What comes after after Board N? Bordeaux!

Forgive the terrible joke that heads this entry - almost as bad as the French Film one.

In any case, my panicked flight from Nantes led me to a calm, scenic train ride through Western France for about three and a half hours. A French girl about my age was seated next to me, and three Italians were across the aisle. After I'd cooled off and begun to feel like a human being again, I started conversation with the girl next to me, only to find that her English was not very advanced - not surprising, her being from Nantes. So we said what we could. My end of the conversation was restrained to speaking of breakfast items and my geographical origins, those topics within the extent of my extremely limited French. She was likewise quiet after she told me she went to school in Bordeaux and had been raised in Nantes.

Then the Italians began to chime in, with similarly broken but often coherent, short sentences in English. Yet our intercourse began to dribble away, once more, after pleasantries had been exchanged. Then came the question: "You talk another language?"

My initial response was, "No," though soon amended to, "Um...poco Espanol."

Both the eyes of Ms. France and the Italians lit up! It turned out that we all spoke Spanish! Thus we spent a greater portion of the next hour conversing in a language that was non-native to all of us, on a train in France. What an experience. I still have to admit that out of the five of us my Spanish was the worst (Europeans: 1, USA: 0), but our linguistic discovery made the trip far more enjoyable.

Once in Bordeaux I did not feel inclined to find my hostel straight away. The tram I took into town from the train station ran along the river - The Garonne - and I stopped off just before the city center. By the riverbank, buildings reminiscent of Paris rising up behind me to the West, lay a small, rectangular, man-made body of water resembling a reflecting pool. Yet there was nothing but the sky above it to reflect nearby. Children, bounding barefoot, crossed and recrossed it, splashing occasionally, yelling often. Parents lounged nearby on the steps facing the river, or else more attentively planted on the cement edge of the shallow pool. I tell you it was only about two inches deep, so that all looked as miniature saviors, treading on the dark, liquid surface. Here I dipped my feet in, trousers rolled up, and myself looking quite ridiculous - though content.

I read there for about half of an hour, and sought food at a cafe nearby. I recall eating a rather terrible salad (don't order salad in Europe, they must think it's synonymous with 'lettuce') and drinking an overpriced beer, but the one's lack of the flavor and the other's lack of economy did little to unsettle my high spirits.

I came into town and did a bit of walking. The Opera House is lovely, a beautiful example of - I believe - neoclassical architecture, facing an open square faced in by various cafes and the Grand Hotel. I may have gotten a coffee there, and certainly found a grocery to buy a baguette and brie, and soon departed for my hotel.

I say hotel - but be not misled. I had only declined to stay in a hostel because I could not find one close or reasonably priced online; and though the hotel was a bit pricier, it was a single room. I now recall my first journey there fondly, though I do not think I felt it so then. Informed by a local that it was 'a bit outside of town,' I had no doubts when I stepped onto the tram and set off towards my abode. Riding the tram as far out of town as it would go before returning, I transferred on to a bus (the #15, I believe), and rode it for fifteen minutes, roughly. At this point I was growing skeptical of my choice in lodging. I had been traveling for nearly thirty five minutes, and was no looking forward to having to make such a trip each time I went to and from town.

But my time sitting on public transport was a breeze compared to the next leg of my journey. Originally having no idea where my hotel was, exactly, I had shown the bus driver the address and asked him to signal me when my stop came up. Fifteen minutes later he slowed the bus near a traffic circle that led onto a highway, and pointed to a solitary building standing more or less in a field, surrounded by tall grasses, across four lanes of rapid, French motor traffic. Eyes wide but undaunted I thanked him (Merci!) and hopped off his bus.

Then came the gambit. It was like a game of frogger, except with life and death. I made it across rather quickly the first time, but the next night I was not to be so lucky, when the driver forgot my stop, and had to let me off on the highway. In any case, the hotel itself was nice, and marginally cleaner than my hostel in Paris. I had a big bed in a room all to myself, with the added amenities of a private shower and bathroom - bliss to the traveler!

That night I found an extremely reasonably priced restaurant where, for 12 euros, I ate a bucket of mussels (Bordeaux is next to the sea), half a roast duck-breast, a slice of chocolate cake with ice cream, and had a petit glass of wine to boot!

I spent some time that night strolling around the town center, but, understanding that my reaching home was contingent upon buses and trams that stopped running at some point, I returned to my hotel (after waiting thirty minutes for the bus). What did I do there? Having little interest in turning in early, I turned on the television. I must say, there really should be an international law or something that bans the dubbing of John Wayne films into French. That man's voice just cannot be duplicated - especially in Francais. The blunt, often gritty dialogue characteristic of Westerns just doesn't mesh with the tone that language operates in. It felt like what I imagine substituting cream in your coffee with butter would result in. An who has ever heard of butter in your coffee? The French? - apparently. I laid in bed until midnight, eating brie and a baguette with a bottle of bordeaux within arm's reach, and sampled dubbed American westerns, the Simpsons, and crime shows.

The next morning I awoke extra-early to compensate for my run across the highway to my bus and tram. After I grabbed a free yogurt and a glass of orange juice, I soon found myself at the Musee de Beaux Arts in Bordeaux. Of course compared to Paris their collection was minute, but even held up against Nantes' gallery the one in Bordeaux seems lackluster. Albeit most of the building was closed for construction, the gallery itself was merely a series of three or four connected rooms, with dominantly religious painting from earlier periods. I would recommend a visit in any case, but do not get your hopes up. Regardless, it is always refreshing to seek out and view fine art, and I found a few paintings that inspired or moved me in any case. Pictured right is a painting by Theodore Gudin.

Soon I was in the town center once again, waiting in a queue near a large bus for an all-day wine tasting excursion I'd booked ahead of time. I filed on, surrounded mostly by French-speaking 40+ couples, with a few English voices dappling the coach's muddled conversation. In an effective though bizarre move, our guide spoke in both English and French, repeating (ostensibly) what she said in her native tongue in mine. The result was an interesting bilingual affair, and a display of the guide's impressive ability to switch fluidly between languages. Funny enough, however, her English was far from perfect, and she kept referring to the current year as "Oh-Eleven" and last year as "Oh-Ten," etc while speaking about vintages.

We motored east out of Bordeaux across the river, up into a hilly section spattered with country estates and sprawling vineyards for as far as I could make out in the distance. The vines were low to the ground and little more than awkward, shriveled-looking stumps in that time of year, but their mass abundance in neat, interminable rows astounded the eye. No grapes yet - just their promise in the form of young green growths on the gnarly brown bases. We came by a smaller estate identified by a large sign displaying the names of several awards it had won, and apparently it was the Pomerol vineyard, which is one of the best kinds of bordeaux. Our destination, however, was Saint Emilion.

At the vineyard we were led around the grounds (relatively small, we were told) and through the tank house, where the wine is prepared and begins its journey to the bottle. After getting squashed about, the juice, grape skins and all, is left to sot for a period of time, until all the skins are removed and an agent is added to begin the fermentation process. After this the wine of casked and sent into a building about twenty feet away, where we were able to sample glasses of some of the finest wines the estate has to offer. If I had ordered these wines at a restaurant, the bill would have been appalling, but for just thirty euros I got a tour, a tasting, and a free bus ride through the country.

The wine was, of course, exquisite and, though my palate usually favors white wines, I have to say that I am sold on bordeaux after learning about it and tasting such fine vintages. During the tasting I met two girls on holiday that were studying at Oxford - both Americans. Amazingly enough, over a month later (just last week) I was in Oxford myself, and who do I meet but one of the girls! One day I meet her in France, sipping vino, and a few weeks later we are discussing the UK's university system in England. It's not like Oxford's campus is very central either, with two dozen different colleges she could have been walking around.

