the first thing to go was my laptop hard drive. the old Toshiba drive had taken some knocks and bumps in its life even before i stuck in my Eee last year and walking 100 metres back to the hostel after war-walking (looking for unsecured wifi connections) without shutting the machine down did it in (damn old-school, non shock-locking drives). i've patched it up and kept it limping along ever since, but not before it ate ~20 of my photos from the days previous so i know i can't trust it to store important data from now on. if i had access to my equipment i could set it aside and run a looped diagnostic over the course of a couple of days, but i need it too much and too often to have it out of action for that long.
i broke my specs in Paris - 5 years i've had those: so long that i can't even remember what i had before. they snapped on one side of the bridge. something most people don't realise is that titanium is work-hardened, which means that the more you bend and flex it the more brittle it becomes until when, one day, you're straightening them outside the Sacre Coeur it shears, leaving you with prescription sunglasses as your only way of seeing more than just a blur.
my camera's been getting progressively more and more beaten up, and there's now dust between the lenses which shows up as dark fleks in some of my photos. i'm still not sure how i'm going to clean that out, although i may spend some time exploring with my screwdrivers (i packed one small philips-head and small flat-head jeweller's screwdriver in my backpack in case i needed to mend something).
my cheap-arse shorts that i picked up in Primark for something like 6 quid have started tearing on the left-hand side between the pockets, and there's a rough patch on the left buttock from where my shoulder bag rubs against them. they've got a date with a skip when i get back to London... or better maybe: a ritual burning. i haven't had one of those in ages...
my PSD (Personal Sanity Device) died a death in Krakow - i'd forgotten that it was in the pocket of my shorts and it fell 2 metres onto the tiled floor of the shower and decided that it didn't want to boot anymore. i spent an hour that afternoon gently prising it open, reseating the memory module (the memory's not soldered onto the mainboard on this model and it had come loose) and reconstructing it to get it working again. it's scratched up more than it was before, but it's making noise again which is all i care about.
the Merrell shoes i bought on my first trip to Singapore for a bargain are starting to give - the stiching's finally going, the lining in the heel has worn through on the left one and the innersoles are so well conformed to my foot that i expect they'd cripple anyone else who tried to wear them. they've lasted me through something like 18 countries and a rough guestimation has them on my feet for over 1000km worth of walking. still, i have the feeling they're also going to want a burning before the year's out.
operating life is usually measured in time - a fridge will work for, say, 15 years before it needs servicing, or the compressor needs replacing. an engine is good for 10 years before it needs servicing. we think in how many years before something needs to be thrown out or repaired. in the aerospace industry things are measured in hours of operational use, which is really far more accurate. if i bought an mp3 player, used it once a week for an hour and packed away nicely in between it'd never get damaged or fall apart, and it'd finally die when the battery broke down, but that's not really the point, is it? what's the point of having something useful if you keep it wrapped in cotton wool and never use it? in real life i'm reasonably nice to my gear, and it lasts longer. while traveling i've been pretty hard on my kit, and in general it's stood up pretty well, especially bearing in mind the beating it's taken. i try to be as nice to it as i can be... it just seems that this life comes with a surprisingly increased level of entrophy. run around the place with a backpack and things are going to take a few knocks and bumps. i know i have.
last night i managed to fall backwards down a steep flight of steps, sliding on my back with my Eee clutched to my chest so that it wouldn't get smashed, keeping my head up so that i took the blows from the steps on my shoulders. today my back's a stiff, bruised mess, but nothing's broken and i'll heal - a smashed laptop screen's not the sort of thing i can easily replace on the run. i have a persistent cough that have been following me since Barcelona and a runny nose i've had since Interlaken. too many skipped meals and too much expedient, cheap food mean that i'm popping through the last of my multivitamins to try to keep myself in vaguely working order. i don't have the time or resources to look after myself properly if i want to cover the amount ground i've committed myself to, and i'm loathe to pay exhorbident prices for food in tourist locations which, to be honest, is where i wind up most of the time. something's going to give, but in the meantime i keep moving in the hope that i can keep ahead of the sickness-monster chasing me and i'll be able to steer clear until i'm done and have the time to spend a couple of days in bed.
living on the road has its toll. double my budget and i'd be able to run at a more comfortable pace. take more time and maybe cook for myself every once in a while, or eat better when i'm out. you know i wouldn't tho - double my budget and i'd double my distance and make even greater sacrifices so that i could get even further across the map. i just hope i manage to not break anything else i can't fix. or easily replace... which reminds me that i need to wander into town and see if i can find some two-part epoxy for my specs. it'd be nice to be able to see at night again...
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Prague: hey gorgeous, where have you been all my life??? (50.1 North, 14.25 East, apparently)
now what did i know about the Czech Republic 3 days ago? let's see... former Communist-Bloc country during which time it was half of Czechoslovakia. capital city: Prague. beer's cheaper than water. so not much, really. pardon my ignorance. i've picked up a bit since then...
remember how i said i loved Paris? and Berlin? when i sat around musing about places where i'd learn the language just so i could live there? welcome to Prague. been wondering where the most beautiful city in Europe was? welcome to Prague. where can you go into a supermarket and pick up three half-litre bottles of beer and still get change from a Euro? this is Prague, baby. it's the Happiest Place on Earth, City of 1000 Spires, possessed of more statues than anywhere else on the planet. ever watched the movie XXX with Vin Diesel, seen the big climax scene where they're trying to difuse the bio weapon before it destroys the city? that's the river in Prague. remember the story about the mad astronomer Tycho Brahe (who was actually Danish, but who's counting) who was supposed to have died of a burst bladder in the middle of a dinner party? Prague. read any Kafka? he was from Prague. it's got a Communism Museum and a Sex Machines Museum, plus the standard accumulation of churches, squares, and clutter you expect from an old, European city. it's just prettier than anywhere i've been. ever.
or at least: so far...
my first impression of the place was fairly average, but then i was heading from the main train station to my hostel somewhat outside the central area by foot at Stupidity in the morning and even then it was pleasant, walking past the statue commemorating the Soviet Liberation of Czechoslovakia (which looks suspiciously like two guys making out until you look more closely) on my way down to the river, through an industrial area and finding my hostel after an hour or so of walking after a sketchy night's sleep on the train. makes me glad i can carry my backpack a decent distance now. one way or another, i was HOURS too early to Czech in (ok, i SWEAR that's the last time i'll make that joke... it's just... you see so fucking many of those ridiculous "CZECH ME OUT!" tshirts at the touristy stores that eventually it works its way into your brain) so i Czeched (oops...) my email and joined in on the standard walking tour which, once again, happened to have a start point at this hostel. welcome to Plus Prague, a member of the "People Like US" chain of budget accomodation... and by budget i mean 6.60 Euro a night. it's a MegaHostel, but don't hold that against it. the busload after busload of Contiki and TopDeck fuckers just add to the colour... and give the Busabout folks someone to poke fun at. not that we feel superior or anything... today's NewEurope tour leader was a girl from Essex who went from "quite pleasant and sane" to "jumping around and yelling like there was something more than caffeine in her coffee" when she went into Performance Mode which is pretty much what i needed at the time, and she kept things nicely interesting the whole way through and by the time she'd finished i'd got chatting to a girl from Sydney who kept me company for the rest of the afternoon, cruising up to the castle, then down and around and in and out of the west-side of the river until got late and we both needed to get cleaned up for the pub crawl... but by that time we'd covered quite a lot of ground and walked some gorgeous streets.
