The Occasionally-Examined Life

Today I indulged in a guided “walking tour”, led by an archaeologist, obstensibly to see the Hidden Treasures of Venice. We met at the top of the Rialto Bridge and not a one of the 14 attendees was under 60. Each person was outiftted with a little wireless radio and earpiece so you could hear the guide's commentary, but unfortunately our guide held the lapel-style microphone too close to her mouth and a lot of what she said was lost to distortion. I'll be sending them my technical recommendations for a better microphone choice.

The highpoint of the 2-hour walk was the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, one of the greatest churches in the city. The artwork inside, including terrific paintings by Titian, is remarkable. Many very large churches like this collapsed over time due to Venice's sandy foundations but this one survived and was worth the walk.

My weekend in Berlin was filled with historic buildings and some great museums. Saturday night there were fireworks and a rock concert (too late in the evening for me) at the Brandenburg Gate celebrating German Unity Day, when East and West became one, 24 year ago.

Berliners have been kind enough to put five of their biggest and coolest museums together on the nearby “Museum Island” in the Spree River. They're doing a lot of site improvement, so it was also a construction zone, but navigating it Sunday wasn't too bad and the Museumspass card saved us money and opened all doors without waiting.

One of the big attractions at the Neues Museum is the bust of Nefertiti, shown on the banner at left. Sadly, no photography of the real McCoy was allowed but you can Google her. A very impressive artifact and, if true-to-life, a lovely woman. I hate to think she had buck teeth and warts and the sculptor, thinking of his own neck, provided an idealized rendering of the Egyptian queen, but you never know.

After many hours of museum salon strolling and getting a touch of museum fatigue, John and I headed to a recommended dive, Deponie #3, underneath the nearby elevated S-Bahn tracks for a signature Berlin dish: Curry Wurst. This proved to be a monster hot dog, slathered with curry-flavored ketchup, and fries. Pedestrian but tasty, and we can say we had it. And that once was enough.

Sunday night we took in a “Gentlemen's Club” which, here in Berlin, was pretty unrestrained. I won't jeopardize this blog's PG status with details but I can say it was an “experience” and European women are beautiful.

Monday saw me on the Air Berlin flight to Venice. John was headed back to States today. As discount airlines go, Air Berlin was fantastic. Absolutely excellent web site, automated email reminders, online check-in, boarding pass delivery in a lot of different ways, great staff, and a pleasant and comfortable flight. A great example of how it should, and can, be done.

Venice is always remarkable. I arrived to a warm welcome back from Gabriel and Diego at the Hotel Casa Fontana (their family owns and runs it) and soon after dove into some cicchetti (Venetian tapas) and red wine at the Bacarro Risorto next door. Later, I had a wonderful meal of breaded veal and roasted potatoes at Osteria Oliva Nera, a very nice restaurant. I especially enjoyed the deep-fried zuchhini flowers stuffed with anchovies and sour cream! A fine Tempura-like appetizer.

Today, I'm off to the “Hidden Venice” walking tour, followed this evening by my traditional visit to Harry's Bar. So, until tomorrow, buongiorno!

Today we visited a unique exhibit, called The Topology of Terror, which includes a museum explaining the rise, the evil, and the fall, of the Nazis, with emphasis on the worst-of-the-worst, the Gestapo, the SS, and the SD. All of the exhibits are photographs, films, and papers from the era, many from the official records kept at the time. They trace Hitler and Company from their rise in 1933 through the end of the war and beyond.

Not only are these materials bleak and depressing but the design of the building deliberately reinforces that air. Built on the city block that once housed the Gestapo, SS and SD HQ,there is no green landscaping, no plants or trees or grass at all. Instead the building, shown at left, is surrounded by large fields filled with very coarse, fist-sized stones, that are sharp-edged and violent-looking. A long section of the Berlin Wall lines along one side the grounds and, below it, a section of the underground basement of Gestapo HQ has been dug out and made part of the exhibit that you walk through. It isn't hard at all to imagine people being shot against those walls.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews is another amazing site, consisting as you can see above, of 2,711 slabs or stellae, in different shapes and sizes, set in rows with an undulating base of tiles. It's a really thoughtful space, full of surprise shifts in perspective, and easy to get lost in, if only temporarily.