After the estate tasting we hopped back on our bus to get spirited up the road to the actual town of St. Emilion. The entire town is, essentially, devoted to the sale of wine locally and internationally, with a long, involved religio-political history. The current state of the town belies a far grander past, now evinced only in ruins and winding, cobbled streets. I wandered at my leisure for a while, sampling - gratis - wines from half a dozen or so shops, surrounded peacefully by the ancient walls of a crumbling village. Set on the top of a large hill, the town looks down upon leagues of vine-brimming estates, multitudinous and mostly family-owned and operated. The feeling of being there mocks our language's poor devices, and may be understood only in imagination, or perhaps by metaphor that I will spare the effort to produce. In short, it was a moment I am unlikely to part with in memory.

Thus brimming with some of the finest red wine in Southwestern France I headed to...church! Not for devotion, however, but rather - characteristically - for tourism. St. Emilion (named for a priest who achieved sainthood upon his death) is home to one of the world's most unique houses of God. Not only is it quite old, but, when it was functioning, its congregation had to progress underground in order to worship. The 'underground church' looks like little more than a relatively tall steeple pegged into the earth if you walk straight up to it, yet the steeple itself actually sits on top of a massive, vaulted-ceilling church carved into the underground hundreds of years earlier. It's entered through the side, lower down the hill. The carved walls feature devotional tableaus and symbols, and chamber leads to chamber until the church opens up into a massive, three-aisle cathedral composed totally of continuous, solid rock. Now lit artificially, it was no stretch of the imagination to conceive of its walls cast with shadows from torches flickering, the low tones of a priest's Latin bounding off the imposing walls.

After St. Emilion I returned to Bordeaux, lamenting that I could not purchase any delectable vintages to take along with me, as I flew the next day to Milan, and had only a carry-on with me, thus barring any chance for my transporting 750ml of liquid across any airspace. After dinner and a jaunt about town, I turned in, to arise early the next day to leave for Italia.

I arrived perfectly on time to the airport after my daily highway crossing, bus, and tram - this time with a train thrown in - and with about an hour to wait until boarding I stoked up some chatter with a fellow traveler in the terminal. Her name was Mai Wu, and she studies economics in Bordeaux, though a native of Canton region of China. As with the French girl and Italians on my train ride from Nantes, my lingual skills met resistance once more, as Mai spoke only Cantonese and French. She knew enough English to convey basic things to me, but much of her understanding of English remained filtered through her French, turning 'patriotism' into 'pah-trih-ou-tis-muh,' and so on.

Amazingly enough, I was able to communicate with her with relative ease, armed with a pad, pencil, and a gradually expanding comprehension of basic French, aided by my study of Latin and 'root' words. By the time we were landing on Italian soil, I had, somehow, explained to her the history of Western Religion from Judaism through the Reformation, the American political party system, and what Walmart was. Likewise, she had explained to me Confucianism and most of her life story - and we hardly spoke a word of each others' language. The writing and drawing came in particularly handy.

In any case, such was my time in Bordeaux. Each place I visited in France felt distinctly different, from the antiquated cosmopolitan atmosphere of Paris to the vineyard-ringed streets of Bordeaux, but I have to say that - even though I haven't written about Italia yet - out of all the countries I've visited in Europe, France comes in second only to Scotland, which shall, undoubtedly, remain close to my heart long into the future.

Onward, to Nantes!

After London and Paris, the 'city' of Nantes was a refreshing withdrawal from the bustle of metropolitan life.

The Gare du Nantes was the simplest and most straightforward train station I had yet to deal with, and my impression of this one building did well to preface my experience of the city itself. No tube, no metro - just a humble tram system, ambling past sloping, cobblestone streets lined by columnar cypresses, crossed by their parallel shadows swaying in the breeze. After leaving the station, I crossed a lazy street dappled with growing mid-afternoon shadows to a cafe (called The Globe, or something like it) where I was, to much amazement, able to purchase a filling lunch of meat, bread, potato, ale, and coffee, all for around 13 euro - a meal whose Parisian counterpart may have cost over 20.

The type of meat that I consumed at this cafe shall forever, for better or worse, remain mystery. However, because of its rare cooking, unique texture, and mysterious origin, I am tempted to call it horseflesh! Cheval! I had already been told of the French disposition for consuming horse meat, and my knowledge of such a practice had in no way averred me from the prospect of meeting such a dish at the table. As the closest appellation for my meal that I could conjure into English from my French menu was something approaching 'meat of the day,' I contented myself with allowing that, very likely, horse was the day's fare.

My brief respite complete, and head a bit fuzzy from ale and caffeine, I muddled through my thoroughly-packed rucksack for directions to the residence of Ms. Celeste Tarbox, the likes of which I had scribbled down - nearly as an afterthought - the night before I made my frantic sprint to the Edinburgh airport. They turned out to be, just about, the best directions I had been given - and, retrospectively, was to get - during my entire trip. On to one tram and off for another, a five-minute stroll through the quiet, two-storeyed outskirts of Nantes, and a left turn down, if I recall, Rue Longchamp, and I was before a largish creme building, with the knowledge that Ms. Tarbox would be arriving any minute home from her employ.

My visit with Celeste was half-providence and half-imposition, though the latter half in the most well-meaning spirit. She is a Franklin and Marshall graduate of 2010, now living abroad in Nantes as an ESL assistant teacher at a local school through a program set up by the French government. Originally having arranged my two-night stay in Nantes at the suggestion of my friend Katie Cooper, who studied there last year, I was delighted when Celeste read on facebook that I would be in her area and told me she lived there. Already at a complete loss as to what I wanted particularly to do in Nantes, following, as it were, that providential wind which whisks travelers to perils and wonder alike, I inquired whether or not she would mind letting me occupy a small area of her floor for two nights, enough to sustain the restful hours of a 5' 9", 130 lbs., 21 year old young traveler.

She happily consented, and even extended to me the loan of an inflatable mattress.

Not knowing Celeste particularly well beforehand - or at all, really, our only connection being that we may have been present once or twice together at parties between my fraternity and her sorority - we spent the evening in conversation over a little dinner in her flat, after which I retired to my mattress. If nothing else of enrichment may be said for my various European travels, I assert that the friendships I made and re-made over my weeks absent from Edinburgh rank just for me as highly as my awe at scanning Paris' rooftops from the Eiffel Tower's summit or standing before the David in Florence.

The next day I spent in comparative leisure from the days of rushing around England and France's capitals. After a visit to the post office and pharmacy - my 100ml travel shampoo had run out - I settled at a cafe near the convergence of three small streets to sip on a beer and read in the sun. I remained in this way for much of the day, extending my residence at the cafe's table with strategically-timed orders of cafe latte and another beer. A older man with an accordion, I recall, came by to court the lunchers and leisurely for the sweeter part of an hour, and though I did not pass him a coin for his troubles, I reconciled myself with my lack of charity through the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, who writes thus of the artist:

"What shall he have enjoyed more fully than a morning of successful work? Suppose it be ill paid: the wonder it should be paid at all."

I had acquired in Cologne, earlier the previous week, a keen appreciation for the pleasure-seeker's necessity to judge the movement of the sun, and how the surrounding structures would cast their shadows resultingly; for there is nothing ruder that spoils a young lounger's day than to plant himself with a book and baguette at a sunny cafe, only to have the sun shift so that all is thrown into shadow, and have the metal table upon which he rests, and the cobblestones upon which he places his feet, turn cool and hard, and consciously so, that the idea of their discomfort impedes the pleasures of reading and drink. Such a lack of judgment in myself effected my move from one table to another, and then to another cafe overall, so that I had drifted down the cobbled lane by the time that Celeste came to meet me after work.

