Airbnb – Page 2 – paralyzedbynotcaring

The wall

Today I went back to examine the remains of the Berlin Wall. It’s not in good shape. It’s falling apart.

Parallel to the wall is a walkway with a timeline describing pivotal social and political happenings in Germany in the 30s and 40s. It wasn’t a load of laughs. Nearby is Checkpoint Charlie, which looks like the entrance fee kiosk of a lesser state park, except with more tourists. On the building overlooking the checkpoint was this love note to Vladimir P.

I also visited the East Side Gallery, a part of the wall decorated by artist. Unfortunately a lot of the art was defaced by graffiti, so most of the gallery had a chain link fence around it, ruining the effect of the different artwork.

Much of Berlin is covered similarly with stickers and graffiti.

I took several more shots of the East Side Gallery and a few of the checkpoint, but my wifi in this airbnb is weak and my high tech way of getting pictures from my phone to my computer–emailing them to myself–is not cutting it.

Berlin has been the most modern city I’ve visited but also the city most impacted by history. One particular message spray painted on a hotel wall read “The past is OVER.” Clearly people are not over it.

Tomorrow I travel to Dresden, which is a short (no layover) train ride away. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an “easy” day–let’s not get ahead of ourselves–but I won’t have to switch trains, and that is a welcome change.

Hallo from Berlin

Yesterday I traveled from Amsterdam to Berlin. There was only one transfer that was a bit difficult, but only because my reserved seat was in the very first car and I had to walk along the length of the train for a long time. When I say I walk I mean run madly waving my ticket so they don’t leave without me. Always a pleasure.

It was of course raining because that is what it does in Europe. The rain however did treat me to this as I sped across the German countryside.

That’s a rainbow, in case it’s too light to see. Only three trains and a taxi ride and I was at my airbnb in Berlin (Kreuzberg district–west Berlin) meeting my new roommate Molly.

She likes to sleep on shoes and watch you eat snacks. I got in about 8pm and my other roommates asked if I was going to go out lol. Anyway the streets were bedlam because Deutschland and Italia were playing futbol. It only got crazier after that penalty kick.

Today then was a bus tour. I was very happy to find one somewhat easily, considering that the tourism office was not where it was supposed to be and two policemen had no idea where it was.

However, the bus driver wasn’t all that helpful and the tour guide said most things in German. I did make out that the bus loop map wasn’t going to be followed because of all the street closures due to the soccer game. Soccer. Why do you keep ruining my vacation? Unfortunately this meant the bus tour was a bit haphazard and I couldn’t keep track of where we were supposed to be on the tour guide, let alone where we actually were. The stops were not announced by their names or by their numbers on the itinerary. I thought Germany would be the most exact in general and especially in this manner, but soccer. Soccer. Soccer. The tour guide did mention that Albert Einstein went to college here right across the street from where the bonfires ate all those piles of books. I’d rather know which bus stop we were on, frankly.

My tour included a boat trip up the Spree river. Did you know that Berlin has more bridges than Venice? (Side note, the boat tour in Amsterdam said that Amsterdam has more canals than Venice, but fewer bridges. I think there is some serious Venice-envy happening all over Europe.)

The plus side is that the boats serve drinks.

Do not be seduced by how bright and sunny these pictures look. Berlin has a horrible case of hotcold. When the sun is out, it is a punisher. Then a cloud comes by and everyone puts on parkas and watches their breath fog. I believe hotcold is a form of torture, am I right? I did feel a few rain drops, but they seemed to be isolated incidents.

The bus tour did not yield a lot of photo ops, mostly because I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at until it had already passed by and the English announcement finally started. This bus tour is really failing. Did I mention it had no wifi and the Coke Lite I bought on board was undrinkable because the tab came off without opening the mouth of the can? I am dis. pleased.

However, despite this oppression, I did manage to take this stunner.

Bam. That my friends is Victoria, goddess of, you guessed it, victory.

I am not sure what Germany won or what this is in relation to. It looks to me like she’s surrendering anyway. I didn’t ask because I was already having an attitude about my wasted diet coke that was 2 Euros. I have discovered that when I am not around someone I feel compelled to please (I am a people pleaser), I easily fall in to being sullen and misanthropic. Not following YOUR OWN ITINERARY adds to this. Hotcold torture adds to this. Lack of wifi adds to this.

