Paris (it’s pretty nice)

 

Visiting the Louvre at dusk.

 

We said goodbye to my uncle and his wife, dropped the car in Limoges, and hopped on a train bound for Paris. And Paris is, as far as cities go, pretty nice.

 

The Eiffel Tower. We’re such terrible tourists that this was as close as we got to it; we didn’t even bother walking across the bridge to the actual park.

 

I’m speaking objectively. I’ve never really been under the sway of the French obsession. Haute couture fashion and makeup? Don’t follow it.

French food? I can agree with them that butter = better.

Romance language? I prefer Italian, or non-romance languages Russian or Japanese.

Paris as a dream destination? The closest I’ve come to learning about sightseeing in the city is listening to David Sedaris’ interview with This American Life.

 

We came upon these columns on a road along the Seine; they’re strangely attractive for industrial grade metal pylons.

 

So with no expectations for Paris, here’s what I came away with:

1. The food is actually better than the U.S. Like in Italy, even the base quality food is better. You can still find places that are meh (especially bakeries), but the grocery goods are way tastier and there’s a fresh market stall for everything from produce and bread to meet and seafood.

 

A kouign amann, which is basically just thin sheets of dough held together with butter and caramelized sugar.

 

2. Not everyone is dressed better, but the better-dressed are noticeably more stylish

 

Look at this random guy. A thousand times more stylish than a random guy in the U.S.

 

3. Everything IS pretty. Forms of function have decoration and embellishment by default. Presentation matters. In this sense, being here reminds me of Japan.

 

This is a random Metro entrance, apparently in the style of Art Nouveau because of course.

 

Oh, and someone told me that Paris Syndrome is actually a thing. Guess it was good I came without expectations.

Sunrise over Grenoble

I’m not much of an alcohol drinker and I’ve never mixed a drink in my life (unless you count a rare shot of Bailey’s into hot cocoa), but if there was ever a name for a drink, it would be Sunrise over Grenoble. And you would make it with layered peach juice and grenadine and whatever alcohol goes well with those two things, maybe a dark spiced rum. It’s true I don’t know what I’m doing behind the bar here in my mind but it’s my hypothetical drink. Get your own.

Anyway, the point of all of this is if you ever find yourself in Grenoble, wake up predawn and hike up to the Bastille for sunrise. It’s picture (and mixed drink) worthy:

After sunrise, head back down to the city just in time for breakfast at a local café. Maybe even get a shot of Bailey’s in your coffee.

Less than 24 hours in Milan

The grand Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

We have arrived later than we hoped in Milan thanks to the Phantom Train fiasco, with our train on to France departing in ~20 hours. Which is a shame, because it turns out Milan is gorgeous and everything I wanted in a city: walkable and beautiful.

The plaza of the Duomo Cathedral

The Disco di Arnaldo Pomodoro

The grand Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Evening commute at dusk

Milan bokeh!

Milan also has a Chinatown! With some actually good Chinese food!

Ravioleria Sarpi in Milan’s Chinatown.

Ravioleria Sarpi in Milan’s Chinatown.

Bubble Tea in Milan

It really is too bad the new EMA HQ didn’t end up here.

Next stop, Venice!

Venice is a beautiful and fascinating place. I’ve always wanted to visit, Natalie not so much. It turns out that it’s got a little bit of everything, good and bad. Its beautiful, winding alleys interspersed with canals and bridges and spires are inspiring. The measures taken to keep buildings from falling and the island from sinking are a testament to human ingenuity and stubbornness. Its attitude towards tourists and the costs (and sometimes smells) of living on the island are saddening. In my view visiting Venice is worth it for two things – the history and architecture, and the marvel of engineering that keeps the city alive. Most of the tourist traps should be rightfully avoided, and it’s best to stay away from popular areas at peak hours.

There are basically two ways to see Venice. The cheaper and arguably more lively route is to stay on the mainland at one of several campsites or large hostel-like buildings, and bus in in the morning. The other way, significantly more expensive, but better for seeing Venice the way we wanted to, is to stay on the island itself. It’s not cheap, but for a very short stay, the value of waking up before dawn and walking the empty streets is worth the extra fee.

