Hamburg

Well, this blog is falling behind. But probably better that I am not inside online all day everyday. Anyways, Hamburg was pretty great as well. I saw some nice parks and a cool church memorial that was an old neo-gothic cathedral that had been bombed out that they left as a war memorial (there is another bombed out church here in Berlin that i think i will go to tomorrow) that was pretty cool. It seemed particularly effective as well; there is something especially haunting about tall arched windows with gray bricks filling them instead of stained glass.
Maybe the best part of Hamburg was a new development near the port area called HaffenCity. Its really, REALLY cool. Hard to describe in the best way possible. Just google image search it, or wait to see my pictures :)
My host also took me out to a couple of her favorite pubs, one of which was just a HUGE open room with like 20 couches everywhere, and the other was called something like the Gold Fish Bowl....errr, something like that, and they had this really cool touchscreen pool! That is, it had like 1 inch of water and underneath a touchscreen where you could attract the fish pictured there by putting your finger in the water and touching the screen! It was pretty awesome.
Now, I should go out and further explore the wonderful hauptstadt Berlin!
Bis Später!

The Fish are Jumping

I never saw them.
My Grandfather knew this, so everytime
he would swing his great auburn arm
and point--"Look!"
Snap my head like an antelope
to the stern: only ripples on the sleepy surface.
Really, Grandpa´s steely insistence to point out every fish
slowly built a stalactite of frustration and doubt
from my windpipe to solar plexus.
But even then I knew that his was an iron will,
fired in the crucible of the Great War,
for his children and their´s
to taste only the fresh breeze of the Pacific Northwest.
But my mother got the folded flag when I was four
with the coffin that can´t be opened.
I had to drink ever deeper of the silent wooded lakes
for all three of us.
When I knew he was looking, I´d close my eyes and mouth
breathe in as long and loud as 12 year olds can,
imgagining tiny spruce and redwoods taking seed in my chest,
roots through my lungs, sprouting between ribs,
and finally raise my gaze to meet his
smile and endless eyes, alive
with the happier shade of sadness.

