Αθηνα

In case you aren't up on your Greek, that's Athina, or Athens. I can't believe that I wasn't originally planning on coming here. People say that there are three places you have to go to say you've been to Europe: Paris, Venice, and Vienna. Well, I've done two of the three, and Athina should be ahead of them both. Maybe it depends on who you are, but for me there is nothing like knowing you're standing where the ancient Greeks stood over 2000 years ago. It's hard to describe the feeling of sitting in the Theater of Dionysos knowing that 2000 years ago, someone sat there to watch the plays of Aristophanes. It's really hard for me to explain how amazing that felt. Everything else here is amazing as well. Like the caryatids of the Erechtheion.Truly beautiful. I spent all morning on top of the Acropolis looking at basically three buildings. Maybe it's because I've wanted to come here since I was like 16, but it was so cool to be up there. You also get a good feel for how large Athina is from up there. A city of 3.5 million people, it stretches as far as the eye can see (on a foggy day). I came to Athina to see old stuff. While in Sofiya, I went into a church that had been built during the reign of Constantine. Here, I've been to buildings several hundred years older than that. But surrounding all that old stuff is a big, new city. Full of people selling rip off Prada purses and Rolex watches, huge office and apartment buildings, and lots of traffic. Then right next to the subway station, Hadrian's Library is sitting there behind a fence. After a while, the ruins all seem kind of the same, so I find I'm not taking as many pictures of old crumbled pillars as I thought I would. But it doesn't stop me being blown away as I stand in the Roman Agora where the main commerce of the city took place after 300 AD.

Sofiya

Part of the purpose of my trip this week was to use up my train pass, part was to go somewhere warm. Sofiya didn't accomplish either of those goals, but I'm glad I stopped there. Sofiya takes the anything goes attitude of Beograd and puts it to good use. I went through the Sofiya Synagoge which was beautiful. Pictured above is the chandelier inside, the largest in Europe at 2000 kg. The synagoge is adajacent to the Romanian Orthodox Church, not far from the Sofiya Mosque. Currently, 2000 of Bulgaria's 6000 Jews live in Sofiya. Before the war, there were 52000 Jews here. But happily, they weren't killed, they moved to Isreal after its formation. Bulgaria never expelled or surendered its Jewish population. They moved there after being expelled from Spain during the Inquisition and stayed until moving to Isreal. So Bulgaria wins a place on my list of countries I highly respect.

Sofiya isn't as well set up for tourists as Beograd was, which meant I did a lot more wondering, but it was great. They have the normal sights you'd expect from a national capitol, the parliment, the national museum, the national theater or opera, huge churches, but they have something I've only seen one other place (Bratislava), a public hall. It's kind of like the open markets you see in other places, but it's indoors. It's a cool place to relax, get some food, and people watch.

I got a doner for lunch. I figure it's a Turkish food, and I'm closer to Turkey now, so they should be more authentic, right? I think it's more that each area developed their own style. The ones here don't come in the pita, they wrap it around it. they put fries in it too. It was good. More spicey. That was nice.

Beograd

Back before I was planning to move to Germany, when people asked me what I was going to do after finishing my PhD, I said I was going to move east, like Indiana. So Germany's just a little farther east, but I wonder if I went far enough. I love Eastern Europe. Love it. Beograd is such a cool place. Of all the places I've been, they have the weakest currency/economy, and you can see that, but they're fighting to improve. I get the impression that Serbians, at least those in the capitol, are in a hurry to improve, but stuck with what they have for now. I think that's why they honk their horns so much. Like constantly. But in Beograd, anything goes if it increases traffic flow. Like driving on the tram tracks to get to the right turn lane. Or parking in a no parking spot as long as you get out of the street.

The "castle" in Beograd is more like a heavily fortified park. Even back before it was heavily damaged, the idea was to have the whole of this hilltop protected and available to mount a defense. I enjoyed the couple hours I spent wandering this area. Then the hours wandering the pedestrian area that starts next to it and extends to the main square downtown. Beograd has the large impressive buildings you expect from a capitol city, and churches that are fantastic. Like the one at the fortress that is clearly a soldier's church, complete with chandeliers made of bullets and sabers. Taking the "beating your swords into [chandeliers]" scripture literally.

