Florence and Pisa (October 8-11)

After a train mishap and then some difficulty finding my hostel, I was ready to crash my first night in Florence. But I ended up going out on the town (read: to a club called Space!, exclamation mark included) with some Australian girls and various other people in my hostel, because some things are more important than sleep, and drunk Australians are one of them.

I'm sure this metaphor has been made before, but traveling alone is like first dates, or like the first week of college--if you were a very different sort of person than I was at eighteen, partying-on-the-town-wise. Everyone always asks the same questions; everyone tells the same stories over and over again. You have to be more social than you'd ordinarily be, or at least, I do. But even though it can be exhausting, it's also really fun.

The next day, I ended up going to Pisa with some of the people from the night before, because they had an extra train ticket, and it was a really good time. I desperately needed a relaxing day, and this hit the spot perfectly--I had some lasagne, then we took typical tourist photos with the Leaning Tower, then we wandered into a cathedral, lay on the grass, ate gelato, and all fell asleep on the train home.

The next day, Thursday, I got up early and spent the morning at the Uffizi Gallery, looking at mostly Renaissance art and amusing myself by noticing how bored angels always look, and how annoyed Mary is in every Annunciation picture. My favorite part was learning that a bunch of paintings had originally been misattributed to different painters, and in one case it looks like Rembrandt added some embellishments to a painting he owned by another guy. That Rembrandt.

After that, I wandered around for hours and saw some palaces--where the Medicis used to live, but now they're museums--and climbed the hill to see a gorgeous view of the city, even though the sun was barely out. I also bought two more scarves to add to my growing collection. I haven't really been buying many souvenirs in Europe, mostly just scarves. Then I hit up the grocery store for some cheap wine (I had to; it's Italy) and headed back to my hostel.

I would be remiss if I didn't take at least one picture of the gelato I've been eating two to three times a day.

On my last day in Florence (this is the place I've stayed longest so far--three and a half days--and it definitely feels like it), I went into the Duomo and its related churchy buildings and climbed one million stairs for more beautiful views, and then promptly wanted to go back to bed immediately. Instead, I wandered up to this giant street market and bought more more things I didn't really need, and then hopped on a train to Rome.

Venice (October 6-7)

Venice was cold and rainy the whole time I was there, but that didn't stop me from doing some wandering around (and some getting lost) as soon as I got there. It wasn't exactly gelato weather, but I did have some pizza. And then some gelato, because, as I figured, I was already wet and cold, so I might as well also eat something delicious. But I was also dead, dead tired, so I headed back to my hostel and turned in early.

The next day was jam-packed. I went back into Venice (I was staying in a random suburb that wasn't nearly so canal-y) and wandered around the old Jewish ghetto for a while (and ate some pastries), then I went on a boat tour of the islands surrounding Venice: Murano (where we watched a glassblowing demo), Torcello (where there are some old churches), and Burano (where they make this fancy lace that only two hundred people in the world--all of them on this island--know how to make). It was neat, and I fell asleep on the boat coming back.

After that, I took myself out for a proper (candle-lit, even) Italian dinner of pasta and wine, then headed to bed early again. I'm almost halfway through with my trip now, and I'm definitely starting to feel like i"m losing my steam a little bit. I think I'll take the next couple days (in Florence/Tuscany) to mostly lounge around and relax and recharge before heading out on the second leg of my trip.

Dachau

(Warning: I discuss some pretty disturbing death and torture things in this post.)

My phone died almost as soon as I got to Dachau, so I wasn't able to take any pictures, but I'm not sure how I feel about taking pictures in a place like that anyway. (Personally, I mean. I don't have anything against others doing it, and I'm also pretty sure I've taken pictures at plenty of other sites of human suffering. But there's something about this, the cultural tenor of it and the place it has in my own mind, that makes me unsure.) Besides, it's not like I'm going to forget it.

It was devastating, and overwhelming, and I kinda felt like I was in a daze for a while after. The tour guide told lots of stories about the horrors and tortures inflicted on the prisoners there, which I had expected (it would seem gratuitous, the descriptions, if this weren't real life. I guess real life is kinda gratuitous, is entirely too much, sometimes), and some stories about the resilience of the human spirit, which I'd also been expecting.

But you can't really anticipate or predict how this stuff is going to make you feel. Easily the most uncomfortable places were the gas chamber and the barracks where guards used to torture people. In the barracks, you walk down a long hallway, and you can peer into empty rooms on either side, with cement floors and peeling paint and the smell of old things. I kept expecting to see things in the rooms out of the corner of my eye, maybe even see people still in there, ghosts or trapped in time, but of course they were all empty.