We took the bus out of Sant’Agata, then on to the next bus to Rimini, and finally on to the train north to Venice. Midway through the trip our train stopped and a bunch of announcements came on in Italian. We did not understand them. The train stayed in the station and eventually people started shuffling off. A conductor came by and told us, in slightly broken English, that the train would not be moving again soon, and we should go on to a different track to catch the replacement. We’ve been through worse transportation adventures, but the feeling of an impromptu change of plans in a language we don’t understand is always exciting.

There is the last station on the mainland, and then the open water. The train tracks cross over a narrow bridge, on either side the Venetian Lagoon. Technically, the mainland just before the crossing is also part of the district of Venice, but what everyone thinks of when they hear the name is found across this bridge.

Right out the gate, Venice does not disappoint. The church of San Simeon is literally the first thing most people see when they leave the station. It’s gorgeous and only a taste of what’s to come.

There are a few ways to get to the inner islands – all of them are connected by bridges, with a bus ferry, or with ferry taxis. The ‘bus’ is actually fairly expensive, and the distances are short. With so much to see the natural choice is to walk everywhere. If we were here for a week or more, maybe the bus ferries would have been a more appealing option.

In the fading hours of the day we made our way to the hotel. Despite the day’s journey and the weight of the packs, we still lingered and turned in all directions staring at the city around us. In short order we were introduced to both the magnificent Italian architecture, the tightly clustered houses and apartments, and the occasional but persistent vendors of tourist things.

We also found that the city of Venice has an attitude, and the people are not shy expressing themselves on the walls. This was probably the largest demonstration we saw, but there are plenty of smaller ones scattered alone or in clusters around the city. The topics range from banning tourists to saving the planet. Perhaps unsurprisingly, climate change is often on the minds of those living here.

Night fell and we left our hotel in search of food. To set expectations, hotels in Venice are not very similar to most people’s idea of a hotel. Unless you pay a lot of money, it will resemble something of a walk-up, 2 to 3 stories of three or four rooms on each floor with a shared bathroom. Much like a hostel in any other part of the world. Similarly, the food is not reasonably priced. This is entirely expected in an extremely popular and difficult to supply city, but it’s good to be aware.

Luckily for us, right near our hotel was a Bigoi. This is a small, almost fast-food version of pasta, where you pick your noodles, sauce, and meat, and they make it fresh for you. It costs about 5 euros and each bowl is enough for a person. Not the best in terms of nutrition, but they taste great and they’re cheap! There are also small grocery stores available, but they still run fairly expensive, and they do tend to run out of key ingredients at night, especially bread. We relied pretty heavily on Bigoi and the snacks we brought with us while we were in Venice.

Also pastries. We didn’t eat a lot of fancy food in Venice but we did make room in the budget for coffee and pastries in the morning. The coffee is still very affordable – 1.20 Euro. The pastries can be a little expensive but are still around a few euro each. This one is called a sfogliatelle. It’s small, packed with cream and syrup, and somehow amazingly crunchy and flaky. It’s fantastic and we found the one we liked best was in the pastry shop Pasticceria Toletta. The lady working the counter in the morning is super nice, and their pastries and coffee are fantastic.

Next time – Venetian architecture!

Remembering World War II in Europe

Tank treads embedded in concrete at a World War II memorial in Warsaw, Poland.

Here in Europe, the memory of World War II is living, breathing, complicated beast. It was less than 100 years ago, and people remember it through stories, monuments, and plaques scattered throughout the cities of the continent. And it’s not remembered in the episodic way we in the U.S. remember the war, which for most of us distills down to we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we beat Hitler and the Nazis (the Russians would like to have a word with you)*, and we nuked Japan. No, here in Europe it’s remembered by which of your relatives died, how much of your city was leveled, what survived, and how you remember who and what didn’t.

World War II displays in Moscow’s Museum of Great Patriotic War (a.k.a. World War II).

