London Town

I met my mom in London rather spontaneously a few weekends ago. It was awesome to see her in the hotel lobby! Awesome because I hadn't seen her in a long time, and also awesome because we had flown into different London airports, and we both had to find our way to the hotel alone. Fortunately we made it without too much trouble. Once I arrived (my flight got in later in the morning than my mom's) we put our bags away and then headed out on the town. Only three days in London and lots to do!

But the first thing to do was get some food. We found a pub and went in with dreams of fish 'n chips dancing in our heads. My mom got the "English breakfast" which was a crazy combination...baked beans, a tomato, an egg, ham, french fries, mushrooms, a sausage, and toast. Wowsers. Here is the proof:

Nice introduction to London, right? (I had a tasty and not so weird fish 'n chips.)

We planned to take a walking tour at 4pm so we leisurely headed in the direction of the pick-up point, stopping once in a while for photos of important cultural and historical monuments.

Yup.

We went by Trafalgar Square. There is Nelson on his column guarded by four gigantic lions.

In this one you can see Big Ben in the distance:

And in this one you can see Big Cam.
Trafalgar Square is the fourth most popular tourist destination in the world. It is much bigger than I thought. The National Museum faces the square, St. Martin in the Fields is a neighbor, and the National Portrait Gallery is a few blocks away. There used to be lots and lots of pigeons, like the flying rats infesting Piazza San Marco in Venice, but a few years ago they started lacing the pigeon's food with birth control because the population was out of control. It seems to be working--we didn't see any pigeons.

I usually stick to the timeline of my travels, but I will go ahead and show you the night-time images of Trafalgar Square. Here is the museum, which we did not enter:

And here is a Trafalgar Square fountain with the new LED lighting. A bit garish for my taste, and I am not sure why purple is the color of choice. But there you go.
We continued on our stroll towards Wellington Arch* in Hyde Park. We passed this lovely embassy, which made us chuckle.

Oh, Texas!

We did go in the National Portrait Gallery. All museums in London are free to enter, which is fantastic. (They make up for it in exorbitant ticket prices at churches.) Although we would have paid to see the National Portrait Gallery. It was worth the trip just to see the Tudor room. I had seen the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I in books but it was so cool to see them in person. My mom and I were also excited to see Sir Francis Walsingham, who was Elizabeth's spy-master. I wrote a paper on Walsingham and spies when I was in 9th grade, and ever since then we have been fascinated by him. Plus, Geoffrey Rush, who played him in the recent Elizabeth movies, looks exactly like the portrait! Well done, casting director!

There are loads more cool portraits, including the tiny Jane Austen one painted by her sister Cassandra. It is basically a miniature and rests in its own little box with its own little light and magnifying lens. We almost missed it.

The portraits are very interesting if you A. recognize/know the people or B. are undertaking some sort of art history study. Once we stopped recognizing the faces we decided it was time to go. When we visit again, which we will, Mother! we should go through the catalog beforehand and figure out who we want to see. Otherwise it is overwhelming.

I believe we stopped for some tea and sweets--how British are we? Then we strolled through St. James Park. In the distance you can see the London Eye, a big ferris wheel.

Mother and daughter.

Our house.

Just kidding, it is Buckingham Palace. There is Queen Victoria's monument with the gold winged thing on the top. It looks like Pemberley. Or, to give a non-fictional comparison, like Chatsworth. This peaceful view is a bit deceptive, though, since the area in front of the Palace is quite busy with cars. See:

My mom is fascinated by British cabs and cabbies. So here is a picture of one of the adorable taxis. Why don't we have cute taxis in the States?

It began to get dark and a bit drizzly as we neared our tour...Maybe the New Europe company did not adjust its times to the recent Daylight Savings switch? We met by the Wellington Arch and already it was dusk.

And rather more than drizzling.

We decided to tough it out, and so did the six or so others waiting for the walking tour. Our guide was named Eliza, and instead of making a My Fair Lady joke she went with an allusion to Queen Eliza-beth II. Which really isn't the same name, and for a peroxide-white blond girl dressed in a half-Goth, half-punk hot pink and black outfit, was not a good comparison. I got a bad feeling...

We stopped by Buckingham Palace. Eliza told us that the Royal Family did not build the palace. It was built by a peer, Duke Buckingham, in 1703, and it was originally called Buckingham House. But King George III liked it a lot, and he was jealous that his palace was not as nice as Buckingham House. So he took the House and made it a palace. Queen Victoria made it the official London residence of the monarchy in 1837.

170 years later, Nicolas Gage and Diane Krueger snuck into the Queen's Office and broke into her desk. So that is cool.

