To help take my mind off of my father's death, I spent most of the month of April traveling; first to Amsterdam, then Prague (Praha), and then Vienna (Wien).
I was able to spend the better part of a week in Amsterdam with a half dozen people from my program here in München. While there we witnessed a pro-Tibet rally with meditating Buddhist monks. Amsterdam is a goofy city, and I had forgotten that it was a canaled city like Venice, which pleases me, as it does remind me of the harbor back in Newport Beach, a rather pleasant inconvenience for those trying to get anywhere in Newport. The canals in Amsterdam are more useful for easing congestion (rather than causing it), and the city sorely needs it. While there, you are constantly on the look out for pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars, all of which race through the city in a very chaotic way. Those who don't keep on the alert find themselves at the receiving end of some local's abuse. The city if full of bikes, there are more than 2 bikes for every resident of the city, so they say, and they are everywhere, huge rows of bikes, bikes chained to just about everything you can imagine. I wondered to myself how many years some of these bikes have been chained to some railing or fence, and whether that was somehow monitored, like if you park your car on a public street for too long. Probably not as it would take an army to monitor such a population. All the canals and narrow streets can make navigating the small city pretty difficult, but thank god that you could probably walk across the whole of it in 45 minutes, so the repercussions of getting lost weren't so severe. Like Newport in the summer, it's easier and faster to navigate the city with a bike than with a car. You couldn't pay me to drive a car through that city.
Since the city doesn't sit on solid ground, almost all the house lean a bit, and the uneven cobblestone streets can be treacherous. Lot's of people I know from the University of Puget Sound happened to be in the city at the same time. One night, myself and three of my fraternity brothers went walking through the Red Light District, but don't worry, we didn't have that kind of bonding experience. I tripped on one of those treacherous cobble stones right in front of a row of windows, and before I knew what happened, one of the prostitutes came out to help me, basically saying "ah, poor baby." I'm sure she thought she had the cure for my hurt ankle, but I didn't; so I just thanked her kindly and went on my way. Although now I'm starting to doubt that she was legitimately concerned for my welfare...What's interesting about the Red Light District, is that the majority of the girls rent out those windows with the adjoining room themselves, and are "independent contractors," if you will. While there we also found out that while drugs and prostitution are legal in Amsterdam, drinking a beer on the street is not. I've been living in Germany for so long, that I thought nothing of strolling around with a road beer. The cops didn't ticket us or anything, I'm sure they realized the hypocrisy of the law.
The Van Gogh museum is one of the coolest things I have seen while in Europe, and the collection there is impressive, but boy was it packed. You're basically in a line that wraps it's way through the museum, which you eventually break free of and can look at the paintings at your own pace. We took a great walking tour of the city that our hostel recommended, the tour guide met us out front before we went to go with the largest group. The future Mrs. Kalanz rode up on a bicycle, a cutely dressed brunette in a tweed coat with green eyes and an adorable Dutch accent. I payed very good attention to the tour and learned quite a bit about Amsterdam. Our age difference aside (which are really just meaningless numbers), I think that an unemployed, degree less college student indebted with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and no residence of his own has a lot to offer.
I traveled to Prague for a long weekend to visit my three fraternity brothers who happened to be in Amsterdam. I napped a bit on the train there, and when I awoke, the masses of rusting Soviet steel let me know that I wasn't in Germany anymore, and disturbed an otherwise lovely countryside. It was really great to be living with my buddies, if only four four days. Staying with them reminded me of how much I enjoy living in the fraternity house with all those guys, so in that way it was a little taste of home, and their support in this time was really meaningful. Prague is a cool city, a bit over-hyped, but enjoyable nonetheless. Having a favorable exchange rate for once was nice, and I lived quite well while in Prague. The Czechs are good looking people, but like most eastern Europeans, not what I would call friendly. I asked my friends if they had learned any Czech drinking games; they laughed and said they had not, and the only game they ever seemed to play was who could be ruder.
Prague is a very old and important city, once the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, one of the most important territories of the Holy Roman Empire. While the city is old and beautiful, the stamp of communism is still very visible. My friends said to be careful about leaning up against anything, as you're bound to get "commie dust" all over you're clothes, which I witnessed first hand. Communism does some weird things to a country. You don't hear people saying much on the street, a behavior that lingers because of decades of passive aggression. As a sign that they did not enjoy communism, everyone went out of their way to appear unhappy all the time, which is easy to do in a crappy eastern European country. The escalators for the subway stations there go really fast, which really catches you off guard. Apparently that was done to discourage children and the elderly from going out much, for what purpose, I do not know. The cops in Czech are pretty corrupt, so my friends told me to avoid them at all costs. What I didn't avoid was the fried cheese sandwiches, which are really just like a big fried mozzarella stick between some bread. Simple, artery-clogging goodness.
