Dinner in Poland, Coffee in Austria, Lunch in Liechtenstein, Tea in Switzerland, or How I Went to 7 Countries in 55 Hours, Part I

The bulk of this story commences on the 9th of December, on which date I flew from Milan to Berlin on a near-empty Air One A320. There were eight passengers in total, in a plane which most likely seats around 150. That's right--I don't know the exact number by heart, as this is a new airline for me, and I'm not quite motivated enough to look up the capacity. Not that anyone reading actually cares, so I guess we can just drop it. In any case, fairly nice cabin and good service, considering my fare was €85. The amount of money they must have lost on this flight alone was, I'm sure, a staggering figure. The country-count clock starts here, upon departure at 1 p.m.













Country Count: 1

Italia

Clock: 0 hrs


Brief note in which we shall take a small voyage back in time a few days: I had just come from four days of taking trains around Italy, with these two fine gentlemen, Brad and Brent, after they had finished up work in Milano surrounding the Kids Choice Awards there.


We drank many excellent espressos and Brad took us to a few of his favorite restaurants in Venezia and Firenze, where the food was wonderful, as would have been expected. Some amusing train rides (including one where we had to change seats three times and then missed our stop in Firenze and ended up in the suburbs and had to take another train back which was super-local and took 1h20m), some dodgy hostels (including one where the old lady who ran it had a t-shirt that said "sex criminal" on it (nice of her to let people know at least)), some drunken attempts to find one of said dodgy hostels in the maze-like streets of Venice at 2 a.m., and one instance where Brad inadvertently kicked a sleeping pigeon into full-speed terrified-escape-flight towards the Adriatic, all made for a very nice few days in a country I hadn't really spent time in for the last 15 years. To that pigeon: Brad felt really bad, so I hope you won't hold a grudge.

In Berlin many buildings and statues have bullet and shrapnel holes in them. I'd never seen such a thing before, and found my thoughts turning often to history while there, surrounded by so much physical evidence of it. And were you aware that the part of central Berlin that was in West Germany was actually completely encircled by East Germany? The West German border didn't quite reach as far east as it's piece of Berlin. I imagine it would have felt very strange to be a West German in Berlin during that time.

The city has a very intriguing atmosphere-- really bleak and northern-feeling in many parts, but also emanating something vibrant and magnetic. It was difficult to tell what it was exactly, but I could easily see why the city is so attractive to the many whom extol it.

Sections of Berlin, such as the one pictured (taken in Prinzlauerberg), reminded me of parts of Brooklyn.


Country Count: 2

Deutschland

Clock: 1h45m


Not content with sticking around Berlin for dinner, and since I had met up with my mother and stepfather who had their Land Cruiser, we decided to do the hour-long drive east to the Polish border. Border-crossings are one of my favorite things in the world, and this was to become a theme of the next 48 hours or so, well beyond what I might have hoped for. Starting about 15km from the border, the right lane was all trucks, barely moving, lining up to gain entry into Poland. Many carried old German vehicles which would then be taken to Poland to be fixed up and sold again--a booming business, I hear. The border was much more interesting than those between the Schengen countries, because it featured actual passport-checks. Two military-outfitted men, one German and one Polish, identified by their respective country-badge shoulder patches, stood in the light rain looking sternly into vehicles. It felt very much like we were entering a different Europe--the dark and uncertain East.


On the other side, all signs were suddenly in Polish, and the roads, buldings, and people looked distinctly different. Seeing this sort of shift occur across an imaginary line in the earth is a truly fascinating experience, and in fact, if it was up to me, I might just spend a year straight crossing borders, and of course, collecting passport stamps. We found a strange little restaurant with almost no one in it to eat what turned out to be a very good dinner, communicating in an odd mixture of broken German and Ukrainian (thanks to Oreste). The best thing about the meal though was the beer--enormous glasses of Zywiec, pronounced Jivietz. I encountered the same phenomenon when I was in the Czech Republic: the beer is glorious, and full of textures previously unimagined. Whether this is a matter of skewed perception or an actual reality, I cannot say. And luckily, due to my time spent surrounded by Czech, I knew how to pronounce the name, which I'm sure raised my esteem in the eyes of the waitress.

