(no subject)
Hey, I went to Europe! It was pretty cool.
I started in New York, staying at the wonderful Kat's. We had dinner at some point, which was nice, and also lunch. I also saw Ed, Julie and Misha at one dinner, and Annie for lunch and wandering around. I also hung out with a bunch of CTYers (Ferret, Ken, Lee, Karen, Alsion, I think was all) for dinner and carousing.
Minutes before I left, I locked my money belt with passport in it in Kat's house, and was forced to find her at Columbia and then back to her house with keys, and then back to Columbia before I left. Tragically, while Kat's is super close to Columbia, the vertical distance and the horizontal difference are roughly equal.
I flew out from JFK on the 22nd of July, through London, and arrived at Amsterdam the morning of the 23rd, on no sleep. I was to meet Alice and Tom at a hotel, but they had missed their train in Geneva, and I had to find the hotel myself. This involved getting lost in Amsterdam, which was nice until it began to rain. I eventually found it and went to sleep, which was nice. The other two showed up that evening, and we wandered the city some that night. Then we went to sleep. The next day was wandering the city, which was very relaxing. Amsterdam is a relaxing city, although the pall of pot smoke over the central city was eventually kind of disgusting. The next day, I became shockingly ill and slept a lot. The next day, I was somewhat better, so I wandered with Tom and Alice some, including seeing a houseboat museum, which was really a houseboat with some pictures of other houseboats on the walls.
The next day we trained to Berlin, which was pleasant, modulo me having to pay a fine for not having yet initialized my rail pass. We rented an apartment in East Berlin for a week, which was in former Communist official housing, redecorated with Ikea and geckos. Berlin was a fascinating city, both modern and rundown, with only about 40% of the housing in use. East Berlin was full of old, beautiful communist architecture with statues of The Worker on top, covered in graffiti. I actually spent much of Berlin sick in bed, but I saw some of it a couple days, and on the last evening before we left, I was much healthier and I went on a long walk and saw much of the city. I also went to the Pergamonmuseum, which had the Pergamon and the Ishtar gate, taken whole from Babylon. This was was something I had wanted muchly to see, so I was excited. Morever, the Reichstag is a gorgeous building. Alice and Tom saw a lot of neat squatter culture, though, I think. Also the ambient music and fashion was much more to my tastes than most other places I have been.
After Berlin we went to Prague for a few days (where they call ATMs Bankomats!). On the way we trained through Dresden, and the few glances we had of it were stunning. I hear it was a billion times prettier be fore WWII. Prague was also gorgeous in some places, and worn and postSoviet elsewhere. Also, I could never get a handle on how much money was worth (I think one crown was about seven cents). The first day in Prague we went to the castle, which was huge and amazing and a tourist trap. We spent a lot of time in a pretty short line to get tickets, and discovered when we bought tickets that this was because the ticketmongers also spent a lot of time trying to sell us other things. The castle was great, but its architectural style had confusingly high variance. The rest of Prague was fun; we ate and a wonderful anglophone expat cafe that made me feel extra decadent. The clock in the main square was stunning. The Communist Museum was fun, the Cubism Museum educational and the Mucha Museum gorgeous.
After Prague, we wanted to go to Vienna, but we couldn't find a place to stay there. So, we reserved two rooms in a hostel in Salzburg. To get there, we needed to take four trains, the first of which supposedly needed a reservation. Therefore, Tom and I walked the two or three miles into town to find the main train station the night before we were to leave. This was exciting, as we found the wrong train station, and it was ruined shell of a formerly beautiful building. Eventually, however, we found the right station and got the reservations, and then returned to the hostel. The next day, we took two amazingly sketchy Czech trains and two nice Austrian trains to Salzburg, where we discovered that the hostel there had room for us that night but was overbooked by fifteen beds the following night and so was going to kick us out. So, we panicked and then bought tickets for Munich the following afternoon.
The next day we had a little time in Salzburg, so we went on a tour of a salt mine. It was very silly, but did involve wooden slides deep into the mountain, raft rides across subterranean pools lit in purple and free samples of salt. Then we went to Munich.
Munich was relaxing, but not super exciting. We went to the Deutches Museum, which was the THE BEST SCIENCE MUSEUM EVER. They had a Jacquard loom and a Linotype and several Enigmata. Also, they had a mining exhibit which was several fake mines concatenated together, and which was larger than many other museum I have seen. t took me about 25 minutes to walk through at a reasonable speed. It was kind of ludicrous. We also went to several nice parks (Englischer, Olympic (which was from space)) and the modern art museum, which had a wonderful design section.
