Paris!

This morning we packed up and left Brussels. We took a bus over to the coast to visit Bruges for the morning, getting a great walking tour from someone who's name I can't recall without my notes. He gave us a good succinct history of Bruges: a former trading city in the middle of the Hanseatic League that got wealthy because of its centrally-located port. By the 19th century the industrial revolution hit, but the local archbishop told Bruges they were not allowed to industrialize. This left the city without any industry, and quickly turned them into a poor, backwards place. However, no factories to build meant no reason to tear down buildings. This means that the entire medieval city of Bruges still stands today. We were shown a 16th century map of the city, which could still be used to navigate through the streets.

So, the result of all this is an incredibly quaint city that history passed by. The problem is, there still is no industry in Bruges. Their primary source of income is tourism, resulting in a town of 100,000 people with 4 million visitors per year. There were tour groups everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Always groups of 10-20 people huddled around one tour guide. We started at the same time as four other groups, and all through the city we were always jostling for position with the other people. So, the catch-22 here is that such a beautiful and quaint city has remained too beautiful and quaint, and has thus lost its charm by having 80% of the people in the city simply being tourists. My dad keeps joking about the places I'm visiting looking like Universal Studios, but this one felt like I actually was in Orlando. Belgium may as well buy the town, remove the residents, and turn the whole thing into a museum like Williamsburg VA. It's hard to explain the difference. I liked Williamsburg, but when I went there I knew I was going to a "historical theme park" if you will. In Bruges, it's like it is still trying to be a city, but failing (in my own biased opinion).

After the nice tour, we went back towards the entrance of town and everyone split up to eat lunch. I skipped lunch and went to the Church of Our Lady, which houses a beautiful sculpture of Mary of Nazareth and the baby Jesus. This famous piece of art was the only sculpture of Michelangelo to leave Italy during his lifetime, and one of the few works of his to make it so far north. The recent movie Monuments Men drew my attention to this work, which was looted by Nazi soldiers as they fled Bruges near the end of World War II, and fortunately was later recovered and sent back to the church. It cost 2 Euros to get into the church and see the sculpture, but it was well worth the money and the lack of lunch.

After Bruges we hopped on the bus and drove to our final destination for this study tour- Paris. We are at the Ibis hotel in Bercy, a newer part of the city in the southeastern 12th district. We were introduced to our Paris coordinator, Fatima, who gave us a long-winded introduction on how to use the subway. Seriously long winded, verging on an hour. We were then given an hour to do dinner on our own. I made the mile walk across the Seine to the Avenue de France, to enjoy a sandwich at Pret A Manger, the British sandwich maker Katherine and I fell in love with on our honeymoon. They have since expanded beyond London, and now have a few locations in Paris (and New York, and Boston, and Chicago, and D.C.). I had a great fresh sandwich, chips, and a bottle of water for 7 Euros. That's hard to beat here.

For the final activity of the day we wanted to get a real taste of Paris. So we met as a group and took the metro to the Marseilles station, then got off and walked down to the public square at the end of the Champs-Elysees. We took a bunch of pictures of the square (where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded), of the boulevard with the Arc de Triomph at the end, and of the Eiffel Tower from afar. Then we walked across the river to the other bank, where we saw a massive procession of police go by. They stopped and we asked what they were about- they told us it was a motorcade for the President of France to go by. We stopped on the Pont Alexandre III bridge and watched as the Eiffel Tower first lit up, as it was after sundown, and then as it performed its hourly 5 minute twinkling light show at 10pm. Then we headed back to the hotel, having gotten a little taste of Paris. Tomorrow we go for a walking tour of Montmarte quarter and a boat tour of the Seine.

