11-5

Day 13

I'm home now (a few days later), and it'll be work to catch up on my blog.  Luckily, today is one of those days with nothing scheduled, so I should be able to get a day or two done.  Even so, this post will probably be mostly photos.

We took the bus to the Stuttgart train station, waited for a train to take us to Munich, and then got out there, waiting for the night train to Venice.  There are different qualities and features of every station I visit (and indeed, every train or bus I ride), and the big difference with Munich's is that it was entirely outdoors.  That may make for an enjoyable stay in June or August, but in November, it was pretty rough.  

We had hours to wait for our train, and there were so many people there that we had to wait for someone to get up to catch their train so we could take their seat.  We found Jeff one first, since his foot is increasingly painful (he's getting surgery on the Monday after I leave, which he's actually looking forward to, so it must really hurt all the time), and eventually, we found three seats together.  There were some young people there, drinking and being loud, and one of them dropped their beer bottle and it shattered on the cement.  The drunk kids laughed about it and got the heck out of there, leaving broken glass and a mess under their seats . . . as well as one of their bags they had somehow forgotten.  Me being me, I thought I should take the bag to the Lost & Found, but Emily said to leave it, in case they came back.

Eventually, our train came, and we boarded, and it was very unusual, with compartments with sliding doors and a single aisle running alongside.  Each car had a bathroom on each side, as well as a smaller, toilet-free bathroom with just a sink and a mirror, ostensibly for tooth-brushing and shaving (at least that's what I used it for).  There were a bunch of students on the train with us, including a group of girls also going to Venice, which would be exciting.*  

The ride was several hours long, and both Jeff and Emily wanted to sleep as soon as they could (it was already long past their bedtime at this point), so they laid out their single sheet, rough army blanket, and wafer-thin pillow, to go to sleep.  My sleeping accommodations were similar, but way up top, in an overhead compartment, which I began to suspect was intended for children, or worse, just for luggage.  It included a bar you could raise so the child could not roll out, but was up so high, it was accessible only by a long metal ladder, which dug into my socked feet as I tried to get up there.  Either I've put on a few pounds, or it was indeed intended for little kids or nubile young people, because once I climbed up there, and Emily turned out the light, I couldn't get back down.  

Emily and me (looking a lot like my own grandmother now).

I did fall asleep, but it hurt my back, and by the time the sun started to rise, I was ready to get down from there.

It's hard to get a picture of the sunrise from a moving train, apparently.

In the morning, the line for the bathroom went halfway down the hall (and the line for the second bathroom did the same), so I just used the toilet-less bathroom to comb my hair and brush my teeth, and held it the rest of the time.  Not long after the sun came up, we reached the outskirts of . . . well, Italy, I suppose (I'd gotten an alert on my phone when we left Germany and entered Austria, and again once we crossed over the Italian border), and hit the ocean.  The train went across the water, and then, islands started to appear, little islands that were entirely built upon, not the tropical islands that I'm used to seeing in movies.  

There were also many, many boats, large and small, and then, we reached the biggest of the islands, which was Venice.  You know, I hadn't realized that that's what Venice was, with hotels and businesses and churches built right on the water, and canals of ocean water going right through them.  I think I'd just assumed it was freshwater, or weirder, that the canals were man-made.  Instead, it's a city entirely built on an island that is accessible ONLY by boat and foot.*

It was early in the morning, and very few vendors were already set up to hock their wares, but there were already plenty of tourists and locals and a disturbing number of nuns walking around, and we'd been there approximately three minutes when an elderly lady fell onto the cobblestones in front of us.  And I don't know if I mentioned this in my hours and hours of blogging, but I saw a number of people fall down on this trip, more than I usually do in an entire year.  Emily ran over to help the woman up, and I thought that was pretty cool, since nobody else would.

