Prague: Queuing Up

By 10am we were on our way up the long, steep climb to Prague Castle. Thankfully, it wasn’t a terrible day weather-wise – it was sunny, but not terribly hot, and it wasn’t raining (cause for some celebration). I was really tired by the time we reached the top – you know you’re climbing quite a ways when you’re walking it, but it’s not until you turn around and look back down at the river and town below that you realize how much change in elevation it is.


Looking back down toward the Old Town from the Castle.

We began the Rick Steves self-guided tour starting with the St. Vitus Cathedral. The entire façade was covered in scaffolding, but the interior is quite stunning – not because of any particular ornamentation, but because of its height. It just seems like it’s twice as tall as it really is, because the vertical lines created by the columns and pillars aren’t broken up by any horizontal decoration. The Cathedral was built in two distinct halves – one during the 14th century, and therefore genuinely old, and one during the 20th century and made to look old. (Apparently, on the façade that we couldn’t see there are carvings of men in suits – the men who helped finish the building in the early 1900s.) There are several pretty stained glass windows, including one by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha. It’s quite modern-looking, and pays homage to historical Czech heroes.




Top row: The Cathedral from the side, and the scaffolded front.
Middle row: The nave (in the left picture, it's the far end that's the genuinely old bit).
Bottom row: The tomb of Prince Wenceslas, and a pretty muraled chapel.

Next up, we wandered into the square between the Cathedral and Old Royal Palace, and eventually into the Palace itself. There’s not much that’s worth seeing (at least according to R.S.), but the grand hall is really lovely – it’s where the Czech Parliament met until the 1990s, which is pretty amazing. The ceiling looks rather art nouveau, as the ribbing is curvy and shapes itself into flowers at the intersections. The wooden floor planks are large, and worn shiny from centuries of footfall. There are two rooms off the grand hall from which two Catholic governors were thrown out the window in 1618 when the Czech Protestant nobles rioted, in what is called the “second defenestration.” Y’know, it’s crude, but it’s certainly one way to let the leaders know you’re not happy with them. (And the fact that this was the “second” one implies that this method had worked in the past!)


The grand hall in the Old Royal Palace.

After deciding that the rest of the castle's museums weren't interesting to us, we headed back down the hill and caught the Metro to the main train station to make reservations for our trip to Berlin on Friday. The Prague Metro is as easy to understand as any other Metro. And the wall next to the train, which in every other Metro station I’ve ever seen is covered with advertising of some kind, is in the Prague stations a piece of art. The three subway lines each have a color associated with them, so the walls correspond to those colors and have rows and rows of alternating concave and convex half-circles. It looks almost like a wall of colored bubble wrap. Quite pretty.


Pretty Metro wall art.

We got to the train station where we’d arrived Monday afternoon, and went to the first ticket counter we saw. We waited in line and found the woman didn’t speak English. She managed to direct us to the appropriate section of the counter, however, so that was pretty good. Then we waited in one line for quite awhile before realizing the guy ahead of us was taking far too long (why we always end up in the wrong line anywhere we go, I’ll never understand) so we switched to the other line. Then when it was our turn, we said we wanted to make reservations on the tickets we already had for our trip to Berlin. The woman at that window told us (nicely) that she couldn’t help us with the schedule, we had to know exactly what train we wanted to take first. (Huh?) She directed us to the information section of the counter, in the opposite corner of the room. Fine.

We walked to the information section and waited in another line (if you’re keeping track, this was our third line – fourth if you count the one we eventually abandoned) which was specifically for information only, no purchases. And just as we had in Germany, we watched helplessly as one old woman just jumped ahead of the quite visible and substantial queue. When it was our turn, we asked for the schedule, and the kind man behind the counter printed it off for us. That was it, that was the extent of his work on our behalf. We then waited in the line at the other end of his counter to actually purchase the reservations. We were waiting, next in line, when a man came up and looked like he was going to cut in front of us. We had been leaving about a foot of space between us and the person in front of us in line – out of courtesy, and out of habit. What we realized is that no one here does that – the next person in line is practically sitting on the shoulder of the person in front of them, so our foot (or more) of space looked to them as if we weren’t in line at all. Or at least that’s what we’re telling ourselves to make the people here seem less rude.

At any rate, this guy was looking like he was thinking about jumping ahead of us, so I moved around from Chris’ side to his front, between him and the woman who was currently being assisted and just in front of us. The guy looked over, saw us waiting there, and it clearly registered that there was a queue – so he moved. Finally, we caught on to the system. We’ll see if this new knowledge sticks.

Mission finally accomplished (and the train leaves at a quite dignified 9:18am), we walked back toward the hotel and hunting for lunch. As we rounded the corner next to our hotel, we stopped to look at the menu of the restaurant on the corner. It looked good, the prices were more than reasonable, and the Visa sign in the window was practically calling our name.

The food at this place took longer than normal to arrive, but it was well worth the wait. I had duck leg confit with baked cabbage and bacon over potato gnocchi. It was spectacular, truly mouth-watering. Chris had potato gnocchi with sun-dried tomatoes and mascarpone and parmesan cheeses. Also wonderful. We get a 5% discount on one meal at our hotel’s restaurant, but I find it hard to believe it could be any better than that food – so we’ve already resolved to eat there again. Perhaps for dinner tonight…

After a brief break at the hotel, we walked over to the Old-New Synagogue to finish our tour of the city’s Jewish sites. It was built in 1270, and is the oldest synagogue in Central Europe. The 13th century floor is easily 10 feet below the current street level – it’s like in Rome, where the Forum and Pantheon are at lower levels than the present-day city. Amazing to think of the crap that builds up on the ground over the years.

The synagogue itself is quite small, yet notable for a few key features:

• Jews weren’t allowed to build things, so it was built by Christians.


• The roof structure would have been the typical four-rib design in the vaults, but as that would have created a cross design (quite inappropriate for a synagogue) a clumsy fifth rib was added.


• There are two strongholds in the entryway of the building which were used to keep Jewish valuables safe, as the Jews were the most heavily taxed group in medieval times.

The front of the Old-New Synagogue, and the two clocks of the Jewish Town Hall next door - the top clock is like any other you'd be familiar with, and the one underneath (on the left) goes couner-clockwise. Why not? Hebrew reads right to left...