The rest of the tour was rather disappointing. I have had such great New Europe walking tours and I had really built it up for my mom. But the rain, the darkness, and Eliza's rather trite information made for a lackluster walk around London. We are tough customers, though. I was more easily impressed by my guide's knowledge in Berlin or Prague since I didn't know much of that history. But my mom and I are pretty good with English history. So we wanted more than a recital of Henry VIII's wives. (And Eliza even got that wrong.) Wow I sound like a brat.

To end on a not so bratty note--a quick note on London. I LOVED being in an English speaking place! After months and months in Czech land it is such a joy (and, no, that is not too strong a word!) to understand signs and menus and the announcements on the metro. Speaking the language removes a layer of stress that I didn't even realize I was carrying around with me until I got to London. It is comforting to know that if I needed help I could ask for it, be understood, and understand the answer. Occasionally I was struck with "I can understand that sign!" or "This label is in English!" exultations which made me happy since I am so used to wandering around in a murky haze of confusion. It was a pleasure to ask a saleswoman at Harrods where a particular product was, delightful to have a conversation with our waiter, and so easy to talk to the people at the hotel desk! Never mind the awesomeness of talking to my mom for three days!

*My mom and I were both surprised at the number of "war/soldier" memorials in London. It seemed like everything was dedicated to Nelson, Wellington, or Churchill. Which I understand, those are big names. But we both expected more Shakespeare or Dickens or Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf. That could just be our bias--more into English literature than English wars.

Schloss Charlottenburg

On my last morning in Berlin I headed to Schloss Charlottenburg, or the Charlottenburg Palace. It was pretty easy to get there with the U-bahn and it was a sunny day (finally!), so it was a very pleasant visit.

The 17th century palace is the largest palace in Berlin. It has been added to throughout the centuries, but was originally built by/for Sophie Charlotte, Friedrich III's wife. He would later become the King of Prussia. Is this the same Charlotte for whom Charlotte, NC is named, and whose odd, nearly bent in half at the waist statue is outside the Charlotte airport?

No, I just found out that Charlotte is named for Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg. She was also German, though, and perhaps is related to Sophie Charlotte?

Anyway, this isn't really important. The palace is lovely, and that is what remains. Walking towards the schloss:

Hurray for blue skies and autumnal leaves!

Another lone traveler was taking pictures of the palace, so I offered to take a picture of her in front of it. She then reciprocated. I have been trying to make that offer to people who are alone. It is a nice thing to do, I think. At least, I am very grateful when people help me out in that regard.

Pretty pale yellow palace.It wasn't so pretty during and after WWII, though. Schloss Charlottenburg was bombed twice. I don't know if they were accidental bombings or if the Germans were keeping something in the palace or what. But the dome was completely obliterated, and most of the palace is a 20th century reconstruction. The inside is sumptuously decorated/restored. I don't know how much of the palace they fixed up. Maybe there are parts of the palace that are still rubble filled rooms. I don't know. The before and after pictures of various restored rooms were amazing. Most of them were charred, dripping holes. I wonder how much it cost to fix everything? I am obviously more interested in the WWII history of the palace than the Hohenzollern (Sophie Charlotte's family name) history.

An excellent audio-guide was included in the tour. I like it when the audio-guide is included in the price of the ticket. Otherwise I usually don't shell out more money to get one. It is my silly act of defiance against high ticket prices. This audioguide was in perfect English and was pretty interesting, though I don't remember much of it. Oops.

The rooms were the basic Baroque-palace-craziness. One in particular was really over the top. It was the porcelain cabinet; a large room absolutely covered in various porcelain objects. The parts of the walls that weren't crowded with jars and vases and tea cups and statues were "papered" with mirrors. The effect was quite dazzling. Chinese pottery was in vogue in Europe in the 18th century, and the Hohenzollerns certainly weren't immune to the craze. The weirdest thing was that the fresco on the ceiling became more 3-D as it reached the walls. So a bunch of painted flowers and grapes suddenly became 3-D and spilled over the border between wall and ceiling. The scariest instance of this was a deer head. Its body was painted but its head, antlers, and one hoof broke through the 2-D barrier and seemed to lean over the porcelain objects below. WEIRD. No pictures inside so I can't show it to you.

