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unforthAs of this morning, destination 3 (Prague) has been successfully reached.
I left Amsterdam very early in the morning to go to Cologne. Mom and I met up in the Bonnhoff (train station) and caught a cab to our hotel. All in all, it was all pretty easy, but as we arrived the rain started to fall, and the weather got increasingly unpleasant. Still, we braved it and, armed with a map, headed off to go to the Museum Ludwig, a modern art museum. I don't care much for modern art, but there were a few pieces there that were interesting, including a statue that I really liked, even if it did look like a Quidditch player.
From there, the weather got even worse - cold, blustery, and raining - and we debated what to do. We ended up with an early dinner (including hot apple strudel with vanilla sauce, yummy!!) and decided to cab it back to the hotel. However, after nearly 20 minutes of standing on a useless taxi queue, we got annoyed and walked instead, and were glad for it.
On Friday morning, we slept in - the most sleep I've gotten since I arrived here - and it was VERY nice. Breakfast was included at the hotel, so we grabbed breakfast, and mom needed to rest more, so I went by myself to the Romische-Germanische Museum (and snapped more pictures of the Koln Dom while I was at it). The museum talks about Cologne's history - it was first founded by the Romans in 38 BC, and for a long time was one of their farthest out bastions, fortified against barbarians, celebrated throughout the empire for their very fine glassware. Archaeological finds indicate that there have been people living in the Cologne area for even longer, though, with Neolithic artifacts to be found along the Rhine. The museum charts all of this, and then has some Rhineland (Middle Ages) artifacts as well - beyond that, though, you have to go to the Koln Stadtmuseum in order to get the rest of the picture. Interestingly, the museum location was chosen because of an archaeological find on that spot. In 1941, during the construction of an air raid shelter, a Dionysian floor mosaic which is really remarkable. The air raid shelter was relocated, and after WWII the museum was built, and all manner of Roman stuff found it's way there - the museum is chock full. I'd say my favorite was the room with about 200 examples (maybe more) of Roman style lamps, one entire case of which was devoted to erotic scenes - apparently the Roman's REALLY liked lamps portraying people engaged in sexual acts. The glassware was really beautiful too, though. ;)
After that, I went back to the hotel, and mom and I together set out for the Koln Stadtmuseum (City Museum) and learned all about the history of the city. The museum was oddly laid out (the 20th century and 16th - 18th centuries were on the first floor, with the 19th century, sort of, on the top, with some cross over). It's laid out in the old city armory, and thus had some fine bits of armor, but mostly it just had a good array of different types of artifacts, from paintings to a winch used in the building of the cathedral, to a Hitler youth log book, a monstrously luxurious urn that won a major contest at a World's Fair one year, and loads of other...stuff. A few things were particularly interesting. When some low level noble fellow was executed in the 15th century, all of his personal effects were confiscated, and this motley assortment of items has remained together to this day, and apparently the collection represents the only maintained batch of such things in existence - mostly little bags with religious relics and money and a few slightly finer bits. There's also a large statue of a farmer, decked out in armor and literally carpeted in nails - after the first World War, donations were collected and the "reward" for donating was getting to drive a nail in to the armor of the statue. There was also a photograph of how the city looked right after World War II, when nearly 90% of the city was leveled - miraculously (some say) or by design (say others) the Dom was almost entirely undamaged - though I did see some signs of the destruction. There were also artifacts from the now-nonexistant synagogues that once were in the city, and some books and paintings from the Cologne University, one of the oldest universities in Europe (founded 1388) - the funniest of the paintings showed a bunch of angels diligently studying, while one angel who was outside and cutting school was getting eaten by demons. Seriously. So go to school, kids, or you'll get eaten by demons. Sadly, there were no English labels in the museum, though the audio tour was available for free, so I didn't learn as much as I might have liked to, though I still learned a fair amount. All in all, between the two museums, I'm prepared to say that Cologne is a whole lot cooler and has a far more interesting history than I would have expected.
