23/05/10 @ 2:40 PM Train 10045 from Kleve to Dusseldorf

                Ha! Well it seems I ate my words last night!  Our train to Dusseldorf was around 45 minutes late, and we left at around 1:20 AM!  But first, Stockholm!

                It’s a beautiful city.  Take the cafés of Turin, the architecture of Paris, the bustle of London and the weather of Berlin – this was Stockholm to me!  It has its cloistered old town, built on a tiny but steep island in the bay.  It has its classy 19^th-century quarter with old cafés and wide avenues.  It even has an ugly modern district (c. 1970s) right by the central station, with cheap storefronts for all the trendiest stores.  The weather was perfectly clear, as was the water, and its large parks (which we saw from a short boat tour) were like a laughing meadow, ever fresh and shimmering and fair.

                We visited a few bookshops and a map dealer in his apartment.  Only one place stood out, for two reasons: one, for some reason there was this loud, obnoxious music being sung in the lobby (I wasn’t as tolerant as I should have been; and often I was crouched in a corner trying my best to conceal my laughter).  The second was what I was able to find in those corners in my more lucid moments: two or three impressive old plate books that, with a few minor repairs, are worth a fair sum.

                We left Stockholm on a speed train to Lund, which is near to the Danish border.  There we hopped onto our connecting train (ours from Stockholm was late and it was waiting for us).  This was another night train which soon after leaving the platform boarded what must have been a massive ferry – it was carrying a train on either side of ours --, and we sailed for mainland Germany, avoiding Denmark completely.

                We awoke yesterday morning as the train rolled into Berlin at 6:00 AM.  We had booked a hotel for the day, but because the room may not have been ready right at 6, I went on ahead to check it out.  Now, Berlin Hauptbahnhof (the central train station) is a rather curious phenomenon.  Typically, a station that bears the name “central” is near the centre of the city.  To my surprise, however, Berlin Hauptbahnhof bears no relationship to this common assumption.  After walking about a kilometre I found our hotel, which was one of the closest as indicated on Google Maps.  Thank God, the room was ready, and upon my return to the station and to Shahram, we hailed a taxi and checked into the hotel, and promptly fell asleep.

                At around 11 AM we left the hotel, grabbed a bus back to the station (the driver’s fare machine wasn’t working so we rode for free), and booked our ticket on the night train that night (yesterday) to Dusseldorf.  Unfortunately, all the two-person rooms were already full, so we’d have to share a room with several bunks.

                After grabbing a quick lunch, Shahram took a taxi to one of the map-dealers of Berlin, while I hopped on the next bus back to the hotel (thanks to the driver, free again, this time because it was two stops and I didn’t have the correct fare anyway).  I called up an old friend of mine in Berlin, Neysan Zölzer, who gave me the details for getting to the Berlin Bahá’ís’ celebration of the declaration of the Báb (marking 166 years since the inception of the Bábí-Bahá’í Faiths).  I booked us a hotel in Brussels for Sunday night, then grabbed our laundry and, once again, pounded the pavement – this time even farther than in Mantua – to a laundromat.  Once there, I met an interesting character.   The proprietor of this particular Laundromat also ran a little café.  He was a short fellow of a stout build who wore this wonderful beige felt fedora and a black-striped beige blazer to match.  This man greeted me on arrival, in a quirky German accent.  Because of our mutual lack of German-English bilingualism, a hilarious scene ensued with him telling me the prices and asking me for more coins, and me insisting on putting all my laundry in one machine (“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he finally said, shrugging his shoulders, before launching into a fully German tirade).

                After an hour and a half of washing, drying, and folding, I hurried back to the hotel, changed clothes, and rushed off.  It was now 4:00 PM, three hours after I had spoken with Neysan.  I went into the nearest U-Bahn station (German subway), and before I could figure out their ticket-purchasing machine, the train I wanted pulled up.  I jumped on (I was only going two stops to my next transfer and the machine wouldn’t accept my five-euro bill), and at the major junction of Friedrichstrasse I went to the rail office and bought a day pass for Berlin’s three fare zones.  I then hopped on to an S-Bahn train, similar to Toronto’s GO trains but far less extensive, and took it out to the line’s farthest reaches.  In fact, the train I was on terminated a stop too soon, and I had to transfer to the next train which was going farther out into Berlin’s suburbia.

