Summer 2003 - Amsterdam, Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin
Monday, July 28th, 2003 – In The Airplane
We're going to Amsterdam now, Mary and I alone. It seems much more a reality now that we're on the plane. The cafes seem like they are just down the block, instead of being thousands of miles and ages away. Reading the tour books has made everything seem like planning, but now we can just take a stroll. We plan to do the museums and the parks, and just basically take a day to rest and get acquainted tomorrow, which I guess is really today. We're packing around, the first time I've ever done so, and taking the train everywhere. It means that we don't have a car, and we can't go everywhere we want to go like I'm used to, but I'm excited to see how train travel goes, and whether we'll meet anyone on the trains or whether it will just be us reading books the entire time. It does make planning a little more necessary, with train schedules and all, but I think the train is going to be just like DC metro trains or the Chicago El, in that "it may take a while, but at least it gets you there."

Mary and I and are still absolutely smitten with each other, and with the thought of Amsterdam. And Paris. And Strasbourg. And Aix-en-Provence! Oh! All the places we'll see! All the coffeshops and outdoor cafes and museums and parks we'll see! The people we'll meet, and the chance to get away from life back home. I'm so here now! :)

Tuesday, July 29th, 2003 - Van Gogh Museum and Vondel Park
Today we greeted the city. The plane ride was just fine, without any delays or lost baggage or anything. We got from Schipol Airport to the Amsterdam Centrall station, and took a tram from there in a ring around the city to our hotel, Hotel Arena. It's a kinda spunky hotel/cafe/restaurant/nightclub, with this funky motif of "ToStay" or "ToNight" or "ToIlet." The room is pretty small, and they only had three doubles so we have a twin bed, but for what we need this is perfect. We took a short nap after we arrived at the hotel (landing to leaving the nap was 9:30 am to 2:30 pm), where we took the tram back to the Museumplein where the Rijksmuseum and the Vincent van Gogh museum are. The Van Gogh museum is a two part building, and a traditional three floor building holding over two hundred Van Gogh's and many relevant contemporary artists. There was also an exhibition wing, (GOgh MODERN) which held some explorations into color, line, shape and other aspects of van gogh's work and how it affects artists from today. Personally, I liked the traveling show that the Art Institute [of Chicago] put on comparing Van Gogh to Gauguin better, simply because it had paintings that I liked better, but this exhibit was informative and beautiful.

Mary and I felt very much like tourists; it bugged us. There were times when we didn't know what we were doing (in the Central Station, and when we were trying to find the Blue Tea House in Vondelpark) that made us very conscious and aware of how touristy and american we were. With the exception of some stoners at the train station, everyone we spoke to knew what we were asking and helped us out. Although we got our questions answered, it still would have been nice if we had known enough Dutch to not feel rude.

Some people made us feel rude, and treated us as such, but for the most part people were sympathetic and helped us find what we needed.
After the van gogh museum, we went to Vondelpark, a beautiful park full of lakes and trees, lined with some of the most interesting characters I'd ever seen. lots of hippies, with devil sticks and hackey sacks and dredded hair and old Amsterdammers in their 50's and 60's grooving right alongside them. It was great weather, and people were out. It was Tuesday evening on the town, and people were out loving it. I hope to get back there before I leave again.

Wednesday, July 30th - Amsterdam: Grocery shopping, Centraal Station, downtown shopping, boat ride, The Shipping Quarter (& Barney's Coffeshop)
*Bubblegum Pot
*"When you smoke from this pipe, you will dance!"
*"My bra smells like weed!" -Mary

Thursday, July 31st - The first train trip, the international counter, Rotterdam & Museum Park
In general, I've found the Dutch to be wonderfully helpful. Although there are some times when they feel overrun by tourists, their ability to speak five or six different languages by age 10 seems to open them up to all different cultures. I don't feel bad asking "sprecht u engels?" because I know they do, because as sad as it is, they use it a lot. When people really want to be everyone to understand, they use English. It really is a universal language. When people swear, or write graffiti, it's in English. "Fuck Israel" it said, and then someone said "Fuck Palestine." Everyone who was walking past the street probably knew. Cops give directions in English, not (only) because it's English-speaking people who are screwing up, but because people understand it. You have to know it if you're in law enforcement.

