Buenos Aires - It Ain't Perfect, But It Ain't Bad

While I’m stuck here in my epic seven-hour layover in Miami, it seems like a good idea to crank out a few more entries about Buenos Aires. Let’s see . . . where was I when we last left off. This time I think I’ll talk about a couple topics briefly.

Topic Six – Driving

Okay, I haven’t driven a car since 1997 and that didn’t change in Buenos Aires, but I can mention a few things here. The streets here are busy twenty hours a day. I guess this is sort of highlighted by the only nineteen-lane road I’ve ever seen – Avenida 9 de Julio. And the lights that are used to direct traffic are little more than suggestions and respected little more than as such. That goes for both drivers and pedestrians. Both go whenever they feel there’s at least a 50-50 chance that they can make it through unscathed. In the defense of the people on the street here, with all of the insane activity on the streets, I only saw one bad accident, which occurred when a cab driver hit a motorcyclist right outside of my bedroom window one afternoon. Other than that everybody made it through with little worse than a few frayed nerves.

Topic Seven – Argentine Women

¡Dios mío!

Topic Eight – Cleanliness

How do I put this. Cleanliness isn’t exactly the top priority in Buenos Aires. First off, there is dog crap everywhere. Before you come to Buenos Aires, you will be warned about it, but the warnings will not properly prepare you for the amount that you’ll find. I saw a few people picking up after their pets but I saw many more that weren’t. It makes any walk of a block or more like an obstacle course through a stinky mine field.

Also, the level of cleanliness in the streets isn’t as high as it is in, say, Detroit. (Note: Sarcasm) It’s pretty damn bad. I’ve seen people toss empty cigarette packs into the street while standing within touching distance of a trash can. The city seems to do a good job of cleaning up and not letting it get too far out of hand, but it is much different from what I saw in Europe.

Topic Nine – The Night

Okay, before it sounds like I’m bashing Buenos Aires, let me change the subject because I really do love the city. One of my favorite things in Buenos Aires is the night life. Since a four-meal- a-day diet is fairly typical here, the last one takes place pretty late. It was not uncommon for me to go out for dinner around 10:00 or 10:30 and be turned away because the place was filled to capacity. And these aren’t mega-hot spots that I’m talking about. They’re just run-of-the-mill restaurants. I’ve gone to dinner as late as 1 a.m. and never had a problem finding restaurants still serving a full menu.

Another beautiful feature of the long nights here is the late happy hours. I don’t recall ever seeing a place in Washington that had a happy hour lasting until 11 p.m., but that’s fairly typical here. It makes sense since people don’t go out until much later here, but it still took me by surprise.

There are tons of places in Buenos Aires open all night. It’s not quite New York, but it’s really not far from it in that particular respect. There were quite a few nights when I go home after 7 a.m. The morning just sneaks up on you here because places are full so late into the night/early into the morning that you just don’t realize that you’ve reached the wee hours.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m going to move around the airport and might write something else for another posting in a little bit. I figure another few entries about Argentina and then we’ll be ready for Egypt in January.

Buenos Aires - Mis Clases de Castellano

Topic #5 - Mis Clases de Castellano

Este artículo va a ser breve porque no saben lo suficiente castellano para escribir mucho. Tomé clases de español durante cuatro semanas y creo que lo mejor era de cuatro semanas desde que comencé mis vacaciones. Conocí a gente maravillosa y he aprendido mucho.

En cuatro semanas, me tomó 104 horas de clases, 80 con otras personas y 24 de uno-a-uno. En la foto a la izquierda son tres de mis cuatro profesoras. La primera es Rosario, que me enseñó durante dieciséis horas. En el medio está Martina, que me enseñó durante veinte horas. A la derecha está Belén que fue mi profesora por sesenta horas, incluyendo todos los de mi uno-a-uno clases. Todos ellas fueron fantásticas y me gustaba mucho aprender a Hispan Aires (mi escuela).

Además, he hecho buenos amigos en Hispan Aires con los otros estudiantes. En la foto de la izquierda son Lukas y Ingol (creo). Lukas es austríaco y fue en la mayoría de mis clases grandes. Yo no tenía ninguna clase con Ingol, pero lo hizo meterme en una pelea en el bar de Buenos Aires, que tiene que ser bueno para algo. Conocí a muchas otras personas y me gustaría poder hacerlo de nuevo.

De hecho, yo lo haré otra vez, porque tengo la intención de tomar más clases de castellano en Barcelona en junio y julio. Dado que este es probablemente mi artículo sólo en castellano, hasta entonces, espero que te gustaba.

(Nota: He tenido que buscar unos ocho o nueve palabras de este en Google, así que todavía tenemos mucho también aprender.)

Buenos Aires - Mis Amigos

My trip to Argentina has been very different from my trip to Europe in many respects, obviously. The best thing about staying in one place in long is the ability to develop relationships.

Topic #4 – Mis Amigos.

My hit-and-run trip to Europe had its up sides and its down sides. Among the up sides was that I was able to visit a lot of different places and see and experience a lot of different things. For what I wanted from northern/central Europe, it was an ideal way to travel. The down side, however, was that I was in no location for more than five days at a time. This limited the depth in which I could explore or understand any particular place or culture. It also limited the friendships I could make. While I did meet some cool people and had some good times with folks in Europe, there wasn’t time to do much more than meet for a time or two and move on.

In Argentina, being here for quite a while, I’ve had a much better opportunity to meet people from all over the world and to make friends. I’ll talk about my Spanish class in another post (maybe in Spanish if I’m feeling up to it), but let me introduce you to some of my new friends.

The big, bald guy in the picture to the left is Lukas. He’s an electrical something-or-other from Austria. As you might imagine from a big Austrian, he liked to drink. He was in my group classes the entire four weeks I was in Spanish classes, often it was just the two of us, so we got to know each other pretty well and hung out in various bars as I tried to teach him about various American sports, including the World Series. He is currently in Cordoba and is planning to head up through South America, Central America and to finish his trip in the United States. Hopefully, we’ll meet again because he is a great guy.