The famous Amber Room, a room entirely covered in amber and gold and mirrors, which was so spectacular it was called the 8th wonder of the world, was originally in the Schloss Charlottenburg. But Frederick William I of Prussia (Sophie Charlotte's son) gave it to Peter the Great. Nice gift! Today you can see a reconstruction of the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. I say reconstruction since the room was stolen in WWII and has never been found. Speaking of which, if you are interested in the art thefts committed by the Third Reich, or the efforts taken to save and hide various art works, or the efforts to restore buildings and paintings after the war, you should watch The Rape of Europa. It is a fantastic documentary all about the fate of art during WWII.

One of my favorite parts is when they show footage of American bombers being briefed on their targets in Florence. The train station was being used for all kinds of bad stuff and it was a "high value target." The commander shows the (so young!) pilots a map with all the priceless art and buildings marked on it--a sort of DO NOT HIT list with the train station directly in the middle of everything. There is footage taken from a plane of the bombs falling and exploding on the train station, but no stray bombs fell on anything else. Incredible. The documentary focuses on the art, but it also makes some wonderful points on the value of art compared to the value of people. Basically, should we risk human lives to protect a painting? Watch it.

After touring the inside, I headed outside to wander about in the gardens. Gorgeous!

A lake behind the palace creates a very picturesque view.

And if you like creepy dwarfs in bonnets you won't be disappointed.

The formal gardens are just behind the palace, but there are wide avenues of "wilder" gardens on either side of the lake.

And a little summer house which is now a porcelain museum! I love summer houses. And this one is adorable.
There is a mausoleum that looks like a Greek temple across from the summer house, but it was covered in tarps and scaffolding so I didn't get to see it. I was bummed.

Here is a view of the palace from across the lake.
The gardens are quite large, as you can see from how tiny the palace looks.
Lovely, lovely morning.

Berlin 3

On my final full day in Berlin I went to Schloss Charlottenburg (upcoming post) and then met Hannah and members of her program at the national television and radio station in Berlin. One of the students' host dads works at the station and he got the group in. The tour was in German so you will have to ask Hannah what was said.

The main takeaway point for me was that the station building was filled with transparent elements. The hallways were made of glass, the stairs were clear, the bridges between one side of the building to the other were glass or something very strong and also clear. Hannah and I had a running joke going about all the "transparency" in German architecture. It is quite the symbol. The government buildings are all filled with giant windows and clear walls, as is the Reichstag with its glass dome from which you can look down on the politicians as they legislate. As you might guess, the transparency is a physical symbol of the "transparency" that the Germans want to emphasize in all their public entities--particularly the TV and radio stations and the government. After what has happened in ther country, they are understandably skittish about secrecy and opaque walls. Although, if I remember correctly, Hitler was fairly open about what he was doing...so I am not sure how appropriate this emphasis on transparency is. Regardless, every time that the guide mentioned "transparency" or "openness" or commented on the symbolism of the open architecture, Hannah and I grinned.

I liked the bright colors in this television studio. It sure photographs well (wonder why?).

After the tour, Hannah and a few friends and I headed to the Reichstag, or the German Senate buildings. We were hoping to take a tour and walk around the transparent dome (grin) but the line was very long. So instead we just posed for pictures and headed for dinner.

Hannah and Cameron:

We chose sushi for dinner and were excited to see a two-for one deal at a restaurant. We all ordered two different rolls...and then the food arrived. Instead of getting two rolls, with one roll free, they had outsmarted us and given us two of each...so we got twice as much food and paid twice as much as we wanted. But it was still yummy and a fun dinner.

Then we headed to Checkpoint Charlie, sort of by accident. We meant to go in the other direction, but it was nice to see it at night without all the people.

Next it was off to the Sony Center in the middle of Berlin. It is a huge entertainment complex with restaurants, a semi-outdoor area with a fountain, a movie theater, shops, etc. The roof is really cool and partially open (grin.)

Here is the courtyard.
So much of Berlin is modern and still being built. I guess that is what happens when 90% of the city is smashed by bombs and then half of it is Communist. That tends to retard growth.

We were there for an international party recommended to the group by one of their professors. We met some interesting people--some Germans, a British woman working in Berlin, (whom I later saw in London getting off the Heathrow Express!) and various other people that we met very briefly. I applaud Hannah and her friends for jumping into Berlin and speaking German and being willing to meet and talk with all these different people, instead of staying in an American bubble.

After we had reached our threshold of awkward small talk (both in English and German) we headed to a jazz club. That jazz club was so packed and smoky that, after watching the chef make crepes for a little while, a group of us left to find a quieter, less crowded place. A small, partially underground bar served our purpose very well.