Things are beautiful here, though. Rotterdam is a very industrialized city, like Lorient it was almost entirely destroyed during the bombings of WWII, and it regrew in an ultra-modern style of architecture. But while Lorient's buildings are all ugly squares, slabs of concrete, Rotterdam's are more organic even in their modernization. We went today to "Museumpark," the center of town, where sculptures seemed to erupt out of the ground. A long pile of stones was drawn across the landscape until it sank into a nearby pond. We sat by the pond snacking on apples, when two or three families of ducks came by and tried to beg their way into some dinner. They were incredibly tame; the little ones ate anything and got close enough to peck at our toes. Eventually, this big mean "bitch-bird" (named by Mary, a.k.a. Jason because of his all-black body and white beak and face) ruined the party. He was very demanding of our food, fluttering his puny wings in order to scare us. It worked. When he started hissing, and I beat him away with my sandal (actually connecting a few times without him being phased in the least) we got genuinely scared.

Besides that, things have been wonderful. Every time Mary saw the birds, or any dog that walked by, her eyes lit up and she'd grab my arm and yell "Dummies!" She's getting tired of schlepping around all her stuff, but she still, without fail, will become giggly at the dummies. They're a saving grace. The dummies, and the food, and the yummies... This is so much fun!

Friday, August 1st - Train to Paris, Notre Dame
Schlepping aside, we're here! Paris is beautiful, although a bit stinky in the summer heat of August. It's pretty similar to how I remember it, actually: busy, stylish and fun. The book we have says "First and foremost, Paris is an international city, and secondly, it is the capital of France." That definitely rings true with me. Although I feel like a tourist, I don't feel nearly as bad when I look at some of the people around me. Mary and I speak French, and are spoken back to in French. It's not really a game like it was when I came in 7th grade, but more like a challenge now. The people we talk to respect the fact that we struggle, and speak slowly for us. We do our best, but when we're tired, or in a hurry and need to get our point across, we fall into English. It's relieving and frustrating at the same time. This is a scary sort of freedom, being able to talk in our native language across the ocean, but it’s also very limiting, knowing that we can’t talk in anyone else’s.

It is obvious that we're American but the French are not treating us as poorly as I feared. I think the Americans that visit nowadays, after the whole war debacle, are generally the kind that the French didn’t mind to start out with. The ones who don't speak any French, or don't know anything about French culture, or really don't appreciate that culture very much, are the Americans that the French really had a beef with in the first place, and they don't come anymore. That would be supporting the French economy.

We arrived in Paris today, and took the Metro subway, without too much difficulty (barring a little moaning from us as we schlepped our bags up three flights of stairs during a transfer) at our hotel. The building next door is being renovated, and the tiny little side street it's on is being torn up, but all in all it's a good place. The weather is hot and humid, a la Paris in August, and our hotel does not have air conditioning, so things have been sticky. It's not unbearable (it's been 33-35 degrees centigrade, but it could have been 35-40, which would have been painful). As it is, we haven't worn clothes in the hotel room because of the heat.

Through the stink and the heat and the language barrier, we're still having a wonderful time. I know I am, and I'm pretty sure Mary is too. After we arrived and took an hour siesta, we headed out onto the streets. We're on the right bank, in a fairly wealthy part of town (although the nearby park is seedy, full of Paris' homeless and reeking of urine). We're five minutes from the Louvre, which we saw on Saturday, and fifteen minutes (at our pace, which is relatively slow because of my incessant habit of stopping to take pictures) away from le Cathedral de Notre Dame
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*Our first Parisian sidewalk cafe; walking past the Louvre, Left bank along the Seine, inside Notre Dame for a service.

Saturday, August 2nd - Louvre and St. Chappelle
We had a Wonderful dinner tonight. We had the receptionist recommend a few places, and ended up in this little Parisian cafe with comfortable seats and a good number of tables and nice pictures on the wall and good mirrors so I could people watch even though Mary was sitting towards the room. The food was delicious, I got penne pasta and Mary got roast duck. We each got a volcano chocolate cake a la Hannah’s mother. And all of that, the ambiance and the food, for thirty bucks. We paid ten for a pair of cokes overlooking the river. We eat well here!