Country Count: 3

Rzeczpospolita Polska

Clock: 7h0m



That night was spent back in Germany at the Rhiemers Hofgharten hotel in Berlin, a nice option for accomodation with original art in all the rooms, many of which look out onto a tranquil, very Berliny courtyard. Hallways and carpets a little scuffed and dirty in parts, but who ever said hallways had to be clean anyway?

The next morning, a visit to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, where I took most interest in a film by a famous artist whose name I've forgotten, which depicts him in a kind of jail cell with a coyote. He is, for much of the duration of the video, wrapped in a large blanket, covered completely, while the coyote spends most of his time inspecting the shrouded figure curiously, occasionally ripping pieces of the fabric away, sometimes with alarming ferocity. Artist-man appears unphased through it all. Though I can't say for sure, because I didn't watch it all. But it didn't seem like the kind of video where any dramatic events would end up taking place. The museum was followed by an outdoor lunch at a stall, which consisted of Currywurst and Pommes Frites, and Gluehwein (the warm spiced wine.) Delicious.

Then we were on our way south, headed for the German Alps just south of München, and just north of the Austrian border. Our specific destination was in fact decided a few hours into the drive--it would be Oberammergau, a town made marginally famous by having one very peculiar tradition: in the Middle Ages, the population of the town was largely spared of death at the hands of the Plague, so the residents made a deal with God that they would henceforth perform the Passion of the Christ plays for six months without ceasing, every ten years. This still goes on today, and I believe the next six-month marathon is less than five years away. Many of the townspeople perform in these plays, which attract tens of thousands of visitors during the period.

The major feature of the drive that day was the windmills--thousands of them swinging at different speeds, looming hugely across a vast, flat landscape. It was night when we arrived at Oberammergau so we couldn't see the mountains that were all around us as we pulled up to the Gasthof Zur Rose for dinner of stag and dumplings and to sleep for the night. So it was a pleasant surprise to see the snow-covered peaks upon waking up in the morning.



In the next installment, a castle, Austria, the city of Vaduz, and a large portion of German-speaking Switzerland....

Cultural Observations & Generalizations from a French Course in France

In a French language program in France, one can expect to encounter the following major groups of students: the Americans, the Japanese, the Germans, and the “Others.” The group of Others consists of all other nationalities, of which there will generally be two or three representatives present at most in a given class. In no particular order, this most often includes: Spanish, Polish, Norwegians, Swedes, Chinese, Koreans, and Canadians. Naturally, there is the possibility that someone from, say, Jordan or Thailand might have chosen to study French at a given time. They would also be included in the latter group.

In any given class, it is a general rule that around seventy-five percent of the students will speak French in a way that sounds much like their native language. Famously, the majority of Americans fit this mold, speaking French in a drawl-like manner, utilizing hard vowels and, often, ‘ums’ interjected between words. Asian citizens struggle with an entirely different set of assumptions about how words should exit the mouth. Certain German intonations turn French into something that could be perceived more as a French-German hybrid dialect. The select subgroup of people in each group that manage to speak French somewhat like French people, therefore, have an inherent separateness, and it is sometimes the case that this group of ‘elites’ will intermingle with ‘elites’ from the other groups, relating to each other through their mutual dedication to serious study and earnest effort, or their ability to find a Chinese student’s attempts to say the name ‘Bernard’ especially humorous.

Intermingling, however, is exceedingly rare. The Japanese students generally collect in the residence halls, speaking Japanese only about twenty percent less of the time than they would have back in Japan, and cooking Japanese food in their small kitchens. The Americans stand in packs talking about American football, the Cape, and the lack of coffees-to-go on French streets. The Germans get together in massive groups to go to the discotheque, while in bars they lament the pathetic size of French beer servings, making exclamations in German as nearby French patrons eye them warily. Periodically, during a class break or a night out, one might observe a certain number of members of the group of Others amidst one of these dominant groups. Such occasions foster additional conversation, in that the group is then able to discuss differences between, as an example, Poland and Germany, and ways to say “cheers” can be compared, while the two Polish girls who might be present in this example can detachedly regard the Germans yelling in German, and simultaneously perhaps meet eyes with a French person who is also regarding them, and feel somehow like intermediaries, in on both sides of the situation.