After Munich, Alice and Tom went to Frankfurt and home and I went to Paris. The place I stayed was the largest hostel in Europe, and seemed to also support some sort of program for children of some sort. It was painted and lit in weird colors, had a bar and was overrun with wild kids. Interesting place, would recommend for the adventurous. I spent my first day Paris walking everywhere, and saw lots of famous things from the outside (Notre Dame, the Louvre, Place de La Concorde, Champs Elysee, l'Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower) as well as seeing Les Invalides (Napoleon's tomb, among other things) from the inside. This exhausted me utterly. The next day I went to the Louvre and spent a lot of time looking at French Empire furniture and occasional famous sculpture, but it was crowded and warm and exhausting so I left. Line were long and I was exhausted, so I didn't do much the next day, but it was pleasant and a generally gorgeous city. I think I went to Sacre Coeur that day, which I really liked. It was on top of a tall hill, and I discovered the funicular after I got the the top. The next day I went back the Louvre to look at the actually, famous things, did, and left. I spent a while looking at small places from Tim Powers' book Declare, which was fun, although the Holocaust memorial was closed. I accidentally found the place, Place de La Enfante, a nice park at the end of L'Ile de la Cite (gender? damn accents, too) where Jacques de Molay was burnt. The next day I wandered some more, and was struck by the sheer number of people out in downtown Paris on a Friday night, most drinking wine or kissing.
The next day I went to London, which was relaxingly familiar. I went to the Science Museum to see the Difference Engine, which was awesome. Also, they have half of Babbage's brain on display.
The next day I went to the Museum of London, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the Transport Musueum (kind of disappointing, actually), and, very briefly, the Victoria and Albert (postclassical art and decorative arts). The next day I went to the British museum briefly to see this (TEWC) (SHAWN CLICK THE LINK DAMMIT AND MAYBE ALAN TOO), which I was previously unaware they had, and also to again see Lely's Venus Bathing, which I love and the Rosetta Stone. The last day I was there, I went to Westminster Abbey, which I thought was kind of silly until I saw QUEEN ELIZABETH'S TOMB and then the Poet's Corner, which had such worthies as Chaucer, Spencer, Kipling, Byron and a bunch other who I was amazed at. Then I finally went to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (which is the former site of the Greenwich Observatory, which is no longer in Greenwich), to see the Prime Meridian and the various Longitude clocks.
The next day (after laundry adventures the previous night), I very early flew back to JFK, where my mother picked me up.
(The lesson learned in the adventure is that there is an H&M in every city in Europe except possibly Berlin (but most likely not). It is kind of creepy.)
I started in New York, staying at the wonderful Kat's. We had dinner at some point, which was nice, and also lunch. I also saw Ed, Julie and Misha at one dinner, and Annie for lunch and wandering around. I also hung out with a bunch of CTYers (Ferret, Ken, Lee, Karen, Alsion, I think was all) for dinner and carousing.
Minutes before I left, I locked my money belt with passport in it in Kat's house, and was forced to find her at Columbia and then back to her house with keys, and then back to Columbia before I left. Tragically, while Kat's is super close to Columbia, the vertical distance and the horizontal difference are roughly equal.
I flew out from JFK on the 22nd of July, through London, and arrived at Amsterdam the morning of the 23rd, on no sleep. I was to meet Alice and Tom at a hotel, but they had missed their train in Geneva, and I had to find the hotel myself. This involved getting lost in Amsterdam, which was nice until it began to rain. I eventually found it and went to sleep, which was nice. The other two showed up that evening, and we wandered the city some that night. Then we went to sleep. The next day was wandering the city, which was very relaxing. Amsterdam is a relaxing city, although the pall of pot smoke over the central city was eventually kind of disgusting. The next day, I became shockingly ill and slept a lot. The next day, I was somewhat better, so I wandered with Tom and Alice some, including seeing a houseboat museum, which was really a houseboat with some pictures of other houseboats on the walls.
The next day we trained to Berlin, which was pleasant, modulo me having to pay a fine for not having yet initialized my rail pass. We rented an apartment in East Berlin for a week, which was in former Communist official housing, redecorated with Ikea and geckos. Berlin was a fascinating city, both modern and rundown, with only about 40% of the housing in use. East Berlin was full of old, beautiful communist architecture with statues of The Worker on top, covered in graffiti. I actually spent much of Berlin sick in bed, but I saw some of it a couple days, and on the last evening before we left, I was much healthier and I went on a long walk and saw much of the city. I also went to the Pergamonmuseum, which had the Pergamon and the Ishtar gate, taken whole from Babylon. This was was something I had wanted muchly to see, so I was excited. Morever, the Reichstag is a gorgeous building. Alice and Tom saw a lot of neat squatter culture, though, I think. Also the ambient music and fashion was much more to my tastes than most other places I have been.
