I'm in Love - Cesky Krumlov!

Few Americans are aware of the small Bohemian village of Cesky Krumlov. It lies southwest of the larger Czech city of Cesky Budejovice, on the Austrian border. The town is a jewel of red tile roofs on a strategic series of oxbows in the Vltava river . . . the waters of which wend their way to Prague from here. Cesky Krumlov has been tremendously preserved, thanks to a 19th century celebration of design called Historism. This aesthetic followed the Roccoco, and was a conscious attempt to integrate design elements of the classical, medieval, renaissance, baroque, and roccoco. The end result is that all of these periods are represented in the buildings, towers, steeples, public squares and castle interiors. Wandering about this Czech town is like playing in a time machine. Krumlov features the second largest castle in the Czech Republic (after Prague) and has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site (second to Venice). In addition, you can raft down the river in inflatable canoes, hike in the grassy hills, or just sit in the mountain air and dine on the delicacies of Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Bohemian, Monrovian, and of course American cuisine. Normally, I would keep a secret like this to myself, but the secret is out. All of Europe visits here, and the Czechs can use the tourism income to preserve the area. So on a hot summer day, this perfect setting is populated by sneaker wearing, tank top sweating, ice cream cone weilding tourists instead of the beautifully costumed aristocracy that watched over this land.
Hotels are numerous, but I can personally recommend, Pension Barbikan Room 6.

European Toilets Stink

A word about the noble toilet, before I continue with my travel blog:
American toilets are wonderful. Good ones are comfortable. They come in custom colors and sizes . . . and some do not even look like toilets.
My favorite thing about American toilets are that they are not very interactive. My plan for a toilet is to arrive, poop and leave. That's it. When I'm done with a toilet, I want to flush and go. I have discovered that American toilets feature superior shape, volume, and water placement. Allow me to explain in graphic detail. (You have been warned.)
Europeans design their toilets so that you have to become involved with their function, collective use, and upkeep. In short, you will have an ongoing relationship with the toilet. You cannot arrive, poop and leave.
First you must mount the toilet, typically in a tiny room too small to enter, turn around and close the door. It appears as though the toilets are installed in these rooms first, then the walls are built.
Secondly, you poop. This part I'm sure you've got (. . . except for those pesky two-year olds who keep leaving comments about their binky. You kids go to bed already!).
Third, you flush. But similar to the paper-plastic connundrum faced in grocery stores everywhere, you must choose the size of your flush in Germany. Little Flush, or BIG FLUSH. There are consequences for the entire planet . . . whatever your selection. If you choose little flush, and you fail to rid the world of your dark matter, you must decide yet again, if what remains is worth a little flush . . . or if you are tired of gambling with the fate of the world, you can just go for a BIG FLUSH, knowing that you did your best . . . but you cannot risk the careless wantoness of yet a third flush.
But wait there's more. Now you must begin to touch the toilet. You must lift the seat, and pick up the toilet wand used by the thousand toileteers before you. You must wand the toilet clean, and scrub if necessary those highly adhesive bits that you've cast off.
Fifth, you must then flush again, with the wand . . . so it is cleaned and you can put it back.
You may now touch the toilet lid again, to close it.
Now you may leave.
Why is this elaborate ceremony needed? Because the toilet is shaped like a funnel. Deep. All-wall. Very little water. One supposes that the Europeans are more water conscious . . . except with every flush a firehose of water is propelled through the funnel.
In the Aral Gas Station in Mulheim An Der Ruhr, the Men's room toilet, has no water . . . but a ceramic tray to catch all the steamy goodness left there. This is a truly interactive toilet. Smell-o-vision. When you flush there is a 50-50 chance that your little friend may be ejected out of the bowl into the room with you. "Say Jello to my Littol Freend!" indeed.
I would go on, but let's not exaggerate. German toilets are different . . . but they are not the worst. The worst, can be found at the mountaintop Drak Yerpa Caves in Tibet. A brick pit teetering on a hillside 14,000 feet in the air. Alien beings come there to die. I have faced these organisms head on (as I could not bring myself to contribute) and survived to tell the tale.
Germany is not this. But why, I ask you, are the people who make Mercedes and BMWs designing their sewer system in this way?
One positive aspect of this system, is that the Germans have clean restrooms. Everyone is required to participate in the cleaning of the toilets . . . or suffer the suspicions of co-workers and fellow toileteers. Talk about your collective guilt!
Frequently, . . . heck Typically! Most establishments charge to use the bathroom. You cannot even get in, unless you've got cash (30 - 50 cents). Some have monitors and janitors on stand-by (why I don't know, when you are expected to participate in the bathroom's cleaning). I have been victimized by just such a janitor in Plzen, Czech Republic. When she demanded 5 krone from me, I gave 50 (stupidly) . . . and got no change. This means that I paid about 3.50 to pee in a train stain that was in the process of being cleaned by a lady janitor. The gaul! For $3.50 I should have been able to decorate a golden brick in a Bohemian Palace!! I have complained about this shakedown ad nauseum . . . and my family has told me to "Let it Go!" . . . That's what lead me to their clutches, I tell you!!! Anyway . . .
In the Block House Restaurant on Adenauerplatz . . . the toilet actually has a bleach dispenser with graphics on how to clean the water closet after yourself. I mean it's one thing to tidy up . . . but the graphics explain how to use toilet paper to spread the bleach over the entire toilet and then wipe it off. Is this my job as a guest? I think not!
Pictures will *not* be provided . . . so move on to the next blog yous!

