Hostels

Alright, I've been through a lot of hostels by now, so I feel experienced enough to talk about them. Now, European hostels are not like American hostels. American hostels are usually interesting places with unique character that gives travelers a cheap place to stay in return for doing chores. European hostels, on the other hand, are more like hotels, but instead of renting you a room they just rent you a bed. They are under no obligation to provide you with anything else besides a bed and toilet facilities somewhere in the building, and sometimes that's all you get. Functioning lights are not necessarily a given. But at least you don't have to do chores.

In general, all hostels share a few characteristics. The receptionists speak passable English. The dorm rooms have at the minimum four beds, but usually more, depending on the size of the room. There are rarely bathrooms in the room, and instead there are common facilities in the hallways. The hostels always have maps to give to travelers, however the quality of these maps vary by a lot. That's really about everything that all hostels have in commons with each other.

Then what are some characteristics that most hostels have that go beyond these spartan basics? Most hostels have some kind of internet terminal, and, thank goodness, wireless internet. They usually charge for terminal use, but I've found wi-fi to be free in all cases but one. Most hostels have some kind of common room that people can hang out in, also usually with electricity sockets for people to recharge their electronics and use their computers. Some sort of breakfast should also be available, but usually these cost extra. Free breakfasts are usually just toast and jam. I consider these attributes essential to an adequate hostel. Most hostels in large cities generally don't have a curfew or lock out period either, allowing you to come and go as you please.

Okay so then what makes a good, or even great hostel? Well, a few extra amenities can make a so-so hostel good, and a lot can make a hostel great. Probably the most important thing is the staff. If the staff are standoffish or not talkative, then you can bet that hostel won't be very fun. If the staff can be found mingling with guests in their free time, then you know it's going to be a great place to stay. I find that the best staff are the ones who have backpacked around and just decided to stay in one place. It's actually quite frequent, and they usually have the best idea of what it is you need to know. A free, good breakfast is a huge step in the right direction. A good breakfast consists of the following: cereal, juice, bread, meat (always salami), and cheese. Some kind of program or activity, like a short tour or a night tour also does much to increase interactions between guests. Kitchens are pretty important, especially for those of us who have been traveling longer and realize just how much cheaper it is to buy food from the supermarket. Providing clean sheets and a pillowcase is also a plus. I have no idea how some places can get by without issuing these things because I feel disgusting staying in the places that don't. Providing lockers for the guests is a good way of showing that they care about security. And finally, serving cheap drinks at night to keep people from going out and getting messed up somewhere shows that they care about safety as well.

I have yet to find the perfect hostel that has all of these features, but I have been to some great hostels that have a lot of them. Unfortunately, you never really know how a hostel will turn out, even if you scour the web for reviews.

Holland

I'm going to just lump all of Holland together because I'm pretty behind right now and I don't have much to talk about. I encountered my first bit of bad weather here, it rained a lot and was definitely the coldest weather I've experienced so far. Anyways, the cities I encountered in Holland are Delft, the Hague, and Amsterdam, although I don't really have anything to say about Delft since I didn't see much of it and there was nothing outstanding about it.

Amsterdam was much more tame than I thought it would be. For a country with perhaps the greatest amount of personal freedom for its inhabitants, people were pretty well behaved. Sure it has its eccentricities, but once you get past those, it's just like most large cities in the Netherlands. However, since about 90 percent of the people there are tourists, it has kind of a superficial feeling to it. Most of the attractions aren't really anything of substance, with the exception of the Anne Frank house which I visited, and that was kind of depressing.

The Hague, on the other hand, was an calm, sedate city. No one was rushing anywhere, everyone was just taking their time walking or biking to their destinations rather than taking the metro. The Hague also felt very modern, with very little classic architecture around and instead more stately buildings and townhouses that reminded me of Boston. This city is famous for its role in international mediation, and its Peace Palace is the forum for countries to have their disputes settled. The palace contains items donated by countries all over the world, from Japanese tapestries to Italian marble.

All in all, though, Holland is a pretty nice country and by far the most accepting of english speakers that I've found. The people there are also genuinely friendly. But it really provided the rest I'll need for the next few weeks. I start traveling long distances once again, starting with a jump to Paris.

