South of France

"Nous avons besion de trois billets a Aix-en-Provence aujord'hui."
"Le hotel, c'est tres loin d'ici?"
"Parlez anglais?"

We took several long trains to get from Barcelona to Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. We talked to a Canadian woman who was visiting a friend and planning on cycling around the countryside that she herself had backpacked through when she was our age. We talked to an English man on his way to house-sit for a friend who clarified that the loud group of boys behind us was speaking Catalan and who explained the Spainish rail system to us. Upon arriving in Aix, a little old Frenchman who spoke no English offered to help us find out hotel. He explained that we'd need to take a bus. So he walked us around town, up some stairs and over to the bus depot where he asked after the right bus for us and sent us on our way. After I made us get off a few stops too early, a kind man at the gas station called us a cab and the woman who pulled up in a cab commented on the size of our bags in an amused voice, happy to bring us all the way into the hotel.

And that's pretty much how the south of France went. From Aix-en-Provence to Marseilles to Avignon, people were kind and helpful. (Sometimes a little too kind- the cat-calling we had been warned about in Italy didn't rear its head until France.) As we watied at the bus station the morning after our arrival, we were offered a ride, which we declined, but later, as I watched an kindly French grandmother hitch a ride on a similar truck, I began to realize that hitchhiking is a legitimate thing here. In general, despite the heat, it was a lovely place to spend a few days.

Marseilles saw Pam and I spend a day climbing the hill to Notre Dame de la Guarde to look over the city and see the islands featured in The Count of Monte Cristo,

wander down to le Vieux Porte to eat a wonderful crepe and walk up and down the busy streets, ordering icees and posing with statues. That night, we watched French movings on TV and talked over the characters with our own interpretations of what their lines should actually be.

Aix-en-Provence is a small town, though charming. By the time I had arrived to catch up with Christine and Pam in the afternoon, we had time to walk over to the astrological clock

 (apparently those are big over here) and find a Tex-Mex place for dinner before catching one of the last buses back. We sat in the upstairs room of the tiny restaurant, talking about Cosmic and Chapel Hill and all the things we missed but would be back to soon.

Our day in Avignon was quite nice, spending the afternoon walking by street performers and actors in town for the festival.

This jazz band was Pam's favorite.

We saw the famous bridge,

 and the Palais des Paupes,

amusing ourselves by stopping for this jazz band or that acting troupe. Pam whiled away the half hour we waited for our train by taking pictures of the Fabulous Invisible Man wearing her battle-torn Sparkly Toms.

Back to Marseilles for one last evening wandering down to the concerts by the Old Port and then we had to say goodbye. We were all splitting for a few days at least- Christine to Belgium to visit the chocolate and the waffles in Brussels, me to Lyon to see a friend and visit a few churches and Pam back home to follow her miracle European adventure with a trip to DC and a return to work. Even the most pleasant of times must pass away. (Why do I always have to sound like a consoling greeting card when I'm sad?) But I have unequivocable proof that out time with Pam was amazing beyond the scope of the word- I cried as I left her to a couple hours' sleep in a hotel in Marseille. Maybe it's part of having a life that seems almost like a movie from time to time- you learn to shed tears at the appropriate scenes.

Nah, it must be because I really miss Pam.

Still, reaching beyond our halfway point in our journeys, we carried on. A quick trip over to Lyon and I left the south of France behind with its good food, good peopel and good memories.

Berlin: A Map's Story

Berlin is a city.

I mean, clearly, Berlin is a city, but I mean that Berlin is what I think of when I think of a city- fancy buildings, sprawling streets, trains, trams, buses, graffiti, advertisements, museums, churches, restaurants and shops, but mostly people. People in the train station coming and going and shopping and sitting. People on the bus, standing and talking and sweating in the unexpected heat. People in the hostel making friends, getting ready to go out, talking over ideas and projects, focusing on their computers, focusing on each other, playing games, cooking, eating, drinking, laughing, listening. People painting, people dancing, people playing songs in bands, on their own, over speakers, to themselves. People talking. People listening. People acting. People watching. People.