After Berlin we went to Prague for a few days (where they call ATMs Bankomats!). On the way we trained through Dresden, and the few glances we had of it were stunning. I hear it was a billion times prettier be fore WWII. Prague was also gorgeous in some places, and worn and postSoviet elsewhere. Also, I could never get a handle on how much money was worth (I think one crown was about seven cents). The first day in Prague we went to the castle, which was huge and amazing and a tourist trap. We spent a lot of time in a pretty short line to get tickets, and discovered when we bought tickets that this was because the ticketmongers also spent a lot of time trying to sell us other things. The castle was great, but its architectural style had confusingly high variance. The rest of Prague was fun; we ate and a wonderful anglophone expat cafe that made me feel extra decadent. The clock in the main square was stunning. The Communist Museum was fun, the Cubism Museum educational and the Mucha Museum gorgeous.
After Prague, we wanted to go to Vienna, but we couldn't find a place to stay there. So, we reserved two rooms in a hostel in Salzburg. To get there, we needed to take four trains, the first of which supposedly needed a reservation. Therefore, Tom and I walked the two or three miles into town to find the main train station the night before we were to leave. This was exciting, as we found the wrong train station, and it was ruined shell of a formerly beautiful building. Eventually, however, we found the right station and got the reservations, and then returned to the hostel. The next day, we took two amazingly sketchy Czech trains and two nice Austrian trains to Salzburg, where we discovered that the hostel there had room for us that night but was overbooked by fifteen beds the following night and so was going to kick us out. So, we panicked and then bought tickets for Munich the following afternoon.
The next day we had a little time in Salzburg, so we went on a tour of a salt mine. It was very silly, but did involve wooden slides deep into the mountain, raft rides across subterranean pools lit in purple and free samples of salt. Then we went to Munich.
Munich was relaxing, but not super exciting. We went to the Deutches Museum, which was the THE BEST SCIENCE MUSEUM EVER. They had a Jacquard loom and a Linotype and several Enigmata. Also, they had a mining exhibit which was several fake mines concatenated together, and which was larger than many other museum I have seen. t took me about 25 minutes to walk through at a reasonable speed. It was kind of ludicrous. We also went to several nice parks (Englischer, Olympic (which was from space)) and the modern art museum, which had a wonderful design section.
After Munich, Alice and Tom went to Frankfurt and home and I went to Paris. The place I stayed was the largest hostel in Europe, and seemed to also support some sort of program for children of some sort. It was painted and lit in weird colors, had a bar and was overrun with wild kids. Interesting place, would recommend for the adventurous. I spent my first day Paris walking everywhere, and saw lots of famous things from the outside (Notre Dame, the Louvre, Place de La Concorde, Champs Elysee, l'Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower) as well as seeing Les Invalides (Napoleon's tomb, among other things) from the inside. This exhausted me utterly. The next day I went to the Louvre and spent a lot of time looking at French Empire furniture and occasional famous sculpture, but it was crowded and warm and exhausting so I left. Line were long and I was exhausted, so I didn't do much the next day, but it was pleasant and a generally gorgeous city. I think I went to Sacre Coeur that day, which I really liked. It was on top of a tall hill, and I discovered the funicular after I got the the top. The next day I went back the Louvre to look at the actually, famous things, did, and left. I spent a while looking at small places from Tim Powers' book Declare, which was fun, although the Holocaust memorial was closed. I accidentally found the place, Place de La Enfante, a nice park at the end of L'Ile de la Cite (gender? damn accents, too) where Jacques de Molay was burnt. The next day I wandered some more, and was struck by the sheer number of people out in downtown Paris on a Friday night, most drinking wine or kissing.
The next day I went to London, which was relaxingly familiar. I went to the Science Museum to see the Difference Engine, which was awesome. Also, they have half of Babbage's brain on display.
The next day I went to the Museum of London, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the Transport Musueum (kind of disappointing, actually), and, very briefly, the Victoria and Albert (postclassical art and decorative arts). The next day I went to the British museum briefly to see this (TEWC) (SHAWN CLICK THE LINK DAMMIT AND MAYBE ALAN TOO), which I was previously unaware they had, and also to again see Lely's Venus Bathing, which I love and the Rosetta Stone. The last day I was there, I went to Westminster Abbey, which I thought was kind of silly until I saw QUEEN ELIZABETH'S TOMB and then the Poet's Corner, which had such worthies as Chaucer, Spencer, Kipling, Byron and a bunch other who I was amazed at. Then I finally went to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (which is the former site of the Greenwich Observatory, which is no longer in Greenwich), to see the Prime Meridian and the various Longitude clocks.
The next day (after laundry adventures the previous night), I very early flew back to JFK, where my mother picked me up.
(The lesson learned in the adventure is that there is an H&M in every city in Europe except possibly Berlin (but most likely not). It is kind of creepy.)