We thought we’d check an “easy” errand off of our list, and walked back to the wine shop we’d seen the day before to get some Becherovka (a uniquely Czech alcohol) for a friend who'd requested it. There was a Visa sign in the window, but the woman told us that “only wine was in the computer,” so the hard alcohol we wanted to buy was cash only. And we were down to 500 Kč, possibly enough for a taxi on Friday to the train station, and didn’t want to deal with another cash advance. We said we were sorry, and walked out. Chris is under the impression that the more times we tell people we can’t buy anything because they don’t take cards, the more potential the establishments have for getting the message they should take cards. I’m not sure that’s the message they’re getting, but who knows.

We generally both like to shop for shoes and clothes when we travel, and we were making an effort. But my feet were getting achy, and I was feeling really tired in general. Even if I’d seen the perfect shoes, I’m not sure I’d have been able to get excited about them. I saw a few pieces of clothing I liked at one store, but the thought of having to get in and out of my own clothing to try anything on exhausted me. We strolled back to the hotel via the Old Town Square and then via another road where Chris thought he’d seen another liquor store (we couldn’t find it), and relaxed in the room until dinnertime.

We weren’t exactly starving, but eventually went back downstairs (after 9:30) for dinner – at the same place where we had lunch, of course! The place was nearly empty, and it was slightly embarrassing to have the same waitstaff there as the lunch crew (we hoped they didn’t recognize us). We ate far too much, and didn’t have far to walk to get back to the room, so we went to bed with very full tummies.

Prague: A Sense of Place

Let this be a lesson to you – any day that starts off well can easily, and quickly, turn bad.

We started our day at the breakfast buffet downstairs, which was slim pickin’s by the time we got there, and Chris dropped off some shirts he’d laundered to be ironed (there are no irons in the rooms, and the hotel said they didn’t have any to loan – they just send them out). We were both feeling better, but still a little tentative.

The Jewish Quarter, the sites now combined into something called the "Jewish Museum," isn’t far from the hotel, so we began our tour at the Maisel Synagogue (as per Rick Steves’ instructions). The entry fee was high enough that we didn’t have enough cash to purchase entry to everything (only the Old-New Synagogue was left out), and they didn’t take credit cards. So, we toured the sites we could on the ticket we bought – the Maisel, Spanish, Pinkas and Klaus Synagogues, the Ceremonial Hall, and Old Cemetery.

Through the Maisel and Spanish Synagogues was a running exhibit of Jews through Czech history, which was really interesting. The Pinkas Synagogue has a rather modern exhibit, where the names of the 80,000 Czech Jews killed during the Holocaust are written on the walls. Upstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue is an exhibit of some of the art created by children who passed through the Terezín Concentration Camp outside Prague. The Ceremonial Hall has exhibits on Jewish burial customs, and the Klaus Synagogue has exhibits on Jewish home life and the Jewish calendar. All of the sites had various artifacts, religious and otherwise, dating back hundreds of years and showing the rich cultural history of the Jews of Prague. It’s sad to note that throughout history, the Jews have been persecuted as scapegoats for any of a city’s or country’s problems, and alternately been some of the most learned and respected members of a society. It always seems that when things are going really well for the Jews, that’s when things begin to go very wrong – almost as if someone thinks they’ve got it too good, that they have taken something away from the non-Jewish people. The Nazis weren’t the first to force Jews to wear a badge or some other garment to label them, that’s for sure.

In the Spanish Synagogue I found the names of two deportees from Terezín to Auschwitz and Birkenau with my last name. And in the Pinkas Synagogue I found more of my name written on the walls. I doubt that they’re relatives in the immediate sense of the word, but it’s still eerie to see my name among the dead of the Holocaust. It makes me more certain that it would be a small miracle, indeed, if none of my family perished during those terrible years.

The Old Cemetery is just as chaotic and wonderful as I remember it from 13 years ago, though it seems much more organized and roped-off than before. There’s a prescribed path leading from the Pinkas Synagogue through the Cemetery in one direction, with many branches off the main path which are roped or fenced off.


The Old Jewish Cemetery is a tumbled mass of gravestones toppling over one another, propping each other up. Jewish law dictates that a body not be moved after burial, and the Jews were granted no more than the land they had for their cemetery - so they just went up, and their gravestones went up with them. People are buried three and four deep. No one has been buried here for ages - there's a new Jewish cemetery outside of the city (where Franz Kafka is buried). You can see in the left photo that they are currently attempting some restoration work on some of the gravesteones - the ones they're working on are covered in plastic.


The pieces of the gravestones in the right picture are the oldest in the cemetery - they were moved at some point, obviously, and they are now in a special area along one wall. You'll notice the pebbles and small pieces of note paper on these graves - there are small stones on graves throughout the cemetery. It's a Jewish tradition that stones, instead of flowers, are left on graves.



Being surrounded by all those artifacts and years of Jewish history, I couldn't help feeling like a part of something larger - even though I'm not Czech. And then, of course, seeing my name in those displays gave me both a sense of place and completely unnerved me.

After our tours (and a stop at the gift shop), we set off in search of a bank machine, since the entry fee we’d paid that morning had tapped our cash supply. One after another, however, the bank machines we tried all told us that they were unable to complete our request. We tried both of our cards, and many different banks. We were using machines that not only had Visa logos on them, but also had the “Plus” logo on them (which our cards have on the back), so we were really confused about what was wrong. After five or six refusals, we decided to go back to the hotel and get online to see if we could get some answers.

Upon arriving back at the hotel we were told Chris’ ironing was done and back in his room, and that it would cost 600 Kč – in cash, of course, which we didn’t have. We told the gal at the reception desk that we were attempting to get money, and we’d have to get back to her.

More frustration – the dial-up, frustratingly slow when we used it before and therefore nothing to write home about – wasn’t even working this time. Chris finally just called his bank to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with his card. They assured him there was no problem, said that they often had trouble with the “Plus” machines in this area, and gave us a couple other logos to look for. We also read in the R.S. book that there were American Express offices scattered around the city, which we figured we could take advantage of in a pinch using Chris’ work AmEx. So, we headed back out again.

The AmEx offices that were supposedly close to us were either no longer in existence or we were unable to locate them (despite asking several people), so we hoofed it over to the Wenceslas Square office, checking bank machine logos all along the way. Finally at the AmEx office, Chris was told immediately that they don’t do cash advances on AmEx cards, that it wasn’t technically an AmEx office but rather an “InterChange” office. (Which explains the giant “American Express” logo outside, right?) Frustrated, tired, and running out of options, we hit an Internet café on the way back to see where we might find banks with some of the other logos we were looking for. We found the website we wanted, but unfortunately the list gave us hundreds of bank locations of a bank we’d already tried several times with no luck.

