A hazy shade of europe

No pics, just a quick update.

I’ve got about an hour before it is worth heading down to the train station to get a train to frankfurt to wait around for an hour or two before I can check in my luggage before I can wait for four hours to get on a plane to sit for 14 hours to get to Singapore to wait for an hour and a half to get on a plane to melbourne for eight hours to take an hour to get through customs to wait for an hour to get a plane back to Canberra…

And see the smiling faces of my nieces. The last bit is good. The rest is kind of horrorfying.

This morning I spent wandering around Meinz. My first stop was at the temple of Isis and Matri Magna (I won’t swear I have that right!). That was small, but actually pretty cool. It’s in- under – a little shopping arcade (they discovered it while building the arcade. It’s about…oh, ok, pics.

Maybe four or five meters a side? The temple is just foundations, after the nasty teutons destroyed it, and was put there by a roman legion who was stationed in the area.

I entered from the mall (the only way) and was greeted by a German speaking lady. We quickly confirmed that neither of us understood the other, but a gentleman was there who, as it turned out, was a guide and an expert who would give each visitor a quick history of the place. He took me down for a 10 minute solo guided tour/history chat and was extremely friendly and helpful. He told me all about them and the history.

Isis and Matri Magna are both healing/rebirth Goddesses – one originally egyptian the other we weren’t too clear on – Asia minor, so turkey, probably. The soldiers quite liked these dieties as one of their main shticks was healing wounded men.

Went from there to the lands museum, which was mostly an art  gallery. Nothing too exciting, but a lot of very nice landscapes.

Had a bit of confusion at the doors, as they were very difficult to get moving but once you opened them a third of the way they automatically opened the rest of the way, freaking me out a little.

Warning: Vampire Bishops.

Went through a few more rooms, still confused and occasionally alarmed as the doors sprang to life in my hands. Until I got to one with a guard on the other side, and he looked at me confused, and said something in german which I am confident translates as “Excuse me, slightly foolish person, is there a reason you do not just press the buttons like the one I am pressing now which automatically open the door?”

I can haz red face?

Anyway, finished out that museum and headed off to the romany-germany museum.

But Eve, I though you had nothing to hide!

But Adam, I thought you DID!

The last museum I wasn’t super impressed with; it had some nice bits and pieces but lacked oomph. Or possibly I was just wanting to be on the way back home.

Headed back, deciding to stop off for a horrible lunch, (Well…didn’t *decide* to have a bad lunch, it just sort of occurred naturally). Then had icecream to remove the taste of the lunch. Then tried to find that shoe shop again, and either failed, or the shop had entirely different staff and shoes and the staff had no idea what I was talking about. Or all of the above.

This really really is the last blog, unless somehow I can get a connection and a powerpoint at the airport.

Have fun all!

MainzCraft

Very few photos taken today, on what is likely to be the last day of the blog before I head home. (There is a chance of one sneaking out tomorrow; we’ll see if I have anything of note to add).

Left my hotel early – both as their was stuff I needed to do and to ensure I could get breakfast elsewhere, as I was not enamoured with my hotel’s offering. Also wanted to send some postcards and weigh my luggage.

Wandered the brief walk to the main square and found a little bakery open. Had a brief language mismatch over an item (“What is that?” “Das ist Quark.” “What is Quark made of?” **CONFUSION** *conversation in german* “cannot explain – Quark ist quark”)

Ordered a doughnut and hot chocolate while waiting for post office to open. As I still had heaps of time, then ordered a quark and another hot chocolate. It turns out Quark is basically a sort of not quite doughnuty-sugary product which is quite tasty.

Post office opened, I performed the ritual weighing of my luggage to the bemusement of the post staff (I have a kilo or two spare) and went on my way.

First leg of journey was unexciting and looked something like this.

Second leg started well enough, perhaps a few minutes late, and then involved the train slightly breaking down. It was only slight, as far as I am aware – I mean, we sat there for about an hour, but I had a book and it was all pleasant enough.

 

the Rhine, supine, is mainly in Germine.

Eventually whatever the issue was was sorted out and we continued onwards.

Hotel in Mainz is nice enough, although having wifi issues (it only works in the lobby, which is where I am now). Found the way into town easily enough – past the fountains, down the stairs, across the balcony, down the stairs, down the street, past the Dom…sounds like a childrens book involving dragons or bears or some kind of angry farmer.

Found my way to the tourist info place – which is, it must be said, slightly harder to find than most of the tourist attractions in town. Discovered a slightly disturbing thing on this walk.

You recall how I have mentioned previously that cities have a certain pattern to their shops? That sydney is 7-11/shop of ill repute/asian video/take away or coffee shop, and rome is pizza shop/museum/gelato/souveneirs?

Well it seems mainz is shop/food/something/shoeshop, repeated ad infinitum. It’s a little freaky.

After finding the tourist info place, I headed to the Guttenburg museum, which was interesting if not providing as much detail as I’d like. Also visited the Dom, which was ok – although I think I am all cathedraled out at this stage. Then went *shudder* shoe shopping.

Found two things – the first being that shoe shops tend to ignore the existence of men as a general rule. The second was that mens shoes are not much cheaper here than at home. (Although did find some I may purchase tomorrow.)

So, will see you all soon!

Trier later

Today was a day of semi-rest,  although it was somehow a day of rest which involved walking for hours on end. I have to work on that.

