Europe - A Rough Guide
by Rob Cummins
What I Did On My Holidays - Jan 2002
LONDON
The story begins with me being the sickest man in London. That's right. The night before Joely and myself are due tostart our holiday in Europe, I wake up in the night feeling a bit funny. Cue the morning and 'a bit funny' has changed into 'like I spent the night in a cement mixer'. Some sort of gastro bug had knocked into me during the night. Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten those barbecue ribs I found on the street. I've waited too long, saved too sacraficially and worked too hard to miss this trip, so I time my throwing up so that I can get things done. I am sick at home, then drag my bags and sorry hide to the train station in the interim 'feeling OK' stage. Then I start to feel sick again. So I'm sick on the train just before we get off, apologise to the other passengers, and use the next stage of 'wellness' to drag our stuff to the airport. So we get on the plane. I negotiate customs very carefully, trying to concentrate on every pore in my body so I don't sweat, and do my best not to shake. They mistake my grimace for a smile and let me through. It was far and away the worst plane journey of my life. But, it took us all the way to ....
ROME
Still extremely sick, we negotiate another train journey to the middle of Rome, and then crawl to our hostel. I check in and then crash out. Joely explores for the evening while I sleep, groan and occasionally run to the bathroom. The next day I wake up feeling a bit better and we explore Rome a bit together. I think I can best describe Rome by the map that we used to explore it.
Joely and I bought a tourist map in order to explore without getting lost. Now, this map had all of Rome laid out on it, all in one colour, a kind of dull yellow. But wherever there was a major landmark, like an old temple or cathedral or ruins or whatever, it would be drawn in as an oversized representation of whatever it was. This is exactly what Ropme is like. It's all quite boring. It's vanilla. Plain, dull, urban, dirty, heavily graffitied. Then as you walk around a corner every now and then some huge, beautiful, incredibly ornate building will loom out at you from amongst the boring crap. It can amaze you and take your breath away, and it will certainly take up all of your attention while it's in sight. Then you'll pass it and you'll be back to the grey boredom.
We saw the Collisseummumm, which is amazingly. We saw the ruins of the Forum, which were interesting, and really nice at night when lit up. Then we went to the Las Vegas of Catholicism, the Vatican. A guard at the entrance searched everyone with a metal-detector wand. With my arms out I took the opportunity to strike a Christ pose, but no one laughed. The Vatican surely is one crazy place. It is HUGE. You just can't really appreciate it without going there. I've been in larger buildings, we all have, but you're just not used to being in one, single, uninterrupted room. It's just a huge piece of space, and it takes your breath away a bit. And then there's the decorations. Huge, elaborate and extremely expensive, there are paintings, murals, mosaics, icons, artefacts, statues, busts, altars, tapestries, candles etc etc etc. I saw a metal statue of Jesus whose toes had been worn away by millions of people passing by and touching his feet. Just one touch each, repeated millions of times. But there's something a little disturbing about the whole thing too. For a religion that started in caves, and had a couple of major tenets about a vow of poverty and a lack of iconography or any physical representations of faith, the Vatican seems to be the biggest example of the difference between what that religion started out as holding important, and what it has become today. What did everything in the Vatican (including the building) cost ? What else could that money have been used for ?
In the same day we also say the Pantheon, where Raphael was buried, and a mausoleum built by Emperor Hadrian for his wife. I am still not all that well, but managing. Still, ask me where all the public toilets are in Rome if you want to. I know. ALL OF THEM. Then we had dinner. Which brings me to another point about Rome. The food is crap. I mean, really crap. Two things I will mention so I don't sound ingnorant. One, I know that the 'Italian' food that we eat is altered to suit our tastebuds. Our pizza is not their pizza, our pasta is made for us. I know this. Also, we were on a budget, and thus not eating the best food on offer. But the food still sucked. It is mostly very, very bland, and if it does have a flavor then that flavor is salt. Too salty, or nothing at all. Crap food. Oh, and while I'm on it, the people are extremely rude, and drive like maniacs. So, then next day I'm sick again. Either I pushed it too hard the previous day, or it was the crap food. Either way, I lose the morning to sleeping and groaning, and wander out in the afternoon to find the Sistine Chapel, only to find it's shut. I crawl home and sleep some more. The next day I am fine, totally recovered. Hooray. We skip and jump and bounce to the Vatican Museum, enjoying the works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello and Leonardo. We finally get into the Sistine Chapel, which is amazing. Then we pack up and get on a train bound for ...
FLORENCE
The North of Italy seems a little better. More relaxed. Also Florence is a much smaller city, so it has a bit of a better attitude. On arriving in Florence, Joely and I discovered something that would help out on the rest of our trip. Because it is winter here and officially the 'off' season, we found that most of the little hotels were practically empty. Because of this they dropped their prices, and we found that we could get a double room with a bathroom for the same money we'd be paying for two dormitary beds in a hostel. Lucky.
Florence is nice. LOADS of art for such a little city. It is made up of tiny, claustrophobic little streets. We saw Michelangelo's David, and Boticelli's Birth of Venus, amongst other things. There is also the Doma there, another massive cathedral with the world's fourth largest self-supporting dome. It is huge, and painted in a funny way. If you look up at it from the congregation's side, you see heaven and the garden of Eden and so on. If you look up from the other side, the priest's side, you see the fires of Hell and the tortures of Purgatory. Speaks volumes methinks. People were nicer, food was still crap, tons of religios art. On to ...