Prague was rapidly becoming more of a problem than anything else.

The tourist information office beneath the clock tower in the Old Town Square was no help at all – the woman didn’t understand the words “cash advance.” I’m the first person to decry the fact that Americans don’t speak other languages, and that’s really arrogant of us, but if someone works in a tourist information office I’d expect them to speak English pretty well. But perhaps that was the frustration talking.

We eventually walked back to a place Chris had seen earlier where they would do a cash advance on a Visa card for a fee. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was one of the last options we had at our disposal (the last being to exchange what little money we had in Euros). We came back to the hotel and paid the ironing bill (which, by the way, is pretty exorbitant – roughly $30 for ironing 6 shirts?!?), and then spent some time recovering from the ordeal.

I wanted to get back to the place I was in the morning, when I was completely charmed by just looking at the city, just walking around. There were sights we still wanted to see, including the Old-New Synagogue, the Castle and the Cathedral. And there was a potential day-trip to Kutná Hora to consider. These things would all take money, and we hoped they would take credit cards – not just for the ease of use, but now for the necessity. Cash, more than anything else in town, seemed to be the hardest thing to come by.

After a little time cooling off in the room, we eventually headed back out to walk around a bit and get dinner. We walked back to a shoe shop Chris had been eyeing earlier, and though the shoes were nice and he’d have happily added several pairs to his shoe collection at home, at roughly $130 a pair (on sale!) they were a bit steep for his taste. We browsed the semi-permanent vendor stalls in the Old Town Square – the area that, 13 years ago, was occupied by people selling only what they themselves had made from crudely set up folding tables. Now, every other shop is selling the same T-shirts and key chains. We had two days left here, and we planned to look for gift items for a few people and maybe shop for ourselves as well, but it was a different shopping experience now than it was when my cousin and I waited patiently as the woman outside the Jewish Cemetery painted my name and “Praha” on the backside of a small river stone on which she’d already painted a Star of David. With all the assembly-line trinkets available nowadays, there’s sadly no room for that woman anymore.

Over dinner that night, we ended up talking about the day’s frustrations, and came to some conclusions. Chris said he feels like there’s an edginess about Prague, something slightly unsettled. I agreed – much of the guidebook is written in such a way that indicates while it’s a friendly city to visit, tourists should be wary of the relatively few scams left from the pre-tourist days. When I was here in 1992, it was so far from being a tourist destination (especially compared to now) that we weren’t expecting things to be easy. No one spoke English, and I had my cousin to help me navigate – not only does she speak German (which, at the time, was the only other language anyone knew – if they knew another language at all), but back then she was also “dabbling” in Slavic languages and actually wanted to test her Czech. I didn’t have to converse with anyone.

That was also the days before the ubiquitous ATM machine, which makes travel in every Western European country a breeze – travelers cheques are a thing of the past for us. In 1992, that was all I had coming over to Europe, and while I’m sure the exchange booths were as much of a rip off then as they are today, they were (and still are) everywhere so exchanging money was no problem at all. There weren’t restaurant hawkers pushing menus in your face every few minutes, trying to get you to sit down for a meal at their establishment. And there weren’t tour groups, led by people carrying huge and colorful umbrellas over their heads to be seen by the crowds of 30-40 who follow them around, clogging the small cobbled streets and the even smaller hallways of the indoor sights. In short, in 1992 it was a city that wasn’t catering to tourists in the way that Paris or Venice has been doing for centuries.

Now, the city looks like any other Western European city – on the surface. Taxis are everywhere, every menu is in six languages, and every shop sells the same postcards and baseball caps. What we found today, however, is that it’s the very thin veneer of a touristy city that Prague is wearing on its still somewhat gritty self. Scratching just beneath the surface, one finds that things aren’t as easy as you might think they should be. And therein lies the irony – in 1992, we were prepared for the difficulties of travel in Eastern Europe, and it was, therefore, simple. In 2005, we were expecting the ease of travel in a Westernized Eastern European city, and any troubles we run into are, therefore, difficult to deal with. As with everything else, it is in expecting something that we make our own bed.

After that frustrating day’s experience, however, I thought we’d be able to enjoy the rest of our time in Prague without expecting anything to be easy. If anything was simple at that point, it would probably be a pleasant surprise.

Prague: A City in Technicolor

I was up at 5:30, whether I wanted to be or not (and I didn’t). I just climbed into my clothes and propelled myself toward the door. It was still dark at 6:00, but only a little chilly. The problem was that we were in the midst of yet another torrential downpour. I’d heard stories in the news in the month or so leading up to our trip about the massive flooding throughout Bavaria, and though the worst of it was certainly past by the time we arrived, I could see what the problem had been. When rain comes down that fast, no amount of good drainage is going to help. Period. We hardly spent any time in the rain (from hotel to taxi, from taxi to train station), and we were pretty damned wet – Chris brushed quite a bit of water from his hair.

We were at the station with ample time to get breakfast items and newspapers before the train left, and though I didn’t think anything looked particularly appetizing I got some pastry thing. I think it was called a “quarkslasche,” and I have no idea what a quark is (other than a mathematical term, I think, or is it a computer program?), but it wasn’t half bad.

Our seats were in one of those 6-seat compartments that I find so old fashioned and romantic looking. They make me think of what train travel used to be like (or what I imagine it used to be like). Passport control was just like it was when my cousin and I took the train from Zurich to Prague 13 years go – a quick look at the passports and no stamps. So according to my passports, I’ve never even been to the Czech Republic. Hey, come to think of it, they didn’t even have anything resembling passport control going into Salzburg – and that’s another country, too! What’s with these people? Don’t they understand we want stamps?!?


Breakfast in our train compartment - traveling in style!

Anyway, the tummy wasn’t happy all day, but it got progressively better. We arrived in Prague around 12:50pm, after passing some beautiful scenery. The information desk told us it was a 15-minute walk to the area where our hotel was, so we decided we’d hoof it. We were so bloody happy to see the hotel by the time we got here – it might be a 15-minute walk with only a pocketbook, but with three pieces of luggage and two heavy backpacks? Not fun. Especially because (and I can’t believe, after all the rain we had in Munich, that I’m going to complain about sun, but here goes) it was pretty warm and I was getting overheated.