Plan for the day was to wander down to the two nearest of the roman ruins (one of the sets of baths and the amphitheater) and then do some shopping. (Spoiler: it does not involve me buying shoes.)

Trier tends to be pretty cool in the mornings, based on my sample size of 2 mornings, but warms up a fair amount. I decided jacket taking was a poor plan and just to have a nice cool walk.

The baths are on the edge of the ‘old city’ part of town, so a quick wander past a variety of shops was all that was needed to reach them.

The baths aren’t a huge site, but very nice – lots of old walls and tunnels beneath them.

 

The tunnels were def. the nicest parts of the experience- lots of little winding ways to go. Very nice.

from there I wandered over to the ampitheater, which is a slightly odd walk – you leave the touristy bits of Trier and walk for ten or fifteen minutes through some fairly leafy suburban parts of town – little schools, lots of houses and so on – and then get to it.

The Ampitheater is of course all grassed over now – well, the stands, anyway – but still interesting. The arena it self was smaller than I expected, as it was only twenty or thirty meters across, maybe? but still fun to walk around.

Although a few of the doors were a little low.

This was the entrance for midgets and emperors.

So after spending my time here, it was off to spend city!

Well, ok, not spend city. Spendytown? Spendsville? A brief pitstop on my train as it passed from Romany to Museoville, changing at buysburg with a short delay?

Headed via the Dom (very pretty) and then to the shopping area.

Confused endless people asking for a calendar for mum.

Stopped in at tourist information office and made some purchases. They only had Trier specific calendars so I asked the lady ‘Do you know of any other stores which would have a more general germany calendar’ which she misunderstood and thought I wanted to get details of stores in other cities which sell calendars.

That corrected, I went to some other stores she had recommended, stopping to find no suitable shoes along the way. Went to the first big department store and asked a lady where there calendars are.

This was not a word she understood in english, apparently – I tried explaining it by showing her the calendar on my ipod, but it didn’t help. She called over a younger staff member, who understood and said the word was ‘Kalendar’.

Anyway, those found, I looked through them and…well, there were a lot of things if she was after pictures of motorbikes, ponies or the like. Tried at the next store and failed, and sort of gave up.

(Did eventually find one at a book shop, but that’s another story)

And that was basically the day. Did some other minor shopping, but nothing too exciting.

Oh, and I got a bought a new house – I don’t recall if I had mentioned this. Picture is below.

If you need to contact me, send an email to Ihaveahugepinkhouse@likeaboss.gov.de

See you tomorrow!

Good Luck(emberg)

I’d just like to say that schweinfleish schnitzel with creamy basil sauce is scrum-diddly-umptious! That sauce was so nice!

As was my day.

A minor balls-up at the start of the day, where, upon reaching the gardens of the Konstantine Basillika and thinking they were very pretty and deciding to take a picture I realised the damn memory card was still lodging in my PC, so no morning pictures for me!

The morning was a walk through the Landishesichises Museum (spelling optional). It’s a museum going from the Palaeolithic era to late roman in the Trier sort of area.

Some very nice items included. The audio guide was ok, if a little chattier than I’d like. I did, however, learnify something; the reason Neanderthals (really Neandertals) are called that. (They were first discovered near the river Neander near Dusseldorf. Near the river Neader=Neanderta.) (I knew it was something like that, but not the detail). Wandered through the museum – which was in many ways not ideally built for it, as there were a couple of sections where it was unclear which way to go, especially for those of us who forgot they had a map in their pocket. (Which probably means it was really PEBMAM). The roman sculptures were pretty interesting, especially the information about the smashed Venus.

Which I guess I should explain. There was a statue of Venus, although you could hardly tell. Apparently some early-AD Christian bigot turfed down the statue and said people should mock such graven idols. And then some centuries later (15th?) someone dug it up, put it in a monastery that was on a pilgrimage-path, and encourage people to stone it – which was done repeatedly for several hundred years.

Lots of high quality gear – an extremely nice crystal ewer and so on. Shop was pretty good as well, although the guy there seemed less than entirely keen on selling things.

At this point it was just before 11:30, which meant a trip to Luxemburg was certainly plausible. Came back here, camera’d up and headed to the station, missing one of the trains by about 10 minutes – but luckily they turn up every hour. On the train, about two thirds of the way there, a message – in German, of course – came over the speakers talking of…well, I’ve no idea, really. Some kind of delay, maybe? None of the other passengers spoke English, so couldn’t work it out; they seemed concerned about whatever it was. Even after a quick game of sign language for the linguistically incompatible, I was none the wiser. I had a vague fear it was talking about delays due to problems with trains which would put a hold on trains back to Trier.

Got to Luxemburg, discovered they sell Chocolate Éclairs in the station – and nice ones, as it turns out. Tried to find information (not very hard as it turns out) to ensure return journey, then decided nuts to this – and went via taxi to the Luxemburg museum of history and things. (“Things” being a technical term meaning, in lay terms, stuff.)

No smoking. No drugs. No roller derby. No pets. No no entry signs. No Oktoberfest. No begging. No glass bottles. No wands.

Museum was pretty good, although slightly miffed that (a) the top two floors were closed and (b) no photos allowed. It also covered pre history to more-or-less modern times, and had art as well. Some quite interesting bits and pieces, including an excellent floor mosaic. Some of the art was reasonable, but I apparently failed to make any notes so you’ll just have to believe me.

