ex-Berliners

Still on the train to Copenhagen by Hamburg, and sleepy since we woke up before five.

In Berlin, we stayed at Eleanor’s house….all the time.

We saw her, her kitchen, her living room, and her vacationing housemate’s bedroom-suite, where we slept and pretty much spent all our time in Berlin, since Annalise had a minor cold and I had tons of work. Eleanor is a casual acquaintance of mine from Carleton, ‘0myyear. She went to the same publishing institute that Annalise attended in Denver. She moved to Berlin with her boyfriend, after they lived in Denver for about a year, and upon arrival, he moved to Dumpsville, population him. Now she goes out with another person, German, and is an editor for an English magazine called Ex-Berliner. We think that’s pretty cool. Anyway, she was incredibly hospitable, giving us keys to her apartment and an enormous room to stay in, which we did.

It’s a shame that we didn’t really get to see any of Berlin, but that’s how it goes sometimes. And it’s not a place we could have come close to covering in two full days anyway. And we actually did get out, so it’s not fair for me to say that. Eleanor lives in what appears to be the hippest place in Berlin, like Bucktown with a can of spray paint. We went to a couple cafés and a first-rate falafel/shawarma place, and it was a new experience to stay in a part of a major city that was not old and visited, but instead rather lived in.

By the way, the Berlin toilets are wacky and unlikable. They don’t have water, it’s dry and bare. When you flush, water mercifully arrives to whisk any droppings from the platform and down the hole, though Eleanor says sometimes the aid of a brush is necessary. Gross.

Staying with Eleanor is kinda like the beginning of the end for us, mostly because we knew her already and it was really comfortable and easy to be there. Now comes more people we know to the north (via Hamburg.)

Only a few pictures. Annalise wishes we would have taken some shots of her falafel plate, if just as proof that we left the house.

Vienna

On the train to Copenhagen (via Hamburg) now.

We left Prague to Vienna last Wed., I believe, and stayed at one of Europe’s premier hostels—Hostel Ruthensteiner. Almost everyone there had come from Melbourne. We also went to this place called the Gosser Bierklinik several times for some of my favorite beer that I would drink in Chicago and Northfield all the time. We also saw some great museums and churches and had an all-around swell time, but there’s nothing fascinating to report. One night, I ate two frankfurters, two bratwurst and a donut at a Xmas market—followed by some Gossers. We ordered locally here, and one night I got gulash, which came with a fried egg and a hot dog with ends shaped like jester’s caps—true Vienna beef.

Pics.

PragueRock

Oh man, three posts in two days! Pretty soon, I'll blog things we haven't even done yet!

In Prague, we stayed at a hotel that was not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE STARS! This is five stars higher than what we are used to. It was an amazing travel zoo deal for 63 Euros a night, including free Internet.

In the Czech Republic, people speak Czech.

For example, we Czech-ed into our hotel, only to discover it was the wrong one. I had taken us on the metro to the other Corinthia hotel in Prague, which was a star less and so completely unacceptable. Anyway, we had a vast breakfast buffet at our hotel, plus we had MTV in German, which was hilarious when it came time for dubbed South Park. Remind me to imitate that for you in person.

The first night we Czeched out the Christmas Market. It was worlds better than Toulon and even cooler than Wurzburg. We bought glasses of hot wine. In the city square we saw something really bizarre: there was this woman in a 10 ft by 10 ft glass cube doing step aerobics to dance music. We’re pretty sure she was advertising for a local gym.

The next day we visited the oldest synagogue in Europe still in use. It was built in 1275. A Czechered past, if you will. It was nice since we had seen about a million cathedrals, but no mosques nor synagogues. We also went to the museum of medieval torture. Glad I was born when I was born.

All around, Prague was great. In fact, I think you should vacation there. It’s cheap relative to the rest of Europe. It’s safe and there’s tons to see, without so many crowds. And St. Vitus Cathedral has stained glass equal to, if not surpassing, that of the cathedrals in France.

While walking on the Charles Bridge, which I think is the longest pedestrian bridge in Europe, and probably the most beautiful as well, we saw a man playing one of those organ grinders. (You know, one of those organ grinders.) The CD said fur alle Anlasse on it, and I liked the music at the time, so, on an impulse, I bought ourselves our first souvenir. What a mistake. It’s like ballpark organ music, but to ABBA. Oh dear.

On our way out, we almost missed our train to Vienna because Annalise had to toast her bread and peel her egg for a soft-boiled egg sandwich. Czech Please!

(Pictures? Czech. Tons.)

Things Get Wurz

(Wow, two posts in two days!)

When Katie, a Carleton friend of mine and former language assistant in France, heard that Annalise and I were applying for teaching positions there about 1.5 years ago, she advised against asking for the southern port town Toulon. She, like us, blogged her experiences, which involved lines like “The top ten reasons I hate Toulon,” and “I saw another homeless man masturbating on the sidewalk today while walking home from school, and for some reason this time it made me want to cry.”

Imagine her surprise when I Skyped her from a bar in Toulon! (Stop, what you’re doing right now and imagine it!)

This was unplanned. The original plan had been two nights in Wurzburg, in central Germany, to break-up the interminable journey ahead—from the south of France to Prague. We’d grab the bus back to Marseille, take the seven hour high-speed domestic train ride north (Strasbourg, about an hour away from Nancy), hit four more high-speeds in Germany to arrive in the center, in Wurzburg, at 23:45, fourteen hours after our departing Provence.

Unfortunately, the train to Strasbourg was completely booked. Not knowing what to do, we panicked and got on the next train to anywhere, figuring we could reassess while moving north or east, since time was of the essence.

That was a somewhat stupid idea, and ultimately of no consequence. Instead of drawing up a new game plan, we realized there was no game plan, nothing to do but to delete our first night in Wurzburg and figure out where to go on the way in the north or center of France. All hotels were booked everywhere desirable, including Strasbourg, since it was a) Friday and b) the time when fairy tale Christmas markets were popping out of the grounds of town centers throughout Europe, kinda like the alien tripods at the beginning of War of the Worlds but benevolent. Already knowing all this, we got off at the first town after Marseilles, Toulon, to get down to business.

(As I write this on a train in Germany, I wonder: why can’t European parents discipline their kids? This is getting ridiculous! Everywhere we go, if kids are on the train car, they are running and/or screaming. These German parents smiling. Unbelievable. Our first night in Provence, this Italian couple’s kids were pulling leaves off the plants and shrieking while Fleur-du-cap’s wonderful Harald pulled at his graying hair. Right now, there’s this kid who ran down the aisle to the empty seat behind me. He’s begun pushing the tray table and making all sorts of commotion. German noise is the worst type of noise. His sweatshirt, by the way, says Indiana University. His father is looking at either him or me, smiling like “what can you do?” Everything, asshole! He thinks the train is his kids’ personal playground/babysitter. The primary school kids in France were also misbehaved. I hate hate hate hate European parents.)

So we first had to call to cancel our first night in Wurzburg, which meant we had to find free wifi (why public phonebooth calls from France to Germany are next to impossible is fodder for another, more boring and even more hateful post). We found it here, in front of this abandoned internet café, which was comical even in the moment. Then, we went back to the train station, where we learned the only way up north would be via night-train to Strasbourg. So, instead of taking a seven hour high speed train ride in the day to Strasbourg from Marseille, we were taking a ten hour low-speed one from Toulon. Between now and then, we had 12 hours.

Although at first blush Toulon seemed nice, we don’t question Katie. There were lots of fashionable stores and cafes, and though we didn’t make it to the seashore, we did check out the crappy Christmas market. The palm trees were sloppily strewn with lights by someone who could almost give a shit, and there was an animated polar bear in a Santa hat that swayed its hips sideways while making masturbatory gestures. We went to a Chinese restaurant, and a bar with wifi called Shannons, at which I caught up with Katie, and then we went onto the sleeping car.