Venice is unlike anywhere I've ever been, and I'm very glad I got to go there.  I wish I had brought my laptop, because it turned out, I had time to blog after all, once Jeff and Emily were snoring away, and I couldn't sleep.  But ah well.  There were many vendors selling shirts and hats and all sorts of souveniers, but the two biggest-sellers were masks and blown glass.  The masks were, at least according to legend, because in the old days, everyone knew everybody else, and you couldn't sneak out and have affairs without being recognized.  So, they took to wearing masks when they went out to carouse and slap bottoms, and it's become a tradition ever since.  In fact, there were a couple of shoppes that only sold high-end masks, made of papier mache, and Jeff has one on his wall he got on his first trip to Venice.  I saw some cool ones, such as a frog and a crocodile, but they were all too expensive for me.***

Everything was unusual, everything in every direction was eye-catching and exotic.

There were spider webs in every single one of these rail decorations, and I took five or six pictures of them, but you could only see them in Emily's single shot.

The glass blowing industry originated from the island of Murano, where they have factories and teach students how to do it.  They have tours every single day, and nearly every shop on the main island, and the smaller ones around it, have blown glass to sell.  They shape the glass into every conceivable design and animal, and the prices range from really cheap--they say a lot of it comes from China, and is passed off as authentic--to horrifically expensive (I saw a big block of glass with a blown-glass jellyfish inside it selling for 1500 Euros).

There were also Gelaterias, or ice cream shoppes, all over every island.  It was mind-boggling how every street would have one, a lot of them with the ice cream made right there on the premises.  That meant that each shop had a different assortment of flavors, and the prices ranged from fairly affordable to a little too expensive.  Jeff did not care.  He got gelatos twice the first day, and four times the second day (I'd often just have to decline, since I not only couldn't eat as much ice cream as him, but I was slow in eating mine, and he was always eager to move on to the next thing (I may have mentioned how I reverted to being a child on this trip, depending on Jeff and Emily as my parent-figures to communicate for me and tell me where to go, but there were also moments where Jeff would call my name and tell me to come on, like I was a child who lagged behind and was always on the verge of getting lost).

The island of Burano is famous for the houses being painted in bright colors, like something out of a children's story.

I like this picture because the lighthouse had turned on its forcefield right before I took it.

They have these water barges that take you from island to island, or just one spot of Venice to another, and people pile inside them, filling up all the seats and then standing when you can't sit.  I experienced these over and over again (and much less frequently, the water taxis and gondolas that you see in the movies), but never really got seasick (they told me that you get less motion sick if you face forward rather than facing back, and that must have worked).  One of the islands right next to Venice had lines of trees inside its walls, and that turned out to be the cemetery, an entire island dedicated to graves and crypts, and I was, of course, curious.  There was a stop there, and I wanted to get out and check it out, but Jeff wanted us to go to two islands, Murano and Burano, and we'd come back if there was still time.  He's really the organizer of this whole business, so I defer to him most of the time.

My understanding of Italian is much better than my understanding of French, which is better than my non-understanding of German, but it didn't really come in handy, except that I could say the numbers.  But a lot of folks spoke English, and tourism is the very backbone of Venice, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, understanding-wise.  

Rule of thumb: if it's a picture with vibrant colors, it was taken with Emily's camera.

The thing that's unique about Burano Island, is that all of their houses are painted in garish, bright colors.  According to the tour guides, that's because there is lots of fog there, and the inhabitants got into the tradition of painting their buildings in easily-recognizable colors, and it just stuck.  It seems to be something they keep up for appearances, and only rarely were there any buildings with faded paint or unpainted sections.  The last time Jeff's family was there, there had indeed been a bank of fog covering everything, whereas it was mostly cloudy and sunny the two days we were there.

There are no rails on the sidewalks keeping tourists from falling into the water, and though I did see a poor lady fall on her face from the cobblestones (Emily ran to help her up), I didn't see anyone go into the canal.

There is so much more drinking in Europe than I'm accustomed to, but I didn't really see any drunks or loud assholes (guess there were the guys who broke the bottle in Munich, but I'm not counting them).

