Buses and Boats and Trains

                Monday began with a drive and a morning stop at Augsburg. There we were able to look around and inside a housing complex that has been around and functioning since the 1500s. It was opened as a form of cheap housing for the poor and it still serves that function to this day. While there is a waiting list, if you can prove you are in need and a good Catholic you can potentially still rent one of these apartments for the original price: .88 Euro a year. Today it is mostly like a retirement community, inhabited by the elderly folk of Augsburg. But they maintain an apartment in the style and furnishings of the original times of use. It was built and opened by the incredibly wealthy Fugger family, a family of traders, who traded with people so illustrious as the Habsburgs. Former inhabitants of the houses include Franz Mozart, grandfather to the famous Wolfgang Amadeus. Other local stories include the occurrence of a very early witch burning. A woman was accused of witchcraft by her 11 year old daughter, convicted and burned at the stake. The middle ages were some rough times.

(Old and New)

                There was also a small exhibit about the Fugger family which included this really awesome upside down map of Europe:

                Then it was back on the bus to the Hohenzollern Castle, which looks like a Disney castle actually. It has really awesome spires, really cool family trees painted on the walls inside, and beautiful views of the countryside. It was an awesome tour partly because you had to wear giant slippers over your shoes and slide around in order to prevent damage to the floors.

                That evening we reached Stuttgart and went straight to the Mercedes-Benz museum. While I’m no major car buff, they had some pretty cool exhibits. They essentially followed the history of cars through the eyes of their company and its development. This they laid out in timeline format, interspersed with other major events from those time periods for reference. Some of the cars were extremely cool and looked like this:

(Limousine!)

                The next day was Aachen! Fabulous mostly for its awesome Cathedral built during the time of Charlemagne. This Cathedral is spectacular from the moment of entry due to its shiny Byzantine style recreation of the original mosaic. It also contains massive Roman marble pillars with original capitals shipped from Italy on carts pulled by mules. Literally over mountains. The interest for me really lies with its history. The throne of Charlemagne, while not used for his own coronation, was used for the majority of the following coronations. It still stands exactly as it was, unglamorous perhaps but miraculous. They cover it with velvet and cushions for any occasion which put it into use but it’s basic look is stone and metal clasps.

There was a really good story which our tour guide told us concerning the throne which if both horrifying and hilarious. Apparently once he was doing a tour for a party of elderly folk and took a moment on the stairs closing the gate behind the group. When he arrived at the top of the stairs where the throne resides there was an old man wearing a paper crown sitting on the throne while all his friends cheered him on and took pictures. As it turned out his name was Charles and that day was his 72nd birthday, the same age that Charlemagne was when he died. The man was obviously quickly removed to try and prevent any extended damage done to the stone by the human touch. It’s amazing how damaging we can be. But the man did get to have his birthday fun and, honestly, I’m kind of glad. 

                But the history nerd in me will still freak out when confronted with reliquaries containing the bones of Charlemagne. I mean come on, that’s insane. And that is exactly what can be found in this Cathedral that and various textiles supposedly connected to the life of Christ, specifically the birthing skirt of the Virgin Mary, the swaddling clothes of baby Jesus, the death blanket of John the Baptist, and the waist cloth of Jesus’s crucifixion. While I can’t say I exactly believe that these things are real, I can say that I’m impressed that the textiles have been dated and placed to Jerusalem sometime between 0 and 200 AD. I’m also in awe of being where such major relics, things that people traveled for miles and miles to see and pray over, rest.

                That cathedral was followed by a drive and yet another cathedral, this one, while less exciting in relics, was grander in scale and more impressive architecturally. We reached Cologne in the late afternoon and immediately headed to the top of the spiral of the cathedral. The spiral staircase is long but a lot of fun, particularly the part where it is an open air metal staircase only semi enclosed, where you can see out over the city. The view from the top is amazing but the skyline lacks a certain something from that vantage point, that being Cologne Cathedral itself, hands down the most beautiful building in the city. But overlooking the Rhine River and realizing that you’re on the upper edge of the former Roman world is a very strange thought. The Cathedral is actually built upon Roman ruins, the cellars of which have now been excavated and exposed to tourist view. The church is simply towering inside and out, literally one of the biggest Cathedrals in all of Europe. When you enter the church one of the first things you notice are these pillars on both sides spanning something like 12 feet in diameter. I was blown away.

