Heidelberg and Sloth

These last few weeks have been spent stretched out on the grass by the Lahn drinking beer or wine, listening to music, and just talking with people. The weather has been abnormally great (in the 70's and 80's) so everyone in Marburg tends to bee line to the Lahn when done with classes. I wish Salt Lake City had something like the Lahn where people could go down by the river and just hang on the grass for hours grilling, drinking, playing music and games, swimming, going out on paddle boats. It is such a great way to unwind from everything. Basically the last few weeks have gone on like this with all-day Lahn parties and then bonfires that go until dawn. Would you believe that I am still actually getting my homework done? Some of the strange miracles of Marburg, my friends.

Yesterday, Chelsea and I decided to take a day trip to Heidelberg (which is just outside of Hessen, but Deutsche Bahn still let's us travel there for free, YAY). Simply amazing weather to be on a train because you pass by all of these huge green fields and large ponds where you can see people boating and water-skiing, not to mention you have a clear view of the castles in each town that you pass by. Simply an amazing country, Germany. When we arrived in Heidelberg we grabbed a map and then headed straight for the castle. You'd think it would be easy to find the castle because it's on the top of a hill, alas... it is the best defended castle in history simply because there is no way to find a way up. Eventually we did, and I wont mention how long it took us because it is embarrassing, and I lugged three liters of wine all the way up where we found a bench to sit on in the middle of the ruins in the shade. There is simply an incredible view from up top:

We sat there for hours just talking, talking, talking about everything that could really possibly be discussed. We people watched and then started reading out loud from books and drank to our heart's content.

As we finished up the last of our boxes, we decided it was time to pack it in and see the rest of the city before catching the last train back to Marburg.

It was such a perfect day that I honestly have no complaints. Not even about the little gremlin saplings that screamed and cried on the train ride back. It was one of those days that just makes you feel complete.

I Can See Helsinki From My House

The following account of my trip to Estonia/Finland is put together with scattered memory and a few notes I had written down while I was there. Enjoy: Having been a bit desensitized to the "wonders" of flying, I spent the 2 hour flight just reading my book. Though it got a little distracting because halfway there, the plane started sounding like a Tuvan Throat singer. As the plane started to descend, Lincoln and I looked out the window at the empty, murky, marsh-looking land of Estonia. I turned to him and said, "I don't think anyone lives here..." to which he replied, "Honestly, I think you're right." Then we saw Tallinn. Not a gigantic city, but also not a hamlet. By this time it had gotten pretty dark and the vast wilderness of Estonia was a single black sheet stretched out beneath us. When we landed, we figured out the bus situation and were off to our hostel. It was only about 15 minutes and we climbed out of the bus and walked around a sketch-looking park and up a couple of alleyways until we found our destination which was shoved between a sex shop and a hookah bar. Everything that night in Tallinn was dark with the exception of the many many many neon signs. Our hostel, The Monks Bunk, was being run by a group of hilarious Western Australians from Perth. All of the red-faced, bearded, and excited to see new people. After a few cheap Estonian beers, Lincoln, Chris, and I set off to find a grocery store. We walked passed the grocery store the Aussie's had recommended twice because it was hidden behind yet another sex shop. My mouth dropped at some of the prices of the food items there (i.e. I got a loaf of bread for 25 cents and a jar of Nutella for 75 cents). That night was spent shaking off the grogginess of traveling by drinking a few beers and talking with the Aussie's. The next morning we set out to discover where we were. Turns out Estonia was a good choice. Right around the corner from our hostel we had a perfect view of the Old Town. It was definitely a skyline I had never seen before. Dominating the view was a tall building with 6 or 7 black onion domes with gold trimming. The rest of the buildings poked out in random places, each of them having their own elaborate design. We started walking in that direction and found a giant medieval wall with a ton of towers that we decided to explore.

Each of the towers had long spiraling staircases that seemed to go on forever. Despite the loads of pigeon poo covering every inch of everything, that damp and musty smell of age that I love so much was everywhere.