fucking pub crawls. just about every hostel i've stayed in has advertised one, and Busabout is always pimping one or another. i've managed to avoid them all through this trip so far, but i figured that i might as well do ONE and see what all the fuss was about... and if i was going to do that i'd do it in the place with the cheapest beer. unfortunatly, the night turnout out to be crap. we met ran into Theo and Christian - the two lads i'd been out drinking with in Krakow - and hooked into their group for dinner which took so long to come that we were late for the meetup for the crawl. Chris and Theo distinguished themselves nicely by getting obnoxious with the wait-staff and then stiffing them on the bill. the crawl itself was crap - we found it at the first pub and joined in for Power Hour which is more or less: you have an hour to drink as many shots and pints of beer as you can before we move on to the next pub. it was an average pub, and i'm not a fan of rushing my drinking and the locations went steadily downhill from there. we got chatting with a couple of Canadian lads who were good value, but got stuck sitting next to a table of obnoxious Eurotrashy Germans who kept things loud and irritating. by the time we got to the next pub Sian (the skinny Aussie girl we'd met along with Chris and Theo) had drunk enough to be sick, so once she was done emptying her stomach on the pavement we poured her into a taxi with an honest driver (we found out later, seeing as she got to the hostel without being robbed or worse). come the fourth place Whatshername From Sydney was getting friendly with one of the Canadian lads and i was sick of it. we were out of pub territory now - into the underground club zone, and as fun as it was to get down and partying with the Eurotrash (what can i say? the German girls were pretty hot) my heart wasn't in it, so i bade my farewell and made a move.
i was pretty drunk, but no so far gone i couldn't find the tram stop... which is when i realised i didn't have a fucking ticket for the thing. they don't actually sell tickets ON the tram. you have to get one from a newsagent, or be lucky enough to be at a stop with a machine and this one didn't. nor did the next. or the next. next thing i know i'm walking back to the hostel at OMG at night, getting lost, finding myself, getting REALLY lost, giving in and hitting up a parked taxi only to find out that i was just 300m away by now and i might as well walk. i had a fun thing happen though - as i'm walking towards the river i see two people with backpacks being chased up the street by a cameraman and a sound guy who asked if i happened to know where the "Old New Synagogue" was. actually, i'd seen it before and gave them a hand on my map. next thing i know, a release form's been shoved under my nose and from the looks of things i may well just be featuring pissed as a newt on the next season of The Amazing Race. not bad for a night's work...
i woke up the yesterday with the innevitable hangover, but i had plans and i wasn't missing them. i heard about the Prague Sex Machines Museum years ago and i've always wanted to check it out, and the Museum of Communism almost as far back. with only 3 days in this place i wasn't going to miss out so i dragged myself together, cleaned myself up and got the tram back into town. the Museum of Communism is actually pretty amusing - it's located over Prague's biggest McDonalds and next to a Casino, which is fucking hillarious juxaposition if you ask me. it's not ALL communism, although it does discuss a bit of Stalin's rise in Russia. mostly it's about Communism in Czechoslovakia, in the days after WWII and before the Velvet Revolution when they cast off the old Marxist systems and the Velvet Divorce (because neither event was violent in any way - everything was completely peaceful) where the Czech Republic and Slovakia effectively said "Meh" and went their separate ways. the Museum is almost a photo essay with a couple of props, but worth seeing regardless, if only to check out some of the gear in the gift shop. there's not much, but the old-style propaganda posters with ammended captions are a laugh, like "You couldn't get laundry powder, but you sure could get your brainwashed..."
the funny thing is that the Czechs effectively liberated themselves, days before the Red Army showed up. in the final days of the war a Civilian Uprising kicked in, driving the Nazis out of Prague to be quietly mopped up by the Russians when they showed up later. the firefight between the remainders of the SS and the Czech guerillas was apparantly pretty epic, not to mention impressive considering they were untrained civilians for the most part. still, the Red Army rolled in the tanks so all the monuments point to them and since they were there they set up shop in the ashes, adding Czechoslovakia to the infamous Soviet-Bloc
me, i celebrated the capitalist society i've grown up in by cramming a massive amount of McDonalds down my throat before i went in. i hate having to resort to junk food like that, but i needed a sure-fire pickmeup and hangover cure and i knew it would deliver - especially once i'd acquired and demolished some variety of caffeine-drink. hangover fading, i wandered through the museum, then headed off and found the Sex Machines Museum which... well, it was better than the Sex Museum in Amsterdam, but i was still a little unimpressed. yeah, it had stuff... it's just not THAT well stocked with gear from history or kinky implements that actually shocked me. it's not that i'm so kinky that i'm unshockable or anything... it's just that nothing really surprised me, although some of the copies of patent applications on the walls made me burst into laughter.
museums out of the way, caffeine coursing through my veins, i was left in the middle of town with no specific plans and the rest of an afternoon to kill, which in my world means that it's time to abuse my footwear some more so i put my map away, picked a direction i'd not been in and walked. the rest of the afternoon was spent getting lost, then finding myself again, then getting lost some more. i stopped in a little arcade with an Alternative Music and Lifestyle store and Band venue, a tattoo artist and a funky little cafe where i read my book for a bit while satisfying my caffeine addiction, and i walked. i found the river and i walked. eventually i decided that i'd seen enough for one day and made my way back to the hostel to put on a load of washing and hit the pool and sauna.
yeah, Plus Prague has a sauna, and an underground swimming pool. how cool is that??? this meant that while every stick of clothing i own was spinning in the washing machine, i'd dived in the pool in my boardies, the cranked the heat, poured a bucket of water on and steamed the sauna way up while i sat there enjoying the sensation of my muscles relaxing while my body sweated out the toxins from my sinful life. i've done it every day i've been here - come back in the afternoon, dived in the pool, worked up a good sweat, then dived back in the pool. meanwhile, since the washing finished i've been able to enjoy the greatest luxury i've experienced in weeks:
All Of The Clothes i'm Wearing Right Now Were Clean When i Put Them On. this hasn't happened since... Valdelavilla. i think i finally sweated in my last clean tshirt when i was in Bruges or Amsterdam and since then i've just been living in my own filth. it was so happy to be have clean things to wear that afterwards i did a little dance and went for a celebratory beer at the pub down the road which is entirely decorated with car parts. i was supposed to be meeting with people in the lobby and we were all going to go together but they proved unreliable so i went solo and chilled out listened to the band while sitting in the beer garden with good Czech beer.
so why do i love this town so much? well, for starters: i'm rapidly coming to the opinion that there's no such thing as "bad Czech beer". it's not the same sort of artform the Belgians have made of it, but every beer i've drunk has been of good quality and GREAT value. a beer in the average pub? around a Euro, which will buy three cheapies in the corner store or two Budweiser Budvars (the original, not the American crap). the people are friendly, especially outside the city centre, and everywhere in the main part of town is just fucking gorgeous. it's the sort of looks that grab you reliably every time you look, and there's always something else to see. look across and you'll see art neuveau, art deco, gothic, baroque. look up and you'll realise that no matter how many statues there are at street level, there'll always be more on the rooftops. and over doors. and at the corners of buildings. the streets are that happy medium of "tidy" which means "not sterile and thereby boring" but also "not the squalid hellhole of Cairo" either. wander around in the afternoon sun, it's pretty. see it in the evening dusk and it's fucking gorgeous. look out over it all at night and you start wondering why you didn't bring your girlfriend... until you remember you don't have one because you're an hairy, unreliable pratt with a wanderlust. people say Paris is romantic, and i'll not disagree, but if you think that's "IT", you're fucking missing out when it comes to Prague.
it could be just me. i've spoken to people who haven't been impressed with the place, but i'm grooving this town. i could easily spend another couple of days running around this place, but i didn't have them to play with. i only had today and today was set aside to go to Kutna Hora - famous for one thing and one thing only: a small church decorated with human bones. you know me by now: macabre? gruesome? just TRY keeping me away, but i'll have to tell that story later, once i've had some sleep...
remember how i said i loved Paris? and Berlin? when i sat around musing about places where i'd learn the language just so i could live there? welcome to Prague. been wondering where the most beautiful city in Europe was? welcome to Prague. where can you go into a supermarket and pick up three half-litre bottles of beer and still get change from a Euro? this is Prague, baby. it's the Happiest Place on Earth, City of 1000 Spires, possessed of more statues than anywhere else on the planet. ever watched the movie XXX with Vin Diesel, seen the big climax scene where they're trying to difuse the bio weapon before it destroys the city? that's the river in Prague. remember the story about the mad astronomer Tycho Brahe (who was actually Danish, but who's counting) who was supposed to have died of a burst bladder in the middle of a dinner party? Prague. read any Kafka? he was from Prague. it's got a Communism Museum and a Sex Machines Museum, plus the standard accumulation of churches, squares, and clutter you expect from an old, European city. it's just prettier than anywhere i've been. ever.