She had some fruit-infused, sparkling wine (quite popular in France), and I finished my beer, and soon we parted ways, that I might meander about the town. Meander I did, and toured the local castle (chateau) and surrounding shops and alleys. At an antiques store, I bought, for 50 cents euro, a 1 franc coin, which, taking the conversation rate that would apply today between those currencies, probably accounted for that old Frenchman's most lucrative sale in history! He may as well have sold me a bottle cap for a dollar. In any case, I count the franc as an interesting acquisition, and well worth the purchase, especially for the tidy sum of 50 cents.

From the chateau, quite close to the town hall square, where I'd lounged earlier, I continued up a street flanked on one side by the castle's moat, and a row of shops on the other. With no destination in mind, I faced in the finest direction that the leisurely traveler may choose: any, and was soon on a main road, the one flanked by cypress. Eventually finding myself at the Nantes Musee de Beaux Arts, I took a stroll around inside, delighted to find many works and artists with which I was familiar, and others I had previously been ignorant of which caught my fancy, such as this painting by Chabas.

Though apparently the sixth largest city in France at around 250,000 residents (Phoenix is America's with about 1,400,000), I reminded myself that comparisons to America were needless, as both my land and that of France's defy evaluation through quantitative means. For instance, though France produces nearly twice as much wine annually, some French wines must certainly taste worse than some American vintages. So with inhabitants, as many French men and women I met had far more character than many Americans I'd met at home.

Rather I measured the city on its own terms, as I feel is usually healthiest approach in evaluating anything, at least initially.

A slower city, a quieter one, too, yet a city of endearing quaintness, the kind often wished for by the inhabitants of more prosperous, more central, more relevant cities in the world. To walk by the river Loire, to navigate without direction the intertwining streets leading easily back to where you began, to take in the subtle contentedness lying static near the cafes and brasseries - all a pleasure, and all unique to Nantes. In other aspects I am sure it is less pleasant. I merely had the advantage of being the traveler who is pleased by pleasure alone, and does not seek out worry or disadvantage with what surrounds him. To him, all is bliss, or he is poorly constructed.

That night Celeste and I abandoned all thoughts of another night in and struck out for a creperie. The crepes I had tried before had all been street fare, vended to passersby from street stalls and mobile carts, made hastily in the Parisian afternoon by careless hands that worked by habit, and closed off minds which dwelt not with the body's dismal labor. Rather this restaurant was a place of domestic charm, fitted with homely decoration according to the French style. For dinner I had a thick crepe mixed with crisp cheese, topped by an egg and strips of thin ham. Delightful is all I shall call it, for who can do justice in words to pleasures divined by pallet alone? Dessert defied description likewise: a sweeter crepe toped with fresh vanilla ice cream drizzled in melted home-made caramel, garnished, perhaps, with a strawberry.

Both courses demanded and done with, we finished off the last of our pichet of dry cider and sought a drink across the street, after which we strolled home through the calm but vibrant night, full of busy Nantes-peoples on their way to and from houses of drink and song.

So concluded my stay in Nantes - simple, indeed, yet full of pleasure that may not properly find communication. The same dumbness of language may visit a vacationer to the Rockies as simply as a holiday-seeker in the French countryside when called on to produce a tale of their travels. The moments of travel as sweet joy to the traveler, the joy itself meted out partly in recitation, and the rest, one could say, is silence.

Of Celeste I may only sing praise. She was gracious to let me stay with her, and the most pleasant of surprises where concerns finding a friend. Our talks were refreshing, our dinner joyful, and it was nice enough to simply have a semi-familiar face to be around in a strange country, among foreign landscapes.

The last event of any note to take place for me in Nantes was my morning of departure. It being a Saturday morning, I rose softly from my air mattress so as not to wake Celeste on her morning intended for rest from a busy week, and moved into the other room to pack my things up. After some dabbling on facebook and email, I left Celeste's with roughly thirty minutes to get to the humble Gare du Nantes. With the aid of the able tram system, and a route that I had already picked out, I stepped on to the cab with little worry on my mind. Yet calamity struck when the car stopped in the center of town - for a street market had set up there with dozens of stalls, and straight across the tram line! Thus impeded, the content tram began its journey back the way it and I had come, leaving me a confounded straggler.

By backpack was not light, I was wearing khakis and a button-down, and beneath the sun of the gently warming day I had no small amount of difficulty barreling past grocers and shoe salesmen in the crowded market of Nantes as I scrambled to direct myself towards the train station. At last I discovered from afar an unimpeded tram line, yet when I boarded its car, gasping "Gare du Nantes? Oui? Gare du Nantes?" into the faces of its bemused and partially alarmed passengers, I received only the unfortunate reply of, "O...ehh...serry, but ozzer way." Ozzer way! Other way! Now I was four hundred yards back from where I had begun, and had to run now to follow the track to the station on foot, as my train left in eleven minutes, and the next tram in its direction was eight minutes away.

So I ran - and how swiftly and clumsily I ran shall never be known to man. I hardly recall the fleeting minutes of mad scrambling towards the station, hands full with my jacket and a poster tube, legs burning, shirt clinging to my chest. All I recall is a driving thought, only half-materially, more of an emotion than anything else. It is, likely, what rowers or other endurance athletes feel during their various performances, and translate roughly to: "Yo, don't stop going, because stopping now will only make all the way you've come worthless, and all the way you have to go more painful." So I didn't stop, and I ran, and ran and ran - onward until I nearly collapsed in front of my train, which had arrived the moment I set foot on the platform, and which I certainly would have missed had I stopped running for a moment.

Tired temporarily, I took my seat next to a quiet French girl about my age, and readied for a pleasant three hour train ride through the countryside to Bordeaux, content in my recent show of willpower, excited for the continuation of my travels.

Lastly, I have to say that - forgive, but I can't help myself - my time in France really gave me an appetite for 'French film.' Look below:

Springtime in Paris

Paris! Where Sydney Carton hung and Doctor Manette made shoes!

My train put me into Gare du Nord (North Station) around 2pm, Paris time. Looking out my window after passing through the Channel Tunnel, I noticed a subtle but immediate difference in the French countryside from that of the English - for one thing, no sheep. Fewer stone walls, also, and far more of those orange ceramic-tile roofs.

After paying a ridiculous cab fare a week earlier in Cologne to find my hostel - which turned out to be a few blocks away from the station - I got a (rather poor) map from the Gare du Nord info desk and embarked on foot to find my hostel. After realizing that the building was on Rochechouart (pronounced, vaguely, 'Roo-she-shwa') Boulevard and notStreet, I stowed my things in my room on the sixth and top floor and asked the concierge how to get to the Tour Eiffel. Along my way to the metro I stopped into a store and bought a wedge of brie and a baguette - I kid you not: mind blowing. Never did my teeth sink more sweetly into any kind of fermented dairy product before this moment. I realized, perhaps for the first time, that there are certain pleasures one derives in life that may never again be attained, and that the quest for their re-attainment is often fruitless. Much brie have a tasted since then, but never so sublimely encountered than in that fleeting moment on a crowded metro car in central Paris.

If traveling from Edinburgh to London had been as leaving a village for a city, then my travels from London to Paris were as from a beehive to the meadow. What I mean, exactly, is that whereas both the English and French capitals are most certainly metropolises of the highest degree and station, Paris is a rolling dream, and London a crowded reality. No stretch on earth have I felt to be more blissful and surreal than the stretch from the Louvre's iconic glass pyramid, tall and uniform museum buildings flanking its either side, down to Tuileries gardens with its blooming trees and blushing flowers, past the Place de la Concorde, where the unfortunate King Louis XVI lost his head, and finally along the Champs de Elysees to the massive Arc de Triomphe, as astonishing in height, construction, and presentation as any of its southern, Italo-Roman cousins. And all in symmetry! All in uniformity such as may impress upon a mind the glowing thought: a plan was had here, in Paris, once! A plan for order and beauty - and it liveth still!