Lastly, the bar I read about on Lonely Planet is only a block away from my airbnb and I was all set to try it until I read that it doesn’t even open until 10pm. I like to be well into my tylenol pm/wine stupor by then. Maybe tomorrow, but I doubt it.

Tomorrow I will go to the museum island, though I can’t decide which of the five museums to explore (don’t say five, you know I can’t).

The bus drove by parts of the wall, which I figured out before the English version announced it, so maybe I will investigate that area as well. It’s quite famous.

I am reading Catherine the Great.

“Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?” – Albert Einstein

XXX

The city’s coat of arms, or what I would call a logo, is XXX. Apparently it does not refer to the liberal attitude towards sex workers here, but rather to the three disasters the city has survived: water, fire, and pestilence. So when you see a pole with XXX on it, like this one

it just means you are in Amsterdam. It has NOTHING to do with the lady who was just sitting in this nearby window.

I also learned that you are not allowed to take pictures at the Van Gogh museum, so these three that I took are ILLEGAL.

The first one is of a peasant lady working her ass off. A lot of his paintings are rural. Most of the people working in the paintings are women, whereas the people who are sitting around doing nothing are usually men. I was going to take more pictures to illustrate this point, but I got in trouble with the museum anti camera campaign.

Just look at this workin girl. Bent and dark and almost moving.

Now look at this guy.

Chillin smokin a pipe.

I actually took a photo of this painting because the subject looks JUST LIKE my airbnb host. There were several other paintings that better proved my point about the female vs male subjects, but I didn’t want to get escorted out. Imagine the page 17 headline, “San Mateo Co. Resident Kicked Out of Most Accepting Country on Planet.”

Here is the final picture I took before the axe came down. It is called “The Potato Eaters.”

Earlier in his career, VG thought this was the one that was going to make it for him.

I’d never heard of it before.

Not that I know much about art, but when I thing of VG I think of flowers and landscapes and his self portraits and oh yeah idk a starry night sky? (Starry Night is actually in NCY right now so I didn’t get to see it).

I did see his famous “Almond Blossoms,” which KB and I did excellent copies of a few years ago at a wine-and-paint event, and the sunflowers, and the smoking skeleton. Also about 500 others. VG did sketching/drawings, was a prolific letter writer, and he spent a bit of time in an asylum. Also, those blue irises on all the greeting cards? Yeah they used to be purple. The more you know.

Outside the VG Museum is the Iamsterdam sculpture/sign, so I took this obligatory shot.

It wasn’t raining yet, so I walked to the Heineken Experience, which is an interactive tour/museum/tasting at one of Heineken’s original brewery locations. No brewing happens there anymore, but a lot of the old equipment was there. I don’t really drink much beer. That’s a lie. I never drink beer. But the tour was right there and I had a discount card and when in Rome/Amsterdam. Well, today I drank more beer than I have had in the last ten years and I think my stomach is dying. I learned that I have been drinking beer incorrectly in that you must not drink the foam. What did we learn about beer? FOAMY!

Probably a bit more than 99 bottles of beer on this wall.

To settle my stomach, I had some ribs.

I ordered these based on a yelp review, and then people at the tables on either side of me ordered them also.

I think these ribs cured my beer disease stomach problem and would prescribe them to anyone with a similar or dissimilar ailment. By the time I was done with dinner, it started raining. Luckily there was a tram stop nearby and I was able to figure out how to get back to the train station. Navigating Amsterdam isn’t easy because the bikes are everywhere. I read that there are a lot of bikes here, and I thought well I’ve survived Davis, CA, how different can it be?

Very, very different. The city is basically designed for bikes, so pedestrians just have to look the hell out for their lives. Suddenly that cheery brrring-brrring of a bike bell becomes the sinister sound of death by pedals. I already hate crossing streets–I know everyone is out to kill me–but here each intersection involves cars, taxis, rickshaws, stoned pedestrians, city buses, motorcycles, trams, double-decker tour buses, tourists, and a swarm of bicyclists. It is a total circus and when the rain started, complete with tent-like umbrellas. Bikes have their own lanes, but they share them with motorcycles. It’s just all a little too much sharing for me. I was so paralyzed at an intersection, a bicyclist pointed at me and then motioned for me to go. I clearly need assistance.

You have probably long since figured that out.

