Firenze

The week or two before I headed out to Florence were fairly rough on me. I was taking far more time getting the same amount of work done and I felt more or less exhausted most of the time. I practically promised myself that, despite all of the beautiful art and incredible architecture, I would spend this vacation sitting back and relaxing. Maybe I would head to the Duomo; perhaps I would look in to the Uffizi, but only if the line wasn't extended to ridiculous proportions. Other than that, I would plant myself in a coffee shop somewhere to read and write and generally try to recover some energy. Needless to say, this plan failed.

I arrived in Florence in the late afternoon. One of the first things I noticed waiting at the bus stop for the shuttle into the city was that no one was speaking Italian. In fact all but three were speaking English. I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me too much; after all, most native Italians would have risked death and drove to the airport. But you would be hard pressed to find an occasion in the other cities I've been to where all of the people traveling by public transport were tourists. This in fact marked one of the twin mainstays of my trip.

Florence is more of a tourist trap than any other city I've been to in Europe. Madrid relies on its tourist income, sure. And London and Paris are flocking with tourists. But in London and Paris, where if you walk through more than one district everything is so heterogeneous anyway, the tourists are just as different as anything else. They don't particularly stand out. Most of the tourists in Madrid spoke Spanish, and even the Americans trying desperately to remember their year of middle school Spanish were trying to adapt to the local culture. In Florence, throughout my entire trip, I heard more English than Italian. In the first three hours I was there, while walking to my hostel and later to stretch my legs after hours of traveling, I encountered more tour groups than I would have expected to find in London, and in a much smaller area. Now, I have an irrational and somewhat hypocritical dislike of tourists, so dealing with this tourist culture while trying to see beautiful things and back at my hostel was the hardest part of the vacation. Once I tuned them out, I was blown away.

Anyone traveling in most European cities will notice that the designers were smart. The streets are small and unplanned, but there is usually a center where some streets intersect. You put the biggest, most grandiose buildings there because everyone looking down those streets will see them. Florence was no exception. I had the experience of having the Duomo grow on me as I walked to my hostel from the coach station. It looked big at the station; it grew to be massive. Apparently St. Paul's is larger, but the Duomo is packed into a smaller area so it looks gigantic. I'm pretty sure it was at that moment, seeing the building which is given as the prototypical example of Renaissance genius and egotism that I decided I wouldn't be able to just stay inside and write. I walked slowly around the Duomo, then turned into a side street, and lo and behold there was my hostel. I was staying about forty five seconds away from it. That also might have been a sign.

The next morning I decided to get up early and head to the Uffizi. I didn't get up early enough. The line was still massive and even though I got there before it opened I had to wait half an hour to get in. It was completely worth it, of course. The Uffizi shows a history of Renaissance art from Giotto's first dabbling into what we would call realism to the Spanish renaissance I had seen plenty of while I was in Madrid. I felt a little off rhythm as I walked past and then was passed by hundreds of people listening to the audio tour or following one of the six guides I saw speaking Chinese, Japanese, or English. About half way through, I walked into a large room which was packed nearly to the brim. This was where the Uffizi's two most famous residents were to be found: Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and "Primavera". I'll give the guy credit, he knows how to paint gorgeous women. The room had nearly a dozen of his works, and seeing that I wasn't getting near those two for a while, I perused the others. I was coming back around to the "Birth of Venus" when I was struck. Botticelli started life painting pagan derived works but then was influenced by Savonarola and started painting more Catholic scenes. One of these later ones was an "Adoration of the Magi". But Botticelli completed the genre for me. It was the most beautiful of its type I've ever seen, and by far the most beautiful thing I saw in the Uffizi. The emotion on the Virgin's face was complex and palpable. She makes Venus look as bland as the Medieval Madonnas. I could look at that painting for hours. After a few minutes, I remembered that I was standing in a crowded room; one of the tours had moved on and distracted me. But as I glanced around I noticed that no one was looking at this painting. Many of them came into Botticelli's room, spent two minutes on the "Primavera" and two on the "Venus" and moved on. I still don't understand this practice. What's the point of going to the museum at all; particularly one where the wait outside, at that pace, is longer than your visit?

