Christmas Adventure Part 5: London

We were oh-so-very broke when we made it into London (after a horrible mix up going to the wrong train station in Paris and narrowly missing our EuroStar train to London (coolest/cheapest transport ever) because there's a check in security limit ON A TRAIN... bah, arriving 2 minutes before international trains left in Spain was so liberating. Anyway, the ticket woman took pity on our--probably obviously starving looking college students--selves and gave us free tickets to the next train even though we had saved a bunch of money by buying the super inflexible tickets... oops). anyway, we walked around so that Rachel could see a little of the city (she left the next morning) before we went to our hostel and then in search of food.

Europe NEVER takes down its Christmas trees! we were well into January...

Turns out, England puts this mysterious security chip with a PIN on almost all of its credit cards. Needless to say, Rachel and I didn’t have said ridiculousness and when we went into a 7-11 type store to buy milk and candy we practically broke the whole place down. To be fast, Rachel went in the cashier line and I did the automatic check-out. Soon enough, the English guy asked her where her PIN was. Rachel, thinking he was talking about a debit card PIN, said that she could give it to him, and he was like, “No. Where’s your PIN???” pointing like we were idiots to the place on the card where that chip usually is. More confused than we had ever been in non-English speaking countries, we proceeded to hold up the line, and I practically broke the automatic check-out machine, it asking for a PIN chip or manager. Why does England insist on a security system that makes itself incompatible with THE REST OF THE WORLD??? Anyway, some guy behind us took pity on us and just paid for our stuff, candy and all, saying that “It probably counts as charity…” The bank we then went to to withdraw cash rejected our cards, and it was another one of those moments… we had lost our baggage, our clothes, we were really far from home with no cash and all we had to our names were these cards that the Queen would have no part of… we just wanted to be let into their secret, English society of fancy—well, at least functional—PIN security chips!! Well, the next morning we went out in search of a bank owned by an American corporation and, sure enough, we were able to take out cash. Rachel basically paid her bills and fled the country.

I then met up with Sam and Betty through the day after I went to the National Gallery (actually a let down after Paris) and a pretty sweat choral mass (wait—what do Protestants call church time?) at St. Paul’s.

WEAK (national gallery).

Next, we paid “Speaker’s Corner” a visit, which is the only place in London where you can protest without a permit, drawing the articulate crazy and sane in equal measure. It was, without a doubt, my favorite place in London.

EXTREME Zionist and very anti-Islamic
This guy was the best.


We had a pretty solid time at some pubs and I went back so I could wake up early the next day to go to the London Castle. The tour was the coolest thing ever and the whole castle and complex and history was incredible. The crown jewels, like I said, were actually kind of lame after the Hapsburg Treasury, though…

way cool place.
Best historical tours ever.



Okay seriously, what's with all these British soldiers that look approximately 5? This guy is guarding the CROWN JEWELS. My 14 year old host brother here in Chile could take him, even with the rifle.

Anyway, the next day I headed off on my series of horrific flights (train to Heathrow, bus to Gatwick, plane to Dublin, plane to Heathrow, plane to Boston… basically hell) and that completed our epic Christmas adventure in Europe!!

Christmas Adventure Part 4: Paris

After an 18-hour (w(b)oo!) bus ride we finally arrived in Paris (during which the police pulled us over right before we crossed the border into France and mysteriously pulled a few people off the bus...). We walked around the city sightseeing until it got dark enough to start getting ready for New Year’s Eve. A few people had told us the Champs Élysées is the best place to go so we grabbed some champagne and headed off on the subway around 11, where we had to fight our way into the cars and people immediately started to try to pickpocket me and feel up the girls. The next half an hour was not so enjoyable as I was constantly telling off or pushing guys off of girls, especially after Jessie attracted a gang of twenty by acknowledging some guy’s presence and giving him a “New Year’s Kiss” or something like that. Mistake. At one point Betty took guy’s hat to try to distract them (mistake #2) and then he accused her of stealing and things really started to get out of control… a philanthropic Parisian snuck us out of the situation through a pass in the crowd.

