lo siento para todos

Well I do have to admit that when I began this epic adventure, my intentions of habitually journaling were pure. But now with only 10 days left and being that the finish-line is in plain sight, I would like to take a moment to apologize to my regulars–if they are still lingering. My entries have became few and far between and I´m sorry. This trip has been exactly what needed but not nearly enough of it. Although spending the night in completely unfamiliar and unsafe places hasn’t been a common occurrence during this trip, the notion of being on my own and traveling with the bare essentials has swept me of my feet–I’ve falling in love with this lifestyle.

The last you´ve heard of me I was in Germany. My ridiculously brief description of Deutschland didn´t do it justice though. My relatives opened my mind to German history and my cousin and his friends opened my eyes with prolonged night of eating, drinking, and dancing– a schedule that would leave american frats boys wanting their mommies to tuck them in early. But the short stay in Germany really wasn’t enough.

I took the overnight train from Cologne to Zurich and 30 minutes later hopped on a train headed to Milan. My stop was in Lugano, Switzerland, probably the southern most lake\resort town before the Italian-speaking Swiss actually turn into Italians. Fortunately I had connections with a friend´s roommate and I spent the next two days engaging in half vegetable-like behavior and half adventurous nap-sacking. Now, my experiences in Europe have been extremely isolated and there is so much more to investigate, but the route through Switzerland was by far the most beautiful string of scenery I have ever seen. The 3 1\2 hours from Zurich to Lugano takes you into the alps, past jagged mountain puncturing the sky which provide the thirsty lakes with a fresh supply of the pristine life-blood. Passing towns on lakes, and villages along mountainsides, the ride was eye-opening, even after traveling for nearly 16 hours.

My time in Lugano went fast, but resting was well deserve. I decided a longer presence in Italy would have disrupted the natural flow of my trip–Italy deserves more than a few days–so I only spent a day in Milan, waiting for my night flight to Barcelona.

Roots

The past is quite a concept. I mean the far past, the past times before you passed time-past times. And if you can figure that one out, finding your heritage is equally as humbling. Living in the past is completely unhealthy, but finding your past, that can considerably rejuvenate you outlook on the future–as it happened in my case. Even in my current time of post-collegiate uncertainty, the future didn’t once cross my mind while visiting Germany.

I arrived in the high-speed German ICE train from Holland. As I bumped from one arriving passenger to the next, we instinctively herded ourselves through a corral of departures. Rushing down the stairs and jocking for position, we made our way to the front of the station where the rest of my group dispersed into the veins of transit. I had arrived: Mönchengladbach.

My cousin Simon met me and within 5 minutes we walked inside a 3-story townhouse built in 1903, destroyed in WWII and later rebuilt, housing three generations of his relatives. On the way up to my room we passed a porcelain plaque with my great-grandfather’s name on it: Walter Pannen. He grew up only 2o kilometers from the house but was known in the area for his quality carpentry work. I still can quite put to words how I felt at that moment.

Not to continue the literary trend, but it just so happened that Simon was an assistant brewer at a local brewery/pub in Dusseldorf– Fuchschen Alt, so in true German fashion we capped the night off with beer and Schnitzel.

You can’t forget about belguim

Tucked between the Netherlands and France, Belgium is a charming country where Germanic tongues meet the sweet sound of romance. Belgium is linguistically divided in half: the Dutch/Flemish-speaking north and the French-speaking south. The capital of Belgium, Brussels, is also the capital of the European Union, the headquarters of NATO, and the unofficial international business capital of Europe.

From Antwerpen, I traveled west to Brugge (sounds like luge)–a remarkably preserved medieval stronghold dating back to the 11th century. Brugge became the largest cloth market in northern Europe by the 14th century (Belgium is known for its tapestry) and the city’s population reached 35,000, as large as London at the time. In the 15th century, Brugge saw peaceful and prosperous times while its neighbors, England and France, were fencing their way through a century of war. Unfortunately for Brugge, a economic collapse soon followed in the 16th century.

Today Brugge is a quaint historical hot spot. The city, which feels more like a town, is surrounded by the former moat (now used for canal tours) and all of it’s main attractions are within the center, a rough square mile. The bell tower has looked over the market square since the 1300s and the view from the top is well worth the 266 steps to get there. The Groeninge Museum has the most complete collection of primitive Flemish art (”primitive” means before the Renaissance) and a lazy stroll around the corner to the Church of Our Lady offers one of the rare Michelangelo sculptures outside of Italy, Madonna and Child.

Okay, now for the good stuff. A trip to Belgium wouldn’t be complete without sampling the local lager and of course the famed Belgium chocolate. After my day visits around town, I found myself in a small, hole-for-a-bar, talking and drinking with neighborhood pub rats. Evidently, the Belgians take serious pride in their country much like their beer because before I knew it, my new found friends had pushed a broad selection of Belgium’s finest, each explaining the Belgian way of life in broken English. I left smiling. The 9.5% beir–more like wine, soon had me wondering through 500 year old streets stopping at random pubs, asking each to show me their best of Belgium.