Not so with London, not so with Edinburgh - not so even with the more modern New York City: Paris, in my experience, has a plan; one on a grand scale, made of Mansard Roofs and bustling public squares, wide boulevards and open, flowing airs.

After taking the metro to the Bir-Hakim stop, I got off and bought a nutella crepe on my way to the Eiffel Tower. I wasn't sure what to expect where the Tower was concerned, but I had high expectations for the crepe, which were met and possibly exceeded. The Tower itself sprung upon me unexpectedly, much as the shocking sprawl of Edinburgh's cityscape did in January as I walked up Arthur's Seat. Walking through a strange city, taking in the language and all foreign stimuli that a new place will provide one with, it is easy to ignore even impressive structures unconsciously - and such was my experience with the Tour Eiffel. Savoring my crepe (pron. 'crep,' not 'craype,' as we Americans are wont to say), the reality of the massive monument burst upon me as floodgates released after a period of heavy rain.

There it stood - a tower that had been a myth all my life, as Big Ben had been - as had Europe. Yet it was real, no longer a gauzy shadow recalled from history books and taken on trust for existing, but existing before my eyes: real, palpable, and massive.

Though it sound strange to say so, I thought often of Walter Pater - Victorian essayist and art critic - during my travels, especially at moments like these. He wrote "of our experience and its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate attempt to see and touch," and how life is, at bottom, an interval of time where "our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations [aka heartbeats, but also experiences] as possible," which rang exceptionally true to me as I traveled throughout the Western World.

Below the tower and along the street leading up to it were manifestations of our overpopulated and increasingly consumerist world - wayward immigrants offering thoughtless tourists thousands of worthless trinkets, their dull grins rebounding helplessly off your semi-interested glances. Hundreds of them, lined up; some standing, some seated; all the same, all full of hope, and all oozing with desperation - and all disappointed with nearly every empty-handed passerby. It is a difficult thing to write about, but the ubiquity of struggling emigres attempting to support themselves by hawking meaningless souvenirs impressed me greatly throughout my tour of the Continent. A nuisance, surely: their presence cannot but detract from the aesthetic pleasure of gazing upon great monuments; yet pitiful, too, and deserving of great pity - for who can wish for such a life, and who can offer a helpful solution to its reality?

I strolled beneath the Tower and the large lawn in front of it for about an hour; met an American family on holiday (their eldest, a junior in high school, is seriously considering Franklin and Marshall!) and then wandered across to the Ecole Militaire (Military Academy). My hunger building (nutella crepes are, sadly, not very filling) I ventured back to the boulevard of my hostel, and, it having been circa 9pm, had to settle for a cheap sandwich out of a corner store. No fancy Parisian dining for me.

The next morning was early to rise and off to the Louvre!

Words cannot properly form a lucid conception of what the Louvre offers. It is a museum that was once a castle - a work of art and a piece of history in itself; it is the repository for a vast amount of the aesthetic value of the Western World; it is a maze; it is a wonder. To wander the Louvre at your leisure - I did, for six and a half bewildering hours, on my own - is what Lysander and Hermia must have felt, wandering through Shakespeare's forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is, nearly too much art to appreciate.

Having heard horror stories from friends and acquaintances about the atrocities committed by rude tourists in their attempts to snap a photo of the Mona Lisa, I made a B-Line for it at once. I got to the museum as soon as it opened (9am), and was before Da Vinci's 'masterpiece' by 9:35am, after paying admission and buying the audioguide (something I absolutely recommend to anyone willing to tackle the massive museum). Truthfully - and I believe this is common among those who have seen the painting - I was not overly impressed, certainly not as impressed as I was by other works. The obvious and popular reasons for feeling let down are the fact that it is, in reality, quite small (30in x 21in), protected behind a glass casing, and set off from the crowd by a rope, preventing anyone who has shouldered their way through the throning mass from actually appreciating it, since the closest one may get is about two yards away.

A more personal, and likely less-widespread, reason for feeling some disappointment at seeing the painting was the attitude that 99% of all other spectators brought to seeing the portrait. Stand around any other hall in the Louvre and you may happen to glimpse onlookers with their heads nodded contemplatively to one side, hands interlocked behind their backs, a look of stoic concentration glazing their placid faces. Not so in front of Mona.

Most spectators, completely uninvested in appreciating the painting in any way, merely elbow and grunt their way through the crowd in order to snap a photo so shoddily taken that it would not earn a junior in high school a D in photography class, and swiftly about-face, again to grunt and push their way through the mindless horde.

Being (how, I know not, as I'm barely 5' 9") taller than most of the people around me, and the time quite early for the museum, I was able to gain access to the front of the horde easily. Staying there was not so simple, as real estate up there is at an ever-shifting yet ever-lofty premium. I tried to look at the portrait (having recently taken and art history class I was hoping to be able to pick up something interesting about the artwork), but, truth be told, the atmosphere is so repellent to contemplation or civility that I gave in to the mass mindset, snapped a picture (a rather, good one, actually), and escaped to quieter corners.

The rest of the day was amazing, and to list all the works of art I saw there would be to quadruple the length of this already burgeoning entry. Instead, my top three have to be:

1) David's 'Oath of the Horatii'

2) Friedrich's 'Seashore by Moonlight'

3) The Aphrodite di Milos (Venus de Milo)

The Oath the Horatii was interesting to see because I studied it in high school, and was yet another ghost of academia come to life before me, made material from out of the ether of schoolbooks. As you may know from reading my blog, Caspar David Friedrich is my favorite painter overall, and his beautiful little moonlit seascape struck me especially. A German painter, it was hard to find many of his works on display in France and Italy, but the Louvre had two (this one and another, the Tree of Crows). The Aphrodite di Milos struck me as exceptionally tragic. Lauded as beautiful, grand, and, overall a (quotations intentional) 'masterpiece,' the statue seemed stripped and almost terrifying in my opinion. Why?

Imagine a Greek island lost amidst the lapping waves of the Aegean Sea, its men modest fishermen and farmers, women proud housewives and spinners. Green swathes cover o'er the the slightly mountainous landscape of the tiny isle, spotted with trees and groves of grapes vines and rich citrus. Alone, nearly forgotten, there lies the ruin of an ancient temple - moss devouring the dinted marble faces of forgotten gods and once-championed heroes of old. By the crumbling remains of the courtyard a statue stands, solitary, the azure sky behind it mingling invitingly with the blue-green seaside below. Armless yet lovely, broken by time yet lofted high by aesthetic virtue, it stares out, as it has for a millennium, at a similarly silent and aging landscape.

Yet strip away the island, the groves of citrus, the surf and sky, fellow ruins, statues, mosses and ancient marble plinth; replace them with a cave of 19th century construction, a new dais to stand upon, foreign and cold to marble feet once accustomed to the warmth of the loving Grecian sun; photograph the beauty the caves now contains, plaster it on signboards, bill posts, postcards, stamps, mugs and erasers, t-shirts, and tea-towels: what remains? A tragedy more profound than Macbeth's slaying of Duncan or Keats' comprehension of Death's inevitability. There you behold a foreigner in stone, trapped eternally to bear the gaze of a thousand - ten thousand, ten million! - gaping, mostly unappreciative spectators, all of whom have merely flocked to your court of worship for the sheer point of being able to have said that they had 'seen you.'

She is, certainly, beautiful. Yet, as with most beauty in art, she rings of tragedy that - I'm certain - only one in a thousand lookers-on identify.

