The David
which was the single most impressive piece of art I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. The scuplture is, well, perfect. It’s amazing. Painted well and perhaps reduced in size, you would believe it really was a human being, just with an amazing capacity to stand still. It’s lifelike. It’s so perfect that I swear it looks like it’s breathing. At any moment he could just jump down and start whipping people with that towel. I’m going to give up describing it and raving about it, just come here and check it out. No picture or virtual tour or website or anything can do it justice.

Demain, L’Avenir, Certainties of Weirdness
Back to Nice. I’m staying there for the night of the 8th and 9th, then it’s back to Rhode Island, baby. The trip shall be at an end. It’ll be weird not be moving every few days or weeks. It’ll certainly be weird to be around millions of english speaking Americans with little or no accent (well, Rhode Island accent, but even that’s less severe than, say, a Scottish one). It’ll certainly be weird. But off of that, I’m still sort of trying to get my head around this whole trip and how I’ve changed and stuff. I’m sure I’ll have some big update once I’m back, sort of a summation, a thank you and all that. But till then, business style stuff calls. Errands. Go to Nice (Nizza as the Italians say in their lovely language), pick up my stuff from Madame Mercier, go out with Lauren and Fez (trust me, I’ll get a good picture and you’ll understand why we call him that) one last time as no one can tell when I’ll next see them, get my travel affairs in order, figure out how to fit everything into my three bags, then get on a plane. Holy god. It really is almost over. It’ll certainly be weird.

From this description, though, you wouldn’t think it all that bad. I wouldn’t either. But I’m in Europe, and some fundamentals that Americans take for granted are ‘debatable’ here.

Take hygiene for example. I honestly fear for the life of that gypsy woman’s son. At such a young age, yea, kids should get dirty, roll around, have fun, but should probably be washed off after that. Apparently his mother didn’t think so. I would estimate that he has not had a bath in 3 months. His mother, true to her philosophy, had not bathed in maybe a third that much time. It’s as if we’re back in Elizabethan times, and people think the more dirt caked to your face the better, as the ‘bad spirits,’ now known as microbes, can’t get in. And they honestly did have dirt caked to their faces. When the boy scratched his face with his surprisingly long fingernails, a thin line of off-white skin shown beneath. He did it again later to the otherside of his face and it looked like warpaint. Now the great thing about the modern world is that we read about thins like hygiene in the Elizabethan age, dirt-caked faces, muddy, manure-laden streets, etc. and we can shudder at the thought of it. But what reading about it, or even seeing movies set in that time do not do (thank god that this technology hasn’t yet been developed) is let you understand exactly what that smells like. It is like a physical barrier to be walked through when you enter a room. It has the effect of immediately unsettling stomachs. My first instinct was to not put down my bags but to run to the window and open it. This was smell number one (well, one and two if you count the fact this the mother smelt of something slightly sharper than the son).

The large spanish woman was a case all her own. She had on some kind of business suit, in a low green, like turquoise or the color of the statue of liberty. It was heavy looking for early summer, and she was obviously feeling the effects of it. She was sweating when I got to the couchette, and, here’s what I honestly cannot fathom, later when she settled down to go to bed she not only kept on her whole business suit, heavy jacket mit sweatstains included, she didn’t even open the package with the light cotton sheets in it, she just threw the heavy wool blanket over her. Am I missing something? Did someone spike the that coke I bought at Gare de Bercy? Perhaps needless to say, after a few minutes of this, I could see the sweat rolling down her face, and the sweat stains that before had been darkness at folds and fabric borders became long lines. My guess is that she had something spicy for dinner before she got on the train, as the smell that soon competed with the dirt twins was, in addition to natural body odor, sharp and gave a strike high in the back of the nose like when you smell hot peppers. This was smell number two.

The Vietnamese guy, though nice, was a chain smoker. Thankfully he spent a large portion of the evening at the train door, blowing smoke out into the french countryside. He was clean and well dressed, too, and left his heavy blanket on the eave over the door. He slept with just one sheet and the only smell that came from him, thank god, was that of heavy smokers around the world. Seeing as I’ve spent now three months in Europe, where people like to smoke even in the shower if they can manage it, I’m actually well used to this one and it didn’t bother me. Other than the fact that he was figgety, and would occasionally pull some precise gymnastics to turn from one shoulder to another in one fell swoop and without actually moving his body from an apparently well grooved spot, he was great.

The person I was happiest with was the french woman. She looked Mediterranean in origin, and wore all black with a black bag. We had fluid and funny conversations in French, and, despite the popular and generally accurate preconception of the French, she did not smell. Given that half the people in the cabin were battling for pungent dominance, you have no idea what a relief that was. When she got off in the morning at some small stop in Italy, she walked past and smiled, and for the first time the whole train ride, I smelled something honestly beautiful and refreshing: French perfume. And with that I laid back and got a whole hour of sleep.

Firenze
…Is beautiful. I’ve only been here for a few hours and have not explored much, but it is quite beautiful already. I lucked out, as well, that it rained all last night and now the sun is shining and there’s nary a cloud in the sky. More updates on that later. I’m gonna go have lunch and check out the Duomo.

I just came back from Charles de Gaulle Airport where I dropped off Liz, Mom, and Aunt Nancy. Hope they get home okay and basically in one piece.

Paris – Metro
The designers of the Paris Metro were art lovers. They laid their lines like Pollock.

L’Avenir

Off to Florence tonight on an overnight train. Couchettes again. Yay. Hope I sleep. Anything will be better than the drunken Russians from Budapest to Munich.

