Europe, pt. 1 (aka Gettin´ Cultured Up)

We have now hit up four different countries in Europe (Spain, Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria). We´re just about done with our stint in Vienna and will be moving on to Venice the day after tomorrow. Before I reallz start, forgive me if I switch the "y" and "z" letters in this blog post....thez´re backwards on kezboards here in Europe, zou know? Makes tzping the words yebra, yipper, yig yag, and Yanyabar interesting.

I´d like to start by saying that I have successfully transitioned from dirty backpacking hippy to well-cultured man of the world. Mostly I accomplished this through showering, but also by immersing myself in cultural stuff. Operas, museums, cultural tours, art exhibits, you name it....we´ve now done it all in Europe. Hell, I even shaved and cut my hair (thanks for the clippers, Cousin Marcos!). Of course, this was a near necessity after being pulled out of the crowd in Cusco, Peru and searched thoroughly by the airport police for drugs. I was pretty up in arms about that event until I looked in the bathroom mirror afterwards.....yeah, I probably would have profiled myself as a drug runner, too.

So, zeah, (ok I´ll stop doing that now) here we are sitting in an Internet cafe in beautiful Vienna, Austria. Vienna was actually my home for the best part of a year, but it was WAY back in the day.....17 years ago. When I was last here, the Internet was a brand new thing for most people, no one had ever heard of a digital camera, you still usually got cash by cashing in traveller´s checks instead of going to an ATM, they still hadn´t invented sliced bread, and the "horseless carriage" was just a wistful dream in the mind of some Ford guy. Nah, maybe not that long ago, but holy damn has everything changed around here. I thought I knew where stuff was in this town. Everything is dramatically different. It could have been the copious amounts of booze I consumed when last I was here, but I had a hard time remembering where even the basic stuff downtown was. But here I am, jumping ahead of myself. Let´s just start off with a recap of Spain first, shall we?

We arrived in Madrid after an all-night flight from Peru after the harsh ol´ Inca Trail, the tale of which I´ve already regaled you all with. I´m lucky enough to have family in Spain. We were met at the airport by my cousin Martha who kindly allowed us to stay in her house for the duration of our Spain visit. We were like orphans in from the cold. A couch? More than just a tiny hotel room????? A refrigerator?!?!?!?! It was like a little slice of heaven for us. We spent time catching up with my family. Martha´s son Marcos also lives in Madrid. Rather than the young punk I remember getting in trouble with oh so many years ago when I last visited, Marc is now a successful professional, complete with wonderful wife and the cutest baby that side of the Danube. We did our share of catching up and hanging out but, like I insinuated earlier, we were ridin´ the cultural train big time. Check out some uber-fancy cultural stuff that we did:

- 7 hours (swear to god) in the Prado Museum in Madrid. This is perhaps the second most famous museum in the world behind the Louvre. We saw Goya, Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, you name it. The place is amazing.
- The Reina Sophia museum. This one houses many Dali paintings and is probably most famous for housing Picasso´s famous "Guernica" painting

That sucker is mighty, mighty impressive in person. It´s HUGE...probably 25 feet wide.

- Visited the towns of Avila (we saw a very cultural severed finger of a sainted nun in a glass case) and Toldeo (where they make a lot of swords which, violent things they are, are now far beneath our cultured selves). Awesome churches and really, really old architecture.
- We also did some shopping, ate fantastic food, replaced our camera (damn thing broke on the last day of the Inca Trail), had a meal with a Spanish couple we befriended on the Inca Trail (Lucia and Guillermo, part of our new Inca Trail family), and saw a couple movies. We´ll gloss over that movie part since we are trying to be culturally superior. Still, it´s good to mingle with the unwashed masses every once in a while, is it not?

From left to right:  cousin Martha, cousin Marcos, baby Emma, Marcos´ wife Carmina, Leann, Chris

We then rolled on to Amsterdam. What happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam. Nah, I kid only. Amsterdam, as you may know, is famous for having a TON of one thing. That´s right. Bicycles. What, did you think I was going to say something else? Who´s the hippy now? Seriously, there are eleven gajillion bicycles for every one car there. We rented a couple bicycles but Leann got so freaked out by the massive bike traffic in the city center that we had to park outside of downtown and walk in. Still, we got our culture on once again in Amsterdam. Even though we were there only a couple days, we saw:

- The Van Gogh museum. No severed ears to be found, but an extremely impressive collection of his work as well as cool "behind the scenes" stories about his life.
- The Rijksmuseum. Home to a bunch of Rembrandts, Degases (uh, what´s the possessive of Degas?), and Vermeers, this place was smaller than the Prado but had a similar feel. Instead of Spanish masterpieces, this one had mainly Dutch masterpieces. Very cool.
- Leann wanted to go to Den Haag (The Hague) to see the museum there that has "The Girl With One Pearl Earring" by Vermeer, but I put my foot down for no apparent reason. Gotta love traveling with a pig-headed husband, eh?

