whence they came. We sit there, a little worried about the situation, but its all good and the guy comes back after a while with croissants and mint tea, the traditional drink of North Africa, and we have this deliciously sweet tea and croissants which was just what we needed, then we leave our stuff to take a tour of the city. Out of the main city where this guy lives its a town that he calls middle/poor economically, lots of windy streets with mud everywhere, paved roads but pavement is cracked and uneven, there are people with mats and storefronts selling all this bread and candy and other stuff and tons of little kids running around everywhere doing cartwheels in the middle of the street and of course looking at us the only tourists, a donkey cart rolled by once, you had banana cart men and orange cart men with the orange leaves strewn on the ground, generally a fairly high level of garbage, wrappers and such, some old cars weaving in and out of the larger streets that were really muddy and needed a good wash, a very active scene in general. We passed the old corrida arena that's no longer in use but its really big and pretty (where they had bullfights) then kept walking down a main road for 3 kilometers to get to the center of town which is beachfront.  Beachfront there is the boardwalk street La Corniche with on the side nearest the water all the nightclubs below ground, far our on the water you see cranes of some sort industrial, not many people on the beach but the weather is pretty nice, sunny and seventy, maybe sixties, a man selling cigarettes, and on the other side of the street lots of cafes with people just sitting and sipping tea. So in terms of dress, maybe half the people are wearing jeans and a shirt, not really "matching" as youd say, and the other half of men are either wearing this long monk type cloak with this pointy hood up or a sort of smock covering, the women would be wearing a monk cloak female version dress thing, slippers or pajama pants underneath, or these pointy leather shoes that everyone has (the men traditionally wear yellow-very clash color) and all the women except a very very few wore the burka headcovering.  Our host told us now a days this is more of a cultural thing than religious, fashionable if you will, and you won't get kicked out of anywhere for not wearing one but of course there are some very religious families that disdain uncovered heads in their private homes. 

Continuing, we walk the Corniche, then walk into the medina, the old town with windy streets, houses with big wrought iron gates in loopy designs and mosaic tiles outside the door with a bulb shape at the top (I loved their front doors) houses really close with ivy or plants in teh windowsils and on top the hosue is open to the sky so you can peek down from your terrace where there's usually laundry drying, the walls around the medina are painted bright colors and theres little souk markets all over people in storefronts with all different types of those pointy shoes, a lot of mineral rich designed things or animals carved into stone, tea sets, gold and silver jewelry, tailors with beautiful traditional dresses for women, flower shops with designs for marriages, then guys selling this round flat bread called "hobs/hops" that we ate at every meal in big stacks (see the pics) and baguettes and fresh fish, we saw one guy selling sting rays whole, chickens with their headscut off, plucked too, fruits and veggies but mainly just bananas , dragonfruits, and oranges, leathergoods, purses and stool coverings in cool designs.  Oh yeah, at the water at the very end of the street is the port, with these big cruisers docked therea nd there's one that goes to Taflika (I think that's the name) spain every hour, its a realy short ride only 14 kilometers to Spain past the straits of gibraltar. According to legend its the point where Hercules, in battle with the giant Antee (I don't know the english name) with a pound of his body on the ground split Africa from Europe. We climbed the hill of the medina to the casbah, old town square with this really old fortress, and we walked through the white town walls and had the beautiful stretch of landscape of the rocky coast and the butt of Africa and the tip of Spain, we could see two continents at once!! It was very cool, and there were some people just standing really meditatively looking out and the ocean. 

Then we walk up to this famous Cafe, Cafe Hava, sit and have tea and bread with this green bean soup and olives and these sandwiches with cornmeal bread, and we literally are staring out at the sea form up on a cliff. Then we walk back and go back to the friends house where he gives us more tea, couscous with vegetables and chicken and we all share from the same plate (thats the way we do it here, we also eat with our hands) and we watched Friends with arabic subtitles-yes. They get two hundred channels free, CNN and MSNBC but also all the channels from every arab world state, Iran and Iraq and Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, it was really interesting even though we couldnt understand most of it. The spoken arabic from country to coutnry differs too, but they can at least understand it all. PS I forgot two things 1. on the airport drive we passed a ton of half constructed buildings that looked like they were rundown but really were never completed to begin with, not sure why, and 2. we passed on the median this policeman in that army type uniform with a tripod camera and a sign saying Radar control-there were those policemen on a lot of corners and most times they had someone pulled over-very revenue generating. So finally we meet our host and he takes us to his house which is three stories, the top story has that terrace with a wall you can peek over, the wrought iron entry gate with mosaic decorations, his stairs are all painted with pretty paisley designs and the walls are covered in mosaic tiles, floors covered in persian rugs and theres couches lining all the walls so theres lots of rooms to sit/sleep, with these huge thick comfy furry blankets all around because it got a little chilly inside at night. To keep the story short, his family was the most welcoming family ever, they cooked for us and were really friendly and he and his friends payed for a lot of our meals and drove us around everywhere and he was like our personal tour guide which was definitely necessary and he did everything with us that we wanted to do and it was amazing.  His hosue was really homey he had a seveteen year old sister and twenty two year old brother and he has three other siblings out of the house, and his mom and dad were there and they're older so the dad doesnt work but he was really funny and passably spoke a few words of french enough to make us laugh, and it reminded me a lot of thanksgiving time/going to grandmas-sitting around eating a lot, making jokes, catching up on family stuff and watching funny movies on tv. That was the gist of it. So that night we took a walking tour of the little town he lives in and climbed up this big hill where we got some more tea and looked out over all of Tanger and saw the big lighthouse blinking and shooting stars, and then we went back and sat on the couches and talked and at 10 PM we ate this really good traditional meal of the circle bread that used to dip into this plate with sauce and meat and vegetables, and we had Fanta with it /Hawaii, this other sugary pineapple drink which I've never heard of but was super good, then we cocooned up in those massive blankets and slept forever.  