The guy in the glasses in Ingol, or something like that. He’s German and doesn’t speak English. That was fine because it gave us both the opportunity to practice our Spanish since it was the only way we could communicate. The last time I saw him was in the Casa Bar in Buenos Aires as I was pulling some Argentine dudes off of him as they were stomping him into the floor. I have no idea how the fight started. I just heard a commotion and turned around and saw Ingol fall to the floor then a couple of guys start kicking him. We were able to calm the Argentine dudes down long enough for Ingol to be dragged out of the bar. I heard through Lukas that Ingol is fine and was too drunk to remember how the fight started. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t remember how the fight ended.

The young guy is Eduardo who is an English and Spanish teacher in Brazil. He was only down in Buenos Aires for a week to brush up on his Spanish. It was his first ever trip out of Brazil and we sort of adopted him so he would have some people to hang out with while he was here. He was a good kid, but I’m sure I bored him some since I am too old to be interested in the night club scene in Buenos Aires any more. Just be assured, though, that there is somebody in Belo Horizonte telling stories of this mysterious American with long, grey hair who talked more about soccer than a typical Brazilian.

My second class still is in its relative infancy, though I have met some really good people in that class, as well. Last week, we had a nice Thanksgiving dinner of steak and creamed broccoli (only two of the five are Americans) and shared some mate, which was a first for me. Clockwise from bottom are Ben (England), Nigel (England), Katie (Austria), Carmen (United States) and me. Hopefully, more friendships will develop and will help to make my trip to Argentina one of the most memorable of my life.

Buenos Aires - Alimento

If you’re going to stay anywhere for any extended length of time, what you are going to eat and where you are going to eat it becomes an important consideration. The one thing I heard most about with respect to Argentine food before I got here was that the beef was some of the best in the world. With that introduction, we move on to the next topic.

Topic # 3 – Food in Argentina

Steak: Yes, the beef is good. In fact, it’s far superior to anything that I had during my trip to northern and central Europe. It’s not quite up there with Kobe beef, but it’s good. In fact, I can’t say that it’s significantly better than the steak you get in good restaurants in the United States. The big difference, however, is that it is always good here. Always. I’ve had steaks in nice restaurants in Buenos Aires that I had to pay a pretty penny for ($15) and bife de chorizo (New York Strip) in smaller, more native restaurants that were cheaper ($4 - $6) and no matter where I’ve had it, it’s been outstanding. Even when I’ve bought it in the grocery store and brought it home and cooked it myself, I couldn’t ruin it. It’s that consistently good.

Empanadas: Like much of Latin America, you can find these everywhere in Argentina. They come filled with beef or chicken or ham and cheese, or vegetables, or other things. You can get them fried or not fried. Of course, I’ve had mine fried. They were greasy but good. All things considered, though, I’ve had empanadas that were just as good in Washington, D.C.

Sandwiches de Miga: For the uninitiated, Argentines typically eat four meals a day. Breakfast and Lunch are not significantly different here than in the United States and Europe, but there typically is a merienda around 4:00 or 5:00 and cena, which is a bigger meal, around 10:00. The merienda is usually a small meal with coffee and sandwiches de miga, which are thin sandwiches, sometimes toasted, sometimes not, with the crust cut off and various sandwich items between the bread. The few times I’ve had them, I’ve had jamon y queso. Nothing special, but I’ve heard it’s very Argentine, so I thought I’d mention it.

Fast Food: There are very few Argentine fast food chains from what I can tell. I’ve seen Havanna cafes all over the place, but I haven’t visited. From what I’ve seen, thought, they appear to specialize in coffee and small snacks, not unlike Starbucks though with a different atmosphere. There are McDonald’s and Burger Kings everywhere in this city. Also, though it doesn’t quite qualify as fast food, there are Pizzerias on virtually every corner up-and-down the major Avenidas.

Bread: The bread is horrible. I’m not a big fan of bread in the United States, but it’s worse here. If I want more bread, I’ll go back to Europe.

Mate: Pronounced mah-tay. Mate is the national drink of Argentina, as well as Uruguay. It is a caffeinated drink made from mixing dried yerba mate leaves with hot water. Typically, people drink it from a hollowed out gourd through a metal straw called a bombilla. Its taste is similar to Lipton tea, though it is significantly more bitter. Another thing that is typical with mate is that people typically drink it in a small group of friends, passing around the gourd not unlike people pass around a joint. (Or so I’ve been told.) I have, however, seen people drink it on their own as their morning caffeine vehicle of choice.

Beer: Everywhere that I’ve traveled, I’ve found some local beer that reminded me of Miller Light. Since I love me some Miller Light, that’s a good thing. Here, my beer of choice is Quilmes Cristal, which is a light Argentine beer that costs about 90 cents a liter in the grocery store. I’ve tried other Argentine beers, like Palermo, other versions of Quilmes and a few that I can’t recall off the top of my head, but Quilmes Cristal is my favorite. There are also a few European beers that seem particularly popular here like Stella Artois and Heineken. But those cost around $1.30 a liter, so . . .

That’s what I have for food here off the top of my head. I’ll probably write about others in future posts, but that’s it for now.

Buenos Aires - The Observations Finally Begin

Okay, I said that I’d do this over a month ago, so it’s time I go ahead and give some of my Buenos Aires observations. Since I’ve been here for five weeks, there are lots of observations, so I’ll try to write on discrete topics over several posts.

Topic One: Speaking English in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is not a very English-friendly city. I haven’t been out of the city yet, but logic suggests that the further out you go into Argentina, the less English-friendly it would get. The good thing about this is that it gives me a lot of opportunities to practice all of the Spanish from my four weeks of classes. Some of my proudest moments have been on the phone with my landlord trying to negotiate through thirty-minute conversations with somebody who doesn’t speak English. Obviously, hand and body gestures don’t work over the telephone so Spanish is essential.

