Election 2007

First off, apologies to all for my seemingly long delay in updating my blog. Due to many late nights carousing Germany's capital and the onset of a cold, I have been trying to sleep as much as possible. Even my latest reading endeavor has been put on hold for a while. But in the excitement of the pre-2008 election and the emotions (rejoicing or resigned) concerning the early departures of Bush's better halves, Rove and Snow, I decided it was time to stir up a distinctly European election. Namely, the capital of France versus the capital of Germany. The election will be decided based upon one city's point accumulation after competing in several categories. So here are the results:

Architecture - The winner is clearly Paris. Every street corner is coffee mug, t-shirt, or postcard material; the incredible number of odd-angled streets can easily leave a visitor clueless for hours, yet you will never lack something to look at. Berlin's "Wirtschaftwunder" (Economic miracle) in the 1960's coincided with an ugly time in modern architecture, leaving most of Berlin (read the parts which were destroyed at the end of WWII) lacking an engendering aesthetic. However, both Kreuzberg's untouched early 20th Century boulevards and the modern skyscrapers around Potsdamer Platz add some sophistication to the urban landscape. Berlin 0-1 Paris

Aura - Once again, Paris takes the gateau (French for cake). Whether modern chic or Lord Byron bohemian wannabe, one can make Paris their own. Intellectuals can feel Voltaire and Hugo in the breeze, and American tourists can hardly hide their jealousy that we lack such a city. Berlin's graffiti is easily the city's greatest dissapointment. While French bohemians prefer to quote Wilde and delve into existentialism, the Berlin underground is an aimless angst which borders on pathetic. Berlin 0-2 Paris

Fashion - That being said, the Berlin underground spends much more time shopping for outrageous outfits instead of reading Goethe or Hegel, making for an eclectic and decidely hip fashion. German boys continue to suprise me with their hairstyles (some of them are unfathomable in the US) while German girls can create a workable color palette of black, green and white for an entire wardrobe. Berlin 1-2 Paris

Gastronomy - While Paris took the Aura gateau, Berlin takes the Kuchen in the food category. Paris is littered with cheap crepe stands, all with the same menus, and overpriced döner kebaps. Berlin, however, not only has crepe stands but real tasty döner. Currywurst or go Greek? A question which perplexes the sidewalk diner in Berlin. Berlin 2-2 Paris

Money Matters - If Parisians coined the phrase "put your two cents in" it would have been "put your two euros in". The Wallet Monster should be the subtitle to every travel guide about the city of love. I created two measures of cost during my trip, a scoop of ice cream and a Döner kebap. A scoop of ice cream costs somewhere from €.50-€1 in Berlin, depending on size and quality. In Paris you couldn't even buy the napkin for that much, rather one should be ready to shell out €2.50 for a little taste of Rocky Road. The Turkish pork gyro, beloved by Germans of all types, offers the same advice: "Why spend €5 in Paris, when you could spend €1.60 in Berlin?" Berlin 3-2 Paris

Size - B for Big and P for Petite. Berlin begins with a B, and Paris with a P! Coincidence, I think not. Paris is walkable, Berlin is, well, not. While I wouldn't call traversing the Champs-Elysees all the way to the Eiffel Tower a walk in the park, one can manage to see much of the city in a long afternoon. Berlin presents a rather different problem. There are several sightseeing meccas in the city, none of which are in walking distance of the other. Gigantic parks are situated right in the thick of Berlin, while the Bois de Bologne (Paris's largest forest) are on the outskirts of town. With the agreement of my tired feet, I award the laurels to Paris's compactness. Berlin 3-3 Paris

Tourism Friendly - With a mascot like Knut the Polar Bear, how could anyone not feel welcome in Berlin? The 3rd most visited EU city, Berlin caters to the ignorant American and blitz-touring Chinese with a heaping portion of Gemütlichkeit (hospitality). When is the last time you ever heard a traveler call Berliners snobbish like they do the Parisians? Notice JFK had the sense not to say he was a Parisian, instead he opted to say the grammatically incorrect "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner). With just a few words of German, you will get a free beer from a nice local; with a few words of French, you get an ugly stare and the experience of French-butchered English. Berlin 4-3 Paris