Bruges

Bruges smells like the sea, which is strange because it isn't on the coast. But it is a natural fortress surrounded by a large canal-moat. It's a pretty small town; it takes only about half an hour to walk across it, and it's relatively calm and quiet despite being a tourist destination. It has all sorts of modern department stores concealed behind facades to give the whole place an undisrupted, homogenous look.

For such a small palce, it nevertheless contains quite a few churches including two enormous cathedrals, one of which possesses one of the few Michelangelo sculptures that exists outside of Italy. Another church says it holds the blood of Christ as its relic of worship. Bruges also has the creepiest church I've ever been in with a relief of human bones as the altar and their Christ icon as being a lifesize mannequin at rest in a faux crypt that you have to crawl inside to see. It didn't help that hte place was completely silent, with no one else present, and eerily lit by candles.

Bruges also maintains a museum inside a medieval hospital and educates on the medical practices throughout the last millenium. Some of the things they did in attempts to heal far exacerbated the problem and were borderline torture. I wonder what sort of things we do today would illicit the same reaction a few centuries from now. Bruges also has real windmills. Not the power-generating kind but the mill kind that grinds wheat into flour, so that was interesting to see.

Bruges is known for three things: chocolate, waffles, and lace. I had the chance to watch lace weavers and it was crazy. Imagine a small octogenarian weaving a hundred different threads together, each from a separate spool. THe experts can handle about 20 threads on any particular part of the project and manipulate 8-10 in their hands at any given time. They go so fast it looks like they're just throwing the spools together. The closest visual approximate I can think of is it looks like they're washing mahjong tiles.
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Belgium chocolate is really good, and here it sells at a reasonable 25 eurocents per delectable piece. But the sheer number of chocolate shops makes it seem improbable that they each sell enough to turn a profit so I have no idea how they all exist simultaneously. At least this means that most shops are empty, leaving the customer all the time in the world to pick his assortment. Poring through the selection is actually a little thrilling and it seems they should charge extra for allowing the experience. In that time such weight and gravity is given to such a small and transient thing. This is one box of chocolates where I know exactly what I'm going to get.

Picture Post 6

This is the center of Prague

Prague has lots of these huge plazas of empty space for walking

Trumpeter heralds for a church

Prague is divided by a few rivers, spanned by lots of bridges

A band of musicians on one of the bridges

A commemoration for St. Jan Nepomucky, one of Prague's favorite saints

The Charles Bridge, Prague's most recognizable landmark

Prague's main street

Gothic cathedral in the middle of the palace grounds that took 600 years to build. This is just the backside, you should see the front (for some reason I don't have a picture of it)

This was Kafka's house

The cathedral (two pictures up) has lots of huge stained glass windows along its sides giving it cool lighting on the inside

Dresden's main pedestrian street

The castle of Dresden

The grounds of the palace of Dresden (separate from the castle)

Halfway

Well folks, here it is, the halfway point. I've been in Europe for four weeks, and I have four to go. I can't believe it's only been four weeks because it seems like so much longer. I've learned a lot about backpacking across the continent, and where I used to be the one asking advice, now I am the one dispensing it to the nervous, naive n00bs.

So how am I doing? Well, it's been really tiring. I often lose track of days, simply keeping count: one day in this city, three days in the next. I have not gotten a full night's sleep in a hostel yet, and I don't think I will; it is just the nature of staying in a hostel. Every day I do around 10-12 hours of going around, the great majority of that on my feet and walking. But I don't feel tired during the day anymore, maybe my stamina has improved or maybe I just ignore it. However, the chances of me falling asleep when I do sit down somewhere is increasing exponentially. Do I miss home? I miss the U.S. I miss being able to communicate effectively with the people around me (besides other tourists) and I miss not being surrounded by strange people all the time.

My equipment is holding up well, fortunately. My pack is doing a great job, but the contents are starting to show their wear. About a third of my clothes are approaching the realm of falling apart, and another third will soon join them. My shoes are wearing through the soles at an alarming rate, but I think they should last the rest of the trip. My pocket camera bit the dust a while back, so my big one is doing all the work now.