The only other thing I learned on Friday was that the word Pepperoni does not mean pepperoni - it means pepperencini; the word salami means pepperoni. This was almost very bad, but I was spared the horrible peppers, thankfully.
Bright and early on Saturday, we got up, but mom had worked to do so we actually got off to a late start. My uncle was joining us in the afternoon, so we went out to a museum in the morning, and then met up with him. Also, mom really wanted to try to find this store she'd been too that sold native wood crafts and she thought she'd identified it, so we went to the Nutcracker House to look at carved nutcrackers, cuckoo clocks, and other such things. I ended up getting a small set of guys with stars for heads, though they had a clock there I fell in love with - not a cuckoo clock, it was a just a clock face with some hanging weights and such. Based on a clock from right around 1600, it didn't have a minutes hand, and only told the hours, and I thought it was way neat.
After that, we headed to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, though we got distracted by an excavation across the street. The Town Hall, right across the street, is quite fine, and in the front yard of it there's a dig uncovering the foundation of a medieval Jewish synagogue, neat stuff. We peered in, but there's not much else to do there, so we moved on to the art museum. The Wallraf-Richartz turned out to have a truly lovely collection dating back to the 14th century, with many fine bits of religious art on the first floor; some fine Old Masters (a Rembrandt, some Rubens, a couple of Franz Hals, and others) on the second floor; and some decent impressionists and such on the third. All in all, it was a VERY nice collection, and I was dully impressed, and they let me take pictures - and I took LOTS, more than I normally do, just because so much of the art was truly nice. I know I've already said it like three times, but I really was very impressed.
We met up with Jeremy in the afternoon, but mom was quite tired so he and I went off to dinner and brought her back pasta. We had a long talk, and that was pretty nice, and then more talk back at the hotel. There's some family drama with my grandfather (some things don't change) but nothing - cosmically speaking - particularly serious, so it's no big deal.
On Sunday, we finally had nice weather (instead of gray and raining weather) and so the three of us headed down to the Rhine for a stroll. I also got my first actually German meal - bratwurst with farmer's bread and salad - and it was quite tasty and very filling. So far, I'd been content with local deserts (in addition to the strudel, I've now had two berliners - which are very, very good, better than a normal jelly donut, I think, and gelato - the gelato in Cologne was amazing) but I was happy to add in local sausage. After that, we went to the Dom and actually looked around inside. It's just amazing - I found in part why, too, it turns out the damn thing is 157 meters tall (about 450 feet) and the inner domed ceilings are some of the highest in the world. I took way more pictures than even I'm gonna want to look at again.
Coincidentally, Jeremy encountered someone that he knew, a nice German fellow named Adrian, and we ended up going to dinner with him at a small local beerhouse. I did, in fact, have a beer, though only one, and actually almost liked it - a much better reaction that I had to my last cup of beer. The food was DELICIOUS. Mom's pork dish came with about the tastiest fries I've had in recent memory, and my roast beef in a sweet and sour sauce was also very yummy, and it came with these really awesome mashed potato balls that resembled more than anything else Matza balls - other than that comparison I'm not sure how to describe them, but they were good. Meanwhile, Jeremy braved the local specialty - he'd had it once before and hadn't liked it, and in fact he convinced me NOT to get it at lunch - which is called Heaven and Earth (in German). It's made up of mashed potatoes, representing the earth, pureed apple, representing heaven, and blood pudding, representing...er...I don't know, but use your imagination. I tried a bite, and though the texture was utterly bizarre, the combination of flavors was quite good. I think it's probably for the best that I didn't order it myself, though, I'm not sure I could have eaten a whole plate of it, not with the weird texture.