Though I went to two other museums, the majority of my trip was spent in churches. Like in Spain, and to a smaller extent London, many of the churches were decorated by some of the best artists in their day. I planned poorly by traveling mostly on Saturday, when many of the churches were closed, and Sunday, when they were obviously celebrating mass. But the ones I saw were incredible. Many of the artists, especially up to the early Renaissance, weren't thinking about doing Art; they were thinking about making the most beautiful altarpiece or chapel dedication they could, ad majorem Dei gloriam. So despite the wealth in the Uffizi and other museums around Florence, probably half of the city's art is in various churches - not to speak of their architecture. A couple I visited were designed and worked on by Brunelleschi. But I didn't get to take a leisurely stroll around Brunelleschi's best work. On the other hand, having mass in the Duomo is something of a good memory to have, right?

That night I had a fantastic surprise. I was wandering down side streets for no reason when I ran into a church. I wondered if it was anything interesting, but it just seemed to be a local neighborhood church. One of the signs caught my eye though; a free concert, that night, in about twenty minutes. The program was an odd mix of a flautist, an organist, and a counter-tenor; hearing a counter-tenor is very odd for someone used to hearing the same songs sung by a woman. It was very impressive, if nothing else. But the organist, who played accompaniment for most of the program, got to stretch his solo muscles once. And that was for Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d minor, a song that I have loved ever since first hearing it on Fantasia as a kid. It wasn't the best version, but this was the way it was meant to be played. Some of the huge chords rattled the church; people were pressed into the seats by its power before recovering with a beautiful melody. I was in heaven.

I did also see Michelangelo's David, which was overrated since they have a free copy standing in the main plaza which was just as good. While I was there a little girl behind me said, "you look like him." I turned around; she must have been about seven years old, and sure enough she was looking at me while pointing up at the statue. I was obviously flattered. "Really?" I said, kneeling down, "You really think so?" After taking another glance at this angle, she replied: "Well... your hair looks like his. But your arms don't. Really, you only kinda look like him." Ah, but the hair does. I suppose I'll take what I can get.

I think the most pleasant surprise (for me - I can't imagine too many people wildly interested in this) was the way the major players of the Renaissance managed to still be a presence if you managed to find them. Sure, there were lots of people heading to the Medici tombs. But I was twice surprised by recognition. At one church, I was in one of the transepts when I noticed a circle painted on the floor of one of the chapels. I looked at it and tried to decipher the Latin. It turned out to be Botticelli's tomb. At another church I was the only visitor. It was well out of the way, and not too exciting. I was lured by a promise of Giotto paintings, but I found myself looking at a painting called "Madonna and Sponsors: Vespucci". It took me a moment to realize the significance. But in front of me was a portrait of Amerigo Vespucci, one that I had just stumbled upon by accident. That kind of serendipity is reason enough to travel.

I did miss out on something this trip. It was something that only occurred to me while waiting through the three and a half hour delay at the airport, and is something I'm not sure I could have changed given the amount of time I spent there. Every European city is divided into two. The first is the international zone, where everyone speaks English and the lifestyle, if not the decorations, is fairly ubiquitous. Don't get me wrong; it's a good lifestyle, one I sometimes miss not having when I'm in the States. This 'tourist zone' is not particularly marked by wealth, either; look at me. The presence of hostels and hotels is not quite it either, since you'll usually be able to find accommodation in the boonies. It's more a willingness and ability to cater; I mean, think about how unusual is it to go to Spain, Italy, wherever and just expect people to know English? Yet many people do expect just that. As long as they stay in the tourist zone, they're fine, but once they head outside, they might find themselves in a little trouble. But it is the outside which I usually find makes for the best travel, since nothing is the same; Umbria wildly differs from Tuscany just as Suffolk differs wildly from Kent or even Oxfordshire. I think I managed to get a little bit outside everywhere I went except Florence. There might have been one or two times while I was visiting the more obscure churches where I had to buy food in Italian, but I'm undecided whether or not they were just letting me butcher Italian and they actually spoke English.

Perhaps it was something about the fact that I was exhausted and slept like a rock every night, but I have to say that, despite the miles of walking over the course of three museums, thirteen churches and one hike up the nearby hills to get a gorgeous panorama, I think I did a better job in getting rest than had I sat in cafes the whole time.

