One Day Stopovers: Venice, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels

Due to the fact that we bought a Eurail Pass with a certain number of free travel days we scheduled in a few cities that we could just stop in to see for one day only, in transit to our actual destination, in order to make the most of our free travel days. The four cities that we got to see extra for this reason are Venice Italy, Berlin Germany, Vienna,Austria, and Brussels Belgium. It is a bit strange having only a few hours to see a city and I am normally inclined to say it would not be worth the hassle but actually I think these stop overs were well worth the effort. We did have Copenhagen on the list as well and ended up not being able to make it, sadly, but not every city is a good one to jump out of the train station and run back at the end of the day.

Brussels was probably the least exciting stop over and was just out of necessity for getting to Dublin the cheapest, but we had a good time anyway. I have been to Brussels before and it is nice but really really crowded and touristy, and actually kind of kitchy. So we decided to opt out of seeing the famous peeing boy statue and settled for just buying peeing boy tourist crap instead. The first thing on our agenda was to eat a ridiculously overloaded waffle. Strawberries, chocolate, whipped cream, and yes, ice cream. We paid an arm and a leg for that and I’d do it again. Then we bought ridiculous amounts of chocolate. Then we went into tourist shops and walked around to kill time and that was it. We headed for the airport and slept in the airport in order to take our obscenely early and cheap Ryan Air flight to Dublin. Have I mentioned how much I hate Ryan Air? Well I am bound by my wallet to them, but oh so resentfully. If you can, I recommend anything else, fyi.

Vienna was one of my favorite stop overs and one of the shortest sadly. This is one of the few cities on the Europe portion of our trip that I have not been to before so this was especially interesting for me. In addition to that, I love speaking German so I was pretty happy to be there. When we arrived we locked up our bags at the station and headed for a tourist info stand. We got the tourist map with all the tourist sights on it and as we started reading through it there were so many cool ones that we wanted to go to that we realized we were never going to have enough time. I was interested in coming to Vienna in the first place because one of my favorite artists, Egon Shiele and his buddy Gustav Klimt, were from Vienna and I wanted to see their work. So Jessi and I decided to split up and meet back at the station in only a few hours, before our train to Prague departed. Jessi went to the Freud Museum to check out her favorite psychologist. OK OK Jessi, I know he’s not your favorite psychologist, in fact hes crazy, right? But interesting none the less. I ran to the Leopold Museum which houses the larges Egon Shiele Collection in the world and literally was running through it. There was an amazing Art Nouveau Jewelry exhibit in a side gallery. Ran through that. Then I ran outside and into the Kunsthalle where there was a Dali exhibit and a contemporary art exhibit about the dream of space. Ran through both of those which were really cool and then ran back to the station. Jessi met me and we hopped on our train just at the last minute and fell asleep until Prague. Definitely going to have to go back there sometime.

Venice was a one day stop over twice actually. The first time we spent all day looking for the port and cheap cruises to Greece, which fell through and turned into a trip to Croatia instead. On the way back from Croatia we stopped here again and actually got to enjoy the city this time. We split up and I looked at art and Jessi chilled out and enjoyed the scenery. While I was walking around and popping into gallerys I asked one of the attendents if she could recommend some good places for art. She asked what kind of art I like. When I gave a vague response she said, well do you like renaissance art? No actually I don’t, I really dislike renaissance art and I prefer art after the 20th century. To which she responded, agast, well, you are in the wrong place. I laughed and went on my way without a recommendation. It turns out there is a lot of really great contemporary art in Venice. I just kept happening upon cool gallery after cool gallery. I have been to Venice before but it is a really great city to re-visit. Not only is it beautiful with a totally unique landscape but it seems there are so many nooks and crannies where you keep finding cool things to look at and explore. Walking around you constantly feel lost, like you can’t escape the maze of alleys so you keep going and keep going and then eventually you happen upon somewhere really amazing. In navigating back somehow there are always seemed to be a sign exactly where you needed it telling you exactly where you want to go. It’s great and amazing! It was a pleasure to be in Venice. I can imagine carnival there would be out of this world.

The last one day stop over was in Berlin and it has got to be one of my favorite cities. Again, I am fairly obsessed with German speaking cities already, but Berlin is particularly special. It has got a vibe to it. It is buzzing with a history that screams for freedom which is fiercely upheld in every creative way possible. There is graffiti everywhere speaking about politics, saying finally we have the right to dissent. The art scene is vibrant with people who grew up in a culture that understands what it would be like in a society without art. They are independent, modern, progressive, political, socially keen, and still attempting to bridge the many social gaps that still exist from a harsh history. Berlin is German but they are a trump for Germany. They are of a higher order. It’s more like Germany houses Berlin, as a guest.

