More Stuff from Europe

I thought I was done taking inventory of my loot from Germanic countries, but I stand corrected. Just got to the Ziploc bag with the souvenirs from the Netherlands. I added some more stuff to my Italy list, if you're inclined to rewind. More below.

Netherlands

• Brochure from the Openluchtmuseum ("Open Air Museum") in Arnhem. This is the Netherlands equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg. But whereas Williamsburg covers one area and one era in U.S. history, the Openluchtmuseum covers multiple parts of Dutch history and life. Interesting place, but it is (understandably) mostly in Dutch--the signs and the language of the staff.
• A brochure and ticket from the Rijksmuseum, the Royal Museum of the Netherlands in Amsterdam. They've got some very cool stuff there from Holland's golden age of imperialism, but I must confess that Rembrandt leaves me flat. His "soft lighting" effects in his painting are distinctive, but not startling or particularly attractive to me. To each his own.
• Brochure from the Anne Frank Huis (Anne Frank's House). Yes, the diary is really there. No photographs allowed inside, but being there really puts you in the head of that 14-year-old girl. The floor space--for eight people--was probably less space than I had to myself in a condo in Alexandria, Virginia: about 800 square feet.
• A train ticket for Haarlem to Amsterdam.
• A brochure that was offered at the Anne Frank Huis by a group called "Free2Choose." They had a video running on a big screen with people given the opportunity to vote on issues ranging from censoring neo-Nazis to suppressing hate speech by radical Muslims. The answers of the people who were in the room didn't interest me so much as the combined answers of people who have visited the exhibit since 2004. It's a little horrifying how many people visiting the Anne Frank Huis were willing to suppress free speech in the name of the common good.
• A picture of myself boarding our canal cruise in Amsterdam. The guy taking the photos caught up with us by moped (one of the primary means of transportation in Amsterdam) on the fringe of the Red Light District.
• Three tram tickets from Amsterdam.
• Ticket from the van Gogh Museum. This is another artist whose works fail to move me, except for Starry Night. As I put it in a postcard to Dr. OZMG, you've got on display what art created by a mentally ill person looks like. That's useful in a way, but troubling. Just as troubling is the notion that someone would pay $40 million for said work.
• A flyer for a Harley Davidson motorcycle fan gathering in Haarlem.
• A free map of Haarlem for bicycle riders.

France

• Metro and street map of Paris.
• Tickets, receipts, and maps from the Musée Rodin, one to get onto the grounds, and a second to get into a house on the grounds that had more of his works. If it were any other artist, I probably would've said to heck with it and left without seeing the rest. However, for Rodin, I made an exception. His sculpture is so lively it practically twitches.
• Ticket and brochure from the Sainte-Chapelle church.
• A couple of Metro tickets. The Paris Metro, IMHO, is much like the French language: unnecessarily complicated. That said, I never got lost or missed a stop, so it can't be all bad.
• Brochure from the Louvre. Being an idjit, I discovered too late that France's Impressionist art is in the Musée D'Orsay, and there just wasn't time/space on my itinerary to squeeze that one one in. There's always next time, right?
• Business card from my hotel in Paris, the Hotel Beaugency.
• An advertisement (one of several left under windshield wipers along the Rue du Mars--it's not just an American problem) for a company advertising its services for translating your family's home movies into DVDs.
• Brochure from the Hotel de la Paix ("Hotel of the Peace") in Beaune, France.
• A coaster from the Deux Magots, a place Ernest Hemingway is apparently known to have habituated. One word: expensive.
• A business card for the shop where I bought a case of Burgundy wine (5 white, 7 red).

• The lyrics to the song the tour sang for Paul, our bus driver as a farewell tribute, sung (I kid you not) to the tune of "The Wheels of the Bus Go 'Round and 'Round." I wonder how many glasses of wine it took to come up with those lyrics. Paul made out pretty well on this trip. Our resident tour artist, Sarah, created a charicature picture of everyone on the tour (note the dork with the hat, front and center).
• A brochure for the Domaine Chandon de Briallles, a beautiful mansion that also has its own brand of wine.
• A brochure and ticket from the Hospices de Beaune Hotel-Dieu, a quite beautiful medieval hospital that was really a hospice--people went there to die.
• A hotel guide for France.

More Stuff from the Trip

You blog readers are getting short shrift, I'm afraid. It is MUCH easier and quicker to upload pictures to Facebook than Blogger. To date, I've uploaded over 1,000 pix there. But then they don't have a five-pictures-at-a-time limit. C'est la vie.

I'm going through the souvenirs and brochures I picked up on the trip now. Rick Steves advises taking along a bunch of Ziploc bags...I suppose to contain toiletry items that might otherwise leak--shampoo, toothpaste, etc.--but his book said bring a lot of 'em, which made no sense, but I thought I'd play along. So I get to Europe and I've got all these excess bags and nothing to do with 'em. Ah, but inspiration struck, and... Read More I realized I could sort out my brochures, tickets, souvenirs, and bits of junk by location so I wouldn't forget where they came from. The bags made me an accidentally anal retentive traveler, but they should help me sort out what I did where, so it's all to the good.