It's hard for me to explain, but I just loved the feel of Beograd. I loved walking across the main bridge, feeling it shake as the buses passed over the expansion joints. I loved the Bohemian Quarter with the building painted with a realistic looking facade. I loved the pizza from the little shack Mara in the main square. I didn't plan this city much better than I had Venice, but I got a great, informative tourist map in English. The only problem is that when they transliterate everything to the Roman alphabet, finding where you are when the street signs are in Cyrillic characters is a little tricky.

Venezia

Venezia is a city with character. I assume that most people take the boat from the train station to Piazza San Marco, but I walked it and saw a part of the city they don't show you in the movies. Statues falling apart, buildings falling apart, graffiti everywhere. But I like it. As the city was built on a series of islands with canals everywhere, there are not streets designed to allow large vehicles. A lot of streets are quite narrow between tall apartment buildings. And they hang their laundry to dry on clothes lines stretched between the buildings. It kind of gave me the impression that Venetians love their city the way it is, live the way they want, and let the tourists deal with it.

The Piazza is stunning. An interesting fact is that the floor of the Piazza is not always above sea level. During high tide, it floods. There are these little drains all over the square, and at high tide, the Venetian Lagoon bubbles up and floods most of the Piazza. Like I said, residents accept Venezia the way it is and let tourists deal with it. I spent a lot of time wandering around, eating a couple pizzas and a gelato ice cream cone. I went through the Doge's Palace, but perhaps what I enjoyed the most was the sunset. Across the Lagoon, behind whatever that church is on that island out there. Bella. I sat there for like 30 minutes just taking it in.

Having not planned this trip very well (okay, at all), I had a pretty good day. I'll go back to Venezia someday, but probably not alone, and not without better planning.

Zürich

Last weekend I went to Zürich. It was really great, but cold. There was snow on the ground most of the time I was there. The other thing about Zürich is that it's expensive. But enough with the negatives. I arrived on Friday afternoon and wandered the city a bit until Wicher, my host, got home. It's a very modern city with lots of history. That night, we went to co-worker's of Wicher's to watch a movie, Dr. Strangelove. It was an international crowd so we watched it in English. They were a fun bunch of guys. We were messing around afterward, among the activities was darts. I threw a bulls-eye. That's right, I'm awesome.

On Saturday, I went around the old city more, mostly seeing churches important in the Reformation. Zwingli lived here and his name is everywhere. The churches here were much different from all the others I've seen. Much more simple. Not plain or ugly, but simple. I broke my rule about taking pictures in churches. Having seen the extravigant churches of Germany and Austria, I imagine Italy is even more so, and I can see why Calvin and Zwingli stressed simplicity in their worship. Several of the churches were closed on Saturday for a wedding and other things, so I had to go back on Sunday to see them. It was really cool to be there and think about how much change started there.

That night, Wicher was having a fondu party. It was mostly a Couch Surfer gathering. That was a lot of fun. Fondu is a lot of work, but makes for a great party. Zürich is a very international city, there were people there from all over Europe, the US, and even a girl from South America. Church had a similar mix. Unfortunately, it's also become a rushed big city. Everyone's in a rush. I've been through a fair number of train stations, but haven't seen as many people running around as I saw there. Great place though. I need to go back in the summer. It was so cold.

Mainz

Having been here a week, I guess it's time for the blog on Mainz. I really like this city. It's actually kind of large and thriving. I think the best part is the huge pedestrian shopping area in the inner city, on the border between the new and old towns. It really is huge and filled with everything you could want. Plus lots of pretzel stands and döner kebap joints. I'll tell you what, the döner might not technically be a german food (it's Turkish) but it's amazing. They have this huge like leg of meat thing roasting on a spit, and they carve off the outer layer, fill a homemade pita thing with it and salad, top it with whatever that sauce is, and voila, amazing goodness. It's so filling as well. So I think I'm actually eating cheaper here than when I was in the Czech Republic, but that's because I quit going to restaurants. I pretty much have an apple pastry for breakfast, a döner for lunch or dinner, and a little pizza from a pretzel place for the other meal. It comes to like 6 or 7 Euros a day.