While it’s hard for me to estimate the exact number of World War II monuments, we’ve seen one in almost every place we’ve visited since we hit Russia. That includes Siberia, where there’s a Soviet monument in Ulan-Ude to the Buryats who fought in the war; to Latvia, where you can find plaques commemorating where the bombs fell and where Jewish refugees were sheltered scattered throughout the city streets; to Hungary, where towering monuments occupy city parks and the bank of the Danube River. There are places where we didn’t see World War II monuments, but in these cases we could have missed them or they could have been removed – the Soviets would have raised them in former Eastern Bloc states, and they might have fallen with the Communist governments.

A plaque memorializing those killed by the Nazis (I think) in Prague, Czech Republic.

The language of the monuments and plaques also varies by location; it either memorializes the loss of lives of buildings in the war generally, or it memorializes specifically the war against the Nazis. In Estonia where an estimated 1 in 4 peopled died, pamphlets tell how Estonians first fought the Soviet Union, then the Nazis to retain their independence. In Latvia and Warsaw, many of the placards say “here refugees were sheltered,” or “here bombs fell.” And then there are the scattered memorials in Bialowieza, which read (in Russian and Polish), “Here the Nazis committed terrible atrocities.”

A plaque in the sidewalk in Riga, Latvia, commemorating a hiding place for Jews.

Memorial to a massacre in the forest, near Bialowieza National Park.

But behind the monuments and the public face of remembrance, there’s a more complicated cultural and personal remembrance that doesn’t conform to the public memorialization. In Austria, this manifests as darkly self-critical humor scattered through the sightseeing pamphlets at hostels: “This location memorializes the terrible acts we committed. Oops, we meant the Nazis, we Austrians were just victims who were invaded.” With the fall of communism in Poland, there are whispers now that some of the murders in the forests of Bialowieza were committed by Soviet soldiers and blamed on the Nazis as a cover-up.

Two visitors stop in front of the “Monument to the Victims of the German Invasion” in Budapest, Hungary.

But this conflict of public and private remembrance is most evident in Budapest, where that recently-built “Monument to the Victims of the German Invasion” has sparked protests that the Hungarian government is ‘washing over history’ for political expedience*. An independent, home-made monument has sprouted up in front of the official memorial with personal memorabilia from victims killed by the Arrow Cross: photos, letters, ID cards, and books. It’s a reminder visitors that like the Austrians, many in Hungary welcomed the Nazis, and many murders and atrocities were committed by Hungarian hands.

Memorabilia and decorations on the homemade protest monument in Budapest, Hungary. The monument asserts that Hungary’s “Monument to the Victims of the German Invasion” whitewashes history by failing to acknolwedge that many native Hungarians committed atrocities as part of the Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross Party.

Two tourists look at both the homemade monument and the “Monument to the Victims of the German Invasion” in Budapest, Hungary.

Only a mile away from Budapest’s new monument, another World War II memorial sits on the bank of the Danube. Dozens of pairs of shoes, cast in bronze, are rooted into the concrete to memorialize those who were shot at the riverbank in 1944 and 1945. With the war drawing to a close and resources scarce, victims were told to remove their shoes before they were shot and their bodies tumbled into the river below. There are rumpled boots and loafers. There are fine, high-heeled pumps. There are children’s shoes.

Plaques embedded in the ground at each end state: “To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross Militiamen in 1944-45.”

A child-sized pair of bronze shoes stand amid flowers at the memorial to the victims shot on its banks in World War II.

—

Side notes:

* Russia took the most World War II casualties of any country by number of deaths, and they were actually the ones to take Berlin on the ground at war’s end.

**The Hungarian government of the last decade has been controlled most by Fidesz, a nationalist right-leaning party that disagrees with Germany’s policy of allowing increased immigration. The memorial cleverly furthers both of its goals by (1) de-associating guilt from itself by failing to mention the atrocities linked to the also nationalist, right-wing party of the Arrow Cross and (2) associating the crimes committed with Germany, not specifically the Nazis, which stirs up subconscious anti-German sentiment.

European Capital Hop: Prague is magic

Prague in the late afternoon, as seen from the Petřín Lookout Tower

Before I visited Europe, I remember hearing from friends and family about the magical beauty of European cities. “They’re gorgeous!” people swooned, “The cobblestone streets and rows of old buildings are photo-tastic. It’s magical!” So far, we haven’t really gotten that. Sure, the old town of whatever city we happen to be in is nice, but it hasn’t been anything to write home about.