Technical difficulties

This is the third time I have started this post. I had the one from two days ago waiting for some time now, unable to publish with our lousy internet in Brussels. Now in Paris, it seems the internet is finally at least serviceable, if not great. That said, all of my pictures are on my phone, which I just killed Skyping with Katherine. So I will write these two blog posts without any pictures and edit them in later. [edit: pictures uploaded]

Yesterday was our last full day in Brussels. We spent the day down in the city center, under a massive triumphal arch. It was ordered by King Leopold II in 1880 to commemorate Belgium's 50th anniversary of independence. Apparently what was built was crap, so the King had it demolished right after the celebration and work begun on a new one. This second arch had one goal- be bigger than Paris' Arc de Triomph. Finally completed in 1905, it succeeded in that regard. It definitely is an imposing sight from a long ways around.

Built around the arch were four massive exhibit halls. One of these was designated for Belgium's military history museum, which was our first destination of the morning. It is not laid out like any museum I have been to before. Our tour guide, Dirk, said Belgian tradition was to display every last artifact they have in public view, so the museum was row after row of glass cases. There were enough muskets, bayonets, canteens and medals there to supply an army today. The only thing saving the exhibition from becoming too overwhelming was the fact that Belgium had less than a century of existence when the museum was opened in 1905.

Adjacent was another wing featuring Belgium in World War I. We were unable to see this section as it is currently closed for renovations. It will re-open later this summer to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War. So we skipped ahead to their newest section, a more familiar Smithsonian-style presentation on World War II. This was very well done, and included a lot of important relics from the war to help tell the story. In addition, Dirk (a retired Air Force officer) led us the whole way, stopping to set the stage and provide detailed information.

Finally, we went into one more wing and saw an aerial collection to rival the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. Devoted to the cold war, the collection includes everything from an F-16 to French and German aircraft, and a Russian Mig-23 and Hind attack chopper. The Mig had an interesting story. At some point in the late 1980s a Russian fighter plane malfunctioned and lost engines. The pilot was ejected, but the plane actually re-stabilized after he was out, and resumed bearing and heading west over Germany. Eventually it reached Belgian airspace, and fighters were sent up to intercept it. Finding no pilot in the cockpit, the air force did not know what to do. There was no protocol for how to react to an unoccupied plane! They ended up doing nothing, and sadly the plane crashed on a house in a Belgian town, killing a girl. It was the only "attack" on Belgium during the cold war, and after the fall of the Soviet Union the Ukraine government offered the Mig that is now on display in the museum as a gift to the people of Belgium in response to that incident.

One other interesting story from the museum that I did not know about related to the V2 rockets that Germany as launching at London near the end of WWII. These rockets were wildly inaccurate, but the point of them was to simply rain destruction wherever they landed, and they were nigh on impossible to stop. The explosion they provided was so large that any aircraft close enough to shoot them down ended up enveloped in the blast. Pilots began to get creative, and took to flying alongside the bombs and using the wings of their aircraft to nudge the wings on the rocket to send it off course. This worked for awhile, until the Germans found out and began putting trigger devices on the wings. Then the airplanes would try to fly directly ahead of the rockets and create enough turbulence through maneuvering to again knock them off course. The real breakthrough came in the form of proximity missiles, which the United States developed near the end of the war (I did not know about this), so that ground anti-air guns could shoot at the V2 and only need to come close, rather than score a direct hit. By the end of the war, the American units put in charge of defending Belgium were experience a 100% intercept rate against these attacks.

By early afternoon everyone but me had had just about enough history. So we took a little break for lunch, and everyone scattered to one of the few food places in the neighborhood. I stopped at a little place that has pre-made refrigerated food, and found Sasha and Barb already inside. You pick out what you want from the cooler, then take it home with you or stay there and they will heat it up and serve it to you in a small dining area in the back. So I was able to have some spaghetti for lunch for only a couple Euros.

After lunch we went back to the Arch. In the exhibition hall across the way from the military history museum is Autoworld, a museum devoted to all things cars. This was less interesting to me, but more up the alley of much of the rest of our group. We only spent an hour here, but there were a few neat sights and some cool historic vehicles on display.

