When they take old Berlin

Whilst taking a stroll through mainland Europe once more, we decided to drop in on the German city we hadn't seen in our earlier tour of the Vaterland: Berlin. Also, we had some friends who lived there, so we had free lodging (which has been known to draw me like a magnet from distances up to 500 miles).

The view from the ground

We began by going on the (free) New Berlin Tour (no relation to the small Illinois town of pretzel fame) offered by Sandeman's, which I highly recommend. Our guide was half-Swedish, half-Japanese; she'd lived in London for a while but found it too expensive so she moved to Berlin. This is one aspect of the city that recommends it to cash-strapped 20-something hipsters looking for a good time: it's cheap. If you live in the Turkish neighborhoods, you can pay very little for rent or delicious kabobs.

Jumping the Gate

Another thing that stuck out to me over the course of the tour was the city's inherent sense of narrative (granted, that was built into the tour, but it's very present in the monuments, universities, churches, etc.). It's easy to just think of 20th century Berlin's story, and no doubt there's quite a lot of that. But after taking in all the history of the previous centuries (Holy Roman Empire, Frederick the Great, Franco-Prussian War), 20th century Berlin has a lot more context, even if it still seems incredible. You can see some ancient buildings, but most of them were destroyed during WWII. There are 'bomb gaps' between residential buildings, where an older building was spared but its neighbor was demolished and has been replaced by something newer. Small metal plaques on the ground commemorate Jews who were removed from their homes and killed in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust memorial, a valley of 6,000 marble slabs of various heights, is disorienting and overwhelming (each slab stands for a thousand Jews killed) to walk through. But my favorite postwar addition to the city is the new Reichstag building, where the German parliament meets. The building was subject to a fire which was blamed, probably spuriously, on communists. Hitler and the Nazi party used the public outcry to gain special powers for the detention of suspicious characters. This, of course, led to Dachau and all the later concentration and extermination camps. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the Reichstag began to be renovated. The new design allows anyone to walk up to a large glass dome above the Bundestag, the chamber where the parliament meets. This philosophical idea of "the people watching the government" is omnipresent in the new design, and it lets you get a nice view of the city as well.

View of the Brandenburg Gate from the top of the Reichstag

Across the street from Humboldt University, there is a large open square called the Bebelplatz where the Nazis organized the students of the University to take part in a book burning. The memorial to this is simply a glass panel on the ground that opens into a lower room full of empty bookshelves. Accompanying the memorial is a quote from Humboldt poet Heinrich Heine, who predicted in 1820 that when people burn books, it will not be long before they burn people.

Though distinctions of East and West are less important now, it's interesting to realize where some of present-day Berlin's icons would have resided when the Wall was still up. Potsdamer Platz is an encouraging example of Western commercialism building modern glass-laden business centers on what had been the desolate no-man's-land between East and West Berlin. Alexanderplatz contains the TV tower, the tallest structure in Germany. Built to flaunt the triumph of East German engineering, the tower later annoyed the atheist East Berlin government because the sun's light projects the figure of a cross onto the tower's glass.

The cross, known as "The Pope's Revenge"

Ronald Reagan later referenced this phenomenon in his "Tear Down This Wall" speech. Speaking of the wall, large portions of it are still available (now as cool artistic murals) in the East Side Gallery, located in former East Berlin.

Hey, that's Laura's birthday! And something else...

All in all, an incredible city. This was my second time there and I feel that I've barely started to see it. 9.0/10.0

The Other Place

Despite our plethora of spires, elitist colleges, and questionable historical accuracy here in Cambridge, we eventually decided it would only be fair to spend a few days in Oxford, where apparently they couldn't figure out how to build a bridge and had to name their city after a muddy spot where oxen waded across the river. I'll try to lay off on the digs, but it's part of the adversarial culture here.

Us and the Radcliffe Camera and a digital camera

As I mentioned before, the University of Oxford is older than Cambridge, and has very consistent architecture due to its nearby stone quarry. Thus the spires seen on a few Cambridge colleges are nearly omnipresent across the 38 colleges at Oxford. Oxford is stereotypically stronger in the humanities and politics while Cambridge is stronger in the sciences, although there are notable exceptions on both ends. Oxford is slightly larger than Cambridge, but it feels much larger due to the double-wide street (St. Giles) that comes directly into the city centre.

But despite this, after having lived in Cambridge for a while, Oxford seems more like a bizarro version of our latest hometown. Both have imposing libraries with deposits of every printed material in the country, both have delicious tea and scones easily available, and both rely on the antiquated method of pushing yourself across a river in flat-bottomed punts (although we do have bridges instead of fords - see first paragraph).