But Prague stands out because it does feel magical. Part of it is the architecture: rows of pastel-colored buildings, each covered with neat cinnabar-colored tiles; the narrow cobblestone streets and alleys; the lights of the city shimmering on the Vltava River at night. It really is gorgeous, and Prague’s title as the “Heart of Europe” is well-earned.

Part of the magic is also in the pricing. We’re coming from the sticker shock of Vienna, but that aside vacationing here is downright affordable, thanks in no small part to the fact that the Czech Republic, like Hungary, is still recovering economically from the collapse of the Soviet Union. We found two beds in a hostel in Malá Strana for $24 a night. We ate lunch and dinner and dessert out for $36 a day for two people, less than $10 per person per meal. And while we weren’t eating at the fanciest restaurants, we got REALLY good food. This bar right around the corner from our hostel called U Magistra Kelly was our regular go-to, with hearty entrée portions, sweet fizzy lemonade, fresh beer, and a killer baked brie.

In short, Prague is the magic city of Europe everyone has been telling you about. Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

The waterfront along the Vltava.

The Prague Astronomical Clock, representing the movements of the sun and moon while keeping time.

An ivy-covered storage courtyard.

A statue over one of the doors.

Giant mushrooms sprout from astroturf in this man-made display.

Wedding photoshoots are common. The couple pose alongside a fence covered in ‘love locks’.

An ornate lock on a door in the city.

A bronze relief on the Charles Bridge, effaced by thousands of hands over time.

Workers repainting a buildling.

A katydid, lost in the city.

That baked brie I mentioned earlier, from U Magistra Kelly.

Streetcars and pedestrians share the narrow streets.

Street art in the northern part of the city.

St Vitus Cathedral (I think), bathed in golden floodlight at dusk.

Pedestrians on the Charles Bridge at dusk.

The lights of Pragues bridges reflecting on the Vltava.

Bear-shaped cookies posed in a window at the local bakery.

Men weld trolley tracks in the north part of Prague.

Picnickers gather apples in the same park that hosts the Petřín Lookout Tower. The orchard is free to pick from, with a limit on how much you can take home.

 

More views of Prague from the tower.

 

Sunset from the tower.

 

A shot of the moon from the tower.

Prague at night.

 

European Capital Hop: Vienna

What I would guess is the belltower, St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

Next up, we catch a train from Budapest to Vienna, our first foray into Western Europe and a bit of a sticker shock. Food, places to sleep, and things to do cost almost twice that of neighboring Hungary and there really aren’t many cheap options. Still, it’s part of travel, and we adapt to the circumstances: we adjust our budget to $80 USD daily for food and board for the two of us.

And the food…well, the desserts are absolutely lovely. The rest seems to be mostly fried meat/cheese/sausage and it’s not great, although with our limited funds we’re obviously not eating the highest-quality stuff. When we’re tired of fried things, the only other affordable thing is Doner, now ubiquitous as the cheap-and-fast choice in nearly all of Europe.

The escalators down to the platforms at one of the train stations.

A street in Vienna.

Ah, Leibniz: co-inventor of calculus and the butt of Voltaire’s jokes.

Equality pedestrian walk signs. Don’t worry, they had female/female and female/male ones too.

Owl figures on the side of the Secession.

An ancient tree near the cathedral, said to give good luck if you drove a nail into it. This worked out badly for the tree, which died a while ago and is kept in this glass tube.

Mural on a building in the tourist area.

A poster that translates roughly to “Don’t talk to the police.”

Hanging gardens in an apartment courtyard.

Mushroom foraging and idenfication books.

An interesting building outside of the tourism zone.

Vienna’s famous cow-and-wolf playing backgammon mural from the early 1500’s.

 

No need for Google Translate–I think I got this one.

 

St. Stephen’s Cathedral

Tourists pause outside of a museum.

Some architecture near the Museums Quartier (I think).

Mmm, lunch: SPAR pasta and Mozartkugeln.

European Capital Hop: Budapest

The Hungarian Parliament Building behind the silhouette of Rákóczi Ferenc lovasszobra, a national hero who led the uprising against the Hapsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire.

