“VIENNA” or “BILLY JOEL WAS ONTO SOMETHING”

Today is May 27th, 2017.  That’s right, I wrote the date the proper way because I officially have had enough of this backwards day-month-year business.  Not as tired as I am of the metric system, but that’s for another time.  Today, back in the States, is my nephew’s birthday.  Luke turns two today.  The day that child was born, I was in the midst of a high school theatre production and had driven back and forth from Salisbury to Winston-Salem three times.  On my final return trip, not half-an-hour after I sat back down in the waiting room, that little bugger was finally born.  Quite frankly I’m not sure how we ever lived without him.

As much fun as this European endeavor is, there is always a shocking dissonance in those moments I’m forced to remember that life goes on, six hours in the past, halfway around the world.  Without me.  Yes, thanks to the modern wonder of internet, lines of communication remain open.  My deep seated, visceral dislike for Skype aside, it’s good.  It will never change the fact, however, that Luke is having a birthday thousands of miles away, and I get to experience it from a screen in the corner of the room.  To me, it’s a exercise in virtual voyeurism, a peek into the life I’m waiting to resume, played over the sounds of Germans pretending to be ‘Cowboys and Indians’ at some inane festival on the street outside.  My apartment has grown to a timeless, filthy purgatory of my own devising.  I’m measuring out my life in coffee spoons, if you will.

What does this have to do with Vienna?  Nothing.  You just happen to be my captive audience.

On the subject of Vienna:  It’s amazing.  Which is a phrase often co-opted to describe a chicken sandwich these days, and thus loses it’s appropriate power to describe something that truly “inspires the sensation of admiration by its beauty, remarkableness, or unfamiliarity.”  In this moment, I’m reclaiming the word from the hyperbolic masses because it’s the only way I know how to express my sentiments on Vienna without devolving into histrionic over-exaggerations and gushing, disingenuous metaphors.  Which I’ve been known to do, but I don’t feel like it.  It’s too earnest and decent a city for me not to be earnest and decent in my description.  My only regret is that I only had two real days there and that they came at the end of my journey when I was feeling the impressive, exhausting weight of jet-setting about the continent for two weeks.

Many of the following pictures are of a museum.  For that I apologize.  It was simply too much of a museum to rush through and not enjoy.  There are a great many other museums in Vienna that I missed out on, and I would one day like to rectify that.  Here are the pictures:

In case you’d forgotten how.

Stray Thoughts:

• I have not many.
• Whenever I think about the city, all I hear is ‘Vienna’ by Billy Joel.  I see a great picture show of the various places I saw in Vienna and I hear the song.  In fact, I believe that would be the most efficient way for me to communicate my feelings on this leg of the journey.  I’m afraid I’m a painful cliche most of the time.  You should go listen to the song and look back through the pictures.  In fact, not just these pictures.  All the pictures I’ve posted.  Put on a soundtrack and flip through the lot.  Music’s greatest ability is to elevate the mundane to the sublime.  Maudlin?  Yes.  Sometimes, though, the saccharine feelings are enough to chase the bitter taste of whatever else away.  Don’t dismiss the sentimental as cloying because the world around you is cynical.  Anyone can be cynical.  Dare to be an optimist every now and again.
• Since I’ve alluded to/borrowed from two disparate sources at two other locations in this blog posting (bonus points if you catch them both), I may as well add a third as a bit of a summation of the entire two week, incredibly fast, European experience.  This comes courtesy of the late Robert M. Pirsig:  ““We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on “good” rather than on “time”….”  And we did.

This is not the death of this blog.  There’s time yet for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea.  More simply:  I’ll be back with more to say about this place which steadily becomes more familiar.  Then again, there have never been foreign lands, sometimes you’re just a foreigner.

To my biggest fan:  Hope this lived up to any and all expectations.

Farewell; until we meet again.

“ITALY” or “IF I SEE ONE MORE CHURCH, I’LL PUKE”

Welcome back!  My vacation to recover from my vacation has finally reached its end.  I’m back to a place I can write from without everything coming out half-hearted, dull, and trite.  Lucky for you all, it’s apparently a national holiday in Germany today, so all there is to do is sit inside and wish I were in a country that doesn’t completely shut down once a week, every week, and then some other times “just because.”  That’s right!  We’re right back to the playfully mean-spirited ribbing for which I am so respected and reviled.

