After travelling the world, I found a great job that returned me to the best city in America: Louisville! Still trying to get to Mongolia, but until then we can reminisce about the good times I had.
Been a long time since I posted, but yes I'm still alive. Blame the streak of hostels with weak Wi-Fi we have been staying in. Hard to upload photos. By Tuesday though we will be in Paris with lots of time (5 days, plus I've been there twice before) and I think a decent hotel, then you should see some posts roll in. Gotta catch up on...
Warsaw
Athens
Santorini
Crete
Rome
Naples/Pompeii
Florence (here now)
Venice
And I should also have the tail end of my trip finalized at that point.
Welcome to Germany. Berlin in particular... It's a big and varied country. These guys are nutjobs. Berlin is very much a modern city that makes its living as a tourist destination based off of exactly how nutty they were a century ago. They handle it today with their museums and monuments and memorabilia with the utmost taste though, I found it remarkable. The city doesn't draw me to live there, but as a historical landmark, don't miss it.
My first encounter with Germany was the train conductor that permitted me to board in Amsterdam. Most of our conversation was in Chinese, and I don't know any! He spoke in half a dozen languages, and I don't know if that display even exhausted his repertoire of polyglotism. While he rambled on about whatever, punching my ticket, I just smiled and laughed at what I could only take to be German humour. And he confirmed my notion that, yes, German is the funniest sounding language. That characteristic harshness and requisite yelling cracks me up.
Berlin is the land of sausages. The schnitzel was fine, and I thought the spatzle (special preparation of egg noodles) was amazing, but I knew it would be, having had several knock off versions in America, always delicious. However one German laughed at me for thinking spatzle was German. No, it's Bavarian. How silly of me... And so, since spatzle doesn't count apparently, sausage it is! It's everywhere, and constantly dollar-dog-day if you know where to look.
Aside from the captions in my pictures below (need to streamline my posting process, just haven't had the time, and we definitely aren't slowing down, as we prepare for seven cities in two weeks through Greece and Italy), I had lot of fun in the German nightclubs, out till 7am one night. German techno clubs are tradition, couldn't leave without partaking. Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA (yes I know that's Swedish, not German, but it's all I could think about)
There isn't too much architecture to admire in Amsterdam. Nor food, nor museums, nor anything...
Churning out posts now just like Holland windmills churn butter.
Molen De Otter, 400-year-old windmill - these make Holland for me
I am happy to go through our stop in Amsterdam so quickly because I did not like this city. It is more touristy than any city I've ever been to, ever (will Rome or Venice change that?). Half of the shops are for booking boat/bus/building/museum tours. Sidewalks are packed through much of the day. As in Copenhagen, a big chunk of the street space is given to bikes. Unlike Copenhagen, there are a lot of motorized bikes, for men and women alike.
The Night Watch in 3D, constructed to celebrate Rembrandt's 400th birthday.
The waterway in the center of the heavily-trafficked tourist area
Outside of the tourist areas, the city is hip and young. The "coffee shops" are plentiful and peculiar. But if you aren't in Amsterdam for those, good luck. Not much noteworthy as far as food goes, and much of what's there is Indian or Middle Eastern - not my type. Museums are expensive and lines for admittance wrap for blocks and blocks. The house where Anne Frank hid from Nazis (I was surprised to learn it was in Amsterdam, and not somewhere in Germany.) and the Van Gogh Museum are the big ones. Better get your ticket far ahead of time!
Too many feet!
Homomonument: not some weird Dutch word but rather a memorial for persecuted homosexuals
What's a "sterdam"?
The Royal Palace
I did get my first souvenir here: a wallet. I was in the market for a better wallet anyway, and I had earlier in Belgium lamented to Phil that the wider Euro notes stick out of my wallet. As fate would have it, one of the vendors in the Amsterdam street market sold wallets and voilà!
The only SFW photo I could extract from the Sexmuseum.
The one special thing we got out of Amsterdam was a stop in the Sexmuseum, one of the most visited museums in the Netherlands. Not much to say about it here, but it was... a visual experience. Light-hearted and funny as well. Highly recommended. You won't spend more than two hours in there, if I'm being generous, but admission is cheap.
If Disney Land were a concept in the 14th Century, Ghent would have fit the bill without even trying.
Ghent
Sint-Michielsbrug
I was set on Ghent from the outset of planning this trip thanks to the advice of a coworker. Neither Phil nor I knew what to expect, but the coworker did an extensive trip through Belgium and never stopped raving about this city. So I was convinced! If you look up a little about it, you find it was one of the largest cities in Medieval Europe and then became a hub for the textile industry. It is not a big city today by most metrics, but it is densely packed with awesome structures around the market area.