Istanbul

I was only partly joking when I warned a friend of mine to check the news reports for any crashes for planes on their way to Turkey. My record for making it to Istanbul - or anywhere else, really - has been marred by some record of failure. This time, too, had its pitfalls, but nothing out of the ordinary travel concerns: the coach to the airport broke down, so what would have been a three hour journey turned into a four and a half hour crawl. After that was the obligatory half-hour spent sitting in the plane without moving, but that merely gave me time to figure out how a coach trip from Oxford to the far side of London can take longer than a flight across a whole continent. The resulting headache meant I was grateful for some extra nap time.

I'm pretty sure that my first reaction to Istanbul was to its size. I can deal with big cities. I've gotten quite comfortable with London, but in most parts of London you don't have a sense of unity. Two stops on the tube, and you arrive in a totally alien environment. New York feels massive, but mostly because space is limited and most people live within a very small area. In Istanbul, there aren't really any natural barriers to stop people from spreading the outskirts a little farther outside the city center. It took, on the least crowded travel day over an hour and a half to cover most of the breadth of the city - the shortest measure. And that, of course, was only on the European side of the Bosphorous. The metro trip from the airport to Sara's apartment consisted mostly of me looking out of the windows and watching the city never end. Once I spent several days wandering around, I could sense more of a feel for each of the districts, but until then, it seemed to me that this city just went on forever.

Of course, most of the growth has occurred only recently, and some the biggest reasons to go to Istanbul, the historical monuments, are lumped together in a much smaller area, as the ancients had far less patience to be bothered with commuting. What they did have patience for, on the other hand, were massive fortresses with impressive towers, walls, cannon, and staircases. My first expedition in Istanbul was to one of the siege fortresses built by Mehmed II on the way to cracking open Constantinople like a pinata. Given my interest in history, I felt I had to climb up to the top of each one of the towers in order to appreciate what a fifteenth century Janissary would have experienced. I feel able to conclude that they would have experienced extreme fitness from climbing thousands of stairs every day. The other point of note from this adventure was the entertainment I provided all of the other visitors, who probably, like the guard at the door, instantly pegged me as an American and watched me climbing up and down for an hour.

Once reunited with Sara, I was treated to the promise of my first mosque. It was hard for me to contain the urge to run immediately from the airport to the Aya Sofya, but somehow I was able to contain myself and wait until the afternoon of my first full day. Let me give a little bit of background information. I've heard about this building for most of my life - I remember learning about it while at primary school in England. Being interested in the Byzantines kept the idea alive, but reading the Cambridge Medieval History over the summer and taking a course in Islamic history here really drove it home. For about a thousand years, the Hagia Sophia was one of the most important buildings in the world. The Byzantines knew it to be the sign of their authority, derived in equal parts from God and from the Roman Empire. The Western Medievals considered it with equal parts awe and jealousy, tensions that would drive them to great heights in both architecture and war craft. The Muslims saw it as the symbol of the great oppressor that would always be opposed to them - they had apocalyptic writings showing that the capture of the Hagia Sophia would be a sign of the end times.

The first thought I had upon stepping in was that the place was a wreck. It was falling apart; there was scaffolding throughout the whole center of the church, up to the dome. I shouldn't have been surprised: the place is 1500 years old and this was not the first major reconstruction work done to it. I soon got over it, and was able to be swamped by its beauty. The mosaics, first of all, were stunning. And then the marble-work. But for me, the excitement was mostly from the almost spiritual experience of being connected to the past in such a place.

Though with nearly as much historical renown, it was the beauty of the Sultanahmet Camii, or Blue Mosque, which struck me. Partly it was the novelty of the different architecture of mosques - the Hagia Sophia, though converted to being a mosque before being turned into a museum, is obviously an Orthodox church. But it was also partly the geometric figures which were able, somehow, to be exquisitely delicate but not overly complicated, while being able to fill the massive building but not be overwhelming. I didn't think such a thing could be possible. The only thing that really surpassed it was the Rustem Pasha mosque, but that's slightly unfair. Not every mosque could be built by Sinan.

