museum pass madness

We had a lazy few days, and decided it was time to kick it into high-gear, so on Tuesday we bought two-day Paris Museum Passes. The PMP gives you free access to 60 sights and museums in the Paris area, so you feel obligated to cram a lot of sightseeing in, which was exactly the kind of pressure we needed to de-slothify ourselves. Here's what we checked out in the last 48 hours:

• The Pantheon, where France buries the men who have contributed most to the nation, including Voltaire, Rousseau, the Curies, Alexander Dumas, and Victor Hugo. We went on Jason's advice, and he was right, it was cool. It's sort of similar to the Lincoln Memorial, in that they're both temples to civic virtue, and they both make my spine tingle. I mean, Voltaire! Neat!
  
  Louis XVI meant the building to be a church dedicated to St. Genevive, but during the revolution the state took it over and rededicated it to its present purpose. In a way that makes it even more inspiring, because it symbolizes the triumph of reason and humanism. It's also a bit creepy, though, because you can't help but be reminded of how the revolutionaries also went smashy-smashy on Notre Dame. Now that I've seen Notre Dame, that seems inconceivably crass. Bad form, France.
  
  
• The Musee d'Orsay: Impressionism, and lots of it.
  
  
• The Rodin Museum: I really wanted to see his fallen caryatid after all the caryatids I saw bravely soldiering on in Greece, but it's in an area that's closed off for renovation. Boo.
  
  
• The Musee de l'Armee and Napoleon's Tomb: As if the rest of Paris doesn't provide evidence enough that Napoleon thought he was awesome. Bonus points, though, for the display of cannons captured from foreign armies. The French really know how to say "Suck on it!" with style.
  
  
• Notre Dame: As I've noted before on this trip, the classics of tourism are classics for a reason. Wow.
  
  
• Sainte Chapelle: Again, zow. Victor Hugo said, "In the Middle Ages, human genius had no important thought which it did not write down in stone." I'm pretty sure he was thinking about the cathedrals of Paris when he said that.
  
  
• Musee de l'Orangerie: I really liked the upper rooms in this museum, built to house Monet's huge circular water lilly canvases. I kind of thought those water lilly paintings were for cat people and 14-year-old girls who dot their letters with hearts, but I was wrong. After listening the museum's audio commentary, I could see how they helped pave the path to abstract art. Plus, they're, like, totally pretty.
  
  
• The Arc de Triopmhe: This was actually not the first arch Napoleon built to comemorate his awesomeness. He started with the one in front of the Louvre, but didn't think it was impressive enough. He really got the awe-inspiring thing right with the Arc de Triomphe, though. It makes every other triumphal arch I've ever seen look kind of lame.

adventures in dijon

On Monday we went to Dijon, the capital of Burgandy. Our trip did not begin well. We had to buy a train pass before we boarded, and then the train was delayed, so we didn't get into Burgandy until around one in the afternoon. Then we ended up waiting an hour for the bus that Lonely Planet told us would take us to vinyards for wine tasting. Finally, after we got off at the last stop, which LP had advised me was at the beginning of the best stretch of vineyards in the region, we found ourselves in the middle of a suburban housing tract, not a scenic vine-covered hill in sight. We wandered around for a while, having a stupid fight and scaring an old lady out for her afternoon walk, but only succeeded in finding the train tracks and the back of a warehouse.

Fortunately, just then we met Lady Luck, who came to us in the form of Bertrand, a drunken Frenchman. We found Bertrand in a bar where I stopped in to ask for directions to the vineyards. He told us, in impressively good English, that he made wine, and he'd take us to his house to taste some if we'd wait 15 minutes. That sounded potentially hilarious to us, so we sat there while he slowly drank the rest of his beer, and then polished off a second, all the while bantering with the his best friend Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc was the only other customer in the bar, and from what I could gather, he and Bertrand go there a lot. They're both fire fighters, and they're kind of guys who rip the filters off their cigarettes because filters are "for zee women." Also, Jean-Marc had a beret and jean shorts on, and Bertrand uses a Winnie-the-Pooh keychain and carries around cardboard box with one boot in it, for no apparent reason. So you can see as how we didn't expect these guys to serve us world-class wine.


We were wrong, though. Bertrand's family has been in the business for a long time. Part of the cellar he showed us dated back to 1728. And he and Jean-Marc made great wine tour guides. Jean-Marc even showed me how to aerate the wine as I drank it, which was particularly impressive given that all his instructions came in the form of hand gestures and loud lip-smacking noises. I snorfed a lot of Grand Cru into my nasal cavities before I mastered it.