The hotel is nice, much nicer than we usually stay in on these trips, and for a comparable price. Our room overlooks the square the hotel sits on, and the pretty butter-colored church on the other side of the square. We dropped our bags in the room and immediately went in search of food. After so much meat and boiled cabbage, we opted for a pizzeria near the hotel, and I was pleased to find they also had ginger ale! We ate our food and then came back to the hotel just in time – not a minute after we’d gotten back into the room it started to rain. We napped a bit and then got dressed and walked around. The hotel is a five-minute walk to the Old Town Square, and another five to the bridge. I think we’re even closer to the Jewish Quarter, but we’ll see.

It’s Chris’ turn again to not feel well (frankly, neither of us reacted well to the German diet), so we went in search of not only fresh air but also something like Gatorade and a place serving a mild meal for dinner. We ended up walking all the way to the other side of the Karlův Most (Charles Bridge, the lovely pedestrian bridge over the Vltava River) and then turning around and coming back.


(L) A view of Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral from the (R) Charles Bridge.


A gray day on the bridge... But the statues look cool in silhouette.

The city is as I remember it, if not better. It feels like it’s in Technicolor now – somehow my memories had faded slightly over time, and I was left with something closer to a sense of the place rather than a full-color photo in my head. And though it was getting dark and the sky was threatening rain, the wonderfully menacing black spires on the Týn Church and the Old Town Hall looked welcoming and beautiful.


Staroměstské Náměsti (Old Town Square), my favorite part of my beloved Praha.


The Týn Church in the Old Town Square (left), and the Old Town Hall (right) - I've always thought the tops of these buildings (which I'm told are Gothic, but unlike any other Gothic architecture I've ever seen) make them look like the bad guy's hideout in a Batman movie. The Týn Church is Praha to me.


Týn Church, as seen from across the glow of the Old Town Square.

German Observations

Before I arrived in Berlin to meet up with Chris, he informed me that German pillows sucked. I wasn’t sure how pillows differed around the world, but he assured me they were definitely different in Germany, and in a bad way – none of that “politically correct” crap about how things aren’t wrong, they’re just different… Nope, I was told these were wrong.

So, to clarify from my own perspective, they’re not so terrible – they just take some maneuvering. The pillow case is roughly the size of two American pillows lying next to each other (long sides touching), and the stuffing is roughly what would fill one American pillow. The logical thing would be to fold them in half, shoving all the stuffing to one side. The maids in Chris’ Berlin hotel didn’t do this, and he ended up piling up all the pillows he could lay his hands on atop one another to make the height close to what he’s used to. The maids in our Munich hotel, however, just folded the damned things in half. Problem solved.

One other thing we’ve noticed in Germany is what things are acceptable to do and what aren’t. For instance, Chris’ friend Lena (from the Berlin hotel) told him that Germans don’t jaywalk. It just isn’t done. She didn’t say (and he didn’t ask) if this is because the police are really strict about it, or because it’s dangerous, or what. We jaywalked a few times around Munich before noticing that no one else was – even punk kids who looked in every other conceivable stereotypical way that they would be prone to breaking laws were waiting at completely carless intersections for their light to be green before they stepped off the curb. So, we eventually followed suit and stayed put until we were told it was okay to go.

Contrast this behavior with the seeming disregard for a queue, however, and color me confused. I mean, I’m not British, but I wait patiently for my turn. On two separate occasions Germans would storm past an obvious line to grab the next available representative, completely ignoring the gaping stares behind them. And what can you do? It’s not like they’re breaking a law or something. It’s not like they’re jaywalking.

Munich Pictures

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the Munich pictures that didn't make it into the other Munich posts. They're getting over the trauma of being cut, so please don't mention it to them. They're still fragile.


The current Pope was a Cardinal in Munich, so they're very proud of him. Pictures everywhere. The thing I noticed was the German word for Pope - it's "Papst." Which is way too close to that beer "Pabst Blue Ribbon." Really.


My "Hell" beer, and a "Nostalgiespiegel" for sale. Now, this may not be funny to you, but in the U.S. my last name is a burden. No one can spell it, some can't pronounce it, and it's nothing other than a name. In Germany, it's a word, and it's hysterical to see it in print. At least for me. Let me have my fun, will you?


It's hard to see, but this was really cool - a shop on the Marienplatz had projectors in the ceiling that were creating this animated "carpet" on the floor. The butterflies were flying around, and the grass and flowers were waving in a make-believe breeze. So very, very cool. I want one.


An entire store selling nothing but dried fruit. Can you imagine it? Of course, I have no idea if the store was selling nothing but dried fruit, because I didn't go in. But if the window display is to be believed (and what is a window display but an advertisement of what's inside?)...


The Town Hall on Marienplatz at night... So pretty...


...And yet I can't help but end this photo tour of Munich on a juvenile note. This is the message you get when you purchase a subway ticket. I'm sure it means something, but it had me in giggles every time we bought a ticket...

Wireless: Easy Come, Easy Go

This was originally posted from a brauhaus in Munich the evening of Sunday the 11th.

So, I'm sorry to have gotten your hopes up after that first day of successful wireless connections, but the wireless goddess is shining on us no longer. At least in our hotel. I am writing this from a Brauhaus down the street from our hotel, savoring a dark wheat bear (Dunkles Weissbier, I think, for those of you who are taking notes) and ready to order the last Bavarian sausage of this trip. We leave for Prague in the morning (6am!!!).

At any rate, I have posts all written on my laptop, but I'm saving them for when I'm not getting funny looks from German diners... More to come, really!

Ciao for now...

Salzburg: No Sound of Music

Chris woke up early and set out to do laundry. I only heard him as he was walking out the door, and I was only half awake when I realized he was locking the door behind him. This would have given me comfort on any other occasion, knowing he was looking out for my safety and keeping unwanted visitors out. The problem in this case, however, was that there was no bolt on the inside of the door to lock or unlock it. The door locked and unlocked the same way on both sides – with the key. So, as I lay there realizing I was locked in this room until Chris got back, I hoped that no one started a fire in the building.

Thankfully, the building was still fire-free when Chris returned, and we eventually got on the 10:48am train to Salzburg. We walked the 15-20 minute trip to the area of town in Rick Steves’ guided walk, and then did the R.S. tour. We were both tired after so much walking the day before (and not enough sleep on my part), so we didn’t linger in many places.


Our first "pretty" view of Salzburg, as we walked across the pedestrian bridge.

