prague

Okay, this is me getting my blog caught up.

Last weekend, we ventured eastwards on a chugging train through Germany to the Czech Republic to czech out what everyone likes so much about Prague. We boarded an overnight train, in which Gregory, Katherine, Collin and I were packed tightly into a six-bed sleeper car, the temperature gauge of which was broken. They didn't czech our passports, which I thought was kind of weird. That's only happened to me on an international train once, which doesn't really make sense to me but ah well. The sleeper car was cozy and warm and we watched the first half of a movie on Greg's laptop until we drowsily decided to rain czech the rest so we could settle down for a surprisingly comfortable sleep.

Okay, enough of the Czech puns, I'm done. I swear.

But czech this out. My neighbor Beth taught me how to spell Czechoslovakia when I was ten years old one day in her kitchen. She made chocolate ice cream milkshakes for me and my friend, and we stood there in the middle of her apartment, sunlight shining in. She was on the opposite side of the kitchen table, and she made us guess before she would tell us. I've never forgotten. Too bad it's moot.)

Prague is gorgeous; after crossing the Charles Bridge - the oldest bridge in Prague, mind you, and absolutely pouring over with tourists and kitchy shops - we clambered up a hill in the Mala Strana, or Lesser Town, which was speckled with trees that bloomed with flowers that were little explosions of pink and yellow. At the peak of the hill was an Eiffel Tower replica - no, seriously - as well as the stunningly ornate Prague castle, which is like a city in and of itself, its towering brown facade dotted with windows is only the first of many architectural marvels.

Most of our time in Prague was spent walking. Trams chugged through the city, but we stayed on the sidewalks, passing graffiti'd buildings and cheery storefronts that twinkled with glass and jewelry. The money there is relatively better on our wallets than the Euro is, so we feasted - in a sense - and the food was scrumptious. 

Unbeknownst to us, Prague likes Easter. Prague likes Easter so much that they bedeck their city in flowery colored streamers, blue and green and yellow; eggs hang from the branches of trees, and red-roofed tents sprout in town squares, peddling steaming food and desserts and trinkets. A stage was set up directly in front of an old church; one day, an Irish pop band performed - the next, there was an oyster shucking contest. All surrounded by the milling of hundreds of people, the natives babbling in Czech, a language stuffed to the brim with consonants - and tourists, chatting in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German. It was insane.

We spent half a day visiting Terezin, the concentration camp situated about forty minutes outside the city. Terezin, we learned, was not an extermination camp along the lines of Auschwitz, but rather a transit camp, from which people would be sent to camps of the former variety. It was - interesting. I felt, of course, as though I should feel something powerful or moving or harrowing or sad, but the experience for me was a very stoic, emotionless one. It snowed the day we were there, gently and quietly; it wasn't cold, just diamond dust sprinkling over the worn gravel and waving grass.

We concluded the weekend on Easter Sunday night, sitting in our hostel room with a chocolate Easter bunny, some popcorn, and a movie. It was quiet and content. Good job, Prague.

Also, unrelatedly, it should come as no surprise to any of us that I am now bottom of the barrel dipping into my savings living in a box when I get home working twenty eight hours a day can you spare some change sir I just spent a semester in Europe poor. But I'd say this is all pretty worth it, wouldn't you?

This weekend - travel break part deux. We begin with five days in Croatia and Bosnia, and then a quick jaunt to Barcelona where I will perhaps run into The Cheetah Girls (no I won't) before returning back here for two days, and then it's off to Italia.

My goodness.

See you in ten. :)

doolin, ireland & the cliffs of moher

The town of Doolin, Ireland only has one road – it’s a long road, sure, but if you start at one end and follow it all the way to the end, you’ve pretty much seen the entire town. All around, the Irish countryside is overwhelmingly green – it’s not called the Emerald Isle for nothing. Hills rise from the ground from one end of the horizon to the other, obstructing the point where the ground meets the sky, which is painted over with thick gray streaks of clouds. Light, weightless rain patters against the ground, pooling into brown puddles in places where the road dips. Houses are peppered across the landscape at irregular intervals, colored boxes that accent the environment. It is a refreshing change of pace for us, having been inundated with big cities for weeks now; there is no need here to cram five or six buildings all onto one corner so that they teeter like a colossal Jenga tower. It feels like stepping back in time compared to other parts of the world.