You Know You're Old When

I spent the week working in beautiful Mulheim an der Ruhr, a river-town in Western Germany between Dusseldorf and Essen. It is lovely, peaceful . . . and a great place to relax. I stayed at the very nice Hotel Am Ruhrufer, but more importantly ate every night at their amazing Thai Restaurant!


However, one morning while I was getting a pot of hot tea at the hotel breakfast buffet, a Swiss man moved my food, setting, computer and what not to another table . . . because he wanted to sit where I was. I thought for ten seconds about whether this was a misunderstanding . . . that perhaps there is another way to indicate that the table is occupied, besides having all of one's things at it . . . or whether the man was perhaps mentally ill. I don't think either was the case. I think this was just a pushy guy. Freakish. Anyway, here is a pastoral view of the Ruhr river from the dam where his body would be burried, if in fact there was a body, which there isn't.

You Know You're Old When

You know you're old when, you go to the Love Parade . . . (the German underage drinking, smoking, and can't tell you if you don't already know festival) . . . and you want to send a million people to their room (with a plastic bucket and a mop).
But allow me to explain in graphic detail:
I'm working 20 minutes from where the Love Parade is scheduled to take place. I recall the Mandy Moore film, Chasing Liberty, and I think about how cool it would be to say that I too have been to the Love Parade.
Despite not having a lover, I am a "Lover." I love. Ich liebe dich. I could parade my love around. I support Love (but sadly the relationship is not reciprocal - Love mostly sits on my couch and watches TV with his hand in his pants . . . but I digress).
But I'm torn. My issue is that this same weekend, I want to visit my family/friends on the Belgian Shore. I must either choose between seeing a once in a lifetime sexually charged cultural experience . . . or domestic tranquility with a family that I see once every five years - who has a new baby.
I decide that the optimal course is to do both: Yes, take the baby to the Love Parade.
No, no. I mean go to the Love Parade, but leave early and drive to Belgium in a rental car.
This plan however is an exercise in logistics:
I try to rent a compact car. They have no compact cars left, so they give me, for the compact car price, a brand new Mercedes Benz. I'm not joking. A brand new silver Mercedes with black leather interior.
Then I realize that I have to drive this expensive luxury car through the Love Parade to some unknown parking plaza for a million people. The hotel concierge admonishes me to take the train, and leave the car in the local station parkingplotz. "It will be safe there, and when you return, you can leave for Belgium."
So, I go by train, and materialize at the Dortmund HauptBahnhof.
There is a 20 minute pilgrimage with a million other people to the highway in front of the sports arena. Everyone is dressed excentrically (a shabby effort compared to the average pride parade). It looked more like a Hookers and Vickers party. All the young ladies were dressed in fishnet and heels, and the young men . . . were wearing the last five drinks they had imbibed.
I literally saw some poor African family, dressed-up for travel, emerge from the train station in the midst of this carnival. They, clearly conservative, were confused and appalled by their circumstance. As they pondered the scene, a 16 year old rained his small intestine over their luggage.
(I hope you're not eating as you read this.)

Anyway, so a million German youths show up early to the Love Parade (The Germans are nothing if not punctual). We have a two hour wait. There are food boths and souvenir stands . . . most are empty. The young people pose an elbow insert a cigarette and light up. For the next hour 1 million teenagers smoke like crack junkies in fishnets.

I wish I could get my hands on the bastard that sold 30% of the drunken youths whistles. Not party whistles. Not new years day musical whistles. He has sold them coach Baker's "Give me 50, with a smile Weinbrenner" whistles. So the second-hand smoking is enhanced with the continuous din of 15,000 drunken peeling whistles.