For this leg of our virtual journey together, I’ve compiled the three Italian stops on our trip into one, gargantuan, picture-filled Blogstravaganza.  In this post, you’ll see 146 pictures of Rome (including the Vatican), Florence, and Venice.  There will be captions to inform you when you have moved on in the slideshow to a new city.  A notable exception to that rule being that I’m not telling you the difference between Vatican City and Rome.  They’re the same place.  I don’t care what you say.  Anyone who takes issue with my stance on the matter is welcome to forward all complaints to our reader satisfaction department, best reached by shouting directly into a toilet bowl on your own time.

If you manage to slog through the impossible depth and breadth of pictures without breaking down into a quivering, jellylike mass of hyper-stimulation, then please feel free to enjoy my stray thoughts on Europe’s Boot.

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Stray thoughts:

• All roads may lead to Rome, but no road in Rome leads to your apartment.  Hope you like getting lost.  You can walk on one street in one direction, reach the terminal end of that street, turn around, and somehow get lost on the way back to where you started.
• The Pope was set to speak when we were in the Vatican.  We had a beer, instead.  I’m not entirely certain we made the right choice.
• The Vatican is less a historical museum and more an immense testament to centuries of Catholic wealth.  Someone, somewhere, sprung a looooooot of souls from Purgatory.
• I was in the Vatican at a time when two Popes live there.  Pretty neat.
• The street to the Vatican is lined with pickpockets, street merchants, and crooks like any other Roman thoroughfare.  It’s good to see the entrepreneurial spirit takes on no more sense of ethics in the shadow of one of the holiest places on Earth.
• Across from the place where Julius Caesar was murdered, there’s a theatre named after the historical cite which, coincidentally, was also a theatre at the time of the assassination.  Neat, huh?  However, the current standing theatre was NOT performing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which is a tragedy of cosmic proportion.  The situation, that is.  The play itself is just a tragedy of theatrical proportion.
• If, at a certain juncture in your life, you find yourself considering ‘tour guide’ as a potential career path, allow me to proffer some advice:  Under no circumstance should, by the end of the tour, the group you’ve led know anything more about your family than they did at the start.  Especially if that’s ALL they now know about the city.  I can tell you an inordinate amount about the various ex-husbands of a certain Italian tour guide, but had to Wikipedia search for all the historical goodness I now know about the various cites we passed as she droned on about Marco 1, 2, and 3.  Gina, you were the worst tour guide of all time.  You’re bad at your job and you should feel bad.
• My advice to anyone considering an Italian vacation:  Fly into Rome.  See it.  Enjoy it briefly.  Then get the hell out of Rome as fast as possible.  It’s gorgeous and everyone should experience it, but it’s too much.  Catch the first train for Florence and Tuscany.  THAT’S something to see.  Florence was absolutely astounding.  I don’t have anything particularly scathing to say.  It’s a fantastic place.
• In the slideshow, you will notice a picture of a rather large steak.  The Florentine steak (called Bistecca alla Fiorentina or simply La Bistecca) is the single greatest thing I have consumed and will likely ever consume.  The people of Florence take this delicacy very seriously, and God bless them for it.  I do not generally condone sharing pictures of food on the internet, but it was every bit as miraculous as most of the art I saw on this trip and deserves to be catalogued.  The smallest available portion is 2.2lbs (1kg), and I regret not ordering something larger.  No bit of that steak survived.  Sometimes I find myself fantasizing about it.
• You ever want to stand out?  Wander around Florence in the evening as a lone man.  Watch as various gelato eating couples murmur to one another as you pass.
• I have previously expressed my rancor toward the Italian public transportation systems.  My fervent frustration has not waned.  I’ve been spoiled by my lovely German trains, where two or three minutes late is an egregious showing of incompetence.  This is opposed to Italy, where buses may or may not show up at all.  Yes, I’m still bitter.
• Venice, what can I say?  Absolutely unique.  One of a kind.  Too expensive to stay in longer than the handful of days we were there.

