Scenes from Italy and Germany

Okay, I think this'll be my last post primarily about that first side trek. I wanted to get at least a few more thoughts out there before they're too far gone.

Some of my favorite moments were not seeing some of the great and well-known sites. Rather, there were just various points in time, whether it was during a meal, or while in transit, when I just felt particularly in tuned with my surroundings, such that they felt completely normal and yet so far from it. These were times when I had to just look around and smile and sit in disbelief that I was in just that particular situation at just that time.

They were also the times I most wanted to be able to be directly plugged in here to really capture in real-time a verbal snapshot to preserve indefinitely. They weren't necessarily photogenic moments (although sometimes I tried), as you would need a full 360 degree camera as well as recorders for at times all 5 of the senses to really capture what was special. A written description, if done well, is as close as you'll come.

Some, unfortunately, were so fleeting that they're already gone. But I'd like to try and recapture a few of the key ones here before they are as well.

I'd say the first one actually did come at a well-known site. I really took my time enjoying the Colosseum my second day in Rome. As I mentioned, it was my only real "objective" for the day, and I got in early and was in no rush. After the guided tour, I spent a good hour and a half to two hours just walking around the structure, and at one point, had a seat on some of the stone steps on the upper level at the center of the arena ("on the fifty", as I kept chuckling to myself).

I sat there, enjoying the shade and the still-mild morning sun and just let my imagination roll. I tried to recreate in my mind the splendor of what it must have looked like when the walls and walkways were covered with marble and gold decor. I tried to listen to the crowd, and to see the battles unfurling below me. I chuckled about how I need to see "Gladiator" again.

I've spent a remarkable amount of time in my life in sports arenas, including (IMHO) the largest and grandest one that the US has to offer. I tried to correlate what the ancient Romans must've felt walking into that arena for an event, to how I feel each time I enter a stadium. I wondered if they tailgated.

The next several that stand out would be in Florence. My first (and second) impressions of Florence were fantastic. The first was walking from the train station to the hotel. I came in on a Sunday afternoon, and arrived at the smaller, secondary station on the east side of town, as it was closer to the hotel. My route therefore didn't take me near the city center, which was bustling (though still no way comparable to Rome). Rather, it went through a pleasant, quiet residential neighborhood. One thing that struck me about Rome was that in my time there, I never saw anything that seemed like a pleasant place to live. I'm sure they were there, but I just never made it to those parts. All I saw were historic sites, shops, restaurants, commercial/government buildings, and in the suburbs along the route in from my hotel, tons of run-down, ugly high-rise apartments.

Florence was a striking change from the start. These quiet streets lined with pleasant, 3-4 story apartment buildings barely noticed nor cared that I was treading on their Sunday afternoon nap. Indeed, there were hardly any inhabitants or traffic around. It was a most blissful reprieve from the noise and crowds of Rome.

Later that evening, I set out to have dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel. The hotel was situated on a parkway that was fairly major by Florentine standards. Across the road was, in fact, a pleasant little park that ran along the Arno River. The sidewalk patio looking over across the street to the park was quiet, shaded, and the perfect place to take a meal. A tasty pizza was accentuated by a 1/2 litre of vino della casa, rosso (house red wine), which at 6 euro, I had thought would be little more than a glass or two. Heh. It was much more and plenty for enough for 2, let alone 1. After dinner, now with a nice buzz on, I took a stroll along the river, and the infatuation I'd developed with Florence that afternoon was sealed into love. And I hadn't even made it into the city center yet. The walk along the river was just before dusk; the temperature perfect and the skies were beautiful. The river rolled quietly by, over the man-made dam that strangely cut a diagonal swath across the it. Bridges crossed at either ends of a lengthy stretch and the city hummed with a quiet, but vibrant buzz.

The next one, and the one that stands out as the most off-the-wall, last-places-I'd-ever-envision-myself came while sitting at the train stop on the Italian-Austrian border. The Alps were towering around us, and the conversations with Franco and Martina had been in full swing. But there was a lull as we were sitting there and I just took a mental step back for a second and thought about where I was. Had my phone battery not been nearly dead, I would've tried to mail in a post right then and there. The Alps? Northern Italy? Austria? On my way to Germany? The whole magnitude of the situation just swirled around me, anchored by the apparent normalcy of it.