The hot smoke and the noise disstabilizes the atmosphere. It begins to rain torrentially on one million German teenagers who are hunched over cigarettes, deafened by whistles. There were four people with umbrellas. I was one of them. 100 people tried to stand with me under my small umbrella. It was not Love, but it *was* intimacy. Others used garbage bags and jackets to augment my "regenschirm." Soon I was the center ring of the Barnum and Baily's Irish Cream Circus.

The rain stopped. The music began. Thumping. Hooting. A roar from the crowd. Then it went off. No music.

The music began. Thumping. Hooting. A roar from the crowd. Then it went off. No music again. The Love Parade was in fact teasing one million sopping wet, deaf, emphysema victims with nothing to defend themselves but whistles.

A third time, the Love Parade began. Thumping so loud that the whistlers never knew what hit them. They could whistle their brains out, but, only, between, the, huge, deep, base, rattling, every, tooth, in, their, drunken, little, heads . . . .

I (old, wet, and sober) decided the writing was on the wall. The crowd was shoulder to shoulder for 30 acres. Now was the time to get, while the getting was good. I would buy an electronic CD later, and re-experience the event in the privacy of my luxury Mercedes. Did I mention that it was a MERCEDES!

I pressed my way back through the crowd, like a ornery salmon swimming upstream in a river of beer with an expensive camera (mixed metaphors, ay?). The torrent of people never ended. The crowd was contiguous back to the train station. As it was already packed at the Love Parade, I could not imagine what the next million people were going to do when they arrived. I didn't stay to find out.

I rushed to catch the train back to the Mercedes.

Halfway between Essen and Dortmund, a torrential rainstorm soaked the German landscape. I, snug, in my commuter train felt I'd made a good decision in leaving. Then the train came to a stop. An unintelligible voice garbled over the loudspeaker. I asked someone near me if they understood. They did.

Apparently, Love Parade Hooligans had gotten into a fistacuffs with the Engineer of the train currently in the Essen Station. As a result the Polizei had arrived to arrest the thugs and take the Engineer to the hospital (krankhouse - still cracks me up to say that - - because it makes me think that this is where all the krank calls in the world come from . . .).

The Hooligan train was blocking Essen station. All it's passengers had decided to quit the train and walk on the rails in the pouring rain to Dortmund . . . so all trains had been ordered stopped until the tracks could be verified as clear.

In short, I sat in a stopped train for three hours!! I was frosted. Stupid Love Parade. Stupid Concierge. Stupid Hooligans. Stupid Rainstorm . . . etc.

In the end the train commenced movement, to another town . . . where a very nice girl from Albania invited me to join her in her friend's car, who was coming to pick her up. This I did. Bless that young woman!

I was off like a dart to Belgium - three hours late!

On the way to Belgium, I came upon a Smart Car going 140 Km/Hr (See also "Nuclear-Powered Golf Cart") . I passed it of course, if only to preserve my self-esteem. I mean one cannot allow a golf cart to blow one's doors off - no matter how fast it is going. I seriously thought about throwing an ice cube from my new silver luxury Mercedes at the Smart Car, but realized that the ice cube would knock the Smart Car over and it would explode and kill everyone inside (the ice cube being equal in mass to the Smart Car).

I thought to myself, if I were in a Smart Car and it was going 140 - there would be screaming. Even if I were driving. This is tantamount to hurtling off a cliff on a lawnmower. Screaming is entirely appropriate.

But suffice to say, I got to Belgium . . . where the next Blog entry will begin.

Would You Believe

Every day when I come to work, people call me "Morgan."
I say, "No, I'm Drew."
They respond "Morgan."
"No, really. Drew!"
"--Morgan?"
I just say "Okay, Morgan." and walk away.

At night the same colleagues come in and tell me to "Fire Abend."
I say, "I can't fire Abend."
"9. Fire Abend."
I respond, "Listen. Give Abend a break. I'm sure he's got a family."
"Fire Abend."
"Okay. I'll fire Abend."
They walk away, and I figure I've given poor Abend another day off the chopping block! Hey, I wonder if Abend's first name is Morgan?

I came home yesterday, from a day at three museums . . . to THIS :

Yes, the fish and the frog were going at it in my bed. Their obvious awestruck reaction is due to my now infamous discovery (evidence captured on film). It goes a long way toward explaining where guppies come from.