Transportation - Thank God for the Metro. Paris' subway system makes 2+2=4 seem like quantam physics, it's so easy. One purple ticket gets you from point A to point B, with train changes taking 5 minutes at the most. The only drawback is the 1am curfew. Berlin's plus is the €2.10 ticket is good for every means of transportation (suburban trains, subways, streetcars, buses) for two hours, whereas Paris' purple ticket is only good for one trip and costs €1.50. My issue with Berlin is that because of its size, any trip will require utilizing every type of transportation, which can mean 20 to 25 minutes waits at a bus stop or subway station. In the time I took to write this paragraph, two Line 6 trains heading to Nation would have passed by, securing Paris as the transportation victor. Berlin 4-4 Paris

But a tie, that can't be. In that case, Paris and Berlin sue each other and the case is taken to the Supreme Court. Presiding is Chief Justice Michael Arnst, the court uses the 2000 election as a precedent and decides a tie is not a tie and denies all appeals for overtime. Therefore, a decision must be made, Paris or Berlin. If only there were Miami-Dade ballots to recount . . . drumroll please . . . the winner is . . . Paris. The City of Lights may be a little expensive and cliche, but every visitor wishes it were home, including this writer.

Early Industrialization to Expressionism

No, that is not the 5th volume of Encarta, but rather the subjects of two museums which I visited during my stay in Wuppertal. Just to get everyone oriented, Wuppertal is a medium-sized city in central-Western Germany, not too far from either Cologne or Düsseldorf. The border to either France or Belgium is less than two hours away. Wuppertal derives its name from the Wupper river and the valley (or "Tal") it creates and has a population of about 320,000. While I am actually staying in a section of the city Remscheid (pop. 115,000), most of my time has been spent going to/through Wuppertal. Some may recognize Wuppertal as the home of the firm Bayer (and they still make the aspirin), others as the home of the Schwebebahn, a suspended train which runs directly over the Wupper river through the town.
Going back to my post's title, I would like to recount some of the museums I toured. In Wuppertal I stopped by the Early Industrialization Museum and Friedrich Engels house. Engels, for those who haven't brushed up on the Communist Manifesto lately, was Karl Marx's intellectual partner (and as some would argue, "better half" in an academic sense) and champion of communism in the mid-19th century. In other words, the same time as Industrial Revolution migrated to Germany.
Düsseldorf has a host of museums, including the K21 Kunstsammlung. While housed in a beautiful Baroque building, the art inside is indeed modern. A little too modern at times. But this questionable "aesthetic" was countered by Wuppertal's renowned (and it truly is, not just more German boasting) Van der Hydt Museum's exhibit of German expressionism and special exhibit of the Blue Rider artists. But enough of the 20th Century!
The Schlossburg museum is a medieval fortress in the Wupper valley, destroyed during the late Middle Ages, it was renovated in the late 1800's when Otto von Bismarck felt he need to build German pride in its past. The museum winds through all the Count's rooms, the fortress walls and the keep, which held the Archbishop of Cologne prisoner for 13 months in the 14th Century.
I wondered why we don't see more museums in Minnesota, then I remembered our history is a blink of the Germany eye. We weren't around when the Romans founded Cologne in the first century AD, and no American emperor spent time in Chaska, so i guess there is no reason for a museum. Unless, yes, of course. A Gedney's pickles museum!

Au revoir France!