My story of Berlin is mostly a story of a map. I didn't notice it when we checked into our hostel in east Berlin, but there was a book of maps big enough to be a place mat sitting on the counter. After being on a train and (successfully, again, I might add) finding our way to the hostel via public transportation, I wasn't really noticing much. We spent the evening eating dinner and then chilling in the common area, where I got a couple of posts done and listened to the conversations of the groups of people going out. Even before I got my map, I spent a good couple of minutes being distracted by the map of the trains in the lounge hostel where the most available plug was. It is a thing of beauty, I think, this crazy, almost unreadable map of stations and colored lines.

Click here to go to a clearer version of the chaos.

We didn't even get a map to head back to the train station to buy our tickets to Vienna the next day. We had gotten burned a little by the price of tickets from Prague to Berlin and were determined to book ahead, so we walked back to the train station (it's really not that bad of a walk), got tickets and walked back, stopping by a market on the way back (where I bought a watermelon slice and proceeded to eat it all the way home). It wasn't until I stood at the counter finishing my watermelon that a guy from our room tore one of the maps off the stack and brought it over to show Christine where a huge flea market would be on Sunday.

I started to pour over the map the second Christine left it in my hands. Already in red were circled our hostel location, the location of the market north of us in Maurpark and a section of town southwest from us where the longest intact piece of the Berlin Wall stood.

Berlin is huge. It's hard to know where to even start in this city. I had a couple of churches in mind (I ended up going to St. Hedwig's, the Berliner Dom, Marienkirche and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, as a reference for future posts), but nothing much else other than that and that, my friends, is not the best of plans. The best of plans is to have an idea of a few things you'd like to see, leaving a lot of time open for the adventures that life can bring you but still giving structure to your day. I sat and stared at my new map for extended periods of time while Christine went up to the room intending to nap.

The guy behind the desk noticed my apparent fascination with the piece of paper in front of me and began to help. This man requires a little bit of description. He's tall and balding, with Latin American skin, a German accent and an interesting personality. The first time I encountered him I was sitting with my bare feet up on a coffee table in the lounge by reception, typing away on my computer, trying to figure a plan for the day. He walked by on his way to the smoking area in the fire escape and went to tickle my feet. I immediately put them down, because he's an adult that works at the hostel and your feet don't belong on tables, etc. He smiled at me from behind John Lennon sunglasses and told me to put my feet back up. "No, you know, it's fine. I do it at my house all the time. Now, this, this is not my house and maybe you don't want to put your feet up because they just cleaned and maybe you want to eat something here and feet are not clean, but no, it is fine, just go ahead and put your feet up. It's just that I like to meet new people, when I see people here, to avoid late night phone calls, you know. All of you, you will go out tonight and I don't expect you back before five tomorrow morning, and you will be laying here on these couches and I just like to see who will be here tomorrow morning. So," he finished, gesturing for me to put my feet back up.

He stood across from me at the bar and started to circle places. "This line is where the Berlin wall was. Basically, you have the East Berlin here, then the French, British and American sectors." He pointed them out on the map. "Now, here, this is your base in East Berlin. This place," he drew a pie piece east of our hostel, "You want to go here. It is nice shopping, you know, where everyone fancy," he did a dance that I assume signified 'fancy,' "wants to go, but also very interesting. And so, Addie Jo," he had a very intentional way of saying my name, "Next question." I hadn't asked one in the first place.

For a good fifteen minutes, he pointed out places on my map, circling and outlining locations in black marker. As Christine said, he doesn't hear a word you say, but he's got a lot to say. I left still a little overwhelmed but more prepared to deal with the mass of opportunities that is Berlin.

My good friend.

Back in the room, Christine was getting ready to go art exploring with one of the guys from the hostel. I'm good at tagging along, so we walked down the roads and ended up at this graffiti covered-old building. Now, graffiti-covered describes much of Berlin, and old building describes much of Europe, so I know I'm not being very specific, but this graffitti-covered old building wins, as far as I'm concerned. Inside, as you climb the stairs through this mess of art and writing, you come to exhibits and exhibitions, artists selling their work and blasting their music from rooms that they are clearly living in. Every once in a while, a jar or a basket would ask for a donation, but it was free, just wandering up and down the floors of what might have been an office building or an apartment building or who knows what else. I wish I had marked it on my map.