My late night escapade quickly dissolved into a mid-morning dash out of the hotel. With a bottle of water in one hand and a box of chocolate in the other, not even Forest Gump would have rushed back to the train station– I walked gingerly, appreciating the narrow streets along the way.

forward to the past

When I mentioned Amsterdam to my peers as my first stop in Europe, a smirk and a snicker would usually follow. I suppose this three syllable destination conjures similar thoughts as if you heard about your co-workers future visit to Vegas–but there are always other, more wholesome reasons to visit. Yes, the city is home to the legendary red light window shopping. And the magnetic scent of one of Amsterdam’s over 400 coffeeshops is always high on the agenda. But once you see through the fog, it’s clear that Amsterdam’s cultural notoriety should never overshadow a deep, rich historical past.

The Dutch Golden Age was in the mid 1600s. After a successful protestant revolution against Philip II and catholic Spain, trade overseas extended and Holland became one of the most powerful countries in the world–once buying the island of Manhattan for $24 from Native Americans. The Dutch were leaders in whaling, inventors of the pendulum clock, founders of international law, and of course wonderful painters.

Rembrandt and the rest of the Dutch Masters (painters not cigars) depicted intensely detailed scenes and portraits of life in a bustling 1640s Amsterdam. The most exclusive collection of art from the Golden Age can be found at the Rijksmuseum (like “bikes-museum). Walk only a couple hundred meters west and you will arrive at the Van Gogh Museum and into the late 1800s. See Sunflowers and Bedroom in Arles in a chronological exhibit focusing on Van Gogh’s later years leading to his suicide. Below the Rijksmuseum looks down over the Van Gogh Museum.

Like the majority of Europe, Amsterdam was fell under Nazi control during World War II. From 1940 to 1945, Amsterdam’s Jewish community of over 75,000 either hid, fled, or were captured by the German forces. Visiting the Anne Frank House allows you to see what 25 months of hiding from the Nazi terror was like. Taking the hidden passageway behind a bookshelf on hinges sends you back to a cold and confined 1943. Eight People lived in a secret annex in the back of Anne’s father, Otto Frank’s jam factory. The living space was little less than 1,000 sq ft.

I’m feeling a little low

God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland. This Dutch expression proclaims how the people of the Netherlands defied nature to become one of the most influential powers in Europe during the 17th century. This wasn’t an easy accomplishment when considering what they went through. Holland finds its self as the largest of the three Low Countries, including Belgium and Luxembourg. These countries are “low” because a significant portion of the land is under sea level, about half in the Netherlands. In fact, Schipol International Airport is 15 feet below sea level, add that to your descent.

The improbable story of Amsterdam begins as a fishing village around 1200. Much like the Jamestown settlement in colonial Virgina, Amsterdam was built on a delta. In order to cultivate and maintain the land, early Dutch farmers utilized windmill technology and pumped the water back into the sea. Each windmill would push the water to the next and so forth, eventually bleeding the land of its marshes and lakes. Hydraulic engineers were highly revered in their time and are still celebrated today. A memorial can be found in the Grote Kerk (Old Church) in central Haarlem, a 15 minute train west of Amsterdam.

As Holland was built, so were the dikes. Two main dikes serve as the defense against the North Sea and construction of a third is on the way. This buffer systems has created several pockets of water: fresh water, half-and-half, and of course the salty North Sea. These dikes run for miles and traveling across them gives you an pretty good idea of how hard it is to keep a sinking country afloat. But Netherlanders have always kept their heads above water and Holland’s history has paralleled its success with fighting the sea; for centuries pushing enemy lines further back and expanding it’s territory.

And so it begins…

Although I had been looking forward to this trip for months, leaving the desert was not the most pleasurable of experiences. Feeling the nasty side effects from Thursday night’s long island ice tea spree, Friday morning was spent wandering aimlessly rather than packing previously. My mother will frown now.

My roommates were thoroughly enjoying the early morning entertainment, chirping in when it was least needed, “Dave, you got everything?” Mental checklist: wallet, passport, socks, brain? Whichever list I should have composed was now mocking me with its non-existing laughs. But I knew I’d be laughing the entire way to Amsterdam, so I bear-hugged what I needed and abandoned what I didn’t.

Before long I was in Amsterdam, except that expression doesn’t do the 14 hours at 35,ooo feet any justice. Schipol International Airport was definitely a sight for sore eyes and my buttocks eventually awoke on the way through immigration. My customs experience went smoothly and my bag even made it, despite a 10 minute connecting time between my flights in Houston. As I left baggage claim, my generous dutch hostess welcomed me (Welkom) and before I knew it we were in Almere, a suburb 25 minutes outside of Amsterdam.