or at least: so far...
my first impression of the place was fairly average, but then i was heading from the main train station to my hostel somewhat outside the central area by foot at Stupidity in the morning and even then it was pleasant, walking past the statue commemorating the Soviet Liberation of Czechoslovakia (which looks suspiciously like two guys making out until you look more closely) on my way down to the river, through an industrial area and finding my hostel after an hour or so of walking after a sketchy night's sleep on the train. makes me glad i can carry my backpack a decent distance now. one way or another, i was HOURS too early to Czech in (ok, i SWEAR that's the last time i'll make that joke... it's just... you see so fucking many of those ridiculous "CZECH ME OUT!" tshirts at the touristy stores that eventually it works its way into your brain) so i Czeched (oops...) my email and joined in on the standard walking tour which, once again, happened to have a start point at this hostel. welcome to Plus Prague, a member of the "People Like US" chain of budget accomodation... and by budget i mean 6.60 Euro a night. it's a MegaHostel, but don't hold that against it. the busload after busload of Contiki and TopDeck fuckers just add to the colour... and give the Busabout folks someone to poke fun at. not that we feel superior or anything... today's NewEurope tour leader was a girl from Essex who went from "quite pleasant and sane" to "jumping around and yelling like there was something more than caffeine in her coffee" when she went into Performance Mode which is pretty much what i needed at the time, and she kept things nicely interesting the whole way through and by the time she'd finished i'd got chatting to a girl from Sydney who kept me company for the rest of the afternoon, cruising up to the castle, then down and around and in and out of the west-side of the river until got late and we both needed to get cleaned up for the pub crawl... but by that time we'd covered quite a lot of ground and walked some gorgeous streets.
fucking pub crawls. just about every hostel i've stayed in has advertised one, and Busabout is always pimping one or another. i've managed to avoid them all through this trip so far, but i figured that i might as well do ONE and see what all the fuss was about... and if i was going to do that i'd do it in the place with the cheapest beer. unfortunatly, the night turnout out to be crap. we met ran into Theo and Christian - the two lads i'd been out drinking with in Krakow - and hooked into their group for dinner which took so long to come that we were late for the meetup for the crawl. Chris and Theo distinguished themselves nicely by getting obnoxious with the wait-staff and then stiffing them on the bill. the crawl itself was crap - we found it at the first pub and joined in for Power Hour which is more or less: you have an hour to drink as many shots and pints of beer as you can before we move on to the next pub. it was an average pub, and i'm not a fan of rushing my drinking and the locations went steadily downhill from there. we got chatting with a couple of Canadian lads who were good value, but got stuck sitting next to a table of obnoxious Eurotrashy Germans who kept things loud and irritating. by the time we got to the next pub Sian (the skinny Aussie girl we'd met along with Chris and Theo) had drunk enough to be sick, so once she was done emptying her stomach on the pavement we poured her into a taxi with an honest driver (we found out later, seeing as she got to the hostel without being robbed or worse). come the fourth place Whatshername From Sydney was getting friendly with one of the Canadian lads and i was sick of it. we were out of pub territory now - into the underground club zone, and as fun as it was to get down and partying with the Eurotrash (what can i say? the German girls were pretty hot) my heart wasn't in it, so i bade my farewell and made a move.
i was pretty drunk, but no so far gone i couldn't find the tram stop... which is when i realised i didn't have a fucking ticket for the thing. they don't actually sell tickets ON the tram. you have to get one from a newsagent, or be lucky enough to be at a stop with a machine and this one didn't. nor did the next. or the next. next thing i know i'm walking back to the hostel at OMG at night, getting lost, finding myself, getting REALLY lost, giving in and hitting up a parked taxi only to find out that i was just 300m away by now and i might as well walk. i had a fun thing happen though - as i'm walking towards the river i see two people with backpacks being chased up the street by a cameraman and a sound guy who asked if i happened to know where the "Old New Synagogue" was. actually, i'd seen it before and gave them a hand on my map. next thing i know, a release form's been shoved under my nose and from the looks of things i may well just be featuring pissed as a newt on the next season of The Amazing Race. not bad for a night's work...
i woke up the yesterday with the innevitable hangover, but i had plans and i wasn't missing them. i heard about the Prague Sex Machines Museum years ago and i've always wanted to check it out, and the Museum of Communism almost as far back. with only 3 days in this place i wasn't going to miss out so i dragged myself together, cleaned myself up and got the tram back into town. the Museum of Communism is actually pretty amusing - it's located over Prague's biggest McDonalds and next to a Casino, which is fucking hillarious juxaposition if you ask me. it's not ALL communism, although it does discuss a bit of Stalin's rise in Russia. mostly it's about Communism in Czechoslovakia, in the days after WWII and before the Velvet Revolution when they cast off the old Marxist systems and the Velvet Divorce (because neither event was violent in any way - everything was completely peaceful) where the Czech Republic and Slovakia effectively said "Meh" and went their separate ways. the Museum is almost a photo essay with a couple of props, but worth seeing regardless, if only to check out some of the gear in the gift shop. there's not much, but the old-style propaganda posters with ammended captions are a laugh, like "You couldn't get laundry powder, but you sure could get your brainwashed..."
the funny thing is that the Czechs effectively liberated themselves, days before the Red Army showed up. in the final days of the war a Civilian Uprising kicked in, driving the Nazis out of Prague to be quietly mopped up by the Russians when they showed up later. the firefight between the remainders of the SS and the Czech guerillas was apparantly pretty epic, not to mention impressive considering they were untrained civilians for the most part. still, the Red Army rolled in the tanks so all the monuments point to them and since they were there they set up shop in the ashes, adding Czechoslovakia to the infamous Soviet-Bloc
me, i celebrated the capitalist society i've grown up in by cramming a massive amount of McDonalds down my throat before i went in. i hate having to resort to junk food like that, but i needed a sure-fire pickmeup and hangover cure and i knew it would deliver - especially once i'd acquired and demolished some variety of caffeine-drink. hangover fading, i wandered through the museum, then headed off and found the Sex Machines Museum which... well, it was better than the Sex Museum in Amsterdam, but i was still a little unimpressed. yeah, it had stuff... it's just not THAT well stocked with gear from history or kinky implements that actually shocked me. it's not that i'm so kinky that i'm unshockable or anything... it's just that nothing really surprised me, although some of the copies of patent applications on the walls made me burst into laughter.
museums out of the way, caffeine coursing through my veins, i was left in the middle of town with no specific plans and the rest of an afternoon to kill, which in my world means that it's time to abuse my footwear some more so i put my map away, picked a direction i'd not been in and walked. the rest of the afternoon was spent getting lost, then finding myself again, then getting lost some more. i stopped in a little arcade with an Alternative Music and Lifestyle store and Band venue, a tattoo artist and a funky little cafe where i read my book for a bit while satisfying my caffeine addiction, and i walked. i found the river and i walked. eventually i decided that i'd seen enough for one day and made my way back to the hostel to put on a load of washing and hit the pool and sauna.
yeah, Plus Prague has a sauna, and an underground swimming pool. how cool is that??? this meant that while every stick of clothing i own was spinning in the washing machine, i'd dived in the pool in my boardies, the cranked the heat, poured a bucket of water on and steamed the sauna way up while i sat there enjoying the sensation of my muscles relaxing while my body sweated out the toxins from my sinful life. i've done it every day i've been here - come back in the afternoon, dived in the pool, worked up a good sweat, then dived back in the pool. meanwhile, since the washing finished i've been able to enjoy the greatest luxury i've experienced in weeks:
All Of The Clothes i'm Wearing Right Now Were Clean When i Put Them On. this hasn't happened since... Valdelavilla. i think i finally sweated in my last clean tshirt when i was in Bruges or Amsterdam and since then i've just been living in my own filth. it was so happy to be have clean things to wear that afterwards i did a little dance and went for a celebratory beer at the pub down the road which is entirely decorated with car parts. i was supposed to be meeting with people in the lobby and we were all going to go together but they proved unreliable so i went solo and chilled out listened to the band while sitting in the beer garden with good Czech beer.