                I arrived at the celebration after 5 PM (it had officially begun at 3).  Neysan smiled, saying, “You just missed the prayers, but I’m sure you pray enough in Canada!” –Yeah, right, I said to myself.  As the friends were lining up for the potluck dinner, I hugged and greeted my old friends from the old days at Towshend: Husseim, Niko, Sara, and Jennifer, as well as several other Bahá’ís I had met on my last trip to Berlin two years ago – of the two times I’ve ever been to Berlin, I always seem to come to the same party!  I also met several others I hadn’t met before, including a member of the cluster’s Area Teaching Committee (what we call a “Cluster Growth Committee” in Canada), who also teaches a teacher preparation course at a nearby teachers’ college.

                After dinner a large number of us took the S-Bahn back into Berlin, and we older youth (Husseim, Christin, Niko, Furutan, and Valeriya) walked an immeasurable distance to a district of Berlin that, according to Furutan, is the home of over 100 cafés.  We grabbed some hot drinks and chatted about our various Bahá’í communities, teaching stories, as well as a myriad other subjects, until someone realized the time and we left.  I met up with Shahram at the hotel and, after some correspondence, we took a cab to the Hauptbahnhof where we waited until 1:15 AM for our midnight train to Dusseldorf.

                Today, Shahram’s friend Norbert picked us up at Dusseldorf’s train station at 7 AM.  He directed us to his new Audi, in which he drove us along the autobahn at speeds upwards of 220 km/h!  After spending the morning browsing his maps, he took us to this old castle-town called Kleve where we climbed the castle’s tower—the castle itself already sitting upon a high cliff, hence the name “Kleve.”  After our walk, we sat down to a delicious lunch of asparagus and ham, which are local specialties in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region of Germany.

                We are now sitting in a Thalys train en route from Köln to Brussels, somewhat out of breath due to a tight transfer just now at Köln.

                A bientôt!

                                Richard

23/05/10 @ 12:15 AM at Berlin Hauptbahnhof

                A lot has happened.  I’ll try to summarize.  We arrived in Stockholm over an hour late due to delays on the Swedish speed train.  I have to say, nobody organizes trains like the Germans.  I remarked this to a friend today in Berlin, and he replied that German passengers will complain if a train is a minute late!

19/05/10 @ 9:10 PM, North Atlantic House, Copenhagen

Dear Blog,

Hail!  I just ran into Intalik Milne, an old friend from Greenland who I lived with for a few months last year.  He's now part of a music choir competing in Denmark that's kind of like Glee meets American Idol.  Viewers text their votes for the best show choir every week, and the winners of the upcoming semi-finals get to go for their final showdown in June in Greenland!  Inta is part of the Julies Allstars choir, made up of singers all from Greenland!  They were quite energetic and sang a number of current pop songs.  You can see some pictures on my facebook:  Europe Trip II.


We got into Copenhagen at about 10 this morning, and after changing money into Danish Krona, left our bags at our hotel and visited a number of antiquarian book stores.  Copenhagen is a lovely little city, with few skyscrapers and in the old town a great public square every 100 yards filled with street cafes.  Upon returning to the hotel, I found Intalik's phone number and gave him a call--he told me that in fifteen minutes he would be performing!


So I grabbed my hat and walked over to the nearby transit station to catch the bus recommended by Google Maps.  However, I didn't know where to catch my bus southbound, and as I was looking at its northbound schedule, I saw my very bus going southbound on the other side of a water channel in the middle of the city.  In a flash I flew down the cobblestoned sidewalk after the bus (I always seem to be running down cobblestoned streets in this blog).  I tried to catch it at its stop near me but I missed it, so I sprinted to its next stop outside the train station.  I jumped on just in time, and after a few minutes hopped off to go to the hall where Intalik's concert was held, the North Atlantic House.


After the concert, Intalik and I walked with a few of his choir friends down into the old city.  We parted ways, and Intalik took me to a nearby university residence where we met up with a few Baha'i youth--Christopher and Nabil.  We chatted until after midnight, after enjoying a Danish delicacy: a thick, buttermilk-like substance with broken biscuits in it, which you eat out of a bowl like soup!  We talked about various experiences in Toronto and Copenhagen, as well as literature and the strangenesses of the rare book trade.


After midnight, Intalik and Nabil walked me home and now I'm off to bed.

Good night!