VENICE
Only there overnight, but it was great. What a nice looking place. I've been to places with canals before, but never anywhere that actually uses them in day-to-day life like Venice. There are postal boats and ambulances. If I thought the streets in Florence were claustrophobic, then Venice takes the cake. But there's something nice about that too. As a life-long pedestrian, Venice feels like my kind of city. Nothing is wide aenough for any kind of vehicle, so everyone walks (uless you're on the canals of course). You can't even ride a bike, because you're constantly going up and down steps. A pedestrian city - I love it. I still wonder what they do about garbage collection, and what they do whan they move house, but these are the mysteries of Venice. There were also tons of dogs about, which seemed strange to me as there is nowhere to really let them run. No parks of whatnot. The bad food curse also lifted, I had a beautiful cream and artichoke pasta followed by a dish consisting of nothing more than wafer-thin raw meant, covered with olive oil, lemon juice and some herbs. Lovely. Venice, nice, different, a little bit smelly, quite expensive and definitely worthwhile.
VIENNA
Crossing the border to Austria, we discovered for the first time the beauty of the Euro. In all we went to six countries in Europe, all part of the EU. As of Jan 1st they all went over to the Euro as their main currency. As a result, we never had to exchange our money, we just withdrew the same money wherever we went, and used it from place to place. Magic. The only problem came with machines, such as payphones and snack/drink machines. But we found that most had either been converted, or old currency was at hand somewhere close by.
I loved Vienna. It might have been because we were getting out of Italy, but I think I just liked it. The people were friendly, and the food was great. I think the Bavarians think about food like I do. Meaty, stodgy, big and full-flavoured. They also like their beer, and prefer largers. God bless them.
In Vienna we went to the treasury to see a whole lot of rich stuff they'd acquired over the years. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces, of unimaginable value. It made your head spin. Including Napoleon's son's cot, the world's largest cut emerald, crowns, jewels, relegious icons, tapestries, ornamental swords, pieces of the true cross, pieces of the true crown of thorns, the spear used to pierce Christ's side, the world's most expensive book and all manner of stuff. Truly mind boggling. We also trekked over to a small museum to see a Bosch triptych I really like.
For some reason I cannot fathom, they had really cheap seafood there. Vienna is not really close to any coast, but they had all manner of seafood super-cheap. I had some salmon and some caviar, but there were also lobsters and everything. Strange. They also have the world's best cakes and pastries. We ate well, drank well and had a great time.
MUNICH
Over to Germany. A little less friendly than Austria, but still good food and drink. We rolled into Munich and checked into our hostel. It was a converted castle out in the suburbs, so that was kind of cool. That evening we went to Hoffbrau house, which was brilliant. It's a big old Greamn beerhall that serves beer in glasses that you could happily fit your head into. My kind of place. They also serve big pretzels, and have a oom-pah band in lederhausen. Bratwurt, sauerkraut, this was the Germany I was looking for.
A note on those waitresses you see holding two fistfuls of glasses. We've all seen pictures, a German lass holding eight huge mugs of beer in each hand as she flits from table to table. I am completely amazed by this. Not because of the fact that they can wrap their hands around all those handles. But, as my friend Francis concurs, because of the WEIGHT. Now, I may have spindly matchstick-arms, but I'm telling you I'd have trouble holding two of these massive tankards in the one hand. Be warned, these beer maidens may well turn out to be cyborgs. Remember you heard it here first.
Also in Munich, we went to the Rathaus, a teddy bear museum (for Joely, ahem), a technology museum and another beerhall. Joely was a bit sick herself at this stage with a cold. She never got too bad, but carried a bit of a cough throughout the rest of the trip.
BERLIN
Surprisingly enough, not all that much of a tourist city. It was OK, but really just felt like a functional kind of a place. The amazing thing for me was that almost all the places we went we on the Eastern side of the old wall. I know that it came down over 12 years ago, but socially, there is just no trace at all. In fact the old border, Checkpoint Charlie, was probably the highlight of Berlin. There is a museum there that chronicals the history of the wall, the various escape attempts and the eventual fall. Amazing stuff. There are only a couple of fragments of the wall left up, it's mainly been completely removed. In Berlin we also went to the old SS headquarters, the carpark over Hitler's bunker and a museum of some folk-art.
AMSTERDAM
Nice canals. 'Nuff said.
BRUSSELS
Winding down now, we really just hung out in Brussels. I really just wanted to go there for the beer. Everyone I know who's been there says it's really nice, and that they have an enormous range of really fine beers. So the highlight was this place we went to with 75 draught beers. And they were GREAT. Each comes in it's own glass, some like goblets, some tankards, some baloon glasses, some martini glasses. The range of flavours is huge, but all were really nice. I would like to return and try more, more and more of their tasy beer range. Belgium, thank you.
PARIS
The final stop. We stayed with an old workmate of Joely's called Lee. Nice bloke. I hate Parisians, and thus am not a big fan of Paris. I also refuse to shower there, as we all know what the French do in the shower. Once again, it was just an easy day of hanging out. We ate, we drank, we looked about. Once again, I can't really see the appeal of Paris, and loathe the people. But it was a relaxed time, and we did manage a very nice if overpriced meal of fillet steak in a roquefort sauce. I refuse to drink wine and the French seem to only serve Heinekin so we couldn't see eye to eye there either. Then it was on to a bus, ferry, back on a bus and pulled into London yesterday afternoon. Into a new room in North London, and back to work today where piles of work has awaited the return of the king. But .... it was a fantastic holiday, we had great luck with weather, accomodation and lack of drama. Supercool, super fun.