The sleeping car was a memorable experience. We had actually tried to get seats, because passengers in sleeping cars are very vulnerable to being robbed, but already all the seats on the night train had been reserved, so couchette it was.

Squishing the definition of the word “room,” a couchette consists of six spare bunks, three on each side, with room in the middle for someone not overweight to be able to turnaround. Each passenger gets a bottle of water, a piece of paper (blanket) and a bag (pillow). I kid, kind of. It’s actually worth the price: there’s nice little reading lights that illuminate only the area of the bed where your head should be placed, and the water bottle is an unexpected amenity. We each had second-level beds across from each other. We thought we were the first ones on the couchette.

“Oh my God! This is hilarious!” Annalise shouted, as she proceeded to take pictures of the “room,” blinding the compartment with flash.

“This is Awesome!” I shouted back. “Check out these lights for reading!!!!”

“I wonder if anyone else will even be in this car, or if we’ll have the whole room to ourselves!”

“I can’t even fit in the bed, ha ha ha!!! Here, eat the laptop so no one steals it!!!!”

“Oh my God, I just noticed the guy up there sleeping! Did you!!!”

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU THINK HE’S ASLEEP?????!!!!!!”

Then we realized that we should be quiet, that we were making fools of ourselves and should not really be talking at all. Which was weird, since it was only 10 p.m., and our plan had been to snack, chat, read and then try to sleep but not succeed.

At the next stop twenty minutes later (back in Marseille), the remaining beds filled. It was Annalise and five guys.

I read for a little bit; Annalise kinda stared off (or so she told me later, it was very dark in the room when the door was closed.) I never got a look at the guy above me because he had already arrived and laid down to sleep before our boisterous entry (see above). When not rolling around awake, he snored damply, like he was draining his sleeping fluids. And man, the guy below Annalise must have thought he had just re-entered the womb. He fell right to sleep and snored (and farted) the whole night.

The couchette was truly a miracle though. Prior to this Europe trip, anyone would tell you that I am a dainty sleeper. I always have earplugs, just in case, and sometimes a blindfold. In the couchette, however, there was no room for me to take off my shoes, and I slept without earplugs to stay alert for intruders, and in all my clothes, my arms around my jacket, which contained my wallet, our passports, and our train passes, and with my computer bag wrapped around my legs, and on top of the blanket. And I slept! Sure, I woke up every time the train braked into a station, almost throwing me out of bed. Otherwise, I was amazed. Annalise did fine too.

At five in the morning the train began hitting stations at which people would disembark. I woke at 5:30 to see a pasty man in a blue coat in our couchette who I didn’t recognize, and within an instant I had seized his arm and yelled “Who are you! Where are you going!”

To this he replied, “Monsieur! A la gare! Maintenant, j’arrive a la gare!” (Mister! At the train station! I arrive at the train station!) and he pointed up to the bed above me, to indicate he had been sleeping there and to pull down a trash bag of stuff. Turns out it was the man who we had no doubt woken upon our entry but had never actually seen.

At 7:30 I waited for Annalise to wake up. Our couchette was still black because the window and door were shut. At 7:58 everyone else disembarked, and Annalise woke up and asked “where are we?”

Within two minutes we were on our half-hour tour of Strasbourg, which pretty much involved free wifi at McDonald’s and a famous cathedral.

We pulled into Wurzburg at 2 in the afternoon, did laundry until 5, walked the town, did the Christmas Market, and hit a bar. I tried a “beer cocktail” called the blackout. You’re probably thinking that must be a really fruity drink with lots of rum and a hint of lager? You weren’t? Neither had I. So it goes.

The hostel was spacious and clean, and we got on six hours more train eight hours later, off to Prague to begin the rest of the trip, which, apparently, will involve only capital cities here on out.

Oh, I almost forgot: pictures.

Provencal Views

Sorry about the hiatus. I'll try to pump out some massive blogging. One of the less interesting stories is about searching for wifi spots to get gobs of work done, because, as some of you know, we rely on our Dell for phone as well as web and email. Essentially, the publication I'm writing for has me doing product reviews, which requires being on two 1.5-2 hour calls every evening, Mon-Thu., until Dec. 22, and then writing them at some point. I'm writing this right now, in between two Friday calls for a separate article. It's a hassle, causes the blog and the sightseeing to suffer, but it's great to be able to almost finance all our travels, so I won't complain. In fact, I'll rejoice! Yay! I'm kinda doing this stream of consciousness, hope it's not boring.

Chambery, after Rome, was a bust. It's mostly my fault. We chose Chambery because it'd make a good 2-day, Alpine stopover between Rome and Provence. So, we booked our hotel while in Rome. Staying in Italy, we had been able to miss the concurrent strikes of historical length going on in France and Germany. We did not, however, miss Black Friday, the one-day Italy transit system walkout, the first in a quarter-century. Trenitalia had been emboldened by its neighbors on tracks up north, and with the support of slacking cabbies, voted to throw the country into chaos. Not that it mattered to us, we just canceled our first of two nights in Chambery and Lisa let us stay another night in her apartment (see Rome post).

So, we left to Chambery, set to only see it for a few hours at night before heading to Provence.

The problem is I screwed up the directions on Google maps. I popped in the hotel's number and street, got the address, and we walked the mile from the train station to 66 Place de la Republique, only to learn from an excruciating halfhour of idoitic detective work that we were in the wrong town, that we needed to be at 66 Place de la Republique in the neighboring town in a hotel off the side of the expressway advertising itself as in Chambery. So, we paid the cab-fare and went to this pod of land containing the hotel and its parking lot, no food.

Tourist tip: don't do what we did.

We ate vending machine that night. Not the machine itself, actually, just some of its contents. If you think of this as the first night that we really "roughed it," it isn't so bad, but I had an awful stomach ache from excessive synthetic shortbread consumption (It was forty percent of my five course meal: two bags of potato chips, the two instances of the shortbread, and a chocolate bar. Annalise opted for the two-course prix fixe: bag of chips, some peanut M&M's).

We took another cab to the early morning train to Marseille. It was cold, and my stomach was being raked by bacteria from overly processed food. In Marseille, we took a bus to the small town of St. Maximin, to be transported by the co-owner of a B&B to an even tinier town called Bras. (French for "arm.")

I feel we're going to not do our time in Provence justice here in the blog: please know it was the best hotel/B&B we stayed at, but, going back to the subject opening this post, we really just wanted to relax from travel and to get work done. The two guys who owned the place were amazing, and the surrounding scenery was gorgeous and has subsequently added to our appreciation of van Gogh landscapes. Harald, the co-owner who picked us up, took us on a couple day trips, talked with us for hours over breakfast about European politics, let us buy stuff from his private fridge and cellar without mark-up, and waited with us for the bus when we left. He helped us with everything, and we hung out with him a good deal, forgetting that we were his customers. If you ever visit France, you'll probably go to Paris, but consider renting a car and staying at Fleur-du-cap instead. This way, you can relax, meet Harald and Joel, and see the Riviera, Nice, Avignon, Marseille, Verdun Canyon, Arles. In the same way that a professor makes or breaks a class, or a boss makes a job manageable or hell, the hotel you choose plays no small role in your travel experience. Harald and Joel and their Bed and Breakfast are, without a doubt, as good as they come.

Anyway, our stories from there aren't particularly remarkable. I got nervous I may have clogged the septic tank with Kleenex, and for that reason was glad to leave. There was also a small terrier in town that terrorized me, walking alongside my ankles barking hate. Everything was closed all the time, so we stayed in to break from the blur of sights, to be able to appreciate the upcoming ones more. In this respect, the trip was a total success.

By the way, I'd like to address the topic of my coat. My coat has suffered so much wind and rain the past ten years, and in the thirty years or so when it was Jeff's. But never has it been dealt the abuse that Annalise, and my family in general, has heaped upon it. I'm laying it out there now. What has my coat done to you? It has kept me sufficiently warm for five years at Carleton. What do you care if I wear it? How is this your business? Year in, year out, the criticism of my coat never stops, and Annalise is the worst. She says even a homeless man would reject it. I think even a homeless man would reject her, to protect the inner lining of his pysche. Anyone criticizing my jacket, I'll tell you what, your heart is like the neck part of my jacket: black from so much filth. Now that it's zipper's broke, I think I'll need to replace it, and I'll miss it much.