It would have been easy enough to visit here for a few days without speaking Spanish, but I can’t imagine living here for two months without at least a little Spanish. When I was in Europe, everybody spoke English. Even the people who didn’t speak English spoke English. If I couldn’t communicate with somebody, I’d just continue to look sad and try to get away with English until the other person would break down and admit that he spoke at least United-States-Movie-Television-Music-English and helped me out. Here, that technique doesn’t work. At least no more than 25% of the time. The good part of that, though, is that it also works out in my favor sometimes. Whenever somebody speaks to me in Spanish and it doesn’t sound like a conversation I want to get involved in, I can break out my “no hablo” and “no entiendo” and exit immediately.

Topic Two: Living Conditions

The first four weeks I was here, I lived in an apartment on Santa Fe Avenida, close to the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, which is one of the better neighborhoods of the city. Though the neighborhood is fantastic, it comes with its own problems. My apartment was shared with between one and four women (it changed from week-to-week) and only had one-and-a-half bathrooms. Needless to say, that caused issues, but those issues were easily resolved and not too painful.

The most annoying part of the apartment was the noise. Buenos Aires is the noisiest city I’ve ever been in. I couldn’t count the times that I was in my first apartment and I looked out the window to see where the plane was landing. I don’t know what type of laws they have here with respect to noise regulation for cars and motorcycles, but they’re inconsistent with those of the rest of the civilized world.

Another problem/benefit is light. It’s light outside by 5:30 in the morning. At the moment, it’s light outside until close to 8:00, and we still have about a month more of the days getting longer here. Obviously, the light in the evening isn’t a problem, but I find myself waking up early here because the apartment is full of light so early in the morning.

Last weekend, I moved into another apartment. It’s a studio apartment, but it’s all mine. It has a small kitchen and I am finally able to cook at home. Eating out isn’t a problem here because everything is so cheap, but when you can buy some of the best New York Strips on the planet at the grocery store for about $4 a pound, you realize the happiness of eating at home. Also, the apartment is on a side street, so it’s a little quieter, though it’s still far from silent.

Perhaps the best thing, however, about the new apartment is that it has a television with about 80 channels. Argentine television is awesome!!! Lots of soccer, with some American sports, lots of movie channels and lots of American television. All of the sports are in Spanish, but that’s fine. The movies and television shows are a mix of Spanish shows, English shows dubbed in Spanish and English shows with Spanish subtitles. The Spanish-dubbed shows are still a little fast for my limited comprehension capabilities but I enjoy watching shows that I’ve seen before that have been dubbed. Last week, I saw A Few Good Men for the tenth time, but the first time in Spanish. Since I already knew most of the dialogue, watching the film in Spanish was very helpful. Also, I find myself learning quite a bit from watching the English shows with Spanish subtitles.

Okay, that’s enough for this entry. I’ll write on other topics in other entries soon. Really.

Adios.

Estoy Triste

I’m sitting in my apartment on a Saturday morning in Buenos Aires. My Spanish class finished up on Friday. My next class starts on Monday, so I have no homework. My internet connection is down, so I can’t play on the web. It’s raining outside and I’m moving to another apartment in two hours, so while I’m sitting here, I thought I’d bring back the blog.

This morning, I’m sad. Four the last four weeks, I’ve been taking Spanish lessons for twenty-six hours a week and I really enjoyed them. I learned a lot, liked the teachers and made friends with some of the students. Now it’s over and everybody is going in separate directions. I’ve got some e-mail addresses and made some Facebook friends, but it’s a four-week period I enjoyed that is now over. On to the next four weeks, I guess.

It also made me think about how weird it must be for the teachers. I spent over sixty hours with one teacher, mostly one-on-one. When you talk with somebody for that long, even if you’re talking slow in broken Spanish, it’s almost impossible not to create a bond. For the teachers, a few of these bonds are created every month and then severed every two, three, four weeks or however long, mostly with people who are leaving the city and never returning.

In a few hours, like I said, I’m moving to a new apartment. I’ll do some grocery shopping, maybe cook at home for the first time in quite a while, and finally (I think) have a television, so maybe I’ll be fortunate and catch some soccer and/or work on my Spanish comprehension. Tomorrow, I will meet some of the people in my second class. That class begins on Monday and the empty place I’m experiencing right now will be filled up with new people, new experiences and new knowledge. I know that I’ll enjoy it (because I tend to enjoy almost everything that isn’t connected with the law) or at least make the best of it if I don’t, but for the next day or so I have a feeling that a mild depression is on the schedule.

Sorry for bringing back the blog on a downer, but I’ve had a great time here in Buenos Aires and my next posts will focus on Happy Sheldon. Hasta luego!!!

Don't Cry For Me: Argentina

Well, I’m back. Sort of. I’m back on the road, but I’m somewhere else – this time, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since I’m taking classes here, there is a lot less time for touristy stuff, though I’m planning on getting a lot of that in as well. Therefore, there likely will be fewer entries and fewer photos.

Now that I’ve set you up so as to not expect any photos, I’ll go ahead and give you some. Just as long as you’re not expecting any. On my first day in Argentina, the biggest soccer match of the year in South America was taking place in Buenos Aires – Boca Juniors at River Plate. I got here too late, so I missed it, though I’m pretty sure there will be plenty of soccer in my future.

If you think that missing the superclasico would depress me, it did a little bit and I went to a cemetery, but it wasn’t the depression that sent me to the depressing plot of land. It was Evita. Eva Peron is buried in el Cementerio de la Recoleta in Buenos Aires, one of the world’s great necropolises. It is a mostly above-ground cemetery with hundreds of mausoleums dating from the mid-19^th century to the present. I don’t know much about Argentine history, but many of the elite are buried in the Recoleta Cemetery, or so I am told. The only name I recognized was Eva Peron, and her family mausoleum had a crowd around it throughout the entirety of my visit.