so why do i love this town so much? well, for starters: i'm rapidly coming to the opinion that there's no such thing as "bad Czech beer". it's not the same sort of artform the Belgians have made of it, but every beer i've drunk has been of good quality and GREAT value. a beer in the average pub? around a Euro, which will buy three cheapies in the corner store or two Budweiser Budvars (the original, not the American crap). the people are friendly, especially outside the city centre, and everywhere in the main part of town is just fucking gorgeous. it's the sort of looks that grab you reliably every time you look, and there's always something else to see. look across and you'll see art neuveau, art deco, gothic, baroque. look up and you'll realise that no matter how many statues there are at street level, there'll always be more on the rooftops. and over doors. and at the corners of buildings. the streets are that happy medium of "tidy" which means "not sterile and thereby boring" but also "not the squalid hellhole of Cairo" either. wander around in the afternoon sun, it's pretty. see it in the evening dusk and it's fucking gorgeous. look out over it all at night and you start wondering why you didn't bring your girlfriend... until you remember you don't have one because you're an hairy, unreliable pratt with a wanderlust. people say Paris is romantic, and i'll not disagree, but if you think that's "IT", you're fucking missing out when it comes to Prague.
it could be just me. i've spoken to people who haven't been impressed with the place, but i'm grooving this town. i could easily spend another couple of days running around this place, but i didn't have them to play with. i only had today and today was set aside to go to Kutna Hora - famous for one thing and one thing only: a small church decorated with human bones. you know me by now: macabre? gruesome? just TRY keeping me away, but i'll have to tell that story later, once i've had some sleep...
Friday, August 7, 2009
Krakow: now the hard bit's over...
06/08/09 11:52PM
looking back over the last couple of days it seems like i got a lot packed into my first day in Krakow, while the rest was pretty cruisy. i guess this is partly true. sometimes that's just the way it works. it didn't seem like that the morning after Auschwicz when an impatient bus driver somehow mistook the words "Salt" and "Mine" for "Auschwicz" and nearly took me to the wrong bloody place, then seemed to blame me for the mistake when the ticket i'd handed him specifically said "Salt" fucking "Mine". still, i got the the right place in the end. i was vaguely curious about going to check it out after memories of The Grey Man mentioning it sometime back before time began, so when the folks i booked Auschwicz with had it as a package option with a small discount i thought why not? and paid the extra.
the Salt Mines near Krakow have the distinction of being the best preserved salt mines in the world, consisting of 240km worth of cut out of the rock over 700 years of active use, of which you get to explore 2.4km. it's pretty kooky in there - over time these people got a bit creative so in and amongst the examples of the old working conditions and tools there are Salt Sculptures - incredibly delicate sculptures that would dissolve if people touched them (i had to yell at a group of Americans who couldn't quite grasp the point of Don't Fucking Touch) carved whole from the rock. then things get REALLY odd. see, the Poles are about as Catholic as they come, so there's not just a chapel down there, but also a church at a depth of 100metres, entirely cut from the rock - the steps, the high roof, all carved out. there are frescos in the walls 12 inches deep with almost perfect prespective (the Last Supper is really impressive), a chandelier where every crystal is clear salt, and altar and a life-sized statue of Pope John Paul II (the Polish one). it's really, completely and totally unreal and OTT, but there you have it. alledgedly the world's deepest church. none of the mines are natural, either. it's all been cut by man, following the seam of salt that made the region rich, and that's what it's all about. Krakow had Salt, and when Salt was as valauble as Gold that meant a lot. the word "salary"? yeah, that comes from the word "salt". you've gotta love the kooky, interesting shit you... actually already knew when you got there in the first place.
it was an interesting morning. not the most exciting tourist attraction i've ever seen, but interesting and entertaining nonetheless and by 2PM i'd been dropped back at the hostel and was out on the street exploring again... in arelaxed sort of way. the nice thing about going somewhere for one specific thing is that anything else you see and/or do is a bonus, the result of which is that i basically spent the next day and a half cruising with no particular agenda - just pick a spot on the map, walk to it, see what's there, wash, rinse, repeat. i wandered into the New Jewish Cemetery (i couldn't find the gate to the old one which i've heard was entirely exhumed by the Nazis apart from one grave which they were told was haunted. cemetery? HAUNTED?!? where do i sign up?) - a quiet, shady, walled off city block just off the old Ghetto. even on a bright, sunny day it was dark and cool in there with graves packed in tighter London Unerground passengers at peak hour. it was kinda nice, but i didn't linger. i like cemeteries... i just don't stay too long.
speaking of cemeteries, do you have any idea how many fucking priests, monks and nuns there are in Krakow? or, for that matter, how many memorials and exhibitions there are dedicated to Pope John Paul II? i couldn't turn the corner without tripping over someone else in a habit of some description. the thing you don't realise unless you've a) researched these things or b) been there is that Krakow is where JP2 grew up, served as a priest, then a bishop and a cardinal. Krakow's his old stomping ground and they're seriously proud of it... although the cynic in me wonders how much of that's got to do with the number of Catholics who like to go on Pilgrimage to places like "Where the most beloved Pope in the last several hundred years grew up and got his Holy on". hell - people still love JP2. at least he wasn't a member of the Hitler Youth like Benedict the Whateverth.
meanwhile, i circumnavigated the castle one one day and actually went in on the next (don't bother - just head in, see the free stuff and get out), finding the Dragon Sculpture that flares up semi-regularly from a hidden gas burner. i walked up and down random streets, drinking coffee in random cafes and eating in random fast food joints. i basically got in as much as i could without stressing myself too much. i spent my second evening drinking with Lucas from Chicago, upsetting the old woman who lived next door to the hostel by getting loud outside late at night discussing modern post-religious morality and ethics (i went to see if he wanted to come for a wander the next day but he was dead to the world. i think i broke him). i took the opportunity to sleep in until 9AM (luxury!) and i absolutely, point-blankly refused to stress or hurry. it was around 4 that i got back to the Hostel and got settled in for the next few hours. i was on the night train again so i had hours to kill, but i'd checked out of the hostel and left my pack in the bag room for the day and being the nice folk they are they had no problem with me hanging around for the evening until it was time for me to skidaddle off for my train to Prague which meant that i got to cruise the net and eat popcorn while watching the evening's movie: Forest Gump.
i'm sorry i sound a little blah about Krakow... i really enjoyed it, but in a pleasant, relaxed sort of way. i'm finding that the more smaller, unassuming, quieter cities and towns are the more i like them, and the more i need to include them in between the big stops. sure, i was a little down in Bruges, but i needed it after Paris, and after flying around Berlin like a mad thing i needed Krakow. it's a really sweet little town with the added benefit that it's in the "cheap and cheerful" Polish way with just the right amount of charm that shows that they're not just putting it on.
of course, now i'm in Prague... and... well Prague's a whole other story entirely!
travel
looking back over the last couple of days it seems like i got a lot packed into my first day in Krakow, while the rest was pretty cruisy. i guess this is partly true. sometimes that's just the way it works. it didn't seem like that the morning after Auschwicz when an impatient bus driver somehow mistook the words "Salt" and "Mine" for "Auschwicz" and nearly took me to the wrong bloody place, then seemed to blame me for the mistake when the ticket i'd handed him specifically said "Salt" fucking "Mine". still, i got the the right place in the end. i was vaguely curious about going to check it out after memories of The Grey Man mentioning it sometime back before time began, so when the folks i booked Auschwicz with had it as a package option with a small discount i thought why not? and paid the extra.
the Salt Mines near Krakow have the distinction of being the best preserved salt mines in the world, consisting of 240km worth of cut out of the rock over 700 years of active use, of which you get to explore 2.4km. it's pretty kooky in there - over time these people got a bit creative so in and amongst the examples of the old working conditions and tools there are Salt Sculptures - incredibly delicate sculptures that would dissolve if people touched them (i had to yell at a group of Americans who couldn't quite grasp the point of Don't Fucking Touch) carved whole from the rock. then things get REALLY odd. see, the Poles are about as Catholic as they come, so there's not just a chapel down there, but also a church at a depth of 100metres, entirely cut from the rock - the steps, the high roof, all carved out. there are frescos in the walls 12 inches deep with almost perfect prespective (the Last Supper is really impressive), a chandelier where every crystal is clear salt, and altar and a life-sized statue of Pope John Paul II (the Polish one). it's really, completely and totally unreal and OTT, but there you have it. alledgedly the world's deepest church. none of the mines are natural, either. it's all been cut by man, following the seam of salt that made the region rich, and that's what it's all about. Krakow had Salt, and when Salt was as valauble as Gold that meant a lot. the word "salary"? yeah, that comes from the word "salt". you've gotta love the kooky, interesting shit you... actually already knew when you got there in the first place.