It's important to be reminded about the evil men can do, and have done, lest we forget and allow it to happen again. But it's mighty depressing, too. And, also, a bit uplifting that at least we have chosen to make these reminders public and hear their message.

Today I'm enjoying the luxury of the Berlin Hilton on the Gendarmenmarkt, a plaza that features two cathedrals, a Concert Hall, and an Opera House. The weather is beautiful, 50-65 degrees, with the kind of clear blue sky you wish was your eye color.

Berlin, as those of us of a certain age remember, is a city once divided by The Wall, a barbed-wire topped cement wall thrown up by the Soviets that divided the city into East and West Berlin. West Berlin, surrounded by East Germany, was kept alive initially with continuous airlifts of food and other supplies by the U.S military. The Wall, with its No-Man's land of land mines and guard towers, was a constant source of stories of courage and determination, as East Berliners tried every scheme possible to get to the West. This included tunnels, car trunk smuggling, hot air balloons, zip lines, and doomed attempts to run No-Man's land. A famous crossing point, Checkpoint Charlie, where U.S. and Soviet tanks faced each other just 200 yards apart, is very near my hotel.

And, how about that, who should walk through the doors of the Berlin Hilton this morning but John, my drinking buddy from back home and determined first-time Europe visitor. Doubtful of all my bragging about the fabulousness of German Oktoberfest beer, he decided to call my bluff and join me for the Berlin leg of my trip and luckily snagged a room on Expedia in the Hilton. But, as he has learned, I'm right, and now he's enjoying having his scepticism disproved. Here we are, at right, enjoying one litre steins, ein mass, of tasty Oktoberfest brew from the famous Augustiner brewery and chowing down on some traditional German fare, heavy on the carbs.

Earlier today we took a open-top bus tour of the city, which was a good way to discover the high points and get the lay of the land. It's amazing how the drivers are able to maneuver those big buses through tight city streets. We were treated to an exhibition of these skills when we encountered a Greenpeace demonstration snarling the main drag and had to do some impressive side street navigating.

John is jet-lagged but says he's recovering fast and, after a restorative nap this afternoon, he'll certainly be able to put some bartenders through their paces tonight. It's interesting for me, having traveled solo for so long, to have someone else along.

What an interesting city Berlin is. It has an ancient history filled with kings and palaces, was home to the brutal Nazi government, was nearly bombed flat during WWII, was divided by The Wall during the Cold War, and was beautifully rebuilt afterwards. Now it's a thriving, modern metropolis with a polite and well-educated population, full of art and architecture worth seeing. For 24 years, The Wall was part of its psyche and, though taken down in 1989, it remains a strong presence, through actual remnants and a brick line that crosses all paved areas tracing its course. It is, of course, a tourist draw, but also a lingering testament to the possibilities of a peaceful end to tyranny.

Every time an airplane I'm in reaches V1 and then V2 at take-off, I marvel at the miracle of flight. V1 is the speed at which the plane creates enough lift to raise the front wheel off the ground, hopefully followed by V2, which is when all wheels leave the ground. You have to wonder about DaVinci and all those other dedicated experimenters of yore who just didn't have the means to accelerate their latest flying vehicle to the point at which it would encounter V1 and V2. The miracle of Lift: velocity = air pressure, + wing shape = flight.

In case you were wondering, here's what the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class cabin looks like. This was my first flight with the newly redesigned cabin and it was both good and bad. The seat space seems small at the shoulders but wider at the hips, and the old Soviet Block-era, DOS-based entertainment system interface has been replaced with a great touch-screen, HD interface. And the dividers between seats have been changed to etched glass rather that solid materials, which produces a sense of more space but also takes away privacy. So, a bit of a mixed bag.