But things are still going very well. Everything is running smoothly and every day I see something new and great. The question then comes around: is this fun? This is a question I've discussed with other travelers. It's definitely excitingand there are definitely lots of fun things to do, but the overall traveling aspect is very stressful and tiring. There are always those times when you arrive in a strange city in the middle of the night with no sense of direction and no clue where to go, and of course nothing's in english, and you ask yourself why in the world you are doing this. But then day breaks, and you see the sun rising over the city's bell towers and you get an answer.

Brussels

For the capital of the European Union and NATO, Brussels does not have a lot to show tourists. It's a pretty sedentary place and not one I would associate with being a major political center. I don't even know what to say about it. It was perhaps the most unremarkable place I've been to. Maybe they have to keep neutral on everything, which would explain why all signs are written in at least four languages.

There's not much in the way of sights, but at least they do have some museums to look at. Beyond the standard art museum, the military history museum had the largest collection of military equipment that I have ever seen, which is odd for a country that likes to stay neutral. There was also a unique music museum that collected hundreds of instruments from around the world and put them on display, and when you stand in front of them with headphones, music from the instrument begins to play automatically.

But that's about it. Brussels is definitely not an exciting place to be. As is true for the rest of Belgium, every other store is a chocolate shop, separated only by snack/waffle shops. That's okay, because they're really good. Bruges promises to have a little more, but judging on the pace of this country, I dunno...

Berlin

Berlin is way too big of a city. I've traveled its streets for 3 days, and I still can't comprehend its enormity. There's so much going on here that it's overwhelming. It's remarkable what the city is like today when you realize that this all developed within the past few years. Since the world wars, Berlin has been bankrupt and only after the Berlin wall fell less than 20 years ago has stuff really started to pop up.

One of the things I like about Berlin is that stuff is open late. Usually in european cities everything closes at 5, maybe 6 at the latest. But in Berlin they stay open to 9 or 10. Even the Reichstag, the seat of German government stays open for visitors until midnight! So for the sheer novelty of it, I went as late as I could go. There was still a line to get in, and it was difficult to estimate if I'd make it in before they close since they admit groups of people at a time. When the call for last group went out, everyone surged forward, squeezing against the walls, and I just barely made it in. Inside, you walk around a transparent dome directly overhead the government chambers. There are footwalks that circle the dome and mirrors placed in a column in the center so that anywhere you are in the dome, you can look down upon the government officials. Or perhaps more importantly, throughout the entire time they are working, they can look up and see the public, and remember who is really in charge.

On the museum front they have quite a few unique offerings that I'm glad I didn't miss. The Pergamom museum has the famous Altar of Zeus, which is a huge carved relief that circles a large auditorium. It also has the Ishtar gate of Babylon and the Roman market gate of Miletus. An egyptian museum had mummies and a bust of Nefertiti and a jewish museum had some interesting modern art displays like a sensory deprivation chamber and a floor filled with solid metal frowny faces. There were also the repetitious museums, another incarnation of the Guggenheim, another painting and sculpture gallery and so on.

Quite a few of Berlin's sights center around the Berlin wall, or what used to be there. Checkpoint Charlie, was the last checkpoint of the wall to fall, and for some reason they commemorate it. There are quite a few interesting stories about people escaping from East Berlin to West by ingenious methods including cons, dressing as a soldier, driving a car low enough to pass under the barrier, and a hot air balloon. There was also a section of the wall still remaining nearby, but it is not a particularly impressive wall, just a concrete slab barely a couple of inches thick.

On my last day, I got pretty tired of going to museums, and I saw that the Berlin zoo claims to have the largest number of species in the world. I feel kind of guilty since I've been to many zoos and maybe I should take the time to go see things that are only in Berlin, but walking by it I saw that it was practically empty and reasonably priced. While lacking the acreage of most zoos, they did have quite a few animals and the facility seemed very much like San Diego Zoo in terms of how the habitats are designed and what animals they have. Another thing they share is they take advantage of their signature baby bear. Whereas San Diego has the panda cub, Berlin has Knut, the baby polar bear.

I like Berlin, but the size of it is just overwhelming. It's pretty hard to get from place to place, even with the public transport system. It's expensive, infrequent, complicated, and it usually takes multiple transfers to get to where you want to go. Even though there were many things I didn't get to see, I still got tired of it and was happy to leave for Brussels.