You can walk through the gas chamber at Dachau, you can stand in the actual, real room--it's not a reconstruction and there aren't any bars or glass to stop you from getting too close--you're right there. When I walked in, that's when the overwhelming feeling really hit. I could feel it pressing down on me at the same time it was rising up, twisting my stomach and my chest. I'm not sure I could say exactly what the feeling was, but it was right there.

The stories of things that happened during the war were intense. But maybe my favorite story I heard on the tour was of something that happened after the war, when some nuns started a convent in some buildings that (if I recall correctly) used to be SS housing or offices. The entrance to the convent is through one of the camp's guard towers, because when she was forbidden to make the entrance there, a nun took a sledgehammer and made one anyway. And some ex-prisoners were really happy about that, because it meant that this thing that had once meant fear and death could now lead somewhere good.

The guide talked a lot on that theme, about the way many buildings that were previously used by the Nazis now serve other functions, and how that's a good thing, that things don't always have to be preserved as their evil past selves. Something about that really struck a chord with me, the idea that yes, we can't forget what something meant, but that doesn't mean that we can't make it mean something new.

Munich (October 3-5)

I arrived in Munich to a train station full of people in lederhosen and dirdles, and immediately went on a walking tour. The guide was another super awesome one, and I had this moment when she was talking about how like 80 percent of Munich got bombed during World War II, because I had honestly (ignorantly, entitledly) never really considered before (not even when I was in Berlin, which was also heavily bombed) that the "good guys" did a lot of damage during WWII too. So yeah, learning things.

After that I didn't really have any plans and decided to check out Oktoberfest. Despite not actually knowing where it was, I figured I couldn't go wrong following the crowd of drunk, festively dressed (literally like half the people in this city are dressed up, it's awesome) people. And indeed they did not steer me wrong! I don't know what I was expecting from Oktoberfest; I should have been expecting it to be huge and crazy, but somehow I wasn't prepared for just how huge and crazy it is. But let me tell you, it's huge and crazy. In addition to all the huge beer halls, there's a giant carnival. I walked through that, and then through one of the beer halls, which was packed, and those girls really can carry like six one-liter mugs of beer in each hand.

But I knew I was too tired to have one then myself. So I headed back to the train station. I was staying in Nuremberg (about an hour and fifteen minutes away by high-speed train), because by the time I went to book a hostel in Munich, they were all really expensive (like $90 a night, no thank you). I somehow accidentally got on a commuter train instead of the express one, though, so it ended up taking almost three hours to get to Nuremberg. But I was in a compartment full of drunk and singing Germans, so I guess it was probably worth it.

I managed to catch the right train back into Munich in the morning, and then almost immediately got on a different one to take a tour of Dachau, the reason, much moreso than Oktoberfest, that I decided to come to Munich. But I'll talk about that in a separate post.

I had planned to have a quiet evening, but a girl I was on the tour with invited me to join her at Oktoberfest, and I am not one to turn down beer-related invitations. And I'm really glad I went. There's just something to be said for the experience of standing up on benches and singing songs you don't really know with a bunch of drunk Brits, Germans, and Italians you hadn't met a few hours ago, and I'm glad I had it.

Me with a beer as big as my face. (Photo cred: Erin)

For I think the first time on this trip, I didn't do anything cultural or historical or Europe-y the next day. But I think sometimes you need a day of rest, especially after participating in something as, ahem, cultural as Oktoberfest. So I let myself sleep in, and bummed around my hostel, and then I did a little shopping, bummed around a little bit more, then hopped on a train to Venice.

Prague (September 30-October 2)

I arrived in Prague at about 3 in the afternoon and had to take the metro to my hostel (but I'm getting more confident about public transit, I think), which was actually the cutest hostel in the world.

That afternoon, I wandered up around Prague Castle, the biggest medieval castle in Europe, and down into downtown, where there are old buildings, twisty streets, and more currency exchange booths than I've ever seen anywhere.

If Norway wins for prettiest country, I think Prague wins for prettiest city I've seen so far. It's just beautiful, all packed in together with colorful roofs and buildings and several different kinds of architecture. Including Cubist!

The next day, Tuesday, I went on a free walking tour with the best guide I've had so far (she told us stories about growing up in communist Czechoslovakia!), then a tour of the castle, which was not what I was expecting (we didn't even go inside), and maybe wasn't worth the time since I'd already seen most of it yesterday. But it's always fun to hear stories of crazy kings and crazy Nazis, I guess.

 

That evening, I went out for dinner and had myself some goulash, and then went to this neat smokey, grungy, below-ground bar with a girl from my hostel, where you can get half a liter of beer for about $1.50. Have I mentioned that Prague is great? I had the pilsner, for posterity, then switched to a darker beer I liked much better, the name of which I no longer remember but I think it started with a "k."