We then took a quick flight on over to Prague. I´d also been to Prague before but, again, it was so long ago that I´d forgotten a lot of it. We cultured the hell out of Prague for a couple days and saw:

- The Prague Castle. Oddly, the thing I most remembered about this place was that someone got thrown out of one of the windows back in the day. There is actually a verb for "getting thrown out of a window" - defenestration. Gotta love them middle ages. Well, there´s a lot more to the castle than exit-only windows. Beautiful architecture, to be sure.
- The Prague Astronomical Clock. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock This clock is in the middle of a square that, when last I visited, had vendors selling bootlegged cassette tapes. I bought the "new" Alice in Chains tape when I was there. Yeah, I´m old. Shut up.
- The Saint Charles bridge. Halfway across the bridge there´s a statue of a martyr named St. John of Nepomunk who refused to tell King Wenceslas what his wife had confessed. Ol´ Wenceslas rewarded his confidentiality by throwing his ass off the bridge. Nowadays you can bring yourself good luck by touching the reproduction of the priest on the plaque underneath the statue. I got lucky that night so it must have worked. (Leann is at my side shaking her head with a disapproving frown on her face.) You can also touch the other side of the plaque to get a little boost in fertility. Leann is now pregnant with twins. (Just jokin´, y´all).

Yeah, we did some other shit in Prague. Can´t remember what. Some guy yelled at me. Pretty sure it was his fault. Maybe. Anyways, we took a 5 hour bus on to the old homeland of Austria.

Quick side note: FINALLY we encounter a country with a foreign language that I can speak passably. Nothing against Spanish, but it really gets old having no goddamn idea what anyone is saying after a while. I´m actually decent with German, even after all these years. "Gezundheit." "Dankeschoen." See what I mean? German IN YO FACE!

We booked an apartment here in Vienna through a very cool website called AirBnB.com (thanks to my super bro Kate Ater for the recommendation). We essentially have our own one bedroom apartment, complete with kitchen and all, for about the same price as a hotel. It kicks ass. We´ve celebrated both my birthday (37 years young!) and our anniversary here. Of course, we have cultured the hell out of Vienna as well:

- Saw a Dali exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien. Actually, it was a surrealist exhibition featuring a filmmaker named Jan Svankmajer as well as other Dali-influenced artists. Dali was pretty full of himself, kind of like Andy Warhol, but a pretty impressive artist nonetheless.
- Saw a Mozart and Strauss orchestral performance, complete with singing and dancing. It was like a Greatest Hits night. The first half was Mozart and the second Strauss. For me, it was like two hours of "hey, I´ve heard that song before!" Like I said, I´m just recently initiated into the whole cultured thing.
- Went to the Vienna State Opera House for our anniversary to see The Barber of Seville. Now, that name sure sounded familiar but damned if I had any idea what the music for the thing was. Well, for those of you as culture-free as me, it can accurately be described as "the Figaro, Figaro, Figaro opera." Many, many more opportunities to say "hey, I´ve heard that before", although most of my Barber of Seville experiences came through Woody the Woodpecker renditions or commercials.

Lucky guy and his beautiful wife on their first anniversary!

- Went to the Belvedere Museum. This one is probably best known for "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt.

Smoochy Poochies

Many other famous artists represented here. There´s even a Van Gogh and some Munch, although not "The Scream".
- Checked out eleventeen churches and cathedrals. Vienna is teeming with gothic and baroque architecture and religious iconography. The place is old and it´s incredible. Even the apartment buildings are hundreds of years old.

Anyhoo, looks like our time in Austria is heading to an end. We visit Venice then Rome then Athens and then we´re Audi 5000 as far as Europe is concerned. After that it´s a brief stay in Egypt. I´ll try and update everyone sometime in the next week or two, but no promises.