Foreign students rarely find opportunities to mix with the French. The rate of incidence rises somewhat as one climbs up the levels of French class—enhanced ability to speak creating more opportunities for casual conversation with a stranger. However, on rare occasions, when one student happens to make contact with a French person, groups of French people will mingle with some number of foreigners, usually two or three, since the foreign student is generally hesitant to venture into an all-French milieu without adequate support.

There are extended moments in such situations where the French speak rapidly amidst each other, the foreign student perhaps catching pieces of phrases that they comprehend, but generally feeling unable to interject anything into the conversation, for that would require a certain volume and certainty in speaking which is generally hard to arrive at. Every ten minutes or so, one of the French might think of something to say to one of the foreigners. If the foreigner is American, questions commonly steer towards whether the person knows the exact words to a given American song, or, if it’s a particularly musical group, one of the French will sometimes produce a guitar and request that the exact lyrics to the song be sung by the American. Failing that, there is the ubiquitous question on all French young peoples’ minds, usually phrased exactly the same way.

“Uh, George Bush, you know? You like him? I hate him.”

A brief rise in tension in the room is perceived while its occupants await the American’s response, which is usually “no,” after which the French questioner laughs and the natives resume rapid conversation. If the foreigner is Japanese, they are more often than not regarded with some degree of fascination, but not many of the French will venture to speak directly to them. If they do, the question will most likely be about manga—Japanese comics—or the level of popularity of rock music in Japan.

In many of situations for the foreign student in France, a number of words exchanged fall into a void of incomprehension, and it could be said that whatever cultural divide is there from the start remains relatively intact at the end. And yet everyone continues to have a merry time, drinking their Kronenbourgs or cheap white wine with fruit juice, perhaps pondering with amusement, and each in their own way, the vast array of possibilities for surreal transplantations of languages and people—Germans amidst Japanese going to a French disco, a Swede translating French into English for a Norwegian, and so on and so forth.

I'm In Brooklyn

I'm in Brooklyn, and it's not quite autumn, but nor is it summer. Virginia the dog is on a special diet. Randy is about to go sing at a children's birthday party.

On Tuesday I have to go on a small odyssey from the Flatbush Avenue LIRR station to Easthampton (a three-hour trip), collect my Audi A3 (which has been collecting dust over the past two months or so), drive it to the ferry at Orient Point, ride that up to New London, show the car to my buyer, sign some forms, mail them, then take a bus back to New York City. It should be thoroughly exhausting, even if everything goes according to plan. Here's hoping everything does.

That is all.

A Lovely Spinner and a Triumphant Return

I haven't been an attentive blogger for the past four months. This is a fact. However, over the past ten days I've been blogging quite a bit, although in secret. You see, I've been blogging to a site that can't be made public, because technically what I'm doing is blogging try-outs. I'm trying out to be a paid blogger for an as yet unnamed site. It's in one of my principal areas of interest though.

No, not giant turtles. My other interest.

So anyway we'll see how it goes. If I end up being a paid blogger I'll let you all know about it here.

Oddly, having to blog elsewhere has made me remember that I like blogging when I don't really have to as well. And I like blogging when I don't need to stick to a certain subject.

So, anyway, here it is. I'm back today. I may not be tomorrow. But such is my Way.

My father has blogged again too. Check it out--this one's very good.

I recently tried out a new business class product and a new aircraft all at once--Iberia's Business Plus, on and A340-600, Caracas to Madrid. Check out a photo of the lovely spinner:



My current location is: Dijon-->Cote D'Or-->Bourgogne-->France

On a daily basis, groups of Chinese tourists come pouring out of the Chinese restaurant down the street. This is funny.

I have more to say but I ought to be building furniture right now.