After class on Monday, I started roaming around town and found myself in la Plaza de Mayo. The Plaza is the heart, though not the center, of the city. Its most well-known landmark is La Casa Rosada, which translates into the Pink House. La Casa Rosada is the executive office of the government and la Presidente (yes, LA Presidente – Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner), roughly equivalent to a slightly-less colorful building in Washington, D.C. Just in case you were wondering, the house was pink long before Argentina elected a female president.

The other famous landmark in a city that’s not really known all that much for landmarks is the obelisk that sits in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio. The obelisk, coincidentally known as "the Obelisk," appears to be similar in size to the Washington Monument and is impressive in its own right. What I find more impressive is what is reputedly (I’ve seen conflicting data) the widest street in the world, Avenida 9 de Julio, which is (again conflicting data) 127 m (416 ft) and 18 lanes wide. Just crossing the street is a little bit of a hike. Despite all of the traffic, however, drivers appear to obey traffic laws and the trip across, though it takes a few traffic light cycles, doesn’t appear to be unsafe at all.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with probably less touristy stuff from time-to-time.

Ciao.

Stanley House: A Review

The Stanley House Hotel in London was the sketchiest looking hotel that I stayed in the entire time that I was in Europe. (Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures at this hotel.) Despite the looks, however, it turned out to be very comfortable and quiet, two things I look for in a hotel. It also had the amenities I like (wifi and breakfast) and only cost around $90/night. After getting a sinking feeling following my first glance, I was pleasantly surprised.

The location of the hotel could be better. It is about a seven-minute south from Victoria Station, close to the Thames. It’s not a horrible location, just not particularly active, though there were some restaurants and pubs that allowed me to get food and drink from a relatively close distance, so I can’t complain too much.

The room was among the largest I stayed in, smaller than only Berlin and Vienna. It also had a full-sized bed that was actually very comfortable. The bathroom was fairly small, but after what I experienced in Amsterdam and Bratislava, it’s nothing that I would complain about.

The wifi was free and was pretty good quality, allowing me to watch streaming video. The breakfast, a traditional English breakfast with “bacon,” sausage, eggs, tomato and baked beans, was very good and very quick. They only served it until 9:00 am, which seemed to me to be uncommonly early, but given my schedule on this particular trip to London, that worked out fine.

I had read some bad reviews of the staff prior to coming here, but I found that the staff was very friendly and very helpful. They helped with some initial problems when I arrived and I noticed them advising others of other places to stay in the area even before they had filled all of their vacancies.

I don’t really have a lot to add to what I wrote above. Like I said, it’s not much to look at from the outside, or even the inside before you get to your room, but I was completely happy with my room and would stay here again.

London Revisited

It turns out that ending the trip with two days, one full day, in London was a little anti-climactic. While I had far from seen and done everything in London that I wanted to see and do, I didn’t quite have the energy or enthusiasm to try to cram a lot into my final visit.

One reason that I didn’t do more than I did in these last two days is that the one thing that I did do took a lot longer than expected. When I left the United States a month or so ago, it was the middle of the U.S. Open. With tennis still on my mind, I decided to go to Wimbledon to see it’s museum and take a guided tour of the grounds.

The guided tour was really interesting. The grounds were a lot smaller than I expected from what I’ve seen on television. Also, I never realized how close together all of the outside courts were to each other. Parts of it looked like you might find at a public court, except with perfectly manicured grass and an overwhelming sense of history.

We also went to see Court One and Centre Court. Obviously, being the most famous tennis court in the entire world, Centre Court was quite an experience, though it seemed a little strange because there were no lines, nets or, except for about forty of us on the tour, people. One unexpected highlight was they tested the retractable roof while we were there, so we got to see that close. Not exciting, just interesting.

Most of the other things that I did in these final two days in London is just walk around, take my last set of pictures, eat, and buy a last group of souvenirs. I took some pictures of Buckingham Palace from the front, since I was in the neighborhood and since I noticed that on my last trip to London, all of my photos were from the back. That’s it, really. Nothing too exciting at the end.

As I write this, I’m on a plane back to the United States. I’ll be there around ten days before heading off to Argentina for eight weeks. I’m thinking of posting some “Top Five” lists from my European trip, just for fun, and then I’ll probably start posting again once I get to Buenos Aires.

Cheers.

Die Port Van Cleve: A Review

In Amsterdam, I stayed at Die Port Van Cleve. I’ll go ahead and start with a summary. Something about this place just always seemed to feel wrong, although the location was near perfect.

Finding the place is relatively easy, provided you don’t get there at one of the non-main stations after dark. Unfortunately, as I’ve written about in a prior post, I got there in a non-main station after dark. The hotel is at the first stop on several traps from Amsterdam Centraal. Unfortunately, from Amsterdam Zuid, where my train stopped, it’s the next-to-last stop on line five. Unfortunately, after six, there’s no way to get tickets at Amsterdam Zuid. The people there told me I could get a ticket on the train, but that didn’t happen either. I ended up risking a fine and just hopping a train without a ticket. That’s not the hotel’s fault, though.

Check-in at the hotel was easy enough, but after taking nearly 30 minutes to get to the hotel, the receptionist gave me a key that didn’t open my door. My this time, the backpack felt like it weighed about five times its already 80 pounds and I wasn’t happy. The receptionist was very apologetic and got somebody to take my backpack to my room on the second trip, but it didn’t put me in a good mood.

The hotel room was small, as was the bed, but these are things I had gotten used to in the discount hotels that I’ve stayed in while in Europe. It seemed fairly clean, but a little sketchy as well. I had made the mistake of reading some reviews of the hotel right before I got there and there were a couple of mouse complaints. While I never saw a mouse or any hints that mice were present, I wasn’t able to get the thought out of my head.