Day 2 Morocco- wake up, go upstairs to the kitchen where our house mom puts out baguette, honey, olive oil, butter, and bananas (I think they're really easy to come by) and coffee. The first good coffee I've had since I've been across the atlantic, its like french coffee but then they fill the rest of the cup with milk (novel idea, no? )so it's like a latte, and you put a big sugar piece in it and its good. Then off for a day of exploring-walk back down to the ocean and we have this really long and extremely intersting talk about life in Morocco, how it is to live with a king, his family  and what they do, how marriage works and womens issues, the perception of the US, the perception of Israel, Iran, etc etc I was fascinated because some of our differences are so much deeper than cultural things, they're literally facts that are considered false or true- we have a different conception of historical truth which is so fundamental to ....to everything. But then again I guess people in America do to, thinking of evolution/creationism as the best example (I had another great converstaion about religion and basic truths with one of my friends when we were sitting in the cafe later that night) but its just good to hear the other "factsets" and realize how hard it is to have a peaceful world where people are willing to listen with so many different views floating around. So we go shopping a little, I buy these amazing shoes that I was told later in the day were, "hideous," dont worry I'm wearing them first thing tomorrow to class, and then we meet up with this Canadian girl and Australian who will be staying with us tonight and we hang out with them for the rest of the day, both girls are super sweet and have interesting travel stories. We go to the Hercules Caves, where legend has it Hercules slept and did some other stuff that I cant remember and also some legends say its where the cyclops in the story of Ulysses lived and theres some other myths associated with it, you go down into the caves (not very deep) and theres water dripping from the ceiling and theres little caverns and mud puddles everywhere and at the end theres a cliff that goes down into a crevice or pool of water thats coming in fromt eh sea and breaking in foamy waves, and the opening out looks like an inversed continent of Africa and you can directly see the sun as its setting it was very very pretty. And there was a pack of camels in the parking lot, there were also camels down by the beach. So we walk around there for a while, all the while our host and his friend are teaching us basic arabic phrases and the australian lived in saudi arabia for a while so she knows lots of saudi arabic, and then we go outside the cave and theres these cliffs with fishermen and little cafes and tidal pools and the water's coming and breaking and squirting up like a geiser and we just look out, then we go down to another cavern which has souvenirs and this famous statued of hercules with chains and theres real live monkeys chained up to the statue, one of my friends Medora got a baby monkey to climb up her and rest in the crook of her arms...cute yes, but lets consider that its a monkey, weve already been around tons of stray cats and a random herd of sheep and dogs and the bathroom at our host house is an "arabia bathroom" aka squat toilet, no paper, no soap to wash hands, and even in the cafes weve yet to find either of those two things though at least they have european style toilets, and we have no shower at home, so our general level of cleanliness is at an all time low. But thats all the fun of travelling. So now its getting dark, we drive back downtown and go to Miami In, this cafe where all these guys are huddled around a big screen tv watching a soccer match and drinking tea (no one drinks alcohol here, "religiously") and here come five girls and two guys and we sit and watch and talk and drink tea, no one really gave us looks or anything because our host knew lots of people there, but it was definitely "guy night" activity, then we left and went to the port to eat outside with the freshest jsut caught fish and shrimp and fried squid, for everyone who liked seafood (everyone but me) they said it was the best fish they'd ever eaten. Again a fun atmosphere, and they kept bringing us good break and we had tea at the end and there were lots of families and people there. By now its eleven ish and where as yesterday we ended our outings at 8ish, when lots of people were still walking around women and men, by 11 the streets are a lot more dead, though near our house a few little kids were still running around the streets and playing playstation in this random room off to the side of the house. Now the question is, sleep or nightclub? My three objectives for the day were: buy pointy shoes (check, i even bought a second pair of yellow ones-go female empowerment no more sexist colors here), go to the caves, and go to a nightclub. Serendiptiously I encountered a Moroccan guy the night before we left who recommended to me to go to this club called 555, it was supposed to be really good. So I wanted to go but was tired, and no one really wanted to go but finally, yes lets go, I've been missing my fill of dancing in Aix and my gosh, when are you going to have the opportunity to party in Morocco again? Also, with the culture being so very different, I was really curious to see what went down at the clubs. So, in my very dirty jeans and a tshirt I'd already worn friday, no makeup, hair greasy and not straightened, socks under my ballet flats, I'm ready to hit the town. not to worry, I got in. So 555 had a brand new DJ so it was full, but instead we went to Mondial down the street, and let me tell you, what an experience. Basically it was this really nice place, white leather couches and tables all around the dance floor which was big, surrounded by pillars that you could go up on and dance, a giant disco ball and flashing lights and loud house music for the most part, I really only recognized one song but some were in arabic and they were cool and some in spanish, very eclectic, some people were drinking alcohol we got red bulls for the group, and the party was going strong. Who was there you ask? Upper twenties men, maybe low thirties, definitely not my age, and guy to girl ratio was staggering, there were girls but they all looked again same age as the guys, amybe a few years younger, most dressed in way way tight dresses, miniskirt, high heels, very low cut top, makeuped extensively. And they were all generally promiscuous dancers, off to the side at tables they were giving private dances or massaging guys (not lap dances, also there was no making out on the dance floor or anything, and no guys were going up to random girls to dance, dancing was generally more distanced even with those girls than in America say) and we proceed to learn that they are all, yes all, prostitutes, paid to be there as escorts. Made sense. So we were dancing with our host and his guy friends on the dance floor having a blast with this crazy topsy turvy world going on around us, no one really bothered us, and I even got to dance on a pillar-baller. Oh yeah, there was also a lot of security watching the dance floor at all times and breaking up certain no=nos, though I was a little confused about that, and there were tv screens all around that showed us dancing sometimes and sometimes showed really promiscuous music videos although for one song it showed these animated cartoon characters dancing which was pretty random. So anyways, this club was very bizarre but made me really proud to be a self-sufficient woman of America in 2008, and glad to be from a culture that gives women the chance to dance with no strings attached. The cultural thing connected with what our host was telling us about how women are either engaged to be married before eighteen and the arrangements are taken care of, or they end up not married spinsters, or are shunned by the family for some reason and become prostitutes, those are pretty much the only options. I'll be interested to see what its like in twenty years at Mondial. 