it was an interesting morning. not the most exciting tourist attraction i've ever seen, but interesting and entertaining nonetheless and by 2PM i'd been dropped back at the hostel and was out on the street exploring again... in arelaxed sort of way. the nice thing about going somewhere for one specific thing is that anything else you see and/or do is a bonus, the result of which is that i basically spent the next day and a half cruising with no particular agenda - just pick a spot on the map, walk to it, see what's there, wash, rinse, repeat. i wandered into the New Jewish Cemetery (i couldn't find the gate to the old one which i've heard was entirely exhumed by the Nazis apart from one grave which they were told was haunted. cemetery? HAUNTED?!? where do i sign up?) - a quiet, shady, walled off city block just off the old Ghetto. even on a bright, sunny day it was dark and cool in there with graves packed in tighter London Unerground passengers at peak hour. it was kinda nice, but i didn't linger. i like cemeteries... i just don't stay too long.
speaking of cemeteries, do you have any idea how many fucking priests, monks and nuns there are in Krakow? or, for that matter, how many memorials and exhibitions there are dedicated to Pope John Paul II? i couldn't turn the corner without tripping over someone else in a habit of some description. the thing you don't realise unless you've a) researched these things or b) been there is that Krakow is where JP2 grew up, served as a priest, then a bishop and a cardinal. Krakow's his old stomping ground and they're seriously proud of it... although the cynic in me wonders how much of that's got to do with the number of Catholics who like to go on Pilgrimage to places like "Where the most beloved Pope in the last several hundred years grew up and got his Holy on". hell - people still love JP2. at least he wasn't a member of the Hitler Youth like Benedict the Whateverth.
meanwhile, i circumnavigated the castle one one day and actually went in on the next (don't bother - just head in, see the free stuff and get out), finding the Dragon Sculpture that flares up semi-regularly from a hidden gas burner. i walked up and down random streets, drinking coffee in random cafes and eating in random fast food joints. i basically got in as much as i could without stressing myself too much. i spent my second evening drinking with Lucas from Chicago, upsetting the old woman who lived next door to the hostel by getting loud outside late at night discussing modern post-religious morality and ethics (i went to see if he wanted to come for a wander the next day but he was dead to the world. i think i broke him). i took the opportunity to sleep in until 9AM (luxury!) and i absolutely, point-blankly refused to stress or hurry. it was around 4 that i got back to the Hostel and got settled in for the next few hours. i was on the night train again so i had hours to kill, but i'd checked out of the hostel and left my pack in the bag room for the day and being the nice folk they are they had no problem with me hanging around for the evening until it was time for me to skidaddle off for my train to Prague which meant that i got to cruise the net and eat popcorn while watching the evening's movie: Forest Gump.
i'm sorry i sound a little blah about Krakow... i really enjoyed it, but in a pleasant, relaxed sort of way. i'm finding that the more smaller, unassuming, quieter cities and towns are the more i like them, and the more i need to include them in between the big stops. sure, i was a little down in Bruges, but i needed it after Paris, and after flying around Berlin like a mad thing i needed Krakow. it's a really sweet little town with the added benefit that it's in the "cheap and cheerful" Polish way with just the right amount of charm that shows that they're not just putting it on.
of course, now i'm in Prague... and... well Prague's a whole other story entirely!
travel
Monday, August 3, 2009
Berlin: urban exploration with mixed success and a day of flying solo...
02/08/09 09:58PM
a fellow traveler who'd passed through these parts before i did was asked what his favourite city in the world was. his response:
"East Berlin."
me, i've not been all over the world so i'll hold my tongue at this point. still, i found it to be an interesting assertion. certianly, lying in my bunk on the night train to Krakow, Poland, it occurs to me that i spent FAR more time in East Berlin than i did in West, but then i also have a certain fascination with Communism and its artifacts. by the time The Wall went up the population of East Berlin had dropped by a sixth from people getting the hell out of the Soviet-controlled area, which is why it was erected in the first place. on one night in the Red Army rolled barbed wire and soldiers out across , surrounding and encapsulating West Berlin, preventing anyone who was in the East from getting back. people visiting friends and family, or just out for a night on the town, were stuck and unable to return expect for in extreme circumstances. apartment buildings built in Soviet period tended to be the stereotypical concrete monstrosities you envision when you think "Communist architecture", so when The Wall fell the East was left somewhat underpopulated and seriously low-rent. now what sort of people congregate where the rent is cheap but comfortable? criminals! and artists (which some may consider to have a high instance of correlation, although i'm not one to judge). one way or another, East Berlin is Interesting without actually trying to be, and it's where you head to check out the Alternative vibe, or engage in adventurous passtimes like Urban Exploration.
UE is, basically, checking out old, disused parts of a city. in its purest form it's very much a "leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photos" sort of activity which is dangerous only in so much as that you want to make sure you avoid security guards and that your tetanus shots are up to date. Matti's plan for yesterday was to head out to an old abandoned amusement park in the East called Spreepark, then move on to the old abandoned military airfield. we picked up a couple of people at the Expats Drinks evening the night before, met at Alexanderplatz and rocked on. alas, Maia stopped every 5 seconds to take photos which kept us from moving too quickly and the Spreepark had far too many people in it to really get into and explore when we were there, and our lack of pace meant that by the time we'd walked around it, got in, evacuated at great speed and got back to the train station we were out of time to get to the airfield. it was an interesting expedition though - checking out what we could see through the fence, and exploring an old building nearby which seemed structually sound, but long-disused.
it's the sort of thing i'd like to try again in a smaller, better equipped group - specifically where everyone understands the idea of "time limit". hell - i reckon that with a bit of research i could spend a week just checking out old installations and facilities that have been abandoned and lie in wait of some developer with some spare credit to come through and transform them into something new. one way or another, out of time and getting hungry we made a beeline for the shop which allegedly introduced the Berlin-style kebab and stuffed outselves silly for all of 3.50 Euros. Matti went his way and i went mine to meet up with some of the Busabout folks and chill out for the evening. we'd done a lot in two days seeing the WWII artifacts and memorials, checking out the Charlottenberg (like a smaller Versailles) and meandering down the East Side Gallery - a 1.3km stretch of The Wall left intact, covered in a mixture of commissioned artwork and vintage graffiti where, if you know where you're looking you can find bars set up between the wall and the Spree river who truck in tons of white sand and create little beach-bars. we spent an hour or two in one of those drinking dark hefe wiezen and enjoying the sunshine before moving on to vegan food in Freidrichshain.
today i flew solo. most of the people i knew had left on the bus that morning, and with my train at 9:45PM i had the day to myself, so i plotted some points on the map and attacked them. i found the Stazi Museum (which was unfortunately closed), passed through the Trend Mafia Markets which were cool, if small, then screamed down to Potsdamerplatz where the Harley Days motorcycle meetup was parked up and down the road, then headed back to the Topography of Terror Holocaust Memorial to have a better look. it's an interesting memorial - 2711 concrete blocks of various heights built on an undulating piece of ground which you can walk through. it's laid out as a grid, so you go through in straight-lines, but as you go you see people passing through on different lines, only to disappear when they change course. in the middle of the city, it's quiet in there where the blocks rise a couple of feet over head-height, and eerie. i like it. the designer kept the meaning of the arrangement to himself, so it's up to the individual to interpret what it means to them. sounds pretty wanky, but it's also extremely effective at the same time, making you really think about it as you go. beneath is an exhibition which i found to be quite moving, outlining the timeline of Nazi persecution, then moving on to show transcripts of letter written by Jewish prisoners, German soldiers, Nazi officials, all laid out in lit patches of the floor in a darkened room. in fact, most of it's dark in there. there's the black, unlit room where the names of the dead are projected on the wall and voices in English and German are read out, along with a brief speil about who they were, what they did and how they died. i'm told that if you wanted to sit there waiting for it to repeat it'd take 10 years to go through.