I then wandered down to take some photos of the rift and the fortifications – Luxemburg being a major strategic crossroads and all that.

Got a taxi back to the station, walking past a few groups of police, and discovered that the next train back was leaving in about a minute. Decided not to run (as I wouldn’t have made it anyway) and to spend the next hour and a bit in Luxemburg. Found the information desk, my blindness having been cured, and asked if their was a souvenir shop nearby. She said yes, directly across the road from the station.

Well I say my blindness was cured; maybe not. Or her direction giving was less than stellar. Spent fifteen minutes looking and failed abysmally.

Went back into station, to go to news agency. There were now several groups of police, some old men with banners and a camera crew. I looked on, slightly confused, for a few minutes, and decided that the best cause of action was to go back to bakery (3 meters away) and ask what was going on.

Polite young luxemburgerish lass asked what I wanted (after a brief ‘do you speak English’ ‘yes, a little’. I said ‘Well…the first thing is, can you tell me what is going on over there?’

‘Oh, um…*mumbled ‘Merde’. I, um…not in English, excuse…’ *talks to other waitress*

Anyway, an older gentleman came out and they got him to explain – it is something they do on this date (or maybe the first Sunday after a particular date, it was unclear) every year to commemorate the young men from Luxemburg who were forced by the Germans to fight and die against the allies, and the others killed in the occupation. I’d figured it was something like this  (the last post is kind of a giveaway) but nice to know. Luxemburg is not really a country you think particularly of the involvement of in the second world war – I mean, I know they were steamrolled during the Nazi invasion of France and the low countries, but you don’t think of it much beyond that.

I didn’t get any particularly good pics as didn’t want to get in the way of the official photographers or the film crew. The old lady who’s head you can see the corner of, who laid one of the wreathes – looked old enough to certainly have been there. (One of the old men holding a flag maybe could have been, if he was a sprightly eighty, but probably was a little young).

Still, an interesting scene to have happened on. And of course I had to order a drink and an éclair from the bakery as well as just bombarding them with strange questions. But it was in the spirit of learning, so all good, right?

For SCIENCE!

From their it was pretty routine. On train, took a bunch of pics out the windows, talked to the guards a little (I think – despite asking four different people and being told I didn’t – I may have been supposed to have a reservation for the first class cabin on the way back. But if so, the guard was way, way too cheerful to care.)

 

Learning to waltz strictly forbidden.

And that’s all I have; well, as noted above, dinner (at a little pub) was both cheap and delicious (take that, Berlin!) and now I’m off to sleepy boe-boes.

One, two, Trier clock…

Makes me wish I’d taken a photo of a clock of some kind, really.

Train from Paris was exciting and full of me photographing and tracking locations on maps and…

No, wait, that’s a lie. I snoozed and read. Was lucky that Saarbruken was the first stop, as the train went no further, forcing everyone to switch trains to go on. I wandered up the slightly odd platform 5 to platform 11 which was infact the same platform. Got on, checked with a kindly German that the train went to Trier. She and her husband emphatically said no. Some argument broke out until one lady said “It stops at Trier, I am getting off at Trier”.

A greater amount of countryside was watched on this leg. Trees and hills pretty etc.

The hotel hear is certainly not flash, but that wasn’t expected. I was hoping for a lift, however! Still, lugging luggage – and my self – up to the third floor is bound to somehow be good for me in some kind of weird ‘fitness’ kind of way. Lug lug lug lug lug.

Worked out my bearings on the second or third attempt and went to the Porta Negra and the attached museum the name which escapes me but it is basically the Trier history museum.

Porta Negra is very old and has cool views. And stairs. Today is definately a stair day. On the first floor their was a group of people with what I choose to believe was a tour guide  doing his best impression of a raving loonie. Or a raving loony doing his best impression of a tour guide, your pick. He would talk and every second or third sentence say something in german, loudly, which sounded roughly like “FLBLARG BULLHB HERB BURGRAMO” or something. It went over well with the German speakers, so must have made some kind of sense.

I put my jacket in one of the lockers and had a little difficulty making it function, to the amusement of the staff; Lockers in german museums do not function in the way they would in Australia. (a) you get to put your stuff in before paying and (b) you don’t actually pay if you want your stuff back ever.

The trier museum had some alright stuff in it but was not what I would call super exciting. Partially because the audio guide they give you has a REALLY enormous amount to say about each item and I just wanted to know what it was and about 5 sentences about each one. Not a 10 minute argument.

For hygiene reasons, you should wash your beard and your…rooster…every day.

Obviously some information about the liberation of Trier during the war (and the damage to it) but in this particular case less than I’d like. Quite a bit more circumspect about this period than the german national museum and other museums I’ve seen.

Discovered that tonight all the museums were open late, so still had time to go to Karl Marx museum and one of the  others. The Karl marx was interesting but again suffered a little from information overkill on some sections of the audio. I loved the fact that the museum had a shop with lots of irrelevant bits of junk in it; Marx would have been so unhappy.

ALRIGHT! Nobody move! Engels and I have political manifestos and we’re not afraid to use them!

I also found the fetishisation of some of the random bits and pieces they had of his – a pen, a few scraps of notes, his handshue box – a bit funny given who it was, but, hey, I had gone to Karlmarxhhous so what did I expect?

