Dresden

For a city that was carpet bombed to the ground not so long ago, Dresden is surprisingly densely packed with historical buildings. They rebuilt practically everything and there really is a lot to do here. Like Pisa, it really is a tourist city. The train station opens up onto the main street, and you simply walk down it until you reach the densely packed historical center. Whereas it probably took hundreds of years to spawn the originals, Dresden sports rebuilds of all the good stuff, most replaced in the last 20 years.

Yes, there are churches, a humongous palace, museums galore, and all the other things necessary for a major european city. Dresden is also the most affordable city I've been to in terms of museums and sights. Since all the attractions are state run, a single ticket can be bought for access to all of them (with audioguide included!). So I had a field day running from museum to museum (there were 17). In odd contrast, the exteriors of the buildings were made to look like the originals, but the interiors are all new and modern.

Although most of them did not have anything exceptionally outstanding, save the art gallery's Sistine Madonna by Rafael, they had the most impressive armory I've ever seen. Complete sets of full plate, chain mail, even scale mail. Hauberks, pikes, spears of every size and length. Hundreds of guns and swords and guns and swords in combination with each other to make the gunblade. A greatsword with a blade longer than I am tall and sharper than the kitchen knives I use at home impressed me a great deal.

And that was just the old town. Just as I was leaving, I decided to poke my head into the new town a little and to my surprise I found a street festival going on. I definitely would have liked to stay longer and see the rest of this city, but unfortunately one day was all I had. Berlin is up next.

Prague

Arriving in Prague by bus was a shock. Suddenly I stepped out into a world where my european money doesn't work and the language is completely unintelligible to me. Spanish worked well in Italy and France, and in Germany and Austria I can recognize word roots and so decipher a meaning, but in the Czech Republic that doesn't work. Fortunately once I got over the humps of getting some money, comprehending the public transport system, and orienting myself, I found that Prague is a rather hospitable city. Its inhabitants treat tourists well and are more likely to speak English than in the other countries I've been to.

But once you get over the novelty of being in eastern Europe, its pretty much like other european cities with sprawling plazas, a castle, churches everywhere, and a rich cultural history. One thing I did like very much is that huge swaths of the city where the sights are concentrated are pedestrian only. Areas like those always seem more vibrant and pleasant than places with large vehicles around.

For the capital of a country, Prague has less tourist attractions than one might expect. Prague castle, the largest continuous castle in the world, houses six museums and an enormous church, which altogether takes a day to go through. But after that, there's just the jewish community with their extremely dense cemetary, and the old town with a few art galleries (I visited one on Salvador Dali and one on Alfonse Lucha, who popularized art noveau).

The city is not really that big either, but with subway or tram stops every 100 meters, it seems ridiculous not to use it. I do enjoy a good train system; buses not so much. Czech food did not agree with me. It's pretty bland and tasteless, consisting of just bread and meat in various forms, with few vegetables to be found. But there are supermarkets aplenty, including good old Tesco, the first I've seen in Europe. So all in all, Prague was more pleasant than I was expecting. I thought it would be more chaotic like Rome, but it turned out to be a friendly and relaxing place. Still, I should have left for Dresden a day earlier because I ran out of things to do.

Picture Post 6

The largest church in Venice has an interior covered with scenes like this, from top to bottom. At first it looks like somewhat crude paintings, but if you look closer you see that it's actually a very detailed mosaic. Sixty kinds of marble of all colors was used to make this church.

Wow, it looks like they copied the Venetian in Las Vegas

Gondola traffic jam

More gondola-y goodness

It is not a good idea to carry food in your hands. The birds will attack

The Grand Canal that splits the city

Fountains like these are everywhere in Italy, sometimes in the middle of nowhere.

One of the infinite number of Venetian side canals


Street musicians playing a duet as the sun goes down in Venice

They try to keep things classical in Vienna

The main pedestrian thoroughfare in Vienna, a nice enough place except there are hardly any places to sit. Look how awkward that sitting guy looks--that ledge is high!