Sadly the whole day we were there was a little bit miserable. Poor Jessi was recovering from a cold and still sick and it was rainy the whole day. We didn’t have an umbrella and we kept thinking it might let up but after we had our breakfast in the first good looking covered coffee shop we found we realized we were in a bit of trouble. We ended up finding this beat up looking umbrella laying on top of the trash can. When we opened it there was only one wire slightly bent so we decided that would do, for the both of us. Hahaha. Anyway, we stayed a bit dryer, I can say that for sure and I was very happy for that trash can umbrella. We went to some holocaust memorials and museums, art gallerys and art museums (well the gift shop anyway cause we were too poor that day for anything not free), Check Point Charlie (where the old east west boarder to the American sector was), and a Berlin Wall memorial. I paid, like a sucker, for an old East German passport stamp and visa, and I was pretty happy about it. I am awfully intrigued by the East German history and if you don’t know much about it I really recommend the German film “The Lives of Others” or “Leben des Andern”. It is a fabulous movie about the stasi secret police and the political feel of the times. It is easy to find and has English subtitles. Also must recomend "Good Bye Lennon" and "Liebe Mauer" (a bit cheesier than the others but still good).

Europe is so vast and so dense it is hard to not be ADD about it. It felt like we were on fast forward for the two months of our travels through Europe especially compared to our extended stays in the rest of the world. But we had a good time and, well, we got our money’s worth.

Paris is Art

Paris has become synonymous with the word art to me. I took 698 pictures in the 4 days we were in Paris and 491 are of art or a building that houses art. One of my favorite days of the whole trip was a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. I have to give a shout out to Jessi here because she was a trooper. I am not sure I could find anyone who would have endured my obsession as well as Jessi. We stayed in the Museum literally the entire day. We had to take a break for lunch because despite that we were hurrying to get through the museum before a late lunch at 3 we were still only about half way through the place. The place is not only huge but completely amazing. It houses just about every artist that I have seen in my art history book from the 21st Century and a vast amount more than that. It is like a dream land of artistic freedom, expression and history. I felt my heart pulsing at every turn finding new pieces that made my dopamine surge. I tried to
only take pictures of my favorite pieces and I ended up with 427 pictures from inside the gallery alone.

In the upstairs gallery there was a contemporary exhibit on the theme of India. It was one of the more amazing contemporary exhibits I have seen in a while and after having just been in India it was even more poignant for us. They touched on themes of mass habitation, religion and technology. One of my favorite pieces was a huge wall with computer boards, cords and various other tech items all stuffed together lining the wall creating an ordered mass of technological waste. Another piece was two huge walls that were facing each other where the artist had built dense city dwellings out of various recycled tin cans which covered the two walls. As you walk between the two walls you feel oppressed by the density and intrigued by the mass details. There were other pieces dealing with sexual assault and the daily life of prostitution, homosexuality and life in the city. I felt impressed by many pieces that I will probably remember for a long time after.

The MOMA Building itself is a work of art. It has transparent tubes on the outside of the building that house the escalators, so all day you can see people coming and going from floor to floor. It is like watching hamsters in a maze. It is adorned with the typical yellow, blue and red attachments from the Bauhaus style. Outside there is a man-made pond around the corner that has various kinetic water sculptures in it. They are really fun to watch and do all sorts of things with spraying, churning, or playing with water. Right in front of the museum there is a big open plaza where street performers can come and vendors set up. It remains pretty open however so you don’t get a sense of chaos. We sat for a while and listened to the cute Dutch performer that was playing when we came out and ended up buying a cd.

Besides art in Paris, we ate macaroons, saw Notre Dame, bought lingerie, and went to the Eiffel tower, and of course ate lots of cheese and bread with wine. That’s what you do in Paris. We had a really pretty great time and had the luxury of staying with some family friends in the city. They took us to Giverny, the location of the retirement house and garden of Monet and we saw the real life view of many of his vast landscape works. There was also quite a nice gallery of impressionist art on the premises, since we didn’t quite get our fill at the Musee D’Arsey. I must say I like Paris. I have been before and I got the same feeling of a quirky sense of calm. I like that. I’d say I could aspire for that.

One more very important detail: Croissants. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat another outside of France. I try not to be a snob, but I’ve been ruined. I can never go back to being satisfied. Paris, you force snobbery. It’s not your fault, you’re just better than the rest.

By the way, thank you Eric, Camille and little Izie. It was a pleasure as always to see you. I hope to see you in the states next year. xoxox