Epilogue

My flight touched down in Minneapolis and the man in the seat in front of me told someone very loudly on his cell phone, "Whew! I'm dyin' to go to Chili's for lunch!" And with that exclamation I realized I was certainly no longer in Europe.

I have not yet been in the USA in the year 2009, and since this time last year I was leaving for Ireland, I have now spent seven of the last twelve months in a different country. This fact, combined with the fact that I hadn't slept in a good 36 hours left me in quite a state of cultureclashtastic confusion for my first moments back in America. I passed through customs, re-checked my baggage, and exchanged my Euros for Dollars experiencing for the first time in five months customer service situations dealing with speakers of my own language. I spoke very slowly and clearly with lots of gestures out of habit and was shocked that everyone seemed to understand me--and I understood them! In my state of delirious fatigue and culture shock I wandered into a gift shop and paged through a copy of People Magazine only to discover that I have missed half a year of pop culture and celebrity gossip. Setting the magazine down, I glanced around the shelves and my eyes landed upon plastic wrapped "turkey-jerky." I gazed, entirely puzzled, for several moments. I think I have forgotten a lot of things about America.

My final hours of travel were appropriately adventurous, exhausting, and decadent. I left Prague for Paris where I met up with my friend Alex Bair who spent this last semester studying in London. We enjoyed a karma-cursed trip to the Eiffel tower--metro ticket trouble, angry security guards, rain, freezing wind--but at least we came away with a few funny stories. The next day we took a decadent trip out to decadent Versailles to see lots of 18th century decadence. After a full day of sightseeing somehow we had forgotten to eat for most of the day (in France?!) so we had a very tasty sidewalk cafe dinner followed by a decadent, decadent dessert.

After that I almost missed my overnight bus to Amsterdam due to more bad karma with the Paris metro. I arrived early in the morning in Amsterdam, bid farewell to Europe, and flew to Minnesota--the North star state, the land of lakes, the mall of America, and turkey jerky.

My flight to Oregon was, of course delayed just long enough for me to become extremely impatient and really hungry. That was all made up for by the fact that I had a window seat for the amazing views of the mountains flying in. Upon my arrival in Portland my mother was shocked to see my Indian nose ring, but she forgave me in time to take me to Baja Fresh. I am proud to say that after five months in India I was able to handle the hot salsa for the first time.

I has been an amazing year. I've learned so much and had so many adventures, but I really am looking forward to some time at home. This summer will have many more interesting experiences in store as I attempt to complete an American yoga teacher's certification course. This will be followed in the fall by my final semester at Occidental. And then comes the great mysterious adventure of graduation.

Thanks everyone for reading along! I hope it was entertaining. Namaste, and see you soon!

The End is Near

I'm in Paris!

Alex Bair is with me and we are having lots of Parisian fun!

Internet is UNGODLY EXPENSIVE and I have but a few minutes ticking away.

I am going home tomorrow morning, I'll be back to Portland the evening of the 20th at which point I will update the blog with photos, stories, and a conclusion to this five month travel extravaganza. Au revoir!

Puppets, Bones, Salt

I am just not the kind of person that can pass up the opportunity to see a marionette rendition of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Prague is famous for its opera, Mozart even chose the city to premiere Don Giovanni here in 1787. The Czech Republic is also well known for its hand crafted marionettes. It only makes sense then that Prague would be home to Unima, the Czech National Marionette Theater, and that this company would offer nightly performances of Don Giovanni. The advertisements had been tempting me since my arrival in Prague and after two days I could no longer resist the curiosity. I followed the posters and flyers and soon enough found myself at the puppet opera waiting for the tiny curtain to rise. The opera was conducted by Mozart himself (he was much shorter and more wooden-looking than you would imagine.) The performers dropped to the stage and the the opera began. The marionettes sang in the original Italian, and since I was too cheap to purchase a program (90 crowns??!) I only had a vague idea of what was going on, the puppet antics were nonetheless entertaining. The opera was abridged from the original four hours and only lasted for two which was somewhat disappointing, but I suppose when it comes to puppet opera it is quality over quantity--and quality it was! All of the puppets gave stellar performances. The ad for the opera claims "Not to see our Don Giovanni is not to see Prague!" Marionette opera: indeed a Czech national treasure.