Moving on from my self-indulgence for writing about history, my second morning brought me to Taksim, an up-scale shopping district. I walked for a very long time on a street which reminded me of Bond street for the crowds and types of stores. Remembering that I could get this where I currently live, I started moving away from the main street and into some of the side alleys. I noticed something which I had first realized in Paris. The farther you walk away from the tourist areas, the more run down the buildings, shops, and people get. In Paris, it took me several city blocks to move from upscale to borderline poverty. In Istanbul it took about a hundred feet. Thirty seconds of walking and I was suddenly the object of great attention from all of the people around me - I had left the tourists behind and was now surrounded by buildings which reminded me of Nairobi or the back parts of Nogales. Impoverished city housing has an odd universal flavor. But the extreme disjunct between rich and poor shook me. I wondered what it must be like to live down one of these back alleys when such wealth is just yards away. It brought home the facade of the upcoming wealth: Budapest had been the same, a city where the extremes are brought very close in the name of modernization.

This trip marked my first visit to Asia, my fourth continent; but, in order to satisfy someone's curiosity, I have to mention that I've still only been on three tectonic plates. I'm not sure it counts, considering I spent perhaps two hours there, but I'm sure someday I'll be able to check it more fully off my list. The more impressive ferry trip led up the golden horn, to the more conservative Eyup district. The local attraction for Eyup is the tomb of one of the companions of the Prophet, something I'd heard about from my Islamic history tutor but was unable to fully appreciate until I got there, bound by tradition not to turn my back on it as I made my way out. After that, the thousands of other graves which line the hillside above Eyup might seem to be somewhat of a letdown; after all, none of them were companions of the prophet. But after the first five minutes of walking up, I began to see the point of the place. The view was wonderful and you would always be very, very close to your family. What more could you ask for?

I believe I mentioned near the beginning that Istanbul is a large city. Having spent three actual days there, I have been assured that I've seen a bare fraction of the place. Along with most of the rest of Europe, Istanbul has made it on the list of places I will have to return to someday. Perhaps in two years, when the Sulemaniye mosque has finished repairs and I'll be able to see Sinan's work at it's largest extant. But there is always the lure of other places: I've heard good things about Tunisia and Egypt, and though I've been to Africa before, never the Maghreb. So many places to go, never enough time. Someday, though, I'm sure.

The start of what I did during my vacation

The start of what I did during my vacation

So, I haven't posted anything on here in forever and so since a lot of time has gone by I have a lot of trips that I've been on, but I'll try not to be excessively long (cause I know this is going to get long).

So, I guess I start back when I went and visited Chris and Molly in Munich. It was weird going out of the country to a place where I really didn't speak the language, but English is so well known everywhere I hoped that it would go well. This was in December and I went with them to their Christmas party for their program. I went site seeing downtown, took some pictures of course. Chris and I tried to go to the opera, but that ended up not working out. Molly and I went to the BMW museum and I wished I had the money to buy the sweet car that I want. We also went to a cool science museum that was enough in German to only make slight sense. Yeah, I also got to watch Molly walk into a glass wall. :P While there I got to experience the difference of feelings of being in a place where there were other Americans, which was somewhat strange considering I only know one other American in Lausanne. I got to eat some authenic food and had a good time.

My family came over for Christmas to come see me (and it was a pretty good excuse to come to Europe). So the first week they were here with me in Lausanne. I took my brothers out with me Friday night, that was pretty funny, cause they don't speak French and didn't feel so inclined to come, but it went okay, although I went home pretty early. So in Lausanne played tour guide for them and basically chilled after finishing up some nasty weeks of tests and school and enjoyed Christmas.

While in Switzerland we went to the chateau de Chillon. Its was a gigantic refridgerator, so it was freezing, but it was really cool to wander through and read about some of the famous prisoners that they kept chained up in the dungeon.

The day after Christmas, we got on the TGV and went to Paris. Paris was fun. It was wet and foggy and cold, but we saw all the cool things like Notre Dame, les Champs Elysses, l'arc de triomphe, le tour eiffel, le Louvre et quelques choses d'autres. Basically it was crazy whirlwind touring and having issues with getting the right tickets for the metro system, but oh well. I will need to go back there at a more relaxed pace to really get a feel for the place, but it was a nice quick overview getting in some important sites.

Umm, well while in Paris, we went to Disneyland, cause the rest of my mom's family at home all went to California to go to Disneyland for Christmas, so not to be left out, we went to EuroDisney. It was typically european aka everything was smaller, but I got to ride some coasters so that was good. We didn't use the fast pass system as effectively as we should of and stood in some pretty long lines, but it was fun and reminded me why theme parks just aren't as good as coaster parks.