All in all, it was an amazing day. We bought Bertrand and Jean-Marc a beer before they drove us to the bus station, and while we drank Bertrand explained that he was returning a favor that came all the way from Australia. Apparently while he was on vacation there, some friendly locals took him under their wing and showed him around. When we stumbled into his favorite bar, he jumped on the opportunity to do likewise. Thanks, mysterious Aussies! I will most definitely pay back the karma bank when I return to San Francisco.

Fête de la Musique

Originally uploaded by nonobstant

Last night, Nick and I went to La Fête de la Musique, a summer solstice party where the streets of Paris are filled with hundreds of musicians. It's great -- almost every street corner is stage for a different act, and you can spend all night wandering through the city, dancing and drinking. Nick and I saw a choir doing Carmina Burana at a medieval church, a band that was kind of like the French Raffi (complete with adorable little French munchkins bopping around to the music), two different salsa bands, a brass band playing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," several DJs (including one whose set ended when the crowd chucked a can at the head of someone from his entourage, I think because they didn't like the Rage Against the Machine song he was spinning), and a stereo system blasting Michael Jackson remixes in front of a parking garage exit. When people tried to drive their cars out, the crowd would surround them and grind up against the doors and windows. Amazingly, no one seemed to mind. I guess everything goes during La Fête.

The best part was the dancing. Man, can French people dance! We wandered through an outdoor rave that seemed to be composed entirely of people who were, like, a hundred times cooler than us. Kind of like this girl. I have never seen people dance as well as these kids were dancing. It was like someone gave Justin Timberlake's backup dancers a whole bunch of ecstasy and set them loose to roam the streets of Paris. We were totally awestruck. We stood there for an hour or so, watching and drinking cans of beer from a corner store. It was the most fun I've had in Paris so far. I really wish Maggie had been there, since she spent our entire time in Europe looking for a good dance club. Last night, all of Paris was a dance club, Mag, and it was super cool.

versailles

leap from bush
Originally uploaded by Ffoggy

Yesterday Nick and I went to Versailles. As we learned from our audio tour, Louis XIV built it to be kind of a super-deluxe prison o' fancy-pantsiness. He forced French nobles to spend part of every year at Versailles worshiping him, and by doing so managed to awe and bore the formerly rebellious second estate into submission. That may sound like a lame plan, but now that I've been there I totally get why it was successful. Versailles is intimidatingly beautiful and completely exhausting. I almost collapsed during the hour we spent wandering around lost in the weird little faux peasant village that Marie Antoinette built for herself and her friends. When we finally found the exit I was in no condition to rebel against anybody, let alone god's chosen vessel on earth. Well played, Louis!

By the way, the French seem to have totally gotten over their beef with Marie. She is BIG tourist business now. That's life, I guess. One day people are screaming for your head, two centuries later they want to buy frilly pink souvenirs with your name embroidered on them.

If you're thinking of visiting Versailles, try downloading Rick Steves' free podcast tour from iTunes. It's a good alternative to the museum audioguide. It's much cornier (he actually makes a "Louie-Louie" joke - gag), but also a lot less focused on the names of the architects and painters and horticulturalists who created Versailles. Don't use his tour for the Louvre, though. It's hopelessly outdated. If anyone has any other good free podcast walking tours for Paris, please let me know.

The Louvre

Apparently my blog has been recognized as a "Blog of Note" on the Blogger homepage, which is pretty cool. Welcome, new readers! I'm going to have to ask you all to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement about Sheldon's meat pie chain idea, though.

Yesterday Nick and I went to the Louvre. It's...well, it's big. It's not as pleasant and classy a museum experience as, say, the Met (the art museum closest to my heart), but it pretty clearly dominates the Met on every other score. It's bigger, more famous, more crowded, the buildings are more historically significant, and it's full of a lot more ridiculously important artifacts. I'm not sure the Mona Lisa even belongs on their Top Five list. They have Hammurabi's Code there! Like, THE Hammurabi's Code, the actual rock on which "eye for an eye" was first written down! I got pretty nerdily excited when we saw it, especially since when I was a 6th grade history teacher I made my students do Hammurabi's Code-related crayon art. By the way, does anyone know how the Louvre got their hands on it? They don't explain in any of their english-language informational material, which makes me suspect some nefarious act of colonial pillaging. Napoleon Bonaparte, I'm looking in your direction!