I initially wanted to visit Prague because everyone I've ever met who has been here seems to say, "Prague is the best city in the world." It is indeed a good city, there's a lot to see, good food to eat, beautiful architecture, but the sheer volume of tourists here was really starting to wear on me after a few days. Having already seen all of the major tourist attractions in the city I began thinking that for my fourth day in Prague it might be nice to get out of the city on some kind of day trip. A series of serendipitous events led me into a bookstore yesterday where I picked up a book about the area and saw a mention of the Kostnice Ossuary. I had heard of this site on the Travel Channel a while ago but had completely forgotten about it until that moment. I immediately dropped the book and ran hastily back to my hostel to get on the internet and look up maps and train times.

But what is the Kostnice Ossuary, you ask? What could make me so desperate to go there? It is a church made of human bones. Well, it's made of regular building materials, but the inside is completely decorated with human bones. Of course it is something that I had to see. I am just not the kind of person that can pass up the opportunity to see a church filled with skeletons. This morning I rose early and headed to the train station where, after a lot of Czech-English miscommunication and confusion, I procured a ticket to the town of Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is a dingy, dilapidated silver mining town an hour away from Prague known for two things: a huge Gothic cathedral and a bone church. I got off the train and followed my internet-acquired walking directions to the Ossuary. The site has been a church and cemetery since the 10th century, but in the 14th century when the plague hit the burial grounds became so cramped with bodies that they had to start stacking corpses in the church basement. Then in the 1800s someone decided to get creative and they used the thousands of skeletons to decorate the church with bone chandeliers, bone candelabras, bone monuments, etc. All together, the church is decorated with the remains of over 40,000 bodies. It's just simply freaky and weird and wonderful.

After filling most of my camera's memory card with skeleton pictures I decided I may as well visit the Gothic cathedral in town as well, since it was supposed to be "spectacular," according to descriptions. I made the three kilometer hike to St. Barbara's from the Ossuary. It was pretty nice I guess--it had your flying buttresses, your stained glass, your Baroque organ, your 15th century frescoes, but it was seriously lacking in the kind of macabre that I was out looking for today. No human remains at all. There were some funny gargoyles though.

Also--yesterday, because I cannot read Czech, I put salt into my tea.

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, Ahoj Prague

On my final day in Berlin I paid a visit to the Schloss Charlottenburg, an 18th century palace and one of the only monuments of Berlin's Prussian era to have survived World War II. I almost didn't go inside upon the discovery that they force an audioguide upon you with your ticket. As I discussed in my previous blog, audioguides are one of my biggest pet peeves. I reluctantly accepted the audioguide because doing things you hate supposedly shows strength of character and I thought there was a chance that I might learn something. I was interested in learning about Queen Sophie Charlotte, the lady of the house, because I could relate to her in that she was apparently a big fan of theater, music, and witty conversations. I began to grow annoyed with my digital tour guide by room two when he kept insisting that I should find the damask walls beautiful and fascinating. I really lost my patience with him in the portrait gallery when all he wanted to talk about was Sophie Charlotte's glowing complexion and completely failed to address the painting I was most curious about--one which depicted three stoic, wig-wearing old men holding hands with each other. I finally pressed mute in room four when, after ten minutes of excessive details about the painted ceiling audio man never once mentioned the plaster stag in the ceiling's corner that was sculpted to look as though it was falling out of the trompe'leoi sky. Schloss Charlottenburg: another reminder that audioguides are cruel and wrong.

