What’s up? Que pasa? (Not gonna even begin to try translating that into French, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Czech or Hebrew.)
Sitting here at a computer in a district of Prague, now seemed like a good time to post an update about my trip through parts of Europe. Do some on-the-move bloggery, if you will.
My trip began December 23 at 7:00 p.m., when my friend Travis and I departed Madrid on an overnight “trainhotel” bound for Paris. It was more of a “trainmotel” or “trainhostel” or “trainouthouse,” but that’s neither here nor there.
Using Eurail passes (of which we now have only one, since someone stole Travis’s), we are able to traverse Europe by train for 15 straight days, with access to the commuter rail services of 21 countries.
We arrived in Paris on Christmas Eve morning, and stayed there until the morning of the 27th. Our hostel – “Young and Happy” – was just that. It was not “Young and Happy and Clean,” but we didn’t mind. It was situated right on the same street in the Latin Quarter that I used to visit with my parents and sister when we visited Europe about 10 years ago. An amazing location, and we definitely took advantage of it this time around by eating in the area a couple times … escargots and frogs’ legs and crepes, oh my. So far, it was also the best hostel experience of our trip, as we made friends with the French staff, the many Australians there, and a few awesome Americans as well. What you surrender at hostels in luxury, you often get back in camaraderie.
Paris truly is an amazing city. In our short time there, we saw many of the major tourist attractions. Still, a look out from the Eiffel Tower showed us how vast Paris is, and that we had barely scratched the surface of Parisian culture and history.
That theme has permeated this trip: More or less, we are receiving a small taste of each city and country, but not nearly enough to gain more than a rudimentary understanding of these places. In Spain, where we’ve lived for three months or so now, we’ve begun to grasp the culture, the customs, the flow of life. A day in Belgium (our second stop), two days in Amsterdam, one in Berlin, three in Prague, and two to come in Munich … it’s like someone gave us the Wikipedia article about the CliffsNotes about the Sparknotes about Europe.
And that’s just fine. On the whole, we’re receiving quite the education about the continent. Aspects of vocabulary, cuisine, spirits, music, art, architecture; each place offers something new, foreign, and special.
In Belgium, we visited Bruges and Brussels. The way of life there, along with the chocolates, waffles and beer, made a major impression on us.
Amsterdam … is something else, probably best described as a music festival culture filled with art, peace and an amazing city layout. It is what you think it is, except for the many times when it isn’t. (Such is life.)
We both would’ve liked more time in Berlin, a city where we definitely felt a few months would suffice, and we had mere hours. Getting there one night before New Year’s Eve certainly made things exciting, though, and we enjoyed one heck of an experience there by going out with 19-year-olds from Hamburg. The next day, we made a brief visit to the Brandenburg Gate, then the German Holocaust monument nearby. As a Jew in Germany, this obviously carried strong significance.
From Berlin, we took a train to Prague, rolling along the way through Dresden, Germany – an important city in world history, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, and the birthplace of the grandmother of my late, great friend, Morris Lewis Walker. His grandmother was born Jewish in World War II, Nazi Germany, and her family concealed the fact for safety’s sake. At age 10, she lived in Dresden when the Allies firebombed it like Pompeii. She survived all that, married an American, and gave birth to a daughter whose son changed my life. Linda Walker is my family now, and it meant a lot to me to be able to see Dresden, albeit in passing, because of what it meant in her life and in an all-time anti-war book. Linda Walker’s grandson, and my great friend, died fighting in Afghanistan over a year ago. For all the things she has survived, that may have been the toughest.
But I digress. A couple heavy moments on a trip such as this are necessary, I believe, but on the whole it has been a ton of fun. After the somewhat sombre note of leaving Germany, we arrived here in Prague. And Czech, Czech, Czech, Czech it out: Food is cheap, beer even cheaper, and the city is beautiful. Although, as I told Travis, “We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.” This is Central Europe, and it’s a different world. The country’s recent, Communist past still plays a large role in the collective identity of the people, who have seemingly embraced capitalism over the past two decades. We went on a free tour of the city today, and it shed much light on a country that I knew precious little about beforehand. We even made a few … wait for it … Czechmates. We also met some awesome Lithuanians who said I looked like Lithuanian NBA player Linas Kleiza. (Can’t say I see the resemblance.)
From here, we head to Munich, where Travis and I are excited to discover more about Germany. Then we visit Barcelona briefly and Valencia, Spain, before making our way back to Madrid.
More to come about the trip, but for now …
Goodbye. Adios. Au revoir. Tot ziens. Auf wiedersehen. Ahoj. Shalom.
by 
by