At dinner I got to again play the game of ‘We have no english menu but we’ll (mostly) translate’ which is much more fun in german than italian. Then popped over to the Dom Museum – and was a little freaked out when this loomed out of the fog at me

Well, ok, there was no fog. But that isn’t a church, it’s a bloody castle with a cross in it. Thing is massive! And outside, for reasons I didn’t quite get, was a robot transcribing the bible. Possibly it was Robunhuka?

Dom museum was small, but thats ok ‘cause I was tired. Had a few interesting little bits and pieces, and some very nice gold chalices and the like.

This is your brain                        This is your brain on  thorns.

WINNERS DON’T DO THORNS.

Oh, now, research team: Is stuff in luxemborg open mondays? I have limited internet here so will look but would help if you do too. If not I’ll probably just shop in town here.

An (un) tested experience.

This morning was a bit of a nightmare. You may wish to skip a little unless you want to hear me bitching about the ANZ. Search for ‘idiots’ and go from there if you’d like. (I did think of titling the blog ‘ANuZ’)

I recalled that I needed to reload my travelcard from ANZ. It turns out that was harder than I had expected for a variety of reasons. I spent a frustrating hour trying to get their useless website to work with no success.

Annoyed and not wanting to waste any time over this – although also wondering if  tuesday or wednesday was a better day not to eat next week – I headed out to the Musee D’Orsay. Which, despite what  some detractors told me, I did enjoy.

Not as much as if, you know, I could buy anything in the bookshop, but I did enjoy it. Wandered around for an hour, saw lots of good stuff which I largely do not recall. Although I did like Van Gough’s ‘Dudes sleeping in a pile of hay’. I wasn’t entirely paying attention, of course, because some of my attention was stuck on, you know, working out with the N dollars I had how much all the taxis and food I needed to get out of the country would cost and what I could buy in europe this week.

Eventually got too stressed and headed back here. Fiddled for a while. Called ANZ again. Talked the guy through the issue, not getting caught  up too much on how horrifyingly bad the interface is (although it is totally woeful; I would be embaressed if it was 1999 and my clients had to access this web interface.) Because I could get 99% of the way through the process and kept running into a ‘confirm the transaction’ message with no way to confirm it.

Eventually, he said ‘Oh, have you tried using internet explorer? It only works properly on internet explorer’.

Well, bugger me, it does work with internet explorer. I thanked him and hung up, and made the transaction, fuming at  the hopeless idiocy of these guys. I mean, if you browser lock a website, a minimum of 1/3 of your audience won’t be able to use it. And if you do have to because your developers are incompotent fools, you can trivially build a check into the damn website to send a warning message to people using some non-terrible browser that they have to use a terrible one. It’s so bloody easy to fix these things.

Sigh. Idiots.

So, in the middle of all that I went to the Musee D’Orsay. Then I walked off to an icecreamery mum had recommended (which was nice) and wandered off through the jewish quater to the Musee somethingsomething paris history…I keep wanting to call it the Musee Chevrolet…Ah, Carnavalet. Close.

It’s a museum of the history of Paris, although it is not the best presented museum of the world – there is no ‘story’ being told that I could spot, but lots of nice art.

Dawdled around inside for an hour or so, though, so I must have enjoyed it. Then I decided to leave, and…wasn’t as easy as I expected. I was on an upper floor, wandering, and found some stairs down. Sadly, that went into an little area from which the only escape was to go up again, and go further, and eventually find a way down.

Now having finances again, my plan for the rest of the day was to go back to the Louvre to see some of the french art in the Richelieu wing and then back to the D’Orsey if time allowed. (Which I should have done in the other order as the Louvre is open until infinite and nothing else is).

Walked down towards the river from the museum and then along Rue de Rivoli to the Louvre. It turns out this is a rather long walk! Took the best part of 40 minutes when all was said and done. (Ok, ok, maybe thirty). Eventually got there and in with no dramas. Had a fun wander, although given that I had done, by all reasonable measures (IE my opinion) the best part yesterday, but there were some very nice paintings in the ‘french stuff’ wing.

I also discovered the Richilieu has escalators. God, the lack of stairs!

No dancing on the escalator. No preventing children playing horsey.

I stopped in one of the cafes on the way out on the grounds that my feet were aching. That was some of the most delicious evian I have ever had.

I decided to head back down to the D’Orsay again, on the grounds that (a) now I had money to buy stuff and (b) I frankly wasn’t sure that some of the more famous Van Gough paintings – starry starry night, for instance – weren’t inside and I hadn’t just spaced my way past them earlier in the morning. Frankly, it is possible that if a dragon had been drinking tea with some kind of armoured ocelot I might have just not noticed and decided to worry about my lack of funds instead.

I was to late for the museum but did get to go to the shop, so that was mostly positive. (Plus, the art I thought I might have missed is indeed not inside).

I finally walked back here, aching and sore but mostly content. Had a delicious dinner of more-or-less a sandwich. (It was a half bagget style thing with cheese and bolognaise sauce and it was crazy good. Plus I had a Balongerie du Papa dessert. Well, and then a second one because it was otherwise quite the trollday.

Feeling much better now – and have the funds I need to keep on, you know, eating, so that’s a plus.

See you all tomorrow!

It’s Thursday (I’m in Louvre)

Alternate title: A Religous experience. Which, by the way, I have no idea how to spell, but I do know how to eat it.

OM NOM NOM

It has become apparent to me that you can survive in Paris only knowing how to say ‘Bonjour’ and ‘Merci’ and then wildly gesturing and offering money to people.