The pictures are doing most of the talking on this one, I’m afraid.  There’s only so much to say about Italy.  Especially when you see three cities in a matter of days.  I sprinted the length of it, I think.  That’s what it felt like when I finally sat down on the night train for Vienna, at least.

Speaking of Vienna, that magical last stop on my whirlwind tour of Central and Southern Europe, it’ll get its own blog post in coming days.  My writing juices are primarily being sapped by script editing and professional correspondence.  Gag me.

Also exciting:  the small German town I’ve been temporarily expatriated to is having a cowboy festival this weekend.  I’ll try and have some coverage on that, if it proves to be as bizarre and interesting as it sounds.  I’ve been promised quite a show.

Thanks for tuning in!

Are you ready for some disappointment?!?!

That’s right, ladies and gents, this post contains absolutely zero pictures.  There are two reasons for that:  One being that the wi-fi across the continent and on various trains, planes, and automobiles is nowhere near the quality needed to upload somewhere near 150 pictures to a hosting website.  The other reason?  I have never been anywhere near as exhausted, beleaguered, captivated, repulsed, inspired, or active in my entire life as I have been in the ten days since last we communed here in this dark and funky corner of the internet we call “the blog,” and thus have had absolutely zero urge, desire, or capability to put words to page in any meaningful amalgamation.

I’m sure the three of you who didn’t stop reading after the whole “no pictures” bit are then wondering what exactly the point of this posting is.  It’s purpose is twofold.  It exists both as a confirmation that I have not been “Taken” and no one need send Liam Neeson to recover me, and as a more general update on the status of your….favorite(?)….traveler.

Thusly, this blog shall forever be subtitled:

ZEN AND THE ART OF “OH MY GOD THE BUS ISN’T COMING”

My usual, overly inquisitive, hypothetical reader may well be asking:  “Why?”  To which I say, “This blog has been active for months.  How have you not caught onto the fact I will probably explain things without you having to ask for the explanation, explicitly?”  Jeez.  Next time I imagine a hypothetical reader, I’ll see what I can do about getting one who contributes meaningfully to these tirades.

More to the point:  This subtitle is derived from the fact that traveling through Europe (at least the way I’ve done it) is essentially an extended game of chicken with a improperly staffed and inconsistent series of public transportation systems.  Yes, Rome, I’m looking at you and your ENTIRELY fabricated number 64 bus.  I know you don’t care but we did, in fact, make it to the train station without your help.  Thanks for nothing.  I digress.  Back to the subtitle:  it’s important to remember as you frantically sprint and shove children to make your connection that everything will be alright.  In the ever popular words of Douglas Adams:  “Don’t Panic.”  The universe is not malicious, and most things are funny if you let them be.  This is easy to say now, of course, in the wi-fi and air conditioning furnished bus on the way back to Dresden from Prague.  It was not as easy to feel this way as I aimlessly wandered around the Prague airport this morning for at least forty minutes looking for a nonexistent bus stop.

What I am trying to say is:  don’t miss the beauty around you because the bus isn’t coming––and, trust me, it’s NOT coming.  You’ll get ‘there,’ eventually, just don’t miss the ‘here’ in your mad dash elsewhere.  Consider the lilies of the field, shove your hands in your pockets, and just “be.”

No, this entire blog post isn’t going to be a series of trite, pseudo-enlightened bullshit.  Pardon the French.  The language, not the people.  The people are without excuse.  I’m kidding.  Kind of.  That’s neither here nor there.

Since we last we met, I’ve seen Rome, Florence, Venice, Vienna, and the Prague Airport Holiday Inn.  This has been an absolute whirlwind of travel, and I am duly exhausted.  In my next few days of my holiday, I’ll work on condensing, compiling, and codifying thoughts and images into a congealed virtual mass of smarmy, sardonic, scintillating stuff that this blog is rife with.  After that?  I’m off on tour with the play I’ve been over here doing for what steadily seems to be approaching eternity.

Also, it’s that time of year!  Allow me to wish incredibly happy (and early) birthdays to my wonderful sister Katie and also to my fantastic nephew Luke  He was pretty technologically capable when I left, he’s probably blogging on his own by now.  I’m sorry that I’m missing out on all the festivities.  Someone save me a cupcake.