The Dutch roadrunner

Today had five trains and three problems, which is actually a pretty positive outcome. The first problem was that there is no good way to time when you are going to be hungry when you know you will be anxious all day. I packed a sandwich and hoped for the best. I ate it while a very not-me passenger on the train had a mental break and went crackermuffins when the train conductor announced we would be skipping his stop. I was just impressed they announced it in English. My second problem was that my Eurail pass counted as my ticket from Amsterdam Central to my accommodations stop, but that meant I had no local ticket to scan to open the turnstile to release me into the Netherlands. An elderly lady observed my problem and shook her head and said “Ha! Do like me!” and when a passenger entered the station via the turnstile, she darted through the closing door like the roadrunner in the coyote cartoons. She was so fast I heard a WHOOSH. She pushed the entrance button and yelled for me to RUN. Already I am a criminal. My third problem is that my airbnb has a waterbed. That’s the thing with traveling you know. Sink or swim.

Strike two

Today the Belgian buses went on strike so I had myself a full day of walking. I saw more canals.

one of the city gates

some windmills

and one disturbing wind sculpture.

Apparently it dances when it is windy. (?!) I didn’t hang around to watch. The forecasted rain never fell and instead I got a sunburn and I think a bunion.

After a long, hot day of walking around and looking around, I finally made my way back to the train station.

The train line to my airbnb had been cancelled. The exact translation was “abolished.”

Fun times!

This is how people roll, I guess. Public transportation is convenient except for when it’s not. I have learned to always have enough money for a taxi. I wasn’t even mad, though I had already bought a now worthless ticket and had to spend an obscene amount of money on a taxi. I guess this is what people meant when they said I’d “get used to it.” I am used to it, and it doesn’t feel good or comfortable. It just feels like I’m too worn out and broken to fight it anymore. I’m the public transportation system’s battered wife.

Tomorrow I am going to Amsterdam and have only 5 transfers from here to there.

What could go wrong.

I am injured

I think with all the running around I did when I traveled from France to Belgium I must have broken my left knee. This knee is making some double cracking noises now at every opportunity. Oh, and it hurts to bend it. Yesterday I took a bus tour of Bruges as a bit of a rest. Twenty euros for a 45-minute ride was a bit much, but as it was raining and the museums were closed, there wasn’t much else in the way of indoor activities other than eating and drinking or climbing to the top of the Belfry. Even though the rain blurred the view from the bus windows and the breath of the passengers fogged the rest, the bus tour was still worth it.

Happy to be on the bus almost seeing the sights!

I considered attempting the Belfry. There was no line. But my knee being broken led me instead to get some fries and waffles. I did a bit of window shopping–there are a lot of shops selling very beautiful, detailed lace works–but in the rain everything becomes a drag and I came back to my airbnb and took a four hour nap.

After a nap and then waking up so I could put myself to bed, I caught the train to Bruge (I’m staying one stop away). Look how cute and put together I was.

My knee felt a bit better, so I stared this behemoth down.

For 10 euros I was permitted to attempt the 366 steps to the top. I started counting but lost track around 7 when I wondered if it was the noun or the verb I was supposed to be counting. A few steps later (nouns) I came upon some descenders and I asked if I was almost there. That made their day and possibly their lives, judging by their screaming hysteria.

Here is the staircase.

Luckily there are a few rest stops along the way to the top. The stairs get more and more narrow and I think a bit steeper as you ascend. A few rooms branch off the stairs and you can sit your ass down and remember you gave yourself asthma and TB just two days ago.

By the time I got do the top I had stripped off both my sweatshirt and my blouse and was wearing my undershirt as an outer shirt and did not care. Everyone else kept their jackets on because they are pod people.

Here I am enjoying the view from the top/dying.

My hair is out of control, makeup long ago sweated off, and I can’t feel the lower half of my body. Look at me at the train station. Now look at me at the top of the Belfry. Don’t tell me exercise is healthy.

Here is the other view you might be interested in.

I took several more but they are pretty similar. Reddish tile roofs coming up to a jaunty point. Charming and picturesque. Like I used to be back at the train station. One thing I didn’t read about beforehand was that there are arrows carved along the outer molding indicating where other cities are.

Now I know which way to go to get to Klemskerke.

I was able to descend the stairs without much incident other than telling all the people I passed they were almost there. An older gentleman responded with “I can’t tell if you are an angel or a devil.” Another good subtitle for my autobiography.