now THAT is fucked up.
then there's the room where monoliths hang from the ceiling, looking like replicas of the ones above on the surface, explaining the fates of a number of families - where they came from, their occupations, where they were sent and who survived to war. it's solemn and heartrending and completely worth visiting.
i've heard people talk about reparation and retribution for the crimes committed by the Nazis, and how the German people should shoulder the burden of the events of 1937 to 1945... and i wonder how you ever could. how can a nation ever try to make up for genocide? how can you explain to a child that actions taken by ancestors they never knew would haunt them for the rest of their lives? i don't think it could ever be done, but i'm glad that such an effort's been made to mark those times and ensure that people never forget that it happened, that monsters really do exist and that they walk the streets with human faces rather than hide under the bed.
coming out of the exhibition i wandered over to where Hitler's Bunker sits mouldering in pieces under a carpark and stood for a while pondering, and while i looked around i noticed the Mythos Germania exhibit which explains the bunkers used by Nazi officials in the area, as well as how even the underground railway tunnels were separated during the Cold War, all the way through the reunification and the final removals of all traces of the old bunkers. all traces of the bunker where Hitler and Eva Braun spent their final days have been removed specifically to ensure that it can never become a shrine for Neo-Nazis, but you can still stand over where the remains sit buried. Mythos Germaina is diagonally across from the Topography of Terror. sitting between them on the east side of the road i noticed the Berlin Souveniers store selling tshirts and key rings next to the cafe where Matti and i had stopped for coffee 2 days previously and suddenly found myself feeling more than a little cheapened and disgusted by the juxtapositon.
there's no fucking helping some people, i swear.
so i moved on and headed back past the Brandenburg Gate, circled around and along the river a little ways, then went and sat on the grass in front of the Reichstag for a bit so that i'd get a chance to see it in the daytime, investigated the Tiergarten (avoiding the nudist area), then meandered gradually back to the hostel. an interesting aspect of West Berlin is the number of open gardens you can find. when The Wall went up it prevented any access in and out of West Berlin apart from train or plane, and with the cost of air travel in those days it wasn't the sort of thing a family could do just to get out of the city for a while. this meant that if people wanted to get out into nature they hit the park. the Tiergarten is just one of these, and it's the size of a small suburb, full of patches of forest surrounding avenues of grass with statues and water features. as i cruised through it i saw families having picnics, people lying around reading books and sunbathing, couples having quiet moments cuddled up together. it seemed a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and reminded me of London in no small way.
as i walked around aimlessly i came across a cluster of big rocks sitting in the grass with a plaque nearby which explained that a Berliner had sailed himself around the world picking up massive chunks of rock from the various continents and dragged them to this spot, leaving "sister" rocks in the original locations which he polished up on their Berlin-facing sides so that on one particular day the sun would hit them all simultaneously and bounce the light back to the ones in Berlin, linking Berlin with the rest of the world. i looked around the field and noticed a chunk of red stone with a couple of guys sitting on it so i wandered over and, recognising their accents asked
hey boys, d'ya reckon this is the Aussie stone then?
"What's that?"
so i explained what i'd seen on the sign and they looked at the rock speculatively
fuckin' crazy, isn't it?
"I reckon. Who'd've thought it? You come half-way around the world and wind up sitting on a rock from bloody home!"
i'd had about enough by the time i tramped back down Unter Den Linden to the hostel, so i killed the last couple of hours sitting around getting a few things organised on the net and making sure i got to the right train station good and early. some time soon i'll pass into Poland, and by the time i'm done there i reckon i'll have had about as much Holocaust history as i can stand. i've really enjoyed Berlin, although i can't help but feel that i'm nowhere near done with the place. when i first visited Amsterdam i had a long conversation with SpeedFox about whether or not we could live there. he'd just interviewed for a job there so it was a bit of a hot topic for him, and by the end of the day we'd pretty much agreed that neither of us would really enjoy it that much. Berlin, on the other hand, has probably knocked Paris out of my Top European City To Live In charts. i don't know if i'll get the chance, but i'll definately have to find some excuse to come back at some point in the future.
meanwhile it's time to see how well i sleep on a rocking, clicking train. at least neither of the guys i'm sharing the cabin with are snoring, so that's a bonus...
a fellow traveler who'd passed through these parts before i did was asked what his favourite city in the world was. his response:
"East Berlin."
me, i've not been all over the world so i'll hold my tongue at this point. still, i found it to be an interesting assertion. certianly, lying in my bunk on the night train to Krakow, Poland, it occurs to me that i spent FAR more time in East Berlin than i did in West, but then i also have a certain fascination with Communism and its artifacts. by the time The Wall went up the population of East Berlin had dropped by a sixth from people getting the hell out of the Soviet-controlled area, which is why it was erected in the first place. on one night in
UE is, basically, checking out old, disused parts of a city. in its purest form it's very much a "leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photos" sort of activity which is dangerous only in so much as that you want to make sure you avoid security guards and that your tetanus shots are up to date. Matti's plan for yesterday was to head out to an old abandoned amusement park in the East called Spreepark, then move on to the old abandoned military airfield. we picked up a couple of people at the Expats Drinks evening the night before, met at Alexanderplatz and rocked on. alas, Maia stopped every 5 seconds to take photos which kept us from moving too quickly and the Spreepark had far too many people in it to really get into and explore when we were there, and our lack of pace meant that by the time we'd walked around it, got in, evacuated at great speed and got back to the train station we were out of time to get to the airfield. it was an interesting expedition though - checking out what we could see through the fence, and exploring an old building nearby which seemed structually sound, but long-disused.
it's the sort of thing i'd like to try again in a smaller, better equipped group - specifically where everyone understands the idea of "time limit". hell - i reckon that with a bit of research i could spend a week just checking out old installations and facilities that have been abandoned and lie in wait of some developer with some spare credit to come through and transform them into something new. one way or another, out of time and getting hungry we made a beeline for the shop which allegedly introduced the Berlin-style kebab and stuffed outselves silly for all of 3.50 Euros. Matti went his way and i went mine to meet up with some of the Busabout folks and chill out for the evening. we'd done a lot in two days seeing the WWII artifacts and memorials, checking out the Charlottenberg (like a smaller Versailles) and meandering down the East Side Gallery - a 1.3km stretch of The Wall left intact, covered in a mixture of commissioned artwork and vintage graffiti where, if you know where you're looking you can find bars set up between the wall and the Spree river who truck in tons of white sand and create little beach-bars. we spent an hour or two in one of those drinking dark hefe wiezen and enjoying the sunshine before moving on to vegan food in Freidrichshain.
today i flew solo. most of the people i knew had left on the bus that morning, and with my train at 9:45PM i had the day to myself, so i plotted some points on the map and attacked them. i found the Stazi Museum (which was unfortunately closed), passed through the Trend Mafia Markets which were cool, if small, then screamed down to Potsdamerplatz where the Harley Days motorcycle meetup was parked up and down the road, then headed back to the Topography of Terror Holocaust Memorial to have a better look. it's an interesting memorial - 2711 concrete blocks of various heights built on an undulating piece of ground which you can walk through. it's laid out as a grid, so you go through in straight-lines, but as you go you see people passing through on different lines, only to disappear when they change course. in the middle of the city, it's quiet in there where the blocks rise a couple of feet over head-height, and eerie. i like it. the designer kept the meaning of the arrangement to himself, so it's up to the individual to interpret what it means to them. sounds pretty wanky, but it's also extremely effective at the same time, making you really think about it as you go. beneath is an exhibition which i found to be quite moving, outlining the timeline of Nazi persecution, then moving on to show transcripts of letter written by Jewish prisoners, German soldiers, Nazi officials, all laid out in lit patches of the floor in a darkened room. in fact, most of it's dark in there. there's the black, unlit room where the names of the dead are projected on the wall and voices in English and German are read out, along with a brief speil about who they were, what they did and how they died. i'm told that if you wanted to sit there waiting for it to repeat it'd take 10 years to go through.