To conclude then, we got home super early, slept for super little, and made our way to the airport and out of africa, back to homebase Aix en Provence. Again in the airport we get "Obama!" shouts from the security guards-oh yeah. So all in all we had an amazingly fun time in Morocco, I would definitely go back, and we had the most welcoming, hospitable family and friends I've ever met.

PICS from the East!!

Toussaints Part 1-Vienna, Austria

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50172103/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 2-Ljubljana, Slovenia

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50172425/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 3- Zagreb, Croatia

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173729/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 4- Belgrade, Serbia

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173915/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 5- Budapest, Hungary

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173920/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 6- Bratislava, Slovak Republic

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173919/a=3230505/t_=3230505

ENJOY!!

Last stop Bratislava and completing the circle- back to Wien.

Day 9 of Toussaints (less than 24 hours left!!!! OhMyGoodness!) - Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Population: roughly 550,000

Working my way up the Danube (Danuj in Slovakian) we reach Bratislava, capital of Slovak republic. I didn't have much time here (which was actually okay by me, again not one of my fave cities) so I didn't get to learn anything really about its history and I'd like to start by a brief overview that I'm looking up as I type.  So (merci de Wikipedia):

Bratislava is known in German as Pressburg, it was the capital of the kingdom of hungary under the Hapsburgs from 1536-1783 when the Turks took over Hungary. In 1993 after the Velvet Divorce we got the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. Okay, moving on.