So then with the rest of my family sick of hearing French and not having a clue as to what was going on we got on the EuroStar and took the Chunnel to England. My dad enjoyed it cause he loves trains, but for me it's become everyday, I guess now that I think about it, it will be weird to come home and to not have trains or metros or public transportation that actually works. But then again it will be weird to drive a car and have parking lots everywhere too.

So now in London, we rented this sweet apartment that had cellphone looking things for elevator floor devices. (Of course I took a picture so you'll have to see that, but during this whole trip I took over a 1000 pics and thats kinda like a million hundred, so my plan is to go through them and pick a few good ones to post, but if any one feels so inclined to see the million hundred of them, I can send them to you or give you a link to them)

K, so in London, we rode around on the classic double-decker red buses and of course we had to sit up top, cause otherwise you miss half the fun. And we saw a million hundred of the typical red phone booths. And Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and a million hundred things. The sparkly crown jewels and the Tower of London and went to some museums and the one occasion I have been to McDo's, cause seriously they are everywhere along with Starbucks and Claires of all things. Yeah, so I guess about half way through this it was New Year's and they did fireworks for forever and a half. It was crazy, seriously like two hours of fireworks. At some point in here I got sick and slept through a day, but recovered and got out afterwards. I could go into more specifics, but would have to look at my pics to remember everything better.

So then my mom and I finally flew into Rome. And I will have to continue my vacation from there later. So I'll try to finish up soon.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the Last: Oxford and London, England

Wherein Chris gets off at the wrong bus stop in Oxford, wanders through a variety of superbly excellent book and music stores, sees a copy of the Medea with handwritten notes by Milton in the margins, eats Thai food at a Japanese restaurant in London’s Chinatown and walks along the Thames.

The England portion of the tour began well enough, if one considers that portion of the trip to begin with take-off from Istanbul. Otherwise it was a beautiful ending. In either case, we chased the sunset for three hours, and that flurry of brilliance which normally passes in mintues was drawn out for hours above the clouds. Absolutely wonderful. The presence of Stardust as the in-flight movie, only maximized the amount of perfection achievable in economy. Good thing, too because the next few hours were going to be miserable.

The first hint of the problems that lay in waiting came when I finally made it through the line to passport control, and the lady looked disapprovingly at my card and lack of address in England. I told her I would be staying with a friend at Oxford, and she made up some address for me, but the problem remained. I didn't know precisely where Emmett lived. But this shouldn't be a problem. I'll meet Emmett at the bus stop and all will be good because plans never ever go wrong. Then the bus driver asks me where I want to be dropped off. Apparently there is more than a single stop in Oxford. Having forgotten to recheck the message from Emmett before departing, I am at a loss for words. He suggests High Street. It's my only real choice. Unfortunately, upon my departure, there is no Emmett there. I half-heartedly try to follow the bus and those that follow at 30-minute intervals to try and see if there are any further bus stops. Eventually I run out of buses. It is now pushing eleven on New Year's Eve, and I have been wandering Oxford for hours and no idea what to do now since everything is closed. So I pay the police station a visit. After convincing the officer on duty I was not drunk and that going ome was not an option, the patheticness radiating off me finally convinces him to suggest a hostel, and that is where my luck begins to change. By all rights, the hostel should have been locked down, but some guy, completely out of his mind on some artificial chemicals, is propping the door open, flagrantly ignoring the 'Please do not smoke on the stoop' sign. When I discover that the computers in the lobby require a pound and that my last piece was spent on chips, the same guy gives me a coin before going off into the corner to play his acoustic guitar. From a quick check of Facebook and correlation with MapQuest, it is only a hop, skip and twenty minute walk to Emmett's house. I get there some six hours after first finding myself in Oxford.

The rest of the trip proves far more relaxing. The next two days in Oxford include walking the grounds of one of the colleges and passing by and through places of such interest as an exhibition of Milton with early editions of the various works and a copy of the Medea with his notes scribbled in the corner, the place where the Inklings used to meet (Eagle and Child? Lamb and Rod? Something of that sort, anyway.), and the Pitt River Museum, a museum in the style of the Victorian Age where various artifacts that caught the fancy of explorers were thrown together in glass cases and given no more labeling than 'Religion' or 'Transportation.' I liked Oxford. It had Blackwell's, simply the best bookstore I have ever seen. Also, it was comfortably sized and none too busy, though that may simply be a result of the post-New Year's timing.