I had one more thing to do in Berlin before I moved on. As a theater major and a lifelong devotee of all things unusual, I felt it was my duty to seek out some of Berlin's really strange theater. I was crossing my fingers that I would stumble into some smoke-filled basement cafe to find Liza Minelli, but three days proved not adequate time for figuring out Berlin's underground scene. Instead, I had to settle for something a little more mainstream. SOAP: The Show is advertised all over the city, so it can't really be that alternative or underground, but it did turn out to be delightfully strange. Strictly speaking, SOAP falls more into the category of variete than cabaret, but as I understand, the two are pretty similar. I suspected I would arrive at the show to find a standard auditorium filled with white-haired tourists, but was surprised to find more of the cabaret atmosphere that I had been hoping for. The audience seemed very hip and very Berlin, it was a small crowded space, we sat at tiny candle-lit tables rather than auditorium seating, and we were served alcohol by stylish young Berliners with existentialist attitude problems. The air lacked the smoky, unbreathable quality that I was looking for, but we can't have everything. The curtain came up to reveal six bathtubs, each one containing a scantily clad acrobat. For the next two hours the performers dazzled us with such feats as juggling in a bathtub, striptease while juggling in a bathtub, contortion in a bathtub, operatic singing in a bathtub, physical comedy in a bathtub, trapeze acts over a bathtub, and countless other bathtub-themed acts of music, dance, and strangeness. No "Mein Herr," no "Wilkommen, Bienvenue," but for my first theatrical experience in Berlin I'd say SOAP delivered.

My first experience with the Czech Republic occurred before I was even out of Germany. This morning I stepped aboard the giant orange bus that was meant to take me to Prague and immediately the Czech bus hostess passed out headphones so that the passengers could listen to the movie that was about to play. "A movie!" I thought, "how luxurious, what a good way to pass the time!" I plugged in the headphones and looked to the screen. There I saw Robert De Niro...speaking Czech. It was an American movie dubbed over in Czech then plastered over again with English subtitles. Irony and inefficiency are stongly at work here. I think I'm going to like Eastern Europe.

Prague is a really beautiful city based on first impressions. It looks, in my mind, quite like Disney's Sleeping Beauty (which happens to be my second favorite Disney movie). So far the only drawback is the very high density of tourists. I would estimate about five per square inch. Tomorrow I have a lot of exciting things to czech out. Ha ha, get it?

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

It appears that after too many months of inactivity while I had no wireless connection in India my little laptop has completely forgotten how to connect to the internet. I've been trying and trying, but something is amiss. This is sad for many reasons, but especially because it means I probably can't post any more pictures to this blog. I shall try to write very descriptively.

I began my day today intending to partake in the free walking tour of Berlin that my hostel offers. Then, as I was eating breakfast I recalled that if there is one thing I hate about tourism it is guided tours--audio tours, bus tours, walking tours, all of them awful. The tour was also supposed to be 3 hours long, and if I've learned anything from Gilligan's Island it is to always avoid the "three-hour tour."

Instead, I opted to explore the city on my own, visiting most of the same sights the tour would have taken me to without the drawback of all of that tedious historical information. I observed, while walking, that Germans tend to actually abide by crosswalk laws. This is baffling after Hyderabad, where crosswalks have yet to be introduced and if one wants to cross the street one must close one's eyes, say a prayer, and step into oncoming traffic. For the first stop on my solo walking tour, I took myself to the "East Side Gallery." This is the name given to the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, now something of a community art project where several blocks worth of the old wall are covered with layers and layers of graffiti murals. It is a very interesting thing to see, but the best views of the wall are only had after jay-walking Hyderabad-style to the other side of the street through oncoming traffic. My improved perspective of the wall was just the first way in which my walking tour was definitely better than the hostel walking tour and my second stop was somewhere that I know that tour wouldn't have gone, so already I was winning as I moved onto location number two.

Berlin's coat-of-arms is a big scary bear, and as a result Berliners really love bears. I had read that in the center of the city there is a public park which contains two actual bears who act as mascots of the city. Naturally then, my first order of business after seeing the Berlin wall was to pay a visit to the Berlin bears. I found the pair of braunbären, Schnute and Maxi, relaxing in their bear-house in Märkisches Park being generally adorable. I spent a rather long time observing the bears before continuing my tour.

After a long walk in the rain I finally arrived at the Berlin National Gallery, which apparently is closed on Mondays. Pity.