The main attractions of the town itself are the Three Pubs of Doolin. (There are actually four, but nobody talks about that last one.) There are two – McDermott’s and McGann’s – at one end of the road, and one at the other end by the name of O’Connor’s. Ask anyone you know if they’ve heard of Doolin (though chances are they probably haven’t) and if they have, they’ll probably have heard of it for its pubs, or at least for the music you find within them. Doolin is, after all, the traditional music capital of Ireland, and each night, a different motley crew of middle aged to older men and women settles down at each of the three pubs and plays music that leaps and skips through the wooden confines of the room. It all sort of sounds the same at first – a high pitched tin flute twitters and toots, while the fiddle provides a rural-sounding backbone to it all. Any sort of combination of instruments is allowed here – we saw a woman with a soccer mom haircut twanging away at a banjo, and next to her, a man with a curling white beard plays a long black traditional flute. The music they make together, though, is bright and infectious; it makes you want to get up and jig – not dance, mind you: jig.

Fun tangential fact: George Bernard Shaw, though he was from Dublin by birth, was known as a frequent visitor to Doolin – it is hard to picture him as anything but a stuffy sort of gentleman, sitting in the back corner of a pub with a quill pen and a blank book, penning Arms and the Man or some other literary masterpiece or what have you. It is altogether more likely that Shaw, given his stance that “a drunken man is happier than a sober one," - direct quote - would be sitting at the bar with an empty pint or two sitting in front of him, a sloppy drunken smile on his face as he cheered along with the rest of the patrons for the music, but I think I’d rather stick to my fantasy that he was above that sort of thing, thank you.

The reason we  came to Doolin, of course, is not the pubs, no matter how attractive they may be. We came to see The Cliffs of Moher. Seventh wonder of the world. (I made that up. But they very well could be.)

The cliffs themselves are a good six mile trek from Doolin, along the southernmost section of a well-traveled road called The Burren Way – the definite article is a new addition; up until a few decades ago, it was just Burren. Perhaps the fact that it’s now a The says something about its increasing popularity. Either way, this snakelike road leads travelers through an expanse of wide green hills, just like you'd picture Irish coutryside; they are speckled with yellow flowers and zig-zagging stone walls, many of which have tumbled down into ruin. Littered stones stick up from the ground, and it looks as though the earth is attempting to reclaim them by reaching up digits of dirt and tugging hard. 

The end of the path is marked by a small car park and stone archway through which visitors pass; there is no entrance fee to the cliffs for those who arrive on foot – if you drive in, you have to pay eight Euro for your entire car, which seems like a relatively small fee, considering the thirty-two million Euro that went into creating an environmentally sound visitors center, built directly into the side of a nearby hill. 

The cliffs themselves are absolutely massive, huge stone slabs that have settled firmly along Ireland’s southwest coast. They rise an unbelievable three hundred and ninety four feet from sea level to the cliff’s edge. Their stone faces have grown over with green moss that cascades like an emerald waterfall down into the ocean below. The sea sparkles and sways, the color of a warm, melted cerulean crayon. The ocean is remarkably clear, and even without any sun, it shines a brilliant hue. The water is a solid mass of blue, except for where it froths in white as it laps against the bottom of the cliffs, right where they hit the ocean. Channels cut through the base of the cliffs, three hundred million years ancient, vivid rivers vanishing back into the dark recesses of the cliff.

There are paths that wind up and down the cliffs, stone and brick paths carved into stairs and viewing platforms, complete with telescopes that talk to you if you insert a quarter. The paved path stops, but a muddy path pressed down by shoes at boots stretches far beyond a “Please Do Not Go Beyond This Point” sign . Everyone seems to ignore this, using the sign as a handhold to move past it, even though to move past this sign is to move past areas that are boarded off by large slabs of stone that act as fences, keeping visitors well back from the edge. The illegal footsteps of the million people who’ve visited this area in the last year along have patted down a well-worn muddy path that weaves by the cliffs themselves; in many places, the paths wander right past the edge. With all due respect to Robert Frost, forget “taking the road less traveled;” if a lot of people have been using these roads, it probably means there’s something good to see along the way.