Now, I leave you with this:

In Central Europe, they grow Canola en masse in the broad, flat plains.  Miles of it.  Endless seas of impossibly, singularly, spectacularly yellow blooms.  Try though I might from various train windows or balconies or wherever else, no picture I’ve taken has done it any justice and I’ve stopped trying.  It’s not a sight, it’s an experience.  If you ask people here about it, they tend to shrug and acknowledge it with all the merit you’d give any patch of grass anywhere else.  There’s something in that.  Don’t let yourself lose the amazing depth and breadth of the majesty and marvel of the things around you just because they’re commonplace.  Don’t let it be the yellow field next door, let it stay a boundless sea of sunshine.

Damn, I slipped back into that pseudo-enlightened b.s., huh?   Sorry.  I’ll be quippier, later.

Until we meet again.

SALZBURG:

If it weren’t for the immense unpleasantness of the night train from Salzburg, you’d all be waiting until tomorrow for the new blog posting.  However, lucky for all of you, we’re sleeping on three pieces of upholstered plywood that fold out of the walls while a strange Italian man (no English language whatsoever) sleeps on the fourth.  Did I mention it’s also hotter than the surface of the sun in here?  Adventure!(?)

Regardless, there’s still a great deal to show and tell about our most recent stop in Salzburg.  You know the drill:  pictures, then sarcasm below.

• When we arrived in Salzburg, we became lost on the public transportation system (which seems to be made entirely of number 2 buses on various routes) and found ourselves over the bridge in a part of Salzburg that greatly soured our initial opinion.  That side of Salzburg is responsible for the city slogan:  “What’d you do in Salzburg?  Wished I was somewhere else.”
• However!  Upon finding our way back across the bridge to our hotel in the Old Town, the entire town changed for the better.  Without the slightest hint of my usual sardonic wit, allow me to say that Salzburg is a wonderful place that anyone would be lucky to spend a few days in.  Not much longer than that, though, because you’d go broke (I tried to keep the sarcasm out of this, but i just couldn’t).
• What the Americans have done to wheat beer (I’m looking at you, Blue Moon) is an affront to the magical liquid that is good, fresh, Austrian wheat beer.
• Salzburg has deep rooted Sound of Music connections, which really gives the city an unfairly bad wrap in my book.
• Other than The Sound of Music, Mozart was born there, and they really, really push that on you.  For instance, I’m writing this blog with a mouthful of chocolatey Mozart Balls.  I’d be more ashamed if the regional chocolate in this part of the world wasn’t incredibly delicious.
• While we’re on the subject:  some German culinary word translates to “nut liquor” on all the menus.  It’s as funny the first time you see it as it is the last.
• A note to various eating and drinking establishments in this region of Europe:  please, for the love of God and all that is holy, turn down the heat in your restaurants.  Turning them into a poor man’s sauna is not helping you sweat off your beer calories.  It mostly just makes you feel like you’re going to pass out into your sauerkraut.

Short, huh?  Admittedly we were only in Salzburg one day and it was raining for most of it.  Sightseeing was limited to what we saw hopping from cafe to bar to cafe to restaurant.  Sorry about that.  Today, once we exit this hellish train, is day one of six in Italy.  Thus, there will be a greater quality of posting soon to come.

Fare thee well

PART 1:  Czech Your Language Skills at the Door

Welcome back, you wild and crazy folks still holding out for a dependable blogger.  Good on you.  I imagine you’re also the kind of people that are still holding your breath for those Beanie Babies to appreciate in value.  I proffer no advice or judgement, but I DO have some 100% genuine snake oil that you may be interested in.  Just saying.

More to the point, after a great many hours slaving away in the bowels of the Landesbühenen Sachsen, I’m finally on holiday!  That’s right, for the next two weeks, I’m wandering about Europe on the parental dime.  Which gets sadder and sadder a sentiment as I rapidly approach 20 next month, but enough about my own mortality!

The next few posts on this blog will be from my various stops in and around The Continent.  First up:  The Czech Republic, as written from the goat-smelling train I’m leaving it on.  As usual, there’s a handful of pictures followed by stray thoughts.  I like this format, it’s the appropriate intersection on the graph of “How quippy I am” vs. “How lazy I am.”

