Germany
Where does Mister P. eat when in Germany? Why, The Original American Hot Dog truck, of course!
I did one smart thing before I left on my trip. I knew for some reason that I should get an American Express card, so I ordeed one. It arrived in the mail the day before I left. Other credit companies can send you replacement cards, but that can take 2-3 days. With American Express, you can go to any of their travel stores and they can have a card waiting for you with about 12 hours notice. That was the good news. The bad news was that the nearest American Express store was a 3 hour train ride away in Berlin. Fortunately, they did had an office in Paris which was my next destination. I had my mother send me money via Western Union so I would have cash to pay for my hotel room, buy a train ticket to Paris, and oh yeah, eat. Between the bad exchange rate with the Euro and an 8% transfer fee, you don't get a lot of bang for your buck. But cash is cash.
I had to take a 30 minute train ride to Koln, then transfer to a 4-hour train ride to Paris. Originally I was going to spend my last morning in Germany in Koln and visit the giant cathedral there. But I needed to make it to the American Express Store in Paris by 5pm to pick up the new credit card. I wasn't going to have any time to go into town. At the Koln train station, I was trying to find an information booth to figure out where to catch my next train but it was tough. I spent about 10 minutes wandering around the station (dragging my luggage around with a broken wheel) when I stumble upon this: (look through the windows)
The giant Koln Cathedral is right outside the train station! I had about 20 minutes before my train left, so I ran (if you can call dragging luggage with you "running") outside to grab some photos. Ohhhhh..... Ahhhh.... 632 years to build and I spent about 3 minutes there.
Paris
Not a bad city, but too much art. I went to the Louvre and saw that Mona Lisa thingee. For years, I've had people tell me "you won't believe how small it is" after they've returned from Paris. I always envisioned it being painted on a canvas propped up on an easel, about the size of a poster you'd buy at Spencer's (without the black-light effects.), so I would have been surprised had it only been an 8x10 or 11x17 portrait. I was prepared for this tiny little picture and instead it looked huge; basically the exact size I expected it to be. What did surprise me was how bland the exhibit hall was. Considering how famous this painting is you'd think they'd at least put up some wallpaper in the room. Maybe something with clowns.
I went to Notre Dame and I really liked the gargoyles. I played around with some of the buttons on my camera and came up with some pretty neat effects... I think they look kind of ominous and scary like this.
Ah, it's good to back in America, right? Wrong. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, America sent France a 20 foot replica. (talk about cheap.) Paris apparently said "um, yeah... gee, thanks a lot. Let me think where I can put this..." and essentially stuck it in a closet. It's sitting far away from anything important on a little island in the Sienne next to an overpass. Silly.
Barcelona
I was on the subway and a guy came in and sat next to me. He had really bad B.O. I'm talking bad even by European standards (doh!). I didn't want to look rude by moving to another seat as soon as he sat down, so I figured I would stand up and get off at the next stop, run to the next car, and get back on the train. Since he could look into the car in front of us, I didn't want him to see what I was doing so I decided I would run to the car behind us. The subway stopped, I got out and started running to the next car. Only to discover that I had already been in the last car and there was no other car to go to. This went I would have had to run two cars forward instead. The doors only open for about 10 seconds, so I wound up getting stuck outside and having to wait for the next train.
Stupid smelly Europeans.
Barcelona also has a very impressive cathedral, but it's undergoing renovations. So what do they do? They drape a giant curtain over the front with an actual size PICTURE of the cathedral on it. Why not just leave the curtain up all the time? Sounds a lot cheaper to me.
I don't know if Gaudi was brilliant or insane, but he sure came up with some whacked-out buildings.
Barcelona is hosting something called "Forum 2004". I went to it, and I still don't know what it was. I guess it's sort of like a mini World's Fair, but the theme was something about opening a dialog about saving the planet and respecting diversity. It all seemed kind of silly to me. What I think really happened is that the Olympics reinvigorated the waterfront area here 10 years ago, and now the city wants an excuse to build a bunch of new high rise hotels to expand the waterfront.
I did catch some interesting shows, sort of. Imagine if Deiter was hired by Disney to come up with a show for their theme park; that's sort of what these were like. In the first, a giant orange comes up out of a lake and peels itself open. Then a bunch of chairs rise up out of the water, and 40 people in white wet suits swim out to them and stand on the chairs and watch the orange. The End. In the other show, a 40 foot animated mechanical cockroach watches a bunch of asian acrobats on trapeze while a guy rides around on a motor cycle. I'm not sure if the Cockroach was protecting the acrobats or wanted to eat them.