We moved down past the sign, just a bit farther, and reached the tip of a cliff from which you can see the rest of them – they spread wide like the folds in a paper fan, and the ocean is simply everywhere. Standing there on the cliffs, you feel flight – they are old and creaky, and signs posted everywhere indicate that they could crumble at any moment – but they still evoke flight, no matter how deeply set into the ocean they are. The cliffs are that tall, that imposing, that awe-inspiring that it feels like you are about to sprout wings and coast down the face of the cliffs to the shining ocean below.

I could have stayed all day; we only had a few hours. Our shoes and pant legs were slick with mud, telltale marks of how close we came to a slippery, glory-filled demise. Forget Dublin - for all it's history, I have never seen such a charmless place - Doolin, my friends, is where it's at.

Next up: Praha. Prahabably tomorrow.

:)

amsterdam

Amsterdam has a reputation. We all know this. We have all heard of the Dam.

To emphasize, this is what happened when I would tell people I was coming to The Netherlands to study.

Brian: I'm going to The Netherlands.

Stoner Kid from High School at a Party: Where?

Brian: The Netherlands. Like.. Holland.

SKFHSAAP: Where?

Brian: ...Amsterdam.

SKFHSATP: All riiiiiight.

Brian: I'm going to The Netherlands.

A Friend of my Mother's: Where?

Brian: Kind of near Amsterdam.

AFOMM: [eyes widen] Oh. Well, you be careful.

And then when I got back...

Bonnie: So did you go to Amsterdam?

Brian: Yeah, it was great.

Bonnie: So... did you get stoned?

THAT'S MY MOTHER TALKING TO ME. COME ON, GUYS.

But I hit the streets of the Dam this weekend, and let me say it both defied and lived up to my expectations. First of all, when I pictured Amsterdam, I pictured something like New York, large and loud and with noise everywhere - tall buildings and bright lights and, let's face it, sex drugs and more sex.

Well - remember how I said Maastricht was like a blend of modern and antique, separated by a large bridge? Amsterdam was like that - bricks, bricks, bricks everywhere. The streets themselves were paved with warm rust-colored brick, and the buildings were all old and some of them crumbly, stone facades and tiny cramped gray sidewalks. It was surprisingly familiar at this point, speckled and dotted with churches decorated with puffy blue-and-red orbs of concrete, Corinthian pillars framing the windows, and with belltowers rising above us, shining gold gilt highlights on doorframes and corners. Canals criss-crossed the city, deep brown waters churning sluggishly by. 

At the same time, Amsterdam was the first city that really sounded like a city, even if when you looked at it, it didn't quite mesh with the sound. Car horns honked, crowds of people chattered like parrots roosting in trees, talking nonsensically and at an impressively loud volume. Trams of blue and white chug on lines through the streets, such new creations slithering through the brick. At night, the bricks and stones were illuminated by flashing rainbows of neon yellow, green, red. The city was like antiquity gone modern, without losing any of its antique charm.  

Collin said it best when he postulated that "Amsterdam is like Bruges's grandson. You know, it's thirteen and has all the genetics but already has all these tattoos and peircings, and they have to see each other at family reunions but, you know, it's awkward."

We arrived on Friday, and spent the first half of the day with Rob Duckers at a museum containing a replica of the gorgeous Arena Chapel in Padua. The walls are quite literally covered in art, scenes from the life of Mary and Jesus in large blocks, beautiful and tragic stories splayed out in crude but evolving art, bright colors, bordered by overwhelming cobalt blue. 

After the sun went down, a red moon had rose heavily over Amsterdam, the infamously named Red Light District glowing with buzzing crimson bulbs of all shapes and sizes. We went to the Moulin Rouge - a sex show. The front of the building featured neon red outlines of very buxom young ladies in all sorts of poses; we went through the door, black plastic tokens to be exchanged for drinks pressed into our hands. We had to clamber up a tight staircase to make it into the showroom, small stage surrounded by benches that were reminiscent of pews in a church gone horribly degenerate.