Anyway, we left Provence replenished from amazing croissants, coffee and company.

Pictures.

Thoughts in Transit

The train bathrooms in Italy are in poor condition. On the one to Naples, there was just a hole and you pee on to the track. I assume this was a problem bathroom, because if it weren’t, all rails in Italy would be coated in the feces of travelers. Still, the improving/deteriorating conditions of public facilities is as good an indicator of border crossing as any, as the ones we used while criss-crossing the south of France were markedly better.

It makes me indignant that you have to pay to use public bathrooms. We’re on a budget! Every cloud has a silver lining: we now possess advanced capabilities for retention.

Perhaps they have to charge though. In Dijon, there was a free bathroom, and the seat presented itself like an over-frosted chocolate donut. Waste makes haste!

The new Ween album, ‘La Cucaracha,’ is the only music I have purchased on the road. It has not been a let down.

Finding the Firefox browser clunky and always conflicting with what I guess is Vista, I gave Opera a shot. If you’ve had the same thought, and are a Windows user, look no further than Firefox if you rely on Google. Opera cannot render a Gmail Inbox.

Read Dave Eggers’ What is the What. Way better than a HWSG, though they’re the same in being tragic, inspiring, and very memorable.

On a rainy day in Paris, across the cobblestone street from McDonald’s, you can visualize Europe’s almost imperceptible slide out of charm and into the 21^st-century. You can hear it in the pop music setting the ambience at sit-down restaurants, local or touristy. Irreversible, this trend is probably bad. It shouldn’t be in on that scene. It’s unbecoming, like an old man on a skateboard. It reminds you of what it doesn’t have at present, in spite of its dignified history.

A friend pointed out that it’s interesting to see all the different things McDonald’s offers across the continent. She’s right. In Nancy, we could get Niocese salad. In Florence, gelato. We’ve gotten wifi there, and a coffee.

People drive their motorcycles on sidewalks, usually to park. In Naples, a man was window-shopping on one.

“I’m blue, abu-di, abu-die, abu-di, abu-die, abu-di…” Europe is where songs from 1995-2005 go to not die.

We’ve heard Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven a couple times now. It must really suck to be the nanny responsible for that kid falling out a window. Wherever she goes in the world, throughout her life, there’ll be that Grammy-winning song dedicated to the horrible loss she wrought on others.

In Europe, the train operators strike with frequency over sooo much less than the CTA has at stake. I say this because there has been talk of a CTA strike. Unless I’m not up-enough on my other local news, I think they should, without a doubt, go for it.

Forgot to add these two links

Here's the one for Lisa's apartment in Rome, where we stayed for five days: http://web.mac.com/finerty/Via_Cimarra/Welcome.html

If you want stay there, she rents it out at reasonable rates.

And here's what she does: http://www.secretgardensitaly.com

Belated Thanksgiving

Last Sunday, we met this guy.

We also dined with the author of this Oprah-publicized-but-un-clubbed book, as well as with a BBC reporter who was recently knighted by the Queen for some very valiant reporting.

In addition to these, and our Carl-connex co-hosts, there were thirteen other expatriates, locals, one Dutch “archeological artist,” a German shepherd and a “Roman” dog, which apparently means gray and non-descript…all at a Sunday-afternoon Thanksgiving dinner.

We learned about the Neapolitan mob from a man named Marco, and got sightseeing tips from Maria, a Boston native turned Rome-based TV producer/reporter/web designer. For the first time in my life, I ate chestnuts on an open fire.

This was all arranged by Tom and Lisa Finerty.

Lisa Finerty is Carleton ’76, and, even better, from Chicago. Tom and Lisa had lived in Bucktown before selling their home to Rick Bayless, the chef behind Frontera. In fact, Bayless films his cooking show from the old Finerty place. They then lived in Santa Barbara, until selling their place there to buy ten acres of Otricoli land and design and construct a house on it. Located high enough in the rolling hills outside of Rome that clouds pass through it, when the surroundings are not foggy from these clouds, this is the view from the kitchen. Tom still does production work, and Lisa conducts tours of Rome and heads Democrats Abroad, Rome.

Thanksgiving, for me, brings to mind images of long, crowded tables full of family, food and warmth. Although extremely long in table, this dinner was unique in being wholly overwhelmed by the food aspect. The fact that Italian cuisine is maybe better than that of all other countries combined does not go unvocalized by expats here. Never taking food for granted any time of year, Thanksgiving in Otricoli took on gastronomical propotions.

Upon our arrival, the night before the big dinner, Lisa immediately put Annalise, Maria and I to serious work in the kitchen. I took instructions on how to make cranberry sauce rich in orange and lemon zest, Annalise did the garlic bread, and everyone together dissected a pumpkin, carving and deploying all parts with the utmost efficiency, kind of analogous to what we’ve all learned about how Native Americans “used every part of the buffalo!” We used the pumpkin’s guts for soup content, the peel for bowl, and its seeds for…baked seeds.

But the next morning the pumpkin soup, though to me delicious, was deemed “unsatisfactory” by a few sophisticates and thus not even presented for dinner. Eating here is some serious shit. Luckily, ad hoc lasagna was concocted, with very fresh cheese furnished by the dairy dude pictured in the beginning of this post. Diane, a photographer hotshot and more, knocked out both this and a carrot-pumpkin dish. Others brought the aforementioned chestnuts, a spinach-heavy quiche, pies pumpkin and pecan, and carrot cake. Somewhere at some point some people (including Annalise and I) also assembled gingery stuffing, salad, broccoli and vegetables, garlic aioli potatoes, mashed potatoes, and other things to surround the spiced-up, thirty-four pound (!!!) turkey that had been slaughtered on Friday.

Well, it was great. And it was well-timed since we had done pasta and pizza the past eight days. It was also poorly timed because I had gotten run down and so my nose was stuffed, and taste is three-quarters smell you know (I actually learned that fact from a former co-worker a few years ago, who can’t smell. She explained that, because of this condition, she didn’t know what food tastes like. That seems like it sucks, but way better than being blind or deaf. Mute or not being able to turn your neck would probably be a toss up with not being able to smell or taste. What do you think?).

Lisa and Tom are awesome, by the way. We are very thankful and wonder if it’ll ever be possible to reciprocate their incredible hospitality. It was unbeatable. We not only had our own room, but our own wing of the house, replete with bathroom. We woke up to their neighbor’s sheep bleating, and some local hunters gunning down wild boar. Lisa drove us back to the train station Monday morning, and let us stay in an apartment they own in Rome, located a few blocks from the Pantheon and Colosseum and all that, and wired to the Internet. And then, when the Italian train system went on strike, for one “Black” Friday, they let us stay a fifth day for free, thus saving us a total seven days in hotel charges. Unbelievable.

When in Rome, we sightsaw, and other things Romans don’t do. It’s funny that there’s way more to write about Otricoli than Rome. Not that we didn’t see and learn in Rome, but we did about what you’d expect, whereas the generosity and food of Otricoli were most noteworthy. Rome’s a big city, but not all that different in feel from, say, Florence. Walking into moving traffic there, though not nearly as death-defying as Naples, is still uncomfortable.

To be honest, things are beginning to blur together a little more, and the cities we’re visiting now, I feel, might be getting a little less appreciation as result of the late treatment. It was kind of like the spinach quiche at Thanksgiving—it was great, another 10-out-of-10, but it was third course, after two helpings of turkey, potatoes and stuffing. I knew it was perfect, sure, but I wished it had come earlier, or that I could wait until tomorrow, when I’d have more room to take it all in. Rome is like the thirteenth course. Now, here we are, in the heart of history and of the most influential religion ever, and not feeling awed. It must have to do with seeing everything one on top of another, without break, which has advantages and disadvantages that I probably can’t sort out while so caught up. Plus, I had much more work than usual this week, and we also planned out the rest of the trip, which wasn’t easy.