We did walk through the lovely Cathedral (past another couple reading the same R.S. tour), and saw the baptismal font where Mozart was baptized. He was the organist in the Cathedral for several years. The archways on either side of the nave are ornately carved but only in black and white, making the overall effect not as gaudy as other Baroque or Rococo style art I’m used to seeing. I loved the detail and the texture, and the lack of color only added to the feeling of it being a texture kind of decoration rather than icing on a fancy cake. The dome was bombed during the war, and has been rebuilt – it’s really beautiful, very light and colorful.


Salzburg's Cathedral: here are the carvings I was talking about, and the lovely dome.


And here's the baptismal font where Mozart was baptised.

There are several “Sound of Music” tours you can take, showing highlights of the Von Trapp family and the places in the city that served as inspiration for the movie sets. Personally, I hate that movie, so I not only had no earthly desire to go on one of the tours, I also didn’t recognize what the guidebook was talking about when it mentioned things about the movie. Whatever, it’s still a very pretty and picturesque little town, with bustling cobbled streets and beautiful open squares.

One of my favorite spots was around St. Peter’s Church and its cemetery. The cemetery had predominantly iron crosses over the graves rather than headstones, and it made for a very different look. Also, the guidebook says that the graves are rented, not purchased – they’re lovingly tended by family members, and all look like miniature raised gardens. The stone surrounding each one looks ancient, and the plots themselves look quite small – I have no idea how they get the old stone up without destroying it, and can’t believe a coffin would fit… Unless Austrians are shorter than other nationalities (or they’re just burying containers of ashes)…


This is the cemetery with the iron "headstones," and is supposedly the one the moviemakers for that stupid "Sound of Music" movie modeled their set after. I liked the cemetery in spite of that information.

The interior of St. Peter’s Church was nothing special, but the domes were fabulous – one in particular was a very ornate onion dome, more closely resembling a spire with onion tendencies. The sky was a lovely blue the whole time we were there (it rained as we got to the train station, so we got lucky), and the green copper of the domes against that blue sky was really pretty – I took several pictures of just the spire.


St. Peter's exceptionally cool dome-like spire I loved. A friend said it looks like a giant head of elephant garlic, and I think she's right. I mean, c'mon - isn't it just great?!?

After a light lunch of a spicy curry sausage with mustard and some ice cream for dessert, we bought a couple of trinkets and then headed back to the station to catch an earlier train. We’d talked about taking the funicular up to the fortress atop the hill, but really the fatigue had just finally caught up with us and we were out of touristy steam.


We have no earthly idea what this was about - the entire storefront of this shop was full of eggs. Dozens upon dozens of colored eggs, all arranged like this in cartons of the same design. Anyone know what on earth this is for? It doesn't matter, really, it was just pretty...


And, well, this needs very little explanation. (Actually, it needs lots of explanation - because my definition of "schmuck" must be very different, indeed, from theirs. This is another example of why it's a problem when you don't speak the language.)

Back in Munich, we chatted with the gal at the hotel reception desk – she’s got a very interesting history, and has traveled to many places we’d like to go. It was fun to talk with her. (A side note: The only problem with talking to Germans is when they know and say my last name. I immediately feel like I’ve been mispronouncing it my whole life…)

After realizing our precious wireless had evaporated into thin air, we tried to get to the Internet café R.S. mentions (after a failed attempt to connect at the Starbucks – yes, Starbucks – across from our hotel), but either it’s no longer there or Rick’s horribly mistaken. I’m pretty sure it’s the former.

We’d pretty much given up connecting to the Internet, and headed back to the Altes Hackerhaus (same place we ate the first night in Munich) for dinner. On a whim, Chris pulled his laptop out of his bag and got a great, fast wireless connection! So, we sat at a table in a beer hall with a beer each and a laptop on the table. Everyone’s got their cell phones out in restaurants, and a few people have digital cameras out, but we were still getting funny looks with the laptop. I sent quick emails to folks about the change in hotel information for Berlin, and posted something quick here about the wireless connection in the hotel going away, and then we put it away.

A brief note about the women who work in the brauhaus (brauhauses? brauhausi?) – they never stop moving, they carry unimaginable weights of huge steins full of beer (our waitress carried a tray with about ten liters full of beer – huffing and puffing as she ran past us), and they never look annoyed. We were really impressed with them all, and told our waitress that night – she laughed and said she goes to the fitness center. Chris said he wouldn’t challenge her to an arm-wrestling duel, and she agreed that was probably best.

I ended up ordering the same thing I’d had the first night – four pork sausages over sauerkraut and lots of mustard. It’s simple, and I love it, but there’s something strange in that combination that causes my tongue to turn a very dark color of green overnight. When I woke up the morning after the first time we ate there I was really concerned – I’d been having some trouble with a bleeding gum, and thought maybe my gum had been bleeding all night. (And please don't tell me that blood isn't green, at the time I thought maybe it was actually black. I'm not an alien.) That theory went out the window, however, when the same damned thing happened after the second time we ate there. I have no idea what it is that causes it, since Chris had sauerkraut with his meal the second night (with his ravioli, no less), and he had a half of one of my sausages. I’ll have to do some investigative work at a later date, because it’s just plain weird.


My sausages and sauerkraut, and Chris' ravioli and sauerkraut (??).


Here's both my Bavarian beer of choice, and - if you look really closely - Chris on a laptop in a brauhaus. How very 21st century of him, no?

Back at the hotel, Chris was watching tennis and I was packing. We were getting up at 5:30 and the taxi was coming at 6:00, so we had to be ready before going to bed; which would have been fine any other night. Unfortunately for me, my stomach was trying to reject whatever it considered offensive about my dinner, and I had to keep lying down or rushing into the bathroom. Not fun. I hardly slept, though I only made one mid-night trip to the bathroom – I was just in too much pain to relax. I wasn’t looking forward to a 7-hour train ride in that condition.

Dachau

I’d gone back and forth when planning this trip about whether to even go to Dachau (about a half-hour by train/bus from Munich), and in the end we decided that we’d go. I have to say I think it was the right decision, however depressing the entire thing was.

The guided tour left at 9:30am – it was a group of about 10 people and the guide, a Scotsman from Glasgow called Joseph. He was really great – striking an admittedly difficult balance between hitting you over the head with awful statistics and also personalizing the trauma that each individual who went through the camp must have experienced. (He ended up asking me if I was okay a couple of times, and saying he could “tone it down” a bit, but I told him not to – that I didn’t think it should be sanitized.)