The Vienna vacation palace of the Hapsburgs and a World Heritage site

Europe in a nutshell: old architecture, public transportation, and people smoking

Vienna has a cemetary housing Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Strauss, among others

Vienna also kept Mozart's parrot. They say this is his actual parrot that he had stuffed, and then was passed on from person to person before winding up in a museum.

Vienna

Vienna is a city of classical music. This is not surprising since it produced Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mahler, among others. It's such a large part of the culture here that there are opera houses and music halls everywhere. On all major pedestrian walkways, ticket vendors dressed in 18th century clothing desparately sell that night's show. It is a constant fight for an audience as shows are usually held daily in each of these places.

Beyond music, Vienna is known for its large gothic cathedral and two palaces of the Hapsburg family, a dynasty that ruled the region for 600 years. The primary palace was the most interesting site of the city because it goes over in extraordinary detail about the lives of its most famous inhabitants, the emperor Franz Josef and his wife Elizabeth. Emperor Josef was a pretty cool emperor. Every day he set aside two hours and anyone in his kingdom could have an audience. He also lived in austerity with a simple iron bed and wooden washbasin.

I also visited the vacation palace, designated as a world heritage site, but that was a mistake. The prices were gouging, the exhibits crowded with people, and the material was a repeat of the other palace. In retrospect, since both palaces had to do with the same people, I guess the repetition makes sense and I should have seen that coming. Vienna did have a very interesting music museum though, that goes through science, culture, and creativity of it in a very slick environment.

All in all, I found Vienna to be pretty bland after the unique characters of Rome, Florence, and Venice. The city was very spread out, making walking a time-consuming ordeal. Maybe someday if I get really interested in classical music or opera (and rich enough to afford the tickets) I'd come back, but for now I'm content to move on to Prague.

Venice

Venice does not feel real. It is like some kind of theme park where things are there more for entertainment than for municipal purposes. This is not surprising for a city that seems 100 percent driven by tourism. Venice is made up of a bunch of islands separated by canals, some of which can be crossed over by bridges. The grand canal neatly divides Venice into larger districts, and since only three bridges cross the grand canal, the entirety of foot traffic is directed to these three points in the city. While not too large of a city, it certainly seems like it is since one is forced to cross the width of the city just to reach a bridge. For example, say you were right across the grand canal from the place you want to be, but you happen to be on the opposite side of the district than where the bridge is. Well, you have to walk all the way to the bridge and then all the way back on the other side.

But wait, it is worse than that. Streets from Venice are not made logically, or if they were then they assume that water traffic is easy and plentiful, which it no longer is. Walking the streets of Venice is like wandering through a labyrinth with alleys that are never straight and, more often than not, dead end. This Bete Noire of a city determines at whim whether you will reach your destination as you stumble around blindly. Oh yeah, maps do not work here either. But I found it rather fun to wander through this maze. I like to think I am good at orienteering, but I was stumped so many times, constantly having to backtrack. Whenever I think I am starting to get the hang of it, I get completely lost.

So as a consequence, it always takes at least twice as long as you think to get wherever it is you are going. There are tricks that you learn along the way. For example, while street names are not helpful with a map, churches are, and you can usually find them by their steeple and use them as waypoints to get closer to your destination. Also, since traffic is funneled to those three bridges, simply finding a stream of people and following the stream will take you in that direction. It would make a great activity to start somewhere, pick a destination, and then race someone to see who can get there first (without running).

Adding to the amusement park aspect of it, every shop is either selling carnivale masks, pizza, glass decorations, or gelato. The gelato here is better than the gelato anywhere else in Europe, at least so far as the places I have been. The combinations of the flavor, portion sizes, and price are second to none. For one euro you can get a scoop of size between 3/4 to 1 cup, much cheaper for the amount than anywhere else. There are quite a few museums around Venice, but none so interesting as the ones in other Italian cities. It does have a fairly large palace, which was very tastefully decorated compared to the ostentation of other palaces. The palace also held the worlds largest canvas painting, which was indeed quite large, and came complete with an actual dungeon, which I found pretty entertaining.