Richard

18/05/10 @ 1:00 PM, IC 2023 from Koblenz to Frankfurt, along the Rhine

Dear Journal,

                Here we are, travelling in a train along the Rhine!  Wowzers!  Absolutely gorgeous.  To my right, a tall, unbroken chain of hills that is occasionally dotted with a quaint little German village.  To my left flows the Rhine, one of the most important river routes in Europe, addressed even by Bahá’u’lláh in an apostrophe in His message to the “King of Berlin,” Kaiser Wilhelm I: “O banks of the Rhine!  We have seen you covered in gore, and you shall have a second turn.”  (Kitab-i-Aqdas, in reference to Wilhelm’s recent victory over Napoleon III and the future world wars that would devastate this prosperous region.)  The region’s wealth is attested by the fact that every half kilometre is marked by either a stronghold, a fortress, a castle, a mansion, or a palace, built by every wealthy family of the region over the course of no less than 700 years.

                Yesterday we travelled over the Swiss Alps into Basle near the source of the Rhine.  We transferred at Basle to Mannheim, and from Mannheim to Dusseldorf.  In Dusseldorf we visited a book store that carries all kinds of material, from the very new to the very old.  Their antiquarian stock wasn’t very exciting, however, and we soon left.  To pass the time until our next train to Bonn, we wandered through Dusseldorf’s old town (Aldstadt), with cobblestoned streets lined with restaurants from all over the world.  Where did we go?  You guessed it: Persian!

                After a delightful ghormeh sabzi we wandered back to the train station and caught our train to Bonn.  Upon disembarking, however, in our rush to remove our baggage, we left behind a poster tube filled with antique maps—which we realized just as the train rolled away.

                We rushed over to the service counter in the train station, where the attendant phoned the next stop, Koblenz, and asked the attendant there to board the train, grab the tube, and keep it there for us to pick up in the morning.

                That done, we proceeded to our hotel.  Tired from a long day of traveling, I soon lost my way from what I could remember on Google maps.  As rain began falling I stopped Shahram at a street corner with all our baggage, while I explored a neighbouring street.  I went into a small bar and asked the young woman behind the counter if she knew where the street or the hotel was.  She didn’t, but suggested I ask at the train station.

                Thanking her, I dashed out of the door and ran back to the station, where I found a city map in the underground passage connecting the train station with the city’s U-Bahn (subway).  Embarrassingly, I realized the missing street was just two steps away from the very corner where I had left Shahram with all our baggage!  I doubled my pace back to Shahram as the gentle rain cooled my face, and caused my shoes to slide on the slick cobbled sidewalks.

                Upon my return, we grabbed our bags and checked into our hotel, not five minutes from where we were standing.  Shahram asked me to go find us some water bottles for the night, and I figured I should mimic Shahram and return to that bar, to thank the young woman by telling her about the Bahá’í Faith.

                After introductions and chatting about our studies – she was Brazilian and studies politics in Bonn, Germany, and very interested in working for women’s rights – I used that to introduce the Faith and the Tahirih Justice Centre, a Bahá’í-inspired organization that defends women’s rights.  She was very interested.  She remembered working with some Bahá’ís in Bonn at the U.N. (There’s a large number of United Nations offices in Bonn that occupy the buildings built when Bonn was the capital of West Germany). 

                I told her she should get in touch with them, gave some contact information, and left, having left her (hopefully) with an idea of what the Bahá’í Faith is – probably my worst teaching experience yet, where the listener was eager to hear more, and I kept stumbling over what to say!

                This morning we left Bonn and went straight to Koblenz (the book dealers in Bonn were all out of town, making our trip there unnecessary).  We picked up our tube at the train station (with everything still safely inside), and we are now pulling into the Frankfurt airport train terminal with the next stop being the main train station in downtown Frankfurt.  I hope after we pick up Shahram’s new credit card we can visit the Temple here – it is the only Bahá’í Temple in Europe, located just outside of Frankfurt.  (Note: we didn’t end up going, there wasn’t much time.)

                Personally, I’m glad we’re picking up the card, because after this morning’s hotel, we’ve probably maxed out my VISA!

                Tonight we take the night train from Frankfurt and wake up in Copenhagen!

                                Tschuss!