Now we are taking a sort of vacation from the vacation, heading to Provence for five days to just rest, work and convalesce. After that, we should have enough break to be appropriately amazed through to January.

We’ll keep you blog-posted with things that happen in the next few days, perhaps with more thoughts so reading this journal doesn’t get self-centered, diary-like and list-heavy. We’re thankful you made it this far with us.

Pictures.

A Photo Firenze

So, here are pictures, finally. They include: Florence, Naples/Amalfi

We went to Amalfi after Naples. To get there, we had to take a bus out of Naples, down the expressway and then along the Amalfi coast. This last third is a 30 mile stretch on the Mediterranean sea. It's great sighsteeing, minus the constant fear that you're going to die.

The ride leading into the seaside town of Amalfi proper wraps around a mountainous shoreline. The road is cut out of perfectly perpendicular cliffs, an embedded and narrow rim 200 feet above the shore. On the right side, coming into town, is mountain, on the left, another lane, and beyond that the jagged cliffs and coast. Sitting high on a bus, looking out the window, you can't see the other lane, nor the railing separating the road from a long fall. Therefore, you kind of have this feeling that the bus is just flying over the turquoise water, and that's calming until you see a truck coming from the other direction, seeming to meet the bus head on. They pass, slowly, and eventually you get to where you're going.

Almafi was, by the way, our favorite place in Italy thus far. Again, it's just dozens of miles of endless jagged 150-foot cliffs against beaches, and in the off-season there are no crowds--just mountains, seafood, empty hotels, the sun and the moon. We stayed in a B&B that was less than half price because it was the off-season. It had a view of the sea. I'll stop, because the pictures explain Amalfi better than I could. Plus, we're exhausted. In Rome now. We'll chat about Thanksgiving Otricoli style in the next post.

Anyway, here's an article I read in the NYTimes recently. It's about an expose of the mob in Naples:

Where Savage Parasites Rot a Nation From Within

In the United States organized crime has entered a Tony Soprano twilight, as small-time bosses carve up ever-smaller wedges of a shrinking pie. In Italy, by contrast, all systems are go. In shipping, fashion and construction, to name just three booming businesses, the mob holds sway, often acting through, rather than despite, local government. All told, according to a recent report by an Italian small-business association, mob-related activity accounts for the single largest sector of the Italian economy.

Roberto Saviano, a young Italian journalist, counts the cost in “Gomorrah,” his savage indictment of the Neapolitan crime organization known as the Camorra. Although less well known than the Mafia, its Sicilian counterpart, the Camorra has held the economy of southern Italy in a tight grip for more than a century. With time it has adapted and modernized, spreading from Naples to outlying towns, while adding financial services and real estate to its expanding portfolio.

“Never in the economy of a region has there been such a widespread, crushing presence of criminality as in Campania in the last 10 years,” Mr. Saviano writes.

The garment sweatshops of Secondigliano, a small town on the outskirts of Naples, provide Mr. Saviano with a case study. Day and night, highly skilled workers turn out low-cost counterfeits that compare favorably in quality with the originals from the big fashion houses. The factories are bankrolled by the Camorra, which lends money at low rates. Factory workers get their mortgages through the Camorra. Once completed, the clothes often find their way to boutiques owned by the Camorra all over Europe, many in Camorra-owned shopping malls.

The Camorra has come a long way since the days of cigarette smuggling. But despite the corporate face, it relies on age-old techniques of intimidation and violence, which Mr. Saviano describes in gruesome detail. When Cammoristi want to send a message, they do a thorough job. Enforcers make their point with one victim by sawing his head off with a metal grinder and blowing it up. The notorious Pasquale Barra, better known as the Animal, set new standards some years back when he ripped a target’s heart out with his bare hands and then bit into it.

Mr. Saviano, whose hometown, Casal di Principe, lies in the heart of Camorra territory, comes up with a total of 3,600 bodies since 1979, the year he was born.

Objective, analytic journalism is foreign to Mr. Saviano. The subject at hand is too personal, and in any case he takes a fiery, romantic view of the reporter’s mission. “I believe that the way to truly understand, to get to the bottom of things, is to smell the hot breath of reality, to touch the nitty-gritty,” he writes.

This passion for close-up, eyewitness reporting leads him to take small-time jobs in Camorra businesses, to show up whenever the police turn up a dead body and to mingle in the open-air drug market in Secondigliano, where fresh batches of heroin are tested on addict volunteers. If they drop dead, the batch is too potent.

The up-close style and the floridly noir prose make for vivid scenes. When he’s concentrating properly, Mr. Saviano also exposes the nuts and bolts of Camorra operations, complete with names and precise figures. His account of the drug trade, which the Camorra has shrewdly expanded to serve the casual, middle-class customer, is a model of muckraking journalism.

So are the chapters on the construction industry and the Camorra’s sinister trade in illegal waste dumping, much of it toxic. All over Italy highly trained experts in law and the environment make the rounds of Italian businesses, offering to ship everything from dead bodies to printer toner to illegal dumping sites in the south. This is worth billions of dollars a year.

From time to time Mr. Saviano takes flight on his own prose and, drunk with indignation, loses touch with the nitty-gritty. His chapter on the port of Naples, where Chinese entrepreneurs now control the illegal offloading of containers, makes for colorful reading, but Mr. Saviano neglects to explain how the Camorra fits in. Often names and killings speed by in a blur, devoid of context. Mr. Saviano never does explain the Camorra’s structure adequately.

Granted, it is a bewildering mess. The sheer scope of the Camorra’s businesses numbs even Mr. Saviano, who confesses to despair. Everything, he writes, seems to belong to the mob: “land, buffalos, farms, quarries, garages, dairies, hotels and restaurants.”

A small flicker of hope burns in a chapter devoted to Don Peppino Diana, a crusading priest who denounces the Camorra from his pulpit in Casal di Principe, organizes protest marches and sets up community programs to siphon support for the Camorra.

“He decided to take an interest in the dynamics of power and not merely its corollary suffering,” Mr. Saviano writes. “He didn’t want merely to clean the wound but to understand the mechanisms of the metastasis, to prevent the cancer from spreading, to block the source of whatever was turning his home into a gold mine of capital with an abundance of cadavers.”

On March 19, 1994, the name day of his patron saint, Don Peppino was approached in his church by armed men who shot him in the head at close range. He died instantly. Mr. Saviano, for his part, has been forced to live in hiding under police protection since his book was published last year in Italy.

A Hostel Environment

Three new posts: Naples, Florence, Venice Part Two. Pictures Tomorrow (left the camera downstairs).

Crossing the street in Naples is something I hope to never do again. But I suppose I have to leave. The cars do not stop. That’s not an exaggeration, or a joke, it’s just how it is. I think you need to do it, here or in some overcrowded third-world city. Is there a difference? We imagine it’s like this in India, but with rickshaws instead of motorcycles and cars. The occasional stop sign or street light is decorative, and it’s not like there are breaks in traffic. What pedestrians actually must do is hold their breath and just walk into traffic, trusting that the cars and motorcycles will brake or swerve.

In other cities with crazy drivers we think: “Wow, could you imagine learning how to drive here.” In Naples, forget learning how to drive, how do kids learn how to cross the street! I imagine that parents have to do more than just say “look both ways.” It’s gotta be like “OK, so, if you see only four motorcycles, and they appear to be more than three meters out from the crosswalk, you can wait or run. Decide quick and if you resolve to cross, don’t stop, or you will die. Now, if you see two motorcyclists and three cars coming from opposite directions, with one delivery truck crossing the median…”

Or, the opposite is more likely true. They just walk, and without fear, and that’s normal.

I think I just heard gunfire outside.