Act one: a woman danced around with a candle in certain places. Act two: a woman wrote on a man, a marker clenched in her nether region - impeccable handwriting. Act three: four members of the audience invited on stage - including our own Allie and Rachel - to dance with the performer, and then eat a banana off of her body. ("It was a really good banana," one of them said afterwards.) Act four: a man in a monk's robe gets up on stage - so does the scantily clad performer. One thing leads to another and they have sex for fifteen minutes, and then get up and leave the room to scattered applause. All this amongst bright strobe lights and deep fog. Wow.

The Red Light District, let me tell you. It was such a.. strange experience, because there were the sex workers, separated from me only by a window of glass. Their expressions were of desire, longing, even happiness, but it must have been a mask. They were bathed in the dim red light that hung above their doors. Crowds of onlookers gathered at a safe distance, chattering in languages other than Dutch: English, French, German. It was a bizarre human zoo, and it made me feel mildly uncomfortable, a knot of dehumanization growing and tugging at my insides. 

Incidentally, we had a sex worker come into one of our classes last week and talk about how it's NOT ALL BAD for sex workers, prostitutes, whatever you call them. Some of them choose it as a line of work. Some of them ENJOY the work, for that matter. 

It was still very strange.

The next day, on an educational note, we hit up the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh museum. The former was... an experience. Small, cramped, with crumbling red and yellow wallpaper. I don't know what I can say about it that hasn't been said a million times before, and more eloquently to boot. Anne Frank has become such a martyr, such a face for the millions, and being there, in the place she lived for two years, was strange, suffocating but relieving.

The Van Gogh Museum was art. Lots of it. My favorite things were the scribbles, immaculate doodles on letters and menus, pencil lines over and over creating things far more beautiful than I could ever possibly do. Such talent. You get close to a painting, and it's small dabs of color, messy little lines that, when you step back and take in the whole canvas, are insane blends of color and texture, portraits and landscapes. I never feel as though I can entirely appreciate art. But here, I came pretty close.

That night was bar-hopping, glowing green shots and sweet yellow drinks, ice clacking against the glasses, big smiles and loud laughter and hot, hot pizza and french fries late at night. It is a thudding in my head, a street populated by sex shops with instruments in the windows I couldn't possibly imagine being used by anyone, and when I try to picture it, I feel phantom pain for the people who stick those things ANYWHERE on their body. It is clamoring down dark alleys and bright streets and phallic monuments and dark canals lit by buzzing fireflies of streetlights.

"Dear Amsterdam," Greg said. "STOP IT."

Nice summary.

(Also, for any of you who may care, the above was said specifically in reference to the large population of attractive women who take to the streets of Amsterdam in comparison to the other towns in the Netherlands. Fun fact.)

This weekend is our first travel break: London, Dublin and Paris. When she went to London and Paris in Baby-Sitter's Club Super Special #15: Baby-Sitters European Vacation, Mallory Pike discovered she was related to Shakespeare. What mysteries await me? Time will tell.

carnival

You all know what Lent is, I assume. The Christian holiday in which those participating give something up - a vice, a habit, a person - for forty days and forty nights. It was the subject of a mediocre movie starring Josh Hartnett. He gave up sex or something. I don't know, it was a pretty terrible movie.

So let's talk about Lent. Let's say you're about to give something up for Lent. This is a big deal. You're going to give up your vices, give up ice cream or beer or sugar or caffeine. And you'll be all penant and everything. Whoa. Big deal. 

So some European guy, hundreds of years ago, decided he wanted to have a little party before Lent. And he invited all of his friends. And they invited all of their friends. And they invited all of their friends. And everyone brought a CD of the loudest music they could. And lots of beer.

Thus, Carnival was born.

Carnival swept its way across Europe last weekend, crashing on the castle like a tidal wave. Beware - this one's a long one.