Before riot happy time!

All was well again and the New Year came in happily and then Paris did what it does best: riot. There were riot police trying to contain crowds of people throwing champagne bottles and arresting people and evacuating wounded officers and all sorts of craziness (below is a quick video of us after we've left the riot. If your interested in the longer, more crazy/scandalous ones, let me know individually)…



somehow (before this video was shot) we had landed ourselves right in the middle of it. The police we kept on running into immediately knew we were tourists and kept on suggesting that we get the hell out of there.


We obliged. It was a good night but Betty and Jessie had to leave the next day (after more sight seeing like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dam and whatnot), traveling elsewhere, while Rachel and I stayed to conquer Paris.



Christmas card photo #2


!!!


Christmas card photo #3...




We went to an amazing graveyard of artists in central Paris. Here, Oscar Wilde. But, by far, my favorite thing was this...

THIS. hahahahahaha... happy now, Marx?


Over the next few days, Rachel and I lived in museums, visiting the Rodin, Louvre, D’Orsay, and Pompidou. Everything was fantastic and unbelievable except for the Louvre. Apparently spending six hours looking at orthodox, realist paintings is not really my thing… Where’s the art? I mean, it was cool to check off the box for the Louvre and Mona Lisa, but… eh. The Rodin museum was absolutely fantastic and the craziest sculpture I’ve ever seen. Rachel was reborn at the Pompidou, and I liked it a lot, except for that Ready Made art shit. boo. By far though, the most incredible was the Musée D’Orsay, an old railway station converted into a pre, during and post Impressionist museum (that’s it… nothing else). Holy shit. Amazing.


Rodin!
D'Orsay = best museum in existence

Back to the Louvre for the (much less cool) inside

booooooooo (Ready Made in Pompidou).


The two of us were pretty much shameless tourists, stopping in for pastries every few blocks in good neighborhoods, going to that intellectual’s coffeehouse district (we drank hot chocolate…. don’t tell anyone…), posing with a baguette at the Bastille roundabout (actually, I don’t think that’s that common…) and going the Pantheon (leave it to the French to redesign their most monumental church as a monument to the French Revolution… that place was incredible). We tried to go to the catacombs (coolest thing ever in Vienna) but they were closed…

mmmmm-mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

disappointingly didn't make me any smarter...

WE JUST FELT LIKE HOT CHOCOLATE, OKAY???
ummmmmm, amazingly unflattering but... amazing... how revolutionary do we look? (and, no, i don't know why we're posing as rioters and we already have bread...)

Pantheon
scale.

Rou-fucking-sseau!

subway
THE most important staircase in the world... and I'll never forgive the French for blocking it off and not letting me get a picture... ever.

We were pretty tight on money at this point and we had a few truly pathetic moments. Among them, well, as I said, Rachel and I had lost our luggage and only had the clothes we wore on our bodies, so we got some more and at H&M sale, but not much, and by the time we got to Paris our rags (literally, my shirt sleeve had ripped when lifting luggage) had acquired a rather unpleasant odor, so after Betty and Jessie left it was time to venture out. Rachel had some pajamas, so one morning she took all our clothes except those to the laundromat (which ended up, apparently being the trip to hell to find detergent without knowing how to speak French) and the idea was to make it back before we had to check out of our budget hotel (somehow cheaper than hostels? It actually was really, really nice though and they brought the "breakfast" to our bed, though I'm not sure if they're offering extra services at this place or some of the staff also works at the Cabaret shows or what, because at four in the morning this woman, scantily clad in a sort of perverted maid's uniform with four inch heels unlocked our door at four in the morning, asked us some unknown questions in French and then left... ????). Anyway, she came back at checkout time without my clothes (thanks to the detergent debacle the clothes had just started the washing cycle) and it was time to check out… after laughing hysterically at my pathetic state of being at this budget hotel in the middle of the Paris Red Light District (cheap), I assembled what little clothing I had and wore my rag of a busted sweater over my chest, boxer shorts, a coat wrapped around the backside of my legs in a vain attempt to cover up the fact that I was wearing rather small boxers and hiking boots (the shoes I had worn on the plane because they were the heaviest to put in the bags). Like this, I walked down busy Paris streets to the laundromat, half amused, half willing nonexistence. Photos available upon request.