First off train ride Budapest to Bratislava- two and a half hours, went quickly, again mostly farmland but sometimes we passed this giant lake with mountains in the background which was pretty, pine trees lined it it reminded me of the lake in Harry Potter where Harry sees his stag across the way as he's trying to revive his godfather.  Cities passed: Nove Zamky, Szob, then I stopped looking and read some French literature and did some typing. I've officially broken my headphones, they literally snapped, so my music jam sessions have come to an end, I also entered Slovakia with a whopping fifteen euros and fifty centimes which was almost enough to get by but not enough to buy the ticket to the Vienna airport, so I was forced to withdraw Slovak Konuts at the bus station (30 to 1 euro). So we get to Bratislava, its a pretty dead city it seems like, its bigger than Ljubljana but the buildings are nothing much , its a dreary day, the architecture is very simple no great statues and even when you walk down to the Danube theres not a whole lot to see although the river itself is of course pretty, most of the shops were closed I think because it's All Saint's Day but nonetheless not the greatest town to be a tourist in, and as you've seen from my brief history lesson Slovak history is dominated by the Hungarians and the Czechs and Austrians so the national sentiment is not a huge factor in memorials or great squares. I didn't take any pictures for the first three hours of being here and walking around because there really was nothing to take pictures of, high rise five to six story buildings and streets, pretty bland. Even the colors of the town (granted its not sunny out) seem dull. But with my map in hand I set out to make a tour of the area. So I saw a bunch of churches, all with those spires with the little bulb on the clock tower in oxidized copper and then a cross on top, St Elizabeth's nunnery with real live uns outside, although the actual nunnery was sort of hidden behind these old brick walls, the biggest church here St Martin's and inside it was very dark, not too amazing it had those long narrow stained glass windows again, the Old Town Hall and the square in front which had these funny statues of lifelike people in different positions, a guard type figure and then someone bending over a bench and someone looking around a corner with a camera in hand- very playful. There was also a Primate's palace which was a smaller building and I really have no idea what its significance is.  My final stop was the synagogue, apparently Slovakia had a big Jewish population before the Holocaust and their synagogue is still intact, it was closed of course but even from the outside it was not striking in any fashion. I think it was granite but it was really boxy with straight lines, no carvings or symbols really, faded orangy red with big square pillars and big metal doors, no Jewish stars, nothing. and a wrought iron gate. There was also a Jewish museum which is supposed to be good and was on my list of things to see but when I got there I figured it would be closed on a Saturday- not only was it closed, it is closed indefinitely for repairs/reconstruction, the sign was in Slovak but it had the date September 8th- either it's been closed since then or was supposed to reopen then, either way not a good sign for a major museum of the capital city of the country. Greatness. But then I walked up up upto the Hrad Castle/Slovakia Castle- this one really does look like a castle combined with fortress walls high up on a hill, its a big square building with cloisters on the wings and lots of little connected houses behind it that might have been where everyone lived, all painted a nice goldenrod.  Again the actual castle was undergoing major reconstruction so there was tons of scaffolding and you couldn't go in which was anoying, even though the grounds were prety you couldn'te get the proper feel of how the castle was supposed to look, but the view of the Danube was good. From the little sign outside I learned that the castle was originally built in 907, then under King Sigsimun in the 1200s it started to be baroque in fashion and they added this big tower, then it was the seat of the Hungarian kings for a while and under Maria Theresa (1740-80) it underwent major baroque renovations, then in burned down in 1811 and was only partially reconstructed in 1953 and they're still working on it. So it's unfortunate that the 907 castle isn't there and I'm not sure if they're rebuilding it in the baroque style or what, so its kind of new old history. Still, it was the best sight in town. Oh yeah, and on the other side of the Danube (its not like Budapest there's nothing to see on the other side its housing, I'm not even sure if its still part of Bratislava proper) there's this big observation tower they just put in with these steel ropes that connect to the main bridge crossing the river, its just like the tower in Montreal, kind of ugly and imposing but its THE thing to see on the skyline.  As you walk down from the castle there's some "gates" that are significant and there's Michael's Gate over in Old Town which was the original only entry into the city over an old moat thats not there anymore, but they aren't really gates anymore there's been so much built around them houses and such that now they're just arched entryways that are part of other constructions and really don't look like anything even if they have cool stories. Michael's Gate had this plaque near it in the ground with a woman screaming, and it was dedicated to the first witch burnt in Bratislava in 1602 (apparently she wasn't a real witch she was just too pretty for her own good at the time..harsh). And the other funny thing was that I did walk through old town but the real "old town" must have been tiny because I kept seeing signs pointing this way and that saying old town, it was like I never entered it but was always inches away. And right near there very inconspicuously there were these metal squares in the ground like a tic tac toe board and you could jump on them and they chimed out and you could play songs with your feet- it was totally random but very fun. So after walking around a fairly dead city and not being impressed I returned to the hostel to write these little ditties, chat with friends, and prepare myself for waking up in the 4 o clock hour to catch a bus to the bus station to catch a bus to the Vienna airport to take a plane to Munich, then Marseille, then a final bus Marseille-Aix and be back to homebase!!! Excellent circle of eastern europe (fingers crossed it ends well tomorrow). Pics will be up soon.