I’m not even sure what to say about the “shower.” It had a tub, but not a regular tub. It was a tub that allows somebody to sit in it. In fact, it nearly forces you to sit in it because there was very little room to stand if you wanted to take a shower. I wanted to take a shower. It wasn’t easy, but I managed. This really didn’t help its score, though, when I reviewed it on Orbitz.

There was free wireless internet that worked very well. I learned in Vienna not to take that for granted anymore. Breakfast, however, was not included in the price of the hotel, but there were numerous coffee shops (no, not those coffeeshops), so I was able to get my morning fix (no, not that type of fix).

The hotel itself is just across the street from Koninkijk Palace and Nieuwe Kirk, probably the most famous buildings in Dam Square. And you should never underappreciate the little chuckle that goes on in the back of your head when you’re walking around and passing places called Dam Hotel, Dam Souvenirs and Dam Coffeeshop. My infantile sense of humor just liked that.

The hotel wasn’t cheap, at least not by the standards that I’d gotten used to in Europe, about $140/night. I’ve received much more around Europe for much less. I understand that there are other hotels in the neighborhood that are in the same price range and if I had to go back, I probably would try one of them out. This one wasn’t bad, but like I said, there was just something not feel right about it.

Amsterdam - The Blue Entry

I’ve already gone into all of the landmarks in Amsterdam that I visited, but what does everybody know about Amsterdam? The Red Light District and soft drugs. Yes, they are there.

The Red Light District was just strange. Lots of sex clubs and women in windows attempting to entice you to come in. I hate to speak of women only in terms of appearance, but when you are talking about women selling themselves from windows, it’s kind of hard not to do so, so I apologize in advance.

I’m not a complete stranger to the world of strip clubs. There was a wide range of women in the windows in the Red Light District, but I’d have to say that the collection of women was not dissimilar to what you might find in a second-class strip club. Some were attractive, but most looked a little worse for wear, so to speak. The streets were primarily full of tourists, like myself, doing a little bit of gawking, like myself, and just trying to take in what they’ve heard about all of these years. It actually gets pretty old pretty quick, but if that’s you’re thing, and it is certainly some people’s thing, then enjoy.

For all of the coffeehouses in Amsterdam, I didn’t see a single Starbuck’s. That’s okay, though. I made do. I visited a place in the Red Light District called Hill Street Blues, because I heard that the food was pretty good. I had some cupcakes that were pretty good. Unfortunately, being overly cautious, I think I underdosed on the cupcakes, which inhibited my relaxation. I was relaxed for a few hours, but certainly not as relaxed as I would have liked to have been.

I remedied that the next day. Since there are over two-hundred licensed coffeehouses in Amsterdam, I though that I’d try something different, so I went to Abraxas, near Dam Square. I went there around noon on Sunday and had a brownie and, of all things, coffee – which was pretty good. Having learned from my mistake of the previous day, I had plenty to eat on this visit. I think I’ve found the opening line to my novel – “I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant on Dam Street when the brownie kicked in.” (Okay, so most people have had a similar experience. I just love the different ways that you can go following that line.) This was the beginning of several hours of relaxation and, for the most part, the end of my trip. Trip as in visit.

This is my last post from Amsterdam (except for the random hotel review) and I just realized that I never talked about Dam Square, which is the old town square and, like all of the other old town squares I’ve visited, is bordered with shops and very old buildings. It wasn’t all that exciting, but it was across the street from my hotel, so I was there for at least a little while every day. There, of course, will be additional pictures of old buildings from Amsterdam on my Facebook page within the next few days. (If there aren’t already. Not sure exactly when this will get posted.)

That’s it from Amsterdam. Now, on to a few final days in London and the United States!!!

Hotel City B - A Review

Time for another hotel review, don’t you think? We’re up to Berlin, where I stayed in Hotel City B.

The location for Hotel City B gets mixed reviews. On one hand, it was great because it was right across the street from a U-Bahn station and, thus, transportation anywhere else in the city, and Berlin is huge. On the other hand, there really wasn’t much going on in the section of Potsdamerstrasse and the area was a little sketchy. About a ten-minute walk north, however, brought you into the heart of Berlin, not to mention a Dunkin Donuts, so it wasn’t horrible.

Check-in and check-out were painless. My room was on the third floor, so an elevator was very necessary. Fortunately, it also existed at this hotel. The hotel’s motif is sort of hard to explain. Very strange colors in the hallways, on my floor the walls were purple, and the room numbers looked like they were handwritten, but I believe that was purposeful.

My room was huge. It had a double bed and the entire south wall was a window that looked directly into the U-Bahn station across the street. The room had an internet connection. It wasn’t wireless, but that was fine as I used the good connection to spend one night catching up on American television shows that I’ve missed while I’ve been in Europe. The only English-language stations on the television were CNN and MTV.

The breakfast wasn’t free, or cheap, so I didn’t indulge. In any event, with Dunkin Donuts all over the place in Berlin, that was going to be my breakfast in Berlin anyway. Oh, how I do love me some Dunkin Donuts coffee.

The rate was dirt cheap, around $70/night. Another thing I liked about the hotel is that I wasn’t required to leave my key at the front desk, so entry/exit was less work here than at some other places I’ve stayed at in Europe.

All-in-all, though I would have liked some better eating options close to my hotel for late-night runs, I was happy with the room, the staff and especially the price.

Amsterdam - The Surprises

If there’s a rock show at the Concertgebouw,

They’ve got long hair at the Madison Square,

You’ve got rock and roll at the Hollywood Bowl

We’ll be there

When last we stepped in on me in Amsterdam, I was talking about places that were on my list of “must see”s in Amsterdam. Anticipating a lot of relaxation in Amsterdam, I hit al of those places early in my trip. I also hit a few others, though.