Saturday brought a train trip down to Alexanderplatz and museum island. I was constantly folding and unfolding my map, checking the train stops and the streets. Christine and I wandered through festivals and shopping centers before coming to the grassy area in front of the Berliner Dom. We spent a good quarter of an hour in the sun, listening to the bells chime less and less, dying away as the passing of the hour got farther away in time. We found a book sale, almost got run over by a bike tour (BIKES- THEY'RE EVERYWHERE IN BERLIN AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE) and split as when I went to go visit my churches.

The Berliner Dom in the sun. Quite nice.

I climbed the two hundred and some ridiculous number of stairs up to the top of the Berliner Dom to see the city from there. I listened to a band on the bridge and counted the steeples in the skyline. Some of my favorite pictures from Berlin are from here.

Reflection of one of the domes of the Dom in a nearby office building

Watching the city

Hey, look, there's a band!

I swear, this is a lion with headphones on. On the Berliner Dom.

You know, just a field. Better from above, though.

Then Christine and I adventured to a new part of town to watch performance art. Basically, there were these moveable wooden stations that had speakers on them that played repeating random noises, a sound like clicking for a while and then a sound like drops clinking against a pipe. In the discussion beforehand, one of the panelists had said that the whole experiences was like an experiment in being free. Freedom, she said, might not be something that we either have or don't have, but more like something that we practice having. And I could kinda see that. As the performers moved, they didn't move with any kind of rhythm I could here. They used and changed the space, regardless of what it seemed like they should be doing. Thought provoking for someone who spent the last eight years practicing being in time with a perpetual drumbeat. I spent a couple of minutes before and after the performance recreasing my map so the train lines showed on top, checking to see if there was a station closer to where we were.

Sunday brought a church service in Marienkirche, where there was a baptism and communion, which ended with me holding hands with two people I've never met before speaking a language I don't speak but with whom I broke bread and drank wine and it just kinda gave you hope for the Church universal.

Christine and I spent the afternoon in Maurpark at the flea market circled on my map. It is something to see. I didn't take pictures of the market itself, but there was a sizeable crowd by the stage and plenty of people walking from stall to stall, browsing and haggling, speaking French and English just as much as German.

Not entirely representative of the many people in love with this place.

As for me, I saw my first real life rat, bought a bag (not from the same place) and listened to German kids sing along to American songs. We walked over to a coffee shop and met another guy from the hostel, who's writting a book on Americans teaching English in Berlin. After a couple of hours of work on blog posts (these suckers take more research than you think), we split and walked over to a poetry reading.

Let me pause and recap. By this point in my trip in Berlin I have:
a) been to an art exhibition in an abandoned building
b) been to a performance in a converted sewage processing plant
c) been to a huge flea market
d) been to a poetry reading. A POETRY READING.

I would like to note that all of these things were entirely unplanned by me.



And then today, after a quick trip over to the Turkish place down the street, we rode the trains out to the Berlin Wall, circled in red, where I couldn't help but take pictures of the murals that dominate it now.

Then we took trains over to the Brandenburg Gate, which used to be the entrance to the city and is right by where the American embassy is. Happy Memorial Day, home!

And tourists. Gotta love the tourists.

Right down the road is the Holocaust Mahnmal, which I am unsure about.

There were, prior to this shot, French children running up and down the aisles.

And then another train ride over to the Zoo, down the road from where is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.The rest of the evening was spent walking around the old American sector of Berlin, consulting my security blanket of a map, turning it around to read street names and folding it to look at the tiny unlabeled icons representing who knows how many other features of Berlin I wouldn't get around to seeing.

Though there was a statue enjoying himself...

Dance off with skateboards.

Again, the people here really made it happen. From the four girls in our room who went out every night, tighter than the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, to the man at the desk, to the author in making, our hostel provided us with all sorts of people to meet, acquaint ourselves with and share our experience of this city. I can't say I'm sad to leave though- a skylight that lets me see a few stars at night is not enough to deter me any longer from Vienna. Wish me luck on the nine hours of a train ride to Austria tomorrow!