I went to Vienna with my program over the long weekend made possible by May Day. Vienna is the most impressive city I have seen by far. It truly has the look and feel of an imperial capitol, except for that the large and powerful Austrian Empire is no more, which is something the Austrians miss but will never say so. Austria is an interesting country, and although it is fairly similar to Bavaria in terms of culture, dress, and language, it is distinctly different from Germany, which the Austrians make very clear. It is a small, rich nation of 8 million and is surprisingly conservative, in fact, the president got in trouble some years ago for making positive comments about the progress and growth that was facilitated by the fascist rule of the National Socialists, but I wouldn't call them xenophobic or fascist. Getting citizenship there is similarly as tough as in Switzerland, before you can even drive on the Autobahn in Austria you have to purchase a special decal to put on your car. The seeming paranoia of the Austrians is understandable, their location is on the edge of eastern Europe, which is historically unstable. It was in Austria that the Turkish Empire's attack on Europe was finally stopped, and today they are still ready for invaders; the mountains of Austria are full of bunkers, barracks, artillery emplacements, and caches of weapons and food. Not really what you expect from the land of The Sound of Music and wienerschnitzel (Wien=Vienna, hence the name).
Nonetheless, the Viennese are the nicest city dwellers I've met and aren't nearly as snooty as people in München can be. We asked a business man where we could find a market, to which he replied that there was one a few blocks away, but that he was headed that way anyways and would take us there. It came up in conversation that he had spent some time in the US so he was interested to hear about where we were from. When we were at a restaurant/bar my friend ran out of cigarettes and the waitress just gave him two of her own.
While there we had a free day, and a couple friends and I went to visit the graves of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss, whose graves are all together in an enormous cemetery. This was a very difficult part of the trip for me; my father loved classical music passionately, and I know how much he would have loved to be there, that this was something he would have wanted to do together. After the cemetery we continued our day by visiting the famous "Bodies" exhibit, in which preserved bodies are prepared in such a way as to illustrate the complexity and beauty of the human body. It was absolutely fascinating, and didn't bother us, in fact we were joking about a bit ghoulishly while in there, and had to keep from cracking up. Beyond muscles, they had every body system there is. There was a circulatory system that they had some how preserved and separated from the body, so that all there was was a bunch of veins and arteries in the shape of a person. The fetal exhibit was of course controversial, even though all of the fetuses died of natural causes. It was fascinating watching it develop from a tadpole at 4 weeks, to resembling a peanut sized human at 8 weeks, and then looking like a tiny baby by 16 weeks. The exhibit reminded me about how the religious right is blocking the use of stem cells in research, which is a criminal deprivation of medical technology with unlimited potential. Apparently all the people were Chinese, probably rice farmers sold by the government, which owns them anyway so I guess it doesn't matter.
That night, the program went to see "The Marriage of Figaro" at the famous and beautiful Vienna Opera House, built in the Neoclassical style. Thank god that they had little screens at every seat with the opera's lyrics, otherwise it would have been a real bore. It was very entertaining, and reading Italian translated into English by a German was at times odd and occasionally incomprehensible. Again, this was a bitter sweet experience, and I thought of my dad for much of the Opera.
This past week I had a chance to go see FC BAYERN, Müchnen's Premiere League Soccer Team, one of the best in all of Europe. The only reason we were able to get tickets was because they were playing a pushover team on a Wednesday night, otherwise their brand new stadium is always sold out and tickets are pricey. Although we were in the second to last row, the stadium is built in such a way that we felt very close (we could easily read the numbers on people's jerseys, for example). Even though I'm not a big fan of soccer, I still had an awesome time and tried to learn a bit about the game. Of course, the crowd was very German and orderly, but would suddenly rise up into an unbelievable roar between periods of intense concentration; the hardcore fan standing section never stopped clapping, chanting, or jumping up and down the entire game. And the subway ride back, as you can imagine, was densely packed with people, singing, and celebration.
Well I'm a couple weeks into the semester now, and I'll keep everyone posted on how school is going once I have a few anecdotes to tell. Unless anyone wants to read my notes written in bastardized German.
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