Köln, or Ich Liebe Ümlauts

Köln war viel spaß. My first couchsurfing host graciously waited for me at the hauptbahnhof for about 2 hours since my first train was canceled and my second train was late! Her name is Louisa and she actually grew up in Canada until she was 8, so her English ist fast Perfekt! We went out for drinks with her friend Alejandro, a really friendly engineer who is currently out of work....just like 12 % of Germany. He was a little older, i think around 30, but he was really friendly, and because German ist nicht ihren Muttersprache, he spoke more slowly and so it was easier for me to understand. We went to a biergarten and drank a couple of Kölsch, the ubiquitously present beer aus Köln, then went to a bar that had 2 for 1 cocktails and we split 2 mojitos and 2 swimmingpools (like a pina colada but with BRIGHT blue food coloring, not as gross as it sounds) between the four of us; and then, then I had currywurst. MMMMMM, I do love me some currywurst. Also, Köln is rather cheap! The bar we were at was relatively chic, but the cocktails, at a 1am happy hour on a Saturday night, were about €4.50 each! And meine Currywurst war nür €2!
The next day, I explored Köln on my own. I went to the cathedral, that is truly massive, and wandered around inside for about an hour, paying the simple €1 fee to see the 10th century book covers and reliquaries they have in their treasury! Cool (for me anyway). I wandered around the fancy shopping district for a while, but everything was closed. I stopped by this cafe that my host had recommended called something like the Cafe Washing Machine auf Deutsch. The decor was really cool; all of the lamp shades were made from old, old washing machines. I emphasize the decor in part because it was awesome, and in part because the services was complete shit. I sat there for like 15 minutes by myself without being served, and watched as other people came in, sat down, and were served immediately. Maybe it was something about me that advertised I was only in the market for a coffee and maybe a croissant during the lunch rush, but I was rather taken aback. So after 15-20 minutes, I left without ordering anything. This ended up being in my favor actually. I stopped by what I THOUGHT was a place called Marx´s Winebar. Cool huh? So I sat down at a table outside but under their awning (it was sprinkling lightly, the first and only rain Ive seen during daylight hours this whole trip!), and a waitress came by within 45 seconds to aske me what I wanted. I ordered a glass of 2005 Bordeaux (probably the best vintage from Bordeaux in the last century, no joke), but the waitress informed me that the kitchen was closed, and they only had brunch, I spoke my halting half German to explain that I didn´t have a ton of money, so if the kitchen was closed, ein Glas Rotwein und vielleicht später ein Kaffee would be enough. However, she came back about 10 minutes later to say she had asked the chef if he would make something and he had said yes! I ordered a simple snack of schwarzbröt und käse, Gouda. The snack and wine were delicious, and I had a nice relaxing time reading and writing at.....nope, not Marx´s Winebar. Again in broken German, I asked the waitress why the owner had chosen that name, and she laughed to say that Marx´s Winebar´s sign was for the place next door that was closed on Sunday, and I was at the Lichtenberg---the Light Mountain. Sure enough, inside, it was plain as day. They had the MASSIVE chandeliers (sp?) that were made of all kinds of random glass, ashtrays, wineglasses, old vases, everything! It was awesome. And the whole wonderful experience, fantastic wine, cheese, bread, atmosphere, service and all, cost me something on the order of €6.50!
After my wonderfully satisfying snack, I went back towards the Dom, passed it, decided I didn´t want to pay €15 for a museum, and wandered around the Altstadt on the Rhein! I stumbled upon a pub called the Bier Muzeum, mit 18 Bier vom Fass! Es war ganz toll. Ich hätte eine Leffe und habe die erste halb des UEFA U19 Championships angeschaut. It was England vs. Ukraine, and Ukraine was up 1-o when I left.
Finally, I met up with my host and her friend Mara to go out for a drink again. This time we got Kölsch at the Früh Kölsch Brauhaus, und dann ein Caparinha (again, sp?). Slowly but surely, my German is improving. We chatted over drinks, and when it came time to go, I asked my host if it was still OK if I stayed a third night. She got a bit antsy because she had a lot of work to do, but then her friend Mara offered to host me since she wasn´t going to her bf´s place in Bonn that night!
The next day, Mara took me to her workplace to get a map of Köln. This place is called the Globetrotter, and it makes Dick´s Sporting Goods look like Footlocker. Seriously. It´s supposedly the biggest outdoor sporting shop in all of Europe, they have a cold room where you can try on jackets, and even a pool for kayaks and canoes. Sweet. Then we went for another bier at the Bier Muzeum (ein Eisbock this time), and finally back to her place for dinner and cocktails. She invited a couple of friends over and we made Caparinhas and played German singstar! I knew like 3 of the German songs, so I sang those and then we switched to the American one. One of Mara´s friends actually did a HS exchange program in Edina when she was younger! Ganz cool.
Und Jetzt bin ich ins Hamburg! At somepoint, however, I have to stop writing and get out and start doing at least a LITTLE bit in this city, so I will have to wait until tomorrow oder ins Berlin to update about Hamburg. Bis dann!

Basel! (Not of Baker St.)

Basel was great. It wasnt quite as picturesqe as Lausanne, a city which I still feel in love with a week later, but it was a ton of fun. I just happened to choose to leave Switzerland on the national holiday, but the celebration was the night before, so my last night in Basel I went to a barbecue, saw fireworks over the Rhein, and then went to a really cool bar. It was in an old train yard, without any real advertising from the street, so you just walk into this industrial complex and eventually you come to this huge open space with two outdoor bars and music and a dance floor right next to the old abandoned railroad tracks. It was pretty awesome. Also, earlier that day, we went swimming in the Rhein! I´ve never swam in a river with quite so fast a current before, so we just walked upstream for about an hour then got in and floated/swam back down.
Unfortunately, my train from Basel nach Köln war ausgefallen. Canceled. So getting to Cologne was a bit of a pain, but I made it! More on Cologne soon, when I have time, but for now I am off to Hamburg!
Tschüss!

Lausanne: A Beautiful Place to Get Lost

This is a wonderful city. While I am excited to see Basel, I am quite sad to leave Lausanne. I think that, throughout all of the places I have visited outside the US in my life, the only two cities so far in which I would truly want to live are Amsterdam and Lausanne. Lake Geneva and the Alps are simply gorgeous. The first night I was here, my host cooked dinner for me and afterwards we went out for a beer at a local brewpub. I had a great ginger beer there, and we talked about her research in psychology and my studies in religion and history. The next day, I rented a bike (!) and cycled and hiked up in the mountains to the East through...wait for it....vineyards! They were beautiful. I actually got lost for quite a while (I think I biked/hiked a total of about 15 km?), but I really didn´t mind in that beautiful setting, amidst the vineyards looking out over the vines onto small Swiss towns, the lake and France and the French Alps on the other side. I stopped at a couple of wineries and tasted and bought their wine. Here they grow a grape called Chasselas that is native to here. It is a semi-dry to dry wine with a decent body and fairly prominent acidity. I really liked it. It comprises something like 75% of all the wine made here, with Pinot Noir a distant second at like 12%. Then, I met up with two other couchsurfers (one from Deutshchland/California and the other from right here in Lausanne) and we went to a park, then I went home for a quiet night in by myself. I decided to spend a third night in Lausanne, changing my plans, and my host graciously welcomed me for a third night without a second thought. Her name is Ute and she actually grew up in the DDR in Dresden, and the wall fell when she was about 8 or 9 I think. She was fantastic. Not only did she cook for me the first night, but the third night, when the plans I had made with the other two couchsurfers fell through, the only one who followed through accompanied me to Ute´s apartment and she cooked for both of us! We shared a couple of bottles of wine and talked late into the night over Swiss Pinot Noir and cigarettes. Quite a great visit. I am sad to leave this great place, and this great host. If ever anyone who reads this goes to Switzerland, visit Lausanne.
Also, join couchsurfing! I have only great things to report, almost halfway through my trip.
See you in Basel oder Deutschland!