Afterwards, we walked around and found our way to the onion-dome building which I named, "St. Basil Jr" and other parts of the old town. I found the look of Tallinn really really strange. Every other building was in complete shambles, while the buildings next to it looked completely fresh. Some buildings were brown and dreary, while others were completely covered with broadly painted strokes of green, pink, yellow, and blue. The cobblestones are probably some of the worst i've ever walked on and have probably never been changed since their original placement in the 12th century.

After wandering around for a few more hours we found our way to the old town square and went into a restaurant called, "The Olde Hansa" where I ate dried Elk meat while others had giant platters of duck, mushroom soup, different breads, vegetables, and a number of other things I can't even begin to describe. We each got a giant medieval-style mug of Dark Honey beer that thickly slid down our throats leaving an incredibly sweet taste on our tongues. That night, the boys went out while I stayed in (not wanted to spend all my money) and drank a few beers with Poncho from Perth. He was tall and just big boned with a giant beard that wrapped around his red face like a sloth. He had a deep guttural laugh that echoed around the lobby. It was fun to watch him strum his beer and flick his cigarette to the beat of the music while he told me all about his home town and how he had ended up in Estonia. The next day started late as we shuffled out of the hostel and took a trolley out to a giant park that had the old summer palace of Pyotr the Great, The National Museum of Art, and the Presidential Palace. The sun was shining and birds and people were running around everywhere trying to enjoy as much as possible before the wrath of the eastern european gods would crack open the skies and pour more heavy rain down on the city. The National Museum of Art was loads of fun. I am not familiar with Eastern European art at all, so it was wonderful to see hundreds of works completely different from what I am used to (Western European). The group was split during the museum trip because Lincoln and I spent quite a bit of time in there. He and I ended up wandering through the park and found our way to the beach where I saw the Baltic Sea for the first time. I strode out onto the sand and jumped up on a pile of seaweed and kind of laughed to myself about how cool it was that I was on a beach touching the Baltic Sea. I bent down and scooped shells out of the water and wrote my name in the sand only to watch it disappear. Lincoln and I took a seat in the sand and talked about traveling and other places as we watched the giant ferries puff away in the distance headed for Finland and Sweden.

We got a trolley back to the hostel where we sat and played a couple rounds of chess waiting for the others to get back so we could see what everyone is up to. The other boys were taking part in a beer pong tournament against the freshly arrived Yorkshire tenants, so Lincoln and I stayed around to watch and then shoved off to the Old Town. We ended up in a tiny, candle-lit, medieval-themed tavern where we grabbed a couple Dark Honey beers along with a couple apple pies and sat in the corner just loving the atmosphere. After an hour or so we decided to go for a walk, but then ended up back in the same little tavern. There were all kinds of options when it came to pies: you could have any kind of meat pies, cabbage pie, apple pie, spinach pie, carrot pie, and so on. We got a couple mugs of Lingonberry juice, apple pies, and a spinach pie and sat down and talked about everything. The next day was complete insanity (in a good way). Josh has a friend, Maksim, who is Estonian and was kind enough to rent a van and take us out to the Estonian countryside. It didn't take long to get out of the city and to suddenly be surrounded by vast tan fields. As we continued on we stopped a giant cliffs that plunged down into the Baltic. The more we went along the thicker the forest got until all of a sudden we were submerged into a giant forest that just seemed ancient. The van twisted and turned around thick walls of green until at last Maksim parked the car and we got out and took a walk through the forest until we got to what we will call, "The Estonian Niagra Falls."

The water was this strange golden color and nobody really knew why, but what did it matter? It was gorgeous. I watched the river flood down into the depths of the forest, it looked like a single golden ribbon cutting through and flowing around the deep trees. After this we drove on to probably one of the most impressive cliffs i've seen. I'm happy my friend was able to catch a picture of me checking it out:

After this we ran off to the Cisternian Paradise Monastery. It's this giant abandoned monastery from the 13th century that is probably one of the coolest places i've ever visited.