If you remember from earlier posts, I have a thing about Olympic Stadiums. I visited the one in Berlin built for the 1936 Olympics and in Munich for the 1972 Olympics. Until I went to the Dutch History Museum, though, I didn’t even realize that Amsterdam had hosted the Summer Olympics (in 1928) and had an Olympic Stadium all it’s own, called the Olympisch Stadion. It took a 30-minute tram ride to get there, but I decided to go.

Olympisch Stadion was about as humdrum a stadium as I’ve ever encountered. Just a big oval of concrete that holds about 60,000 people – expanded from the 23,000 or so it held during the 1928 Olympics. I couldn’t get a good picture from outside because of sponsor crap hanging from everywhere in preparation for next week’s Amsterdam marathon. I went inside to see if they were open for the 5 euro tour. The guy behind the counter said that it was open, but it was all in Dutch and all indoors, so it probably wouldn’t be worth it to me. I told him that all I was interested in was taking a few pictures from inside the stadium. He said that since it was only me, I should feel free to just walk out on the field and take some quick pictures. So I did. That was pretty cool. In Munich and Berlin, I got to walk down the stands to the front row of the stadium, but in Amsterdam, I got to walk around the track and onto the grass of the stadium. I loved that, but like I said, the stadium was just so-so.

I hopped back on the tram to return to my hotel near Dam Square and about halfway back, something caught my eye. It was the Concertgebouw. Now, I don’t know anything about the Concertgebouw except that it was mentioned in “Rock Show” by Paul McCartney and Wings back in the 1970s. But I’ve been to the Hollywood Bowl and I’ve been to Madison Square Garden, so I felt the need to hop off the train and at least take some pictures of the Concertgebouw. One is included here for your viewing pleasure.

Another place I ended up visiting was the Homomonument. I had never heard of it before my trip, but I saw signs pointing to it while I was walking back to my hotel from the Anne Frank house, so I decided that with a name like that, I had to check it out. I’ll tell you what I know, which is practically nothing. It honors gays and lesbians, but I’m not sure which ones. That is to say, I don’t know if it’s honoring anyone in particular or commemorating any specific event. There was a plaque, but it was all in Dutch and I couldn’t figure it out. Anyway, I took some pictures and moved on.

Okay, if you’re waiting for the stuff from Amsterdam that interests everybody in Amsterdam, that’ll be in another post to come shortly.

Amsterdam - The Highlights

I’m sitting in a railway station

Got a ticket for my destination

On a tour of three night stands

My backpack and MacBook Pro in hand

And every stop is neatly planned

For a lawyer and a one-man band

I’m sitting in Amsterdam Centraal waiting for a train to Paris. I’m not taking it all of the way to Paris. I’m only going as far as Brussels. There, I’ll hop on another train to London. It will be my first trip to an English-speaking country in four weeks. Woohoo!!!

Hmmm . . . Amsterdam . . . where to start. I didn’t do nearly as much sightseeing in Amsterdam as I did in other cities where I stayed at least four nights. I spent much more time in Amsterdam . . . relaxing . . . and walking around town in a relaxed state of mind. Knowing that likely would be the case, I did go to all of the places in Amsterdam that I wanted to hit, and went to a few more that I didn’t even know existed before I got there.

I guess that I’ll dedicate this post to the places that were on my original agenda that I visited while in Amsterdam. The top place on my to do list was the Anne Frank Huis. Like everybody else, I read the book a few times as a child and have always been intrigued. Of all the places I’ve visited, the Anne Frank house had the longest line that I’ve been in since I went to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Once inside (it’s a little pricey), we got the tour of the digs. All of the information was in English as well as Dutch, so it was easy to follow. There wasn’t much to it since there’s no furniture, just the rooms of the secret annex, but the one thing that I took away was how small all of the rooms in the secret annex were. I think claustrophobia would have got to me before the Nazis did.

The next place on my list was the Heineken Brewery. Now, I don’t think it’s an actual brewery anymore, so it’s more of a brewery museum. It was quite interesting as it allowed me to learn more about beer, although to be honest, Heineken is far from my favorite beer. At the end, though, we got free beer at the Heineken bar, so I guess you can’t argue with that. Like all of the other sights in Amsterdam, though, it was kind of expensive. Fifteen euro (about twenty-two dollars).

I also wanted to make sure that I went to the Van Gogh museum. Unlike other museums I had been to in Europe, e.g., British Museum, the Louvre, the people here took the “no photographs” rule pretty seriously, so I don’t have anything from inside. If you’re a Van Gogh fan, the place is very interesting. In addition to paintings, the museum also focuses on correspondence Van Gogh had with his brother and others, e.g., Guagin. These letters are in Dutch, but several are translated into English and many also contain sketches of paintings Van Gogh had finished or just begun or never actually painted. Extremely interesting look at an extremely interested man.

The final “must see” on my list was the Dutch History Museum because, well I’ve looked at the local history museum in almost every city I visited, so it just felt right. Although I did learn a lot about the history of Amsterdam (and got ideas about additional places to visit), beyond that, there was little to get excited about. Much of the museum attempted to demonstrate Amsterdam history through art, fittingly enough. The most famous museum in Amsterdam likely is the Rijksmuseum, but having seen enough Dutch Master paintings everywhere else in Europe, and not being the biggest fan in the world, I decided to bypass that particular one.

That’s enough for this post. I’ll probably talk about the places I visited that weren’t on my “must see” list in the next post.

Dag.

German Efficiency, My Ass

I really wish that I had started writing about Berlin before I tried to get out of it. I absolutely adored Berlin, much more so than I expected and even more than Munich, but I’m afraid that my description might be clouded by the hellatious time I’ve had trying to get from Berlin to Amsterdam. Maybe if I write about it first (not sure if I’m going to post it first), I’ll get the venom out of my system before I start writing about the rest of my trip to Berlin.