After the Louvre I took my lovely stroll down to the Arc de Triomphe to meet Anna Katia, my friend from F&M studying in Paris, and we had a delightful afternoon. Together we sipped lemonade (which you have to ask for as 'citron' or 'limon presse,' or they assume you mean Sprite) and munched on baguettes stuffed with cheese, jambon, and greens amidst the beauty of the city. We later walked up to Montmartre and saw the Sacre Cour church, with its wonderful view of the city.

The next day I visited the Musee Rodin, where iconic sculptures such as 'The Thinker' and 'The Gateway to Dante's Hell' reside, placed around a lovely old estate which Rodin once lived in himself. The Thinker is wonderful up close, and I enjoyed many of the other statues scattered unassumingly around the garden estate. It was a lovely day outside, as well, which increased the joy of being outside amidst such fine works of art!

I spent the afternoon outside the Notre Dame Cathedral (which I did not go up, the line looking interminable) and wandering through the city. The cathedral was - perhaps I have become uber-jaded from having seen such wonders as The Dom in Koln and Westminster Abbey - less grand and imposing than I expected it to be. Still, it was beautiful in its own right, and what gargoyles I could make out from the ground below happily evoked memories of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (and my father's impression of the 1939 film, with Charles Laughton). The architecture there is amazing, and the cathedral itself seems to be well maintained and conserved. Unique to the Notre Dame, I found, were its beautifully large, circular glass windows fixed into either transept (the shorter arms of the cross shape of most cathedrals/abbeys - a word I picked up along my way).

That night, not wishing to go to bed, I returned to the Tour Eiffel by metro and sat on the lawn with a fresh baguette, a fresh wedge of brie, and a fresh bottle of quasi-local French wine. I opened the wine, halved the baguette, and sliced up the cheese for what I am tempted to say was my most serene one and a half in all of France. The tower itself lights up at night, and every hour on the hour lights up with sparkling flashes for a few minutes in a dazzling display. Sitting where I was, I met an older Frenchman who had also come to enjoy the sights. He was a businessman who worked for an investing company with clients in Dubai, and told me (in modest English) that even though the world-famous Khalifa Tower there is far taller than the Tour Eiffel, all it looks out upon it boundless desert, whereas the Parisian icon has the 'best city in our world' to stand amidst.

The next day I met up with Erin Feeney - recent F&M alumna and now English Language teacher in the outskirts of Paris. We traveled by train to Versailles and spent a few hours traipsing through the private apartments and lush gardens of France's extinct monarchy. The gardens were lovely, and still manicured to symmetrical perfection. I chose a lucky time to take my tour of Europe, as it was about the time that most plants and trees began to come into bloom. The apartments were nice, as well, but became redundantly impressive as time went on: "O, another gilt-enameled, tapestry-rich, velvet-stuffed, portrait-hung royal suite...just as lovely and magnificent as...the last ten!"

After Versailles we travelled back to the Tour Eiffel, but this time I went all the way up to the top, with Erin. It was a bit rainy, so the pictures did not come out exceptionally well, yet all was plain to the seeing eye, and the experience remains with me in lucid memory.

The next day I boarded a leisurely train to the countryside, where my story shall resume.

Overall, of Paris I shall say this: Beauty in this world is truly in the eye of the beholder, yet I doubt that many eyes land upon the long, garden-flanked boulevards and stately buildings of Paris without beholding some beauty of one kind or another. It is a city of infinite variety, placed neatly between the past and present with what is has to offer architecturally and picturesquely, with enough art to overwhelm a Ph.D. from Oxford and scenery enough to thrill even the most dimly enthused tourist to towering heights of jubilation.

Thus I ventured away from this capital of France after having visited the capitals of Scotland and England, now heading towards a small, but serene, town called Nantes, where my journey would continue.

Leaving and London

What home has the traveler? And what becomes home upon his return?

Happily, after traveling from roughly March 16th - April 17th (counting Cologne, Germany), I am back in Edinburgh, and here to stay - for the most part. How I am to relate my travels to you all, I scarcely know. I plan to churn out entries at whatever rate I may, and hope that you (whoever you are) will keep up at your own pace. Tales I have to tell that would fill up tomes vast and voluminous, yet I shall tell all, or try to.

I shall begin at the beginning. Thursday, April 24th, 11pm: I had pre-purchased my bus ticket on a direct line to the airport; packed my solitary, slightly bulging backpack full of clothing, electronics, travel passes, hotels reservations, and addresses; set my alarm for 4:30am. Flight to London-Stansted Airport departing 7:05am from Edinburgh. All ready, yet a storm was brewing even then.

My kickboxing friends (pictured below) had concocted a plan for a night out, starting at a flat and progressing to a club, and since I would not be around for the coming weeks, hoped I would attend. My plan? - join in the festivities, have a drink or two, and come back to my flat around 1am, so that I could take a wee nap until 4:30 to depart for the airport. Sounds cheery to me. However, anyone with a taste for the dramatic will have already guessed that not all went according to plan (a closely thought-out plan, at that).

Things began to derail upon my returning to my flat at 3:30am. That certainly through a wrench into things, but nothing to fret over, of course. My nap, simply, would be shorter, and I would have all the more reason to sleep on the plane. If only. After a bite from the fridge and a quick check of facebook, my next conscious moment occurs at 6am, a moment of bewildered fear, confusion, and various sudden movements. First - out of the bed; second - to the cell-phone (Ah! It is, indeed, 6am!); third - to google, and from there a list of taxi services. Within a minute I had arranged swift transport from 8a Darroch Court over to Edinburgh Airport, followed by a moment of calm at the center of the storm, for all was waiting at that point: waiting for the taxi, for the ride to end, for security to check me through - then it would be a race to the gate.

Greater feats have been accomplished in the history of Man: we've sent people to Space, erected tall monuments, delved winding canals, and all within a brief three-thousand year span of existence. Surely I could make it to my gate within an hour? Thus is the tale: Cab arrives 6:25am, I leap out frantically twenty-two minutes later at the airport (6:47am), it's not a big place - I'm through security by 6:54am; I fear that the gate may have closed, even though the plane may not have left. Running. Panting. Rage, despair, wonder, and contingencies flash through my wondering consciousness.

The Departures Board: Flight EZY228 Edinburgh to London-Stansted, gate 8, delayed 2hrs.

DELAYED. Two hours. Relief and weariness set in simultaneously. I collapse in a chair at my gate and await departure.

* * *

Despite the havoc involved with getting there, London was a dream! I met my friend Bridget from F&M at Stansted, and together we embarked for London to meet up Gardner, another fummer, studying drama in the city. Bridge and I decided to walk from Liverpool station to his flat near Marble Arch, looking forward to getting a better feel for the city than we would have taking the tube (subway). We marched for two hours, taking our time, stopping for a meat pie, multiple photo-ops, and a quick look about St. Paul's Cathedral (which looks like the US Capitol Building). Surreality set in when my eye caught a sign for Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn near Holborn Hill. For my legal-savvy readers, you may already know that this quarter of London holds (or held, at least), many of the courts and legal offices in England's capitol. Why so surreal, then? Well, I only recognized the names because they feature significantly in Charles Dickens' Bleak House, a novel of nearly one-thousand pages that I read last year (and loved). How strange! To be among the streets and buildings I had read of in Dickens' world! And now seen in mine!

Moments like this occupied much of my time abroad over the past month: in Paris in St. Antoine, where Dickens writes of a highly pivotal wine shop in A Tale of Two Cities; in the Venice of Shakespeare's merchant; in the heavenly Florence, where Dante wrote his Inferno.

