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.)