Over the next three weeks we’ll be European capital-hopping, where we have a few days in Budapest, Vienna, and Prague before ending up in Linz, Austria for the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival.  Like Riga, we have little time to get to know each city, but hopefully it’s enough to get a feel for what makes it unique.

First up: Budapest, capital of Hungary and the fusion of two prior towns – Buda, and Pest. Stretched across the Danube, the city is a mix of beautiful architecture, verdant parks, and busy car-filled roads. The most beautiful time for photography is dusk, when the city lights up its most iconic buildings.

The Hungarian Parliament Building, as viewed from utilitsa Alkotmany.

The moon rises over the southern wing of the Hungarian Parliament Building.

Visitors pause to read signage at the the impromptu protest memorial in front of the German Occupation Memorial. The protest memorial accuses the government of rewriting history to make Hungary seem like victims rather than supporters of the Nazis.

Memorabilia laid out at the protest monument, which argues that many Hungarians participated willingly in the murder of Jews, Roma, and homosexuals during World War II.

St. Steven’s Basilica at night.

Moonrise over Buda, on the other side of the Danube.

The stairwell leading up to our hostel.

Graffiti drawn on the side of an ornate building.

A sad robot.

Possibly some kind of revenge.

A team  of students participates in a scavenger hunt across the city.

Protesters occupy the edge of Varosliget, where the city has proposed to remove green space and replace it with a museum.

A stuffed animal watches over a donations box for the protestors.

 

A man pedals a Ferrari boat around the pond in Varosliget.

A typical day at the Szechenyi Thermal Baths in Varosliget Park. They were nowhere near as warm or relaxing as a Japanese onsen.

Men play cards on a patio at Szechenyi Baths.

A tour group wanders by a bronze statue in downtown Pest.

Lunch – lemonade, chicken with spaetzle, and strawberry soup.

The bank of the Danube.

A plant grows from a discarded bucket, washed ashore from the Danube.

Budapest Central Market Hall.

Warsaw

We’re in Warsaw after an uncomfortable overnight bus ride in which I had food poisoning, but that’s ok because Poland has amazing food for cheaper than your average European country. Pierogi and golonka, here I come.

Veal Pierogi with fresh pickled slaws.

Golonka (pork knuckle) with sauce and mashed potatoes.

As we wander the streets of Warsaw, though, I can’t help but ask myself “Where are all the people?” Except for a handful of tourists and the occasional homeless person, the parks we find are empty. The trolleys ferry only one or two souls at a time.

An empty bridge over the highway.

Graffiti laced statue base. It probably once held a Soviet monument.

Trolley rails embedded in the grass of a park.

The only crowds we see are at the local farmer’s market (which is a bit livelier, but not until about midday) and in Warsaw’s “Old Town”, reconstructed after bombing in the Second World War leveled 80% of the city. Even here, the crowds of tourists aren’t dense and on a rainy day, everyone disappears.

People line up for fresh Chineve/Vietnamese food at the farmer’s market.

Tourists stop to listen to violinists play in the Old Town.

The Old Town on a rainy day.

Men waiting out the rain in the Old Town.

The dearth of people, especially young people, isn’t surprising in Warsaw. First, we’re not wandering the financial/downtown district, where everyone actually works. Second, a lot of younger working-age Poles have left for Western Europe. Since Poland joined the EU, over 2 million Poles have emigrated, many of them young people looking for better-paying jobs.

A young woman checks her phone while waiting outside her store.

“The Little Insurrectionist”, a statue in the Old Town that commemorates the child soldiers who died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

But not everyone has left. One evening, we go out for a walk along the Vistula River and find ourselves part of a steady trickle of people in that direction. They’re all young and dressed up, and many are carrying bottles of wine or packs of beer. The trickle becomes a stream of people, and when we reach the riverbank there are dense crowds of people milling around, drinking, laughing, and socializing. Food trucks and ice cream carts line the sidewalk. We ask a couple of English-speaking Poles what’s going on; “Is this a special event?” we ask. “No,” one of them replies, “This happens almost every night in the summer.” So this is where the people are.

Warsaw nightlife on the riverbank.

