Vacation report

[studentbane]

echoweaver and I are just back from a week in Germany and the Netherlands. It was a wonderful vacation and a great experience.

There will be a full exploration report on the travel blog eventually, with pix and stuff. But for the moment, some highlights:

• Mineral baths in Wiesbaden.
  
• Visiting echo's (third) cousin, also in Wiesbaden.
  
• The DFDF Filk

Comments

[enochs_fable]

Sounds like it was a lot of fun. I'm interested in hearing more about the baths at Wiesbaden.

Amsterdam is cool, and however limited your time, you did more than we were there! What's the floating flower market like?

I also found the Anne Frank house really affecting.

[studentbane]

I'm interested in hearing more about the baths at Wiesbaden.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pix of the building. It was sort of a hodgepodge of Victorian neo-classical, pretending to be Roman, with touches of Twenty-first century chrome-and-class chic. Here's a tourist page on it, though.

The mechanics were pretty simple: At the entry, they gave you a coded wristband that you used to pay for any services. You dumped your clothes in a locker (coded by the wristband), showered, and then headed for the pools.

They had about 4 temperatures of pools, with the medium-temp pools having whirlpool jets and the cold pool right beside the hottest pool. The whole "alternate between v. hot and v. chilly pools" trick turns out to be pretty neat. It really does feel invigorating, in the sense that you can pretty much feel the capillaries in your skin expanding and contracting. Of course, their cold pool was still like 18 or 20 C, so we're not talking cold cold here

body image

[enochs_fable]

One thing that we took away from it all is that we would probably all have healthier attitudes toward body shape if public nude bathing were a serious part of life. When you see that most people around you are far from Hollywood model body form, it's easier to realize that you're not that exceptional.

I think you're probably right.

One thing I've always wondered is how American cinema is prettified, where with Europeans, while there are still plenty of beautiful people, there seems to be a wider range of permitted looks.

[studentbane]

Amsterdam is cool, and however limited your time, you did more than we were there!

Oh yeah? I find that surprising. We felt like we only got to touch the surface. What did you do with your time? (How long were you there?)

What's the floating flower market like?

It's nifty. It's only theoretically floating -- it's basically a long line of booths and stalls all down along a canal. They're all built on platforms that sit on the canal, so they're "floating" in that sense, but many of the platforms are concrete and are obviously permanent. But there's a huge pile of them and they have an amazing variety and selection of flowers and flower seeds.

I also found the Anne Frank house really affecting.[nod] Totally. It's a powerful place and history. I haven't read her diary myself, though I've seen stage productions and read excerpts. But it still really resonated. It's a complex set of feelings to witness such a human face on such a terribly dark and inhuman time