Europe Journal

BERLIN

So what I remember learning today is that the Germans are really, really, really sorry about that whole Holocaust/World War II thing. They can’t apologize for that enough. One large city block is cleared to be a memorial for all murdered Jews. Just flat land. Very depressing. Ate a Berliner (a jelly doughnut, not a citizen) and it was okay; Ed Jr. wanted to stop at a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast which really says “native foods,” don’t you think? What else do I remember? Well, they’re still cleaning up from the war. There are still bombed-out buildings hanging out, especially in the East. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum is filled mostly with old warning signs that told all the Germans that their country was split in half. They all start with “Achtung!” and then they say something like “Do not cross the river under penalty of death” or “Have proper identification ready” or “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” You know, stuff that people would yell under stress if they had to. In East Berlin I bought me one of those wooden Russian dolls that you can open up and find a smaller doll inside. Neat! I always wanted one of those! This one is of Soviet leaders, from Yeltsin all the way down to Lenin and I think Karl Marx, but it’s too small to tell. So far my impressions of German folks are good. Their trains run right on time, which means they’re just like Buffalo’s subway except it works and it takes you somewhere. At the Reichstag (German Parliament building), the placards try to make abundantly clear that “The sham government of the Third Reich never held session inside our government headquarters.” It’s like Okay, guys, we’ve all moved on now! But everyone remembers when the Berlin Wall fell, and there’s a line through the city marking where it was. It’s an odd photo opp, especially as you try to take pictures of it in a busy intersection. Maybe it’s their way of getting the last Americans out of the country.






AMSTERDAM

You know, if you don’t smoke pot, like hookers, or own a bicycle, Amsterdam’s probably not for you. But we tolerated it for a few days. The first thing I remember is the bike garage, which must have had something like 7000 of the things on three levels. What I want to know is, how do these people get from their house to the bike garage? Anyway, I had the pannekoken. There’s the Beastie Boys lyric that says “When I’m in Holland, I eat the pannekoken,” and I always thought that referred (no pun intended) to marijuana. How foolish of me—they’re pancakes. And you roll weed in them. I’m just kidding. But speaking of drugs, we were walking down the street when Joe just kind of blurts out “Hey, as long as we’re here, why don’t we buy some crack?” Two seconds later, a guy walks up to Joe and asks him, “You’re looking for crack?” “No, I was only kidding.” “Are you sure?” “I WAS MAKING A JOKE.” He was very nice for a drug dealer, though. I actually felt bad for Joe because he really wanted to go to the Van Gogh museum but we didn’t have the time. We did make the time for the Anne Frank House, however, and it was a total waste. So these people hid in the attic, right? And fifty years later, someone thinks “Hey, I can make some money off of this,” puts up a couple of guardrails and wham, charges people like $6.50 to look at an empty attic. Whoo. And it brings in people by the droves; they line up down the street to see Anne Frank’s wallpaper. What else? You can’t take pictures in the Red Light District, but for the most part you probably don’t want to. And because property taxes used to be based on how much ground your house covered, all the buildings are really thin and high (in altitude, not under the influence). In order to get furniture upstairs they use a rope-and-pulley system outside, and so the furniture doesn’t hit the wall on the way up the building actually comes out towards the street as it goes up. So every building looks like it’s going to fall on you. That really makes me fell bad for the people walking around on mushrooms…dude.





PARIS

Paris on New Year’s Eve is nothing like Dick Clark does. First and most disappointing, there’s no big clock. People just sort of collectively decide when it turns into the next year, so it is midnight from about 11:30 to 12:30 in the morning. Second, the use of such explosives in New York City would probably get you deported. Paris doesn’t have a fireworks display, but the Parisian citizens compensate by bringing whatever sparklers, M-80s, rockets, or scud missiles they’ve been storing up for the last twelve months. And I’m only kidding about the scud missiles. Under the Eiffel Tower is Ground Zero, and anyone down there has to prepare to dodge everything thrown at them—purposely. We tried to stay away from the action but there were a bunch of kids—Joe and Ed refer to them as Arab terrorists (?) —that would run up to you, light a firecracker in your face, yell “Bonne Annee!” and throw them at you. We did a lot more running that night than we expected to. While trying to leave the area at 12:30, the major road was filled with cars that were scattered in fifty different angles—there was no use driving, the morons—and drunken revelers danced in between the four lanes of one-way traffic, personal champagne bottles in hand, jumping on car hoods and chasing after random girls to, well, French them. The French really aren’t as rude as people say…wait, yes they are. And I completely forgot that they closed the subway there at 1 AM meaning that 3 million people in the street had to walk home in the cold. THAT’S rude. Especially when the riot police is yelling at you to get back while he closes the metal gate to the station right in front of you. ESPECIALLY when your hotel room is like ten kilometers out of town and you end up walking for the next four hours in the cold. Speaking of subway stops, the ones near the hotel happened to be open, where we found two Anglophone girls about our age trying to find their way to Nation station, meaning they were too drunk, stupid, or both to notice they passed that stop twenty minutes before they actually got off the train. One said they were from “Vancouver,” the other from “Texas.” Yeah, right. You sound like you’re from Michigan State. Anyway, they asked what we thought of New Year’s in Paris and Joe says something like “It was one of the most awesome experiences I’ve ever had,” to which Texas girl says, “I’ve partied harder.” So I feel bad for her, since she could have had a much more exciting time in her Michigan State dorm drinking a 24-pack of Budweiser in front the strobe light she bought at Spencer’s, instead of blowing all her parents’ money on a trip to Europe to get the same effect. The next morning we slept until 1:30, mostly because we needed that five hours of sleep to keep alive. Rockin'.






