Eastern Metropoli

Having seen Budapeshhht...

We're still not really sure when we decided to come here, because eastward exploration was never part of the original plan, and if nothing else, we had the story of hurtling through Slovakia in the dark under the supervision of a dreadlocked and seemingly underage Hungarian train conductor with lazy speech.  But there was something else, and trumping Slovakia are the stews and the bridges and the glowing castle on the hill, and a favorable exchange rate that had us living like kings.

Czech Music Stories

Berlin Jazz

I Am a Child, Pouting In the Corner, Stubborn and Hungry

I am without ability or will to communicate except at the most basic level, which makes me want to be silent and still.  Germany, I wait for you to welcome me and bring sausages and potatoes unsolicited to wherever I may happen to be in your capital.

My Next Ikea Home

Sunday morning walk in Amsterdam. There's a smell, warm and not entirely pleasant, like old cooking oil. Cymri suggests a mix between chocolate chip cookies and wet dog. In any case, it's definitely a post-Saturday-night kind of smell. The city is still sleeping at 8:30, and everything is extremely quiet: the parks and streets are empty, the only things open are a grocery and a coffee shop. Just me and the ducks and the dog-walkers.

The best part of walking these streets is admiring the apartments on the canals. The Dutch seem to have a penchant for display, at least in Amsterdam. All houses facing the street have large picture windows, streakless and clear, providing a full view of an entire home (and its inhabitants). I can't imagine being so comfortable with that kind of public exposure, but then again my home doesn't look like these: stainless steel cookware, walls of books, flowers and bowls of fruit placed casually on a table next to the window. My first thought is that they are all restaurants. Then I think that maybe all these places are model homes for sale, with the furnishings tactfully suggesting, this is what your life could look like if you lived in Amsterdam and weren't such a slob.

But I did see a man last night watching TV on his couch, so I have to conclude that people here just don't mind living their private lives publicly, and that leads to all sorts of questions. Is constant exposure a way to show off wealth and status? Or to show you have nothing to hide? Or is it the kind of thing that brings people and communities closer together--offering your life freely to your neighbors and maintaining (in return) a certain level of cleanliness and order in your lifestyle? Maybe slobs are the weak link of society.

Normandie: Cheese, Beach, Freedom

Life on the road ends.  We go from living out of a car to living off the packs on our backs, from maps to timetables, from highway hazards and foggy roads to the warmth and quiescence of train cars.  We have relinquished control of our destiny to the rails, and say goodbye to small towns and shuttered villages.  We enter the world of the Easily Accessible.

Bog of Death

Oysters and French Children

Flying through Normandy at top speed, too fast to keep up with the map. It seems like every village and town is listed, no matter that they are only 500 meters apart and contain 10 houses and one church each. Within 20 minutes we've passed through Bonneville, Trouville, Deauville, Blonville, and Villers-sur-mer. Bam, bam, bam.

We had our "off" day in Deauville/Trouville. The towns are a famous seaside resort from the turn of the century, apparently escaping the heavy bombing that the other coastal towns got in the wars (such as Le Havre, completely destroyed). Now, it's peaceful and popular, especially for its seafood. The beaches are literally covered in THOUSANDS of shells--mussels, clams, scallops--if that gives you any idea.

Beach by our hotel in Deauville

They go "crunch" when you walk.

It was a sweet walk, excellent fish market. We ate fresh raw oysters with white wine next to the market stall rather than sitting in a restaurant. Followed it up with the signature fromages of the area, which we combined with dried sausage and apples, le pain et moutarde stolen from breakfast in our hotel room.

On the way back, I took some clandestine recordings. I couldn't resist the kids playing by the sea. Are French kids cuter because they speak French?

1. Girls play a hand game.

2. Brother and sister mimic the church bells in Deauville.


Yes. C'est comme ça.

If I close my eyes, this butter sandwich will taste like food

Where are the French? Where do they work? We wandered through the streets for an hour in Paris just admiring the apartment buildings, with their shuttered windows and cute little Juliet balconies. It's like walking through a movie set. So if we hadn't been hungry, it might have taken us longer to realize that all the shops and restaurants were closed. The French are Catholic, and are closed on Sunday. Later we found out that they are also closed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on days that end with Y.