But I have to go easy on the place not only because it's a beautiful and historically significant piece of British history, but because Laura was here for a semester three years ago. We went back to visit one of her favorite spots, University Park, and recreated a shot from the Rainbow Bridge there when I visited her there in 2007.

So young, so much hair...

And the award for "Most Years Aged in 3 Years" goes to...Braxton

In all honesty, I would definitely have applied to Oxford if they'd had a program(me?) that fit my skill set. As it is, we just get to visit. The bus from Cambridge to Oxford is known affectionately as the "Chunder Bus" in honor of the winding roundabouts taken at full speed ('chunder' is a British slang meaning 'to vomit'). I didn't quite live up to the bus's name, but I did feel some carsickness by the end of the 2 1/2 hour ride.

Jumping off the Rainbow Bridge and out of the shot

One of our favorite Oxonians (and later a Cantabridgian as well) was don and author C.S. Lewis. Despite the various worlds he created in his mind, Lewis hardly ever traveled - he came to Oxford from Belfast, fought in World War I, and then lived in England for the rest of his life. He was known (along with Ezra Pound) as the best-read man of his generation, and later became famous for his lectures about Christian apologetics on the BBC during World War II. Later in his life, he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, a children's fantasy work for which he is best known today.

While employed as a fellow at Magdalen (pronounced 'maud-lin') college Oxford, Lewis and his brother bought a house known as The Kilns on the outskirts of the city. Named for the clay kilns originally on the property, the house and grounds are now maintained by the C.S. Lewis foundation, and is used to house scholars and authors from time to time. We were lucky enough to get a tour of the place, which was something of a pilgrimage for a Lewis-phile such as myself. Afterward, we explored the forest behind the house, which is affectionately known as 'Narnia' today.

The window through which Lewis looked when writing at his desk

We ate at The Eagle and Child, the pub in which Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their society known as the Inklings met to discuss their essays and works of fiction. After scouring the literature of their day, they decided they would have to write for themselves the stories they wished to read. The Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and many other works were born out of this society, which continues to be an inspiration to aspiring fantasy writers today. Lewis and Tolkien were good friends, and it was Tolkien's vigilant discussions with him that resulted in Lewis's conversion to Christianity.

And we ate lots of scones and meat pies, drank tea and Suffolk cider, and then braced ourselves for the chunder-y ride home.

So many puns available I couldn't decide on a title

Whilst exploring this dark, damp island people call Britain, there are some things you just have to do. Bath is one of those places - according to one tour book, it's the single best city to explore outside of London. Since the Gates Scholars are full of intrepid foreigners eager to have an 'authentic' British experience but not look too much like tourists, a group of us took a charter bus to see this very old city whose hygenic implements go back a millenium before the battle of Hastings.

But on the way, we ran into another must-see British tourist attraction: a very large pile of rocks.

A lovely shot of us in front of...HEY, THAT'S NOT LAURA!!!

Apparently there are many such 'henges' around Britain, but this one grabs all the attention. Despite our (successful) efforts to convince my friend Victor that the rocks were shipped in boats from Australia, the actual technology used to erect these large rocks is fairly impressive, (moreso if you're an early neolithic cave dweller whose main use of mathematics involves the most efficient way to club your next meal or future wife and drag it/her into your bachelor pad). I've seen it now, and I bet the rocks will still be there in another few thousand years.

It just looks like we're jumping high because the rocks are so small.

Bath, meanwhile, is a lovely city, once you get over the confusion about how to pronounce a common American word which is also an English place; how long do you really want that vowel to be? If you're like me, your main impression of Bath comes from Jane Austen novels in which the wealthy people are always making trips there for their complexion or something while the young poor protagonist feels awkwardly out of place, not to mention the inevitable worrying over whether [standoffish male love interest] really likes her or if the family's reputation will be damaged by [naive female relative's] dangerous liason with [roguish military officer who's really no good for her].

I managed to catch Jane for a photo-op while she was contemplating the social plight of 19th Century lower-class English ingenues...she keeps pretty busy like that.

If you hadn't guessed, Bath is named for the Roman baths which were built during the Roman rule of Britain 2000 years ago. The Romans took their bathing seriously - supposedly a non-Roman asked the Roman commander at Bath how often he bathed, and he was ashamed that his duties only allowed him time to bath once per day. (It was because the barbarians saved so much time by not bathing that they decided to take up other hobbies, like undermining the Roman Empire, and yoga).

The audio tour took so long, the water turned green...

The baths are quite a site - the bath part used to have a covered roof but is now outside, and the outside section is now under a roof, so you have to use your imagination a bit. There are some lovely sound-only exhibits where you can hear a goat being slaughtered so an augerer can read your fortune from its entrails. Also, instead of a wishing well, they had a cursing well, where you could carve nasty things about someone on a coin and throw it in (don't say what you cursed for, though, or it won't come true!). Ah, Rome. Right on plumbing, but they had some more progress to make in fortune-telling and curse-selling.