After that, my legs had turned to pudding, so I rolled into a tea room for a steak and some booze. The food was great, though remind me not to sit down to a meal if I’m in a hurry.

I didn’t feel like doing a lot more walking. I have TB, after all, and jello for joints, so I decided to save the museum for tomorrow. I did see the outside of St. Salvator’s Cathedral, but as per usual I couldn’t find the door to get inside. Here is a lovely crucifixion statue on the outside.

Oh, and in case you are wondering what shoes to wear here, I took a picture of the most flat and walk-friendly sidewalk I’ve encountered so far (other than the people movers–more of those, please).

(PS I have not forgotten the DEMON, but I saw no signs today)

(PPS I am reading The Stand, Europe Through the Back Door, and How to Not Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking)

A bit of weird

The train situation is still up in the air and out of my control despite a reasonable request I sent to France via tweet. So, today, I got back on the tour bus and went to MNAC (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya). I went through the modernist halls first and was greatly disturbed by a painting of a cherub Cupid gambling. This explains so, so much. I didn’t take a picture because I want to forget it. The rest of the museum has a lot of religious art–frescos, paintings, sculptures. There were a lot of somewhat strange looking Jesuses, my favorite of which is this–

This Jesus seems super chill, even though in the upper left panel a ghost is riding a horse, in the upper right, people are arguing with laundry, in the lower left, auditions for the Haunted Mansion, and, look, on the lower right, a demon is trying to give sleepy Jesus a snake gift. All this and the center Jesus looks like he’s fresh off the Santa Cruz beach. Chill.

Outside the museum is a great panoramic view of the city. My face is blocking it in this picture.

There were ESCALATORS down the hill to a fountain. I escalated down and waited for the fountain to turn on, but it never did. This is called the Magic Fountain. It magically did not feel like performing this afternoon, so I got back on the bus. I’d been on the whole tour before and was able to look around more thoroughly. It was then that I started to notice some weird things. A pizza place called “WHY?” and a clothing store called Vague, for example, caught my eye. Then I saw this spicy meatball.

What. The. Hell. The tour guide didn’t mention this HUGE stone sphere sitting precariously on top of a mall by the sea. This thing is one hurricane away from pin balling its way through the city. How is this not in every disaster movie.

And finally, a block from my Airbnb, I spotted a message.

That’s right, the mark of the Devil, in the flesh, in an ally off La Rambla. You heard it here first.

Also, the Devil speaks English. The more you know.

Epic throwdown, pt 2

By now I am wary of the rail way and could not make myself get up early and go back to the station to deal with getting the tickets for the next parts of my trip. My body said no. So I slept in, relatively, and then bought a two-day pass for Barcelona City Tours. The 13th stop on the tour was the train station, and I almost got off but decided the ticket counter was probably on siesta anyway. So I completed the western tour of the city, including notable locations such as a bunch of stuff from when the Olympics were in Barcelona, a soccer stadium, and some really epic statues. My favorite was of Columbus, who is raising his hand as if to say, what, like it’s hard? He’s such a dick. Love him.

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After finishing the loop I went the mercado and got a salad. I brought it back to my room and crunched it down, though truth be told it was very hot in my room and without ranch dressing a salad is a fight to eat. I decided that, as it’s Friday, I should find the ticketing office today just in case they are closed on the weekends. I found the information booth more easily this time and gave up completely on asking about “Eurail” and instead said “long distance.” This helped a bit, though I still had to wait in line to ask where to wait in line. Such is travelling without prebooked reservations–

–however, after my number had been called I was told that I could get a ticket from Barcelona to Narbonne, France, but not the intended transfer from Narbonne to my destination, Bordeaux. Why? Because the French train workers are on strike. Why? I asked the clerk at the Barcelona station. He looked at God and said, “France.”

France, you are now my enemy. This is worse than the time Anthony Bourdain said he didn’t like chicken nuggets. Outrageous.

Sources close to my heart hope that the strike will end soon because it also involves the garbage company. Lil Bro texted me with “just take a taxi.”

Let me google that for you, Lil Bro:

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So I have a ticket to the south of France and then… ? Not sure what to tell my Airbnb in Bordeaux. “Hi, I’d love to keep my prepaid reservation, but your country’s trains aren’t running until question mark, sorry”?