Afterwards we headed back to our neighborhood with the rest of the evening free. We got off the subway near a market district so everyone who wanted to could buy some chocolates. I wandered around trying to find an H&M that my phone insisted was somewhere it wasn't, when I stumbled upon a used bookstore connected to an antique map store. I popped in and perused the collection for awhile. Eventually the old man running the place saw I was looking rather seriously, and came to help. I ended up picking up a map of Belgium and Holland from the early 19th century, after the Netherlands had gained their independence but before Belgium got hers (she belonged to the Dutch for those 15 years).

I was going to slum it on my own back at the hotel, but one of the girls came and asked me to go out with their group. So I joined about 6 others and we went to a little Italian cafe not far from the hotel. I had lasagna for dinner, and just realized now that means I had Italian twice in one day. After returning to relax for a little bit, I joined Sasha and Barb and about a third of the students in another trek down to the town hall to look at everything lit up once more (many of them hadn't been down at night yet). And that more or less ended our Brussels experience.

Enjoying Belgium

We are wrapping up our final night in Brussels today. Tomorrow will be another check-out day, followed by a day trip to Bruges and then our longest trek- a bus ride to Paris. 

These two full days in Brussels have been a change of pace from the rest of the trip. Fewer places to visit and quicker transport have made for more free time to relax and enjoy this international city. I'm finding that most people here speak English, but only a very limited version. After seeing everyone in Germany speak rock solid English, even in the little towns, I am surprised that the EU capital would be the place we see the least. Then again  , in a tri-lingual city where English is #4, the local residents have their hands full. For me, it has given me a chance to practice my French in a more laid-back environment than Paris will be. 

Yesterday morning we went to a chocolate museum and factory. It was okay, but nothing special. The museum was a self-guided tour smaller than the Anne Frank House, which wasn't overly inspiring. The factory was crowding into a room to watch a gentleman show us how he makes Belgian pralines. The man really enjoyed his work, I can give him that, but we had around 35 people crammed into a space the size of my kitchen. The highlight here was a little girl who kept calling the chocolate "icky". 

After that we jumped on the subway and headed out to the last stop on the line going northwest. This was to visit the site of the 1958 world's fair and it's main attraction, the Atomium. This is a structure representing a scale model of an iron molecule at a ratio of like 9 billion to one. It has nine different pods with elevators, stairs and escalators linking them to one another, with exhibits inside. Inside the top pod is an overpriced restaurant and an observation deck with panoramic views of Brussels. It was an impressive building, but other than the view it afforded of the city, most of it can be appreciated without needing to spend the €12 to get inside. 

We grabbed some food at the (again overpriced) cafe at the base of the Atomium, and then went next door to mini-Europe. This is a small park where replicas of hundreds of buildings all across Europe have been painstakingly created on a model scale. It was pretty interesting, although we have actually visited many of them on this trip!

We made it back to the hotel by 6 or 7. The whole group had not had an outing together in some time, so we gathered together in the evening and all went across town to a bar that Paulo recommended. It was a nice place, but expensive, so nobody wanted to eat there. We stayed an hour or two for drinks, then the group started to break off into smaller groups that went to do their own thing for the evening. I joined some of the others for dinner at a next-door fry stand. The Belgians sure are proud of their fries, but from what I've found they're nothing special, and none of their 15 different sauces compares to what Amsterdam has to offer. Sorry Belgium, don't mean to hate. 

We rode the bus back to the hotel district and went to a sports bar. There we met a whole group of students studying here from Clemson University in South Carolina. They were nice at first, but apparently rather standoffish, so we didn't interact with them for long. After a few more people went back to the hotel, several of us went back down to the town square, having heard that it's neat to see all lit up at night. We weren't disappointed. 

It was getting pretty late, but we decided to check out one more place, a local club that some people had recommended. After meeting a couple local college students named Juan and "Big Co," they agreed to show us how to get down to the bar (delirium) and came with us. Turns out it was in a pretty seedy neighborhood, but the place was packed. We stayed for just a little bit and talked to the Belgians, and I had a rather lengthy conversation with an intoxicated Russian named Constantine who is studying IT in Brussels and wants to get really good grades so he can one day visit canada. We got everyone safely back to bed by 2. 