*Walking past the poshy stores along Rue Rivoli, getting on the metro to get into the Louvre, French & Italian paintings (Mona Lisa), the Cathedral of St. Chappelle, Mary getting locked in the bathroom.

Sunday, August 3rd - Pompidou Centre, Siesta, Laundry
*I took a picture of an old Parisian today sitting on a park bench, loaf of bread at his side. He wasn't looking at me when I took the picture, but he saw me snap it and gave me the same look that I got from my Peruvian subjects on that one day when we were driving over the three mountains on the dirt roads. I guess nobody likes giving away their image without permission. But how else can I get candids??

We had dinner on the row of tourist cafes by the park again, but this time in a slightly different (more chain-y) place. We had salads, which were too big, and a big bottle of water, and it cost the same as the wonderful meal we had last night. We ate there because Mary needed sustenance, so it was just what we needed, but still. I like my way of finding cafes better.

Monday, August 4th - Train to Strasborg
Today was mostly a travel day; I got a lot of reading done. We are going to miss Paris, but we're happy to get out of the big city. The heat has been out of control; it will be 41c tomorrow, the hottest summer recorded in France since 1949).

We got up early and had a delicious breakfast in the basement of our hotel, a kind of arched basement dining room with stone walls and a fireplace... Very romantic. We checked out, and went straight to the train station because we didn't know how long it would take. We were about an hour and a half early, so we sat and chilled on the ground in the open while waiting for the train. Unfortunately, it wasn't air-conditioned, so it was pretty stifling.

Strasbourg itself is a lovely town, very hip and happening despite itself. It's full of quaint German Alsace black forest architecture, although it's technically part of France, with most people being proficient in German and French. When people don't understand our English, they start talking in German. It's nice to not be assumed American, although in all honesty, we haven't been treated very differently. It's just a mental thing.

The town feels very quaint, but the people themselves are surprisingly... hip. Not quite trendy, but getting there. They wear clothes as fashionable as any Parisian, and there's even a pretty good mix of ethnicity, at least in the foods and restaurants, and people we've seen.

The old town (right around the cathedral) is a tour-bus cash-cow, with all kinds of vendors and guys walking the streets with umbrella hats and fake flowers and robotic bunny toys laid out on blankets on the sidewalks. In addition, Strasbourg is the seat of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, although the parliament buildings are outside the central tourist area. There feels like a lot of money is circulating in this town. It's very lively.

Tuesday, August 5th - Strasbourg Cathedral

Wednesday, August 6th, 2003 - Alsace Museum, Le Petit France & Lake ????
My dad would have loved today. We got a relaxed start at a little fast-food breakfast place that I brought for Mary back to the room. Mmm, French pain-chocolate!
I like Strasbourg a lot. On the surface, it seems very quaint, with traditional Bavarian german architecture. It makes you go "oh, that's cute!" But there also seems to be a real underbelly here, a real city. There was a special on the BBC a couple of days ago about how Strasbourg was the real "spiritual heart" of Europe, and I can see that in it's people. They really are the height of European chic. Although the town's facade is classy and old, there's a lot going on. Between the European parliament and all the trading, there's a lot of money in this town. And I can see why; it's beautiful. The cathedral is gorgeous, awe-inspiring. The shopping district was fun, with lots of interesting people running around. Even the tour-group tacky souvenir stores around the cathedral were fun.