Then there was London. Unfortunately, London was simply too big and expensive for two days and a student's budget. Too big for a month, come to think of it. The banks of the Thames are great, and we covered a lot of the city, making it into the National Gallery and Tate for a few hours on the second day. The thing is, it was nothing more than a tasting, a quick overview to give me an idea what I would like to do were I to come again. It's frustrating.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the Third: Istanbul, Turkey

Wherein Chris discovers a city entirely unlike any other he has yet visited, partakes of a culinary tradition he was entirely unfamiliar with, and observes multiple aspects of Muslim religious culture firsthand for the first time.

I find it funny to remember the anticipation I was coming into Istanbul with. For a solid week, I had spoken nothing but German except for a few select sentences in English, once to try and demonstrate a Texan accent to my hosts, for a solid week. Istanbul, the farthest I had ever been from the States, was going to be my language break. Mostly that’s true. Very random guys on the street struck up conversations with me in English, and I didn’t need to bother with German at all. However, I did struggle to pronounce anything in Turkish. Literally, I think it took me two days to start pronouncing the name of Sara’s university consistently. Boğaziçi? More like Bowazeechee.

Istanbul, though, is the most interesting city I have encountered in my travels thus far. At first I thought of it as bulging, straining at the seams. Down the main street my hostel (the absolute nicest of all my hostel staying and named Chambers of the Boheme to boot) additions built on the second and third stories of the buildings leaned out into the streets, and at no time, despite staying atop a pretty good hill and taking a bus a fair distance to the airport, did I ever see the edge of the city. Neither was it uncommon to see half-destroyed buildings support the new ones sprouting up, as if the builders were too impatient to wait for proper demolition and just wanted to get on with it.

Now, though, I think a better word is vital, a liveliness propelled by the impressive contrasts at work in the city. On my first evening, Sara and I burned our way through one of the chicer malls I have known. On my last day, the bus took us past the partial ruins of the walls which once surrounded Constantinople. The aforementioned street is in Taksim, one of Istanbul’s trendier districts, one where you can only find chain stores. The streets at midnight were packed to an extent I have seen the main walks in Munich packed only during the height of the holiday season, and the women wearing headscarves were definitely in the minority there. Later during my stay, we took the ferry to Eyüp. In between visiting the tomb of a companion of Muhammad and prowling through the cemetery that dominated the hillside, we walked the market street. There it was not uncommon to see women in the entire no-hands-and-only-the-smallest-part-of-the-face black outfits. It was fascinating.

Then there were those things which were completely new to me. First, the food. Turkish food is amazing, börek fighting for a spot at the top of the list. The street food is more plentiful than any I have known, and they do some tricky wonderful stuff with cheese and yoghurt. Appropriate recipes and ingredients will be found and then cooked.

Besides the tomb, I saw entered my first mosques. Blue Mosque is kind of an impressive one to start with. Seeing the thing from the outside, I was expecting maybe three stories. No, the entire thing was hollow and quite beautiful, especially the calligraphy.

Istanbul is a city to return to, at least in twenty years or so when the subway begins to resemble an actual system instead of two lines that do not connect. Maybe it will have found a way into the European Union by then and be able to fill that nice, little, expectant space above the TR on the license plates with the rings of stars.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the Second: Cadolzburg, Germany

Wherein Chris bums off (very) distant relatives, is treated most generously, enjoys foods which his palate was not sufficient to fully enjoy, and consumes more alcohol in a 24-hour period than he ever partook of in the United States.

Despite this being my first Christmas outside of the United States and away from my parents and sisters, I still manage to spend it with family, albeit family very distantly related through my grandfather. I spent most of my time with his cousin and his family, and visited one of his sisters and her daughters a few times. At least I had met them before, once when I was in seventh grade and my grandparents took me to Germany for the 95th birthday of a great-grandfather and great aunt and again before beginning my semester in Munich.

I am convinced that Moni, the wife of my grandfather’s cousin Georg, was a maid in a previous life but a bad one and her punishment was to shuffle back on to the mortal coil and do the maid duties but this time because she wants to, and she has dragged her family into it. They were incredibly generous and refused to ever believe that I had eaten enough. Quite literally I felt like the fiancé in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. “Hast du Hunger?” “Nein.” “Möchtest du dann ein bisschen Tee oder Brot mit Käse?” “Nein, danke. Ich bin sat.” “Lebkuchen? Plätzchen?” At least I could understand their Frankish dialect better this time around and actually keep a conversation in German.