My initial impressions of London were tempered by my exposure to it immediately after having been in Edinburgh. Though it is not to Edinburgh's discredit - I much prefer the airy Heart of Midlothian to Foggy Londontown - it felt like going from a village to metropolis. After all, London is a metropolis - I had just never known the extent to which it was. Overall, I would say it felt more like New York City than any other place I have been on my travels. Whereas I struggle to picture even one 'skyscraper,' or something close to it, in Edinburgh, London had many tall, modern, glass-faced structures.

Our first move was to hop on the tube and see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Big Ben was, in my opinion, not as big as I had imagined. It's a tall, for certain, but less imposing than I had imagined. The tower is connected to the parliament building along the south side of the River Thames (pron. Tems) and Westminster Bridge (where Wordsworth got the inspiration for his poem of the same name) juts out across the water. The tower sits grandly among its surroundings, gold paint at its top, the clock faces pointing out boldly in all directions.

Westminster Abbey was austere as well. Compared to the Dom of Cologne, I was not necessarily blown away. It's like trying to appreciate hills after having seen the Rockies. In any case, the abbey itself is very large, with impressive carving and sculpture all around the outside - your standard Mary and Child, Saints, Angels, &c &c. Due to a mass at the time of my first visit, I did not go inside until the next day, but, for the sake of narrative, I'll step outside my chronological account to tell of the abbey's innards.

Imagine a box - large; stone; vaulted lid. Imagine an hourglass, and each grain of sand a year. With every falling grain of sand, things begin to fill the box: coffin-shaped things. A lady-chapel is added on to the box; some more flying buttresses; then a clock is fitted into one of the box's towers. More coffins. Some plaques, name plates, &c. A few more grains and suddenly a great many statues have sprouted up, crowding the box's corners, occupying its niches. Tiny priests give tiny sermons to tiny crowds inside the box. Slightly larger crowds, totally uninterested in hearing sermons, circumnavigate the box's insides. Tiny faces gawk. Children and men alike look on at the time-accrued monuments, half-proud of the coffins and half-ignorant of their inhabitants. The sand runs more slowly - the present day approaches.

Why a box? Frankly, it's just how it struck me. A large chamber, filled up with half the history of England: Henry V (who uttered, with Shakespeare's help, the famous lines: 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'), Elizabeth I, Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, Richard II, &c, as well as half of the authors on my syllabi for the last three years: Chaucer, Dickens, Hardy, Ruyard Kipling, Spenser, Tennyson, &c. There were many more memorials scattered around the 'poet's corner,' as well - Shakespeare, Keats (who was destined to reoccur in my travels), Shelley, Eliot, Austen, Arnold, and more. Truly astounding to be amidst so much 'history,' though it be, as it often is, dead history. In the presence of such greatness, I felt what, just maybe, Hamlet was meant to have felt when he sees the gravedigger toss poor Yorick's skull up out of its grave. 'Alas, poor Yorick...a fellow of infinite jest...that skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once!' So felt I, my feet on the earth where half the cannon of English Literature lies buried (Those hands had fingers once, and could write!).

To return to a chronological account of things, after Westminster we walked along the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. Here I learned something! Perhaps you, fair reader, may have been aware of this fact - I was not: London Bridge is simply a bridge. Nothing fancy, extravagant, or otherwise iconic about it. I had, however, always thought that London Bridge was in fact the water-crossing called Tower Bridge, pictured to the side, which I am sure you all will recognize. Apparently the bridge of London's name simply marks the spot where, centuries earlier, the Romans first spanned the Thames. The iconic Tower Bridge, however, featured in many films and television shows (the Harry Potter advertisements all over Europe has it in the background), is farther down, leading from the southern bank of the Thames roughly to where the Tower of London sits.

As the sun was setting we walked around the streets on the southern side of the river, asked these two girls for directions who had no idea how to get around, despite the fact that we had just seen them exit a secondary school in uniform and were walking home, and finally settled down to eat dinner. That night Bridge and I got to meet Gardner's friends, and we all went out to the scariest night club - if you can call it that - I've ever been to. Animalistic madness prevailed. Smoke filled the air of its cavernous, multi-level interior. Meaningless drum and bass eroded upon any rational thought - the only faculty that sustains humanity and separates Man from Beast. Beast prevailed in this den of horrors. Stevenson comes close to describing the scene in The Master of Ballantrae accounting a pirates' revel: 'On the deck the rest were got to a pitch of revelry quite beyond the bounds of what is human; so that no reasonable name can describe the sounds they were now making. I have heard many a drunken bout in my time...but never anything the least like this.' Men - shirtless, hair raised up to pin-point with gel, fists bludgeoning the wispy, neon-laser air around them - eyes dull, yet charged with anger and heat; women like Furies, hair flashing as heads whip wildly to mad music - bodies seemingly electrified.

Horrified, disgusted, repelled - we fled! Thanks for taking my ten pound cover charge, though! The name of the club: Fabric. Perhaps the signifier least corresponding to its signified that I have ever run across. No fabric was involved. It was like walking into a store called The Flower Pot and finding out it only sells car insurance, except far more frightening.

The next day Bridge and I embarked sans-Gardner to see the town. Vaguely, we wanted to see Notting Hill, Hyde Park, Wimpole Street (explained below), the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and to get high tea. We succeeded, more or less.

Hyde Park was simply a large, open, green area, so we took a picture in it and proceeded on to Notting Hill. Sadly, however, the tube wasn't running in that direction that day, and the bus ride was six pounds return, which we deemed a bit pricey to see a hill. With high hopes, and the day before us, we moved on to find Wimpole Street. This destination is, perhaps, one of the most obscure in London, and rarely ever figures into most sightseers' plans - yet I am not every sightseer. 27a Wimpole Street, I recalled, was the address of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady. How could I go to London without paying a visit? Of course the house, like the character, is fictional, yet the street exists, and walk along it I did.

To back up a bit: before we even got to Wimpole street, we happened upon a museum that turned out to be one of my favorites on the trip! Called the Wallace Collection, located just off of Oxford Street and contained in a grand Victorian mansion, the museum is reallyjust a great series of rooms filled with an immense amount of odd bits of collectible, fine art, armor, weaponry, furniture, and curiosity from around the world. I was particularly delighted to find that one of my favorite paintings - Fragonard's 'The Swing' - was in residence there, and felt rather moved by an ancient saber from Persia, one of many swords, daggers, lances and so on displayed at the museum - moved so much in fact, that I wrote a poem about it. After all, just imagine the history of the saber: once an article of status and willpower - a weapon: cruel, sharp, serpentine - and now suffocating behind a pane of glass! What blood it must have tasted on those far off desert battlefields. What anger once moved its weight towards screaming foes! Museums can certainly be a bore sometimes, but if you are willing to give a little life and consideration to what you're looking at, it can totally change your experience there.

Among its curiosities, I also found a renowned painting by Rubens, which is said to have been so well done that it inspired an entire genre of paintings called 'rainbow landscapes,' not surprisingly comprised of sprawling landscapes overspanned by a rainbow. I spent some time looking at it, and it is, I agree, a very well done painting.

Tempted to spend all day in this museum of absurdities and wonders, we yet moved on to wonders other and else.

From there we progressed on to St. James Park and Buckingham Palace, both of which are beautiful in their own rights. The park, full of daffodils just blooming in the early Spring, speckled with wildflowers and blanketed in lush grass, was a refreshing respite from the bustle of London's crowded streets and busy tube. Aside from pigeons here and there, gallant ducks and assorted fowl roamed leisurely, some lounging by the lake, others winging overhead towards the Thames. The palace is large, but, personally, I found the large statue and fountain outside of it far more impressive than the building itself. Also: no guards in red coats with big silly hats! What a downer! Instead we were left with these chumps in grey coats with assault rifles, looking very Stalin-era-esque. Bummer, says I.