A Brighter Shade of Melancholy

Belgian Beer and
Dutch Cigars
in Switzerland
spells:
LUCKY.
This word tastes better than
PRIVILEGED,
but I feel OK about using it,
I hear that language is malleable,
constant flux
and all that.
But sometimes, happiness courses through your veins
like molten sapphire,
obliterating even the
innermost guilt,
and you cant but help
to smile at the world
and all thats in it.

Milano, Pt. 2

Yesterday was quite amazing to say the least. I'm increasingly aware that, unless I spent about 20% of my waking hours in Europe at a computer, I'm going to have to leave a lot out, so I'll just hit the high points. I was invited to lunch--for all our loyal readers, it was the very same lunch I truncated my post yesterday to attend--at my couch surfing host's brothers condo north of Milano. It turns out that my host, Daniele, chose to host me in no small part because my CS profile says I was born in Wisconsin! His sister-in-law is from Wisconsin, and actually spent two years in Appleton when she was a kid! So my presence at lunch was a surprise for her, and one for which she was clearly quite grateful. She moved to Milano with her husband about a year ago, and, living north of the city relative isolation and speaking only the most basic Italian, she is understandably a bit lonely. So we shared a delicious lunch of pasta with pesto, bread, mozzarella, tomato and fresh basil, and delicious wine! I had both a Bonarda and a Barbera...that were frizzante! Even though we sell a sparkling shiraz at The Wine Thief, I had never tried it, so these were my first sparkling red wines. I have to say, I really enjoyed them. After that, one of my host's friends from his job offered to show me around the city. We went to the Duomo, two parks (Simpiore and Venezia...I think), and the Castle Sforza, built by the great merchant family of the same name during the renaissance. Later on, we went to meet up with Daniele and some of his friends for a drink and some food. He wanted to introduce me to the Milano Apertivo, where you pay for a drink and endulge in a huge smorgasboard of food for free after the purchase of a drink. Sadly, it was all gone when I arrived, but I had what was I think the best barfood I've ever eaten: brie, prosciutto and tomato on an olive and basil foccacia and only five euros!....mmmmm. Also, the mojito was fantastic, and the setting and company were even better. The bar was called The Art Factory, with a lot of modern art (my art history terminology is woefully unexacting) and mirrors everywhere. Also, it was a beautiful night so many people were outside, and we frequently stepped out for a cigarette or a cigarillo. I met a lot of Daniele's friends from university, as well as some of his friends from his link with the exchange program Erasmus (a link that Im still not quite sure what exactly it is...). I met a young woman named Helene from Belgium who is working on her PhD in medieval studies! Although she focuses on medieval literature and public readings as opposed to straight up history, we had a long and, well, for us anyways, fascinating conversation...that would bore most people to deat. Still, it was fun. I also met a girl named Perrine from Avignon who is going to be published in Science! I could hardly believe it, but she helped with research on some article about yogurt...so she gets her name in Science. Damn. Then, shortly after midnight, we got in a car and drove to the university where Daniele and his friends had studied, and where many of the Erasmus students were currently studying. We had some rum and coke in the bottle, and then there was a huge bucket of sangria from which everyone helped themselves. It was great. I met a friendly Italian guy named Marco with whom I drunkenly ranted about how the US had blown it against Brazil in the Confederations Cup, and an aspiring environmental engineer from Milano named Anna with whom I comiserated about America's dismal environmental legislation and the urgent need for attention to climate change. Finally, as the party was winding down...well sort of, a bunch of people jumped in the car and went to this club on the southside of Milano called Karma. My host, however, was rather tired, so he took someone home on his motorbike, and then just came to pick me up at the club before I went it. It was probably for the best though, as the cover was 15 euros, and in Italia, you dont go out to the clubs until about 2, and you don't come back until 5....I was not exactly in the mood to drink and dance until dawn and then try to navigate my way back to Daniele's apartment drunk and exhausted by myself.
Still, all in all, a great night.