Started the morning at the Louvre; to summarise for those who have never been, it is larger than you’d expect. Indeed, I think it may be larger than a country (even if that country is the Vatican).

The Louvre is just a quick jaunt down the banks of the seine, although it feels a lot quicker in the morning than the afternoon, I can tell you! I found one of the entrances they don’t tell tourists about (IE not through the pyramid) and skipped 40 minutes worth of line. A quick jaunt past the shops and I was into the thick of it.

I headed pretty quickly for the renaissance painting section – not to see our friend the Mona Lisa (although I did) but the stuff near it.

As a quick aside, and at fear of sound like a hipster, people need to get over our mz Lisa. She’s not the prettiest girl in the building, nor the best painted  – nor the best painted by an Italian renaissance artist called DaVinci.

back where we were then…

The bits of painting I like are through one of the sculpture areas and past Winged Victory – which again I would suggest is not famous just because of quality but because it is famous and therefore is famous, in that special way that fame works. I walked past two young American lasses discussing Victory, one of whom wondered where the head was and the other saying ‘Well, I think it was made that way, otherwise why wouldn’t they have the head?’

Lots of fab paintings by people from Veronese to Botticelli to Raphael.

Oh, and some guy mum likes.

Now, is everyone here?

Yes, Caravaggio, but I seem to be a woman…

You always seem to be a woman, Botticelli. Shut it. We’re here to convene the 18th annual meeting into why Donatello, who no bugger has heard of, is one of them famous ninja turtles, rather than someone who people have actually seen a bloody painting of, I E me. Botticelli and me are here, Lippi – are you a baby, Lippi? pansy. And, ah, Titian, come on in…

One of the interesting things I meant to comment on yesterday is that angel wings in medieval and renaissance painting are much less uniform than in modern conception; not always the full-eagle span of downy white swan feathers, thin and sleek – you get wings in red, in owl feathers, in narrow and wide wingspans.

For instance!

In this painting by Raphael, you can see St Michael ( or the Archangel Michael, I forget.) smiting some demon. But the wings on his back!

No sleek swan wings for this one! They look more like duck wings – a sort of dowdy brown, not anything like long enough for his  height, and look how chubby they look! If they were any chubbier he’d look like  a sickly sweet cherub. With, ok, a large sword and about to cut someone’s face off.

A throng, as usual, ten people deep around ML, but otherwise crowds pretty reasonable.

Not by Raphael, as it sort of looks, but by Oggiono. Unless I photographed the wrong name tag for it.

I wandered down the main hall with the renaissance art in it, back to the cafe and out again; lots of excellent work. There is often a lot to see in the Louvre – both in terms of the art but also the random sculpted ceilings and decorations, as you tend to forget that it was King someone or other of France’s palace. Probably some Louis.

No drinking and driving a baby-drawn chariot unless someone in the car is wearing pants.

IT’S THE LAW

Among the many inventions of the Greeks: Crazy naked warfare. This invention was not one the Romans chose to steal.

Not having had quite enough museum, I popped down and did some further sculpture watching and wandered through part of the Egyptian and roman section, before remembering it was utterly enormous and turning back. The Louvre is also the place with the highest ratio of things which look funny to me of time it takes to walk through it; I’ll restrict myself to maybe two more. Or five, it’s hard to say.

Next  week on campy seventies Batman: Can batman defeat the double trouble team of Gucci-Goo AND the dreaded Hat burglar?

Dah dah da-da-da-da DAH dah, da-da-da-da DAH dah…

Had a minor misfortune involving works going on preventing me from looping back to the entrance, so had to  backtrack about a dozen rooms. Also took me a little while to find the statue of Psyche I was looking for. The room also contained Hercules fighting the LEAST threatening hydra ever; poor little dear wasn’t even knee high! What a bully!

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think there is a buttock-washing monkey in the area…

Finally went down to the entry way, decided to eat, realised it was just a food court, decided not to eat, made some purchases (with the usual ‘we have a hundred copies of eight different things despite having a million different cool pieces of art in our collection’ issue) and headed back here.

Relaxed my tootsies a little, wandered off to get the Religious shown above (which was a little tart, but nice enough) and then to the Conciergerie. For those who don’t know it, it’s an old building next to the palace of Justice, where the condemned spent their last night before dying. Or last quite a few nights in some cases. Just shy of 3,000 people were killed there during the reign of terror following the French revolution.

It is rather impressive.

Pottered my way through the conciergerie, stopping at the gift shop to make a minor purchase, and headed to Sainte Chapelle. They were just in the process of closing the line to people without tickets. Luckily I already had…I had, um

no museum pass on me. I certainly had it when entering the conciergerie, so I raced (wandered) all the way (five meters) back there and proceeded to have a confused conversation with a lady selling tickets there who was behind reasonably thick glass and spoke no English. If I’d spoke more French I would have started with ‘Turn you flaming mike on and fix the speakers!’

She eventually waved me to the guard, who smiled and sent me to the main desk, who sent me back to the guard who actually spoke English, who sent me to the shop where I was sure it would be and indeed it was.

So back to Sainte Chapelle, where I was literally the last person allowed into the grounds, a big door closed behind me. Saint Chapelle is inside the walls of the palace of Justice (much to the surprise of the Americans in front of me who thought despite being put through a metal detector and x-ray machine they should be allowed to take a knife in).