                We took a little break to drop out things at the hotel and grab some food but a few of us ended up back in front of the cathedral around the time it was getting dark to see it’s façade lit up at night. We laid down in the square to examine and appreciate both the impressive scale and detail of the structure. This ended up leading to a plethora of reactions from passers-by ranging from asking us if we were protesting something, to taking pictures of us, to simply joining us. It was a lot of fun, despite the confusion.

                After Cologne it was back to good ol’ Berlin again, with a six hour drive across the country. Luckily this trip was punctuated with a stop in Magdeburg. There we saw on last Church. This church, belonging to and entombing the body of Otto the great is a lovely church but it was sadly hectic at the time of our visit due to preparations for a television broadcast of an orchestral concert of sorts.

                Even so, we received an excellent tour of the building including great descriptions of the statues in the building. The highlights included two sets of ladies, five laughing and smiling and five in anguish. The facial expressions on these women of stone were lifelike and beyond. Their overplayed faces were fascinating and nearing creepy, the sadness hysteric and the euphoria manic. Another interesting bit of history is a World War I memorial which shows men of all nations together in the sadness of war. The memorial was taken down and put away during the Nazi regime due to its pacifist message. But my favorite story was the one of Otto the Great’s first wife. Essentially he married an English princess and gave her a really excellent wedding gift--Magdeburg. Her tomb is in the Church and her bones remain inside to this day. This we can be almost entirely certain of due to chemical testing on the minerals of her bones. They can decisively say that the woman of the bones in question grew up drinking the water of the Thymes River and later in live drank the water of the Rhine. Science is CRAZY.

                After Magdeburg it was on to Berlin to pack and sleep before the weekend began and Liz and I embarked upon an adventure on our own.

                We left somewhat early and arrived by train in Hamburg around 10 am. We checked into our hostel, a nice place called Backpacker’s St. Pauli, and went immediately to our entertainment of choice: Beatlemania, the Beatles Museum in Hamburg. The museum is located in the Reeperbahn district due to Hamburg’s particular connection to the careers of the Fab Four. The band played at a series of clubs in the red light district during their early career. At this point they were making next to nothing and living  in the back room of an old cinema. They played stints of several months each in The Star Club, Indra, The Top Ten Club, and the Kaiserkeller. During these short contracts they would play for 4 to 7 hours a night straight every night. A strong case can be made for this being the real period in which the Beatles honed their talent and formed into a professional group of musicians. While the only clubs still running today are the Indra and Kaiserkeller (also stops during our visit to Hamburg), the Beatlemania museum and conjoined Beatlesplatz stand still as a testament to this amazing period in the lives of four of the greatest rock and rollers of all time.

                The museum is four stories tall and takes you chronologically through the career of the band with a large focus on those early years. They have pictures and sketches of the, at this point, greaser looking rocker kids, from friends and girlfriends of the time. They also show several interviews including the artsy girlfriend of one of the then Beatles Stu Sutcliffe, allegedly the lady who convinced them to get those signature moptop haircuts. Klaus Voorman, a good friend of the band and an artist had a great collection of drawings and paintings of them during this era, and a few interviews of his first impressions during those days. The story of course carries on beyond hamburg from British Beatlemania to the Ed Sullivan show, through movies and albums and wacky outfits. There is a room which talks about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band which contains a giant version of the album cover which you can walk into and take pictures, in order to insert yourself into the famous crowd. Next to that is an all white room with almost nothing in it except for the all white album displayed in the center and a small sign with information on the wall. There is a room which is designed to be the inside of a Yellow Submarine and an excellent room with giant headphones in which you can listen to and compare the two different productions of Let It Be: the original (produced without any input from the actual Beatles themselves due to their already having essentially broken up) and “Let It Be….Naked” (the much subtler version produced in 2003 by Paul McCartney). All in all it was an amazing experience for a huge Beatle fan such as I am and I’m extremely sad to add that plans have been made to shut down the museum, presumably due to lack of traffic. While this depresses me greatly, I am at least glad that I was able to experience it before the end of the month when the projected shut down should occur.