Anyway, the schedule is hectic. I arrive late on the 23rd and basically go straight to bed (after tea, bread and cheese). By the time I get up Christmas Eve morn people are rushing to finish preparing for the many dinners that are coming and still checking to make sure that I am perfectly all right and all possible needs and wants are satisfied. Family and friends come for a visit, and other family and friends are visited by us. Thus begins the drinking. Evening comes up, and we attend a Lutheran service and head out to another relative’s for Christmas Eve dinner. Hang out there for a while, enjoying their Super-Bio, homegrown everything, before tagging along with younger cousins to a club. Have my first Cuba Libre and sips of a Vodka Bull, terrible drinks, and get to bed around 4:30. Wake up on Christmas, and this time we’re serving lunch. In total, the drinking amounted to six glasses of champagne, a glass of 1988 red wine, schnapps, and the aforementioned long drinks. I guess the rum balls count, too, but I don’t remember how many of those I had.

By the end of it all, I’m exhausted. Good thing the general energy level dips then. I wander Cadolzburg some, my grandfather’s hometown, and shoot some pictures. It’s a very cool town, small enough that you can circle it in an hour or two and the streets in the town center, built around a castle dating back to the 30 Years' War are cobblestone.

Funny(ish) story. On the 27th, Moni gives me a ride to Nuremberg, so I can catch a direct train ride back to Munich. Wandering around after buying a ticket, I see that there is a train leaving for Munich a half hour than the one I originally intended on taking. I jump on. Unfortunately, it arrives a half hour later, cutting my already limited schedule to unpack, wash laundry, repack and recheck my flights before leaving to catch the plane to Istanbul down to two hours. It was a rush, of a sort.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the First: Ischgl, Austria

Wherein Chris experiences for the first time true alpine skiing, realizes that the hills of Minnesota did not adequately prepare him, improves and bites it hard enough on the final day to require a trip to the resort doctor.

The invitation to join the family of the foreign-exchange student who lived with my family last year was first extended when I visited them in Dresden in the fall. I declined the invitation at first, unwilling to accept such generosity, but when I finally got around to planning what I would do with my two weeks of Christmas vacation and decided that a full week of my German relatives was too much, I took that answer back.

I am bleeding glad I did. For four days I got to hang out with decent people and speak a lot of German in Ischgl, Austria at a ski resort large enough (300 or so kilometers of piste I believe) to stretch into Switzerland.

Keep in mind now, my only previous skiing experience was at a small ski resort two hours from my house in Minnesota. I’m fairly the height of the building I’m living in here in Munich is comparable to some of the hills there. Also, I think the last time I actually did downhill skiing there was some five years ago.

Fortunately, it appears that skiing resembles riding a bike in that you never forget how, even if the difficulty is a bit more. No ski school for Chris this time around. Of course this means I fell somewhere between five and fifteen times on the first day. I know I fell at least five times earlier in the day, but on the last one, the one which ran from the highest point to the very bottom, I lost track. An these were proper falls too. Not slipping on a flat part. These were bite-it-and-slide-ten-meters-before you-slam-your-elbow-down-to-keep-from-finishing-the-slide-at-the-mountain’s-base falls. Amazed that I somehow came out of it all without any bruises. At least I improved. I don’t think I could have taken many more days of that punishment, and the others, far more accomplished skiers than I, were probably tired of waiting for me. Fell only three times on the second day and once on the third (and that was on the glare ice at the very bottom of the run where everyone had finished their own runs). Only twice on the final day, but that last fall was bad enough to send me to the resort doctor. Even though I was able to walk there, they still sent me to a town doctor to make sure my spine was okay because of the pain I was complaining of. Fortunately it turns out only to be a strained muscle in my neck. I have the X-rays to prove it. Thank God for free European health care.

I would have been happy to simply be there, even if skiing were taken out of the equation. It was absolutely beautiful. It occurs to me that mountains covered in snow should be cold and threatening, but I did not find them so. Cresting that first mountain and catching my first glimpse of the range was a view worthy of taking one’s breath away. The sky, too, was perfectly clear, a relief after the month of overcast in Munich and all the better to see the blue. I hear it’s a different blue, richer and deeper, than that you see from sea level. I believe that.