Also of note was the Guggenheim museum that was nondescript, unlike its massive sister museum in New York. I usually find abstract expressionism to be somewhat less than real art, since it is supposed to express the subconscious mind and therefore should only be interpreted by the subconscious, and minds like that should not be in a museum or near sharp objects. But at any rate, there was one featured piece that, either through some trick of lighting or by the properties of the painting itself, you could not actually focus your eyes on it. Whenever you try, you end up looking past it like you do at those 3-D pictures in order to get the 3-D effect. It was a very weird experience.

All in all, I really enjoyed Venice, even though it took so long to find places that I wanted to go. Well, it is good I did not cover everything since I would really like to come back here some day. Also, I do not know how much longer my body can take this five-scoops-of-gelato-per-day habit without suffering ill effects. On to Vienna!

Picture Post 5

Needs no caption

Classic Italian riverside street in Pisa
Olde tyme architecture in Florence, the city is a designated UNESCO world heritage site

The outside of the cathedral and duomo. This is the first time I've seen a multicolor exterior, but it's done in red, white, and green marble I suppose to be patriotic

Florence cityscape from outside

The graffiti in front of Juliet's house

Florence's river at night



Inside the big duomo (dome)

The main bridge crossing Florence's river, lined with gold and jewelry shops

Verona's old Roman arena

As you can see, it still functions as a performance hall

Verona

As a city, Verona does not have much, especially when compared to the big hitters. It has an old Roman stadium, but nothing compared to the Colisseum. It has a tower too, but it's not as big or nearly as famous as Pisa's. It has a castle, but Milan's outsizes it by a good amount. It has a few churches, but not as numerous nor as significant as Florence's. In short, Verona does a lot of things, but none as well as other cities.

It's largest distinction is that it is home to the oldest working stadium in the world. That Roman stadium is still being used today as an opera house and for musicals. So it's in far better condition than the Colisseum, and one can clearly see the effciency of design used to get people in and out quickly. It probably takes five minutes to fill and evacuate that thing. Verona is also the setting for Romeo and Juliet, and they have an attraction called Juliette's House, even though it was never lived in by a Capulet. It is interesting to see however as the walls of the courtyard entering it are covered by layers and layers of graffiti to look like some superdense Jackson Pollock paint spattering. I'm sure this thing is worth millions of dollars to a modern art museum. It's a collective effort of tens of thousands of people who visit the site and mark the walls.

That being said, Verona is not a place I would want to visit again. I saw everything of interest to me in the few hours I was there, and still had time for lunch. It certainly does not seem like an Italian town and has a much slower pace to it. Maybe it would be a relaxing tourist destination. Anyways, Venice promises to be much more interesting.

Florence

Florence is the kind of city you expect to see when you think about Italy. The streets are narrow and filled with scooters, the buildings are all old and have a historic air to them, and there is a church on every street. A river divides the city in half and bridges cross over it every hundred meters or so. It is home to a plethora of museums, but only two that people really go to: the Accademia and the Uffizi.

The Accademia is built around Michelangelo's David. Literally. You walk into an entry room and there are some paintings, enter a hall with some unfinished Michelangelo sculptures, and then wham! there he is at the end of the hall. And that's the end of the museum. Most people spend less than an hour here. But David is all the museum needs. I had high expectations of it, and even those were blown away. His knees have all the ligaments and his limbs have veins. I had a reservation to get in, but the reservation line was actually longer than the non-reservation line so I didn't use it. Stupid tours.

The Uffizi gallery doesn't have a stunning centerpiece, but instead has a variety of high-tier work including Boticelli's Venus and pieces from each of the ninja turtles. They stretch this collection through a very long museum bordered by a hallway containing busts of every Roman emperor from Julius to the last Constantine. Florence is definitely a city I could have spent more time in as there are so many museums, palaces, and churches to visit. But of course they each charge an exorbitant amount for entry. Fortunately they each have their own unique character, so it doesn't end up blurring all together.

Next stop: Verona, the setting for Romeo and Juliet and some other stuff.

Picture Post 4

Outside of the Colosseum walls

Interior of the Colosseum, the view from a senator's seat

Colosseum at ground level. The arena floor was made out of wood planks and has been removed to reveal the rooms underneath the floor that house the animals, slaves, backdrops, etc.