After that, mom and I got a delicious slice of chocolate cake at, of all places, Starbucks. It was late, though, so we went back to the hotel, packed, and that was sort of that. Our flight was at 11 AM this morning and, rather than risk being late, we were instead massively early, and now I've been in Prague for a couple of hours, though I'm VERY tired and so are the others (they are, in fact, both asleep right now) so we're not really trying to do anything. From what I saw in the cab ride to our hotel (actually, it's really an apartment/suite, with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen area, it's rather amazing, and not all that expensive considering that when Ben arrives there will be four people staying in int) it's an interesting city with a lot of contrasts - high, beautiful spires but dirty streets and graffiti; lovely, detailed architecture opposed to the blank, sheer Communist-era buildings, that sort of thing. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be much to actually DO, but lots to SEE, so I suspect I'll spend lots of time wandering around. This is good, because I'm even more broke than I was before. Today, at the airport, when I went to get Czech krona, the local currency, the ATM spat out my 1000 krona (about 60 dollars) and DIDN'T spit out my ATM card, so I'm now sans means of getting more cash other than borrowing it from my uncle or my mom. I'm gonna try to do that as little as possible and rely on my mastercard instead, but we'll see - so far, neither Amsterdam or Cologne has been a credit-friendly city.
All in all, I liked Cologne more than I expected to. The people were friendly - very demure during the day, but VERY noisy at night with soccer-mania gripping them. The city was fairly clean and peaceful, and though I could have wished for better weather, still it was pleasant to wander around and stuff was close together. Furthermore, the sights were very impressive and the museums had excellent collections - the Kolner's are very proud of their city, and so there seems to be a strong tradition of donation. Furthermore, just walking down the streets exposes one to more than 2000 years of construction, for even with the damage done by the war there are still bits and pieces of the old Roman wall to be seen, and the city has been inhabited without break for that entire time period. Not many places can say that!
There's not loads I want to do in Prague, but I think it'll be interesting anyway. Our hotel is really nice, and the wireless works way better than at the old hotel, and we're here for almost a week - all very positive things. I have, of course, been snapping pictures (though none of Prague...yet...) but there are tons from Cologne, where all of the museums let me take them. I'll post links to some favorites soonish, but first I've gotta finish labeling the Amsterdam ones - I'm about half done... :)
I left Amsterdam very early in the morning to go to Cologne. Mom and I met up in the Bonnhoff (train station) and caught a cab to our hotel. All in all, it was all pretty easy, but as we arrived the rain started to fall, and the weather got increasingly unpleasant. Still, we braved it and, armed with a map, headed off to go to the Museum Ludwig, a modern art museum. I don't care much for modern art, but there were a few pieces there that were interesting, including a statue that I really liked, even if it did look like a Quidditch player.
From there, the weather got even worse - cold, blustery, and raining - and we debated what to do. We ended up with an early dinner (including hot apple strudel with vanilla sauce, yummy!!) and decided to cab it back to the hotel. However, after nearly 20 minutes of standing on a useless taxi queue, we got annoyed and walked instead, and were glad for it.
On Friday morning, we slept in - the most sleep I've gotten since I arrived here - and it was VERY nice. Breakfast was included at the hotel, so we grabbed breakfast, and mom needed to rest more, so I went by myself to the Romische-Germanische Museum (and snapped more pictures of the Koln Dom while I was at it). The museum talks about Cologne's history - it was first founded by the Romans in 38 BC, and for a long time was one of their farthest out bastions, fortified against barbarians, celebrated throughout the empire for their very fine glassware. Archaeological finds indicate that there have been people living in the Cologne area for even longer, though, with Neolithic artifacts to be found along the Rhine. The museum charts all of this, and then has some Rhineland (Middle Ages) artifacts as well - beyond that, though, you have to go to the Koln Stadtmuseum in order to get the rest of the picture. Interestingly, the museum location was chosen because of an archaeological find on that spot. In 1941, during the construction of an air raid shelter, a Dionysian floor mosaic which is really remarkable. The air raid shelter was relocated, and after WWII the museum was built, and all manner of Roman stuff found it's way there - the museum is chock full. I'd say my favorite was the room with about 200 examples (maybe more) of Roman style lamps, one entire case of which was devoted to erotic scenes - apparently the Roman's REALLY liked lamps portraying people engaged in sexual acts. The glassware was really beautiful too, though. ;)