Bath also has beautiful architecture from a more recent period. The city's status as a resort for the rich led to many architects designing master works for the elites who lived or vacationed here. Among these are the King's Circus and the Royal Crescent, where architect John Wood (no relation to the Community College) showed the unique beauty of curves instead of corners. The Royal Crescent in particular is quite striking, with a lovely vista of the rest of the city in the valley, with green hills on the other side. The rich people living in the crescent tried not to be too upset with us foreigners taking in their view.

If I had a skateboard, this would be an awesome grind.

And we went to pubs and Indian restaurants, and the food was good if not overly healthy. But that pretty much goes without saying at this point.

Final Score: 7.5/10.0

Switzerland, Part Deux/Zwei/Due

So my uncle Mark decided to visit Europe while he had two nephews there. Unfortunately for those of us in England, he speaks German so well that he didn't want to bother with any countries that speak English, and thus he stayed with Zack instead of us (NOTE: the sarcasm in the last sentence would be apparent if you could hear my tone of voice or if you knew my uncle Mark. I think he just stayed with Zack because Zack has a car).

At any rate, Laura and I went to meet them by flying into Basel, a city on the corner of France, Germany, and Switzerland. After waiting in line for Swiss customs, Zack texted me to come out on the French side instead, so we rapidly shifted countries and got our passports stamped. Then we met Zack and Uncle Mark and drove to Switzerland in about 5 minutes (apparently parking is easier on the French side).

Alp-gazing

We had a similar experience to the last time in the Lauterbrunnen area, driving into what was apparently a beautiful mountain valley but not being able to see mountains until the morning.

My uncle, despite being a bonafide Midwesterner and resident of Nebo, IL, spent many many summers of his life in Colorado, climbing up mountains and rescuing wayward children. So he's always loved mountains, and was very excited to see the Alps. He was thus overjoyed when we stepped out of the chalet where we were staying on the first morning and saw....part of a mountain. It was pretty cloudy.

We decided to hope it wouldn't rain, and went for a hike up the side of the valley. We made it to a
small mountain micro-village that seemed to be closed for the off-season, such that it seemed eerily like an old western ghost town.

It's quiet...a little too quiet.

Going a bit further, we found a mountain stream whose bridge had been taken down, probably to keep travelers from getting hurt by going farther in the winter. Naturally we instead found various ways to jump across the stream, nearly slipping on ice in the process. You just can't contain the exploration instinct.

We climbed up farther, just above the snowline, and had a very brief snowball fight (it didn't get too intense, as we sensed the possibility of slipping, falling, and dying, for which our mothers would never forgive us). But it was extremely beautiful, and only renewed our desire to start a bakery in Colorado. One of these days...

We climbed so high that Zack was beheaded by the troposphere. Or the edge of the camera.

We also visited the lovely mountain town of Grindelwald, though as semi-educated Americans we couldn't really get past the Harry Potter associations.

So that's where he was hiding!

Laura finds the Eldar Wand

The next day we went to Lucerne, which is also a beautiful city set up in the mountains with lakes all around it. I saw the lakes and the beautiful city, but by this time the clouds were obscuring nearly all the mountains. But although I could sense that on a clear summer day, the city would be a different kind of beautiful that I couldn't quite see, the cloudiness added a certain isolated quality that's hard to describe. It was almost like Brigadoon, up in the mountains and separate from everywhere else on Earth.

Jumping on the Creepy Skeleton Bridge

All in all, we didn't have nearly enough time in Lucerne, but we got to walk around the old city walls and the old bridge with creepy paintings of skeletons that represented the black death. Maybe I'll come back there someday and go skiing. Or maybe not - it may seem tautological, but I'm beginning to realize that these places that gain such majesty from their isolation are also very difficult to get to, and are only going to seem more isolated once I'm back in America.

Lucerne (cloudy and cold version): 7.0/10.0

The Lost Tracks of Edinburgh

Part of the 'work' I'm doing here made it necessary that I meet with the designers of the acoustic simulation software I'm using. Originally this was going to involve tracking them down in Denmark, but later I found out that they were actually teaching a course on the software in Edinburgh right after I arrived. After a little wheeling and dealing, I got various people to pay for my trip, and our first foray into exploring Great Britain began.

Edinburgh's grass verges appreciate the effort

It was about the same cost to take a flight, but since we had plenty of time and a desire to see the countryside, Laura and I opted to take a train to Scotland. Despite enjoying Scots (apparently 'Scotch' is not an okay adjective anymore) history and having a slew of Scottish ancestors, I had never been there and was excited to see it. The train ride up was beautiful, allowing nice views of Newcastle and the surrounding countryside.