Another unexpected higlight of the Louvre was watching people take pictures of the Mona Lisa. There are approximately 17 huge signs en route to the painting stating in multiple languages that photographs are NOT ALLOWED. Still, almost everyone who goes tries to get a snapshot. You can see that they know it's not allowed, because they look guilty and try to do it as sneakily as possible. The guards are apparently not empowered to take people's cameras away for breaking the rules, so they're left with no option but impotently glaring at the tourists, and, occasionally, ruining someone's picture by waving their hands in front of the camera. Nick pointed the spectacle out to me, and we spent 10 minutes standing there, watching and snickering.

deux croissaints, s'il vous plait

Things that are wrong with Paris:

1. When you order coffee to go, they serve it in those thin, clear plastic cups that are really only meant for cold beverages.

2. Apparently, chocolate chip cookies aren't a big deal here. I guess that's because they're an American invention, which I didn't know. As a result, it's difficult, although not impossible, to find cookie dough ice cream in Paris.

That's it. That's all I got. Paris really does seem close to perfect. It's even great when it rains, full of laughing couples rushing towards gazebos.

I was a little nervous when I arrived, because several people I'd met on my trip so far told me that Parisians are very rude to tourists. I haven't found that to be true at all so far. People here are insistent about speaking French to me, instead of switching to English without being asked like locals in other places I've been, but that's about it for French pride so far.

We haven't really done much yet, which is great. We're going to be here for long enough so that we don't have to rush to fit everything in. For the last few days we've mostly just wandered through the streets near our apartment, trying to figure out who makes the best croissants. I'll let you know when we decide.

various cinematic things, new and old

Athens is dense, urban, hot, and great. Nick and I went to the Acropolis yesterday and saw the Parthenon, which I sort of expected to be un-wowed by, because we've got columns in the US, too. It turns out I'm an idiot -- big wow for the Parthenon. We went late, so we saw it in the pink afternoon light in a nice cool breeze. As an added atmospheric bonus, there was guitar music drifting up the hill from a concert rehearsal below us in the Theater of Dionysis (which reminded me, unsurprisingly, of the Greek Theater in Berkeley).

We also went to an outdoor movie theater (of which Athens has many) for a screening of Ocean's 13. They don't dub in Greece, so the movie was in English with subtitles, but I still had some trouble following the details of the various scams. Am I getting old? Was the volume too low? Or are George and Brad too cool to allow themselves to be completely scrutable to the likes of me? Not sure. Anyway, it was better than Ocean's 12 but nowhere near as good as Ocean's 11. Fortunately, it was impossible not to enjoy the movie, since we had sunset and the Athens skyline as a backdrop. If you're ever in Athens, I highly recommend outdoor cinema.

bye bye, budapest. alone in athens.

my legs hurt
Originally uploaded by Ffoggy

I arrived in Athens 36 hours ago, after saying a sad goodbye to my parents and sister in Budapest. We had a great trip, and consumed more beer and french fries than I thought humanly possible in a mere 14 days. Go, Team Utgoff, go!

Nick didn't get here until this morning, so I had a day to wander around in Athens by myself. That was actually kind of fun, until I got stalked in the National Gardens, which temporarily soured me on solo exploring. I noticed a weird-looking middle aged man staring at me from a park bench, and left because he was creepy. I realized he'd been following me for twenty minutes when he wandered up behind me as I sat down again. When I got up to leave a second time, he got up and started following me AGAIN. Gross. Fortunately, he only seemed capable of very slow stalking, so I lost him pretty quickly by power walking out of the park.

Anyway, Nick is here now, so I feel less sketched out. He's alseep at the moment, though, after having struggled valiantly against jet lag until 8 PM. That means I have a chance to blog about Budapest, which I completely missed, what with all the fun.

The highlights were:

• Statue Park, where they moved all the socialist statues after the communist regime fell. It's a total tourist trap, but a good one. We took lots of pictures of Utgoffs doing impressions of soviet statues. (See the above for an example).
  
  
• Goulash. I'm totally adding this to my list of foods I need to learn how to make at home. I expected it to be stewy, but Hungarian goulash is actually more of a spicy soup, with lots of beef and vegetables. All the other Hungarian cuisine I sampled was kinda greasy and unremarkable, but goulash rocks.
  
  
• Going to the Gellert Thermal Baths. Budapest is famous for its thermal spas, and the Gellert is supposed to be the most beautiful. It's a huge old turn of the century style building that looks a bit like a cathedral or an opera hall, where you can swim among pillars, tile mosiacs, and glass ceilings. Apparently the Utgoffs aren't quite good enough for the Gellert, because the staff was totally rude to us. It's hard to enjoy a drink by the pool when you have to confront the angry Hungarian lady guarding the lockers in order to get at your pocket money.
  