After those sights had been seen, we moved on to the great box of Westminster Abbey, which I have already detailed above, and then got tea by Tower Bridge. Our plan was to get high tea, which includes several courses of tiny sandwiches and other tasties, but since it turned out to be quite pricey, we invented 'medium' tea, and ate scones with clotted cream and jam instead, alongside our respective pots of tea. Very tasty. I must say that, overall, my taste for tea - an old favorite of mine before coming abroad - has expanded and increased. I respect tea for what it is, and found an article pinned up in the shop about the drink very interesting. In it, the writer discussed the different ways of thinking about tea, one being to consider 'tea' as a measure of time, a small unit of relaxation, solitude, or socialization free from responsibility or concern. In a way, it makes the whole concept of tea much grander than simply being a drink, but rather a social construct based around a special unit of time. Coming from America, where a cup of coffee - our (stereo)typical drink - is usually consumed on the run, during the moring commute, or to help us power through a sluggish afternoon, the idea of tea as a relaxing span of time appeals to me.

After tea we strolled across Tower Bridge, declining to go to the top of it for five pounds (maybe it was more than that), and instead continuing on to the Tower of London. It was a whopping eighteen pounds to get into the Tower itself (which is, in reality, a large complex reminiscent of a castle/fort), so we, again, opted simply to walk around it and appreciate it from the outside. Poor Clarence came to my mind - Richard III's unfortunate brother in Will Shakespeare's play of the same name - and his death by the hands of those conscience-stricken murderers. I thought of all the prisoners kept there at one time or another, and of all those who were killed, and felt much the same way I did in a museum in Scotland where a guillotine was kept. It had been used for over three thousand executions, and there I had been, standing straight in front of its platform, my head occupying the space where a basket probably once lay, waiting for other heads to tumble into it. Just as certain places seem to exude, or rather concentrate, doses of 'history,' so too can some places seem to collect auras of death and suffering. The Tower was one of them, for me.

After the Tower we continued on to Covent Garden - where My Fair Lady begins - and wandered around the shops and things, later to return to Gardner's. He went out, but Bridge and I were properly knackered, and so bought some beers and ciders, watched Much Ado About Nothing with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and turned in to get up early.

The last installment of my Londontown tale concerns the following morning. Bridget had risen early to catch her flight back to Dublin, and I arose later, as my train through the Channel Tunnel to Paris did not depart until 10:30am. I took the extra time in the morning to visit University College of London, an old medical school, where I met a girl from Malaysia waiting for a young physician's conference to begin, and spent some time writing postcards. Bridget then texted me, (understandably) frantically, asking what time it was, because she had apparently missed her flight, despite serious planning.

My spine straightened up, and, as the veterans of Henry V's battle of Agincourt on the mention of St. Crispin's Day, I was instantly on tip-toe to find out what madness was afoot. My phone said 9:04am, but I suddenly recalled that the UK had not done their version of daylight savings time yet, whereas the US had weeks earlier. Panic! I asked my Malaysian doctor friend for the time, and sank into the hallowed pavement of University College when she told m that it was, apparently, 10:05am. What!!?

With little else to do, I sprinted, heavy backpack and all, back to the tube station, waited impatiently until I got off at King's Cross/St. Pancras, and ran like fleet-footed Mercury to the ticket counter. It seemed that, at this point, the UK was only trying to mess with me, as the humongous digital clock - had to be at least three feet wide, with foot-tall digits - read 9:30am. I heaved a sigh of relief, and suddenly wondered what the hell Bridge and this aspiring young Malaysian had been talking about. Out of breath, I approached the pudgy man at the ticket counter.

"Hello sir," says I, "it's really 9:30, right?"

Pudgy man blinks, yawns, perhaps blinks again.

Finally, he speaks, as calmly as can be: "Oh, sorry mate, it's 10:34am, officially. Haven't been bothered to right the clocks yet."

I pale. "Excuse me? Isn't this a train station? Shouldn't the clocks be correct?"

Pudgy man blinks. "Well, it was right this morning. just haven't been bothered yet."

I felt like bothering him.

"So I've missed my train."

"If your train was before 10:35."

"10:30, actually."

"So you've missed it, then."

Deeply unhappy with this man's nonchalant response to my predicament, I was surprised when he offered me a new, free ticket for a later train direct to Paris, and wished me a cheery day. Thank you, pudgy man. Maybe change the clocks next time.

Thus concluded my stay in London - though I'm going back in late May, though exactly how and why is a story for the Rome segment of my blog. On to Paris I sped, under the English Channel, ready to enter a world of French, baguettes, brie, and wine!

With so much to cover, I will simply keep on attempting to churn out these entries. Keep up at whatever pace you will. I hope I entertain with my tales.

Koln: A Cathedral, Kolsch, and the Rhein

From Deutschland I return - soon to be off for England, France, and Italia.

The five days, five nights I spent in Germany took me from the medieval byways of Edinburgh into the 20th century plazas, boulevards, and town squares of Koln (Cologne) and back - and what a trip it was. I am reluctant to fit it all into a single post, but I may as well try.

First, some historio-geographical notes. Koln is Germany's 4th largest city, with a population just shy of one million. Located in the Northwest, its dialect apparently differs greatly from Germany's more southern and eastern regions (though of course I could not tell). During WWII the city was heavily bombed by the RAF, and most of its older, medieval structures were completely leveled. A tragedy for sure, still it gave Koln the opportunity to rebuild and reorganize itself into a more modern city. Compared to Edinburgh, its streets were quite wide, allowing for several lanes of cars to drive on main streets in both directions, as well accommodating for a network of trolley/tram systems which made travel around the city simple.

Also, in an extremely important note: civilization has reached Germany in the form of Dunkin Donuts. Its presence in Koln raised my opinion of it inestimably. Tears were shed upon my first sight of the purple and orange sign jutting out from a shopping center.

But what did I do there, for five days, on my own?

I arrived around 9pm Wednesday night, the 16th March. I got a taxi to my hotel after taking a train from the airport, which was a necessarily evil, it being dark. Only 'evil' because once I got to know the city I realized that I had paid 8 euro for a cab journey that would have taken me fifteen minutes to walk. The hostel was much nicer than I had expected. I stayed in a mixed 6-person room, but there was only one other guy there when I arrived. He holds the key to the second of two 'small world' experiences I was about to undergo. But that's for a bit later.

First came a wave of what I imagine falls under the name 'culture shock.' After stowing my goods in a locker and making my bed, I took to the streets, and instantly felt immensely dwarfed by the omnipresence of the German language around me. English - my English, the language in which I speak, write, and, most importantly, think - held no currency in this land. My articulate speech was thus rendered valueless; the swift strokes of my pencil likewise pathetic in their being foreign. I have never felt 'foreign' as I did in those first few minutes of walking through Koln's streets - I may not be from the UK, but a kind of retroactive feeling of kinship with the British kicked in once I found myself plunged into a pool of speech and writing that I could not decipher.

Fear not, however: I acclimated swiftly. Three out of four Germans usually spoke enough English to give me directions or conduct transactions, and I picked up an extremely limited vocabulary there as well (greetings, numbers, some foods, and common phrases). I also learned the word for 'push' - drucken - because it was on all the doors; likewise, I never internalized the word for 'pull,' because I just knew to pull if there was some other word than 'drucken' on the door. It also helped that, in my experience, the Germans of Koln were exceptionally friendly, always willing to give advice or else to speak about their culture.