Brussels

Today I am tired and did not want to get out of bed. I got 8 hours' sleep for the first time on this trip, and my body has rewarded me with a backache and an overall sluggishness. I'm excited for everything we are going to see over this final week of the trip, but physically- ugh. 

Yesterday we left Germany behind us. We left Trier at 7:30 and drove through Luxembourg on our way to Belgium. All we got to see if the city of Luxembourg itself were the buildings in the distance, as well as a traffic jam that extended outwards to Germany in the east and Belgium in the west (morning commuters heading into the city). 

By 11am we had reached the capital of Belgium (and the capital of Europe as the locals like to say, since the EU is housed here. We were able to check in early and given some free time to get our bearings and grab lunch. I went with a group to a gourmet hamburger place across the square. It was the first hamburger I've had in weeks. 

After lunch we went me our new coordinator, Paolo the Italian. He took us on the subway to the city center where we went to the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU. While it was neat to be there, the visit was a letdown. All we got was a 90 minute lecture in a classroom by a long-winded Danish journalist on the structure of the commission. We already had one classroom lecture on the EU back in Osnabrück, and the German professor there was far more captivating. Here the room was too warm and it felt like someone was sucking the air out, making everyone having to fight to stay awake, myself included. Too bad, since the subject was genuinely interesting. The biggest upside was being able to use their guest wifi network. With speeds approximately 40 times faster than any we have yet seen in Europe, my phone was able to upload the entire backlog of photos that had been waiting to post to the cloud. 

After the Commission we took the metro back to the hotel and met Jos, a local retired Brusseler, who gave us a very thorough walking tour of the city. We learned all about the Belgian people, their disdain for conformity and authority and how it reflects in their architecture and culture. All of the buildings in town square are built in a different architectural style, for instance. He taught us that there is no such language as Flemish (news to me), but that Flemish is just the word for Belgians who speak Dutch. It's a slightly different dialect, and they don't have the "Dutch throat disease" with all the phlegmy syllables, but the language is the same. We also learned that of the 1.1 millions inhabitants of Brussels, fully 60% of them are foreign. 

Jos walked us through town, from the town square up to the central station, to the upper city (I think he said 70 meters higher as the city is built on a hill) to a massive palace and square built in the 18th century when Belgium was Austrian-owned. We finished the tour by seeing the famous Mannekin Pis statue. Jos said this is an American icon and he's not sure why. To them it's just a local fountain like any other, and other tourists want to see different things. The Chinese, for example, run immediately to the house where Karl Marx wrote his communist manifesto to get their picture taken by it. 

I had a light dinner with a few others at a local fry stand. The Belgians are particularly fond of French fries, having claimed to invent them. Then I was able to stay in for the evening. I finished reading Lord if the Flies and went to sleep. And, as I said, am rewarded this morning by feeling like I can't move. That'll teach me!

Trier

Today was our final day in beautiful Germany. Compared to the ragged schedule we have been running, today was almost a day off. 

That doesn't mean we were allowed to sleep in, of course. Checkout time at the hotel was 8:30. We broke our day in bright and early by loading the bus, then immediately hiking across town and to the top of the hill overlooking the river, for a 9am tour of Reichsburg Cochem. This is another thousand year old castle, although very little of the actual structure remains. Unlike Burg Eltz, Cochem was captured and razed by the French in the 17th century. Our tour guide says the castle has a "special rate" for French tourists who come visit. 

After two centuries as a ruin, a wealthy German merchant purchased the ruin in the mid-19th century with the aim to rebuild. The king at the time, Kaiser Wilhelm, told the new owner he could do what he liked with the castle, so long as the exterior facade was recreated to the original appearance. So today Cochem Castle remains a medieval castle on a hill with a renaissance palace inside. The owner built this restoration as a gift for his wife, whom he loved very much. Unfortunately for him, he left her in Berlin while the renovations were underway. While apart, she fell in love with another man, abandoned her husband and 3 children, got a divorce (scandal!) and had 9 more kids with her new husband. 