I guess you know this already, but so many more people smoke in Europe than back home (especially in France and Italy), but I wonder if one of the reasons we stand out as Americans is by the fact that we're a) fatter and b) not holding cigarettes.

We rode these canal barges so much, we could feel the sway of the water even when we were on dry land.

Emily and I tried to get a photo of the sunset, but by the time we got to a good vantage point, the sun was gone.  However, the next day would more than make up for it.

Once the sun went down, it didn't really get cold.  And what's more, the activity didn't slow down: there were still thousands of tourists walking around, the stores (for the most part) were still open, and the boats kept going along the canals.

This was my photo from a bridge, looking at the buildings and full moon...

And this was Emily's photo from the exact same vantage point.

We checked into our hotel, got rid of our bags, and then went out for dinner, a few souvenirs, and another gelato.  These dudes selling sweatshirts ran around like crazy for me, trying to find the sizes I needed for my sister and mom, and it occurred to me that every one of these vendors were selling the exact same stuff (but still, they threw in two refrigerator magnets, that I'll give my sister and mom, so it was cool to feel appreciated).

*My cousin's oldest daughter is sixteen now, and I really ought to urge her to visit Europe while she's young and unattached, so she could go over and hook up with dudes who speak Italian and French.  It would be an adventure you'd look back on for the rest of your life, I'm sure. 

**Obviously, there's a train station to get to the island, but on the island itself, there are no motorized vehicles allowed, no cars, motorcycles, bicycles, or even e-scooters.  I didn't realize this until Jeff pointed it out, but it also makes sense--imagine the congestion and danger if people were doing something other than walking through these narrow passageways and alongside the un-railed docks.

***There were also Guy Fawkes masks, which was only notable because it was the Fifth of November, something I was reminded of every time I saw his face.

11-4

 Day 12

Well, Jeff still didn't feel well, so we got ourselves another day to decompress (though only MOST of a day, because we have train tickets to Munich this late afternoon, and another set to Venice tonight).  After suffering through "Severance" for me, it was only fair to let Jeff pick the entertainment today, and he picked "Detectorists."  It's a British show about two friends (Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones) who spend their free time with metal detectors, looking for buried treasure in the English countryside.  It's ostensibly a comedy, and I did laugh a time or two, but more than that, it's a show that made me feel very, very sad.  I've heard it said that a big part of British humour is enjoying watching people suffer, and that seemed to be what this show was all about.  The only time--literally, even when sick or hit with sudden diarrhea or jammed into a train compartment with sweaty strangers--I've felt sorry for myself this whole trip was while watching "Detectorists."

However, Jeff says that the show doesn't make him feel bad at all.  He sees it as two friends who manage to find a spot of hope and joy in their otherwise-miserable lives, sharing this hobby they're passionate about.  Jeff says the show makes him happy.  So there's that.

While we were watching "Detectorists," I glanced up to see (what I thought to be) a woman or girl standing in the hall peeking out at us from the wall.  Of course, nobody was there, but a minute later, when I looked over again, I thought I saw her again.  Maybe there's a story in that, maybe not.

I won't be taking my laptop to Venice with me, because it's just too bloody big.  So, this'll be the last time I use it for a while.  Ironically, if I die, then nobody will ever read this (because I'm days behind on my blog).  Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows.

Marshal and I Discuss THE GIVER

Over on the Outfield Excursions* podcast, Marshal Latham and I talk about the 2014 movie THE GIVER . . . which, oddly, I had never heard of.  It's set in an interesting black and white, utopian future where everybody has their unemotional purpose, and one old man's purpose is to know all about the time . . . Before.

I have already forgotten most of the plot of this one, but I do remember it had Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, and an infuriating Katie Holmes in it.  And Taylor Swift?  Really?  That has to be a typo.

Anyway, heck it out HERE.  I accept your apology.

*So weird, I originally typed Offield Exchursions.  Guess we should do the show more often.