I asked them what they had to say for themselves. Wordlessly, fish puckered up. Frog arranged the following message:

Who am I to judge, really (but they can get their own room, right?).

Next is the story of the teeny tiny Diet Coke who lived in a Shoe. How small can a Diet Coke get? They make one small enough to remove one set of finger nail polish (or tooth enamel) - I always forget the urban legend. It's adorable. If you feed it and care for it, it will mature to a healthy two litre bottle. Who, I ask you needs, just a swig of Diet Coke? It has zero calories to start with!! It's not like you are going to reduce the health impact? If anything, it becomes a slip and fall hazard . . . The jury says, NO!

Lastly, in the art museum, I happened upon this scene: Patrons viewing a photo exhibition of found images. I realized quickly, that the patrons themselves were formally staged, and unconsciously coordinated . . . all fixed on the same thing (a wall of text). Germany's Next Top Model? What do you think?

Berlin's Top Ten

What are Berlin's top ten things to see and do? I'm glad you asked.

By bus or bike, are the best ways to see Berlin's sites. You may buy a DB pass and sort the route out for yourself, or buy a "Yellow" bus ticket . . . and let a driver transport you along an appointed route between the monuments. Of course, one man's monument is another man's tourist trap. You could spend six months in Berlin (and the environs) and not see everything there is to see. If you have six months, no problem. But for the weekend visitor, these are my recommendations:

1. The Museum Insel and Berliner Dom - Like London and Paris, Germany has looted the world's ancient history of its most spectacular works of art. You can find a littany of museums, parks and churches on the narrow stip of land between the Spree river and its opposing canal. Of late, Berliners are disassembling the East German congress building (full of asbestus) and hope to build a replica of the original Berlin state palace (that inside will be a shopping mall). Quel damage! But the museum island is the epicenter of the new Berlin, and provides more than a single day of distraction.

2. The Brandenburg Tor and Unter Den Linden - The main street of Berlin has been rebuilt from ashes and ruin. It is beautiful, clean, and tree-lined. The boulevard from the western gate of the old city extends to the museum island, passing Humboldt University, Bebelplatz (where the books were burned), St. Hedwig's Catholic Cathedral, the NeuOpernHaus and the War Memorial. Walking the length of Unter Den Linden gives you a sense of the conflict between old and new Berlin. Both are omnipresent and engaged in a new synthesis.

3. Denkmal for the Murdered Jews of Europe - This memorial lies between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Tor. It is an undulating field of mausoleum-like cubes, covering an underground information center about the Jewish Holocaust. In my opinion, it is a more successful monument than the Jewish Museum of Daniel Leibeskind.

4. Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Wall and Topography of Terror - A divided city, country and world becomes tangible at this border between east and west, then and now. Interestingly, the remaining wall in central Berlin is now protected by a wall (See picture), because too many western tourists were breaking off chunks as souvenirs. Now the Berliners are tasked with preserving something that was once the bane of their existence.

5. The Reichstag - Take a parliament, build it up, have an anarchist burn it down, enable fascists to take over the country in its absence, and bake in several world wars for about 30 years. When done, set in a cold war for another 30 years until ready to decorate. Clean the parliament, modernize it, and top it off with an architectural icon (a transparent dome that reflects the environment through a spiral staircase). Serves several million a year, hopefully for a long time.

6. Charlottensburg Palace - Set in beautiful parklands in the heart of the city, this palace anchors Berlin in the history that preceded the 20th century.

7. The Berlin Zoo, Tiergarten, and Siegelsaule. What's not to like: Animals, food, ice cream, and Elsa the Golden Angel.

8. The Gendarmenmarkt - Berlin's most beautiful square is the Baroque incarnate. French flourishes surround museums, cafe's and concert halls. It's just a beautiful place to "be."

9. Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche - The most successful synthesis of the old and the new is the memorial church. The destroyed cathedral is bookended by a blue jewelbox lantern-like church and bell tower. The site can be experienced from outside and inside (the living house of worship). You must most especially visit inside the remaining ruin, featuring beautiful mosaics of German history. The buildings seem to change their character over the course of the day, and year. Photographed in the morning, at midday and night, the buildings metamorphize and reflect light in a broad range of moods.