The herringbone seat arrangement means you never have to climb over someone else to go to the loo, the bar, etc. and, yes, those seat backs flip forward to make a flat bed (duvet and pillow provided). Yes, there's a 4-stool bar in Upper Class, too. So what with all these amenities and excellent food and service, the cost of this ticket class is easily justified. Of course, I pay for a lesser ticket and use frequent flyer miles to upgrade to Glorious Food and Seating Class, so it's very worthwhile for me.

The Fall travel season has arrived and, in a few days, I'll be jetting off to another European adventure. The weather looks to be good, the food and drink will be fantastic, and there'll probably be a strike or two to generate some excitement. So, get ready to settle back in your easy chair and come along with me via this blog once again. We'll be heading for Berlin first.

Point of order: You may notice some ads appearing below my posts now. I have no control over these, short of shelling out $30/year to get WordPress to turn them off. My apologies if they're annoying, intrusive, or obnoxious.

Here are the beverages I enjoyed during my 2012 trip.

They're listed as “Beer Name (Brewery) ABV%”.

Munich:

Oktoberfest Bier (Augustiner) 6.0%

Oktoberfest Bier (Paulaner) 6.0%

Oktoberfest Bier (Spaten) 6.0%

Paris:

Le Guillotine (Huyghe) 8.6% – Belgian strong pale ale

Blond 6 (Maredsous) 6.0% – Belgian ale

England:

Mad Goose (Purity) 4.2% – Light copper pale ale

Gales Seafarer's Ale (Fullers) 4.5% – IPA

Squirrels Delight (Oakleaf) 4.5% – Bitter

Ginger Doodle Stout (Binghams) 5.0% – Dark stout

Headlock (W. Berkshire) 4.1% – Amber ale

Good Old Boy (W. Berkshire) 4.0% – Ordinary bitter

Notting Hill Amber (Moncada) 4.7% – Amber bitter

Old Peculiar (Theakston) 4.8% – Old dark ale

Ghost Ship (Adnams) 4.5% – Golden ale, with U.S. hops

Oxford Gold (Brakspear) 4.8% – Mild pale ale

Amber Ale (Market Porter) 4.2% – House pale ale

Old Speckled Hen (Moreland) 4.5% – Pale ale

Hobgoblin (Wychwood) 5.2% – Extra Special Bitter

I meant to comment ealier on my EuroStar ride from Paris to London. It remains a wonderful trip, clearly superior to the same journey by plane, if a little more expensive. The idea of passing under the English Channel has lost its excitement after so many trips, I'll admit (it's 25 minutes of blackness), but the whole experience is just more civilized than flying. Yes, you do have to schlep your own bag on and off the train, but that's a small price to pay for luxurious personal space, comfortable seating, and great views out the window. I travel “Standard Premiere” class, which is only a bit more than economy but not as astronomic as Business Premiere. There have been noticeable changes in service over the years: the included hot lunch choices became one choice, then a cold lunch, then smaller. But I've noticed this in a lot of places, a sign of the economic times no doubt. At least the wine is still plentiful and free.

My last day in London, I headed off to the Borough Market, which has been around in one form or another since the 1200s. It's a wholesale and retail food and flower market, in Southwark, beneath the southern end of the London Bridge. It features dozens of stalls and shops with a wide variety of foods, groceries, and flowers. I'm partial to a place there that sells take-away organic chicken wraps, with sweet chili sauce and parsely. Very tasty and easy to eat while strolling around.

This is also the home of The Market Porter, a nice old pub with a great selection of cask ales. Naturally, I had to sample several of them. The Porter is also frequented by the people who work those market stalls and it's fun to eavesdrop on their accents and concerns.