now THAT is fucked up.
then there's the room where monoliths hang from the ceiling, looking like replicas of the ones above on the surface, explaining the fates of a number of families - where they came from, their occupations, where they were sent and who survived to war. it's solemn and heartrending and completely worth visiting.
i've heard people talk about reparation and retribution for the crimes committed by the Nazis, and how the German people should shoulder the burden of the events of 1937 to 1945... and i wonder how you ever could. how can a nation ever try to make up for genocide? how can you explain to a child that actions taken by ancestors they never knew would haunt them for the rest of their lives? i don't think it could ever be done, but i'm glad that such an effort's been made to mark those times and ensure that people never forget that it happened, that monsters really do exist and that they walk the streets with human faces rather than hide under the bed.
coming out of the exhibition i wandered over to where Hitler's Bunker sits mouldering in pieces under a carpark and stood for a while pondering, and while i looked around i noticed the Mythos Germania exhibit which explains the bunkers used by Nazi officials in the area, as well as how even the underground railway tunnels were separated during the Cold War, all the way through the reunification and the final removals of all traces of the old bunkers. all traces of the bunker where Hitler and Eva Braun spent their final days have been removed specifically to ensure that it can never become a shrine for Neo-Nazis, but you can still stand over where the remains sit buried. Mythos Germaina is diagonally across from the Topography of Terror. sitting between them on the east side of the road i noticed the Berlin Souveniers store selling tshirts and key rings next to the cafe where Matti and i had stopped for coffee 2 days previously and suddenly found myself feeling more than a little cheapened and disgusted by the juxtapositon.
there's no fucking helping some people, i swear.
so i moved on and headed back past the Brandenburg Gate, circled around and along the river a little ways, then went and sat on the grass in front of the Reichstag for a bit so that i'd get a chance to see it in the daytime, investigated the Tiergarten (avoiding the nudist area), then meandered gradually back to the hostel. an interesting aspect of West Berlin is the number of open gardens you can find. when The Wall went up it prevented any access in and out of West Berlin apart from train or plane, and with the cost of air travel in those days it wasn't the sort of thing a family could do just to get out of the city for a while. this meant that if people wanted to get out into nature they hit the park. the Tiergarten is just one of these, and it's the size of a small suburb, full of patches of forest surrounding avenues of grass with statues and water features. as i cruised through it i saw families having picnics, people lying around reading books and sunbathing, couples having quiet moments cuddled up together. it seemed a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and reminded me of London in no small way.
as i walked around aimlessly i came across a cluster of big rocks sitting in the grass with a plaque nearby which explained that a Berliner had sailed himself around the world picking up massive chunks of rock from the various continents and dragged them to this spot, leaving "sister" rocks in the original locations which he polished up on their Berlin-facing sides so that on one particular day the sun would hit them all simultaneously and bounce the light back to the ones in Berlin, linking Berlin with the rest of the world. i looked around the field and noticed a chunk of red stone with a couple of guys sitting on it so i wandered over and, recognising their accents asked
hey boys, d'ya reckon this is the Aussie stone then?
"What's that?"
so i explained what i'd seen on the sign and they looked at the rock speculatively
fuckin' crazy, isn't it?
"I reckon. Who'd've thought it? You come half-way around the world and wind up sitting on a rock from bloody home!"
i'd had about enough by the time i tramped back down Unter Den Linden to the hostel, so i killed the last couple of hours sitting around getting a few things organised on the net and making sure i got to the right train station good and early. some time soon i'll pass into Poland, and by the time i'm done there i reckon i'll have had about as much Holocaust history as i can stand. i've really enjoyed Berlin, although i can't help but feel that i'm nowhere near done with the place. when i first visited Amsterdam i had a long conversation with SpeedFox about whether or not we could live there. he'd just interviewed for a job there so it was a bit of a hot topic for him, and by the end of the day we'd pretty much agreed that neither of us would really enjoy it that much. Berlin, on the other hand, has probably knocked Paris out of my Top European City To Live In charts. i don't know if i'll get the chance, but i'll definately have to find some excuse to come back at some point in the future.
meanwhile it's time to see how well i sleep on a rocking, clicking train. at least neither of the guys i'm sharing the cabin with are snoring, so that's a bonus...
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Berlin: Don't Mention The War...
heading back from a pub out in the suburbs this evening in a city that was 20 years ago reunited with sledgehammers and constructive demolition, i was left to navigate the U-Bahn on my own for the first time since arriving. i don't often take public transport when i travel but in Berlin it's worth it, espcially when i'm being shown around some of the less-known sights and you want to save time, so as i walked down the steps my hands went into autopilot and fished my PSD and headphones out of my TARDIS bag and brought on some noise. i'm in Germany and i'm feeling that something in German would be appropriate but i realise quickly that i cleared Rammstein off some time ago in favour of... i'm not sure anymore. it might have been In Flames... or Incubus. i mentally scan my database, and on a sudden realisation i'm digging deep into the Guitar Hero soundtrack to find Heir Kompt Alex by Die Toten Hosen (Here Comes Alex by The Dead Pants) and everything's right with the world as the train runs along towards Alexanderplatz. shortly thereafter i remember that i included some Rammstein in some compilations i'd made up years ago and i'm pretty sure i had it loud enough that Keine Lust and Engel were audible to everyone else in the station. it didn't help that i was headbanging - that tends to draw attention.
i'm staying in a mega-hostel just off Unter Den Linden, roughly 20 minutes walk into East Berlin from the Brandenburg Gate. it's a good location, across the road from Alexanderplatz which is a) a large square with a water fountain and b) a main rail hub for the city. this made it easy this morning when Matthias came to meet me and show me around. it's nifty running into other travelers you've met before when you're out in the world. it's freaky-cool catching up with someone you've not seen in years, since way back in another life. i've not seen Matthias in something like 4 years, would realistically make it 2 lives ago, and the last time we spoke we were... i wouldn't go so far as to say less than friendly, but certainly not on xmas-card lists. still, when i walked out the front door to see him snapping a quick photo of the statue across the street i recognised him instantly, and we fell back into step just like it was old times when i used to come round to his place and drink beer until far too late in the evening.
i can't stress the value of having a local guide, even if they've only been in the town for 5 weeks. Matti'd been training to do the free walking tours i've been taking in almost every city, so we headed off so he could get some practice, meandering through the central area, then bouncing from location to location to check out some stuff that isn't on the regular tourist route, like having a laugh at the Australian-themed restaurant at Potsdamerplatz, and the artisty area in Freidrichshain. i'd already gone on a mission the previous evening after arriving with Dee, Stef and Val, taking in the Book Burning Memorial (a glassed-over hole in the ground in the stop where the biggest book-burning occurred, in which you can see bookshelves with enough room for one of each of the 22,000+ books on the Nazi list of prohibited titles) and the viewing terrace on top of the Reichstag (with is totally worth checking at night), where i experienced the strangest phenomenon.
i've never been to Berlin before, but i instantly knew this building, etched into my mind's eye. i'm standing 50 metres from the front steps with a pilfered MP44 Assault Rifle wearing a Red Army uniform fighting my way across the trenches and pillboxes surrounding the front of the building, taking cover behind burning tanks. sprinting up the steps, i leap over the barbed wire to clear the soldiers behind the sandbags, take out the heavy machinegun on the platform opposite then carefully pass between the pillars on the right-hand side so that i don't take a magazine-load of bullets in the back while i clear the fortified area in front of the heavy doors under the engraved roof. all this is happening in my head while i stand there looking at the facade, and i can't help but wonder at the accuracy of some of the computer games i've been playing in the last few years. i think i died a dozen times getting up those steps when i played Call of Duty 4, and the layout of the front of this building has been etched into my memory. it's pretty ridiculous getting flashbacks from a place you've never been, but there you go.
i'm glad i met this crew - Dee's older than she looks and is more mature than most of the kids on the bus, and Val and Stef? they're just... Nice. don't drink, don't smoke, they say things like "dang" and "shoot". i'm sure they have a wild side, but i'm yet to find it. next to these two i'm a total badass, which amuses me a little... but then next to these two my mum's a total badass. certainly, they've been a nice gang to hang with.