All that's left of the Roman forum

This dome is in the Pantheon and is made entirely out of concrete with no structural supports. Either engineering genius, or sort of dangerous

The hallways of the Vatican museum all looked like this, covered from ceiling to floor with paintings

The secretive Vatican archives

Me mailing stuff from the Vatican post office

Interior of St. Peter's Basilica, but the picture doesn't do it justice

The Spanish Steps after a rain (the guy on the right is a street performer)

Pisa

Pisa is a one-hit wonder of a city. As I'm sure you are aware, they have a tower, and it is leaning. It's a nice tower and all, but it's not exceptionally tall. If it were standing straight, Pisa would have a fraction of the tourism it enjoys now. Anyways, Pisa was a welcome respite from the unending crowds of Rome. There's far fewer people here and better weather, but the tower's plaza brings you right back to Rome with the tour groups, the heat that somehow localizes in that area, and the bazaar-like rows of trinket hawkers.

Pisa is essentially a ring with the train station on one side, the tower on the other, and a main road connecting the two. Very convenient. However, I didn't find the tower or the adjacent church that interesting. Maybe I was tired from Rome or maybe I felt that it isn't really important. I think that if they wanted to fix it, they could, but they obviously don't because people are willing to pay 20 bucks each to climb it. So they let the tower stay as it is, and even though they "stabilized" it, it still slips a little each year. So I only spent a few hours at the site before continuing to France.

From my impression, and the impressions of others I've talked to, Italians are not a very accommodating bunch. Also, if you step out of line, they're not afraid to launch into a tirade to chew you out. We've noticed that Italians, especially waitstaff, treat non-Italians quite differently than Italians. At a restaurant, you can bet that the Italians will be served before you are, your food will take longer to come, and the bill even longer. Either they're tired of dealing with confused tourists all the time or they're "just plain ornery" as one Canadian put it. I don't blame them, I mean, tourists aren't going to return to the same establishment even if the service is good, so why try? But when such a large part of your economy is centered around tourist trade, you might be happier if you don't resent it. Oh well, bad customer service isn't going to stop millions of people coming through to see the sights.

Maybe Florence will change my mind.

Picture Post 3

Milanese city art

Now that's a castle!

Michelangelo's last work

Now that's a crazy instrument! Also found in the Milan castle museum with the Michelangelo sculpture

More Milanese city art

Shopping arean in Milan at the city center

The beach of Nice

Same beach, later in the day

A public park locks its side gate at 7, unbeknownst to many of us visitors. To get out we had to climb over this spiky railing that hangs out at a third story level over the sidewalk.

Vatican City

There is so much history in Vatican City and so many collected works of art that it is impossible to appreciate everything. It just becomes a blur of frescoes and sculptures and canvases. So everyone focuses on the big ones because they stand out: the basilica, the sistine chapel, and the largest and most important paintings. The other 99 percent of the city is largely ignored and skipped through. To be in the Vatican museums is to be submerged in a river of people and carried along in a current of bodies. You might try to fight the current for a while, to stay a little longer in one room, but in the end it is not worth the effort and you just let it push you along.

Groups of people flock to the Vatican well before opening, standing in line along the city wall. I was early enough that I was inside within 15 minutes of opening and immediately raced to the Sistine Chapel, which lies at the end of the linear path through the museums. This gave me the opportunity to gaze in awe at it without the jostling crowds, and I spent nearly an hour in this room alone. The chapel itself is a flat rectangular box of a room without any decorations save the paintings covering the walls, but the paintings give the illusion that there are heavy drapes on the walls and carvings along the ceiling. It really does look 3-D.

I won't even try to describe Michelangelo's paintings, or Raffael's or Botticelli's. The museum has hoarded so much of Europe's great art that it's astounding. From the Sistine Chapel, I reentered the museum at the beginning and spent five hours I didn't realize was passing. By then, I was running out of time to see St. Peter's Basilica. Like the rest of the Vatican, St. Peter's defies description. The interior is the largest enclosed room I have ever seen and it feels so big that it is unreal. Like looking at the Grand Canyon, it's difficult to comprehend the size of it.