Dachau was the first concentration camp, opened in 1933, and primarily not an execution destination but rather a work camp. Certainly, thousands died there – but it was from being worked or tortured to death rather than herded into gas chambers as was the case at places like Auschwitz. (It was a relatively few 32,000 who perished at Dachau, compared to more than a million people who were murdered at Auschwitz.) Interestingly, the reason that the execution camps weren’t in Germany is that Hitler’s government had made it illegal to commit euthanasia within the country after the German people loudly declared they were opposed to euthanasia. (Of course, it was hardly euthanasia that was being committed, but that’s how the Nazis were billing what they were doing – killing those who were unfit to work or who were too ill. How they got to be unfit to work or that ill was entirely beside the point.) Dachau was also the map upon which all other concentration camps were built, and where everyone who worked in one was trained.

It’s hard to describe the place and accurately the feeling of it – it’s a museum, it’s a learning experience, and it’s a gravesite. As our guidebook points out, the lovely garden area around the crematorium is fertile because of the ash that poured out of the chimneys for years. I suppose one could walk through the museum or around the grounds and not be paying attention, in which case it wouldn’t be a difficult experience. But why would you go if you were just going to treat it like a place to stroll around? I was somber when we arrived (walking through the gate marked, “Arbeit Macht Frei” – “Work will make you free” – which the guide pointed out was only readable from the outside – it was backwards to the people who were prisoners there), and it wasn’t until we reached the point in the museum with the actual whipping bench used on prisoners that it felt real to me. Sure, the pictures were horrible, and the buildings had seen atrocities, but to see this otherwise un-noteworthy piece of furniture with the whip marks on one side just brought everything into focus. We were standing in the room that was used as the bathing room, and also as a place for punishments (including the whipping bench). There are photographs there depicting the room as it was in the years during Dachau’s operation, so you could see the shallow-faced emaciated prisoners standing in the place you were standing. It was chilling.


The entry gate, reading "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Will Make You Free"), as seen from the outside of the camp. The fact that it read backwards from the inside is testament to the lies being told to outsiders about what was really happening inside these gates.


It was in front of this punishment bench that I started crying. The punishments here were psychological as well as physical - prisoners were forced to count out the blows themselves, and if they stopped or miscounted the captors would start over again at one.

The barracks were all destroyed by the Allied forces, as disease (particularly typhus) ran rampant through the camp, but two barracks have been built on the footprints of two original barracks and they have examples of what the beds would have been like in the different periods. The crematoriums are both still intact, and the ovens still there – with the doors open. There’s a room next to one of the oven rooms where bodies were piled up when the Allied forces arrived, because the death rate had increased so much they had run out of coal to burn the bodies. Local farmers carted the bodies away and buried them in mass graves in the town of Dachau.


The new crematorium and its ovens - the old one, across the courtyard, had only two ovens and the deaths soon outpaced the captors' ability to burn the bodies. This new crematorium also contained a gas chamber.

There are mixed reports about whether the gas chambers at Dachau were ever put into use. Most accounts say they were not, and the one account that says they were isn’t reliable enough to be counted on as fact. Either way, they were certainly exactly like every other gas chamber at every other concentration camp, and no doubt served an intimidation purpose even if they never killed a single human being.

The camp was surrounded by electrified barbed wire, and within that was a deep ditch and then a strip of land called the “death strip,” where prisoners would be shot dead by guards in the six lookout towers. The guide told us there were many prisoners who would run into the death strip on purpose, as that was one of the surest ways to commit suicide. He also said there was a slang term for prisoners who would sneak out of their barracks in the middle of the night to get to the electrified fence and commit suicide that way – they called it “going to the wire.”

I’m re-reading what I’ve written here so far, and it isn’t coming close to conveying the oppressive air, the ashy smell near the crematorium, the knowledge that the trees lining the main “road” between the barracks were much smaller in 1933, the feeling that there are thousands of eyes watching – and hoping their message is clear. It was a cold, damp and rainy day, and it was appropriate. I can’t imagine that any summer day – or any other day – spent at Dachau was happy.

The motto of the museum is “Never Again” – the idea being that by continuing to acknowledge and learn about what happened that we won’t let it happen again. But as the guide pointed out, it has happened again – Cambodia, Rwanda, Serbia, and now Darfur. It raises the sad but necessary question – what on earth will it take for this to truly never happen again?


Never Again.

A tip if you plan a trip to a concentration camp – keep in mind it’s not a “fun” thing, and ought to be treated with the respect afforded to any cemetery. And even though my eyes are still a wee bit red, I’m glad we went. I picked up a pebble from the pathway outside the crematorium that I plan to put on a grave in the Jewish cemetery in Prague next week.

After the tour we came back to Munich and while we were at the train station we got our reservations for our Monday trip to Prague (only two direct trains – 6:44am and 2:30pm… We’re taking the early one…), and found out the schedule for trains to Salzburg on Sunday. Walking back we got absolutely soaked in a torrential downpour. It had been drizzly on and off all day, but this was serious rain – the kind where the drops look like they’re made of milk, they’re so big. Got back to the hotel and out of drenched clothes. We relaxed for a bit, I posted to the blog (until the wireless connection went away), and napped. Then we had dinner at the place our Munich friends said would have been their “Plan B” if it’d been raining – Weisses Brauhaus, a place that Hitler and his fascist cronies apparently hung out in 1920. The food was good, though the portions were much larger than I could handle. I did finally have some veggies (side salad with dinner), though, which was a nice change of pace. I don’t mind not having salad in places like Italy and France where the meals include veggies, but I’m finally starting to understand Mom’s craving for “something green” on our trip last year…

Chris plans to do laundry early in the morning on Sunday, and then we’ll take a day-trip to Salzburg around 11am. And then we’ll repack and drag our behinds to the train early on Monday for the 7-hour trip to Prague…

Munich: Getting Acquainted

First off, I’m thrilled to find not one but six wireless networks within reach of my computer - four of which are unsecured. So, big thanks to the person who’s hosting me from my hotel room.