Milano, Pt. 1

My first leg of couchsurfing is underway. Friday morning I said goodbye to my aunt, uncle, cousins and their kids then again to my parents at the trainstation at Camucia-Cortona. I spent the afternoon in Firenze, walking around, admiring the Duomo again, and eating delicious gelato at Perche No! There, I bumped into two girls from Wesleyan who, when I asked what I should do with the remaining 75 minutes before my train left, advised me to go to a library around there. It was really nice, for one thing, it was AIRCONDITIONED. For another, there was a beautiful terrace with a view of the Duomo.
I left Florence an hour late after missing my train :-/ and arrived in Milano at about 730. I took the metro almost to the end of the line, where my gracious host Daniele picked me up on his motorbike. We spent the evening in with some of his friends eating pizza. It was fun, but I certainly felt the foreigner as they were mostly speaking Italian, and I was thus oblivious. There was also one tense interaction in which I got into a verbal tiff with one of Daniele's friends. I brought in a bottle of Prosecco as a gift for my host, when Daniele was not in the room, and he made some comment, in English, to the effect of 'oh you are trying to poison us with that stuff, gross.' Needless to say, I was rather taken aback that he had insulted my gift. What insued, I did not expect; we ended up having a veritable battle of wine knowledge in which we debated good versus bad Italian wines, and whether or not DOCG appelation controls mean anything. In the end, he backed off from his insult, without actually conceding that I was right, and we never came to blows, so that was good! Ha, one night here, and already got into an argument with someone from Milano, hope today is a bit more relaxed....though I doubt there will be more English spoken.
Unfortunately, I know have to get going for lunch, but will write more soon!
Ciao

Rural Tuscany

The ceiling of the
living
dining
sitting
room
is stratospheric. Well,
maybe exospheric,
it depends, I guess.

The cyprus stand like shady sentinels,
while the flowing fields
of sunflowers ripple and burn in gold.

And the eyes of
their sun warmed faces
are deep and kind,
they shine with a certainty
that everyone here knows,
Jesus is really and truly inside
the bread is always unsalted,
something about a fifteenth-century tax
abd pride
and tradition.

Roma Pt. 2

I need to be on a train to Tuscany here in just about an hour, and although I am looking forward to being there, I will nonetheless be sad to leave Roma. My first couchsurfing friend, Roberto, was such a wonderful friend to show me around the city. On Friday, I joined he and his cousin from Milano out at a club for a bit. The first one we tried had too long of a line, so we then went to an outdoor club that is right on the Circus Maximus! The cover is free until 2am (they go out WAY later here, stay out till 4 or 5 usually) so we didn't have to pay. We didn't stay too long, and actually left just a little before 2, but I once again had a great time talking with Roberto and his cousin. The sightseeing was, as always, amazing. I saw St Peter's, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museum which, altogether, probably took about 6 hours. Last night I had a couple of missed connections with couchsurfing people, so I ended up just staying around the hotel and having an espresso and a cigar on the Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. Then, however, someone from CS did get in touch with me; his name was Luis and he was a really nice guy who was originally from Bolivia but has been living and studying in Brussels for a year or so. We just had one drink at the local bar/club (which caters mostly to the tourists at the hostel and hotel nearby), then walked all the way to the Colosseum looking for another bar or club....finding none. So we just walked back around 2, and he left. However, right before he did we bumped into some wasted Irish guys, asking frantically for a bar pub or club as though they were inquiring about an injured family memeber. Turns out, they were all cousins and were in town for a wedding. Luis bid me farewell and we exchanged a knowing smile as we watched the Irishmen stumble their way up to follow me. I showed them the bar right near my hotel, and, thinking I would turn away to go to bed, I was practically forced down into the basement to have a drink with them. It became immediately apparent that conversation down by the dancefloor was utterly impossible, so I went back upstairs to the outside patio (basically the sidewalk) with one of two of them (I think there were 6 of them in all). There, we met two girls from Norway who spoke the most fluent English I've heard from a European since arriving. They were FAR more sober, so I ended up mostly talking with them, as we watched the wedding party (most of whom were probably 19) get increasingly mashed, and eventually, thrown out. Then, after being teased about not being drunk on my last night in Rome by the bartender, I finally went back to the hotel at about 4am....at which time I woke my parents up.
AH! TRAIN! I have to run.