And what about, I don’t know, the rest of my stops?

I’m not thrilled at not having plans, especially now when it is clearly not my own fault. That salad has been doing the salsa in my stomach. I continued reading Rick Steves’ guidebook to distract me, but he lets this bomb loose: “Make yourself an extrovert, even if you’re not.” Get out of my comfort zone, huh? Is 9000 kilometers still not enough?

Here is a pretty picture of the Placa Catalunya to remind myself that this should be fun:

These fountains do tricks.

Tomorrow I’m going to a museum and a beach for realsies, not just looking at them from a bus. Take that, Rick Steves.

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” Siggy Freud.

Epic throwdown, pt 1

This morning I took a shuttle to take a train to take a train to take the train (Madrid to Barcelona).

And then a taxi.

The first two trains were pretty straightforward because I started at the airport (end of the line) and could only go one way from there. I was on my way to catching the famed fast train to Barcelona. I just had to find it first.

I exited the commuter train at Chamartin, which should have a Eurail stop. The train station employees I asked told me no and to go to the Atocha stop. Back on the commuter train, then. At Atocha–a mega station attached to a mall– I asked a seguridad where the ticking booth for Eurail is and where the banos are. After the look I’ve come to expect from people I talk to, he said “No Eurail. Banos there.” He clearly spoke English and said banos in a Californian accent. I repressed my rising Eurail panic and paid almost a Euro for the privilege of using a mall privvy. I had my suitcase, my day bag, and my purse with me in the stall and we had a conference.

“It’s going to be okay,” I told my purse. “We will ask every employee here if we have to. Maybe even menfolk.” The purse remained nonplussed and with all of us in the stall I had to shimmy sideways to get to the real business at hand. With that issue aside, the reality of having to haul everything around again and ask anyone in a vest for the Eurail started to crush my spirit. If there was a sign or guide to the station or a helpful hint on the Eurail website, I wold have seen it by now. All I’d seen so far was a directory of the stores, and there wasn’t even a Sephora. And the wifi sucked. I stayed seated sideways and waited.

Then a message from God came in the form of a terrible cover of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” I put my head down and let it happen.

I left the banos and asked every seguridad, ticket counter, and free-sample peddler how to get a Eurail ticket. The sixth person pointed me to the Information center, which was hidden behind what seemed to be a carousal made of candy. The information desk clerk pointed me further into his office to the separate ticketing office. Not a counter, not a kiosk, a full on DMV style take a number and wait behind the yellow line office. I took two numbers (one for a train today, one for a future train) and waited behind the yellow line. About forty other people were also waiting, but many came and went and the numbers on the Now Serving display ascended from 199 to 647 surprisingly quickly (90 minutes).

Here’s the deal with the Eurail pass: you have to also book a reservation. I have the Eurail pass, but not the actual ticket for a specific route. Now, you can indeed book these online, but only if you do so at least 8 business days before your trip so they can MAIL you a hard copy of the ticket. This totally destroys the ethos of this trip–to be a leaf on the wind–and I am not a little irritated at how archaic this advanced train system is. Paper tickets? Mail? I know I’m from silicon valley and expect everything to have an interactive app and same-day delivery, but come on.

So that is why I had to find the ticketing office before finding the actual train even though I spent almost 2k on the Eurail pass. Oh and don’t forget the booking fee (10 Euros) . The good news is I was able to get on the very next fast train to Barcelona (yay!) but that meant I had to rush to the railway onboarding area right now and not book my subsequent ride from Barcelona to Bordeaux. So, after getting explicit directions to where the Eurail train was from three people along the way, I was able to find my seat and watch the Spanish countryside go by.

Above is a still taken from a 10-second movie I made about the Spanish countryside rolling by.

After I was settled in my seat and listening to my audio book (finishing rereading Ready Player One and then reading more of what the expert Rick Steves says about traveling) I decided not to be angry with the people who told me I was crazy/wrong/misinformed/American when the Eurail ticketing office was actually within shouting distance of their places of work. Though I am still American.*

A short taxi ride after that brought me within blocks of my Barcelona Airbnb, which is an apartment that opens to a small plaza on a pedestrian-only road.

I visited the market and am eating an apple. The sticker says it’s a seduce life variety.

So here’s today’s lessons: keep asking until you get the answer you know is right, and if that fails, seduce something.

*Very, very

Category: Airbnb