Across from the Market Porter, is Neal's Yard Dairy, with its racks and racks of full-sized cheese rounds and fresh dairy products. And, oh yes, free samples. If you like English dairy, this is The Place to visit. It's a shame U.S. Customs won't let me bring home a huge hunk of Neal's great cheese. When you go to the market, don't miss this dairy outlet.

My final stop in the area was The George Inn, now owned by the National Trust, and “England's only remaining 16th Century coaching pub”. The National Trust plaque outside says that both Shakespeare (the Globe Theatre is not far away) and Dickens patronized this pub.

That was good enough to get me to stop in and have a pint of Old Speckled Hen. It was fun to squint my eyes and imagine a drunken Will Shakespeare staggering out on these cobblestones. Although probably very little of what I coud readily see dates from that era. It was a good pint, nonetheless.

By the way, I've mentioned Hilary Mantel and her prize winning book Bring Up the Bodies in two other posts. Well, to top it off, she got on the elevator with me this afternoon at my hotel. We had a brief conversation and I congratulated her and let her know I was looking forward to her next book. What are the chances of such an encounter? Loved it.

This morning it's back into the arms of Virgin-Atlantic at Heathrow for my flight home. I've had a good trip overall and Oktoberfest in particular was fantastic. I'll add a post after this one that catalogs all the different beers I enjoyed. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to being home again. Until the next time I dust off my passport, safe journeys.

Today was my day for visiting the British Museum, which is always a treat. They have a great permanent collection, of course, and many special exhibitions. I had a ticket for one these, Shakespeare: Staging The World. As usual, the exhibition is in the upper floor of the circular, domed structure, The Reading Room, which is in the middle of the museum's interior courtyard.

The curators basically wanted to show Shakespeare's works and life in the context of the events going on around him, and they did a very good job of it. For example, there were interesting timelines of the production of his plays plotted against political and historical events. I was also reminded that he cleverly presented situations, and put words into the mouths of ancient Roman and more contemporary Venetian characters, on stage, that would have been deemed treasonous if presented and said by any real person in England at the time. Yes, there's another tie-in with Venice! During Shakespeare's time, Venice was apparently mythologized by the English as a kind of Las Vegas, i.e. Sin City, and setting plays there allowed the audience to enjoy the licentiousness vicariously.

Of course, the exhibition included artifacts, documents, and other related physical “stuff”, and also numerous videos of well-known modern actors reading various speeches from the plays. All in all, it was well done, and a very entertaining and illuminating exhibition.

I also visited two pubs in the area (The Museum Tavern and The Plough) and got to enjoy some cask ales that I'd not had before. You know, the staff at these pubs are just downright nice. It's really a pleasant experience to go there (and not just because of the alcohol). England is experiencing a real loss of traditional pubs – up to 25 per week are closing – and it's a shame. Oddly enough, I was told that the traditional ale that I like is actually outselling the Stella and other lagers that appeal more to the youth market these days.

Now here's an interesting travel topic: the in-room safe. During this trip, I've stayed at one hotel with a very secure and securely installed safe (Munich), one hotel with no safe at all (Venice), one hotel with a safe that was not bolted down in any way (Paris), and one with a bolted down safe that was plastered with “Hotel accepts no responsibility” stickers. Now, I've never had the misfortune of having anything stolen from my room (knock on wood) but I am security conscious. The safe that wasn't bolted down seem pretty silly; I mean, why bother?

When faced with no safe or a silly safe, I just put things in my luggage and lock it. Sure, a thief could just slit the luggage, but I suppose it's at least “out of sight, out of mind”.

Who comes in your room any way? Well… there's the maid, of course, and on this trip, at one hotel that was being renovated, two “electricians” with a master door key card showed up while I was in my room (they knocked), and here in the Hilton, workmen came by during the day and replaced several pictures on the wall (I saw their cart and room list – with my room at the top – in the hall as I left), so it's not “nobody”. I do wonder that a hotel that provides a safe can then go on to say they have no responsibility!? So what do they think is the purpose of the safe they paid good money for – is it just a central place to collect your valuables in order to make it more convenient for a thief? Sure, customers travelling with the Hope Diamond should not trust the room safe; but what about me and my iPhone, iPad, and $200? It's just one of those little travel conundrums, I guess.