i'd been in town for an hour or two when i realised that of everywhere i've been since Paris... and possibly including... this is the most "home-like" city i've been in. this could have something to do with everything being so modern. Australian cities are, you have to admit, ridiculously young when compared to Europe. the country's only 221 years old for fuck's sake. i've drunk in pubs older than that in most of the countries i've been to, and some of these places have seen constant, civilised habitation for over 2000 years. most of Berlin, on the other hand, is less than 60 years old, and much of East Berlin is even more recent. in WWII most of the city was bombed down the shattered stone and burning timbers, and a lot of the rest was fought over tooth and nail by the remnants of the German Army and SS while the Red Army swarmed upon the last remaining Nazi strongholds in a wave of tanks, blodshed and brutal retribution for atrocities committed from Poland to St Petersburg. fighting went house-to-house back to the bunkers around the Reichstag until around the time Hitler embraced the warm friendship of a .32 Luger round in his bunker, the remains of which i stood over for a while, by which time there was barely a building left standing that wasn't gutted by fire and artillery and half the city had to be rebuilt. spin forward to 1989 and i remember watching news footage of the people taking to the Wall with pickaxes and hammers, tearing down the practical symbol of idealism and oppression that had divided friends and loved-ones for 30 years in one of the most spectacular aftershocks of the fall of the Soviet Union. much of the old Soviet-style buildings have been rebuilt or renovated, leaving much of (the former, but i'll continue to refer to as) East Berlin remarkably new - very much contemporary to much of the recent construction in Perth or Melbourne.
it helps that, unlike many of the places i've been where large swathes of the older parts of cities have been given over to tourists, Berlin feels like the sort of place where people actually live, as opposed to, say, Amsterdam where the locals generally wouldn't be seen dead in the RLD unless they were... you know... working. i'd been in town for less than 24 hours when i realised that i desperately wanted to learn German and apply for an EU working visa, although from what Matti said, if neu-Deutsch keeps getting popular everyone'll be English soon enough anyway which personally i think is something of a shame.
what a town! what a vibe! Berlin carries itself with the effortless grace of a city that works well as a unit. the public transport's excellent (when it's working - there was "emergency maintenance" on the S-Bahn while i was there. i'd love to see it when everything's humming along properly), there's someone selling bratwurst and/or kebabs on every second street corner, or so it seems. Berlin is home to the buggest Turkish population outside of Turkey and as usual they brought their food with them. nowhere seems too busy, or too boring, and a huge proportion of the population know exactly how good they've got it because they remember what it was like before when things were Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. pondering plans for the rest of my stay i can't shake the feeling that i'm really going to enjoy the next couple of days...
i'm staying in a mega-hostel just off Unter Den Linden, roughly 20 minutes walk into East Berlin from the Brandenburg Gate. it's a good location, across the road from Alexanderplatz which is a) a large square with a water fountain and b) a main rail hub for the city. this made it easy this morning when Matthias came to meet me and show me around. it's nifty running into other travelers you've met before when you're out in the world. it's freaky-cool catching up with someone you've not seen in years, since way back in another life. i've not seen Matthias in something like 4 years, would realistically make it 2 lives ago, and the last time we spoke we were... i wouldn't go so far as to say less than friendly, but certainly not on xmas-card lists. still, when i walked out the front door to see him snapping a quick photo of the statue across the street i recognised him instantly, and we fell back into step just like it was old times when i used to come round to his place and drink beer until far too late in the evening.
i can't stress the value of having a local guide, even if they've only been in the town for 5 weeks. Matti'd been training to do the free walking tours i've been taking in almost every city, so we headed off so he could get some practice, meandering through the central area, then bouncing from location to location to check out some stuff that isn't on the regular tourist route, like having a laugh at the Australian-themed restaurant at Potsdamerplatz, and the artisty area in Freidrichshain. i'd already gone on a mission the previous evening after arriving with Dee, Stef and Val, taking in the Book Burning Memorial (a glassed-over hole in the ground in the stop where the biggest book-burning occurred, in which you can see bookshelves with enough room for one of each of the 22,000+ books on the Nazi list of prohibited titles) and the viewing terrace on top of the Reichstag (with is totally worth checking at night), where i experienced the strangest phenomenon.
i've never been to Berlin before, but i instantly knew this building, etched into my mind's eye. i'm standing 50 metres from the front steps with a pilfered MP44 Assault Rifle wearing a Red Army uniform fighting my way across the trenches and pillboxes surrounding the front of the building, taking cover behind burning tanks. sprinting up the steps, i leap over the barbed wire to clear the soldiers behind the sandbags, take out the heavy machinegun on the platform opposite then carefully pass between the pillars on the right-hand side so that i don't take a magazine-load of bullets in the back while i clear the fortified area in front of the heavy doors under the engraved roof. all this is happening in my head while i stand there looking at the facade, and i can't help but wonder at the accuracy of some of the computer games i've been playing in the last few years. i think i died a dozen times getting up those steps when i played Call of Duty 4, and the layout of the front of this building has been etched into my memory. it's pretty ridiculous getting flashbacks from a place you've never been, but there you go.
i'm glad i met this crew - Dee's older than she looks and is more mature than most of the kids on the bus, and Val and Stef? they're just... Nice. don't drink, don't smoke, they say things like "dang" and "shoot". i'm sure they have a wild side, but i'm yet to find it. next to these two i'm a total badass, which amuses me a little... but then next to these two my mum's a total badass. certainly, they've been a nice gang to hang with.
i'd been in town for an hour or two when i realised that of everywhere i've been since Paris... and possibly including... this is the most "home-like" city i've been in. this could have something to do with everything being so modern. Australian cities are, you have to admit, ridiculously young when compared to Europe. the country's only 221 years old for fuck's sake. i've drunk in pubs older than that in most of the countries i've been to, and some of these places have seen constant, civilised habitation for over 2000 years. most of Berlin, on the other hand, is less than 60 years old, and much of East Berlin is even more recent. in WWII most of the city was bombed down the shattered stone and burning timbers, and a lot of the rest was fought over tooth and nail by the remnants of the German Army and SS while the Red Army swarmed upon the last remaining Nazi strongholds in a wave of tanks, blodshed and brutal retribution for atrocities committed from Poland to St Petersburg. fighting went house-to-house back to the bunkers around the Reichstag until around the time Hitler embraced the warm friendship of a .32 Luger round in his bunker, the remains of which i stood over for a while, by which time there was barely a building left standing that wasn't gutted by fire and artillery and half the city had to be rebuilt. spin forward to 1989 and i remember watching news footage of the people taking to the Wall with pickaxes and hammers, tearing down the practical symbol of idealism and oppression that had divided friends and loved-ones for 30 years in one of the most spectacular aftershocks of the fall of the Soviet Union. much of the old Soviet-style buildings have been rebuilt or renovated, leaving much of (the former, but i'll continue to refer to as) East Berlin remarkably new - very much contemporary to much of the recent construction in Perth or Melbourne.
it helps that, unlike many of the places i've been where large swathes of the older parts of cities have been given over to tourists, Berlin feels like the sort of place where people actually live, as opposed to, say, Amsterdam where the locals generally wouldn't be seen dead in the RLD unless they were... you know... working. i'd been in town for less than 24 hours when i realised that i desperately wanted to learn German and apply for an EU working visa, although from what Matti said, if neu-Deutsch keeps getting popular everyone'll be English soon enough anyway which personally i think is something of a shame.
what a town! what a vibe! Berlin carries itself with the effortless grace of a city that works well as a unit. the public transport's excellent (when it's working - there was "emergency maintenance" on the S-Bahn while i was there. i'd love to see it when everything's humming along properly), there's someone selling bratwurst and/or kebabs on every second street corner, or so it seems. Berlin is home to the buggest Turkish population outside of Turkey and as usual they brought their food with them. nowhere seems too busy, or too boring, and a huge proportion of the population know exactly how good they've got it because they remember what it was like before when things were Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. pondering plans for the rest of my stay i can't shake the feeling that i'm really going to enjoy the next couple of days...
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