Chaos!

What an odd Thanksgiving.

We keep forgetting it is Thanksgiving. A friend wrote me an email on Tuesday wishing me to eat a leg of tofurkey for him and I had no idea why he said that until someone else at the end of a work call said “Have a nice Thanksgiving.”

For Thanksgiving, then, we had pizza, from the most well-reputed pizza place in Naples, the most well-reputed pizza city. If you’ve read Eat, Love, Pray, the author goes on about it there.

Naples is a much, much less touristy and more poor city than Florence, Venice or Rome. There’s two million people here. It sits on the invisible latitude separating the northern first world from the southern second and third. It really feels situated in both. Did you know that there were over 100 mob-related murders here in the last year alone?

Our only concern is pickpockets. We’ve even seen an attempt on the street. There are so many aimless people with angry faces that you don’t want to bump into.

We’re staying at our first hostel tonight, as Carleton alumni have made our budgets big enough, at least until Italy collapsed it a bit again. Anyway, this hostel is rated one of the ten best in the world by Hostel World, and it’s easily one of the best places we’ve stayed at. We have a private double for fifty euro that comes with a TV and DVD player, and there’s a whole library of awesome DVD’s. They have wine nights here, and pizza nights, and all sorts of things we’re going to miss since we’re only staying one night. Everything is spotlessly clean, unlike Florence, and the power works, unlike Venice. We get a free map and the woman at the front desk told us what we should visit, when and how to get there. This hostel is anti-Napoli, as far as my impression of the city goes.

Tomorrow, Amalfi. Today, no pictures of Naples, as we arrived after dark, and would probably have the camera snatched the second we took it out anyway. Check here and here for some idea of what it is like.

Mario Duomo

We ate at a place called Mario’s. It was good. We saw the Duomo. There, now we have a pun for the blog title. What more do you want!

It’s nice to be back in a landlocked, navigable place. Florence was much dirtier, grittier and less graceful than I imagined. It’s crowded.

Otherwise Florence is what you expect, we don’t have much more to say. We had a great time. We saw Michelangelo’s David, which is way more impressive in person, unlike the Mona Lisa. This makes sense, since the former is very big. Also saw a bunch of other art. And pretty bridges. And the Duomo, which we climbed for beautiful sun-baked cityscapes. And more great food. Italy is the place in Europe to splurge.

We’re just stating the obvious here. In case you couldn’t tell from the opener, I’m struggling with this one. Naples is less obvious, read that.

The Venice of Italy

We’re behind on blogging. We still need to cover Florence and Naples, but here’s some on the rest of our Venice trip.

We’re noticing, thumbing through our Lonely Planet book, that so many places get labeled “the Venice of x,” for having multiple waterways. For example, Bamberg is the Venice of Germany. Brugge, the Venice of the North, supersedes Bamberg. There’s another one in Europe, but I’m too lazy to look it up

Actual Venice turned out better than it started, though I personally like some of the fake ones better.

It’s impossible not to get lost here. Blame the 400 canals and over 100 islands and bridges. This was the last aggravating point (that, and the obscene Italian train fare). “Just losing yourself” strolling in a city loses its novelty when you’ve already been lost for quite some time.

Anyway, we did the things to do: San Marco, gelato, spaghetti, art, canal views. These things are as Venetian as beautiful walks.

Tourism, however, has an odd, indirect, hollowing effect on the city. Although people live here, at least two thirds of those out and about seem to be non-residents, and we’re not talking just the Rialto or San Marco. Tourists here aren’t annoying, and it’s a city worthy of being toured, but it’s just not what I saw in mind’s eye reading the Merchant of Venice, or in Venetian paintings. It’s like there used to be a real, actual city here, or at least one that had been built up in my imagination, and by replacing all of what I imagined with a bunch of gelaterias and 70 euro gondoliers, it just kind of feels like a ghost town or something. I’m not sure what I mean, and it’s likely just me. I’m crazy, like the Siberia of San Polo in Brazil.

Venice the Menace

(Hi. So we've added three posts recently: Venice (below), Zurich (below this), and Kaufbeuren (below that). We've got pictures for all three: Venice, Zurich (Karl + Swiss Alps from Train), Kaufbeuren. Thanks for reading and viewing and emailing all your comments, they are appreciated.)

Ten things of note from our first four hours in Venice:

1. Getting from the train station to our hotel didn’t work, as the water taxi indicated on the hotel website only goes half as far as said website indicates. Furthermore, the route is roundabout and pointless, a waste of six euros ($243) apiece.

2. Upon arrival to the hotel, upon the very instant that we entered, the power went out.

3. The guy working behind the desk is a total idiot, who demands that we turn the key into him every time we leave the hotel but then leaves the door locked when we try to get back in and doesn’t respond to the bell on the first three go rounds.

4. I’m always nervous about pickpockets here.

5. Venice is not warm. That happens further south, I guess/hope.

6. I couldn’t find anywhere in this huge tourist trap of a town to get wireless Internet to make a phone call for work.

7. OK, I did actually find a place and during my call some brainless and rude blonde knocked over my glass of cheap red wine onto my pants and shirt, staining both beyond repair without getting me a replacement (glass).

8. Exhausted, we went to a restaurant in our neighborhood, not caring that it was touristy until we ate some seriously mediocre food with a budget-breaking price tag.

9. None of the above is Venice’s fault. Even the wine-glass-smashing blonde was German.

10. Venice in Italian is Venezia, and we wonder what determines what European cities get spelled differently in English?

Notes from our much better next two days in Venice coming soon.

1.

Karleton

It seems every two days we swing a notch closer to our generation: Scott was ’77, Kim ’87, and now Karl Vollmers ’96. Hanging out with Karl felt like hanging out with a Carl, at least the type I’m used to. Thirty-something feels our age now.

Karl’s life in Zurich is unusual. Or it’s unusual that it’s there. Born and raised on a Minnesotan farm, he did undergrad at Carleton in physics, continued this line of study at the University of Minnesota before being induced by his boss-professor to come to Zurich to work at the Institute for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, where he does some baffling but relevant mechanical engineering type stuff.

What’s odd is that he and his wife married in Minnesota six months before they moved to Zurich. She’s currently in the South African plains, surrounded by lions. Literally, you can hear them roaring in the background if you are Karl and on Karl’s cellphone. She just got a job back in Minnesota, and, as it turns out, Karl will be back in Minnesota shortly as well.

Unfortunately, we don’t have much to report on Zurich itself. It was way too expensive to go outside. More importantly, Charles really had to catch up on work.

Based on absolutely nothing but price tags, we wouldn’t recommend seeing Zurich unless you are rolling around in fifty dollar bills as you read this. Every time you enter a restaurant or get a coffee or buy a magazine, you feel like you just landed on Park Place with four houses. Example: we got two hot chocolates for $12 (18 CHF), without tip.

As for the argument for Zurich, Karl went over the main points with us, walking us to a couple cathedrals, up some hills for views over the whole town, then down to the older districts, and introduced us to some real schmucks (Swiss for jewelry store). Despite the Alps being more in the background than we had expected, Zurich can stand with the best of Europe in terms of beauty, age and class. (Unfortunately, we left the camera in the room!). Did you know that there are 1100 fountains in Zurich, most drinkable? That’s more than any city in Europe, by a lot we’d guess.

Also, we’re not just saying this, we had the pleasure of being astounded, amazed, astonished, surprised, shocked, dumfounded, dazed and just all in all flabbergasted and rendered speechless by the fact that we stayed with our third consecutive extremely nice Carleton alum. Karl not only toured the city for us and bought us beers and let us drink his Belvedere vodka, but he let us use his coffeemaker and laundry facilities, bought us tram tickets, made us homemade pizza for dinner and walked us to the train station early in the morning to help us buy tickets out of there.

We now have exactly eight hours to reflect on his generosity on this train ride to Venice. Boy, time flies when you’re having fun!