                That evening took us back to the hostel where we found a group heading out to the public viewing of the Germany vs. Greece soccer match and joined them. The crowd was amazing and the game was going well but about 15 minutes in it was pouring down rain. The atmosphere was amazing, there was this mixture of panic at getting wet and overwhelming spirit keeping everyone in place. The energy was palpable. You would be amazed how many people stayed put to cheer on their team as the rain poured down on their heads. Hundreds. By halftime our little group weas all soaked to the bone and decided to retreat to the safety and warmth of the hostel and watch the game from the common room. So we came back, put on a mismatched collection of our clothes that happened to be dry and watched the Germany completely destroy Greece 4:2. Gooo current country of residence!

                Saturday put us on a train to Denmark, which notably is water away from Germany. To solve this problem, what do you think they might do? Build a big bridge? Dig a huge tunnel? No! They drive the ENTIRE TRAIN onto a ferry and then ferry it across. I did not expect this. It was crazy. They make all of the passengers get out of course and we milled about on deck watching 45 minutes of ocean go by before once again boarding our train and continuing to Copenhagen. 

               We checked in to our hostel, Danhostel Copenhagen, and went out and about for the evening. We had dinner and then began to look for entertainment for the night.

                It was Midsummer Night’s Eve as it turns out, the night before the Summer Solstice, and we had heard tell of some sort of bonfires happening around the city. But being mildly confused and inclined towards finding a club with live music we decided to ignore this temporarily. This however was less ignorable than we had previously thought since we stumbled across one of these bonfires while crossing the river on our way to hear some music. We watched from across the river for a few minutes as they tried to get this collection of sticks to catch fire on a raft on the water. We then ventured closer to see that this was not just a bonfire but a feigned witch burning, complete with a wooden witch made of sticks at the top. We hung around the atmosphere for a while and then found our way to the music. Later that night we came back by the river to see the fire in much stronger force and the witch no longer visible. I am still slightly baffled by this, seemingly incredibly widespread tradition, but none-the-less I am really glad we ended up seeing it firsthand.

                The next day we decided to hop up bright and early and take a walking tour around the city highlights before we had to check out at 10 am. The good part about this is that apparently no one but joggers are awake at 7 am so we had little trouble with crowds of other tourists for a while. We looked at the beautiful old town as we walked down cobblestone streets in the early morning drizzle. We saw the Rosenburg Castle and it’s surrounding mote and gardens, the much larger Citadel, with its collection of canals forming a star shaped mote around it, the fantastic harbor rain tossed harbor, and the apparently very famous Little Mermaid statue. She is apparently based upon the original Hans Christian Anderson tale and seems in be in mid transformation in the statue on a rock in the harbor. I liked her despite my confusion as to her fame.

                After checking out and having a lovely warm brunch buffet and the best Chai Latte of my life inside a cozy café around the corner, we headed over to the NY Carlsberg Glyptotek. The Glyptotek is essentially a museum of art from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt to modern French and Danish art. The French exhibit is impressive with several works each from Renoir, Monet, and VanGogh. We were able to spend about three and a half hours in the museum before catching our train ride home.

                There is one more observation about Copenhagen that I forgot to mention. Copenhagen has more bicycles than perhaps any other place on the planet. People bike EVERYWHERE. There are bike racks lining the streets everywhere you look and they are all filled with hundreds of bikes. There are nice wide bike lanes on nearly every street. It’s just a biker kind of town.