Due to a "suspicious package" on our train at the platform, my ten-hour trek from Saint-Brieuc, France to Wuppertal, Germany was lengthened to ten hours and forty minutes. My trip started out looking out over wheat fields, interrupted by off-white-washed houses with slate roofs; it ended with mist-obscured views of forested valleys containing fachwerk (the traditional German style with dark-brown exposed beams in patterns) houses with clay-tile roofs. The roofs were the first Franco-German difference I noticed . . . that, and plastic grocery bags. To be sure, they exist in both countries, but in France they are as abundant and free as in America. In Germany, only the customer who forgets to bring his own sturdy cloth grocery bag is forced to shell out 25 euro cents to buy a plastic one. But this represents one of the stark differences in the mentalities of the neighboring nations.
Germans would rather spend ten minutes separating garbage into neat piles of organic waste (Biomüll), plastics and packaging materials (Verpackungsmittel), glass, and Restmüll. Restmüll is, as the name suggests, the rest, the garbage which absolutely cannot be sorted into the other categories. As an unwritten rule, this last lump of waste should be the smallest. If not, the sorting process went awry at some point.
The French would rather live life it seems. I actually stood by a green waste container for ten minutes in Paris, waiting to see what people threw in it. Not out of curiousity, but out of fear of throwing my German-qualified Restmüll into a container reserved for recyclables. I thought, what else can a green bag mean other than recycling. But the Parisians proved me wrong. The bag was for everything; how German tourists manage it in the city is beyond me. They must join Catholics in confession, asking for forgiveness from Mother Earth.
On another note, I must offer kudos to all those who have been a tourist in a country without knowing the local language. While I had more French knowledge than most American tourists, it fell embarassingly short of my expectations. Being a non-tourist has always been a tourist for me, and only visiting German-speaking countries and staying with host families has made my wish a reality fairly simply. But France caused me to stray from my comfort zone, and it made for some great experiences.
This weekend promises trips to Köln (Cologne, and not my father's hometown in Carver County), Düsseldorf and Wuppertal, home of Bayer aspirin. Then off to Lübeck, Berlin, Regensburg and then finally Munich.
There is a German word which suits my feeling about my remaining time in Europe: knapp. It can mean "short" but it is much better used to describe the five-minute gap when changing trains ten tracks apart. The hint of sufficiency ("If I run, I can make it" mentality) and the reality of missing something important (Muttering "Oh Scheisse" while the train pulls away).

Pesky keyboards

As promised, Saint Brieuc has given this author days of rest and serenity. While I realize it has been a while since my last post, I can honestly say that there hasn't been much to write about. Saint Brieuc is a coastal town on the English Channel and the last four afternoons I have spent on its wonderful beaches, reading and testing the waters. Rural France is everything one imagines, uninterrupted straight lines of poplar trees and all. 

Today François and I went to the famous Middle Age abbey, Mont Saint Michel. It is a religious fortress of sorts on top of a seaside hill with a stunning view of both water and fields. The food here has been amazing; such morsels as honey-lemon crèpes to hearty dishes like grilled tuna. Certainly the French reputation of bon appetit is being upheld.

As for the computer keyboards, I must register some complaints. While the German keyboard's only major switch is between "y" and "z" (causing everybody to everzbodz), the Swiss and French have presented more difficulties. This in large part due to the difference in usage of certain letters. For example, "q" has changed places with "a", and "z" with "w", and "m" with the question mark and comma key. Not to mention one must hit "shift" in order to use the number keys for numbers instead of punctuation marks.

But that is a small price to pay for two months of European travel I suppose!