While I was cooped up in a seminar room all day, Laura got to do some exploring (completely unfair, as she'd been there before anyway). Although to be fair my seminar room, which was on the top floor of a snazzy hotel, had an incredible view of Edinburgh castle and the North Sea.

Contemplating haggis and other serious matters

The first day when I got out of class, we checked out the National Gallery of Scotland. Like all major UK cities, this has the advantage (if you're not paying UK taxes) of being free. It also has some really beautiful landscapes of the highlands by the Scottish masters (assuming you're an art-ignorant simpleton such as I and like landscapes better than portraits). As usual, it contained some obscure painting that Laura was excited to see, but the gallery containing it was closed. I suppose that is the price you pay for knowing about art.

Afterward, we feasted at Deacon Brodie's tavern, a must-eat stop in the city. It's named for the seemingly upstanding citizen upon whom Robert Louis Stephenson based his novel Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Crossing off another of my lifetime to-do list items, I had some haggis. Haggis, if you're not up on your offal-based ethnic foods, is the Scottish national dish, consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, all boiled in its own stomach. I came prepared to be grossed out, but actually liked it quite a bit. It tastes like spicy hamburger, all ground up beyond recognition - just the way I like my sheep organs...

The castle walls prove impervious to jumping-over

The second day, we headed straight to the castle to tour it as fully as we could in what little daylight remained (Cambridge is already pretty far north, but Scotland gets even less sunshine). The castle is a wonderful old monument to Scottish history and mentality. After the hike up to the gate, we tried to take in the view as long as we could until the darkness set in fully. I'm always on the lookout for cities that are on the water but also have mountains next to them - some people have told me this is geographically impossible, but Edinburgh comes close. In addition to its lovely view of the harbor and the craggy castle that dominates its skyline, it is surrounded by ranges of hills on the mainland (some small-minded people in the UK would call them mountains, but they've all been cramped together on this tiny island for so long that we can't really hold that against them), and on a clear day you can see Ben Lomond across the bay.

My only famous ancestor of note - Robert the Bruce - was featured heavily in the exhibits inside the castle. In reality, he was nothing like the simpering coward shown in Braveheart, but was pretty dislikable for other reasons (he once agreed to a peaceful meeting with his rivals in a church, where he proceeded to kill them). Come to think of it, probably most 14th century Celtic clan leaders were not exactly the sort you'd want teaching Sunday School...

Some hoodlums took a very nice picture...before STEALING OUR CAMERA...just kidding

You can see the Scottish Honours (sort of like the crown jewels), which many Scots gave their lives to keep away from English aggressors. You can read about the stone of destiny, on which the Scottish monarchs were crowned. Further up, the chapel contains a memorial to the Scottish units that fought in "The Great War" and WWII. Even recent Scottish history possesses a certain mystique that I don't think exists as much in the new world or even in England. War, hono(u)r, heritage, and bloodshed form a strong part of the Scottish identity, from Rob Roy to Sean Connery.

Edinburgh retains that greyish, stone, 'hard' feeling that I felt in Prague, but here it feels more natural, as though it were a part of the national character. Plus, there is more green space incorporated into the city, not to mention the fabulous land- and sea-scapes that border the city on every side. A 4-day visit wasn't nearly enough; I really want to go back and see the highlands
as well.

Final score: 8.0/10.0

Bridge on the River Cam

We have often walked down this street before

So, after a good bit of galavanting about the continent, we finally came to Cambridge (our fair city), where we would be actually living for the year. I've been contemplating how to write about Cambridge, since my initial impression of it was shaped by the fact that I knew I would be living there, and my impressions since have a depth lacking in my short visits to other places. Cambridge has a large amount of history behind it, and I've been able to take lots of it in and select the parts that appeal to me most. Because of this, I've decided that I'll just do a series of posts about aspects of Cambridge that stand out to me, and try to leave behind the nutshell-reduction approach that I've used for everywhere else.

Cambridge is located is located about an hour's train-ride north of London, in the middle of a swamp that is affectionately known as the Fens. The city has basically no natural resources in itself - everything it has needed has been imported over the centuries. Though the city is often compared to "the other" English University city (Oxford, though we prefer not to speak the name here), Cambridge does not even have its own rock quarry, which has made its architecture much more varied over the years, while Oxford's building style is much more uniform.

The brick- heavy front gate of St. John's College

While the University of Oxford predates the city of the same name, Cambridge existed as a city before the university came about. The university traces its roots to an incident in 1209, when a dispute at Oxford threatened to bring about scrutiny from the monarchy, and a group of scholars decided to make for the market town of Cambridge to lay low for a while. However, like most
scholars who try to get out of academia, they found that they possessed no useful skills, and soon took up teaching again.