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Non-Stop

(Pictures are coming in next post, tomorrow)

Kim Feldt’s Carleton ties are dynastic. Her mother went to Carleton. Her father went to Carleton and is now a trustee. Her grandmother graduated during the Depression and, still alive, is a frequent contributor to the alumni magazine The Voice. I’m pretty sure her family has been in Northfield since back when the college was known as Carleton-Feldt, before the undocumented Great Schism of 1888 and the ensuing defeat of Jesse James.

Anyway, had Kim not taken us in for a couple nights, she says she would have felt like she had let her family down (would have had feelings un-Feldt, if you will).

Upon graduation in 1987, she lived like Annalise and I after we left Carleton—just a few blocks off Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. A few years time found herself in Africa climbing up Mt. Kilimanjaro. She came down with a future husband who lived in Germany. She moved there, learned the language, became a psychologist, had a daughter and moved to Kaufbeuren—a very livable place.

There are, for example, more bars per capita here than in Berlin, and the really good local beers in the stores are about seventy-five cents max. There is a grocery store below her house, and a few blocks down a café with free wireless. There’s all these statues, and tourist information on King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the lunatic royale who built one of the most famous castles and German tourist destinations: Neuschwantszensenteanineanenen (I can’t look this up right now, let’s say: N).

These castles are a forty-minute car ride away to the middle of the Alps, and Kim chiseled out valuable time from her Tuesday afternoon to take us and her daughter to see them. This was awesome since these castles were about one of six places I really wanted to see on this trip, along with things like the Louvre, the Vatican, the red lights of Amsterdam and a man who can eat his own face (I’ve seen three out of four, and can’t wait to get to the Vatican next week!).

We hiked around the woods there, and the views of the Alps are more majestic then anything I’ve ever seen. We then went to the castle Hohensehenensensentesteinenesteinagau (H), since N was closed. The exterior, like N, is gorgeous and fairy taley. The interior—eh. That’s what I’ve heard about both castles, so the fact that we got to walk around the premises but couldn’t go in the other one is ok with me.

Both nights and mornings Kim fed us (dinners and breakfasts, respectively). She also bought us beers and packed us lunches for the train ride to Zurich. Again, we are astounded by the incredible generosity of a stranger.

There’s this church outside Kim’s house, and every six hours, on the six’s and twelve’s, some madman in the belltower goes beserk, banging and banging against the clap until someone goes up there and forcibly removes him. I counted the bangs until I actually got to 68, and I never learned to count higher than that at six in the morning. In a couple minutes the clanging was over, and I went back to sleep, and slept through Kim talking next door, curing one of her patients.

It’s weird to think I’m having such a merry little time in a country that would have had me worked to death less than seventy years ago. Take that, Nazis!

Next thought, Zurich.

As American as Apple Cake

When Scott Northrup was a Junior at Carleton, back in 1979 or so, his mom feared that if he took up an offer to study abroad for a year in Erlangen—a town a couple dozen miles from Nuremberg--he might never return. When Scott told us this story on the car ride from the Erlangen train station, his mom's warning immediately reminded me of my own's well-placed hope that we’d “like France, but not too much.” Unfortunately for Mrs. Northrup, it appears the outcome was quite different for Scott than it will be for us.

Scott returned to finish his senior year in Northfield, where he majored in German lit. Before long he was back in Erlangen, looking for work. He found not only this, but his wife, Sibylle, a German native and primary school instructor. In Germany, aspiring teachers have to student teach for two years before being released into the wild, though when Sibylle was doing it the requirement was three.

Scott and Sibylle have three kids, all now in their twenties, leaving guest rooms galore in their three-floor home in Dechsendorf, a tiny town just outside Erlangen. Scott is now an international sales manager at Siemens, having started as a translator. For Annalise and I, the most important decision in his life was to provide his current address to Carleton Alulmni Affairs, which threw it up on the Alumni Directory for all backpackers with Eurorails to see.

Upon arrival, Scott and Sibylle had homemade apple cake ready on the table, and that night we had Nuremberg-style bratwurst, plus sauerkraut and apple juice. (The Northrups, by the way, have, like, 8097235 gallons of homemade apple juice in the basement.) Having high-quality local cuisine and staying two nights in a typical German home, with its comprehensive garbage system and doorbells in the back, was more satisfying than educational, as we were always full and sleepy.

It is hard to imagine a more accommodating and perfect situation than what Annalise and I had in Erlangen/Dechsendorf. Scott and Sibylle insisted on us eating an amazing chicken stew the next night, invited us to raid their two fridges (one was just for beer), and gave us our own room, plus some sightseeing tips.

The best of these was Bamberg, a thirty minute train ride in the opposite direction of Nurenberg, and a place that forced Lonely Planet’s authors to piss themselves and ask: “Is there a better town in all of Germany?”

In Bamberg, you can drink beer that tastes like ham juice knowing that that’s a good thing. Brugge-like in its medieval quaintness, it lacks tourists and its version of perfect local beer is less expensive. Its houses clearly date from hundreds of years ago, and there are about seven landmark churches. Although it was drizzling and then pouring for most of our walk, the views didn’t fog up, and the frozen rain only made the Bamberg bars more comfortable and Sibylle’s stew more warm. It was wonderful to stay in Erlangen and, for karmic reasons, we hope unknown Carls come visit us someday once we’re all set up.

Because Carleton, as a great school, is in the business of supplying the world with great people. They call them alumni and ask for their money, and staying with one in Europe blows away any hotel. Having hopped the Atlantic ourselves, it’s important for us to meet people who continued on this path, because, for us, the question’s aren’t currently could’ves, but if’s and would we rather’s. That is to say: meeting Carletoners who explain how they passed the juncture that we’re currently at is a study in possibilities and outcomes. The fact that Scott and Sibylle seem so happy reminds us of exactly why we wanted to see what life was like here in Europe: in order to see what it could be like here. And, lucky for us, the Euro-Carleton diaspora stretches across Germany and spills into Switzerland and Italy and elsewhere, meaning more speaking English, more glimpses of possible futures, and less hotel costs.

We were going to see Munich for five hours today but decided to swing by later and slept in and hung out with Scott and Sibylle’s colossal dog named Duma. She comes from a violent breed that used to be trained to attack bears and protect sheep, but she is, to use Scott’s words, “cognitively a little warped,” and so is always biting at imaginary flies, for instance.

Today, we got some work done. I'm writing from the apartment of Kim Feldt, class of 1987; right now she’s upstairs with a client. Annalise is still full and sleepy, and life is still good and transplantable.

Pictures!

Forbach-Gausbach

Visiting the sleepy twin German villages of Forbach-Gausbach, and hiking in the Black Forest mountains, has been refreshing. There are no tourists here, no English is spoken, the population is under 1000, and there's some of the best, freshest, most inexpensive Thai (?!) food we've ever had. And wireless internet in a hotel suite for 55 euro per night.

The people are very friendly. We got free shots at the Thai Bistro, just for being customers, I guess. There are about four restaurants here, one of which is in our inn, and all the inns and houses are out of Grimm's fairy tales and you never know if you're walking into someone's house, an inn, a restaurant or a beer garden--it's always some combination. There are tons of vegetable gardens, chicken coups, and wild mountain goats. There are also many beautiful cathedrals, with bells clanging even at 3:15 am.

Here are pictures. It's really, really great here.

Red Light, Go

Brugge and Amsterdam are opposite cities that both remind me of Las Vegas. Or, rather, they are defined by and renown for things I’ve only seen there. The vast majority of Brugge seemed, for instance, to be occupied by and catering to tourists. Amsterdam, on the other hand, had prostitutes, slots and drugs. Neither, however, resemble Vegas, and both, by seeming like desirable places to live, are also as unlike that city as they are each other.

Disney World seems to come to most people’s minds with Brugge because it is a tourist trap of fairy tale proportions. The city, however, is not synthetic. It was not built by or for tourism, it’s just trapped in the 14^th-century. Known as the Venice of the North because of its canals, when Brugge became a popular vacation destination for nostalgic Westerners, 19^th-century architects kept the city’s development arrested, designing buildings in Gothic style to match those already stuck in the mud. The result is a tremendously beautiful city that everyone should visit.