Our Lady of Victory

This next church is one that I actually really researched and was excited to see. It was built as a Lutheran church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, but then the Catholics won the Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War and the church was given to the Catholics by the emperor in 1620. It's named Our Lady of Victory after that victory. I thought it'd be fascinating to see if the architecture was any different between Protestant and Catholic churches at this time, and to see if the inside was laid out differently than the other churches I had looked at.

In my planning for Prague, I had placed it alongside Prague Cathedral, thinking that I would have plenty of time that day to go looking for other places. As I got more involved in directions and looking around Prague, I realized I had no idea where it was and I got a little disheartened. Maybe I wouldn't see it at all.

Christine and I were exploring, looking for a good place for dinner, when we walked by a building that caught my attention.

Clearly, my attention is easily captured.

I wonder what that is, I said aloud and Christine gave me a look that I've gotten used to seeing any time I ask her, a person who has seen this city for the exact same amount of time that I have, what something is. I bet two dollars it was a church and internally I thought, wouldn't it be funny if this was Our Lady of Victory and it was just here the whole time?

It was.

I was so delighted to know where the place was when  I went back the next day that I hadn't even bothered to check the opening times of the church. I remembered it being free to view, since so many pilgrims would come to see the Infant of Prague, a statue of baby Jesus that originally came from Spain and, legendarily, St. Teresa of Avila. I bounded up the stone steps and took a second to compose myself at the door, noticing the sign requiring that I be silent. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and...

walked right into a communion mass. It was a great opportunity for me, because I got to see the church in action, but also extraordinarily embarrasing for me, because I walked in in the middle of mass. Of course, I wasn't the only one- there were a hefty number of people with cameras around their necks chilling in the back. Since I was wearing a dress that day, I decided to fake like I was just late. I sunk down into a back pew and listened to the service (in Czech). I stood when everyone else stood and mumbled something when everyone else responded. After the service, I walked over to a side station where they had copies of a missionary magazine that I perused in order to look like less of a tourist while I waited for the crowd to clear and processed the service.

It never ceases to amaze me how people are just, you know, chilling in a church I came halfway round the world to visit.

The thing that stuck out to me most was how far away the priests were. I could see them lifting the bread and the cup for communion, but I have no idea what their faces look like. They also came down out of the chancel to give communion to the people, but went back for the end of the service. After the benediction, they precessed out the side and the congregation stuck around, greeting each other and chatting while a nun came to reset the altar after the service. It was like the priests carried out a function- they gave you your communion, they blessed you on the way out. They made the space function.

With the service over, people went feely to the altar on the right side of the church. There was a general wave of people, all waiting to stand or kneel before the Infant of Prague.

He avoided any better pictures that I could have taken.

Now, I know that I've got to stop walking in the Catholic churches like a Methodist, but I just cannot yet understand how such an altar came to be. I can tell you the story- the Infant came to be at the church after being handed down from mother to daughter as a wedding gift when the final daughter only had sons. She gave the wax statue to the church with the prayer that the statue would bless the church. Years later, after war had wracked the city and the church, a monk found the statue sitting abandoned in a pile, broken and without any hands, and heard the statue say something like, "Give me my hands and I will bless you." So the monk did and the statue has. The church has witnessed miracles and the plaques of the wall are all outpourings of thanks for the good things that have happened in people's lives since praying for the Infant to help them.

This is just one side of the altar.

Like the distant priests and the ornate buildings, the Infant of Prague is foreign to me. A church like this, a statue like that, these are things that you visit and look at and ponder, not somewhere you build a life and a fellowship. It's very different from the early church, meeting in houses to survive as a community, or even from many churches in America today, so focused on small groups and personal faith. Then again, I'm fascinated by this little baby Jesus, dressed up and enshrined. And who am I to remark at all about the validity of people's beliefs? I myself believe that a common man was the Son of God and rose from the dead over two thousand years ago, leaving a community of believers with a mission and two milleniums of an unfulfiled promise of return. If nothing else, the Infant works as a focus of devotion in the main nave of the church.