Though the first college was not founded for another 20 years, Cambridge University has been recognizing 1209 as the official founding date of the university, mostly because it gave them a great excuse to undertake an 800th anniversary fundraising campaign throughout 2009. In 20 years, they may change their minds to celebrate another 800th anniversary, depending on their financial situation.

The bonfire on Guy Fawkes' Day

The university currently consists of 31 independent colleges, which are residential bodies responsible for housing, socialization, and one-on-one tutoring of their students. For most of the university's existence, the colleges held supreme power over the actual education that went on at the university. However, in the 20th century, as Cambridge's scientific prowess created a need for expensive laboratories which individual colleges could not afford, the university's departments gained more power through the construction of such facilities, which the colleges shared between them. Older facilities, such as dining halls or playing fields, are still owned by individual colleges.

Though Cambridge was a younger university than Oxford, it proved adept at gaining royal patronage, which can be seen by such marvels as the famous King's College Chapel, built by Henry VI-Henry VIII, and the fact that HRH Prince Phillip is the symbolic chancelor of the university to this day.

King's College Chapel - excellent, er...rib vaulting

Many of the oldest and richest colleges are located along the river Cam, possessing green space next to it which is collectively known as "The Backs." The quintissential Cambridge experience is to going punting down the Cam through the backs, looking at the architecture of the old colleges and feeling inconsequential in the scope of history. Punting, by the by, is not a football (or even rugby) term, but rather an idiosyncracy of English cities on shallow rivers, whereby people get in flat-bottomed boats called punts, and propel themselves by sticking a long pole into the bottom of the river and pushing themselves along.

If you're less interested in the history of Cambridge than interesting stories, a fun passtime is to simply wait on one of the bridges over the Cam and listen to the profession punt tour guides. While there are some things along the Cam that it's generally agreed that there are certain things along the Backs that have interesting stories about them, there is virtually no consensus about what those stories actually are. For instance, the Clare College bridge contains a stone ball that is missing a wedge. Apparently, this is a boring stretch of the river, because every single tour guide has a different take on what this means - some will say there was a tax to pay on fully completed bridges, others will say that the builder wasn't paid and sabotaged the bridge out of vengeance.

The mathematical bridge, nails and all

When you pass another bridge in Queen's College, known as the mathematical bridge, some guides will try to persuade you that Newton himself, in the midst of a metal shortage, constructed the bridge out of wood without any nails, despite the fact that nothing about Newton would lead you to believe him to be an exceptional bridge engineer. If you brought up the fact that the bridge obviously contains nails now, they would tell you that it later needed repairs and was disassembled, but no one could figure out how to put it together again without using nails. It combines a ridiculous unprovable assertion with a deity-like glorification of a Cambridge icon - everything you need for a good punt story. The truth is that most of these stories are lost in history; things are the way they are because they've always been that way (we haven't even started using oars, for crying out loud!). If you enjoy romanticized versions of history, stop by sometime and I will punt you up and down the river with even more ridiculous stories than these.

Or maybe I'll just keep posting them here.

Castles in the Air, and on Very Tall Hills

Traveling with me is always a balancing act

I was just about to post about our entry to Cambridge, when I realized while going through pictures that I’d missed one other German city – Cambridge’s sister city, in fact. That city is Heidelberg, the jewel of the Neckar River Valley. It’s fairly famous and therefore draws large amounts of tourists, completely disproportionate to its size but probably not to its quaint beauty.

Like Cambridge, Heidelberg has over 100,000 people but is dominated by a university. Walking up and down the entirety of the Hauptstrasse is a good way to get a feel for that part of the town. Many of the university buildings are either very old and won’t let you in or new and in use and won’t let you in. But they’re nice to look at from outside.

Looking quite schloss-y

The main thing to see in Heidelberg, as you may have guessed by now, is the large castle (affectionately known as the 'Schloss' - Germans sometimes pick odd sounds to express their affection) at the top of a rather steep hill. It’s a bit of a ruin, but the ruining didn’t actually happen until the 16th and 17th centuries, when a combination of lightning damage and French sabotage spelled its doom. The red bricks of the castle make it shimmer like something out of a fairy tale. Mark Twain said of it that

“Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect. One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as to establish itself in a picturesque attitude. Then all it lacked was a fitting drapery, and Nature has furnished that; she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye. The standing half exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done their work of grace. The rear portion of the tower has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds and stains of time. Even the top is not left bare, but is crowned with a flourishing group of trees & shrubs. Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done for the human character sometimes − improved it.”