We sat around a tiny table with our exotic beer and talked. It was wonderful to speak English, especially to Americans! I didn't have to confine my words to basic ones, my sentence structures to simple ones, my speech speed to turtle, or my enunciation to non-regional crisp. It is interesting how living with people who are either learning English (the boys) or who speak fairly well but miss the more complex words/sentences has affected my speech. I am really careful, especially with the boys, to use words and phrases they know while mixing in new ones slowly and hopefully painlessly. So it is a pleasure to speak to native English speakers every once in a while!

In the morning I partook of my last included breakfast and headed to the train station. I was three hours early, due to worries about the journey to the station taking a long time plus a basic fear of missing my train. Fortunately, the Hauptbahnhof is new, shiny, and clean. It is essentially a train station inside an upscale mall. There are three floors of shops with the tracks in the middle, where the food court or carousel and Santa's Workshop usually are. So I wandered in and out of the shops to pass the time, pulling my little rolling bag behind me.

My extreme earliness gave me time to comparison shop for a Berlin shot glass. I began collecting shot glasses at an early age, about seven or eight. At that point I thought they were just small cups, and as I was obsessed with anything miniature, (maybe because I was so small) they were the perfect collectible. Tiny tea sets, mini jam jars, small bottles of ketchup...I loved it all, but especially shot glasses. Now, I wonder what the people at the cash register thought of the small eight-year-old girl purchasing shot glasses. Probably, "Her parents should be ashamed."

But I was innocent and just liked the pretty, city-specific little glasses. I have about twenty-five of them now. They are an excellent souvenir since I have never been to a place that didn't have shot glasses for sale. Last week, my mom told me that she was horrified by the number of shot glasses and the dust collecting in them as they sat on my shelves at home, so she boxed them up and put them away. Not cool, Mom.

The train: Train travel is not as romantic as it once was. (But is any travel as romantic as it once was?) I was rather hoping for roomy seats, a jolly witch pushing a food cart loaded with chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, a sparkling interior, clean windows, and a cheerful Club Car. Instead I got stained, small seats, no food cart, (magical or otherwise), and a general dinginess with gross bathrooms and a cheerless Club Car with surly attendants. Where is the charming Club Car from White Christmas, with the white tablecloths and sparkling wooden bar and malts and club sandwiches? (I like to say "club car" really fast and precisely, emphasizing the hard C, as the train ticket man with the peculiar voice says to Wallace and Davis in White Christmas after learning they don't have tickets for a sleeper compartment: "You can sit up all night in the ClubCar.")

So the train wasn't lovely. But it got me back to Prague by way of Dresden and Decin. The train actually curved its way along the same riverbank where I had taken pictures of locomotives in September when I was in Decin with the family. And now I was a passenger on those very tracks...

Auf wiedersehen, Berlin!

Berlin 2

First, I would like to thank (and link to!) my wonderful friend Julie's wonderful blog, At Home With Myself. She is the Julie who has often appeared in my blog posts, and without whom my time in the Czech Republic would have been rather grey. Here is a picture a nice stranger took of us today in Prague. Thanks for sending it to me, Julie!

Her blog, like Julie, is awesome, lovely, witty, and profound so you should take a gander. She gave me an award that was first given to her, the Lemonade Stand Award. I am very excited and touched to be given this award, many thanks!

We just enjoyed a four hour brunch at Cafe Cafe, followed by a leisurely stroll through Prague and across the Charles Bridge. As I am very busy procrastinating submitting my graduate school applications (last night I actually sat down in front of the glass porthole of the washing machine and watched my t-shirts and towels swirl around and around in the suds...for fifteen minutes) this morning/afternoon with Julie was especially welcome! Plus, besides her dazzling conversation and overwhelming kindness, people are nicer to me when she is there! Waiters and shop people, I mean. She speaks to them in Czech and suddenly they don't treat me like an annoying, stupid American anymore. Today we even got free cake!

And now for another method of procrastination--blogging! Here is the other post on Berlin that I promised.

On the way to Museum Island (an actual island, though criss-crossed with bridges,) that houses several museums in Berlin, I passed this monument to victims of war. Inside was a rather forlorn statue of a woman bending in grief beside the body of her husband or son or brother or father. Sort of a Pietà. Too sad. I liked the angels on the outside of the building, the way that they are carved in the round and emerge from the entablature.

Nearby is this huge church. Apparently King Leopold couldn't decide what architectural style he wanted, so he just threw everything up there.

Notice the sphere of the television tower between the dome in the middle and the baby dome on the right. You can barely see it through the fog. It wasn't a very sunny or warm day.