GENEVA

Switzerland is the only place where we had to exchange our money, from the universally accepted Euros to the lesser known Swiss Francs. Darned Swiss. You know they just joined the UN last year? In their attempt to be completely unbiased and peaceful, they’ve stayed out of the EU. That means one Euro is work like 1.34 Swiss Francs, or some weird computation that’s like measuring time in quarts. Our impression of Switzerland is very good, however, even though the city was on holiday that night and virtually empty. After all, they do have the UN there, and the Red Cross, so they must be decent folks. The Francophones there are polite, and every where you go sells Swiss Army Knives and Toblerones. We went to the church Martin Luther preached at after he was kicked out of Germany—I think that’s what happened—but it was closed. So we went to dinner at Movenpick because it was the only thing open and we sat next to an old lady that spent about an hour and a half picking at her $20 dinner (about 34n3.Q Swiss Francs) until she happily asked for her check. Like she was making a sand castle or something. We found a few statues in around the UN-Red Cross area that looked pretty odd so I made Ed and Joe stand next to them and imitate them while I took incriminating photos. I hope those came out. Did I mention Geneva is in the middle of the Alps? I don’t know how we did it, but we walked uphill the entire day. Even when we were backtracking. Strangely, we never saw the Swiss Army, that is until we got to Rome….






ROME

Rome is nuts. I’m a history major, and I almost went into shock. There are so many historical thingamabobs, or monument whatchamajiggers to commemorate the historical thingamabobs, that we eventually stopped walking around for fear that we’d find more stuff to look at. I wore a light brown, cordoroyish shirt with large breastpockets, where I put my oft-used camera and my daily allowance of five rolls of film. I went trigger-happy for two full days and Ed started calling me Generalissimo Photog, which kind of stuck. We had a tour book that said one of the hostels was called “Fawlty Towers,” coincidentally just like the old British sitcom. Then I found out it was actually based on the British sitcom, so it was even funnier. Then I found out that’s where Ed made our reservations and it was like winning $5 in the lottery! Sweet! The Roman subway has less stops, more people, less seats, more graffiti, less reliability and more sudden brakings than the one in New York City. Rome has the Pinto of subways. Still, whenever you get off, there’s tons of cool stuff! We went exploring around the Coliseum and found a 16th century chapel that was just covered in murals and other interesting artistic endeavors. We found the archaeological remains of a pagan temple and the Circus Maximus within a couple minutes walk. One of the best things was outside the city—the catacombs—and I was happy to have dragged Ed and Joe to it. I don’t feel bad about getting off at the wrong bus stop, or making them walk down a rural road with no shoulder while little Italian cars missed them by inches going about 70 miles an hour, because we got there, right? It’s weird finding a cave that second century Popes were buried in. A Spanish lady who spoke decent English told our Italian tour guide that we should pray and that made all the opened graves seem a bit more homey. Still, the tour guide told us that she once took a group of British folks down there and she hasn’t found them yet. Nuts, I tells ya!