First off, let me say this. “German efficiency” can kiss my ass because I haven’t been able to get in or out of this country on time, yet. So far, my second trip out – the one I’m on now – has been the worst of all. People had less trouble getting out of East Berlin during the cold war than I’m having today.

I’m neurotic when it comes to travel. I get to where I need to be on time. No, not on time. Early. Very early. I was at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof an hour before my train was supposed to take off, waiting patiently. I got a sandwich to pack away for lunch, got a muffin, got some coffee, and went to the track forty minutes early.

Now, let me tell you about the tracks. There are eight tracks, numbered 9-16, all in this little complex. The weather outside is bad, so there are numerous delays and announcements, mostly in German. Now, occasionally there would be an English announcement, but that didn’t matter. Announcements were coming over the speakers at five tracks at once, all different announcements, and even if I was fluent in German, I wouldn’t have been able to understand five people speaking it at once.

I kept checking the overhead board at my track that said my train was coming at 10;37. At around 10:40, they took my train off the board. Then there was an announcement, finally in English, that the train would not run today. Then, they apologized for any inconvenience. That made everything better. GODDAMMIT!!!!

So, I go to a ticket counter to see if I can get a different ticket, perhaps to a train that was going to run. At least this part was relatively easy. They put me on a train that had to make a connection in Duisburg that was leaving in five minutes from the track on which my original train was supposed to leave. I can handle that. Just walk back to where I was and wait three or four more minutes. Right?

About ten minutes later, some woman comes to yell at me in German. I tell her that I don’t understand what she’s saying. She obliges me by yelling at me in broken English. The train’s not running upstairs. I have to go downstairs. She tells me that I should have looked at the big board downstairs. Oops, sorry. I go downstairs to the big board and it says Track 13. There’s only one Track 13. It’s upstairs. And the train is running 50-minutes late (meaning I’ll miss my connection, but I’ll get to that).

I go to the people who exchanged my ticket and they tell me everything is fine, but the train is actually going to run out of Track 3 or 4, downstairs. I still have a few minutes, so I knock people down and jump over suitcases like O.J. Simpson in the 1970s. (I was tempted to go all O.J. Simpsons in the 1990s, but fortunately, it didn’t come to that. At least, it hasn’t yet.) I get down to Track 3/4 and wait about five minutes and notice, without any announcement in either German or English, that the board has changed to say that the train is now heading out of Track 7. Grab my 100 pounds of crap, run upstairs, run downstairs get on Track 7.

About an hour late, the second train arrives. I get on it. It goes from Berlin to Amsterdam, but there is a connection in Duisburg. Originally, I had a 41-minute wait time for the connection. Now, it appears I’m going to arrive 20 minutes or so late, depending on how much more time we lose. My hopes are that (a) the train running out of Duisburg is a half-hour or so late and/or (b) there are plenty of trains running from Duisburg to Amsterdam since I’m arriving in Duisburg around 4:00 pm.

Anyway, the best laid plans and all that. F@#king German trains. I thought these things were supposed to run on time. I hope I get to Amsterdam sometime tonight and I’ll probably update this post eventually to let you know if/when/how-in-the-hell I make it.

Toodles.

(Ed: Obviously, I made it to Amsterdam. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so high, umm, I mean I wouldn’t be able to post this. Since the train stopped in a station other than Amsterdam’s main station and after 8 pm, trying to figure out the public transportation here was futile and I had to hop a train without a ticket and randomly guess where to hop off. I guessed wrong. Cost me about 30 more minutes. Oh well. It’s all better now . . .)

K+K Fenix Hotel: A Review

In Prague, I stayed in the K+K Fenix Hotel, just off of Wenceslas Square. In many ways, it was the best hotel I stayed in while I have been in Europe, thus far.

Getting to the hotel was pretty easy. The Praha Holesovice station is on the Metro, so I just hopped on and four stops later, I was in Wenceslas Square, at the base of the statue of the good king. From there, it was a seven- or eight- minute walk to the hotel. Check-in was quick and easy and I was given a room on the fourth floor because I asked for something relatively quiet.

The hotel did have a lift, which as I’ve pointed out in earlier posts, is a big plus given the masses of crap in my backpack. It also had free internet service, though not wifi. I had to plug my computer into a modem to get the juice, which isn’t as convenient as some places I stayed, but after having nothing in Vienna, I wasn’t about to complain.

My room, which was in the neighborhood of $100/night, was huge, relatively speaking. It had a full-sized bed (my first true full-sized bed in Europe) and a flat-screen 19” television, which also was an upgrade over all of the places that I have stayed, thus far. In addition, the bathroom had a bathtub, which I took advantage of since I have no idea when the next time I’ll see one of those.

The free breakfast was the most extensive of any that I have experienced, as well. There were cereals, breads, meats, cheeses, eggs, fruits, vegetables, fungi, juices, places to sit. Not necessarily all you could ever want, but all you need and plenty of it, too. Did I mention it was free? Free breakfast is always good.

If I have a complaint, its that I returned to my room around 2:30 on Sunday and housekeeping still hadn’t arrived. When housekeeping did arrive, they had a tendency to not bother knocking, which could always lead to some awkward moments. They did a good job, though, because it was one of the cleanest rooms that I have stayed in.

Since it’s starting to get cooler here, the lack of air conditioning generally isn’t a problem. To be perfectly honest, I don’t even know if I had air conditioning. I’ve grown so accustomed to just opening the window that it’s what I did here. Also, noise was generally not a problem, though I could hear a television coming from somewhere in the wee hours of the morning once.

Overall, I guess I’d rate it a very good budget hotel, at least in relation to everything else I’ve experience with respect to budget hotels in Europe.