We went to Maastricht last Friday for an academic excursion with Rob Duckers, assistant director of the castle program and generally The Man. It was another of those cities that looked as though it belonged in a different century - or at least half of it did. You cross a bridge held up by long white pillars; on one side is a quiet town, streets of stone and houses of brick. On the other side is a city evoking an industrial sort of atmosphere - not quiet modern, but more square and neutral, washed out in whites and tans. It was, overall, an interesting excursion - churches built up several stories; clambering up a spiral stone staircase, my hands rubbing against the rough blocks making up the walls, I tried to find myself back in the tenth, eleventh centuries, when these buildings were first erected. How they were built is beyond me - I picture people like ants, scurrying back and forth from stone quarries, clambering over half-built gray structures, and I simply cannot picture these spires and towers emerging from the rubble.

The sun set, and the city exploded into red and yellow and green, bars spilling out into streets, and people, people, people everywhere. We walked out of a bar where we had been having a lovely drink or three with Rob Duckers, and found ourselves awash in a sea of reckless abandon. The Duke left us to our own devices, and we immersed ourselves in Carnival.

There were six of us that night in Maastricht, bounding from bar to bar, table to table. Round one. We stand, leaning against a soaked table, cardboard coasters blending into mush in front of our eyes. Round two. We dance, pressed up against each other, neon lights flashing and fog steaming, spurting from a machine we can't see. Round three. There are balloons in rows stretching from building to building. The darkness of the city opens up hidden alleys full of revelers, clothes screaming the Carnival colors. Round four. Sticky waffles coated in chocolate. Urinals standing like warped statues in the middle of the streets. Round five. Catchy tunes in Dutch and English echo down the alleyways, the cramped space amplifying the sounds tenfold. Round six. We collapse into warm hostel beds, bright orange decor and sheets in rainbow stripes fading like the music.

"Carnival," I wrote, my handwriting large and loopy, "is perfection."

We traipsed back to Well in time for four days of dancing and parades. The Linden seemed like it exploded too. The back room, hidden like Narnia, opened wide for us, the wardrobe doors turning into a walk-in closet, and we stormed our way through it. The walls back there looked pastel, baby blue and baby pink smeared across the wood. Portraits of past Carnival Princes hung like plaques from the ceiling, in some cases only barely resembling a real human being. It was as loud back there as it was in Maastricht, sometimes louder, the sound bouncing around in the cramped space. We would leave with our ears ringing.

A horde of Emerson students marched in the day parade on Sunday, our costumes a bizarre amalgam of colored facepaint, bright boas and scarves, hats of all sorts and - in Greg's case - a sculpted plastic mask scarier than anything I've ever seen, slightly resembling current President George Bush. It was cold, and most of us weren't aptly dressed. We shivered and shimmied our way through Well, constantly moving to keep warm.

Monday night, a parade of lights trekked down the streets. Floats decked out in the scariest creations you've ever seen - papier mache lions and tigers and people (I'm not making a Wizard of Oz joke; I'm above that) with tongues painted bloodred hanging from their mouths. Each float was also overflowing with lights - some stagnant, some flashing. It was a techno dance party out in the cold, lasting for two hours of cheers and pink and green and blue and yellow and white, each color having its fifteen minutes of lashing our eyeballs. The floats themselves were laden with Dutch adolescents tipping back beers, bored expressions flitting from face to face.

Speaking of drunk Dutch adolescents, Greg and Collin and I stumbled upon a group of them standing on the bridge to the castle on Saturday night. Lights that had been illuminating the arms of the bridge were tipped into the moat like some flourescent Titanic, rear end sticking up into the air. They smelled of too much bad beer, but were all smiles when we came their way.

"We're your new best friends," they told us, trailing behind like wisps as we crossed into the castle courtyard. We didn't let them into the castle, of course, and they fled before RA Kevin Overshiner, beacon of social justice, ran out onto the grounds looking for them. They did manage to ask us for a blowjob before we parted ways - laughter with accents, if that's even possible, rang out through the VB courtyard. Greg and I raised our eyebrows at each other, not bothering to suppress our grins.

Pretty typical.

Carnival has since ended, the only remnants being shattered bits of glass and torn streamers littering the roads on Wednesday morning. It's mostly all been swept away, tumbled into the trash. At least until next year.

"Take your vitamins and have fun," a Dutch woman told me the second day of Carnival as I purchased my brightly colored effects, scarf and gloves to proclaim my Carnival pride. I don't know what vitamins had to do with it, but... fun? Yeah. This was fun.