Another ride on the U-Bahn led me to Brandenbuger Tor, a big historic gateway in the center of the city where the Berlin wall was ceremoniously torn down in 1989. It is also right next to Berlin's holocaust memorial. I thought the memorial looked kind of strange from the pictures that I saw of it, but it turned out to be very cool. It is a plaza filled with thousands of rectangualr granite pillars of varying heights. As you walk into the memorial the pillars get taller, the sounds of the traffic become muffled, your path gets darker, and it becomes harder to see the outside street. It's all very haunting. There is also a museum with the memorial which is supposed to be really interesting, informative, and well worth the visit. It too is closed on Mondays.

Berlin is generally less touristy than Amsterdam was. This lack of tourism, combined with Germany's strong sense of national pride means that the German language is predominant and English is rare. In Amsterdam, English seemed even more common than Dutch and I had no hesitations about speaking English to communicate, but here it is not as simple. This is just somewhat problematic for me since my knowledge of German is limited to the phrase "Ich esse keine fleisch," (I don't eat meat). So far there have been no major communication breakdowns, but I'm expecting one at any moment.

Oudezijds Auchterbergwal

I spent my first day or two wandering around Amsterdam in total confusion. India is hot, Amsterdam is cold. India is cheap, Amsterdam is expensive. Indian cities are crowded and chaotic, Amsterdam is clean and orderly. I was often the only Westerner around in Hyderabad and in Amsterdam I blend in so well that people speak to me only in Dutch and tourists keep asking me for directions. No one has offered me rickshaws, no shopkeepers have shouted at me to look in their stores, I have walked along the street on real, paved sidewalks, and not a single cow has crossed my path. In India a woman won't show her knees in public and in Amsterdam I am staying on a street where prostitutes and sex shops are abundant.

I chose my hostel because it advertised its central location in the city. As it turns out, it's actually the center of the Red Light district so I'm getting this culture shock in one huge dose. As I was walking out of my neighborhood to go meet some friends the other night I was caught behind a group of French kids who appeared to be no more than 15 years old and I wanted to shout "No! Cover your eyes! You shouldn't be seeing this!" As soon as I passed that group I ran into a group of very elderly tourists taking in the sights and again wanted to shout "No! Cover your eyes! You shouldn't be seeing this!" Tourism in Amsterdam, I have decided, is a very strange thing.

I know a bunch of kids from Oxy who are studying abroad in Amsterdam this semester and they were kind enough to hang out with me the last two nights. On Thursday, Justin, Sara, and Alex introduced me to "La Chouffe,"a Belgian beer (named after a gnome) which is very delicious, unlike Indian beers which taste like poison. On Friday I called Alex to see what they were up to and he informed me that they were all going to go see the new Star Trek movie. I have always dismissed Star Trek as something for nerds not to be watched under any circumstances, but I agreed to go with them because, really, what else is there for a 21 year old girl to do on a Friday night in Amsterdam? The movie was actually pretty decent.

While not monopolizing my friends' time, I have been exploring the city on my own. So far I haven't gone to many museums or anything, because it is hard to bring myself to pay more than 1 Rupee admission to anything. I guess I'll have to get over that. I went to the Van Gogh museum; it had a very nice collection, but more importantly it had a place to eat Belgian waffles right outside. This was a hugely exciting discovery for me and I am now increasingly interested in visiting Belgium.

Tonight I will leave Amsterdam on a bus to go to Berlin. I arrived at the bus station yesterday knowing that I had to get a ticket to go somewhere, but didn't officially decide where to go until the woman at the counter asked me, "Where do you want to go?" I spontaneously responded "Uh...Berlin?" so that's where I'm going. My knowledge of Berlin is limited its portrayal in the movie Cabaret, but if that's any indication it should be an interesting place.

Amsterdam. Culture Shock.

Amsterdam might be the most opposite place from India that I could have come.
I am going to freeze to death.
For some reason my computer worked fine with the wireless internet here on the first day and is now not working, so there is a lot to say, but I am using the hostel computer, someone is waiting for me to finish and it's getting awkward.
To be continued...