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Amsterdam, Netherlands
And he said behold what I have done, I've made a better world for everyone
I rode a Eurostar chunnel train from London to Brussels, the tunnel itself was kind of loud and not necessarily eventful. I then lingered in and about Brussels for about an hour between trains, enough to eat a waffle and some frites that I literally thought were going to kill me. I had about seven hours in Amsterdam (5pm-midnight), leaving myself just enough time to wander around happily. Amsterdam reminded me a lot of the nice parts of Greenwich Village- the West Village in particular. There was nothing wrong with this place.
This is the Kaiser Willhelm Memorial Church in the West Berlin part of Berlin, still half bombed out from when Hitler ran the place, pseudo restored into a giftshop.
I’m in Berlin for 14 hours, and here so early that nothing is even open yet. I can in by a night train and am leaving by another one again, so far these have been a great way to see a place without having to figure out a hostel. One real disadvantage of not planning a trip in advance is that I find myself spending a good chunk of my day (sometimes a solid hour or two) in lines and talking to train agents or hostel desks or at money changers or luggage lockers. As well as a lot of time on the trains or at night in the hostels looking through train schedules and really planning the next few days and then the next few days after that.
There was only a small section of the old Berlin Wall still intact, most of what was no man’s land is under construction. There is a lot of construction in Berlin, which is both exciting and frustrating. There was a big exhibit of architectural models showing some of the new buildings- I'm always impressed by things like that.
It rained on me in Munich. Its surprisingly flat, more schwarzwald (black forest) than alpine. I went to the BMW museum to see the building, ate a pretzel the size of my head, and then went out to see Dachau.
I don't know how anyone could ever live in Dachau. Death hangs over that place. They showed a map of the town. On one side was the concentration camp, on another mass graves, on another the SS shooting ranges where they did more mass killings, death on all three fronts. The camp itself was as unpleasant as you could imagine. I walked through the main hall, through the parade grounds, by the "arbeit macht frei" gate and watchtowers, by the site of the condemned barracks, along the barbed wire fences, through the crematoriums, through the gas chambers. I thought it was an important thing to do. I still think that. It stopped raining at Dachau. The smell of stagnant water, decaying squirrels in the road, distant unpleasant, unidentifiable sounds. The place is still haunted by evil.
After that it’s kind of hard to go back to Munich and all its drunken Bavarian glory.
This is Salzburg, Austria, home to the Von Trapp family (I think they moved to Vermont) and Mozart (he’s dead now). These gardens were featured in the Sound of Music during the Do-Re-Mi song, although I did not see any Austrian kids dressed in drapes singing in harmony anywhere. And in the background you can see a castle where I paid 20 AS to ride a funicular up the hill to see.