VATICAN CITY

The Vatican is the shiznit. Word. It is the smallest country in the world, but per square mile it is ten times cooler than anything else out there. Even better then Luxembourg. The Vatican is also where I was the least able to get along with, and Generalissimo Photog should apologize to his comrades for acting like a military sergeant as I tried to make time for everything. First off, the country is protected by the Swiss Guard; how cool is that? And you wonder, if the Swiss never fight, are they good? Then again maybe the Catholics hired them because they DON’T want them to fight. Either way they’re armed with axes. Yeah. We took the elevator to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica…well, not exactly the top. That takes you to the rim of the dome, probably the most impressive sight of the entire trip. It’s crazy stepping into that doorway and realizing you’re ten stories up and there is a 300-foot chasm right in front of you. And that chasm, and the dome over it, is covered in gold, mosaics, and Who knows what else. The extra 330 steps to the very top were almost as interesting, as you had to walk up stairs sideways as you went up the side of the dome. I could talk all day about this place. In the Vatican museum, Joe had to walk against traffic for 20 minutes to get back into the Sistine Chapel because he didn’t know “the picture with the two guys almost touching” was in there and he had to see it before we left. There were wall paintings and carvings at every step. Even if the museum were empty it’d be a great museum. And what supposedly remains of St. Peter is underneath the Basilica, in it’s own special room with golden everything and diamond encrusted stuff that nobody can look at except through a window. I’d like to spend another week in the Vatican, just snooping around, trying to sneak into the Pope’s basement, but the Swiss Guards would probably hack me to death. The next time I go I’m going to bring a bunch of postcards with Martin Luther on them, just so I can get them stamped with the Vatican postmark.






AUSTRIA

After two very long days in Rome, it was actually nice to get stuck in a stuffy train car overnight. On the way down from Rome we were put in a sleeper with this Italian guy and his snoring, four-year old son, and some girl named Ja Young, who didn’t say a word the entire time but had a stuffed koala bear attached to her backpack next to the name tag that said “Korea.” Nice people, but too many for a 6 by 6 by 8 cell. So this time Ed tried to make sure no one got in the cabin. He had us shut the door, close the curtains, turn out the lights, and stretch waaaaay out over the seats so it looked like there was no room. But first we had to get rid of three guys from Senegal, or some other country. Their language sounded like a mix of Spanish, French, Swahili (though I’ve never heard Swahili and don’t really know what I’m talking about) and Mooklar, a language I just invented. But they seemed very nice. One they left we put our plan into action and took over the cabin. We slept head to head to head, just like the Beastie Boys’ “Hello Nasty” cover, and talked girl talk all night. At about six or seven in the morning an Austrian border guard—the real freaking military—threw open the door and yelled “PASSPORTS!” Joe and Ed didn’t wake up fast enough to notice, but he was smiling the whole time. It must have been really funny watching Larry, Moe, and Curly fly around leap up from a pile of coats and luggage like startled moles. Bumping into each other for no reason other than we were still dreaming, Joe gave him his ticket, or the first piece of paper he could find, to which the border guard yelled at him again until he figured it out. I had mine but he barely looked at the thing; his smile just got BIGGER. Then he yelled “THANK YOU!” and we never saw him again. So that’s what I remember about our 45 minutes in Austria.






MUNICH

Munich¡¦s a good, hearty town. I think it was Sunday that day, so everything was closed again. We got there about eight or nine in the morning and Ed knew of a nice pub that we could go visit, and since Joe and I didn¡¦t know where we were going (a normal occurrence) we just followed him. The pub makes its own beer, is about five hundred years old and prefers natives to tourists. We forced Joe to drink a liter of beer for breakfast, and Ed already posted about that; it¡¦s as funny as it sounds. ƒº A great part about this tavern was that certain tables had a coat of arms hanging over it. We found out that certain groups of local men claim these tables, and no one else is allowed to sit there. Ever. Their own special beer mugs are kept locked away for when they come. And there a group of them was, 10 AM on a Sunday morning, preparing for a long day of drinking beer. One guy even had a drinking glove so as not to get repetitive stress injuries in his hand. That¡¦s Messed Up. There was a band and everyone was having a pretty good time, but we had to go, especially Joe, who had to pee like nobody¡¦s business. Outside at noon we watched the town clock go off, especially interesting because it¡¦s one of those old ones with little people in them that dance around every hour. About fifty people came out to watch it, and it was interesting for a full two minutes; good thing we ran out there in the blistering cold to go see THAT. I can¡¦t really remember anything else about Munich; Joe was drunk enough for all of us. Now where did we go next?