On the train from Paris to Strasbourg, we kept passing these picturesque river scenes, with people laying out along the banks and swimming in the cool refreshing water. It looked so good, especially considering how hot and out of control the weather has been. I got it in my head to go swimming, so Mary and I went after we came back from Le Petit France and took a siesta. She was a little reluctant, since she didn't bring a swimming-suit and didn't want to go very far, but I prevailed and got her to come with me. It was a perfect French beach, with sand and rocks and everyone just laying around, on the grass or the sand or on floaties in the water... People were running around playing tag, or throwing a ball around in the water... There were easily five hundred people by the time we got there, late in the day when people were already leaving. There was a rocky outcrop, and kids were diving off of it in search of Evian bottles they were using as buried treasure. The lake itself fell off pretty fast, it was probably only fifteen feet until the water was above both of our heads, but we swam out into the middle anyway. Mary's an avid swimmer, and loved showing off. ;)

Thursday, August 7th - Train to Berlin, settling down

Friday, August 8th - Festering & the Beer Garden
We did nothing today, and it really felt good. It's just like last year, festering and lazing. But I still feel like I'm really putting my time to good use. I'm a little sad that we moved away from France earlier than we were going to, because I was really getting into the whole French language thing, but Germany's fun too.

We sat around until night, talking and sleeping and watching DVD's. Christian got home from work, and Christian, Alyssa and I went off to a german Biergarten. It was a gigantic, terraced park. There were probably 500 people there. There were tons of picnic benches, with hundreds of Germans sitting in rows with giant steins. Very friendly atmosphere.

Saturday, August 9th - Friends (Season 4)

Sunday, August 10th –
I told Christian that these last few days have been like an eternity of Saturday Morning Cartoons. I miss that! No worries, all you had to do was laze around in your pajammas and watch TV. There was the X-Men cartoon, and how my dad would come down and ogle at the cartoon superheroine Storm. I don't even remember anything else that I rotted my brain with, I only remember how relaxing it was. Waking up and zoning out was a private little comfort for me.

And here we are now, lazing around again. There are no worries here, only a balcony and a stereo and a DVD player. This is the life.

Monday, August 11th – Potsdam
Alyssa had to go on an audition in Dusseldorf, for an audition for a show she already did, so she was gone all day. Because of that, Christian, Mary and I spent the day together. We were going to go to Potsdam last year, but ran out of time (read too lazy). Potsdam is a suberb of Berlin, a beautiful little town. Frederich the Great built his country palace, Sans Souci, here, with grape terraces for the wine. It's a beautiful Baroque castle, up on a hill overlooking [what would have been] the german countryside. And yummy food! I had a delicious prosciotto (sp) and mozzarella pizza...

Tuesday, August 12th –
Today's our last full day in Berlin. It went by real fast...

Wednesday, August 13th - Train to Amsterdam
It feels good to be back in Amsterdam, if only for just a day. It's overcast, like some of the days last year, although at the beginning of the trip the weather was gorgeous. It was the first time the weather has been cool in a while, so Mary and I were actually happy about it, feeling refreshed. We also felt confident because we knew the system. I still had a few strips left on my Strippenkaart, to use on the trams and subway.

We're staying in a Novotel, the first really American hotel we've stayed at so far (barring the best western Alyssa picked out in Strasbourg). It's nice, but all the tour busses bum me out. Having stayed two weeks ago in a hip, thriving little hotel, in a quaint district right outside the city center, the Novotel, with it's easy access to the grey highway but little else, looks particularly sad. It's great inside, with a big room and bed, but it doesn’t have the charm (the two lockers and tiny little writing table) or the well-designed style, of Hotel Arena.

As a whole, Amsterdam was one of my favorite cities. The people were significantly more diverse than in the other European capitals we visited, racially, socially and economically. It was particularly friendly, and the younger crowd that we saw or talked to briefly (the two teachers who we helped find the hotel) were very open and welcoming. The hostel we stayed at in Rotterdam was clean and homey, and I loved hearing the bartender talk to everyone about where they were going. When we checked out after only one night, the staff lady asked us "Leaving so soon? Why?" I felt like she really wanted to know, and would have been concerned if there had been a problem. And I doubt she was making what the other reception workers made at other hotels.

I would have liked to have stayed at more hostels, if only for a day or two more. I really loved the atmosphere, although I also loved the private rooms that Mary and I shared. It seems very important for her to have a private place to implode in, which is why the Flat was so wonderful. I wonder whether that will change next year, living in a triple. Well, at least I'll have a room to myself at the house, which will be wonderful. I'm very excited about it, surprisingly, about having a car and being off campus. I hope my course load won't be too much. But, I do have high hopes. All should be good. :)

Thursday, August 14th - Flight Home