11-3

Day 11

Jeff had to go to work this morning, but he slept in as late as he could, so now I have a few hours to blog and wash clothes while we wait.  I told Emily that we didn't really need to go to Italy anymore, since I'd experienced so much, and she could just make a pizza and we'd call it good.  But the tickets are already bought, and it's gonna be in one of those sleeper trains you see in Bond movies, so they apparently look forward to it too.  That's tomorrow.*

This was a day to do nothing, and I spent hours of it blogging and copying pictures off my phone.  In many ways, it was a wasted day (I didn't even go outside until the very end of the night), but because Jeff and I have been sick (did I mention that he seems to have caught the same exact cough as me?), we needed a day to hang out and eat and watch television together.  My first day, we'd put on the first episode of "Severance," but I had trouble staying awake, and so he put on the first episode of a show called "The Detectorists," which I completely slept through.

"Severance" is a totally effed-up show about a group of people who work in an office, doing something so secretive that they've agreed to have a surgical procedure done so they will forget what they did the second they leave work.  But it goes both ways (like you're ex-girlfriend): they have no memory of their lives before they started work there, and as far as they're concerned, their WHOLE LIVES are working for Luman Industries.  The show is extremely well done, but it's also extraordinarily slow-moving.

One thing I meant to mention last week but didn't is that on my first two days here in Germany, I waved at strangers, both on the train and on the street.  Finally, Jeff saw me doing it and asked why I waved.  "Just to be friendly, you know?" I said.  "Well, people don't really do that here.  No wonder that woman gave you a strange look before."  But the odd thing is, ever since he said that, I've been tempted to wave at people (old and young, but mostly little kids, especially those in costume).  And I don't know if I would've been inclined to wave at them before told me that (because it's just in my nature), or if I want to wave because he told me it's culturally inappropriate.  Funny that.

*Later, Jeff would tell me, "And you told Emily you didn't want to go to Venice."  But I had to explain, I did want to, most of all, but I felt I had already taken so much, so, so much.  When I got back, my niece showed me what one night at the New York Hotel costs, and it made me throw up a bit in my mouth.  Luckily, I had been eating applesauce, so it didn't look any different.

11-2 (Skull, Skull, Skull!)

 Day 10

This was our last day in France.  As usual, Jeff and Emily woke up insufferably early, but unlike yesterday, when they snuck out and had breakfast together without me, I woke up in time to get dressed and go with them.  The breakfast situation is bizarre, since there are tons of tourists, all chatting in three or four languages (French, English, German, and Spanish), and there's a swarm of employees running around us, trying to seat people and clear tables, as well as restock food and keep busy.  I don't know why I mentioned that--it's not at all interesting--but I'm blogging now, and trying to type whatever comes into my head.

We ran over to Disneyland as soon as it opened, grabbed a couple of final keepsakes, and what the heck, went on Phantom Manor one more time.  

We checked out of the hotel, got on a bus, took it to the train station, and took the train to Paris.  It was a madhouse at the Paris train station, and became a madder house later on that night.  It's only a city of two million people, but that probably only counts those that were riding the Metro that afternoon.

When I was coming home from my uncle's funeral last year, my niece's boyfriend told me that one day, he'd really like to go to the catacombs under Paris and see the ossuary.  To be honest, I might not have known that place existed, but sure enough, a year later, here I was, crossing off a bucket list item from his bucket list.

We had to travel from the Metro to a bus stop, then ride a crowded, impossibly-slow-moving bus through the city.  The busride through Paris was interesting because, after riding a bullet train and watching the speedometer pass 300kph, I was shocked to see us doing approximately five miles per hour, creeping along slower than the people making their way past us on scooters and bicycles.  It might have just been a busy traffic afternoon, or it might have been hell itself.  Luckily, a bunch of people got off the bus four or five minutes in, and I was able to sit down for the rest of the hour long bus ride.  Because we were going so slowly, I was able to take in both sides of the Thames when we passed over it, wondering if I was seeing that famous river or something else (I wasn’t sitting near Jeff and Emily to ask, but she told me later that it was).

