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.