There were all kinds of crazy twisting passageways that would go down and then suddenly swing up again and completely turn you around. It was a labyrinth of epic proportions and I was in love. We excitedly went down into the creepiest of creepy-looking places where we found piles of animal bones and other doorways leading into darker places (which, of course, we went to). Then we ended up in the old chapel which was beautifully eery.

I looked around at the high vaulted ceilings and imagined the chants of the monks echoing from the walls, the desperate prayers, the people who ran here for safety during times of war, everything that could have possibly happened here. These walls witnessed the rule of Eric V of Denmark, and then the conquering by the Teutonic Knights, and then it was partially burnt down with 28 monks trapped inside, rebuilt, and then witnessed the Livonian War, then the occupation of Sweden, and later the Russians. And now it was rubble and tourists were running around taking photos. We all agreed that we could have spent a whole day in there, but we had to get going back to Tallinn. When we arrived back in Tallinn, we went to a little restaurant in the former factory (now art student occupied) district. I had a giant chicken salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and I don't even remember what. Only that it was amazing. That night was the hostel beer pong championship which some of our group were in, so while that was going on, Lincoln and I ran back up to our little Medieval tavern to eat more pies and drink more beer/juice. The next day we were shoving off bright and early to get to Helsinki, Finland.

There's a picture of Lincoln on the back of the ferry as we go across the Baltic Sea. Actually, I don't know if I want to call that thing a "ferry." It was a FREAKING HUGE SHIP. I'm kind of new to this whole boat-travel thing. So I was in awe that this thing with 8 floors, a grocery store, a casino, and 37 restaurants and bars could FLOAT. When we landed in Helsinki and got off the boat, we had to take a bus into the center of town. When we got off the bus we were suddenly surrounded by dozens of gypsy music groups. Each of them trying to play louder than the next. Helsinki reminded me a lot of Prague in some ways. Many of the buildings were just so elaborately decorated it didn't seem real. We caught another boat that took us to a small island called Suomenlinna where we made our way to the southern tip to check out the old fortress. Needless to say, it was simply epic. We found creepy places to crawl and giant cannons to play on. Here is a photo of the whole group (minus Lincoln who was taking the photo) in one of the underground passageways:

We made our way back to Helsinki where we just walked around and looked at the city. It had some pretty incredible things.

We caught a 21.30 boat back to Tallinn and were happy to leave Helsinki. It wasn't a place you wanted to spend a whole day in, maybe half a day. That, and we kind of missed Tallinn. As the boat pushed out of the harbor, I went and stood on the back of the boat and decided I would stand there and watch Helsinki disappear. Lincoln came out and joined me and pretty soon we were freezing, but we had made a commitment to watch Helsinki disappear so we were going to do it. Didn't matter that it started raining and the wind was going to rip my face off... I was going to do this. It actually turned out to be a LOT of fun. First of all, I love the wind, and I love fog. We passed another smaller ferry and Lincoln and I started pretending to order commands to shoot missiles at it (doing all of this in Russian accents). "Zey take up zpaze in vater. Shoot mizzles zo zey know who zey try to raze." It's hard to write it... but you get the idea. We stood there and watched Helsinki disappear into the fog, and then walked down to the bar to join the other guys where we sat and talked until we heard the big foghorn indicated that we were arriving in Tallinn. I forgot to add one picture of Estonia that's probably one of my favorites:

Tallinn was a home away from home away from home and felt good to be back. Unfortunately we left bright and early the next day and made it back to Marburg at around 16.00. It was a very fulfilling trip and one that I needed to take badly. I hope to see Estonia again at some point, and perhaps Latvia and Lithuania as well. Actually, I just hope to see the rest of Eastern Europe and so on and so forth.