After that, I went back to the hotel, and mom and I together set out for the Koln Stadtmuseum (City Museum) and learned all about the history of the city. The museum was oddly laid out (the 20th century and 16th - 18th centuries were on the first floor, with the 19th century, sort of, on the top, with some cross over). It's laid out in the old city armory, and thus had some fine bits of armor, but mostly it just had a good array of different types of artifacts, from paintings to a winch used in the building of the cathedral, to a Hitler youth log book, a monstrously luxurious urn that won a major contest at a World's Fair one year, and loads of other...stuff. A few things were particularly interesting. When some low level noble fellow was executed in the 15th century, all of his personal effects were confiscated, and this motley assortment of items has remained together to this day, and apparently the collection represents the only maintained batch of such things in existence - mostly little bags with religious relics and money and a few slightly finer bits. There's also a large statue of a farmer, decked out in armor and literally carpeted in nails - after the first World War, donations were collected and the "reward" for donating was getting to drive a nail in to the armor of the statue. There was also a photograph of how the city looked right after World War II, when nearly 90% of the city was leveled - miraculously (some say) or by design (say others) the Dom was almost entirely undamaged - though I did see some signs of the destruction. There were also artifacts from the now-nonexistant synagogues that once were in the city, and some books and paintings from the Cologne University, one of the oldest universities in Europe (founded 1388) - the funniest of the paintings showed a bunch of angels diligently studying, while one angel who was outside and cutting school was getting eaten by demons. Seriously. So go to school, kids, or you'll get eaten by demons. Sadly, there were no English labels in the museum, though the audio tour was available for free, so I didn't learn as much as I might have liked to, though I still learned a fair amount. All in all, between the two museums, I'm prepared to say that Cologne is a whole lot cooler and has a far more interesting history than I would have expected.
The only other thing I learned on Friday was that the word Pepperoni does not mean pepperoni - it means pepperencini; the word salami means pepperoni. This was almost very bad, but I was spared the horrible peppers, thankfully.
Bright and early on Saturday, we got up, but mom had worked to do so we actually got off to a late start. My uncle was joining us in the afternoon, so we went out to a museum in the morning, and then met up with him. Also, mom really wanted to try to find this store she'd been too that sold native wood crafts and she thought she'd identified it, so we went to the Nutcracker House to look at carved nutcrackers, cuckoo clocks, and other such things. I ended up getting a small set of guys with stars for heads, though they had a clock there I fell in love with - not a cuckoo clock, it was a just a clock face with some hanging weights and such. Based on a clock from right around 1600, it didn't have a minutes hand, and only told the hours, and I thought it was way neat.
After that, we headed to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, though we got distracted by an excavation across the street. The Town Hall, right across the street, is quite fine, and in the front yard of it there's a dig uncovering the foundation of a medieval Jewish synagogue, neat stuff. We peered in, but there's not much else to do there, so we moved on to the art museum. The Wallraf-Richartz turned out to have a truly lovely collection dating back to the 14th century, with many fine bits of religious art on the first floor; some fine Old Masters (a Rembrandt, some Rubens, a couple of Franz Hals, and others) on the second floor; and some decent impressionists and such on the third. All in all, it was a VERY nice collection, and I was dully impressed, and they let me take pictures - and I took LOTS, more than I normally do, just because so much of the art was truly nice. I know I've already said it like three times, but I really was very impressed.
We met up with Jeremy in the afternoon, but mom was quite tired so he and I went off to dinner and brought her back pasta. We had a long talk, and that was pretty nice, and then more talk back at the hotel. There's some family drama with my grandfather (some things don't change) but nothing - cosmically speaking - particularly serious, so it's no big deal.