The apartment search goes well. I got help today from Cathy, a woman at the Max Planck Institute who's job is basically helping new students get everything taken care of related to moving to Mainz. She went with me to sign the contract on the apartment, and was amazing dealing with them to get me a good deal. In one short (well not really that short) meeting, I learned a lot about Germans. Germans are very helpful and nice, until you try to do business with them. As Cathy put it, they are all so afraid that the other person is going to rip them off, they all try to rip you off first. So basically there is no trust in German business dealings. I have been having problems getting my money from America into my German bank account, and finally decided to just pull cash out of the ATM here, then take it to the bank to deposit. Well, I can only pull like five or six hundred Euros a day, so I needed them to be willing to let me pay the deposit and such on the apartment next week. It took some doing, but Cathy managed it for me. It helped that the real estate lady wanted to leave for lunch. So tomorrow, we should finish everything up, I'll get the keys, and no longer be homeless.

It's weird to think that this is my new home. I was thinking about it Sunday at church. I've been to church in three different countries and two languages since being here. It kind of felt like just another place I was visiting, but no, this is where I'll be for three years. It's going to be a great place to be. The ward here has been really great, welcoming and friendly. The singles group is great too. There are like 10 or so of them/us. From what I can tell a tight and supportative group. This is going to be a great place for me to be.

Ceský Krumlov and a New Strategy

After almost a week in Praha, it was time to leave the beautiful Czech Republic and return to Austria. On my way out I stopped in Ceský Krumlov, a quaint little town with some pretty sights. I hadn't lined up a Couch Surfing host for Salzburg, and was planning on just staying in a hostel. When I got to Ceský Krumlov (I went by bus, a relatively pleasent experience), it was kind of cold and rainy, and I didn't have anywhere to store my stuff. As I wondered through this cool little town, I found my self not very interested in my surroundings. That's when it hit me. You know those people who travel around for months on end. I realized I'm not one of those people. I think three weeks of traveling is my limit, and I whould probably keep it to two at a time from now on. I was getting tired of not having somewhere to fall back to if I couldn't find a place to sleep, so I decided it was time to head to Mainz and find an apartment.

I went back to couch surfing, this time looking for hosts in Mainz. Then, I made my way to Linz, Austria and found the overnight train to Frankfurt. I just got a sitting place on the train because sleeping places are more expensive, figuring my ability to sleep anywhere would get me through the night. It turned out much better than I had anticipated. There were only three of us in the compartment, so we could fold our chairs down and lay down. So I pretty much got a sleeping place without the extra expense. I wandered around Frankfurt for a couple hours in the morning, then connected with a host here in Mainz. I've spent the past couple days wandering around Mainz, getting a feel for the place and looking for apartments. Man, and even though we had a unit on housing and stuff in German 1, I'm having a hard time searching for apartments in German. I've found one that might work, and I'm gonna go check it out tomorrow.

Now as for the new travel strategy. I still want to do some more traveling and such before Christmas, but now instead of deciding a place and time, I'm just going to pick places and have the hosts I think I'd like tell me when they could host me. We'll see how well that works. I did already get a response from a host in Zürich, so I'll be there the 16th through the 18th. I'll probably take the overnight train in and out again. That way I max my time in these destinations and do something constructive during the train ride. I've got like seven more days left on my train pass, so that's like three or four more cities at least. That seems like an atainable goal. And on the days I stay in Mainz I can do those things I need to to get settled here. It seems like it's always taken like two months or so to get settled whenever I've moved in the past, this way I can do that stuff before my schooling starts. That should make everything just run smoother. I'm pretty optimistic that this is a great plan. Now that I've cut my two months of travels into three weeks, I'm glad it worked out this way. I'm glad I spent a week in Wien and got to know the people and places there. I'm glad I spent two weeks in the Czech Republic. That was a really great experience. If I had been planning a three week trip from the beginning, I might not have gone to the Czech Republic at all, and I would have only spent like two days in Wien. So yeah, all for the best and now I try something new.