The tour was nice. Afterward, we walked back down the hill and hopped on the bus for a scenic drive along the river to Beenkastel-Kues, another tiny quaint ancient German town on the river with a castle overlooking from the hill. We had two hours to explore the town and eat lunch (only our third scheduled lunch break this whole time!), followed by a boat tour down the Mosel to view the adorable towns, vineyards on the steep slopes, and enjoy the river. It was cool and rainy by this point in the day, so we spent most of the two hour tour inside the cabin chatting with one another. 

One of the most interesting sights was the construction of simply massive pylons approaching the river from one of the cliffs above. It looks as though the state is building a highway through the area, and when it came to the Mosel river 
with its steep valley, decided to just simply go right over the top. The phrase from Hitchhiker's Guide game to mind, about how "inrergalactic bypasses have to be built somewhere." Regardless, it looks like it will be quite the engineering feat. I look forward to finding some information out about the project. 

Also seen here: 

The boat tour ended a little before 4. We took an hour drive down to Trier, Germany's oldest city right on the Luxemburg border (sadly we won't be going to see Lux). Built around 2500BC, Trier still has some amazing Roman relics, including a portion of the main gate to the city. We checked into the hotel and had the rest of the evening free. I walked the historic route around the city to see all of the ruins before carefully choosing my dinner from the Esso gas station next to the hotel. It's the earliest I have turned in this whole excursion, and even after an hour of chatting within Katherine and writing up two blog posts, I will still get to bed by midnight. Tomorrow: onward to another new adventure!

Random musings on Germany

As we spend our final day in Germany, I have some thoughts that I've collected during our weeklong stay. 

-We have visited cities in four different federal districts (Neidersachsen, Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen and Hamburg), and found a wide range of cultures within them. As a student of history this should not surprise me, but it did. Each of the fourteen states was an independent country until German unification in the 1880s. So as a "country" they are relatively new. The United States had vastly different cultures between regions prior to the civil war, and it took that internal conflict to unify us. My guess is that our homogenized view of one distinct Germany is fueled by the Second World War, which coalesced Germans of all types into one terrifying image of national socialists and SS officers. Being able to travel to so many regions (Bavaria and Berlin are the only two big ones we are missing) has really given me a personal feel for how rich and diverse the country actually is. 

-Drivers have to be nuts here. Sure, there are major autobahns between big cities. But watching tour busses and semis navigate cobblestone streets designed a thousand years ago is simply terrifying. In addition, there seems to be very little rhyme or reason to things. Cars park on the street in two-lane roads resulting in games of chicken for who gets the only remaining lane. Vehicles park on sidewalks, drive on sidewalks, drive down paths that look like they're built for dogs instead of cars. Two-lane highways are so narrow that when two vehicles pass they are so close that both shudder violently. Does either slow down though? No way! And yet I have only seen one traffic jam and no accidents. There are without a doubt many fewer cars than in any equivalent city in the U.S.

-Bicycles are still relevant. In Amsterdam we saw bicycles everywhere. Okay, they're a city known for bicycling, where there isn't any room for cars on the narrow canal streets. But every city in Germany is filled with bicyclists as well. Not so many as Amsterdam, but enough to see people of all walks of life on bikes in every city, town, and hamlet. People biking to work. People biking on their phones. People biking while smoking. People biking with kids on the handlebars.

-Public transit is amazing. Intra-city is great, but I am mostly impressed by the extensive light rail system that goes nearly everywhere. I haven't checked the exact mileage yet, but when we used it to travel to Bremen and Hamburg last weekend, it was analogous to taking day trips to Chicago and Minneapolis. The discount weekend pass made it cost €9 per person for both trips combined. 

-No Walmarts

-There is a lot that actually reminds me of the 1990s in the U.S.  Cell phones are much less common. Pay phones are still everywhere on the streets. Smoking is permitted nearly everywhere (trains are the only places I've seen it forbidden). Newspapers are more prevalent. Everyone uses cash and pays bills together in restaurants. And of course there is a lot of 90s music playing on the radio. 