One slightly disconcerting note - when we arrived in Munich on Thursday night and caught the U-Bahn (subway) from the main train station to get to the hotel, we hopped on a train that was inhabited at one end by a group of disaffected youth blasting German heavy metal from a small boom-box. The boys in the group both had shaved heads, and one was wearing army fatigue pants and had the word “SKINHEAD” written on his forearm in black marker. He bobbed his head along with the music and held both his arms above his head, staring into space (which was also in the direction of the rest of the train car). I found myself worrying about something I’ve never had to think about when in the past I’ve heard people make racist remarks, because in the past it was never directed at me. As I watched him, I found myself thinking, “Do I look Jewish?” It’s not a good feeling. (Speaking of, I’m told by one of the drivers who was working with Chris this past week in Berlin that my last name isn’t just a German word, but also a typically Jewish name. I had no idea. So, whether I look Jewish or not, apparently Germans who see my name will have a pretty good idea of my heritage, at least.)

I decided awhile ago, while planning this trip, that I didn’t want to cram all the Jewish history sightseeing into this tour. I thought that since I’d never been to Germany that I should give it a chance at offering me happy memories before I associate it too much with Hitler and his regime. Seeing those kids on the subway was, as I say, quite disconcerting, and yet I’m inclined to think that they’re just being punk kids like any punk kids in the world would be - attracting attention by doing things that most people would find unacceptable. I could be wrong, and they could be real skinheads, but really - do members of the KKK walk around with “Property of the Ku Klux Klan” T-shirts on? Enough of that, let’s get back to the touristy stuff…

We spent most of Friday wandering - our hotel is located very close to the three churches I really wanted to see (Frauenkirche, St. Peter’s & St. Michael’s), so we did all of them. We also went up the tower of the New Town Hall which not only offered great views of the cityscape, it also scared the bejeeezus out of me by being open-air. Yipes! I managed to swallow a tidbit of fear and get close enough to the edge to take a few pictures, though. I do all of this for you, so I hope you’re happy.

We met up with friends of a friend for what had been billed as the “perfect” beer garden experience. They didn’t disappoint. They’d brought a picnic and we ate outside on the north end of the English Garden – very pretty, and (I’m told) very typically Munich. Never a beer drinker before, I consumed more beer that night than I probably have my whole life. My favorite concoction was actually half beer and half some kind of lemon soda – it had the same sort of sweetness that hard cider does – and it’s good they had something that wasn’t entirely beer, as the glass I drank from could have served as a swimming pool for one of my cats.

After it began to rain a little we headed back to their car and they drove us around to other parts of the city. We ended up walking a bit to what amounted to a “wine” hall and finished off the evening with some Muscat wine. They dropped us off back at our hotel at 12:30, and we were all happy to have met. They’re delightful, and I look forward to a continued relationship with them.

Anyway, here are some pictures for you as well, of our day so far. Oh, and we’re taking it nice and easy - we woke up at 10:30am. Ahh, vacation!


The New Town Hall, on Marienplatz. The Glockenspiel is on this tower, and does its little routine every day at 11am and noon. We saw it - it's pretty cute.


Frauenkirche, taken from the New Town Hall's tower; and the nave of the Frauenkirche.


The mustards I've grown completely attached to (especially the sweet one in the back); and apparently a new line of work for the Son of God - jewelry salesman ("Did Jesus Wear A Rolex?" should be cued on everone's stereo right about now).


That's me with our new friends, and then Chris & I. After I finished the one in my hands (yes, I finished it), I had one like the one Chris is holding. Finished that, too.

Germany: Arrivals

Mostly, it was a travel day like any other travel day. A few tidbits:

I’m finally reading “All the President’s Men.” I have an old paperback edition, and when I opened it on the plane I was reminded how much I love the smell of old paperbacks. It’s that odd sort of sweet and fragile smell of old low-quality paper; not quite musty, but probably in the same category of smells you associate with good memories as your grandmother’s attic. I wonder if I enjoy smelling the book more than I enjoy reading it.

Thoughts on post 9-11 travel – For awhile, there were security measures everyone knew and no one questioned. One of them was that no one would agree to watch a stranger’s bags. Another was that no one – not even first class – got metal knives with their in-flight meals. We’re nearing the four year anniversary – only four years – and both of those things have, apparently, gone out the window. At the Newark airport a woman near where I was sitting was frantic because she’d agreed to watch the bags of a woman she didn’t know, and it’d been at least 20 minutes since that woman left. The two airport officials she spoke with both said the same thing – “I’m sure she’ll be back any minute. If she’s not back in 15 more minutes we’ll take the bags to the lost and found. But I wouldn’t worry about it.” Don’t worry about it? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? And then on the second flight with my meal I received metal utensils – including a metal knife. I suppose I should’ve expected this at some point – people feeling “inconvenienced” by certain security measures so that airlines (being service-oriented) revert back to the pre-9/11 days – but I never thought it’d be so soon. We Americans just don’t seem to be that good at learning from history.

Talk about an easy arrival – Alex, one of the drivers for Chris’ company for the week, was waiting for me at the airport. Very nice guy, gave me a mini-tour on the way back to the hotel. The folks at the hotel adored Chris this week – they were sad we’d made arrangements to stay at a different hotel when we got back to Berlin, so they offered us a rate that was nearly half of our other hotel (and this place is much nicer) and cancel our other reservation for us. I found out when we returned to Berlin that the gal at our hotel had to resort to telling the other hotel we couldn’t come because we were in New Orleans before she was allowed to cancel the initial reservation... Probably not the most responsible thing to do, but hey - it got us into the hotel we wanted to be in! (And I didn’t have to be the irresponsible one, so...)

En route to Munich, everything seemed to be fine – until I realize we’re in the wrong seats. It was one of those 4-seat groups that face each other and there’s a table between us. I think the people next to us were supposed be next to the window, and instead we accidentally thought we were. They didn’t say anything when they sat down – I hoped it was just because they were nice and it wasn’t a big deal, as opposed to them chalking it up to more bad behavior on the part of Americans. But I didn’t have my hopes up.

No-Fuss Arrivals & Teabag Tag

Chris emailed me this morning (I have no idea what time it was for him, but certainly not morning) to say that he'd arranged to have a limo come pick me up at the Berlin airport! What a nice guy... All I have to do now is look for a guy holding the right sign - no bothering with finding a taxi or remembering the address of Chris' hotel.

And my teabag tag this morning (I haven't had tea in awhile, I guess):

"Put all your eggs in one basket and - watch that basket!"
Mark Twain

So Close...

I think I'm just about ready to leave, which is a great feeling - especially since I don't fly out until Wednesday morning! I've packed my bag almost entirely (last-minute items to be thrown in - ahem - last minute), and have checked off basically everything on the list. I'll clean the house tomorrow after work, and then it'll be ready to be handed over to the house-sitter. Yes, it's a very good feeling.