As far as touring the city goes, the central attraction is one street through the middle of town which displays historic buildings, one after another after another. You have never seen anything like it. Bam bam bam, your jaw stays on the floor.
Inside the one accessible church, Saint Bavo's Cathedral
Gravensteen Castle
Lightning Bird Tree, but we did not get to see it lit up.
Ghent is not only comprised of exquisite buildings.
An alley with legalized graffiti
Ghent is known for one type of food beyond what permeates all of Belgium: waterzooi. It is a creamy stew featuring either whitefish or chicken. We found a place that served both types; Phil had chicken and I had fish. And I must say this was the single best food item I have had on my whole trip, maybe in my life. I continue to talk about it days later. Everything is getting compared to it. I think Phil wants me to shut up about it.
Excited for my Nordic waterzooi. Little did I know how delightful it would be.
There is a Belgian restaurant right next to where I used to live in Indianapolis. It was my favorite restaurant in Indy. It has fries and crepes and mussels and carbonnade (from my previous post) and waterzooi. I doubt I could enjoy it now that I have had the real stuff.
Continue below to read about our quick, unplanned detour in Antwerp.
Our first European stop with skyscrapers: Brussels!
Have you ever been in a sewer? How about a sewer museum? Well I have, and it only cost me 4€. It really was cool. Dare I say it should make your bucket list! It's something everybody needs to do once. Learn everything there is about sewers, especially Brussels' sewer history, and smell the stinking l'eau usée. The Brussels Sewer Museum was a step underground and away from the typical museums. And you know it is authentic because there were no English translations. Learned a lot of French potty language.
The device pictured is used to reduce the cross-sectional area of the pipe beneath it and redirect the flow to the bottom of the pipe, thereby breaking up the caked sludge.
As cuisine goes, Brussels is known for waffles (gaufres), vol-au-vent, carbonnade stew, beer, and chocolate. The chocolate is good, but I am not a chocolate guy. Similarly, I should not judge beer, but I did have a couple because Belgium touts ¨trappists¨ which I did know to be a type of beer I like... as far as beers go. The vol-au-vent & carbonnade stew main courses are excellent; I had the former, similar to chicken pot pie with an extremely light and crispy biscuit as ¨crust¨, and Phil had the latter, a hearty beef stew.
Chocolate? Chocolate!?!? CHOCOLATE!?!?!?!?!?!
Sint-Katelijneplein
Congress Column
European (EU) Parliament
Saint Boniface
Inside a church, forget which one
Porte de Hal castle
WWII Memorial and a shot of the huge Brussels cityscape.
Église Notre-Dame du Sablon
Baldwin I, First King of Jerusalem
Mannekin Pis (Piss Boy) dressed up for some royal Ethiopean gathering.
But now the waffles. I still drool over those. It is easy to find those Belgian classics here in Amsterdam, but I have resisted buying any more. There are actually two types of Belgian waffles, the Brussels variety and the Liège. The Brussels waffle is light and crispy and classically covered in sugar, as a funnel cake. Though that one is good, the Liège waffle is the stud. It is chewier and covered in carmelized sugar.
Some shots of the Grand Place
I am a little behind on my posts, already in Amsterdam and getting to
Berlin tomorrow. We are moving so quickly. We have had the time to hit
everything we want in the cities so far, but not much time for writing
blogs. When we get back to our hostels, we collapse exhaustedly. Anyway, I hope to catch up on my writings in the next few days.
I am through it already but my next post will be for our smaller Belgian destinations, Ghent and Antwerp. Then I will post for Amsterdam, which we just finished touring. Next stop and subsequent post: Berlin.
Overall, Brussels was the best destination yet, easily. Livable, modern and historic, tantalizing food, and French. Let's see if Berlin can top it.
Have you been listening to Bleacher's dropped Gone Now album? I have, and I love it. Of the pre-release teasers, I Miss Those Days gets the most playtime. But of all the songs, Goodbye and, above all, Goodmorning, are my favorites.
Angering a dinosaur outside the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
I wasn't even trying to capture bikes in this shot of a downtown canal, but it's unavoidable.
Phil and I had an extended stay in Copenhagen because it is one of three locations where I know a local. This time, Saaaaaaaam and his wife Shikha took care of us. I fenced with Sam at Tufts, and he is hands down the funniest guy I know personally, so it was great to catch him during his comp sci postdoc at the IT University of Copenhagen.