The City Nobody Wanted to Leave: Dresden

We arrived in Dresden around three in the afternoon to sunny weather with a temperature in the late 70's early 80's. I haven't felt this weather since last Oktober. Needless to say, we all got a little crazy because Marburg had been so cold and rainy. The hostel room was better than I had anticipated. It had large windows and a balcony (keyword here being balcony). The view looked out over Dresden, but I didn't take much time to scope it out because we decided to run down to the Elbe (river through Dresden).

As you can tell, it was a bright clear day and the air was humid and warm. When I stepped off the bus, I was reminded of a quote by Jack Kerouac: “The air was so sweet in New Orleans it seemed to come in soft bandannas; and you could smell the river and really smell the people, and mud, and molasses, and every kind of tropical exhaltation with your nose suddenly removed from the dry ices of a Northern Winter.” A bunch of us ran down to the grass by the river (some with a Maß beer, some with glasses of wine) and sprawled out on the long grass in a way that looked like we were photosynthesizing. As I dug my heels and hands into the grass laying on my back propped up by my elbows, I looked out at this amazing panoramic and couldn't help but smile. When the bells of the dozens of cathedrals went off and the steam boats rolled by, it seemed as though every happy feeling i've ever had, every beautiful thing i've ever seen pulsated under my skin and then exploded from every pore. It was a feeling beyond that of non-belief, it was one of those feelings where you just know that you exist. Life didn't pause, it didn't go slowly, it kept with natural time and it was perfect. I felt each blade of grass, each cool breeze, every cathedral bell that rang and every blow from the steamboats resonated in my chest. In those few moments, I found myself in my own little european pari-nirvana. After we managed to pull ourselves off the grass (you can imagine what a difficult task that was), we headed for the Altstadt to look around. Everywhere I looked there was landscape of some unbelievable baroque marvel. We stopped and watched a band of hippies perform some kind of artsy-musical piece and then continued onward through a large gateway into the Altstadt where a huge May market was going on. Flowers and flowers and more flowers throwing up everywhere. In the center of the market was a large colorful May pole surrounded by elaborately carved wooden stands selling all kinds of food, clothes, and knick knacks. We all got some kind of variation of a Bratwurst and sat down to watch the market at work. Some people were bustling along buying things left and right while others sat at long, colorful tables drinking beer and smoking. Having had a long day, we decided to go back to the hostel. On the way, we stopped for ice cream. I got my classic favorite of chocolate and lemon and walked down the street a ways to where a gypsy was hard at work plucking keys and pushing and pulling her accordion. We continued down the street and under this long arch-tunnel where an opera singer stood singing Ave Maria. We stopped to listen and then continued on our way back to the hostel where we spent a good night inside drinking tea and simply talking. That night I went out on the balcony with a book and sat there watching fireworks shoot across the Dresden skyline. The next day we were scheduled for a city tour, so we all jumped out of bed eager to see more of the city. The first half of the tour was spent, to my dislike, on a bus where we drove around the suburbs of Dresden and then came back to the Altstadt where we filed out and separated into groups. The next half of the tour was on the Dresdner Zwinger.