10. The Fernsehturm (The Television Tower). During the advent of mass communication, in the 1950s and 1960s, West Berliners erected a tall radio tower (Funkturm) that was supposed to be a modern Eiffel Tower for Berlin (It had a viewing station and elevated restaurant, but is nowhere near as beautiful as the Tour Eiffel). For many years this was the highest view of Berlin. The East Germans would have none of it. The radio tower offended their national pride and heroic aesthetics, so they designed a superior tower (that to me looks like a papal wand or 1968 Christmas ornament) and had the Swedes install it over Alexanderplatz and the Karl Marx Alley (read as communist parade route). 28 years later in a unified Berlin, this symbol of communist pride is capitalistic tourism headquarters. A fitting tribute, no? My favorite thing to do is wander through the park below the tower photographing the numerous statues, fountains, churches and Town Halls, and then to ascend the tower in a tiny elevator to eat ice cream in the rotating restaurant. If you can manage to do this late in the day, you can watch the sun set. Then, Berlin lights up like a Christmas tree!

Rostock and Warnemünde

Three hours by car north of Berlin, on the Baltic coast (called the Ostsee here), there are two superlative twee coastal communities called Rostock and Warnemünde. Rostock is a red-brick shipbuilding center with broad streets and parks. The town square is festooned with cobblestones, fountains, scupltures and cafe's. From Rostock, one can board a modern commuter boat to the coast proper. Here, featuring a broad arcing strand of sand is a fishing village - now resort of Warnemünde. Where fishing boats used to dock along manmade canals (like Amsterdam) luxury sailing yachts park. The freshest "Fish-bread" sandwiches are made in the fish market, and the town (on the alternate bank) is beautifully decorated with flowers, sidewalks and cobbled alleys. I lucked out, and the weekend I visited there was a wochenende fest. Food, drink, art, souvenir and jewelry stands lined the sidewalks. I even managed to go for a "schwimmbad" in the Baltic Ocean (another off my list Sonya). It was cool, but bracing! Aside from severe (yet temporary) shrinkage, I am now prepared to join the polar bear club in Orlando. In short, if you're in Germany on a warm, sunny summer day and want to wander at your leisure amongst the flowers and parklands of the north, head for Warnemünde.

Happy Fourth of July!

Many of my friends have written to me to gloat about having the day off, while I in turn must work in Berlin. Others have forwarded their sympathies, that I will miss fireworks and apple pie. Why not at all my dear readers!

Today, July 4, 2008 . . . The New American Embassy opens on the Pariser Platz in Berlin (this is the plaza directly behind the Brandenburg gate (that 20 years ago was still in East Germany). We share the plaza with the French embassy (thus Pariser Platz). In any event, tonight, weather permitting, there will be an opening ceremony and the American Embassy will set off fireworks over the Brandenburg Gate. It is a mere coincidence that it is the fourth of July . . . but a happy one. I'm sure every American in Berlin will be out to see the display. There are two issues: Due to the high latitude, it does not get dark in Berlin during the longest days of the summer until nearly 11pm at night. The fireworks are scheduled for 11:30 apparently. Secondly, it has rained all day. I hope that the setting sun will calm the weather, and that we'll get a clear night sky.

The embassy is quite controversial because of it's location between the Brandenburg Tor (Gate) and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. It is said that the architectural firm that designed the embassy, made several politically incorrect requests of the German government, which included moving the Brandenburg Tor to accommodate the embassy, or moving the Holocaust memorial to accommodate the embassy. I don't know if either story is true . . . but I can believe some remote beurocrat would innocuously propose such a faux pas. The embassy succeeds and fails on different levels. The structure is understated;the stone, shape, and situation complements the setting. The building is truncated and blocky though, not matching the heighth of the surrounding structures, and for this many in Berlin have complained.

Too late. The building is there, as is, and ready to open. I'll let you know how it goes next week.

Update: Well, Friday evening was a bit windy and rainy. So the U.S. Embassy decided to set off the fireworks an hour and a half early (one assumes because it was dark enough). As a result I missed the fireworks, and was standing at a subway station 3 miles away, when I heard them going off! When I finally made it to the Unter Den Linden U-bahn station . . . a thousand pissed-off Americans were standing outside a fence wishing they had not believed the Embassy telephon operator - who advised us all that 11:30 was the time. I put my camera over the fence, and took the following picture of our tax dollars at work:

On a positive note, I went back to the Pariser Platz the next day, and attended the street fair. It was well attended, and pleasant in a Federal kind of way (read as the volunteer-organized LGBT Stadtfest was way better!!). I even played their spin the wheel and win a prize game. When I spun the wheel, the needle landed on a suitcase! I was sure I'd won a trip to somewhere (in America?!). Nope. The bored clerk handed me a "New US Embassy" coffee mug. So one of you lucky birds is getting a mug for Christmas in lieu of coal (if you play your cards right).