After briefly losing our breaths climbing the hill, we toured around the lovely grounds of the castle on what turned out to be another beautiful day. We didn’t actually pay to go in the castle (I’d been in it before, but it's not as cool as the grounds). The best way to see the castle is from just outside it, which also affords a nice view of the rest of the valley.

Got the jumping picture on the first try - for once

There’s another cool view of the castle from the Old Bridge spanning the Neckar River, whose reddish tinge matches the castle’s. I’ve heard that the Philosopher’s Walk, a hiking trail up the hills on the other side of the river, gives a pretty cool view of the castle and city also, but we didn’t have time to do it.

That's funny, the damage doesn't look as bad from here...

So if you want to see a charming old German city with fairly uniform architecture, and if you don’t mind your spouse serenading you with songs from The Student Prince (Laura put up with it pretty well), Heidelberg may be worth a trip. 7.5/10.0.

St. Bernards, Cheese, and Beautiful Mountain Chalets OR The Things You Get By Avoiding Centuries of Warmongering

As my brother was driving us to Switzerland, he kept telling us how beautiful it was and how lucky he felt to live within driving distance of it. Since it was dark by the time we crossed the border, I feigned skepticism, wondering aloud if the country actually had any mountains at all. Large sections of the sky didn’t even have stars – beautiful country indeed...

“That’s because the mountains are blocking them,” Zack insisted.

“Sure, Zack, whatever you say. I’m just not sure how your psychiatrist will feel about these ‘mountains’ when I tell him you’ve stopped taking your medication...”

“Sigh,” said Laura (not literally, but you get the idea – this is her reaction to many of my conversations with Zack, especially on very long drives).

Jumping in front of mountains that, it appears, actually exist

We each had a goal for going to Switzerland. Zack, who’d already been there nine times, merely wanted to soak up more of the beautiful vistas of mountains and the charming-yet-ubiquitous chalet houses on the mountains. Laura wanted to see a large St. Bernard, preferably with a small barrel labelled ‘XXX’ on its collar. I wanted some delicious cheese. All of these expectations and more would be fulfilled before the trip was over.

Okay, so the St. Bernard didn’t have a barrel around its neck, but it was a very large dog, certainly capable of rescue missions if it didn’t look so darn sad all the time. And when we woke up the next morning, I had to admit that we really were surrounded by some pretty incredible - nay, breath-taking - cheese vendors. And mountains.

As we drove from Interlachen to the Lauderbrunnen valley, Zack popped in a CD and soon “Rocky Mountain High” was thumping through the car’s speakers. I had actually never heard the song before, and as a result I suspect it will always remind me of the Swiss Alps. I don’t know if John Denver ever went to Switzerland, but I think he would have approved.

Paragliders launching from the mountains above Gimmelwald

We took a cable car up to the small mountain town of Murren, then took a hike to the even smaller mountain town of Gimmelwald, where we enjoyed a relaxing lunch staring at the humungous peaks around us, some of which extended directly into the clouds. I had some delicious cheese. It was delicious. We all thought about living in that valley for the rest of our lives. The sense of displacement from home was even greater there, since it was a lot of trouble to get there from Europe, let alone America. Eventually, we scrapped that idea and started making plans to move to Colorado and open up a bakery. Mountains are big, and they have a gravity about them that makes it hard to leave.

Avalanche-stoppers save Zack and Braxton from certain death

But of course, we did eventually. We went back to Interlachen and had some cheese fondue that couldn’t be beat. Then we got up the next morning and drove to Basel. But I will leave Laura to tell that part of the story, because again, I don’t feel I could do it justice.

Interlachen/Lauderbrunnen Metro Area Aggregate Score: 9.0/10.0. If only I spoke German...

It's Finally Oktober

Since most of these posts have been fairly time-independent, you might think that we've just been traveling pretty consistently and I do a (somewhat) good job of keeping up with them. However, while I'm not posting in order, it's been a while since some of these trips actually happened. Sometimes I need to let things mull around in my head before I know what to say about them. We did a lot of traveling before coming to Cambridge, and though we've done some since, I felt the spacing of the posts would work out best if I put lots of detail into every place we saw last fall, since when we're in Cambridge it's far easier to blog than to hop on a plane to the Continent.

So anyway, this post is about Oktoberfest, in Munich. We went. You might think to yourself, "Well, Oktoberfest - that makes him only 5 months behind." You're wrong - the majority of Oktoberfest takes place in September, so I'm really 6 months behind. Oktoberfest is the world's largest fair, and began in 1810 to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese (for whom the Theresienwiese, the grounds where the festival takes place, is named).

Laura puts her heart into jumping over the Theresienwiese

In fact, because of another monument to the Princess that was mentioned on my diminutively-insufficient map of Munich, I initially led us astray to the other side of the river, where the parks were quite beautiful, but the large crowds we'd expected to see were conspicuously absent. Eventually Laura, my better half, managed to catch my mistake and we soon emerged at what looks a lot like the Illinois State Fair TIMES A BILLION.