Across the street from the church is a large empty lot where a palace used to stand. I believe it was built by the East Berliners (we are in East Berlin now) or perhaps it was just used by the East Berlin government? Anyway, they tore it down. But now they are going to rebuild it. They only tore it down a few years ago, so the whole thing seems rather silly. To the left of the bus you can see a billboard with what the lot will eventually look like.
One of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Peters, writes a great series of funny mystery thrillers about a female Egyptologist in the early 20th century. (Peters has a PhD in Egyptology so she puts a lot of cool historical and archaeological information into the plots.) She also writes a series about a Minnesotan woman with a PhD in medieval art who works at the National Museum in Munich. In the latest novel, this woman goes to Berlin to the Alte Museum to talk to a colleague and march in protest on the steps of the museum. I had just finished this novel on the train to Berlin, so I had to go see the museum. A little odd, perhaps, to go to the museum primarily to see where a fictional character went...but it was awesome. Here is the museum.

And those columns are where Vicky and her rotund German boss Schmidt and her dashing reformed(?) jewel thief boyfriend marched with their sign painted on a bedsheet, and where they confronted the crooked Jan Perlmutter. Love it.

Next stop was the Pergamon Museum. I took some Greek Art and Archaeology classes at Duke and I have always had sort of a fascination for archaeology and greek art so I had to stop by this museum. It houses monumental ancient art and is awesome. The museum takes its name from the Pergamon Altar which is its showpiece. It was built in the 2nd century BCE, so only 2,200 years ago. Only.

Taken from what is now Turkey, the altar is a massive staircase surrounded by almost life-size friezes and huge columns with an altar on the top. They let people take pictures (hurray!) so here are some images.

The staircase--see how big it is? The altar is through the doors at the top.

One side.
A closer look at the frieze. It depicts the giants (with fishtails so they look like mermaids, ecxuse me, mer-MEN) battling the Olympian gods. Look at that drapery flow!

Some scale. The altar was a huge box, basically, with the frieze going around all four sides. They have only reconstructed the front part, so the frieze against this wall would have been on the back of the altar when it was complete. I thought this portion of the frieze was funny. How do they know that this chunk of marble went there and not three inches higher? Though I know that some very educated person with a hundred degrees probably devoted her life to positioning these fragments using all her expertise and knowledge, it still amuses me. The other holdings of the museum include this huge ancient Market Gate from Miletus (now Turkey.) This is only 1,900 years old. Thanks for the big picture, Wikipedia.

The room was specially built to house it.

It was amazing to see these monumental works of ancient architecture reconstructed instead of just pieces of a frieze or statues. Now, it would also be pretty amazing to seem them in situ...there is a lot of controversy about where these pieces should be. They were excavated by Germans which is why they are in Berlin, and they were dug up (in the 19th and early 20th centuries) before there were strict laws about what you could and could not remove, so most of these things were "exported" "legally." But.

Shouldn't they be back where they were originally built? But some of those places don't have the resources to conserve them. And it would be mean to remove them from the museums that depend on them to stay alive. But it is sort of mean for Germany to keep them when Turkey and Greece and Egypt have asked for them back. But.

If they weren't removed then there may not have been anything left of them today...

But.

Enough of that. At least until I talk about the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.

The Pergamon Museum also has the Ishtar Gate from Babylon, which was constructed in 575 BCE. It was built as a road through the city for the ceremonial processions to use. Beautiful glazed bricks make up the gate. It is gigantic and so vibrant. Here is one tower.

The gate.

They have lots of pieces of the gate and could basically build a museum just for it. Instead they have only reconstructed the smaller gate (the big gate won't fit in the museum) and some pieces of the glazed walls.

I went to the Pergamon Museum first because after six pm on Thursday nights the other museums are free, but not the Pergamon. I planned to visit the Alte Museum after six to take advantage of that free admission. Well, like Cinderella at the strike of midnight, I was at the door of the Alte Museum right at six. (That comparison is actually not very apt--there was no fairy godmother involved and no magical ball gown or shape-shifting mice. Unfortunately.)

I walked right in and asked for my free ticket. But.

The Alte Museum, like the Pergamon, does not participate in the open-late-and-free-Thursday- night-thing. I was so disappointed and flustered that I walked right back out again. There wasn't much I wanted to see in that museum anyway. Vicky and Schmidt had gone back to Jan Perlmutter's office in the museum, but I didn't think the guards would let me follow my fictional friends that far. So instead I got a picture in front of the museum and then headed to my hotel.

Here is the museum without the obstruction of me. I don't know why they light it with green. It makes it look like a basilisk lives there.

Here is the church at night.

A bit blurry, but you get the idea.

Stay tuned for more Berlin!