Unfortunately it started to hail as I left the basilica and not wanting to battle Roman rush hour in the ensuing rain, I ended my day at the Spanish steps, where a group of Spaniards held their flag and sang their anthem boisterously, Japanese tourists gawked at them, and Italians largely ignored them. Well, I've seen all the major sights in Rome, tomorrow morning I go to Pisa.

Rome

Rome is a pretty amazing city and was nothing like what I was expecting. I had heard it would be dirty, offensive, and dangerous. Instead, it was dirty, offensive, and quite safe. Once you get used to the crazy traffic anyway, and having been weaned on the streets of southeast Asia, I found it manageable.

On my first day, I made my way through the ancient city. The Colosseum, Palantine Hill, the Roman Forum. These were my playgrounds of the day, and to be honest, they were a little underwhelming. I'm aware that the hype for some of these things, like the Mona Lisa, can make it a little disappointing when you see them in real life, but I can't help it. The ruins have been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair over time that what's left is a pale shadow of what once was.

Take the Colosseum: it's walls are crumbling and pockmarked with holes that once contained metal supports. After the gladitorial games ended, the Colosseum saw new use as a residence for a noble family, animal pens, a marketplace, among others. Finally, it was used as a source of raw materials for new buildings. That's the reason why a large portion of the outer wall is missing; it was cannibalized. That being said, it's still an engineering marvel. It is a stadium designed to hold 60,000 people and built thanks to the invention of concrete.

Palantine Hill, the first site of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, and the residence of many rulers, has even less than ruins. All that's left are bare footprints of what once were buildings. Bare brick columns rise from the ground that used to be covered with marble, but like the Colosseum, was recycled. The guides just point at things and say, imagine how this used to be back when it was great. For example, the toe of a statue is all that is left on the ground, but they ask you to imagine a 12 foot statue that would fit it. The Roman forum was not much better, with only a temple left somewhat intact and the rest footprints as well, with the exception of several columns still standing here and there. Well, pictures will show it better when I can get around to a picture post.

But no time now, Vatican City is tomorrow, and that's going to be awesome and lengthy.

Nice

Well, I made it to Nice just fine. As the train was pulling into the station I noticed that the train on the adjacent track had the number of the one I needed, so a quick hop over and I was on my way to Nice. Later at the hostel, which was awesome, I talked to an avid traveler from Belgium, and she said that getting stuck somewhere does happen and in cases like those you just sit down anywhere and try to sleep until the first train the next morning. I don't know if I'd want to sit down just anywhere, but good to know this is an acceptable practice.

Nice is not a city for sightseeing, it's more of a relaxation destination. Within a few hours, I had seen all of the major sights in Nice, and so with lots more time on my hands I had to do what everyone else was doing: just sit around on the beach and in the park. Nice is a lot like any oceanside city you would find in Southern California. The beach is bordered by a wide promenade where walkers, bikers, and inline skaters cruise from one end to the other. A little inland, the streets are narrow and congested with cars. I had the misfortune of being in Nice on a Sunday, when everything is closed except for the tourist shops and restaurants right on the beach.

Throughout the day, flocks of people congregate at the public beaches. The beach is a narrow strip of smooth rocks that looked uncomfortable to lie on, but people were doing it anyway. The water is an unusual shade of blue, like the color of a raspberry Otter Pop or blue cotton candy. It looked pretty artificial and was cold despite the warm weather. So not much to say about Nice, travellers come here just to hang out and relax on the beach or eat at one of the many expensive french restaurants.

I'm sure that Rome, my next destination, will be more exciting.

Train trips

For all the tales of Europe's efficient train system, I was surprised at the diffficulty of figuring out how to travel long distances, how long it takes to travel, and the fact that it costs an arm and a leg. Flying is definitely the way to go. Less flexible, but cheaper and faster. My train experiences in Germany have been good. When they say they will arrive at 2:00, they are on the money or even sooner. When they say they leave at 6:28, you can bet that at 6:29 that train has left the station.