We went to a bed and breakfast there that Annalise had booked for my birthday. It was great. The shower head was, like, 98 feet high, and the room had a view of one of the most imposing cathedrals in Belgium. We went to a bar with 350 different Belgian beers, though I didn’t know how to optimize that (“Excuse me Miss, can I try 100 different beers please?”), at least without my aficionado friends Brendan and Joe. We went to a chocolate history/factory/museum, which was fun. Then we went to Amsterdam.

What’s interesting about Amsterdam is the little things. Example: you can get a Quarter Pounder with cheese, but they don’t call it that there. What do they call it? Royale with Cheese. Royale with cheese? The Red Light District is fascinating. It’s got lots of tourists and, walking through it, you can immediately tell who’s there for “sightseeing” and who looks like they need to get down to business. It’s really funny. We saw this one guy walking with his friend down a red-lit alley, and he was smiling big and kind of made this grunting-slurping noise and said in a gravelly-voice “Hubba hubba.” A sightseer on the brink. But nobody snapping photographs, that’s prohibited. Around there are coffeeshops that sell weed. I accidentally wandered into a pastry shop that had delicious-looking donuts and stuff. I didn’t notice the lack of price tags though, and I got a tiny donut for 3.50 euro, which is about $234. And it was half-frozen and tasted like wax. So, apparently, there’s all these stands that prey on the people with the munchies. The whole area is creepy and historic.

On the first night I had a muffin and a panic attack. Coincidence?

These things are what blemish Amsterdam, but it’s an incredible place. The brick buildings are old and gorgeous, and the museums are about as good as in Paris. And the canal walks rival those in Bruges. We went to the Van Gogh Museum, which may have been my favorite thus far. I also got a lot of work done, which took away from touring but financed the future.

Anyway, pictures.

On the train now to Black Forest Germany, on the day I was supposed to be going back to Nancy, on the train that took us to it for the first time via Strasbourg back in September.

P.S. Writing this post script in Black Forest. This is quite the experience. We are in a very isolated town, everything is dirt cheap and the views are amazing. No one speaks English, of course. But the radio here is playing achy breaky heart. Hmmmm. Anyway, the town we are in is Forbach, we found it haphazardly.

Photos from Paris

http://picasaweb.google.com/annarlessuperblog/Paris, plus we added a couple to the album on Nancy (apartment and place stanislas), but it's really just a shot of some nice people we almost became friends with and a waffle, which was good and from next door.

Onward, But Mostly Upward

Leaving Nancy to Paris as early as we did ended up saving us an additional, unexpected $2000. Our last days in Nancy watching DVD’s and eating soup is for another blog entry, in a parallel universe where everything ever written is about things no one cares about. Instead, here’s a recap of Paris:

If there’s one word to sum up our last week, it’d be stairs. I think we spent about a third of our waking hours on stairs. Our hotel—man it had stairs, six stories worth, winding and narrow, which made for some fun when hauling nine months worth of stuff for two people up and down from our top floor chamber. (By the way, mid-week we were able to unload what we wouldn’t need until January/Chicago, thanks to Annalise’s generous and incredibly resourceful Aunt Linda, who came through in the clutch yet again. Details in parallel universe).

At the metro station, there were stairs, about eight stories worth. Stairs of all sorts: winding and straight, steep and shallow, spotless and urine-soaked. Then stairs at stations for transfers. Then we were staired down at museums and cathedrals. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs.

The second most descriptive word would be the popular choice: art. We hit the Louvre twice, the Pompidou once, and Orsay once, and visited some famous cathedrals. Oh, and the Rodin museum and sculpture garden. The Louvre and Orsay suffer from Delillo-esque tourists taking photographs of the most photographed pictures in the world because they are the most photographed pictures in the world. They push and shove and flash and damage. They are just so goddamn dumb. So many people, of every color and gender, crowded around Delacroix’s and Van Gogh’s, zooming through rooms, framing the frames on Monets and Rembrandts, with their cellphones even, snapping a picture and moving on, without a thought to expend appreciating anything. Don’t these tech-savvy zombies realize that there are 90 million of the same damn shots on Google images, posted by their fellow drones?

Aside from the global convergence of narrow-sighted sightseers, the museums are great. The Louvre is actually the best and the worst museum in the world. It is a wonderful, million-mile walk, up and down the stairs of an art history textbook, the only problem being the most earmarked pages (the ones full of tourist idiots).

The Orsay is also gorgeous and houses its own trove of recognizable masterpieces, with a slightly lower idiot quotient . Both are open one evening each week, outside of standard daytime hours. That’s when you should visit them, there are no crowds then. The second best time to visit is as soon as it opens. That goes for cathedrals too.

Paris was awesome. The food was actually cheaper here than in Nancy, and Annalise was in heaven, ordering salads without meat, bread without meat, ice cream without meat. And the Eiffel Tower was a surprise. I always had thought it’d be small and ugly, but it’s big and beautiful, at night anyways, when it is lit up and, for nine minutes each hour, has about a hundred balls of light haphazardly bouncing off each other and sprinting up and down the ironwork.

We both caught a cold, neither slight nor severe. It wound up and down our hotel’s serpentine stairs and in and out of its shared toilets. The place we stayed at was nice enough though, at least for the 50 euros rate. Having a plastic shower box four feet from the bed was an amusing change of pace, and the toddler a floor below us, who got the same cold but really bad, could be heard hacking violently, even when our door was closed, and if you imagined she was dying, the whole place took on a real bohemian flair!

Onwards and upwards. I’m now officially 26, sniffling, on an express train to Brugge. Maybe they believe in elevators here, and free water.

(Pictures coming in next post.)

Everything Has Changed

What if we would have gone out to eat instead? Our decision to not blow an obscene amount eating but to have spaghetti for the third time that week in our studio-sans-stove certainly impacted the nature of our conversation. Reaching for another glass of sink water from her chair in the dining room kitchenette library, Annalise casually recalled that she had come to Europe to travel and was looking forward to our first vacation.

Within five minutes we had bought two two-month unlimited Eurorail passes, necessitating we quit our jobs. The impulse of it all belies how much our needs had changed. You can email us for more info, but this decision was nothing personal--strictly business. Nancy, accommodating and warm-hearted as she was, was also a gold-digging bitch. By grabbing all the money we still had and running in the night, we enabled a promiscuous 2-3 months with the rest of Europe, allowing ourselves also to forward our careers in a stoveful, couchful apartment in Chicago come winter, not to mention save for a wedding. Option two would have been fun but left us with 0 euro, which is one way to beat the exchange rate.

So, here we are in Paris. Next Belgium. Then Amsterdam. Then Portugal. That’s the first two weeks. It’ll be fun. We’ll keep you more posted than Raisin Bran.

A description of the teaching jobs. Charles taught at 3 different schools, 13 different classes, grades 1-4. Annalise taught one school, a few classes. We both kinda enjoyed it, though Charles was filled with dread going to class and likes the riddance of anxiety. Annalise was amused that half the students went to learn what wines were paired with what dishes and that learning a recipe for tiramisu was some serious homework, such is professional catering and hotel working school. Her profs spoke English and she never had more than six or seven students at a time. Charles was often left alone with 20+ and no one spoke English but him. With some first graders Charles played Hangman, so they could practice saying letters in English (H = “Accch,” n’est pas “Ahsh”), and so the category was names and he had put five placeholders for letters, and someone guessed “H.” There was an H.

_ _ _ _ H

And then they guessed Q, and B, and Q again and he had drawn individual nosehairs, but there would be no eleventh hour. The correct answer was S A R A H, but the hangman hung.

Sarah burst into tears, which was a surprise. Luckily, this teacher was in the classroom, because she, unlike a couple of others, knew it was illegal to leave her pupils alone with a foreigner with no teaching experience.