Simply a Baroque masterpiece. After the tour, we walked around the May market again and got more wurst. Then we met up with some other people and we went to heaven the Museum of Fine Art. And it is there, that I died and was reborn multiple times. I saw so many paintings that i've spent years and years looking at and studying in textbooks including a couple that I wrote very large essays on (Raphael's Sistine Madonna, and Nicolas Poussin's Realm of Flora). I also saw tons of work by Rubens, Rembrandt, Füssli, Claude Lorraine, Coreggio, and the list runs on and on. When I left that museum, there was nothing that could pull me down, I was freakishly happy. After the museum we went back to the hostel, put some things down, and then went to dinner. I also did some walking around behind the hostel in an area I decided to call, "Hippyland." And it was just that. Streets and streets of no cars and just bicycles, naked people walking around, dreadlocks, cotton clothes, multiple instruments, everyone sitting down on patches of grass or walls playing music or talking. The oldest person in this neighborhood was probably 35. It seemed to be all the students living in one massive area. I sat down on a wall and ended up talking to a few art students from Holland and Germany. We had a great time talking about nerdy philosophical stuff and geeking out about the museum of fine art. After a couple beers, I said farewell to them and went back to the hostel to find friends and wine. When my roommates went to bed I was still on a museum-high and went to the balcony below me to visit some friends there where we drank more wine and they let me ramble on and on (more passionately than normal) about all of the works of art I saw in the museum and why I loved them. After they went to sleep, I went down yet another floor to another group of people and spent some time with them. I then returned to my room and grabbed my book and went outside once more to enjoy the cool night air. The next morning we all shuffled into a bus and were swept off to the Elbe River & Sandstone Mountains. The drive there, alone, was MAGNIFICENT. We passed through fields and fields of bright yellow canola flowers.

We arrived at the summer residence of August the Strong (king of Saxony/Poland from way back when). Three GIANT and elaborately decorated mansions surrounded a large courtyard of tightly organized flowers. It was a little too mindblowingly colorful. We then proceeded into what was called, "The English Gardens." It was basically a forest with a gravel path cut through the center of it. In any case, it was simply gorgeous. Tall light green trees surrounded by long grass, multiple kinds of bright flowers, and red squirrels with long ears and colorful ducks scampering all over the place. There was a point in our tour when we walked by a bunch of lilac trees, without hesitation it seemed like half the group purposefully faceplanted into the lilac trees and for a minute all you could hear were the deep inhales of jazzed students. The Sandstone Mountains is also named, "Little Switzerland" because of the nature, and I believe it. Everything looks a lot different than most places i've seen in Germany. We went out to this look out point and could see for miles. Not far away, we could see the Czech border. We then continued on through more canola fields to an old fortress situated on the top of a giant plateau. After all of this we made our way back to the city where we all spread off, many going back to the Elbe, and others itching to take a nap in their beds. I went off by myself and walked around the city and Hippyland a bit more just enjoying what I was seeing and enjoying everything that had happened that day. I sat on a bench in the middle of a giant park and pulled out my book. After a couple hours I went back to the hostel for tea, and then went and sat on my balcony overlooking Dresden. I sat there for another hour or so listening to music and drawing. I then left to hang out with people and check out a jazz/blues bar a couple blocks away. I sat in the bar moving my head to the beat of the music, and when more and more people arrived it got louder and louder and everyone started clapping and cheering as the horns blew up and down creating insane scales and jumping from high note to low note with ease. I sat with a couple young kids from southern France and another old couple from Belgium. We all clapped along, drank, and laughed as the music escalated and eventually quieted down. I returned to the hostel with my head in a daze. I could either spend the rest of my life here or I couldn't stand how utterly perfect it was. The next day, everyone sluggishly moved around due to the madness that had been the night before. We all had to leave the city by noon and nobody seemed particularly happy about having to leave so soon. I know that I, for one, was not. Before we left there was a giant steamboat parade (for May Day) on the Elbe and tons of parades and protests around the city. I'm sad that we had to leave that day... I would have liked to see more of what May Day in Dresden produces. The ride back to Marburg went by quickly with my book and the fantastic scenery of zillions and zillions of canola flower fields. I came back to find Marburg in the full swing of Spring. All of the trees were tall and the leaves poured out of the branches mixing with one another to the point that I couldn't tell which branches and leaves belonged to which trees. Many of the trees were so full that they bent into each other creating large green archways over the dirt paths of the forest. I was happy to come back from Dresden with such wonderful weather in Marburg, it made returning a lot easier. Then again, the next day we were pelted with golfball-sized hailstones......... doesn't matter. Marburg has character. I swear i'll get around to writing the post about Estonia and Finland. I just found it a lot easier to write about Dresden because I was just there and for a shorter amount of time.