SC itself is very impressive stained glass and gargoylery. The inner stairs are fairly steep and damn narrow, but worth it. (And there are only about 20 anyway).

And that is my lot! Tomorrow off to the Musee D’Orsee, I think, and possibly back to the Louvre for the other wing, and possibly the Museum of Paris, should it end up existing.

Au Revoir!

That Mousse was so rich the Republicans want to give it a tax cut

Look, I tried to find a good Australian version of that joke, I really did. My goodness, that Mousse was rich. It was the chocolate equivalent of some kind of metaphor I cannot currently make as the humour centre of my brain is gorging itself on rich, dark moussy goodness.

Oh, where was I? Oh, right, heading to Paris.

Got up at the crack of early this morning, having had one of those nights where you wake up every hour or two and have a 30 second panic you’ve missed your alarm. And then go back to sleep.

A bunch of the usual blah blah later I was at the train station, and the train was already at the platform (I was about 20 minutes early). Lots of police around, wanting to check everyone’s passport. Got on, settled in, read  a little, and then the train left –actually about 4 minutes early by watch, which could have been crazy awkward for anyone cutting it fine.

The train journey was essentially very dull. I was on a train for 7 hours; hooray for science, wooo! Actually, it was fairly reasonable and extremely easy, other than the six or seven times they needed to check my ticket and passport. (The same guy checked them at least three times, in case I had become someone else.) The only interesting thing I noted was at some station in the south of france where for some reason all the platform staff were wearing the same purple shirt with black stripes.

(It is, I will grant  you, possible I was asleep at the time).

Got to the hotel easily and headed up to my room and dropped off bags. Headed to Boulangerie du Pappa where – horrors!  – they had not made any chocolate éclairs for the day. But they did have this sort of undercooked chocolate muffin thing, so that was ok.

Then (after getting the hotel staff to give me directions to places I COULD get a chocolate éclair, headed off to the Cluny, which is the French medieval historical museum. Which had some pretty neat things in it, including an exhibition on swords. Several historically important swords were on display, including this one

which was apparently Charlemagne’s sword (and scabbard). Some other interesting bits and pieces – the sword of one of the Merovingian kings, and this carving

which is a piece of medieval racist propaganda. You can see Jesus in the middle, about to be carted off to prison. The person behind him, with good western features and a good western sword, is one of the disciples. The evil roman, on the other hand, has become an evil Saracen Roman, with slightly Asian/middle eastern features and a curved sword. This was pretty common in the middle ages; in Ireland the villains in Christian stories were all drawn as Vikings.

The Cluny isn’t huge, but has a lot of stuff in it. I enjoyed the room full of pieces broken off Notre Dame (by the revolutionaries who figured any king was fair game, even if they were from the bible) and the one with the unicorn tapestries.

Rur-ru, raggy, i ridn’t rash his read in!

(It is a little known fact that unicorns can, indeed, speak, but due to union rules are only allowed to speak like cartoon dogs).

Lots and lots of golden reliquaries and treasure boxes (which are now probably worth more than the treasure they once contained) and statues . A few minor problems with the provided audio guide, where numbers didn’t match up correctly. Also some excellent medieval chess pieces.

Finally, it was back here, a bit of a relax and a watch of the daily show, and out to dinner. I’m on the edge of the Latin quarter, so there are figuratively literally infinite places to eat close by. Picked on, eat some nice food, and the aforementioned mousse. Which was so rich it ranks 7th on the list of EU nations by GDP. Although, to be fair, Greece ranks below the taxi I caught in Milan this morning.

 Warning: Unicorns with loud music ahead.

May the Sforza be with you

Good lord, my feet ache. I walked from a bit after ten to a bit after 5:30, with maybe half an hours break for lunch.

Today was, indeed, a much better day in Milan. Far less grumpy than I was yesterday.

Started with a walk to the castle, which was a lot more open than yesterday. It contains half a dozen mini-museums, covering things from art, armour, musical instruments and Egyptian and prehistoric stuff.

And cats in the moat.

And the cats in the moat in a hidey hole, ready to pounce on a rat or a vole. When you going to feed them – I don’t know – well, we’ll have some dinner then – I’ve sure we’ll eat a pigeon then…

*ahem*.

So, yes, castle museums. Lots of statues in various degrees of broken, including this one

who appears to be a reject from lord of the rings, or perhaps an early cast of the Voldemort mask for Harry Potter. (There was a book in the bookshop called something like ‘Harry Potter and the Magic of Art which was sadly in Italian).

The first section of the museum had a few famous artists featured, including a Raphael that I did not take a good photo of. All the ceilings were interesting, with frescoes and paintings on them. One in particular – in which the beams on the walls were turned into the trunks of trees and the branches leafed out and all joined together into an overhead canopy – was spectacular.

It was really one of those things that looked a lot better in person than in picture – hard to get the muted colouring to show through correctly. Plenty of cool armour and weaponry in the next few rooms as well, but nothing so spectacular that I need to show a picture of it. I then discovered that one of the ceiling frescoes had been done by Da Vinci and backtracked and – ah, yes, it was indeed the one already pictured. Leonardo was certainly a talented bugger.

Upstairs in part A was the art collection.

Jesus as a baby, practicing his heat vision.

Mostly not particular famous artists – well, ok, famous artists, but not the big name ones. Plenty of other things on this level – the odd statue, some bits of treasure – including some massive coins.