Laura keeps the precepts of Oktoberfest written on her heart

I mean, it's big. Make no mistake about that. It's also (during the day, at least) quite family-friendly. Granted, there are people walking around consuming large amounts of beer, but that's very different in German culture. Also because Bavarian beer is very light, other Germans are less affected by it (my brother's landlord says it's the same as water) as they usually drink stronger stuff.

There are many stereotypes about German culture which all come out at Oktoberfest. For instance, they actually do wear traditional Bavarian clothes - lederhosen and all. It's considered important in Germany to own a set of these clothes for occasions such as these, and they seem to have built up the critical mass of people necessary for it to seem almost 'cool' - we saw several high schoolers in lederhosen, which, I'm fairly sure, would signify the Apocalypse in a modern American high school.

"Fine, Mom, I'll wear the lederhosen! You don't have to twist my arm..."

Getting inside one of the large tents is a must - we didn't have any trouble getting in during the day, but the reservations get booked up for the evenings pretty far in advance. Inside, you will be treated to a variety of sausage, chicken, and other meats. In addition, the tents usually have what for lack of a better term I'll call "um-pah" bands - complete with accordionists, tuba-ists, and the occasional alpine horn-ist. The bands play some contemporary music, but tradition dominates the music lineup (and everything else about Oktoberfest, for that matter).

Our cruisers can't repel tubas of that magnitude!

There are rides as well, but if you're fully enjoying the food and drink, you probably wouldn't want to take part in them. Just walking around the Theresienwiese takes the larger part of an afternoon, and it's well worth seeing once in your life. I wouldn't take a trans-Atlantic flight just to see it, but I know several people who would.

We saw a bit of Munich coming back from Dachau, and a bit more trying to find the Theresienwiese, but I don't know if I've seen it well enough to give it a fair rating. That being said, most of what I saw was very beautiful. I think I'll give it a peremptory 7.0/10.0, with the caveat that I may move it up or down slightly if I ever come back to see the city itself.

The Hills Have Lives

The Mirabel Gardens, Salzburg Cathedral, and the Festung

One of the least unique things about Laura and I as a couple is our feeling about The Sound of Music. She likes it, and I don't. Granted, I haven't seen it in 10 years, so maybe I will find new things about it that my more mature cinematic self can dislike.

But I'm betting that none of those things, new or old, will be the scenery. We decided to stretch our German Railpass to the limit, and actually took a train all the way to Salzburg, just across the Austrian border. We were lucky to catch another beautiful day, and Salzburg is a nice place to catch beautiful days. If you happen to be an unmarried male, you may not know that Salzburg is the setting for The Sound of Music, but I'm guessing everyone else knew already (my mom has confessed to me that she took German in college for the express purpose of one day going to Austria to become more like Julie Andrews).

Nuns, but no Sister Maria

But beyond all that Von Trapp yodeling, there's quite a bit to Salzburg. Granted, we started with the Mirabell Gardens, and we had to wait in line behind several skipping couples until we could get a free shot at the infamous archway of foliage.

Jumping instead of skipping

You might think that I as a connoisseur of music history would be interested in Salzburg because it was Mozart's birthplace. Interesting, true, but not enough so to shell out €10 to tour his old house. To the extent that child geniuses exist at all, I think Mendelssohn was as good if not a better example of it than Mozart, who was trained like a machine from birth. And Mozart wasn't actually that fond of Salzburg, although the city makes lots of tourist money off of him today. The coolest musical thing I saw there was the cathedral, which is huge and old like many European cathedrals, but also has four separate organs flanking its sanctuary (which, the acoustician in me would like to point out, would be hard to keep together if they were all playing since they all face away from each other and the reverberation time must be at least 5 seconds) which look pretty intimidating.

Laura looking prim and proper

But the most worthwhile thing in Salzburg, at least by my estimate, is the huge fortress ('Festung') on the hill in the middle of the city. It claims to be Europe's largest fortification, "possibly the most beautiful," whatever that means. Yes, it costs some money to get in, but it costs less if you climb the hill yourself rather than paying for a lift, which makes you feel better about paying to get in because you've already saved so much money.

The hills are alive - that's probably why they built the Festung

What's so cool about the Festung, you ask? Well, for one thing it's huge, imposing, and has a great view of the beautiful valley, river, and hills. You really need to climb to the very top of this one and catch the breeze on a sunny day - okay, I admit I may have burst into "The Hills Are Alive..." once or twice, but I don't know any more than the first line (when I was a kid, we used to sing it as "The Hills Are Alive and They're Gonna Eat You!") or so.