Well, time for some sleep now. Tomorrow we visit the Borough Market, located under the south end of London Bridge. Do join me!

My arrival in London coincided with the onset of a massive head cold, so my activities have slowed a bit. Luckily, British pharmacies have all the usual OTC cold symptom relievers and so one of my first stops was my local Boots for the necessaries.

One consequence of this was that I cancelled my trip out to Oxford yesterday, in favor of more sleep and a slow start to the day over breakfast in the Executive Lounge. A major benefit of being a Hilton Honors Gold Member (thank you for the tip, Nancy and Ingrid) is access to this lounge, where they also serve lunch, tea, and dinner, gratis. I did get out to Reading, my ex-pat home in 2008, in time for lunch with Mike Mather, the first person we hired for my company's UK office (since moved on) and a good friend.

It was fun to see Mike and he was full of interesting stories about the recent London Olympics, for which he was one of the “Gamesmakers” volunteers. This gave him behind-the-scenes access and a supply of good anecdotes to share.

We had an enjoyable lunch at O'Neill's in Reading over a pint of Guinness. I spent a bit of time after lunch visiting some old haunts and checking out the Christmas stuff (already on display) at the John Lewis department store. I then settled in at The Ale House (formerly The Hobgoblin) pub and started sampling their range of guest ales. A “free house” unaligned with any specific brewery, they've hosted 6200+ different ales, so far; though I limited myself to six (half pints) yesterday.

There I was, on my bar stool, looking over the thousands of beer pump badges stuck to the walls and ceiling, when I spotted a Virginia Tech pennant pinned to the wall behind the cash register! Several of my good friends are Tech alums and, apparently, one of the original owners of the pub years ago had spent a year studying abroad at Tech. It's fun to stumble over things like that when you're out and about in the world. Here's another example: this is a picture of a bar I passed in Oxford last year. In case you don't know, “Wahoo” is the nickname for University of Virginia (my alma mater) students. This bar's web site says it provides the finest “Disco, Soul, and Motown” music. Sounds a bit 1980s to me, but, well, the Virginia influence runs far and wide, I guess.

I've been asked to comment on the availability of WiFi during my travels. In short, It has been variable.

In Munich, the hotel provided connectivity in my room and I was given a password to use when making the connection; re-connecting on different days was a snap. In Venice, it was the same, however, connectivity was only available in the lobby lounge. In Paris, it was available in my room but after connecting I was directed through some 3rd-party provider (web page login required, along with submission of personal info, like email) for service, resulting in tons of spam. Here in London, it's barely available in my room (I had to hunt to find the 3' x 3' area on one side of the room where there's any signal at all) with a 3rd-party login page but no personal info required and no spam.

I have had, in most but not all places, a decent cellular signal as well (but, of course, that is the uber expensive way to go, even with an international data plan in place). So, while the number of people carrying mobile devices has skyrocketed, WiFi availability is still inconistent and sometimes frustrating, regardless of what the hotel advertising says.

I mentioned earlier that I'd just finished reading Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel while on this trip, and within a day or two they announced that she'd won the prestigious 2012 Man Booker Prize for Contemporary Fiction for it! This was her second Man Booker win, also an unusual occurence, and the first double for a woman author. This book is the middle volume in a trilogy (Wolf Hall is volume #1), and if you're a fan of the television show The Tudors, you'll like these books. I am now looking forward to #3 appearing in the next year or so.

Tonight , I'm off to see War Horse at the New London Theatre (head cold and energy levels permitting) and then tomorrow a special treat: the Borough Market, beneath the south end of London Bridge. See you tomorrow!