Christmas Adventure Part 3: Berlin

We stayed with a family in Berlin and they were the nicest people ever and fed us amazing German food constantly… we barely wanted to leave the house (thanks, Elisa! Glockenspiel be damned, I’m really glad we went to Berlin over Munich. The whole East/West division was absolutely incredible. We stayed with a family that had lived (well, actually, still lives) in East Berlin and the father told us all about it on our way in from the airport. My only complaint is we brought them the tastiest cake in Vienna (stupidly not buying any for ourselves) and they didn’t eat it (nor share…) while we were there… another reason to go back to Vienna. We spent like three or four hours at the Berlin Wall historical museum which was incredibly well done and had all this historical information and personal stories and artifacts of things people used to get across the wall (like retrofitted cars, hot-air balloons, scuba diving equipment, etc.). Phenomenal.

Museum.
Posing with the East German soldier at Checkpoint Charlie. Awkward/tactless/amazing Rachel moment: Jessie was getting her passport stamped at the checkpoint and the guy was like, "Fischer (her last name).... hmmmm...." and Rachel blurts out, "Jeeeeeeeeew." The amazingly German guy turns to her, blankly staring for a couple of awkward seconds--it seemed like he was either going to scream at us for ratial/historical insensitivity or be really depressed for the rest of the day--but then lets out this huge, boisterous laugh... it kind of weird actually, but hilarious evidence that 50 years later, Germans can still appreciate a self-deprecating Nazi joke. (Note for the sake of a tad of PC-ness: Rachel is Jewish)

The one thing we didn’t take advantage of were the antiquity museums that are supposed to be fantastic. Sigh. Other than that, we did a whole bunch of incredible sight-seeing that you can see from the pictures, tried to find this really awesome club, got lost and settled on this really awkward but fun bar.
City hall.
Now don't go all McCarthy on me...

Looking at the church from the antiquity museum.
Reichtag!!! Seriously one of my favorite buildings in Europe. Neither the French nor the English built such a state-image projecting center.



and the new modern additions. Apparently the mirrors are so that the legislators in the chaimber below can look up and see the people they work to serve (and also the whole symbolism of people above the government, yada, yada). anyway, way cool
Brandenburg Gate.

Christmas Adventure Part 2: Vienna

Vienna was, tied with Paris, my favorite. The Hapsburgs made the city one of the most epic and extravagant and historical places on earth. Vienna seriously has everything: ridiculously awesome performing arts what with Mozart and the Vienna Opera and the Vienna boy choir (seriously though… they’re the best in the world), the Hapsburg palace complex is amazing and we spent a long time going around the gardens and museums, the treasury makes the crown jewels of London feel outclassed and underdressed and Vienna has a spectacular museum (second in my mind only to the Musée D’Orsay and Pompidou Center in Paris).

Garden in front of all that castle business





Imitating these female Japanese tourists we just saw doing the same thing... sorry, tasteless, but it was just too good.

Neo-gothic town hall. Not a big fan, but everyone else was.

View of garden from museum.


There was a really awesome cathedral there (of course) with even more spectacular catacombs with mass graves of hundreds and hundreds of people that died from the plague! Rachel and I climbed the South Tower which was the most ridiculous stair mastering exercise I can remember.

Don't know why I don't have a better photo...

Great view from up top.

We saw The Magic Flute in the Vienna Opera and everything (the production, cast, set, orchestra) was absolutely spectacular (thank God for those electronic translators next to every seat)! There’s a bunch of other stuff (sight-seeing, etc., but you get the idea), but I really, really want to come back to Vienna (esp. during the summer when all the gardens are even more amazing and you can swim in the Danube)!

Opera House
Inside. I dunno.