In addition, the Festung has a golden hall whence the archbishop ruled, and it's made of ornate wood and gold overlay - like Medusil in The Two Towers. Maybe I've exposed too much of my innate nerdiness in this post already, but a good appreciation for Tolkien and epic fantasy will go a long way toward an appreciation of European history - lots of majestic buildings, vistas, and weapons of death. The Festung also has a museum of medieval weapons which is a bit grisly but informative.

Braxton gets corrupted by sheer power in the Golden Hall

All in all, a city that lives up to its hype - don't come here for Mozart, come here for Salzburg. 7.5/10.0

Pilgrimage to Leipzig

Anticipating that the day after Dachau might be something of a downer, we had decided to go to Leipzig, city of light and music, for a pick-me-up. Actually, the ‘light’ part was in doubt at first – our entire weather forecast for the week was somewhat inaccurate. We went to Dachau on what was supposed to be a gray, gloomy day, but it actually turned out to be very pretty (not that we felt much better as a result). The next day in Leipzig was supposed to be sunshiny, to hopefully raise our spirits and make us feel better about the human race (yes, I do tend to script my life like scenes in a movie). This prediction was looking equally dubious, as we rode a train through four hours of rain and clouds. But as we left the train station, the clouds were beginning to break, and it ended up being the beautiful day we’d hoped for, although we never would have appreciated it as much if it had happened the way I’d scripted it in my head (or maybe that’s just the post-production editor in me, trying to insert morals into events that don’t need them).

Leipzig is mainly known for its connections to Western music through the composers who spent many years of their lives here. There were too many such composers for us to do justice to them all in one daytrip, so we had to prioritize. After a quick, failed attempt to find RichardWagnerplatz (which I swear was on the map but sadly did not seem to have a correlate in reality), we went to the house of the composer who is more associated with Leipzig and whose legacy left the city pilgrimage-worthy in the first place: J.S. Bach.

Laura in the Thomaskirche

Despite being a huge name in classical music today, Bach led a pretty low-key lifestyle throughout his compositional career. It was only the Baroque period, and composers had not achieved the international rockstar status that would later be associated with Mozart or Liszt. After several years in Weimar and Cöthen, Bach accepted a position as Cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where he would spend the remaining 27 years of his life. While there, he enjoyed a prolific career, writing, rehearsing, and accompanying one cantata per week, as well as churning out a couple of little Bachs who would become pretty well known composers during the Classical period.

Jumping by the Bach statue

Much like every other tourist attraction you’d like to see in Western Europe, the Bach museum was undergoing renovations and only had a small portion of its exhibits up, with no English translation available. But we did get to spend a lot of time in the Thomaskirche, which was one of the main things I wanted to see while in Europe. Bach’s immense faith and compositional impact, all while serving on a relatively small scale to a local congregation, have always been an encouragement to me. But the fact remains that later composers and audiences would not have been inspired by Bach or even known who he was had it not been for the diligent musicological efforts of the next guy whose house we would visit, Felix Mendelssohn.

You see, the classical music world in Mendelssohn’s day was sort of the opposite of ours – while we are trapped in the past, making the same tired overtures to a relatively small cabal of dead Europeans, the musical programs of Mendelssohn’s day were solely focused on the present, a relatively small cabal of live Europeans. Tastes had changed with the times, and Baroque music was ignored and forgotten. Despite Bach’s paradigm-changing mastery of counterpoint, chromaticism, and fugue, audiences 80 years later preferred to listen to the cookie-cutter classical garbage emanating from any number of no-name halfwits who are today completely forgotten. But Mendelssohn, who had risen from a child prodigy (better than Mozart, according to Goethe) to one of the premier composers of his day, also took a strong interest in staging the works of master composers long deceased. It was through Mendelssohn’s efforts staging Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Berlin that ignited later generations' interest in Bach's music.

Mendelssohn looking oddly diagonal

Mendelssohn is my idol in many respects – he was a polymath, also creating numerous drawings, watercolors, and paintings, some of which are displayed in his house. He also spearheaded music education by founding the Leipzig Conservatory. He was friends with Liszt and the Schumanns, and they hung out at each other’s houses. He had a recital hall in his house, where friends and family would periodically perform new pieces they were working on. If I were to be displaced to any place and period in history, it would probably be late 18th Century Leipzig.

That being said, Leipzig is still very nice even if you’re not crazy about history. The University is quite modern in some parts, including a space-age tower that looks a bit like an open book or a wisdom tooth, depending on your perspective. The city has many beautiful open squares with fountains (a must for any old European city), very good street musicians, (though not as transcendent as Prague’s), and, according to Laura, really incredible hot dogs.

Final rating: 7.0/10.0