After slinking around that first night, I returned to the hostel and ordered a beer - specifically a 'kolsch,' a beer specific to Koln - at the bar in the lounge downstairs. I figured that I was bound to meet someone if I sat there for more than five minutes with a beer in my hand, and, sure enogh, I was soon speaking with a woman from France, a younger guy from Arizona, and a sheepish man from outside of London who looked about thirty. We talked through a number of unmemorable topics when a fourth man entered the bar's lounge and took a seat with us. I sized him up, as I was beginning to do automatically with new folk I encountered: male in mid-thirties, african-american, Yankees hat on, amiable-looking, probably American. And American he was.

Raised in Kennilworth, New Jersey, Wayne (his name, I learned) and I had things to speak about in common, myself from the same region of northern Jersey. As usually happens, I was asked what town I live in, and responded with, "Ahh, you've probably never heard of it, it's a real small town next to Paramus and Ridgewood, about twenty minutes from the city." He replied with, "O, you mean Glen Rock?" I was impressed - but after all, he was raised not far from GR. I pressed on, "Yes, Glen Rock, it's a nice place." He returned with, "I know, I lived there when I was eighteen, I lived on Hamilton Avenue." WHAT? Readers, for those of you who have never visited sweet Glen Rock, I'll have you know that I walked or drove down Hamilton Avenue 180 days a year from the 6th grade up until the 12th - right past this man's old residence. The odds are impossible. Glen Rock is 2.7 square miles - a particle in a drop in the bucket of America's vast and various landscape - and I was in Koln, Germany, speaking to one of the proud and few people on Earth who have had the privilege of living there.

Briefly, I'll tell Wayne's story. After Glen Rock he got certification to teach ESL, but was down on his luck and could not secure a job. Instead: moves to Thailand (what any respectable teacher facing denial would do). Meets a German girl there from Hamburg whom he ends up dating for several years. Eventually moves back to the States, to become a full-time poker player in Las Vegas (apparently he is very good). Why was he in Koln at the same time as me? Apparently his Hamburg sweetheart had left him, severing all ties, and here he was, some months later, come all the way to Germany - to win her back! Yet he had tried, gone to Hamburg, and met only the cold shoulder of heartache. His plans for the future: move back to Thailand - apparently his favorite place to go when met with defeat.

My second chance meeting came when I began speaking to the other guy staying in my room at the hostel. His name was Roger, and he turned out to be from Glasgow. We began talking, and it turns out his father is an MSP - Member of Scottish Parliament - and works about half a mile away from me in Edinburgh. More interestingly, my friend who interns at the parliament actually knows Roger's father. And there we were, in Koln.

Thursday I resolved to peruse Koln's tourist attractions. This mainly meant, for me, the Dom, the massive cathedral near the Rhein, and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum of Art.

The Dom is mind bogglingly large. A colossus of Gothic architecture, it stands as the world's fourth-largest cathedral. The eye may not view it all at once: it must wander about it, seeking out the gradations of shadow bringing to view its massive sculptures, buttresses, spires, steeples, and towers - otherwise all is indistinct greyness. The detail involved in the cathedral's construction is baffling as well. Every cornice, wall, arch, crenellation, and column bears some sort of sculptor's touch; a statue, a flower, a wreath, &c. Begun in 1246, it took hundreds of years to complete, and undergoes constant renovation, restoration, and repair.

Notable for its two large towers in front, but also its seven-part, rounded end - wherein lies the Altarpiece of the Three Kings, and, allegedly, the bones of the three kings who gave gifts to Jesus upon his birth - the cathedral is astounding from tower down to terra firma. Its inside is cavernous, and quite imposing. Great columns stretch from floor to ceiling, the rotundity of which it would take three men to circumscribe, holding up tons of stone far above the pews and altars which rest below. Priests in scarlet robes patrol its byways, accepting donations and overseeing the affairs of tourism. I was able to ascend the southernmost tower to its top, past the belfry and up hundreds of stairs, where I could look out on all of Koln.

That afternoon I perused the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, where I was able to appreciate the paintings of my all-time favorite painter, the German Romantic, David Caspar Friedrich. On display were - regrettably - only three of his works, but they were wonderful. I particularly enjoyed "Mist on the Riverbank,' and bought a post-card sized copy of it in the shop afterwards. I also got the chance to view the first-ever exhibition of Alexander Cabanel's artwork. After one hundred and fifty years, this is the first true display of his works and life. Such is the fate of many artists.

That night - for St. Patty's Day - I embarked to every Irish pub I could find, and had a jolly good time.

Friday I rented a bike and made my way through the countryside along the scenic Rhein to a town called Bonn. I did not actually make it to Bonn, as I was initially told it would only take me about an hour of biking. The riverside was quite nice and scenic, and the day was nice enough. That is, until I emerged into a hellish haze of industrial pandemonium; those landscapes of pipes, towers, smokestacks, and power cables that serve as the rude and unsightly cogs of our civilization - the likes of which no alpine nor hedgerow can hide. Smoke billowed from endless rows of stacks; cables and pipes mazed their way past the and alongside the roads, and suddenly everything was significantly less picturesque. After one and a half hours I turned around and caught a train back to the riverside on the outskirts of Koln, and toured the Lindt chocolate factory and museum. My friends, I tell you: I saw more chocolate, and in more forms, that any man should ever encounter such. Toffees, truffles, sticks, rolls, rounds, malts, candies - I saw it all, and saw them made. Too much! All too much! In any case, I had my fill and then sat at their cafe, where I enjoyed a 'drinking chocolate' mixed with tequila, white rum, tabasco, and chili flakes: The Montezuma.

That night I purchased a ticket to the the Koln Philharmonie and saw Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed. It was wonderful, and certainly relaxed me after my long day of riding, but I lament my tired state. I may have enjoyed it more fully had I been more full of energy.

Saturday I awoke naturally at 8am to a sixty degree day. Blue skies, puffy clouds - I was outside walking around by 8:15. After my two rather touristy days of movement and activity, I decided it was most certainly time to simply grab a good book and sit by the river. I also brought a few pint-bottles of German Weisbeir (wheatbeer, think Blue Moon) along. Sitting in the sun by the Rhein, drinking good German beer out of a wee kolsch glass, reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, there was nothing else in the world I could have needed. That Nietzsche had some interesting ideas - only about 50% of which I can actually understand - not the least his declaration: "You want to wear no clothes in front of your friend? It should be your friend's honor that your present yourself to him as you are." That's deep, Nietzsche, very deep.

So Saturday was mostly relaxation alongside the Rhein, watching the couples pass by, hearing German float by me as smoothly as the river within its banks, the meaning of both as inscrutable as could be.

Sunday and Monday I slept in and wandered around the city, once finding a massive park by a lake in the middle of town, by the university, reading and writing the day through. I cannot say I ever got lonely on my trip. I am like that - travel with companions is only advisable when the companions are completely suited to you. Truthfully, I've only known a handful of people I've been able to travel with and still have the time of my life. To travel alone, for a certain kind of person, is a higher pleasure than to travel accompanied. The city was, indeed, mine to do with whatever I pleased; mine to wander around, to drink beside, to stop and consider at my own leisure.

Looking ahead, I must prepare for my longer excursion into the Continent, which shall commence this Friday the 25th March. Within six days I will have stood beside three of Europe's most important rivers: The Rhein, the Thames, and the Seine. Until now, even with a tiny nook of Germany uncovered to me, the Continent, which has, in the words of Conrad's Marlow, "been one of the dark places of earth," shall cease to be for me; cease to be "a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over," and become a living, existing swath of activity and culture, of language, and of experience. To London! To Paris! The wine-ripe fields of Bordeaux! The sea-lined channels of Venice! To Rome, that metropolis of antiquity and storehouse of exalted culture! To the towers of Bologna!

To Europe! I go!