Karlštejn

Today I took the morning to go out to Karlštejn castle. It's one of the more compact castles I've been to. Now that it's November, things have started closing down, like castles. So I didn't go through it at all, but I walked around most of the grounds. My guidebook mentions taking a hike from Karlštejn to Srbsko after visiting the castle. I find more and more that nature is what I really enjoy, so I decided to take the hike. It ended up being about 6 km. After I had set out, I wondered if it should worry me that I had no map for where I was going. All the book had said was follow the red marked trail. I had seen these markers before when hiking with the scouts in Pálava. They look like this. Sometimes, I'd walk for quite a way without seeing any, but since I hadn't really come on any forks in the path, I wouldn't worry too much. I had a little trouble when I finally got to Srbsko, because I didn't know where in the city I was going. But these places aren't all that big, so again, I didn't worry, just follow the main road until it leads somewhere. I found a nice restaurant for lunch and went all out because I didn't really have breakfast. I went for the soup, dumplings, vegetables, and the 200 gram steak with tangy sauce. Excellent. I find myself doing this more and more often now, and I love it. Just take off, wandering around, whether in the woods or in the city. It's interesting what you can find sometimes. I was thinking about it today and thought that when you wander aimlessly, you always find what you're looking for.

Kutná Hora

After a crowded Friday in Praha, I decided to spend Saturday in Kutná Hora. Good decision. This little town an hour outside of Praha is a great day trip. Behind me to the left is the beautiful baroque St. Barbara's Cathedral. It was partly covered for restoration while I was there, but you could still see it's splendor. Directly behind me is the Jesuit College which is spectacular as well. What really made Kutná Hora back in the day was the vast silver mine that employed up to 2000 miners at a time during the 14th to 16th centuries. During that time, one third of all the silver mined in Europe came from Kutná Hora. I got to go on a tour where you actually go through one of these medieval mines. I'll tell you what, when you're digging everything by hand, you really only make passages as large as is absolutely necessary, and not much more. Often they mined what are aptly called "crawling galleries." We went through a passage that for several feet was only about a foot and a half wide. Tight, but a really cool experience.

Near Kutná Hora is the town of Sedlec, and the Church of All Saints. This church is surrounded by a graveyard, and when the plagues and Turkish wars passed through, the cemetery got full, so they started digging people up. Then someone thought it would be a good idea to decorate the church with these bones as a reminder of the bond between this life and the next. So this church is decorated with like 60 000 bones. I'm not going to lie, it was kind of disturbing. Having skulls and bones hanging from the ceiling like party streamers and a chandelier where they were sure to use at least one of every bone found in the human body. Yep, just a little disturbing.

Praha

Praha (Prague) really is a beautiful city. With night scenes like the above view of the castle, you can imagine what it's like in person. Having never been bombed out during any of the world wars, all their old, amazing buildings are still mostly original. Walking around the city, I kept finding new, beautiful buildings. The city is somewhat seperated into New and Old Town. So you get great buildings like the Tyn Church (the headquarters of the Hussites, the first reformers) and ones like the National Theater below within a few blocks of each other, but separated by hundreds of years. Like most cities this old, a river runs through the town, and there are several islands that are accessible by one of the bridges. I liked going out to Střelecký Island in particular. From there you get really great views of the town, Charles Bridge, and the castle.
Now, I have one complaint about Praha. It's filled with tourists. Below is the hourly gathering to watch the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square chime the hour and run it's little show. Now what I think is kind of funny, is that it wasn't even working when I was there. But still, the masses gather every hour, on the hour. This is probably a personal problem, obviously these hundreds of people don't mind too much. I don't remember it being this crowded in Wien, maybe that's just because it rained like everyday I was there. All I'm going to say is Praha is a really great place to visit and I highly encourage you to visit, but it's the stop I'll let you take without me.

Czech Trains

Before coming to Europe, I bought a couple train passes, one, the "global" Europe pass, and the other, the Czech Flexipass (because the "global" pass doesn't cover any Eastern European countries). Because I had this train pass, I felt that I should take the trains as I went from Brno to Třebíč to Telč to Praha (Prague). This was a mistake. The train from Třebíč to Telč took about two and a half hours. The bus would have been 45 minutes. From Telč to Praha was even worse. The first trip was as fast as one could go by train. I was pretty proud of myself navigating small, poorly marked train stations (Jihlava, the station above is one of the bigger ones I went through) where there was no English written or spoken. Going from Telč to Praha, I was not so successful. But I learned some things, where you ask the info person for an itinerary, they most likely will not give you the very next one, but the one after that. So the two hour wait might only need to be 5 minutes, if you're quick. Second, Czechs like to list the next stop of a route, so make sure you know the difference between the final destination and the next stop before that train leaves that you could have taken. Third, have your entire trip planned out before leaving, so if you aren't going to make it to Kutná Hora in time to go to the Sedlec Bone Church, you can take the quicker route to Praha. And lastly, if you're not completely sure, ask someone before you get on a train. Luckily, I asked and got off the wrong one before it left, but not in time to get on the right one before it left. Take home message, if visiting small cities in the Czech countryside, take the bus.