Unless, of course, I'm forgetting something major...

Yeah, I'll probably end up freaking out about that tomorrow night around 11:30 and then end up staying awake until 1:00am. But hey, that way I'll sleep well on the plane!

Seriously, the biggest decision I have left is what book to bring with me to read. I have a small pile of paperbacks on the dining room table, and am only planning to bring one. So far, "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is still high up there in the running, but since I've read it something like four times already I'm thinking I should give something else a chance! I put "River Town" down some months ago, and could happily pick it back up as well. And I've never read "All the President's Men," so that's another option. Too many choices...

Chris noted this as he was packing last week, and I'm finding it's true as well - we travel nowadays with so damned many pieces of electronic equipment. We each have a laptop, an mp3 player and a PDA - and each of those things comes with synching cables and recharging cables. Then there's the little digital camera (which Chris took with him). Incredible.

In completely unrelated news, I've had TLC on all evening as I've been packing and such, and it's been a marathon of a show I'd never heard of before called "Miami Ink" about a Miami tattoo studio. It's a so-so show, but watching it has made me want another tattoo. Perhaps for my birthday next year I'll treat myself. I love the one I have (it was a first anniversary gift from Chris in 1997), and I liked the guy who did it - I hope I can find him again. (I think I might have lucked out - depending on how updated this site is, he's here.)

So, just a few more things to do tonight before I hit the hay - including having some dessert and finishing my pedicure - and then it's one more day at work to put things in place so that my boss doesn't have a freak-out while I'm gone and think he needs to call me in Germany. I think having to deal with work while I'm overseas would put a pretty heavy damper on my vacation. I'm totally fine with a pile of stuff on my desk when I get home, but while I'm gone? I like my boss, but I don't want to hear his voice in Germany...

Alrighty, that's it for me this evening. More later, if there's something interesting to say...

Missing New Orleans

When Harry Connick, Jr. & Wynton Marsalis performed this last night during the relief concert, I cried. You could stand in the middle of the French Quarter right now and be missing the city. I look forward to a time when everything is as it was again.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans,
And miss it each night and day?
I know I’m not wrong, this feeling’s getting stronger
The longer I stay away
Miss them moss-covered vines, the tall sugar pines
Where mockingbirds used to sing
And I’d like to see that lazy Mississippi
Hurrying into spring
The moonlight on the bayou, a creole tune that fills the air
I dream about magnolias in bloom, and I’m wishing I was there
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans,
When that’s where you left your heart?
And there’s one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans
The moonlight on the bayou, a creole tune that fills the air
I dream about magnolias in bloom, and I’m wishing I was there
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that’s where you left your heart?
And there’s one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans
- Louis Armstrong

Concert for Hurricane Relief

Governor Pataki was on not long ago in one of those between-song segments on NBC's Concert for Hurricane Relief. He said that the gulf states, like the rest of America, lent such support and help to the city of New York over 9/11 that the people of New York wanted to give back. He said that there's still a fire engine working in NYC that was donated by the state of Louisiana. He handed the Red Cross a donation of $2.5 million for hurricane relief. Amazing.

4:51am - And No Plane to Catch

Well, at least not my plane. I put Chris on an airplane to Berlin this morning, playing the role of chauffeur. (Except that I was too bleary-eyed to drive out there, so he drove... I just drove back after there was no other option.) I am decidedly not a morning person. I only tolerate waking up at that ridiculous hour when I'm going to be getting on an airplane later that day. I was back home this morning by 6:45am, and fell back into bed for another hour and a half... I'm still out of sorts, and am very glad it's Friday...

Weather & Politics

I haven't said anything here about the disaster on the Gulf Coast, mostly because the whole thing is so far beyond words. New Orleans is a city dear to my heart, a city I truly adore - and seeing the pictures on television is making me ill.

What upset me the most, however, are the looters and snipers. Okay, if you're breaking into a store to pick up water or diapers, that's one thing - but stealing stereos and jewelry? That's just theft. Even having said that, I can almost understand the motivation behind the looters - it's chaos down there. What I absolutely cannot understand are the snipers. There are people shooting at their fellow hurricane victims as they're being evacuated from flooded hospitals. What in the hell is that all about? Until someone can explain to me why they're shooting at people who are suffering as much as they are, I have to consider them sociopaths.

Seriously, though, if this isn't a clear indication that the concept of anarchy doesn't work, I don't know what is. Anarchy can't last - people broke into flooded Wal-Marts and stole all the guns, so they're now the new rulers of a drowning and lawless city. I dearly hope something is done soon to restore order, or the loss of life will continue. Can you imagine surviving the hurricane and the flooding only to die during the fucking rescue efforts? Unbelieveable.

And then there's this gem, from the American Progress Report:

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said yesterday that it made no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans. "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," said Hastert. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco responded, "To kick us when we're down and destroy hope, when hope is the only thing we have left, is absolutely unthinkable for a leader in his position." Hastert later attempted to clarify his remarks, saying he was not advocating the city "be abandoned or relocated" and that his "sincere concern" was with how the city would be rebuilt. Hastert's clarification did not include an apology.

Yeah, because it's always easiest to kick people when they're down.

**

Completely unrelated, and a bit of what I consider good news (also from the American Progress Report):

In a step forward for gay rights, the California State Senate "approved legislation Thursday that would legalize same-sex marriages." The bill now moves to the state assembly "which narrowly rejected a gay marriage bill in June." Right-wing legislators in California have gone on the attack. State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth "suggested that 'higher power' opposed the legislation." A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "would not comment about how the governor would act if the bill is sent to his desk."

To help the relief efforts along the Gulf Coast, please consider a donation to the Red Cross.

Making My Lists

The list-making has started. I have my "things to do before I leave" list, and my "things to not forget to pack" list. Both are growing so far, not shrinking. I hope to make some headway this weekend.

I sent an email to my Aunt's friend in Berlin, who will be in town the weekend we're there - so we should be able to connect with him, at least for dinner or something.

I'm oddly preoccupied trying to figure out what music I'm going to want to be listening to over the next few weeks, and therefore what music I should load onto my MP3 player. (Perhaps this is why my lists are growing.)

The trip to San Francisco is officially off. On the one hand, I'm really bummed - I'd have loved to see the bike race (especially since my favorite guy will be there), but I wouldn't have relaxed or enjoyed the trip at all - I'd have been a stress-case thinking about all the stuff I should've been doing. Oh, well - everything happens for a reason, and all that BS.