Nancy was nice, filled with people we’ll probably never see again.

M_NEY.

To you Chicagoans reading this: see you sometime after Jan. 9.

Two Negative

Living in the Land of Lardons (amongst other delicacies)

Unfortunately, you don’t need to know French to guess what lardons are. Yes, that’s right, lardons = lard…bite size pieces of lard. The dictionary translation is “streaky bacon” and from what I’ve seen they’re basically large bacon bits with as much fat and little meat as possible. In the region we’re living in, lardons can be found in quiche, pizza, salads, pasta and, my favorite, the “Lard Sandwich,” the first item on the menu at a popular sandwich shop near our apartment.

While the ubiquity of lardons is something I hadn’t expected in France, I did come to this country expecting people to eat strange meats and organs…and really, France has exceeded my expectations. Charles and I are fortunate to live right in the center of downtown and just a block away from Marche Central, a huge indoor market with stands from different countries serving fresh jams, pasta, chocolate, cheese, pastries, produce, and, of course, meat. In fact, 75% of this large, Grand Central Station-esque market is filled with meats and unidentifiable organs. Vendors strive to sell chicken, rooster, rabbit, pigeon, etc., looking as life-like as possible, keeping the heads, eyes, and feet all on the animals. With the rabbit (keep in mind I used to have a pet rabbit) it wasn’t enough to keep its eyes in and leave a petrified expression frozen on its face. Oh no! They went the extra mile by keeping its fuzzy rabbit tail on, splitting open its stomach, taking some unidentifiable organs out and laying it on its body (a bonus, I guess ). If Marche Central were in the US, all debates about classroom animal dissection would cease and there would just be field trips to Marche Central to better understand anatomy…or should I say, gastronomy?

Through the Ringer

France is annoying and expensive. We went to do our laundry today and saw that it cost 3 euro for one load in a washer. These washers are the size of onion rings. It'll cost a trip to London to do two weeks worth of laundry. Dryers charge by 13 minutes.
Other things that are exorbitant: rent, internet, utilities, train fare, clothes, all toiletries, technology, intra-France cellphone calls and any normal food. Plus, we have to keep all our receipts because we have gotten rung up twice for one purchase three times in two weeks. Has it really only been two weeks?
People said our trip would be an "adventure," and I never put any stock into that, because when I think adventure I think of my friend Jeremy's trip to cambodia (http://bloggingxanadu.vox.com/), or a peace corps pioneer. Those trips require courage. Wow, I live in a culture that I can't afford and wants to be American. Will I go broke? I'll never know unless I stay.
I'm not unhappy or homesick, I'm just telling you that Nancy is a pricey gal and sometimes she's hard to live with.
In other news, Annalise's stomach is making strange noises and I teach little kids (sometimes sans other adults, to my surprise).

Plus des us

Dijon, Beaune are added: http://picasaweb.google.com/annarlessuperblog

A Dabble in Stereotyping

Having been here a little over a week now, here are some very gross over-generalizations:

Public bathrooms cost fifty cents sometimes. That sucks.

The French know how to spend money. They spend on completely useless things. This isn’t necessarily bad. Art, for example, is not practical. They don’t, on the other hand, buy big cars. Although it could be argued that an SUV is dangerous and useless outside of, say, the wilderness, the idea, misguided or not, is to have a safer, better driving experience, and driving is something you have to do. The French, instead, collect crystal. They think having more than one TV in a house is ludicrous. The upper middle class here has lots of paintings and wine cellars. A nice art to luxury.

The toilet flusher in our studio apartment bathroom is strong.

The lack of screens on the windows is not great. In the morning, when we kill mosquitoes, we have our own blood on our hands.

Annalise’s professor asked us why the Americans hate France. “I watch FoxNews, I see what they say about us, and I don’t understand it. What did we ever do to them?” France is like an affectionate, naïve big brother when it comes to the US. France is older, artistically richer, and yet 75% of their shows, movies, and music is American. In a way, they can’t escape from looking up to us. They don’t understand our senseless belligerence and just stroll along with their crystal and pointy-toed shoes, singing Kanye West and watching Boston Public.

French people who act like Americans are disappointing because they fail. I don’t like French youth because they love role-playing as Americans. They sing in terrible English, oblivious to meaning, dress in our brands, try to act hard, only to be undermined by their flowery vowel sounds. Imagine if all our pop culture were in French—wouldn’t you want to learn French? We don’t get it why Annalise’s students aren’t all that enthusiastic.

I like it here because life isn’t about work. Americans live to work. The French work only so much to live. This is, without a doubt, as it should be. There’s no invisible hand to feed, little obsession with a competitive edge. If people work hard it’s because they like their jobs, not because they want more money than they know what to do with. Liking your job and working at it is common all around the world, but over-achievement for its own sake is foreign here. If you don’t like your job, they’re limits set up by the gov. on how many hours of your existence can be taken from you. One doesn’t feel guilty about having fun on a weekday. The French don’t need to earn the right to live because it’s given.

A hot dog is four euro, a salmon/spinach quiche is two. Buy local.

France’s food isn’t superior to America’s, it just has a better average. What I mean is this: In Chicago, I didn’t eat badly. However, I always had the option of eating shitty food, I just never exercised it. In France, I don’t really have that option. Well, I do, jus t not as easily. The common gastronomical denominator isn’t low. For this reason, there are less fat people.

And what’s with the coffee? I think I actually want a Starbucks. I haven’t seen a non-NesCafe-vending machine coffee-to-go yet in this country.

French people look better than Americans because they are fashionable and eat better.

I ordered a beer called Desperado. I don’t pronounce French well, but I asked for a Desperado and the bartender stared at me. He looked at me and said something I didn’t understand. I repeated “two Desperados.” In French: “Deux Desperados.” I got one Stella. How did this happen? What else could “Desperado” be but “Desperado”? I went back to get what I wanted. This isn’t really an over-generalization, but does represent how frustration in the little things is definitely part of life here. I’m glad there’s two of us. (“Two Desperados, get it, ha ha ha” –Annalise).

Although our current living situation in the downtown studio isn’t as good as our 2-bedroom apartment in Chicago, it’s not far behind. It seems luxurious to have countertops around the sink in the bathroom, a shower with consistent water pressure, a shower head that is taller than 2/3’s of (Charles’s) height, a desk, a dresser (for Charles), floors that won’t be flooded, I’m sure there are other things. One can reach the pantry, the refrigerator, the dishes, the dresser, the sink, the bed, all from our “dining room” table. 1828 Henderson, however, had more than one room, a stove, a couch, and people in the neighborhood spoke English. The grass is greener on the other side of the Atlantic.

I wonder what life will be like here for us in five months. It’s hard to imagine, it already seems like five months have gone by. Will we want to be here forever, or will we hate our lives? Stay tuned.

So Superblog avec photo

We have plus des photo than advertised below, just check here for all: http://picasaweb.google.com/annarlessuperblog

Bienvenue 2 Notre Blog

Hi family and frirends,
Inevitably, we'll be using lots of English/French (Engench?) here.
Pictures are coming soon, we just don't have many since today is the first sunny day here.
But weather is hardly symbolic, because all's been perfect, so far. We've heard countless horror stories about how the French will be aloof, rude and unwilling to speak English. That finding an apartment and getting a bank account would involve endless bureaucracy. That the streets would be dirty, with dogs pooping everywhere.
Instead, we were able to get an affordable, furnished apartment in the exact corner of the city center--and yet it's quiet because we're in a sort of back/middle area of an enormous building. We got a bank account set up through our two very helpful profs at our school. The French people always say hi and bye to each other when they're just passing in the halls, and every time we struggle with the language, they go Engench, much to the retardation of our French learning. And we've eaten pate off the dog-free sidewalks. Parfait.
Until later, here's some photos pre-France (NV, NYC, CA), and some pictures of our room and of Annalise getting fat.