It’s not clear from this picture, but the smaller of these coins is the size of maybe an Australian 20 cent piece or slightly smaller – bigger than a 10 cent, anyway.

So the bigger one is absurdly oversized. It would be the best part of the size of the palm of my hand – certainly bigger than the palm of most women’s hands. It seems completely impractical! You’d need a team of slaves just to carry your coin purse for a quick coffee. Although I am not entirely certain it is intended for general use, as the guy pictured either has a really weird haircut and a huge forehead, or is wear a chefs hat or similar.

This is another oddity. It’s  by an artist called Paolo Landriani, and is very well painted and put together – but the subject matter is some kind of miracle involving bees spraying from someone’s mouth. (you can *just* make them out in the picture.)

What, you can’t see them? You must not understand fashion – these are the Emperor’s NEW bees. No, in all seriousness, there are bees. Coming out of his mouth. It’s called st Ambrose and the miracle of the bees.

A few other really nice pieces, one in particular I took a photo of is below. I also discovered in this museum that hair replacement therapy has been practiced much longer than i thought, since the renaissance, on both men and women. Although I am disturbed that they used to replace the hair with grapes.

Not a picture for whiners.

One final pic from that section – this one by Doneda – which  quite liked.

very nice indeed.

I whipped through the prehistoric and Egyptian sections of the museum, as they were mostly nothing super special – nice enough, but not as good as other equivalent sources.

Although I did note that under at least one version of the Egyptian religion, when you died and went to the afterlife, what you got to do for nearly all your time was farm grains for Osiris. And this was the GOOD afterlife, the heavenly one; and what you got to do was the same back breaking labour you’ve done on earth your whole life. Clearly, priests back then didn’t feel the need to offer anything particularly much.

There were some other bits of the castle, but they were closed until after 2. So I worked out my route on the map and headed towards the Brerra.

On the way – just outside the Castle – I was accosted by a gentleman with bits of string. Now, I know the scam, but bloody hell this guy was persistent! (The scam is they tie a piece of string around your finger, and claim the knot is lucky/magical/special and will bring you love/luck/money/the ability to always set the toaster to that thin margin between uncooked and burned. They then demand money – 20 or more Euros  – for their special work even if you didn’t ask for it and will scream bloody murder until you pay them some money to go away). I made the error of making eye contact, and the guy tried to grab my hand – I pushed his hand away and tried to keep walking – he tapped me in the gut to get my attention, I started shouting no at him and he still followed me for another five or ten meters (me with hands jammed firmly in pockets to prevent magic string and protect the contents).

He eventually gave up and left me heading off, fuming.

I mean, look. It’s (more or less, legality aside) fair enough for these guys – who probably have difficulty getting employment in most of Europe – to sell knock off handbags or sunglasses or whatever. I would never buy from them, but at least that is something that people are stepping in to more-or-less knowingly. But the shysters and scammers really annoy me.

I decided I needed to sit down and have lunch to calm down. Looked at a couple of places, which all looked either dodgy as hell or expensive. Eventually found a little pub-looking place with a menu outside in Italian. I asked one of the waitresses if there was an English menu – she said no, her colleague said yes – there was some heated Italian and they offered to read it to me. I ended up having a lasagne and water – a 7.5 euro meal, delicious and very filling.

Eventually left and headed to the Brerra. It was ok, but did not have an amazing collection. And had a no photographs rule. Lots of stuff by (Frederick?) Hoyes, or Hoya, or something like that – a couple of nice pieces. The rest of the gallery was a pretty quick circuit for me – again, some reasonable art. There was a Caravaggio but it didn’t excite me overly. Endless annunciations and adorations and similar. I also somehow neglected to take notes, so can’t look things up and post their pics. Whoops. It’s a shame, as there were a few very nice bits and pieces, but, well, such is life.

From their it was a quick jaunt back to the castle, to the re-opened other upstairs (and a walk past a second finger-knot idiot although this time I fixed-stared my way past him). There were a large number of stairs, and I was a little knackered by the time I reached the top. An attendant was there and asked for my ticket – I fumbled, not recalling which pocket I had put it in but thankfully he just waved me on. Musical instrument museum was…well, full of instruments. Then went up to the treasury/costumery, which had a few nice bits and pieces.

Heading back, I decided to swing past the church with the Last Supper (for which there was no chance of getting in) as they had an exhibition of Leonardo’s writings. Paid my way into that, pottered the way through – it was pretty interesting, especially some of his drawings about the world being a sphere and such (although he did believe the sun orbited the earth, so at best partial credit).  The discovered there was another sister gallery across town with a painting of his and more codexes. I seriously considered packing it in, but thumped my way across town, feet aching, to see it.

This was an excellent choice. Because as well as having that, they had an art gallery attached. This one had a lot of high quality stuff in it. A very nice Raphael, a low quality Botticelli, and various others. The top floor had a large Raphael cartoon (in which he and three other famous artists become crime fighting turtles. It started well, and then their mortal enemies, the corporate drones, re-cast all the other characters as middle class white people and the storylines went downhill).

The last room was by far the most impressive. It had a painting of a duchess by Giovanni de Predis which was extremely well executed. Also had a Leonardo (although one of the boring ones), and excellent reproductions of The Madonna of the Rocks and the Last Supper, done in the 17th century by other artists. The Madonna of the rocks in particular was deftly done (although the background wasn’t as sharp and the focus was narrower).