Eventually, we got to the center of town (I assume it was the center, but I never knew where or when I was while in France).  We had a tour scheduled of the catacombs, but we were early and they wouldn't let us go in until the time of our appointment.  So, we sat around and watched the locals smoke until it was time for our tourist activity.

They had metal detectors and x-ray machines even for the ossuary, but I guess I understand that you're not being paranoid if people are truly out to get you.  They handed us little phone-like devices with headphones attached, to be our virtual tourguide, with various chapters marked that we were supposed to listen to when we saw the corresponding number on the walls of the underground maze.  And down, down, down the stairs we went until we were deeply underground, us and about a dozen total tourists, all speaking (and listening to) different languages.

It was cold and wet down there, and absolutely unlike anywhere you'd normally find yourself, unless you had a root cellar growing up (my grandma's house had one, and it also served as a nature sanctuary solely for spiders) that went for miles.

There was a bit of history, and a bit of spooky detail on the recordings, but you didn't really need to know the details once you got to the point where there were hundreds of bones lined up, and later, thousands piled into all sorts of different patterns.

My eight year old self would've thought this old guy was the absolute coolest.

I had, sick f**k that I am, brought my Yo-Gabba-Gabba dolls with me in my backpack, but when it came time to pose one for an Instagram photo . . . I just couldn't bear to do it.  It seemed intensely disrespectful to the dead, and indeed, to that precious bastion of modern culture that is Instagram, to take a picture of a stuffed animal with any human remains.  So instead, I took a picture by one of the supporting walls and called it good.

I did, however, consider leaving one of the stuffed animals among the bones, as some kind of offering.  But ultimately, I was worried someone would consider it a sick joke, so I took the dolls with me (and not a skull, though I certainly could have.  It astounds me that more people HAVEN'T stolen skulls*, considering they are just there, often only sitting on rows of bones, and there's no security of any kind down there.  It may be, Donald J. Trump notwithstanding, that people are just more decent than I give them credit for.

I was absolutely blown away by the sheer number of bones there--the femurs along must have numbered in the thousands, and if each one of those represented a person (or half a person, technically), we're talking the population of a whole city piled up in tight and tidy walls.  Also shocking to me was that there was no bad smell, no unpleasant odor at all, amid all that death (Jeff seemed to think that was a no-brainer, but I always equate the dead with "the funk of forty thousand years").

Yeah, that's daylight on the surface.  A chilling reminder of how far down we were.  

There were restrooms outside of the ossuary, but they were unisex.  It was the first time I'd gone in a bathroom where both men and women were in the stalls.  Not really worth mentioning, really, except I took a photo of the toilet paper dispenser, that had been "decorated" in the ossuary theme.

While we were there, Emily asked me if I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, or the Sienne River.  I had briefly seen the Sienne during the busride, but I did want to see the Eiffel Tower, if only for a minute and from a distance.  So, we got on the Metro again, took it into the part of the city where you could see the Tower, and got off.  We walked over, and you could see it for at least a mile away, but we got so close there were vendors selling miniature Towers all around us.

I suppose I ought to feel more affection for the Eiffel Tower, since it’s one of Europe’s most famous landmarks, right alongside the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Big Ben (which I was told by two different tourguides was NOT the correct name for it, and yet here I am, deliberately getting it wrong again), the Colosseum, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, and that bridge where the Spice Girls jumped their bus.  But I only know it from movies, and the fact that it’s famous for lovers young and old.

We walked down the street, surrounded by tourists, and the Tower could be seen all the way down the blocks (indeed, it had been visible from the train, long before we got to the stop).  We had about an hour to walk around and look at it, but Jeff mostly wanted to grab something to eat and to sit down.  I took a few pictures, and saw an Asian couple each taking photos of the other standing in front of it.  I went over and asked if they wanted me to take a picture of the two of them, and they reacted as though I'd asked if they needed their arses wiped.  I guess my small-town American ways are once again horribly repugnant to foreigners.  Pretty typical, actually.