Frederik's Church in the background
Inside Frederik's Church
Front to back, my liver, beef tartare, and herring smørrobrøds, then Phil's three
First thing we looked up was what Danes eat. Not much is the answer. They have excellent hot dogs and sausages, but how will they compare to Germany's? But their one truly signature dish is smørrobrød (translates literally as butter and bread), aka open-faced sandwiches almost always with rye bread. Why make a sandwich open-faced? Seems dumb. Sandwiches with two pieces of bread are convenient, right? Millenia of fine-tuning food brought us to the modern sandwich. Well, as Sam put it, don't think of these meals as sandwiches, but rather some concoction served over a piece of bread, like how Americans might add a piece of Texas toast to a meal. Phil and I each had a sampling of three smørrobrøds from a Michelin-starred restaurant called Aamann's. I think my warm one with a liver pâté, mushrooms, and bacon stole the show.
The Little Mermaid (Den Lille Havfrue)
A fountain
Søfartsmonumentet, we think it's for WWI
Kastellet, a star-shaped fortress
Twisted Metal, anyone? Not in Holland yet.
Telia Parken, our first European football (fodbold) stadium
What else does Copenhagen have? Lots and lots of babies in luxurious strollers. It's a weird cultural thing how much natives take babies with them wherever they go. And they take the babies in style. Phil and I grew up on the mean streets in our formative years. Not these toddlers. Many strollers consume a whole sidewalk's width. Pure baby.
And then bikes, which is really cool. Almost every street has a lane dedicated for bikes, with their own crossing signals and "ready-set-go" traffic lights to let the bikers pick up speed from a stop. Copenhagen is consistently rated the best city in the world for biking, and it shows. Everything is made to accommodate bikes. A bike parking area by the train station, just for example, is always near capacity with hundreds and hundreds of bikes.
Nazi Jumbo by Carlsberg beer (actually an Indian swastika, which predates Nazi usage)
A park near Carlsberg
The Danish opera house and a food market
What's the makeup of the city? Lots of water as would be expected if you know where Copenhagen lies. At the center of the city is the Tivoli amusement park. Then there's a fortress, a castle, a soccer stadium, a mermaid, and a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood called Christiania. This last one is the my favorite part of the city. It's like suddenly being transported to South America, as best as I can estimate without ever having been to South America. There's some drug use and hippie-dippie garbage, but the neat aspect is making the transition from walking in a park covered in trees to walking on people's property, still covered by the same trees and ambiance. Healthy, unleashed dogs strutted with no owner. One dog followed us for a hundred feet or so and then tailed off to go about its day, further away from the garage that initially housed it.
Part of Christiania
Danish Kroner (the Euro is not used here, and it's not the Swedish Kroner either)
featuring a hole in the 5-piece and celebrating Niels Bohr in a commemorative 20-piece
Niels Bohr Institute - We could smell the physics greats of last century.
The house in which Niels Bohr grew up.
Our big museum stop of Copenhagen actually lies a half hour north of Copenhagen, in Humlebæk, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, known for its outdoor sculpture garden right on the shoreline. Two major exhibitions were up for our visit, featuring a Dane named Tal R and a South African named William Kentridge. Phil and I agree that Tal R's art is excessively abstract, neither of ours interest (the kind that makes you think a monkey could do it sometimes), but Kentridge's work made for quite an exhibition. I'd go so far as to name him one of my favorite artists, inspired to learn more about him since the museum visit. His work has changed significantly over time, from stop-motion videos with charcoal to a complete fusion of many artistic media.
Recent work from Kentridge
*snicker*
We got rained on for some of our outdoor sculpture exploration.
In our spare time, we booked all our travel up to France, which gets us through July 8, at which point Phil will head home and I will continue to southern Germany and Switzerland with Mike and Mark. We also booked our hostels for the next week. I was thrilled to learn it's easy to find them for ~$25pppn in most any city. Also, turns out the approximate 48 hours we have in each city should be enough for how Phil and I want to backpack through Europe. Many critics admonished our speedy plan but after realizing our downtime during five days in Copenhagen, we are really happy with our schedule. Yeah, some cities are bigger than Copenhagen and Stockholm, but that's the way it's gonna be.
This sofa store sells only two sofas, formerly just one according to Sam. So avant-garde!
Up next: Brussels (where Phil will try to retrieve a computer out of the airport lost-and-found from two years ago), Ghent, and Amsterdam.
edit: a couple shots I really like that I captured on my way out of Copenhagen, after I originally submitted this post