Then back here, broken and tired. Decided to have a small dinner at the in house cafe (no restaurant). They only do toast, basically, so I ordered that. And then it came with ham and cheese and I was a happy, happy camper.

Reminder – possibility of no blog tomorrow.

Ciao!

Mal Ano

Before I came, while planning the trip, my mother asked me why I was coming to Milan. I said I wanted to go somewhere else in Italy, and people said Milan was nice.

I am not sure who those people are, but I would like to explain to them the error of  their ways.

Ok, ok, I will hopefully at least partially recant these statements tomorrow, but today has not been full of sunshine and lollipops. This is in part because all the museums etc were closed today (They close on Mondays. No-one knows why).

Train from florence was pretty packed. Also discovered to my financial detriment that I am supposed to write the date of the trip before I get on the train on the Eurail. Hasn’t been a problem before, but I now have a fine to the contrary. Or possibly a donation to some guys retirement fund; it is sometimes hard to tell the difference in Italy.

Got to Milan, and was immediately confused by the train station. I looked around for a few minutes, then decided I was busting for a whiz. Milan train station is the first place in Europe I’ve had to pay for a loo.

Found taxi signs to taxi rank, and was looking for taxis. A guy came up to me and asked if I needed a taxi. I told him I did, and then where I was going. Then my non-stupid brain kicked in and I asked where the taxi rank was; he evaded the question and offered me a taxi ride to my destination for 35 Euros. I asked if he was a regular taxi, he evaded, and eventually said “Eh no…taxi privato…”.

I turned my back on him, took about five steps and had someone else try the same line (although them I shut down immediately). Got to the taxi rank and got driven here for a (marginally!) more reasonable 18 E.

Milan is full of both cars, lunatics and trams. This is not a good combination. Also, I have discovered a length of time less than the Plank time; it is the time between a light turning green and a driver in italy honking his horn at the guy in front.

Anyway, got to hotel, room is…adequate. Discussed with staff downstairs how to get places, got directions to castle.

Mentioning it was closed seems not a necessary detail. Although, to be fair, the castle itself seems fine with letting people figure that out for themselves. This posed a potential risk of making the blog very dull, so I did what anyone else on the internet does in this circumstances: pictures of cats.

One of the castle cats hunting butterflies.

I, for one, welcome our new Illithid overlords.

Went for a walk down Via Dante towards the cathedral. It’s a nice enough walk, not too long, but at this point I realised my problem with Milan: It’s sydney. Yes, ok, it has a castle and a cathedral. But it’s basically a big functional town rather than somewhere with cool old stuff. I suspect the people who made it the 7th most popular tourist destination are the same people who think a holiday in Nice is better than having your toes eaten off by baby shrimp, or being forced to watch family guy in badly dubbed Norwegian.

The Cathedral itself is very nice, from the outside at least. Big…ok, confession time.

I have no idea how to describe which architecture as what. Romanesque, Gothic, Glaswegian – really, I have no idea. (Ok, I have brutalist covered – thanks, work!). I have the same problem with makes and models of cars – ‘car’ ‘sports car’ and ‘van’ are about as distinct as I go. Frankly I’m doing well if I can be bothered remembering the make of my own car, let alone spotting them on the street and saying ‘Oh, a Foyota button-crush! I think it’s the 74…no, the 76, with the advance cat box manipulator! So I’m going to make up words, and you at home get to smile  and nod along, ok?

So it’s a big gothic church with lots of fluting and spikes. Not as nice as Notre Dame, but still reasonably sexy as architecture goes.

And open; lets not forget the importance of that!

When I first went in, I though ‘bloody hell, those paintings are rubbish! They’re so flaming dark!’ and then ‘No, it’s the room! It’s too dark!!’ and then ‘Oh, right…eyes are adjusting…’

Art was ok but nothing striking. The stained glass was pretty good;

As was much of the statuary. A few of those later. A quick theological discussion/rant now; avert your eyes,  Catholics and small children!

So, it’s my recollection that Catholics believe (for the most part, or used to) that the bodily ascent into heaven on judgement day is literal – that anyone cremated is SOL and that missing body parts are lost (because creating the world in seven days is easier than high quality prosthetics).

But surely this means everyone will get to heaven rather lacking in the skin department?

Ok, moving on from that!

Viewed from a ninety degree angle, this looks like the skull is attached to an undead horror that is killing some poor woman.

Went into the crypt area, which had the arc of the covenant, I think.

Then went into one of the nearby shopping areas; I became rapidly convinced it was both dull and out of my price range. And that I was in Sydney.

I tell you, it’s the damn QVB!

Stopped at a cafe a few blocks away, where the main waiter was not a polite man. Had already ordered and was hungry so stayed, and then on contemplation realised that Milan was the first place in italy where a Grazi was not returned with a Preggo.

Came back here and pottered around; had poor dinner nearby.

This is not to say the city has no merit, or I had a terrible day – ok, it wasn’t perfect, but I’ll live. But the city is sure as hell not showing itself as somewhere I would ever return or recommend someone go.

Before I go, though, two additional stories from Florence:

The one thing that made the audio commentary worth listening too was that it told me that Savonarola’s followers were called a word in Italian which translates into english as The Whiners. I laughed a bit at that, to the slight disturbance/confusion of the attendant in the room.

Also, there was a guy there doing street chalk painting who was pretty good IMO –

So, here’s hoping the Castle and the Brera are awesome and my tales of Milan tomorrow are much improved!