The first night in Munich there was actually one such moment that I was able to blog live (here). It's probably a good thing I did too, because after what followed that night in the hostel, I'm not sure I would've had the inclination to go back and right anything pleasant about the experience. But that evening was most definitely one of those moments.

I suppose alcohol has a tendency to help create or at least add to these moments, so its no surprise that lunch in the beer garden at Hofbrauhaus and the beer tent at Fruhlingsfest both qualified. At the Hofbrauhaus, the brass band blasting out live music and the Best Pretzel I've Ever Had were the golden touches that polished off a scene set with a pleasant fountain in the middle of a small, enclosed courtyard, with a nearly impenetrable canopy of chestnut trees providing shade. Looking up, only a few specks of the perfect blue sky above could be seen through the large green leaves.

The beer tent couldn't be more different of a setting, and yet the ambiance among the people was the same. Table after table, person after person, enjoying the setting, the conversation, the music, and drinking the same huge beers. But oh yes, the setting was different. The beer tent was probably eight times the size of the courtyard at Hofbrauhaus. Maybe more. Along one side were food and beer vendor stations. Along the other were what were apparently private boxes--small mini patios one next to the other with small picket fences separating one from each other, and from the main area in the center. Ornately decorated signs labelled each one. At the front, of course, was the stage, from where the Cagey Strings belted out an amusing blend of country, oldies, classics and hard rock. When a band can jump seamlessly from Lynard Skynard to AC/DC after having completed some Little Richard, with a bona fide country song I didn't recognize in between, you know you're onto something special. Of course, in between the food vendors, the private boxes, and the stage, were row upon row of picnic tables, jam packed with people enjoying the moment. Occasionally a group would get up and dance on their table.

As far as the physical appearance, what stood out to me the most, other than the sheer size of it, were the buntings hanging from the ceiling bearing the blue and white diagonal checked pattern of the flag of Bavaria. There was something about the coolness of the colors and the vibe that they gave off that was very welcoming.

Among the general in-the-moment feeling the entire time I was in the beer tent (which, really wasn't all that long. Feeling a stranger in a strange land, I found an empty seat and had a beer, but without conversation to sustain the night, I moved on after it), I had one specific moment when I had to chuckle and think about some friends a few thousand miles away. At one point, the band started into Alabama's "Hey Baby". Each time they'd draw out that "Heeeyyyyyyyyy, hey-ey baaaby" line, I couldn't help but chuckle, smile and add in a whispered voice, "Go Wildcats!" in the beat that followed and think of all my Northwestern alum friends back home. (For those not privileged enough to have attended an NU football game, that's a standard musical cheer of the Northwestern Marching Band.)

I suppose first setting off into the streets of Ulm was yet another similar experience. Here I was walking out of a train station into a town that I knew absolutely nothing about, save for that it shared its name with my great grandmother's family and that it had a beautiful cathedral which my grandfather had been fascinated by. Oh yeah, and that it had been compared to Des Moines.

It was a different sort of experience for sure, as it was the one time on the entire trip when I really felt I was well off the beaten path of the tourist. Finding the town to be full of pleasant little surprises was an unexpected bonus, but when I first set foot up the street from the station, I had to just shake my head and wonder what the hell I was doing there.

For as cool as Venice was, you'd think it would be chock full of little episodes like this. But for the life of me, I can't really think of one that stands out as being a great in-the-moment vignette. Maybe the whole time was like that and no particular moment ever stood out? Maybe I was too fatigued at that point from a week's plus worth of travels piled on with tons of walking around winding, tiny streets that never seemed to lead where I though. Whatever the reason, Venice was pleasant, but the lack of reasonably priced net cafe's was apparently not much of a burden at that point, as there was little that jumped out as a scene that absolutely had to be painted in words to be remembered.

I'm looking forward to painting many more scenes in the future, both from Normandy next week, from my travels in Scotland next month, and from the rest of my time in Ireland.