COLOGNE

Ed really hyped up the cathedral in Cologne, Germany (which is Koln, Deutchland to the natives). “You really have to see it, Fred.” “It’s really cool, it’s the biggest Gothic cathedral in the world.” Blah blah blah. So one day we step out of the train station and Boom, there it is. This 700+ foot church is standing right in front of us. Big, black, pointed, covered in gargoyles. It’s so big it blocks out the sun. And we just stand there, staring at it. “Holy CRAP.” And nobody says anything for like three minutes. Then Ed says, “Yeah, the first time we saw it we were like ‘holy crap’ too.” Ed and I came back a couple days later and I was still like “Holy CRAP” for a full day. I just kept repeating, “It’s so BIG!” But inside was sweet. Imagine a building like that full of mosaic floors with stones no bigger than your pinkie fingernail. The thing took 600 years to build! They also just opened a museum in the basement with some funky relics, like some cattle brandings from the 17th century that’s supposed to cure Mad Cow Disease. Wuh? The rest of the city was pretty nice as well; there are hardly any cars downtown because like most cities in Europe, the streets are too small for ‘em. They tried the same thing in America: they call them shopping malls and since they’re away from population centers the parking lots and highways needed take away the convenience they supposedly make. Ed and I went to a store called Media Markt, kind of a Circuit City. Over there they still have a “Black Music” section for CDs. That really isn’t a big a problem as Ed and I going CD shopping, because we both have serious problems in that category. I think we got like 12 CDs total and then went to Pizza Hut. Ed has been hankering for American food the whole trip—he forced his parents to go to Dunkin Donuts in Berlin for breakfast—so I let him succumb to his urges for once. I took the plunge and had the pizza with pineapple on it, because I figured, hey, yesterday I had pizza with tuna fish on the top; how could this be any worse? I came out of there a convert. Bathrooms cost no matter where you go, and I paid the attendant double because I just felt bad. What else happened in Koln? Well, it was settled around 60 AD by the Romans, but that doesn’t have much to do with my trip.






AACHEN

Aachen always reminds me of the Castle Aaaaaaaaagh mentioned in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” It’s almost as historical! Here we saw remnants of an old Roman watchtower (still in use), and the church that Charlemagne used to control the Holy Roman Empire from. There’s a bust of Charlemagne in there that actually contains his real skull; Ed found out that whenever a new king took power they would bring out Charlemagne’s head to welcome him. Geez. There was some other story about how the church was bombed during World War II but the late Charlemagne’s Magical Powers deflected everything off the roof. Instead, the bombs all hit the church next door! Ha ha ha ha ha! Ahem. I took pictures of quaint streets and old stones while Ed bought postcards. After all, if you take a bunch of pictures, why buy postcards, and if you buy a lot of postcards, why use a lot of film? We dropped off Joe a day or two before, and realized that our conversations focused more on history, school, and big words compared to when Joe was with us. By the end of the trip, a good 80% of what Joe said involved the word “Bork!” Remember the Swedish Chef from “The Muppet Show,” and nobody knew what he was talking about? In Europe, it was like we were meeting 1000 new Swedish Chefs every day, and we imitated them often through our brash American ignorance. France: “Qu’est-ce que le bork bork?” Germany: “Borken ze bork?” Italy: “Borka borka! That’s-a spicy-a meatball.” Ah, Aachen.






BRUSSELS

Brussels was cold. Hot d*ng, it was cold. You know how cold it is outside now? It was COLDER there. Ed normally prefers walking to the subway—What better way to see the sights?—but we gave up quickly because we were turning blue. So anyway, we kept going into a bunch of churches for no real reason other than they looked neat…and because we were COLD and trying to stay warm! The only thing colder than the weather was the reception we got at the Court of Justice, a really great building where, apparently, some serious shizzy was going down. In Flemish, “shizzy” means depositions, asylum requests, and other international Serious Business. We scrammed without taking pictures because we were afraid of getting arrested. Earlier that day we had the totally required Belgian Waffles and some chocolate (good!) and made our vacation compete visiting the Mannekin Pis. At the waffle place we realized that all the nice French people left France, for several reasons:

1.) The store was closed, but they let us in and took our order

2.) When we left a tip, they got all upset and tried to tell us in French that we paid them too much!

3.) A fellow American tourist’s credit card didn’t work and she “had no money” (sounds dubious) and was allowed to come back later when she found a cash machine

4.) They were awesome waffles!

We also went to the new EU complex, where we found a Tourist Information center with more free stuff than I could carry. So I made Ed carry it for me! Ooh, what else? BRUPARCK! A leftover from a World’s Fair of old, BRUPARCK! has the greatest movie cineplex in the work, a 300-foot tall model of an atom, and fish and chips (good!) for only 7 euros 50.






FRANKFURT

I went to the airport in Duesseldorf to fly home, but not only did the flight get canceled, United Airlines declared bankruptcy and by the time I got there the company had packed up and left. Somehow I ended up in Frankfurt. Frankfurt’s airport has about 400 front desks, and that’s not an exaggeration. I don’t remember how I got home. I mean, I took a plane, but other than that I’m pretty clueless. All I remember is having a cold, running about a mile down a hallway, and having about ten security guards get friendly with me in the course of seven minutes. I played a lot of Game Boy on the plane and tried not to throw up. And that’s the end of my trip! Thank goodness, because I’ve written ten pages about it and I don’t want to write any more. Time for a nap. Bonne annee!