I figured I'd add here some notes on English music. I brought my iPod with me because I figured that I'd be on trains a lot, and it'd be nice to have. But I find that I hesitate to listen to it because it makes me feel out of place. I've been working hard this trip to not feel like a tourist, and there are a couple things that really make me feel like a tourist. One is pulling out my map or guidebook, and the other is speaking or hearing English. The speaking part isn't so hard, I just don't say much all day. But the hearing has made me hesitate using my iPod. But yesterday I realized that a lot of the time when places are playing a radio station, half the songs are in English. But what I find most surprising about this is that they are songs I've never heard before. Not they just aren't my type of songs, I really don't think these songs are very popular in the US. I guess it's kind of a David Hasselhoff kind of thing, they love him in Germany, but he's got no following in the US. So I decided that if they're going to play English music in train station waiting rooms, I can listen to my iPod.

Telč

Telč was the first time this trip I didn't couch surf. I reserved a place at the Penzion Patricia for two nights while I was still back in Třebíč. A penzion is kind of a mix between a bed and breakfast and couch surfing. It's kind of like commercial couch surfing. It was nice having my own room and bath and everything, and Patricia still gave me lots of helpful info about Telč, but it strained our friendship that I had to pay her. I'm not saying there shouldn't be hotels or penzions, I'm just saying I don't think I'll ever look at them the same.

Anyway, about Telč. Again, the nice town square and plague column (although here it is for gratitude that they didn't get hit by the plague, not as penance to get the plague to leave), but here the square has been done in Italian Renaissance style, as was the taste of the ruling lord. If you look carefully in the picture above, you can see how they've marked the road through the square with the coloring and orientation of the pavement stones. I thought that was pretty clever. Because Telč was never a huge military target, the "castle" was built right on the square. It's really more of a chateau, but it's quite impressive. The interior has some really fascinating decoration, a lot of it in the graffiti style, where you scratch off the outer layer of plaster to reveal a different colored material beneath. Some really detailed, impressive stuff. Also a lot of woodcarvings on the ceilings that are impressive too. I keep using that word, impressive. That's probably in part due to my pathetic vocabulary, but kind of because that's the impression I get from these small Czech towns. Not huge and grand and massive like in Germany or Austria, but still very impressive. I like it.

Třebíč

Třebíč was a nice little town where I had my first adventures in communication. My guide book says that the train station has luggage storage, but I couldn't find it and the woman working the ticket desk spoke less English than I do Czech. So I trudged down to the info center, and there they told me to go to the bus station. Once again, I have trouble finding it, but I ask around and I think I've found it. I say think because they guy who seems to be in charge speaks even less English than at the train station and is using sign language that makes absolutely no sense to me. Well, my pack is kind of heavy, and I was beginning to come down with a cold, so there was no way I was going to haul that thing around all day. I persisted with this guy, and eventually, he leads me to a locked room, and it looks like he's pulling out a receipt book thing. So I pay him 30 crowns, and leave all my belongings with him. As I'm walking away, I think, "Hopefully I'll still have clothes at the end of the day."

Like every other town here, Třebíč (the i is made long and the č is like a ch, the ř is a sound unique to Czech, somewhere between a rolled r and a zh, so good luck with that one) has a cool square lined with shops. One had whole pheasants hanging outside for sale. However, the main attraction here is the nearly intact Jewish ghetto. It's difficult to tell from the picture above, but it is a crowded, tight little place. Really enlightening to see how the Jews were treated for so many years. As the city across the river spread out and prospered, the Jews were forced to stay here in tight quarters. With a peak population of 1500 Jews late in the 1800's, only 10 Třebíč Jews survived the Holocaust. This place was left pretty much as it was when the Jews were forced out, and now is a great source of education and remembrance.

This was a great stop on my way to Telč. At the end of that sightseeing, I went back to the bus station, showed my receipt, and got my luggage back. Good day.