Berlin: What I Liked (Most)

As the train cruises from Germany into the Netherlands, I thought I’d do a quick post on the two things in Berlin that intrigued me the most – The German History Museum and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

The Germany History Museum covers nearly two thousand years of various groups of people who have lived in these lands over the centuries. As far as German history that I am actually interested in, particularly with respect to Berlin, most of that took place in the 20^th century, or the second half of the 19^th century at the latest. Apparently I’m not alone and the museum’s curators realize that because I would estimate that out of the two-thousand years of history, about half of the museum covered the period from around 1820 to the present.

What I most wanted to see before I went into the museum was how things like World War II, Nazis and the Holocaust would be portrayed in the country in which those atrocities either took place or had their genesis. The answer is pretty frankly. There was a significant wing dedicated to Hitler’s rise to power, the war and the murder of millions. There were various documents demonstrating early discrimination of jews and homosexuals in Nazi Germany, leading to a sculpture of the death camp at Auschwitz (if I remember correctly). I was glad to see that the issues were not swept under the rug, not that they really could have been, but it also left me with a deep sense of confusion of how this could have been the same place that I was visiting less than 70-years ago. As time passes, it becomes easier to think back to the time as something far back in history, doomed to black-and-white film and Time/Life books, but it in the big scheme of things, it really wasn’t that long ago at all.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the museum.

The other thing that intrigued me in Berlin was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the church is about 60% of the size it was prior to a 1943 Allied bombing raid of Berlin. Rather than save what they could, tear down the building and rebuild, however, the “hollow tooth,” as people from Berlin refer to it, stands as a memorial, with a completely new church built right next to it.

I never got a straight answer though as to what exactly is being memorialized. Is it to memorialize the German dead of World War II? There were millions of them after all. Or is it a memorial to the severe destruction that war causes and a reminder as to why it should be avoided at all costs? Or is it just a sign of defiance to a world that kicked its ass? There’s probably an answer somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, I was really enjoyed the church.

Berlin: What I Did

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting to find in Berlin. Aside from the Brandenburg Gate, currywurst and remnants of the Berlin Wall , there wasn’t anything in particular that I was hoping to see, though I had hoped that the more I examined the city, the more I would find that interested me.

Berlin surprised me with the degree to which I found myself mesmerized by various things that I found. In particular, off the top of my head, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche and the Deutsches Historisches Museum. I’ll go into more detail on each of those in a future post. For this post, I’ll just highlight a little of what I did.

Because of the strategic positioning of my hotel, I decided to hit Berlin in two waves over the course of my two full days there. On the first day, I went towards the center of the city. My hotel was just a short walking distance to Potsdamer Platz, which is surrounded with skyscrapers (by European standards) by companies such as Sony and Mercedes. Turning left on Ebertstrasse takes you straight to the Brandenburg Gate.

If you’re familiar with Berlin at all, you’re familiar with the Brandenburg Gate, which was built in the late 18^th century. It’s long been the scene of celebrations of military conquests, and not just those of Germany. Napoleon marched through its gates. So did the Soviets. So did I, though I imagine it was much more dramatic when the others did it.

In the same neighborhood as the Brandenburg Gate is the Reichstag, which is the official seat of the German Parliament. It probably is best remembered for the 1933 Reichstag Fire, which helped bring the National Socialists into power, even though they likely were the ones who started the fire. One of the things that I found most intriguing about the building is that although it has had extensive renovations, parts of the façade are still riddled with bullet holes, courtesy of World War II.

Walking east from the Brandenburg Gate takes you down Unter den Linden, one of the most famous streets in Europe, not to mention the most famous in Berlin. Before I walked down the street, I had read that it was full of beautiful old buildings and beautiful scenery. The first kilometer or so, though, primarily all I saw were fast food joints and souvenir stores, and the only beautiful building I saw was the Russian Embassy. As I got further down the road, however, I saw what they people were talking about, as I approached the Dutch History Museum and the Berliner Dom. I spent a few hours in the Dutch History Museum, but like I said, that’s for another post. I didn’t enter the Berliner Dom, but I took pictures of the outside, which will have to do for now.

On the second day, I headed west. The first of the two places I wanted to visit Kurfurstendamm, which is a two-and-a-half mile street filled with shops, shops and more shops. A lot of shops. I walked the entire length, each way. In the middle, I stopped for my first currywurst.

(Detour: Currywurst probably deserves its own post, but I’ll talk about it now. I had heard for years that currywurst was a Berlin specialty and that only people from Berlin could appreciate it. What I’ve learned is that you can find it at least all over the German-speaking world – I saw it in Switzerland, Austria and other parts of Germany. Currywurst is a sausage, usually something in the neighborhood of a fried hot dog, drenched in this ketchupy-curry sauce and sprinkled with curry powder. I avoided eating it until I got to Berlin because I wanted the original currywurst. I wasn’t disappointed.)

Much more interesting to me than the shops of Kurfurstendamm, however, was what I found at one end of the street, my starting point. What is there is the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-Kirch (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church). Nicknamed “the hollow tooth,” the church once stood 370 feet tall and was one of the largest structures in Berlin. Following a 1943 bombing raid, the church became a severely damaged 206 ft ruin, but the Germans left it standing as a memorial to . . . something. A new church was erected next to the ruins and services are held in the new structure.

The last part of Berlin that I wanted to visit was Olympic Stadium. I’ve seen matches on television played at the Olympic Stadium, home of Hertha BSC. I’ve also seen old film of the Hindenburg flying overhead and Jesse Owens winning his four gold medals there. The stadium has changed significantly since the 1936 Olympics, including being partially covered in the last decade or so. Nevertheless, one could get the sense of how it would have looked when it was the Nazi’s pride-and-joy as they showed off their culture to the world. It was a very interesting trip.

Those are the highlights of my trip to Berlin. I’ll go a little deeper into a few of the items that I mentioned above, though I’m probably through talking about currywurst. Let’s hope so.