                                                Richard

17/05/10 @ 7:40 AM, EuroCity train 50 from Milan to Basle

Dear Journal,

                Guten morgen!  We’re on a high speed train leaving Milan, passing through the Swiss Alps, and arriving in 4 hours in Basle, an important Renaissance city in Switzerland, way up the Rhine River, where many early printed books and maps (known as incunabula) were made.  Sadly, we are not staying in Basle, but continuing on to Dusseldorf via Mannheim, and ultimately Bonn for the night.

                There’s a TV screen on this train that follows the route via Google Earth!  I’m so excited!  (Note: Okay, it wasn’t terribly accurate, but hey, it’s a neat idea!)  Plus, it’s  a beautiful sunny day, and I’m beside the wind and I hope to take lots of pictures!

                Yesterday.  Yesterday was grand.  We met an old map-dealer friend of Shahram’s, Arnaldo, a 77-year old man who looked like he was 57—a full head of hair and a beard, and as fashionable as a parasol.  The first thing we did was go to lunch.  And what a lunch!

                He drove us 20 minutes out of Padova to his little hamlet, and to a quiet small-town restaurant where he eats everyday.  It was idyllic.  We dined on the patio.  The sun illuminated the simple courtyard.  He ordered for us a three-course meal—the waiters all know him by name!  We had local Italian breads, spaghetti pomodoro, and Shahram and I each tried the local grilled fish.  We finished with a cup of strong espresso.  He kept joking that “your Zoroaster” wouldn’t mind if we had a glass of wine – he wasn’t terribly interested to hear that Iran had hosted two new Manifestations (the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh).  The whole meal lasted well near two hours, with much laughter, stories, and life lessons.  Very pleasant!

                Afterwards, he drove us to his house nearby, where he lives alone with 40 cats and all his massive collection of antique maps.  Shharam spent an hour or so looking through the man’s maps, while I perused his personal museum of ancient Roman, Greek, Persian, and Mesoamerican artefacts.

                After an hour or so he drove us back to the city, and after a short walk through the old town, we grabbed a train back to Milan where we ate a light dinner (after such a weighty lunch), then slept early in order to catch this train, which left Milan at 7:30!  Anyway, I should be aiming my camera outside to catch this beautiful scenery!  (Except that whenever I try, all I do is get the trees lining the tracks!)

                Auf Wiedersehn!

                                Richard

16/05/10 @ 9:30 AM – Frecciabianca train 9713 from Milan to Padua

Dear Journal,

                Yesterday was a rather ordinary day.   While Shahram spent the morning at the Mantova book fair, I grabbed our two bags of laundry (stuffed to the brim, of course), and went off in search of a laundromat.  The place around the corner recommended by the hotel was closed on Saturdays—what kind of a laundromat closes on a Saturday?!—and I returned to the clerk at the hotel.

                “Is there anywhere else?” I asked.
                “There is one, but it’s very far,” she replied.
                I pulled out my pocket map of Mantova.  Nothing in that town could be described as “far.”  She took her pen and circled Piazza Gramsci: “A fifteen minute’s walk,” she told me.  

    

                So with the two bags clamped under my arms—the handles on both bags having snapped—I made my way past the piazzas and outdoor cafés of the centre, and down a cobblestoned road, to Piazza Gramsci, a rather large traffic circle with shops all around it, and nice, big, leafy trees all between the traffic circle and the shops, effectively blocking the names of the shops from the view of any passers-by, such as myself.  So I picked a direction and walked around the circle.  By this time, my arms were aching and my woollen pullover was really cooking me in that close, humid air.

                Exasperated, I stood on a corner outside a bakery and begged in my heart for guidance.  Like a gentle morning breeze, I looked to my left and saw someone come out from a shop with a bag of clothes in hand.  Amazed, I rushed to the shop and went inside.  It was a dry cleaners’ ("Sue, the dry cleaners here are just as good as the ones in Europe.").  The lady behind the counter saw the despondence on my face and told me, in Italian, to go to the other side of the square (I could have sworn she said “Tony’s”.)  “Grazie mille!” I professed to her, and walked as quickly as I could manage, dodging the cars swarming the traffic circle, and finally coming nearly the full way around from where I began to find the local coin laundromat (not called “Tony’s” at all!).

                After fumbling with their centralized control system for the few high-speed machines they had (I paid for someone else’s laundry along the way, and he promptly returned the favour), I went out in search of a grocery store where I could get new plastic bags to carry the laundry home with.  I returned to the laundromat, and thankfully the dryers only took 20 minutes to dry our clothes!  I then folded and packed away the clothes, making sure to catch up on some Tolstoy in my downtime.