  
• Party Island. Maggie and I had heard that some of the spas have night parties where you can dance in your bathing suit in the pools, and we asked a waitress about it. She directed us to "Party Island," which turned out to be a really far away place where high school kids go to do drugs and listen to techno music. I think we must have had a communication problem with the waitres, because there was definitely no swimming. Nevertheless, Maggie and I had fun drinking and hanging out in our bathing suits (under dresses, thankfully). We spent some time chatting with two British physicists, the only other people over 20 at the bar, but we ditched them after they turned out to be the kind of people who don't own TVs.
  
  
• Walking around Budapest, just looking. Wow, is Budapest pretty. The view from Castle Hill at sunset was amazing. I got to see fireworks over the Danube, too. Good stuff.
  

meat pie

meat pie
Originally uploaded by Ffoggy

My good friend Sheldon has been talking about starting up a chain of meat pie restaurants, and I kind of didn't get it until now. It seemed like he was just talking about fancy Hot Pockets, and who's going to invest in a Hot Pocket-based business plan?

Now that I've been to Eastern Europe, though, I totally get it. Apparently, everywhere else in the world has amazing meat pies. They're nothing like Hot Pockets, or those gross chicken pot pies they served in my grade school cafeteria. Maggie's pictured here eating "burek," the Bosnian meat pie, which is kind of a twisted up spiral of sausage and flaky pastry deliciousness. How is it that the US hasn't developed its own national meat pie? As Sheldon writes,

"The love of meat pies... its what brings us together as a global community. It is the lack of meat pies here in the US that is at the heart of our unwillingness to join that global brotherhood."

So sad, and so true!

Sarajevo

We're in Sarajevo now, another beatiful Bosnian city. It's full of pretty red-tile roof houses, more than 200 old mosques, ornate Austro-Hungarian imperial buildings, and skyscrapers. All of this is surrounded by lush green mountains, from which the Bosnian Serbs shelled the city to bits during the war. In Mostar, you could still see the war everywhere -- as you walk down the former front line, most of the buildings you pass are just stone skeletons slowly disappearing behind trees and ferns. Here, most of the damage has been repaired, except for a few shrapnel-pocked walls and a couple of fancy landmarks looking for a generous patron.

Yesterday, we signed up for a tour of the city, which was great. Our tour guide Delila was a 23-year-old econ student from the local university, clad in super-tight jeans, a tiny halter top, and faux Gucci shades. She was kind of like a Bosnian Maggie, except slightly more made up and scantily clad. She invited along a similarly trendy friend named Ellie who was studying to pass the tour guide exam, so we got two giggly guides for the price of one.


My favorite part was seeing the Latin Bridge (shown in the picture, along with our sassy tour guides), on which Archduke Ferdinand was assasinated. There used to be bronze footprints commemorating the spot where Gavrilo Princip ran up to a corner and pulled the trigger, but they got ripped out of the pavement during the seige of Sarajevo because Princip was a Bosnian Serb. I was looking forward to going to the bridge because I thought it'd be an interesting curiousity, but it was more intense than I expected. It's actually kinda spooky standing on the spot where WWI started.

It was also really interesting listening to Delila and Ellie talk about Tito. We saw Tito keychains in Mostar, and several Tito portraits in Sarajevo. We took them to be kitschy relics until we met our tourguides, who were BIG Tito fans. Tito kept Yugoslavia's ethnic and religious groups from fighting, they pointed out (although they didn't mention that his tactics for keepting the peace were pretty nasty). They both said that Bosnia was living proof that socialism works, because the average standard of living was apparently way better in the former Yugoslavia. If econ students who dress in trendy ripoffs of luxury brands thought that, I'm guessing nostalgia for communism runs pretty deep in the Balkans.

Stari Most

We arrived in Mostar today, after a short two-hour car ride from Dubrovnik. (We couldn't get seats on the bus, even though everyone we asked, including a bus station ticket clerk, told us there was no need to buy tickets in advance.)
It's beautiful here, and sort of reminds me of Lord of the Rings, with all the verdant mountains, cobblestone streets, and stone towers. There's an icy-looking aquamarine river running through town, and it's small enough so that you hear the prayers from the mosque no matter where you happen to have wandered. Most exciting of all, the food doesn't suck. I'm feeling pleasantly full for the first time in a week. Woo!