No Prerequisite

This is the park across the street from the library where I’ve been working. It’s pretty big, so I haven’t explored the whole thing yet… or much of it at all, really…
Continue reading ‘Friedrichshain’

Ok, no new pictures tonight, but an explanation of “the dancers” I mentioned last time. There was a week-long event here in Berlin, a festival for gymnastics/exercise, and as part of it there were performers here in the Sony Center doing a variety of things: dancing, jump-roping, flipping around on stage, etc. Since they’ve been gone, there’s been a little more space here, but not much; in general the Sony Center is a very busy place. (Not at 9 in the morning on a Sunday, though. So few people are here at that time that the wifi isn’t turned on; or, if it was, nobody noticed a problem with it for several hours, forcing me to go to an internet cafe to check my email.)

I made it. More (low-res webcam) pics to come. Yes, I have a real digital camera, but these are quicker and easier to upload.

While I was in Europe this past semester, I spent several days in the Hague. I arrived after a long morning train ride through northern Germany and a shorter ride on an orange and aging regional train. Not the best of first impressions. When I arrived at the central station in the Hague, I set off in search of my hotel without consulting Information. Big mistake. The map I had found online failed to make clear just how many streets it left out; needless to say there were quite a few. The Dutch woman who helped me at the Information center had, as one always hears, nearly perfect English. She pointed me in the right direction, and despite her suggestion to the contrary I took off on foot.

The city, like the weather, was beautiful. I wandered along a park and came to the canal I was looking for. As I walked the length of the canal in search of my street, I realized the Dutch couldn’t be nearly as litigious as Americans; the lack of railings between the sidewalk and the meter drop to the canal would have been a lawsuit waiting to happen in the US.

After checking into my hotel, I headed back to the central train station; my rail pass allowed me unlimited travel on any day I used the trains, so I wanted to take full advantage of that by visiting Amsterdam and taking in a Boom Chicago performance. Amsterdam was a confluence of bicycles, deadly trams, historic buildings, prostitutes, and more than anything else, tourists. From the shops (and other ‘vendors’) in the red light district to the boat cruises to the restaurants, everything catered to tourism.

Despite a late night I woke up relatively early the next morning. I decided to visit the shoreline, but again chose to venture out by foot, unaware of exactly how far I would have to walk and having only a general idea about what direction to head. As I passed another of Europe’s gorgeous churches, I noticed a small group of protesters with signs in a number of languages, including English; despite understanding three languages worth of signs, I couldn’t quite figure out what they were protesting. I headed around to the other side of the church and came upon a group of tourists; unlike Amsterdam, I didn’t find myself surrounded by them at all times. A pair of husbands and wives approached me with a tiny map, and through a number of internationally-intelligible made it clear they wanted to know where they were. After a few moments I heard one wife say something to her husband, and realized they were French.

That made things a little easier. I explained that I spoke a bit of French, and that there was a larger map on the other side of the church. I led the two men back to the poster I had seen just after walking past the protesters. We found our location on that map without problem, but translating that to the tiny map they had proved extremely difficult. In the end I referred the two men to the Dutch protesters behind me, and headed back on my way. I came across the two wives by their vehicle, and explained that their husbands would be back shortly. They thanked me for my help, and asked where I was from; only then did they realize I was American, and suffice to say they were more than a little surprised.

I eventually made it to the beach after following a tram line for a few kilometers. Following lunch I made my way back to the hotel through a rather large park, and collapsed in bed when I got there.

I had planned on riding a bike out of town the next day, but the weather didn’t cooperate, so I bought a day-pass for the trams instead and explored the city that way.