I walked around back to check out the museum and the gift shop and got distracted by the sacistry on the way back. I walked by confessional booths and an altar and found myself in a room with glass cases holding mini-figurines of other statues of the Infant Jesus around the world. There are so many, in so many different styles, from all over the place. I think I was in front of the South American cabinet when a monk approached me. He asked if I was from Brazil, which absolutely surprised me, but which I will take as a compliment. After explaining that I was from the US, he proceeded to tell me all about visiting Boston and New York and I think DC, though I'm rather unsure about the whole conversation. Then he talked about the church's mission in the Central African Republic, taking me over to the pictures he had on the wall. "I leave June 16th. You come?"

"Oh. no, I am traveling. I can't be there on June 16th."

"No, no, Americans, you are elastic. You come, June 16th. See, here, I built this. These people, they know me. You will be known here, you will be famous here. Not like in America. Well, I don't know, you may be famous in America. But here, you will be noticed."

I laughed and thanked him and told him not this time. "Ah, if you are sure. Still, you can tell people that you were invited to go. An invitation. That is something. Good-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye," he said, waving and walking back to the case of the mini-statues.

I walked out of the church, feeling like I should stop and at least cross myself before walking past the Infant, but the room was crowded. I thumbed through the pages of the missionary magazine I still held in my hands. Water for people who need it. Gifts to the world around. An invitation. Something indeed.

Prague

So I'm not as good at this as I thought I'd be. I have a journal and that's got entries for most days in it, but the blogging is a little different in that it has to be something people might actually want to read. Following that idea, the blog from Prague is going to come at you in 5 parts. Part 1: arrival and events, the general or-somethings of life; part 2: Prague Cathedral and St. George's Basilica, both of which are in Prague Castle; part 3: St. Nicholas Church in Lesser Town (because there's two St. Nicholas Churches in Prague- how is that fair?); part 4: Our Lady of Victory, featuring the Infant of Prague; part 5: The Jewish Quarter, Old-New Synagogue, Pinkas Synagogue and old Jewish Graveyard. For your reading convenience, parts 2-5 are going to have their own separate posts, so that you can skip around of skip them entirely, should you so choose. There will also be pictures. I just have to pick which ones.

Thus, without any further ado, Part the First: Arrival and events.

Firstly, Toronto airport is the most improved airport in the world, has free wi-fi and a little play area involving bronze tigers, and announces everything in French, English and the language of the airline you're taking, which, in our case, was German. Also, Canada has money of its own that is neither dollars nor euros, so we didn't buy any of the wonderful things that the duty-free station had to offer.

The plane was nice and even though Christine and I didn't have seats beside each other, the lady sitting beside me switched seats with Christine so we could be together, which was kind. The flight was long but not too long, and the screens had this awesome, constantly updating map of where we were and how long it would take us to get to Dusseldorf, which was exciting. I watched about half of that movie with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman because the girl in the seat diagonally in front of me was watching it. I read about half of Paper Towns by John Green and fell asleep to the opera station, giving Christine the opportunity to steal and read about a third of Paper Towns.

With another short flight from Dusseldorf to Prague, I had gained a good view of the city from the air (also a good view of the wind turbines- congrats on the renewable energy source, Europe!), an airplane blanket and an airplane pastry, both of which are still hidden away in my bags. Here's the part of the story where I become really proud of Christine's and my senses of direction. We found a transportation map of Prague, an ATM, the bus to the metro, the right metro and the right metro stop and the way to our hostel (even though we walked past it and had to turn around once) with the assistance of Christine's iPod and the difficult-to-locate Prague street signs (hint-they're on the walls of the buildings). Check-in was easy and after updating our respective families of our still-alive status, we took a nap... for eight hours.

This kinda put a damper on the intention to visit the castle that afternoon, so we adventured out to get food and wander in a totally safe way. On a recommendation from two people in the next room over in our hostel, we headed toward the Charles bridge to find food, but were accosted by a small man outside a fancy restaurant and ended up eating there instead. Good, but pricey. Also, the Czech currency are Czech crowns, about 16 of which equal a dollar. It used to be about 50 crowns to the dollar maybe ten years ago. I learned this thanks to our economics-studying tour guide from Wednesday night.