-People have been universally friendly to me. I realize that I have been making every effort to speak to them in their own language, and successfully had at least 4 all-German (rudimentary) conversations, but even so I have not had one bad experience. I just cannot imagine that being the case for a German visiting our country, even if he speaks perfect English. 

Cologne, Burg Eltz, and Cochem

Sven at Cologne Cathedral

After checking out bright and early this morning, we said goodbye to Osnabrück and boarded a charter bus headed south. Our first stop was on the Rhine River. Cologne (or Köln as the Germans call it) was founded as a Roman outpost in the first century AD. Our bus pulled right into the downtown area where we disembarked and met our new host, Sven, who will travel with us for the next few days.





Sven took us on a brief walking tour of the old city. We saw the town hall, which is the oldest government building still in use in Europe. We were told a story about the medieval struggle between the church
and the city government. One day the bishop invited the mayor to come and discuss their differences, but was instead locked in a room with a lion. Having suspected a trap, the mayor brought a knife and was able to slay the beast. This made the mayor a hero among the people, shifting the balance of power from the church to the city.

Cologne city hall

Other highlights on the tour included the old town square, a bridge covered in padlocks, a monument to the holocaust, and the main attraction; the city cathedral. Begun in 1248, this massive building was not completed until 1880, whereupon renovations immediately began and continue to this day. Sven told us

that the locals have a saying that the cathedral will be finished only when the apocalypse arrives. Also, because it took over 600 years to build, the final portion of the Cologne cathedral was actually constructed using steel. This fact saved it from the allied air raids in World War II, when 96% of the city was destroyed and 70 bombs fell on the church itself.

Cologne Cathedral

After a quick bite, we were on the road again, heading yet further south, this time to Münstermaifeld to visit the ancient castle of Burg Eltz. This castle was built in the late 12th century by the Eltz family. It is notable for being one of the few castles of the era to not only survive intact (it was attacked only once, in the 14th century), but still be owned by the same family, now in their 33rd generation.

Burg Eltz courtyard

It was a 1.2km hike from the parking lot down to the castle on a beautiful hiking path through the woods. Because the Burg is built on a small hill in a valley surrounded by larger hills, the walk in was

all downhill. We had a guided tour which gave us a good sampling of the rooms and life inside the castle through the many centuries it was inhabited. In fact, the family still comes back nearly every Friday
from their home in Frankfurt to spend the weekend at the castle. Our tour guide, Felix, was a little nervous because this was his first tour in English. He needn't have worried though, because he did a very nice
job and handled everyone's questions with ease. Following the tour, it was time to climb back up the mountain. We took the road this time, which was much steeper but offered spectacular views of the castle from above. After stopping for some pictures it was back to the bus and on to Cochem.

In Cochem, a tiny town of 5,000 people, we stopped for our last visit in this busy day: a local winery. The Weingut Rademacher has been family-owned and run since 1882. The owner, Hermann, gave us a personal tour which was very thorough. He started behind the house with the vineyards, which are built into the face of a very steep hill lining the river Mosel. There are many wineries in the Mosel region, around one-third of which are built into hills, which is supposed to provide better growing conditions resulting in better tasting grapes. Hermann walked us through the entire process, from the methods used to properly plant the vines, to their cultivation, their storage, fermentation, bottling, and labeling. The wine is kept in barrels in a stone cellar under the house as well as in a rock cellar cut into the face of the mountain. 

We also learned some of the marketing side of the business that faces a small family-owned winery. In the Rademacher case, they produce 20,000 bottles of wine per year, and sell directly to local consumers. They do not sell to grocers or distributers. Although they have the land available to add a good bit more capacity to their production of wine, the family has found that increasing their market in the past has led to greater uncertainty in demand as well as losing some control over their operations to the demands of their distributors. Both of these combined to reduce the actual profit margin of the company while leading to more headaches. They have decided to remain small and exclusive.

After the tour we had a wine tasting, which allowed us to sample up to ten different flavors of the specialties offered. We then checked into our hotel for the night and set off on our own to explore Cochem, get some dinner, and some rest.

Cochem on the Mosel (different castle)