I won’t tell you start to finish about my tour of Dachau, because if you’re seriously interested you could undoubtedly find a better website with a more talented writer that can take you visually and historically through the whole camp. I’ll just tell you my impressions. I’ve been thinking a lot about my experiences today. I think they could be explained by one image that I just can’t get out of my head. I was sitting on the far end of the camp, near the memorials. The main barracks of the camp, where the prisoners were kept, were knocked down in the 1960s because they were decrepit. Only the foundations remain. On days like today, the sun beats down particularly hard on these foundations and the gravel paths around them. Being stone, they take this energy and radiate it around them. The effect is like we see on highways or savannas in summer. It’s as if shouts of horror from all those years ago were rising from the ground and shaking the air. It’s the first manifestation of the heavy atmosphere of the camp. One always hears writers use phrases like “The feeling of death was palpable,” or “It was a heavy atmosphere,” or “If these walls could talk…” and things like that. I’d never actually felt it till today. If the walls in Dachau could talk, they would scream. The vicious nature of this place is brought out by the camp motto, molded in iron on the entrance gate �Arbeit macht frei.� Work will set you free. This is a vicious truth. The only freedom one got in Dachau was death. And death was brought, in most cases, through overwork, like a bitter and compassion-free euthanasia.

Dachau is a heavy place. One feels the history, the violence, the barbarism. The feeling is brought to life by little simple explanations in different rooms like, “And this blank room in front of you is where countless prisoners were tortured to their death.” This takes a bit to sink in, but when it does, and is compounded by others, like “A man was executed for coughing on that spot you”re standing there,” the atmosphere is heavy and oppressive and sad. A look to the perfect sky above, the rolling fields beyond the fences, garners the question “How on earth could something like that have happened?” The only response to this question isn’t really a direct answer and is posted on the memorial, visible only when leaving, in five languages: Never again…

Mike’s Bike Tours
On a much, much lighter note, I passed this afternoon/evening on Mike’s Bike Tours. Yea, basically they give you a very silly looking bike with Harley Davidson hog handlebars that come up to your shoulders, and a little bell, usually in an embarassing neon color that used to be reserved for early 90′s spandex and MC Hammer video backgrounds. My tour guide (no, his name was not Mike) was a hilarious englishman named Jason. He’s been doing the tour for something like three years now, and when you weren’t being made to say “Wow…” at the historical or practical significance you were probably nearly falling off your bike you were laughing so hard. Definitely recommended to anybody in Munich. They do tours in Paris and Amsterdam, as well, apparently, so next time I’m in either of those places, I’m going to try and hit them up.

Lina, etc.
Yea, she didn’t try to kill me and we had a great night last night. We went out with her cousin and her cousins friends to the English garten. Definitely a fun time. Hope to see her friday as well. Much love, everybody. I hope all is well.
originally posted on 22 may 2002, edited because of embarassing mistakes 23 may 2002 and reposted.

Memoirs of a Geisha
Great book. The character of Sayuri is an amazingly intricate construction. That was probably the best thing about the book: the way one immersed oneself in the life and surroundings of Sayuri almost effortlessly. The greatest books bring you into their world and you don�t notice the difference until you put them down. Memoirs was such a book. Definitely recommended.

Cool conversations last night with Marie-Anne, from Quebec City, Quebec, and this guy from Hong Kong. Yes, he told me his name, but after the third time asking him to repeat it, I just nodded and said `Oh…� Chinese is going to be insanely difficult next year. I think his name had a Koi in it somewhere… One of the guys that runs the hostel, Martin, is a funky Australian guy with dreads. His day job is as an experimental DJ. He makes what he calls �Limited� or �Fractional� techno music. It is the easily the weirdest assortment of sounds I�ve ever heard. He makes the point that it can be really powerful on a big system with a lot of people around. While I�m sure that�s true, it still doesn�t quite jive with me. Chaq�un a son gout, I guess. He�s apparently pretty popular, though. One of the Irish guys standing at the counter while we were talking music said, after Martin had walked away, �That guy is a genius, man…� Then he walked away, too. The jury is still out.

Off to Munich tomorrow. Psyched. Probably staying at least one night in a hostel, after that we�ll see. After Munich it�s beautiful budapest for a few days, which I know nothing about, by the way, then Paris!

And, for the record, if I don�t write you an email, but I write an update here, don�t take it personally, that�s sort of the idea of this site is that it�s easier to update this one page than it is to write emails to the 50 odd people that are actively interested in my trip. A postcard… now that�s personal… Much love everybody.

Cork

…actually reminds me of Providence, minus the tall buildings. Ok, minus the tall buildings and anything done to it in the last 15 years. Yea, maybe Providence with no high rises in the dark ages of the 1980’s. There’s a nice looking river, about the breadth of the Providence River, running through the middle of town. To the east, a hill a bit smaller than College Hill, but with the same sort of sloping and plenty of antique looking houses. To the north, rather than a valley like we have in Providence, the hill curves around. Imagine elevating Pawtucket a few hunded feet and you’d achieve roughly the same effect.

When I wrote this down, the road I was on also sort of reminded me of Jeremy’s ‘funcut’ off 146 near his house. The bus driver’s driving like Jer, too, so, therefore, I feared for my life.

The municipal buses in Cork are the exact same as the ones in Sydney. Different upholstery, of course, and ad placements, but basically the same.

Blarney
Yea, I kissed the stone. Wasn’t quite what I envisioned. A lot smaller, for one, and the position you have to get yourself in is insane. I had these anglo-american tourist girls take my picture. I’ll try and upload it from Amsterdam or Berlin. There’s not really a whole lot to say other than I’m thankful I didn’t wreck my digital camera in the rain. That and more places should take American Express. Wow, was this my least inspired update yet, or what? Much love, guys.