I'm joking. Kind of. Throwing out a completely unresearched but possibly accurate statistic, I'd say that 75% of the stores I saw in France, in any city, any given time of day, were locked up. The rest were open between 10am and 5pm (except for Mondays and sometimes Wednesdays, and occasionally by appointment only). I'm wondering how anyone in this country makes money. A full time job must come out to 1000 hours per year. Actually, it wouldn't be so bad. I would also love to live a little more slowly--have two hours for my breakfast every morning (espresso and a croissant), take weekends off, read a book during my 3 hour lunch break. If only I could manage to stop being so hungry.

We've concluded that the French survive on bread and occasionally cheese, which explains both their svelte figures and their ability to make a living. Never before have I been so aware of America's super-size culture. I expect three full meals a day, and I expect the food to be fast and plentiful. If I order a small, it should be large. If I order a large, it should be obscene. And I don't even eat that much!

In Europe, small means small. At the hotel breakfast, I modestly place one of each item on my tray, and turn to face a cafeteria of people eating a crumb with no butter. Even my condiments look ridiculously greedy. It's hard not to feel self-conscious, especially when I'm also trying to pack croissants and yogurt for lunch, and full meat sandwiches for dinner.

A Parisian Lunch

---------------------------
Nov 20th:
I adjusted to the bread and cheese diet after a few days, but that all ended with the All-you-can-eat ribs in Bruges. Now I'm back to being hungry all the time, but in Germany where it is cheaper and easier to resolve. Currywurst, bitte?

Tips for Eurostar and UK Regional Trains

Eurostar
Book early, three weeks is best. Also, look out for holidays! There is a French school holiday tomorrow and all direct trains to Paris were fully booked. Luckily for us, there is an alternate route from London to Paris via the Paris Disneyland, which nobody ever talked about. From Disneyland it's just a short (45-minute) subway ride into the city. We couldn't use our Eurail pass discount, but it was still cheaper than traveling direct.

UK Regional Trains
I can't really understand this one. All I know is that there are major price differences based on any number of arbitrary factors, possibly including:

• date purchased (in some cases, same-day is better than advance booking)
• peak hours (This is very important--hundreds of pounds difference)
• the line you are traveling (big city or rural/commuter vs. passenger trains)
• whether you buy at a computer kiosk or from the ticket office, even at the same station.

I have no idea how it works, or how everyone manages to get the best price.

My Bed Has Curtains

No sleep
Six hour layover
Train to Palmer's Lodge
No "War Horse" today
breakfast next to Bloch store
(poor Stortos, uneaten and wilting)
extra plane food
V & A
sleep-deprived delirium
poor, poor me

----------------------
That's a poem I wrote after the 24 hour trip from Honolulu to London. Or I'm calling it a poem now...it has a nice shape to it, and an appropriately poignant ending.

We're staying at Palmer's Lodge this time around, a hostel in north London. It's no Passfield Hall. Palmer's Lodge is like going camping, where every new discovery reminds you what a nuisance it is to go camping (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible). Bunk beds with wooden beams hammered at random diagonals, requiring you to stoop constantly or bump your head every three seconds; showers with no door or ledge; showerheads that only spray for 20 seconds. And yet, I am clean, warm, comfortable. So far, so good.

We are way, WAY up in the attic.  Room 302 is up three flights of stairs, through the bathroom, up two more flights, then down a short hallway leading to a spacious area under the roof where 12 bunks are stuffed into whichever corner they fit. Small, public, and no storage space.  That being said, it's a beautiful old Victorian house, and I can imagine this to be the servants quarters, which gives it a little charm. And even if have to be a servant, walking up and down four flights of stairs is much less painful when you have a carved bannister and a suit of armor on the landing.

It is now 4:30pm, I have finished my roast beef, and there is no energy left for anything but packing and then sleep forever.