The Rick Steves people are up front about telling you that anything you buy you'd better ship home or keep small, because otherwise you're carrying it with you for the rest of the trip. Thus the small portables. The bracelets are from Venice and going to the mom, stepmom, and little sister. The shot glasses are for me and a friend. The magnets go to the "work wife." The books, wine, and chocolate are mine. My needs are simple.

I just thought this was fun. Passengers traveling in business class get this little goody bag of stuff for the overseas traveler, including socks, sleep mask, earplugs, comb, toothbruush, and toothpaste. Just the basics, as they're handing you a drink upon sitting down. It's going to be VERY difficult to put up with the soda-and-peanut routine (if that) on those crummy little RJ's...











I didn't buy a LOT of stuff, partially because of the weight/space restrictions, and partially because I'm a klutz and knew I'd break things...oh yeah, and partially because I'm generally cheap. But I'd have been remiss if I didn't buy a stein from Germany. I mean, really...

Eventually I need to buy a scanner so I can post some of the stuff I got (anyone need a brochure from Dachau?). Below are web sites to some of the places I either visited or collected brochures from. Let the good times roll.

• This appears to be a German lady who is interested in things astronomical: http://www.christawawers.de/univers/linksen.htm. Cool!
• From Bacharach, Germany, a site for souvenir hunters, among other things.
• A jeweler in Rothenberg ob der Tauber.
• St. Jakob's Lutheran Church in Rothenberg.
• A book about German children living through World War II. This book was recommended by our local guide, Herr Jung, who was 8 years old when the war began. Another book recommended by Herr Jung: German Boy. I guess if you want to know what it was like for German kids during and after the war, these are good sources.
• The Deutsch Post (office). At one point I must've bought something from them. I was curious about their logo. It appears to be the stylized horn of a herald, who would blow said horn when he had messages to deliver.
• Picked up a brochure from Hotel Gerberhaus, where we stayed in Rothenberg.
• Also got a brochure from Gutshof zum Schluxen, where we stayed in Austria.
• Oh, shoot. I found a €5 note in my pile of stuff. Well, I suppose I could keep ONE bill as a souvenir. I managed to spend everything else, except for some loose coins.
• A brochure for the Via Claudia Augusta, formerly a Roman road that connected the Po valley with Southern Germany. It's now a tourist trail. Amazing what a difference 2,000 years makes.
• Feel like going paragliding? Try this.
• The Toppler Theater in Rothenberg ob der Tauber. No web site, sorry.
• I missed the Doll and Toy Museum, but got their brochure.
• A brochure from the Dachau concentration camp.
• A ticket from Neuschwanstein Castle. This place must be seen to be believed.
• Didn't get to see this, but figure it would've been cool: Legoland Deutschland.
• Ah! The name of the town near Neuschwanstein Castle is Hohenschwangau. I feel better. I was drawing a blank.
• Another place I got a brochure for, but didn't see: the Rhein Theater.
• Also in the bag for Germany: the travel alarm that broke, prompting the purchase of "Frau Wristwatch."
• I saw this ski jump prior to crossing the tallest road bridge in Europe.
• A piece of slate from one of the vineyards above Bacharach.
• I seem to have picked up a lot of coasters. Hmmm. Brands include:
  --Gulpener (Netherlands)
  --Mittelrhein (Winery, Germany)
  --Andescher Klosterbiere (Bavaria, Germany)
  --Landwehr-Brau (Germany)
  --Bitburger (Germany)
  --Gösser (Austria)
  --Feldschlösschen (Switzerland)

More later. That's all from the Germanic pile, I think.

Cleaning Up Amsterdam

It seems the government of Amsterdam has finally decided that all those brothels and marijuana joints (er, shops) are not such a great thing after all. According to this article,

The city is targeting businesses that "generate criminality," including gambling parlors, and the so-called "coffee shops" where marijuana is sold openly. Also targeted are peep shows, massage parlors and souvenir shops used by drug dealers for money-laundering.

Brothels, gambling parlors, and marijuana are generating criminality? I'm shocked, shocked...next you'll be telling me that there's organized crime in Las Vegas--oh, wait... Still, the head shops (etc.) will not go away completely:

"It'll be a place with 200 windows (for prostitutes) and 30 coffee shops, which you can't find anywhere else in the world - very exciting, but also with cultural attractions," he said. "And you won't have to be embarrassed to say you came."

So: use zoning laws to create upscale houses for prostitution and marijuana shops? That's one way of handling it, I suppose. The Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate did something similar in Edo (Tokyo), by restricting geisha prostitutes to particular districts.

Now mind you, I won't be going around Amsterdam with a pile of Bibles and chastising people for immoral behavior. When in Rome, you needn't do everything the Romans do...or so my theory goes.