We wandered across the bridge listening to the man playing the recorder by the gate before making it to the Old Town square by the astrological clock. We took pictures and sat around and wandered back. 

As much as I hate light pollution, some things are pretty at night. Statue and Tyn Church.

The next morning we climbed the hill by our hostel to the castle, which still had a wonderful view of the city, even if it wasn't the bell tower of the cathedral. We moseyed around the castle and its grounds, looking at the cathedral, the palace where the Defenestration of Prague happened (I know you shouldn't be happy because of the death of someone, but defenestrate is such a wonderful word and it wouldn't have entered my life without the Defenestration of Prague, so thank you, 17th century man being thrown out a window to begin the Thirty Years' War) and St. George's Basilica.

It's much more impressive in person, I think. But so pretty!

DEFENESTRATE!

That afternoon I went wandering and found a park by the river where there were families picnicing, people biking and people walking.

Vltava river, looking back at the Lesser Town side of things.

As with any good park, there were pretty statues, my favorite of which was hidden in the trees...

...and as with any interesting place, there were creepy post-modern statues. Faceless babies. Huge, creepy, faceless babies. Even though I had been warned by Cracked.com (the faceless babies had made number nine on the 14 Most Unintentionally Terrifying Statues in World list), I was unprepared for their barcoded heads and huge, crawling bodies. Seriously, they're taller than me, just crawling around.

You think it's cute...

but then you see this. (Tourists are included for scale.)

On the cheerier side of the park, a family lit a sparkler, put it on a cake and gave it to the children to carrying to one of the women at the picnic, singing Happy Birthday in a language I didn't understand, but I'm going to guess was Czech or Russian or some other Slavic language. That's the wonderful thing about an international city- there are so many languages floating around. I heard snippets of French followed by a barrage of German all amongst the background of Czech and the all-too-frequent English. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon, people watching in a park in the summer.

Day 3 in Prague was taken up with St. Nicholas Church and Our Lady of Victory in the morning, a late lunch on the square which took on quite a different personality by daylight, teeming with people, tents and a stage, a long afternoon in the Jewish quarter and an interesting evening on a guided tour. So, to give you the last flavor of Prague, I bring you thoughts from our guided tour.

There's a statue of Freud hanging off a building which I never would have noticed unless our guide pointed it our. The Tyn Church right off of the main square has two intimidating towers, and being a gothic church, the whole effect is rather imposing. Our guide said it looked like something from Lord of the Rings, like Cirith Ungol or Minas Morgul, which is a geek win for sure. I didn't get a chance to check out the inside of the Tyn Church, but at least I have a story to associate with it. The Lord of the Rings reference also probably explains our guide's wish to travel in New Zealand and Australia. Good choice, tour guide, good choice.

Along the way, we talked about the unfortunate multitude of tourists, especially Japanese tourists with their cameras and substantial memory cards, St. Patrick's Day, different traditions on Easter and traveling around world. Our tour guide was finishing his masters in economics, apparently for free because public school is free in the Czech republic, after earning his bachelors in three years and finishing the masters in one and a half. He really wants to travel, though, and didn't sound super excited about an internship involving economics, his inevitable future.

You see a lot of people in Prague. Well, I guess you see a lot of people in any big city, but I was fascinated by some characters here. The man playing the recorder on the bridge the first night, sitting outside the tower door playing haunting melodies that belonged to no song at all, only to be replaced during the day by an unfortunate soul in red and yellow garb and armor, standing watch over the musician's spot with his fake sword.

The guards inside the castle, marching through crowded plazas in full uniform, sunglasses guarding against the summer morning. The woman sitting watch in the synagogue, perched over the main room, observing the tourists from a hall covered in remembrances of unfortunate times come to pass. Our tour guide, content in his work but ready to see more of the world. Finally, this poor man who walked to the back of the train, hoping to get a room by himself, ending up with the two of us and our backpacks on a four hour ride to Berlin (another public transportation success, I might add). He's stuck watching the beautiful scenes go by outside our window, accompanied by the melody of my typing. I feel a little bad, especially since he helped me put my pack up on the rack. But life is full of eventual inconveniences. There are worse things in the world.