On Wednesday, I took the train about an hour outside the city to Kutna Hora with some other people from the hostel, to see the bone chapel, decorated over many years with the bones of plague and war victims. It was super neat. Here are some creepy pictures: 

 

 

We also went to a cathedral, though already, after not even two weeks, I'm starting to be kinda, "Really? Another cathedral?" about it.

When we got back to Prague and went to grab dinner, I had an interesting experience. We went to a kebab shop (what would I do without kebab shops?) and I noticed that the guy making my döner only gave me one sauce and didn't give me cucumber, which I'd requested. So when he went to hand it to me, I said, "I wanted all of the sauces. And cucumber, please." And he kind of shook his head and said, "You are American," and I said, "Yes, I'm sorry." Because I know I come from an ignorant, entitled, demanding nation, and I know that I myself can be ignorant, and entitled, and demanding, intent on getting all that's owed me on my $4 kebab. My companions, Dutch and Australian, respectively, both commented that it was rude of the kebab guy to say this, and maybe it was, but it really made me think more concretely about how I (as a foreigner, as someone from the US) present myself abroad. I'm not sure I've come to any conclusions about this yet.

But I do know this. Prague is beautiful, and awesome, and lovely. I think it's been my favorite place so far, and I was so sad to leave.

Me with Annie and Jurri, my traveling companions in Prague. 
(Photo cred: some random other tourist with Jurri's camera.)

Berlin (September 27-29)

After starting my trip in small, Scandinavian cities where almost everyone is a fluent English speaker, Berlin was the first place I felt some tiny moments of culture shock, or something like it. Not that Western Europe is drastically different from the US, but it was the combination of the train station being so confusing, and the city being so big, and the ticket-counter lady muttering things in German under her breath when I forgot what day I needed a ticket for, and I had the scary realization that I might not understand everything people were saying to me and they might not understand me. I've already been doing a lot of extra smiling, as it's the only way I have of expressing "I know I'm an idiot, but I promise I'm nice and I mean well," and I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot more of it.

I decided to let myself relax and settle into the hostel and finish my book in the morning, then I spent the afternoon on a free walking tour. That's definitely something I'd suggest when traveling, especially if you're like me and a) you're bad at directions and like that a tour teaches you a few landmarks and helps you orient yourself as to where things are situated, and b) you like looking at historical things, especially when there's someone there to point out the hard-to-find ones and tell you cool stories about them. (Plus, sometimes you get a Liverpudlian guide!)

After that I doubled back over a couple of the sites on my own. I wanted to see the Reichstag up close and I wanted to spend more time at the Holocaust memorial (the real name of which is long and German and I don't think anybody actually calls it that), which is seriously cool.

When you look at it from the edge, you can't tell that it's not built on flat ground, or that the stone blocks are all in straight rows, but when you start walking between them, the ground dips and suddenly you're in the middle of this maze of giant stone blocks.

It feels a little like walking down a city street, with the buildings encroaching impossibly close on both sides, and even though there were plenty of other people in there, when you turn a corner it can feel like there's no one else there at all. It was definitely an evocative experience.

I was getting pretty tired by this point, so I headed back to my hostel and stopped along the way for some currywurst (sausage with ketchup and curry powder on it), which I was told I must try. It was pretty good, and after that I called it a night.

The next day, I had been planning to wander and then go on another (alas not free) walking tour, but I stumbled on a bike tour place that was doing Cold War/Berlin Wall tours, and I took that instead. My knee had been bothering me a bit, twingy from all the walking, but I wrapped it up (in gauze, for alas there were no Ace bandages to be found), and maybe it was psychosomatic healing or something, but it felt much better. After the tour, which took us all over the city but felt much less strenuous than walking, I went out for my first proper German beer, which I obviously took a picture of.

I ended up in this tiny little French-themed bar full of smoke (you can smoke inside here!) and cheap beer. We shared a table with some locals and tried some shot they had, which tasted sweet and strangely (and strongly) like flowers and herbs, and seemed to me like the kind of thing they give you in Faerie so you won't be able to leave, and it felt like an authentic experience, whatever that  means.

The next day, Sunday, I let myself sleep in, which I desperately needed, even though it meant I missed a huge flea market I'd been planning to go to. In the afternoon I visited the Pergamon Museum, which has a bunch of famous antiquities (like the Ishtar Gate, which is apparently a thing) that some German archaeologists brought back in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, the exhibit with the Pergamon Altar was closed for renovations, but I had fun looking at everything else. I love old things, and imagining the stories that go with them.

My favorite thing was probably the Wall of Mshatta, an ancient city (or palace?) in Jordan. Check out the detail on that stone carving! On a huge wall! Human beings are so impressive.

After the Pergamon, I braved the subways system and wandered around Berlin's baby version of Oktoberfest and ate more street food, and then it was just about time to pack up and head to bed.