Americans in Paris

I gave up on being an invisible tourist the second day in to my trip. Not even the Parisians know which is more annoying, an American tourist who addresses them only in English or the one who only knows the four phrases listed in their travel books and must then apologize one minute into the conversation by saying, "je ne parle pas francais" (I don't speak French). Parisians speak so quickly that even my basic knowledge of French got me nowhere, and so I do look forward to staying with my friend Francois and having the opportunity to practice.
But this isn't complaining. Paris has been quite the experience and sometimes you have to give in to being a tourist. How many Parisians claw and scratch to get to the Mona Lisa? It was World War II over again: ignorant Americans, camera-toting Japanese and belligerent Germans. Amazingly, I cruised from the Pyramid main entrance to da Vinci's masterpiece in less than 15 minutes, including security screen and ticket purchase. While the Louvre is as good as they say, one cannot pass up the Musee d'Orsay across the river. The paintings are all quintessentially French and nothing gets you in a better mood for a walk along the Seine than a few Monets to please the visual pallette.
I now have to days left in the city of love, which has remained unsurprisingly loveless for me, and my big dilemma is what to do on Sunday when the Tour de France, doped and all, reaches the heart of Paris in a triumphant celebration. Lucikly I have a little less than 24 hours to figure that out. Sorry for the delay in a new blog post, but I am sure it's not necessary to explain there is too much to do in Paris. My next post will be written from the French countryside and written by a much more relaxed author. A bientot!

The DMV of Paris

Bonjour mes amis,
Yes that means I am in Paris, the city of love and lights and lost passports. I indeed lost my passport somewhere between Zurich and Paris, and still have absolutely no idea how. To compound my problems, when I arrived at my hostel they booked me as two people in a double room instead of one person in a room of 4. The upside, I spent a night in a room by myself and paid the dorm room rate. The downside, the solution is being in 4 different rooms over 8 nights. That wasn't so difficult.
Spending the morning in the US Embassy was the hard part. Luckily it was raining, which meant waiting inside for a long time was tolerable. And to be clear, we Americans do receive expediated services once pass the initial screening. While taking the ID photos required for my new passport, I missed my number: C816. I came back to the waiting room, waited for nearly an hour, and when they called C829, I went up and asked what was going on. They explained that I had missed my number being called 3 times, and the woman gave me a disgusted look. The look that says I work for the DMV, or in the cases of Victoria and NYA, the post office.
Luckily I was spared the twenty minute interrogation suffered by a businessman when asked why he lost his passport. I just gave her my best "Lord, forgive him for he knows not what he has done" look, and it worked. From 9:15 am until 1:30 pm, I stood, waited, stood, waited and paid.
Thank God for equilibrium though. What goes down (my mood) must go up, the reverese is true only for gravity. Tonight I am invited to a 21st birthday dinner for a French acquaintance of mine from Johns Hopkins.
Bonne anniversaire Gwen et a bientot mes ami americains!
(For those of you who speak French and wonder why in Paris I cannot type the accents, I reply the Internet cafe has American keyboards. Go figure)

You are now entering the Twilight Zone

Misleading, that is what Switzerland is. And gorgeous Crossing the border from Germany into Helvetia (what the Swiss call their country), the landscape changes only a little. The houses look the same, the billboards still in German. Everything seemed so normal, until the first Swiss opened his mouth.
Having so many German contacts, I have already heard the woe stories of Germans who mistakenly went to Switzerland thinking they could get by speaking High German (Hochdeutsch). But it is quite an experience in itself. To be sure German dialects differ from the German I learned in school, but no course can prepare you for Swiss German. Most of the time I give up listening in on conversations because I understand NOTHING!
Interestingly enough, my first night here, Raphi and his friends spoke to me in High German and said that was harder for them than speaking English. While their course materials are written in standard German, their spoken language is somewhere off the charts. I was trying to come up with an American, or even American-British comparison. Feckless. While people from New Jersey murmur and use outdated slang, and Texans take more time to speak a sentence than I do to eat, we at least understand one another. The same cannot be said for the Swiss and Germans.
Yesterday, I went on a solo excursion to Luzern. Stunning views and high-end fashion stores are ubiquitous. With a charming, but expensive, downtown, Luzern is situated next to the mountains and spanning a channel which goes into a gigantic mountain lake. Rain precipitated an early departure, but over all, the city is definitely a must-see. Tomorrow I will arrive in Paris. Unbelievable.
Happy reading to all the Harry Potter fans out there, and Gruezi to the rest of you!