There were tons of tourists there, and a big park beside the Tower, so you could have a picnic, drink some wine, wait for the lights to come on, or knock up your best gal.

The trains in Paris were increasingly full, to the point where, it was like something out of a cartoon, or a clown car.  Once we got our bags with us again, the trains were so full that we started skipping them rather than jam ourselves in like a box of crayons (the Metro has a train every two minutes), but one time, we had to climb onboard, only to have no room to stand, and I ducked out and got in the next car (which was stupid--you remember me saying I had to depend on Jeff and Emily for everything?  I didn't know where we were going or which stop was ours, or even how to ask somebody.  I texted Jeff, when I could finally get my farligging phone out of my pocket--we were that stuffed together), and he didn't text back.  At each stop, a couple of people would squeeze through the cluster and get off, but a bunch of new people would get on.  All the seats and every available space was full, to the point where I was smashed up against strangers like it was the end of the dance and "Forever Young" by Alphaville was playing, so get your PDA in while you can, kids.  We all held on to the same metal bars, and when the strain jerked, we all leaned one way or another.  I asked Jeff if Paris was always like this, and he said he'd NEVER seen the trains so full before.  So there's that.

We got to the station, tired and grouchy (a kid bumped into Jeff and he didn't even say "Oy!"), and we discovered that there had been a fire somewhere (on the tracks?  In a train?), so everything was super delayed.  And the station was so full, you couldn't sit down.  What we ended up doing was standing by a group of would-be passengers, and once someone stood up to angrily leave (to get a cab, or get on a bus, or simply to lay down on the tracks), one of us would hurry to claim their seat, then wait for another one.  I thought I'd tell you about the dude sitting next to me that kept getting up to make a phone call, so I took his bag off the floor and put it on the seat, because people would come to ask me if the seat was taken but I couldn't communicate with them, and when he'd come back he glared at me for moving his bag and the third time this happened, I seriously considered throwing his bag off the balcony or onto the nearest terminal . . . but I won't.  Eventually, they did fix the problem/put out the fire, and the trains started moving again.

I'm now on the train back to Germany.  The dude next to me is watching "Game of Thrones" on his laptop, and it's from the seasons when I was no longer watching.  I must admit I'm curious, since the whole of the cast is all together, and that didn't really happen since the first episode.  But ah well.  I saw that BULLET TRAIN movie in the summer, and what it doesn't show you is how the train shakes and twists and throws anybody walking around against the walls/seats, like it's an unpredictable carnival ride.  Having never ridden a train like that, my body kept insisting I was on a plane, and I kept wondering where my seatbelt was.  New experiences every day.

After the pain of the Paris station delays, we got to the city of Mannheim, and there was another delay.  We met an Asian lady on the train who was going to Berlin, and joy of joys, she only spoke English and not German, so Emily told her that the train about twenty minutes after ours was going to Berlin, and we helped her with her bags (she had three suitcases, for one small woman).  But our train got delayed, and eventually, the Berlin one arrived and I said, "Guys, should we make sure that lady gets on this train?"  It was good we checked, because she was waiting for us to get on ours, so she could wait twenty minutes for hers to arrive.  She got onboard before it took off, and a few minutes later, ours arrived.  It was now late at night, later than Jeff and Emily ever stay up.  But luckily, they were there to show me where to go and where to walk/hobble for the next bus, and how to pay for it, and which exit to get off on.

It was past two am when we got in, both Jeff and I coughing, and they went to bed while I blogged until 3:30 or so.  There's nothing planned for tomorrow, so we'll probably use it to rest.

*Though judging by the cranium-shaped holes in the various wall designs, a few people have made of with them over the decades.  Just not NEARLY as many as I would've guessed.  After all, some asshole had spray-painted on one of the walls (seems like Emily took a picture of a skull that had been graffitied too, though it wasn't amid the photos she sent me).