                Upon returning to the hotel, Shahram and I packed up, ate a quick lunch, checked out, and chilled in the lobby while we waited for our return train to Milan.  After studying the recent Ridvan message from the Universal House of Justice on the train (once a year the supreme governing body of the worldwide Baha’i community sends a message to the Baha’is of the world), we pulled into Milano Centrale, the main train station of Milan.

                I don’t like Milan, I must say.   It represents to me the culmination of an oppressive, all-consuming, economy-driven system that evokes a spirit of lethargy and apathy, combined with an excessive individualism, in those who buy into it.  When you go to “Milan,” you go to the old centre, the Duomo, where all the world’s major designer stores pay enormous rents for massive square footage in elaborate old buildings, massed around the central cathedral (an over-elaborate and gaudy construction, no pun intended).  It really looks as though when Christ threw the merchants out of the Temple they merely went and set up shop on the front steps!  There was even a large set of chairs set up outside the church, their backs to its walls, facing a great big ad for Rolex.

(This image was not taken by me.)

              “In Milan,” I quipped sardonically to Shahram, “it is fashionable to worship not the Church of Rome, but the Church of Rolex, of Gucci, and of Louis Vuitton!”

                I imagine there are people possibly reading this who would love to spend an afternoon—or a week!—in Milan’s Duomo district.  (I would prefer the week where we are travelling right now, beneath some fantastic low mountains with the snow-capped Alps not far off!).  Consider how this Duomo came about: the elaborate domed roof and marble palace with the most exquisite cafés, a Louis Vuitton, and, you guessed it, a posh McDonald’s.  This palace was built in the age of Italy’s unification, no doubt to rival the antiquated grandeur of Rome—how else do you convince the industrious, commercialized, “civilized” (cough cough) wealthy Milanese to unite with the “backwards” (cough cough) peasantry of central and southern Italy?  You make Milan not simply the regional capital, but the cultural and economic capital of the entire Italian peninsula!  (Interestingly, a similar process took place in Canada in the decades following Confederation with the transfer of cultural domination from Montreal to Toronto: and Toronto’s cultural “dominion” spread over the Prairies through the centralizing effects of its radio programs, professional sports teams, and proliferous and assimilating mail-order catalogues.) 

                The Centrale station provides the needed counter-balance to the Milan-centred Duomo—Mussolini’s signature colossal and nationalistic central train station combines the symbols of all Italy’s regions in the hope of presenting the peninsula’s diverse cultural traditions as part of one cohesive whole.  The rooftop bears the signature Roman she-wolf with the infant Romulus and Remus beneath; while the chimera, a flying lion and symbol of the Venetian Republic, decorates its interior, and its pillars bear peasant-like figures: all of which underscores a nationalistic pride that maintains that a great Mediterranean dominion is sustained by the hard labour of the peasantry, the pillars supporting empire. Milano Centrale, although conceptually unsound, is a marvel to look at, and was completed in 1931 at a time when bankrupt New York businessmen were leaping from tall buildings to escape economic ruin.  Like they say, though Mussolini did terrible things, he did  make the trains run on time!

                Sorry for the rant, and the long build-up to that one joke!  After strolling around the Duomo we went back to the Centrale area, near our hotel.  We grabbed dinner at a local self-service (where Shahram, in his constant battle against touching public doorknobs, kicked open a bathroom door like a cowboy might barge into a saloon—he refused to wear my hat while doing it, though).  After, we reserved several train tickets for the next two days, then returned to the hotel.

                I leave you know as the train pulls into the star-crossed city of Verona!  Until next time, a fox on both your houses!

                                Richard

Later in the afternoon @ 3:45 PM – At our hotel

Dear Journal,

                I’ve just finished typing up my remaining journal entries and will be posting them pronto.  Shahram has given me a few hours off while he visits the book fair here in quiet Mantua.  The streets are filled with school children, evidently on some kind of trip to visit this historic town.  It was here that Virgil was born over 2,000 years ago, who went on to write one of the greatest works of European literature, the Aeneid.  This too was where Shakespeare sentenced Romeo from Verona, less than an hour’s journey by rail. 

                It is very lovely outside and I hope to take advantage of the fair weather before the rain hits again.  I’ll hopefully post some pictures shortly.

                Ciao,

                                Richard