• Double decker buses:  neat, but the basic physics of them concern me.  “Let’s get this giant, tall contraption and put it on a narrow set of wheels.  Next, let’s hollow out the bottom so people can force some luggage in there that in no way compensates for the bottom-heaviness we’ve removed in our hollowing.  Then, we fill the top full of people and send it around the curviest roads Europe has to offer.”  Every turn felt like it was going to be my last.
• Fresh off the bus from East Germany, new to a country that I entered under a heavy shroud of fog, surrounded by the newness of the most alien language I’ve ever seen written on signs, mystery abounds, I step down the stairs, shoulder my pack, aaaaaaaaaaand:  Burger King.  Thanks, globalization.
• Speaking of that alien language:  What the hell?  Does every word need the letter z?  Not only that, the word “of” is the letter z.  Beyond the deep-seated fascination with the letter z, the impressive length of every word suggests that they’re compensating for something.  For what I can only imagine.  In practice, the language sounds a lot like everyone is intentionally making up a pretend language just to mess with the foreigners.  And to borrow the inimitable Jonathan Stanton:  “Every letter has a damned quesadilla above it.”  A quesadilla indeed.
• According to my mother, I look like Jesus now.  So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
• My first interaction with a Czech citizen:  Me:  (Garbled and mostly incoherent attempt to ask how to get to the Old Town in German) Them:  “Oh, I don’t speak German.”  Me:  “Yeah, me neither.  Old Town, though?”  Them:  (Points vaguely) “That way.”
• My “scary red hair” identification of middle-aged German women still applies in other countries.  I’ll have to see if that’s a universal truth across the continent.  Stay tuned as my unscientific study continues.
• Great moment in Czech history:  Three catholics thrown out of 50 foot window into pile of shit.  Survived.  There are plaques, a tour, and everything.  Defenestration of Prague.  Look it up.
• “#1 Museum in Prague” translates approximately to “Listen to fabulously wealthy man narrate his family’s extravagant art collection.”  Most of that collection consists of portraits that various plaques informed us may or may not actually be of this man’s family.  Highlight of the museum:  watching the steady progression of the effects of inbreeding on the upper crust of European society through the ages.  There’s a whole room toward the end full of the most comically hideous women ever painted.  Somewhere, at some point, a portrait artist was almost certainly hanged for them.
• When designing a museum, if you ever find yourself saying:  “Yeah, we should make our museum a long, narrow corridor, approximately wide enough for two people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, with low ceilings, and one entrance/exit somewhere arbitrarily in the middle which requires you to ascend and descend world’s worst flight of stairs,” you should be hanged with the honest portraitist.
• To the city of Prague:  Can I ask why the number 15 tram is the only tram that goes anywhere of use?  Second question:  why does it only run every hour, sometimes, when it feels like it?
• Along the far-too-many steps up to the Prague Castle, before getting to the exceptionally militant checkpoint, there’s a moment of quasi-religious, deeply spiritual respite:  A Czech man in a black cowboy hat and vest combo, with his most pronounced, thick, incomprehensible accent, singing and strumming the seminal Eagle’s hit “Hotel California.”
• With the utmost cultural sensitivity and genuine curiosity:  Why are the vast majority of Asian tourists speed-running the great landmarks and museums across Europe?  They are generally locked in a dead sprint, eyes focused straight ahead, oblivious to the things they paid admission to run by.
• For the first time since my arrival in Europe, miraculously enough, my mattress was not two pitifully narrow mattresses held together by a rice-paper fitted sheet, but one, contiguous mattress.
• Apparently the carp (that’s right, the fish) is a symbol of Christmas to the Czech people.  Traditionally, the carp swims in the family tub for a day or two before being killed, cleaned, and eaten.  As an aside:  this also said to be the day the baby Jesus brings the Christmas tree.  I’m not touching that one.  You can look that up, too.  My question is:  where’s the song about the Christmas carp? O’ Christmas Carp, O’ Christmas Carp or Carp, the Herald Angels Sing or On the First Day of Christmas my true love gave to me:  a carp.  She put it in my tub.  Said she wanted to wear my skin.  Didn’t work out.  

There it is:  Prague.  In more or less a thousand words and some questionable iPhone pictures.

Look forward to more sardonic musings on Europe.