Crowds of people, sitting and standing and drinking on the riverbank.

Ulan-Ude: This is different

The Molodaya Buryatia monument at a traffic circle in Ulan-Ude.

Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic of Buryatia, is situated just east of Lake Baikal. Though it is built at the meeting point of the Uda and Selenga Rivers, the streets are dry and dusty with fine yellowed sand. It lends a wild-west feel to the city, especially in the suburbs. Here, old wooden buildings with immaculate carvings and battered windows squat side-by-side along broken pavement and hardpack dirt. It is a world away from the skyscrapers of Moscow. The other side of that town is a glimpse of that world-away through the same dust-yellow filter. Spreading from the town’s main square are the dense, multi-story apartment complexes and shopping malls, where people can find everything from bread to fashionable clothes to some fine international chocolate. Multiple theaters line the central square and candy-colored sidewalk boards around it advertise new restaurants, bakeries, and the ever-popular kvas vendor. Things are developing quickly in this part of Ulan-Ude, all beneath the watchful eyes of a ten-foot statue of Lenin’s head.

—

The people of Ulan-Ude are equally as strange for how similar and different I find them. As we people-watch at a fountain in the central square, I spot the typical Slavic-looking Russians, with slightly tanned skin and blonde hair—“White-looking” people that look like my mom’s family. But the other half of people I spot are pale to dark, with rounder faces and jet-black hair—“Asian-looking” people that could be part of my dad’s family. Regardless of appearance, there seems to be no racial tension as couples pose by the fountain and kids play together. That’s nice, given what I’ve been hearing about the troubles in the U.S.

Then there are the handful of people who are clearly mixed, and it’s weirdly like looking into a mirror. Beyond Hawaii and California, this is the only other place where I’ve encountered people who look like me. I want to talk to them and ask what it’s like, if there’s any discrimination, or if it’s considered a bonus. But I’m still learning to sound out Russian Cyrillic, and my vocabulary is limited to “Thank you”, “Hello”, “Exit”, “road”, “I want cake”, and “No smoking”. I am not equipped for any conversation. But that doesn’t stop one woman who mistakes me for a local and rapid-fires a string of Russian at me. I catch “Gdei…”, so I know is she’s looking for something. But I’m lost as to what, and can only give an embarrassed smile and lift my hands in an “I don’t understand” shrug. The lady, abruptly taken aback, returns the embarrassed smile and a string of Russian words that I assume are “Oh sorry, nevermind.” The weirdness now goes both ways.

The plaque on this local monument reads “In memory of the martyrs for Communism” in Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

—

Our hostel is across from the train station, and we can hear the rumble of the trains throughout the night. During the day, we sometimes make our way across the pedestrian walkway over the tracks, pausing at the middle to stare down at the lines of endless train cars. Some are passenger trains, but an overwhelming majority of them are carrying goods: massive tree trunks, wood planks, tumbled gray gravel, black-stained tanks of oil, and piles of jet-colored coal. And it’s not just one car carrying these natural resources, or ten of them, but hundreds of rail cars, stretching past visibility into the horizon. These never-ending trains in Ulan-Ude’s trainyard and slowly jerk to life with the creaking and screeching of metal-on-metal, bound for elsewhere, usually southward toward China, toward the bottomless demand for resources.

It looks like Ulan-Ude sees little of the wealth that this Siberian bounty fetches for Russia, and we find ourselves wondering why Buryatia remains part of Russia. We ask an employee at our hostel, a sharp, no-nonsense woman fluent in English, Russian, and Chinese, why Buryatia isn’t its own country. “You guys know that you’re basically propping up the economy for Moscow and the rest of Russia, right? Like, why don’t you demand more investment from the capital or break away to sell the resources yourself.” She scoffs at me and replies, “Oh, that is always what the Americans would want, what they tried to do.” I had no idea that the U.S. tried to convince Siberia to break away from Russia, but I wouldn’t be surprised. She continues with an answer “What would we do if we broke away? We have no way to develop these resources on our own. And we are all different groups. If we broke away, all we would do is fight each other and we would have nothing. Russia gives us an identity, unity.” Russia is the message that all of these people, regardless of race or geographical location or social status, rally around.