However, as I'm just now finding out, international travel is a whole new can of worms. I left Stuttgart on a night train to Milan last night. I figured if it's a night train going a long distance, it must be a newer one. Not so, the train was more ghetto than I had feared and complete with a complement of suspect characters. Fortunately, there were many cars and few passengers so I was able to claim a six-seat cabin to myself and tried to get some sleep. At 2am, we crossed the border between Germany and Italy. I know this because customs agents stormed the train with flashlights, yelling for passports. At 4:30am, a police squad with a german shepherd passed through every cabin looking for drugs. At 6am the customs agents swept through again. I did not try to go back to sleep.

In Italy, the trains make an attempt to follow the schedule, but there are inevitable delays. Between Milan and Nice, I change trains twice in small Italian towns. My first connection gave me 25 minutes between trains, but the arriving train was 19 minutes late. I had to run as fast as I could, laden as I was, to check which track to go to and then to make it there. That took me five minutes, and the train left five minutes late anyway. Which brings me to my current problem: Right now, I am on a train that left five minutes late, headed for a connection that only originally gave me nine minutes. If this train makes regular speed, without delay, that gives me only four minutes to make the connection. If the next train leaves late, I'm safe. If this train doesn't make it in time, I'm in trouble.

I made plans. Tonight I will be in Nice. In two days I will go to Rome. My train travel days have been carefully allotted to take me where I need to go without leeway. I like to have plans, and I like to have backup plans. But here there is no backup. This is the last train to Nice tonight (a three hour trip), and I don't have a ticket travel day to spare for tomorrow. My ticket from Nice to Rome has been bought and paid for. I hate the uncertainty. I might be stuck in a rural Italian town at the base of the Alps, far off the beaten tourist track. I might have to find a bus or something to take me the rest of the way. Or I might find myself walking blindly around in the dark in just a few hours. Well, I'll have to get to Nice one way or another.

Milan

Currently, I am en route to southeastern france by way of cutting through Italy. By chance fortune, my train trip allowed me a substantial chunk of time to see Milan. I arrived in fine condition to see the fashion capital of the world; the T-shirt I am wearing has been in my possession for 9 years, has bleach stains on the sleeve, and has three holes that I know about. I stowed my backpack and immediately high tailed it to the Metro to get to the museum that houses "The Last Supper" before it opens. My guidebook said reservations recommended, but I thought if I get there early enough, I wouldn't have to wait too long in line. But when I got there, I was promptly told that the wait was, in fact, two weeks and could I please try again later. So close and yet so far.

Well, there's other things to see in Milan. The Castle Castello Sforzesco was so big that it makes the German Rhine castles seem like childrens' playpens. Its interior houses no less than 12 museums containing medieval and renaissance artifacts as well as more modern items. There wasn't nearly enough time to see even just the museums I wanted to see, so I stuck to the highlights including a plethora of carved stone dioramas by Bambaja and the Pieta Rondanini by Michelangelo, his last work left unfinished.

I then went to the geographical center of the city where the Duomo lies. It is the third-largest church in the world and is made of pink marble. It was begun in 1386 and finished by Napoleon in 1809. Yes, it was over 400 years in the making. This building is something that has to be seen firsthand as pictures will not do it justice. Inside, barely any light gets in and the sheer volume of stone overhead feels as if you are walking through a hollowed out mountain.

Picture Post 2

The central park of Stuttgart

The Duomo in Mainz. I spent about half a day in Mainz, which lies between Bacharach and Stuttgart

A fancy room in the Ludwigsburg palace

An extremely long hall within the palace.

Looks kind of like Versailles, doesn't it?

A stone-paved street in Marlbach. Note the historical architecture of the building, which I think is called "half timber"

Bacharach on the Rhine

The hostel-castle, Schloss Stahleck

A wider view of the castle so you can see how it sits over the town

The Wernerskapelle, or the ruins of Werners chapel

The main street through Bacharach

Castles on the Rhine: a modern castle on the river and an older up in the back

Castle Katz. No, seriously.