On Sunday, we finally had nice weather (instead of gray and raining weather) and so the three of us headed down to the Rhine for a stroll. I also got my first actually German meal - bratwurst with farmer's bread and salad - and it was quite tasty and very filling. So far, I'd been content with local deserts (in addition to the strudel, I've now had two berliners - which are very, very good, better than a normal jelly donut, I think, and gelato - the gelato in Cologne was amazing) but I was happy to add in local sausage. After that, we went to the Dom and actually looked around inside. It's just amazing - I found in part why, too, it turns out the damn thing is 157 meters tall (about 450 feet) and the inner domed ceilings are some of the highest in the world. I took way more pictures than even I'm gonna want to look at again.
Coincidentally, Jeremy encountered someone that he knew, a nice German fellow named Adrian, and we ended up going to dinner with him at a small local beerhouse. I did, in fact, have a beer, though only one, and actually almost liked it - a much better reaction that I had to my last cup of beer. The food was DELICIOUS. Mom's pork dish came with about the tastiest fries I've had in recent memory, and my roast beef in a sweet and sour sauce was also very yummy, and it came with these really awesome mashed potato balls that resembled more than anything else Matza balls - other than that comparison I'm not sure how to describe them, but they were good. Meanwhile, Jeremy braved the local specialty - he'd had it once before and hadn't liked it, and in fact he convinced me NOT to get it at lunch - which is called Heaven and Earth (in German). It's made up of mashed potatoes, representing the earth, pureed apple, representing heaven, and blood pudding, representing...er...I don't know, but use your imagination. I tried a bite, and though the texture was utterly bizarre, the combination of flavors was quite good. I think it's probably for the best that I didn't order it myself, though, I'm not sure I could have eaten a whole plate of it, not with the weird texture.
After that, mom and I got a delicious slice of chocolate cake at, of all places, Starbucks. It was late, though, so we went back to the hotel, packed, and that was sort of that. Our flight was at 11 AM this morning and, rather than risk being late, we were instead massively early, and now I've been in Prague for a couple of hours, though I'm VERY tired and so are the others (they are, in fact, both asleep right now) so we're not really trying to do anything. From what I saw in the cab ride to our hotel (actually, it's really an apartment/suite, with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen area, it's rather amazing, and not all that expensive considering that when Ben arrives there will be four people staying in int) it's an interesting city with a lot of contrasts - high, beautiful spires but dirty streets and graffiti; lovely, detailed architecture opposed to the blank, sheer Communist-era buildings, that sort of thing. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be much to actually DO, but lots to SEE, so I suspect I'll spend lots of time wandering around. This is good, because I'm even more broke than I was before. Today, at the airport, when I went to get Czech krona, the local currency, the ATM spat out my 1000 krona (about 60 dollars) and DIDN'T spit out my ATM card, so I'm now sans means of getting more cash other than borrowing it from my uncle or my mom. I'm gonna try to do that as little as possible and rely on my mastercard instead, but we'll see - so far, neither Amsterdam or Cologne has been a credit-friendly city.
All in all, I liked Cologne more than I expected to. The people were friendly - very demure during the day, but VERY noisy at night with soccer-mania gripping them. The city was fairly clean and peaceful, and though I could have wished for better weather, still it was pleasant to wander around and stuff was close together. Furthermore, the sights were very impressive and the museums had excellent collections - the Kolner's are very proud of their city, and so there seems to be a strong tradition of donation. Furthermore, just walking down the streets exposes one to more than 2000 years of construction, for even with the damage done by the war there are still bits and pieces of the old Roman wall to be seen, and the city has been inhabited without break for that entire time period. Not many places can say that!
There's not loads I want to do in Prague, but I think it'll be interesting anyway. Our hotel is really nice, and the wireless works way better than at the old hotel, and we're here for almost a week - all very positive things. I have, of course, been snapping pictures (though none of Prague...yet...) but there are tons from Cologne, where all of the museums let me take them. I'll post links to some favorites soonish, but first I've gotta finish labeling the Amsterdam ones - I'm about half done... :)
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Date: 2008-06-16 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 05:12 am (UTC)