Madrid, Spain

First off, what the hell is this? There it is, nice and large for your viewing pleasure.

This is one of the first things you see stepping out of the Madrid train station. It’s really creepy. Seriously, though, what the hell??? I can’t get over it. It scared me again when I was going through the images in my folder. Man. And it’s huge! I don’t think you realize how huge it is. It’s like 8 feet high or so, like waaay taller than me.

Running into this is terribly ironic, because the Atocha train station in Madrid is famous for having an indoor tropical garden:
So the Madrid municipal government made a huge point of making your first footsteps into Madrid tropic and magically green and all those good things. And of course, I went right onto the subway, so I completely missed it. I didn’t miss this though:

Anyhow, Madrid. Very nice city. It immediately feels sunnier than Paris or London. The first thing I did was make friends with strangers and go visit the park nearby. (Park del Buen Retiro):

We were lost in it for over three hours. Besides the weather, it was really something special. I must’ve lay (lied?) on the grass for an hour.
Yes… I’ve apparently documented every single moment of this trip. I am pathetic. 

I even stumbled upon more swans, actually:They make them in this colour?

For once, I’m going to take a moment to discuss the hostel I stayed in! It’s called “Cat’s hostel” and apparently it’s from the 18th century and is considered to be a national landmark. All this to say - look at the gorgeous living room:

Just like I heard everyone in Ireland drinks (and I didn’t believe it, and it turns out they do), I’ve heard that Spain runs on a different schedule than everyone else. Things like “they eat dinner at 9 o’clock, they go out at 2 and stay out until 7, etc…” Well, I didn’t do either of those things, but apparently they’re fairly true, as well.

I went out on Thursday night – I was thankfully home by only 4. It sounds like I’m being sarcastic or trying to be hyperbolic, but everyone else came home so much later, actually… I thought I’d be home for 2 or 3, but I didn’t factor in going out for the best Churros in the city:
They really are divine. Rival poutine for a midnight snack, even. (Although poutine is a better all around meal, though.)

While we’re discussing food, here’s Orad enjoying local empanadas: I make it look really appetising, eh?

I also accidentally ordered the most wicked egg sandwich:

I lived a couple of minutes from Plaza del Sol:

It’s littered with hilarious costumed people trying to tempt tourists:

It’s also considered to be the ‘ground zero’ for the postal coding system in Spain:
Yea, I know it’s not that huge of a deal, but I stood in the center of Spain for a moment.

A lot of the buildings in Madrid are extremely gorgeous, as well:

I went to Plaza Mayor. Not sure what this square is famous for, but in the daylight it’s a tourist trap (and probably a pick-pocketer’s dream, too):

Madrid, as the capital of Spain, is also the home to the Royal Palace:

Next door is the Almudena Cathedral:

Inside is another spectacular organ, though less impressive than the one in Coventry, and nobody was playing it when I came to visit:  
My second night in Madrid, I went to a Jazz bar. Madrid is apparently one of the Jazz capitals of the world. The ticket was a bit pricey, but definitely worth every penny by the end of it. Playing was the Pepe Rivero trio, a Cuban trio consisting of a pianist, an upright bassist and a drummer. They played a set that riffed on Chopin; it was phenomenal.

Finally, before hopping on the train today, I went to go visit Miro, Dali, Tapies and Picasso at the Sofia:

I learned about these guys at Julien’s grand-father’s. I can sort of recognize them, now, though I won’t pretend to understand (or appreciate) most of them.

There, I saw the Guernica. (No pictures allowed, for once!) I also saw this interesting thing:
Not sure who made it, but I appreciated it. I figure someone else out there might, too.

Madrisms
(Snoop Dogg speaking Spanish?)

-I’m so excited about this one:

-Another outdoor bathroom (sorry, water closet). This one cost 30 cents, though. These are starting to become fairly common, so I’m probably going to stop taking pictures of them everywhere.
Speaking of bathrooms, in an effort to save 30 cents I stepped into Starbucks. Check out this security system they had installed:
I got around it, of course. People leave receipts lying around everywhere.

-Hotdogs. In. A. Can. You have no idea how hard I had to resist buying this.

-Madrid is very into ham, actually. Beginning with the (apparently extremely successful deli franchise) Ham Museum (Museo del Jamon):

-On to their flavours of chips:

Other things unrelated to Madrid, but that I’ve sort of picked up there:

Apparently there’s a “Rutherford” building in Manchester, UK. Apparently, his bust sits at its entrance, too.

Useful list of famous Canadians (a response to ‘nothing good has ever come from Canada’ – mainly directed at Americans):

• Sidney Crosby (especially since the Olympics – Americans really hate that)
• Jim Carey
• Mike Myers
• Wayne Gretzky
• The Barenaked Ladies
• The Arcade Fire (for some)
• Alanis Morissette  (for others)
• The guy who invented Basketball (they always challenge this one, and wikipedia always owns them)

What not to mention:

• Avril Lavigne
• Nickelback
• Celine Dion

Back in Paris (for one day)

An overnight bus is a bad idea. It’s really really tough to fall asleep when riding in a bus. In a plane or train, smooth rides, you’re fine, but the turning and jerkiness of the bus kept waking me up.

And then, just as I was dozing off, the bus driver gets to our destination - an hour early. What is one supposed to do at 6:30 in the morning?

So I walked into town from the train station. Sure, it took 2 hours, but I got to see more of (non-central) Paris that way. I got to see things like this:  The physicists in the audience are clawing at the screen right about now.

This extra day in Paris gave me a chance to do a few things I didn’t get to last time. I went for a walk in Paris’s islands. There, I finally got to eat ice cream at Bertillon:
Pink Raspberry and Mango. Actually very delicious. Clearly.

I also visited the Notre Dame cathedral again:
Why ‘again’? Here I am at the cathedral with Julien way back in 2004:  I promise that this is the same building. Wikipedia says that I took a picture of the East side, this time. Whatever.

Speaking of Julien, I went to visit his grand-parents (Andi and Denise) really quickly while I was in town:

I also got to relive my favourite Paris memory of sitting in a Park with a pastry and some milk:

Things I forgot to mention about Paris last time:

-TV times start at really awkward hours. Say 8:35 or 8:40. And sometimes they skip commercials and then just show them all in a row at the end.

-The sounds in the metro and train stations sound like the commercials in Bioshock. (It’s a video game, you probably haven’t played it – the gist of the reference is that it’s set in the 50s.)

More funny things about Paris:

And this kid is cool:

After my overnight bus from London to Paris I took an overnight train from to Madrid.  (I’m on an overnight train from Madrid to Lisbon right now, actually.)

On the topic of the overnight trains, imagine my surprise at the Parisian train station when I saw this:
In the picture, you can barely make out that the Madrid train was cancelled (due to a strike – the second time I’ve been foiled by a strike in Paris, the first on my quest for wifi one day). I was told that I’d either have to take a coach bus or I’d be allowed to sleep in the train overnight and would take the day-long train ride the following day. I opted to take a train to Barcelona and then connect to Madrid from there. I got to Madrid at noon the next day, still faster than any of the options I was presented, and I got to sleep in a bed on the train!

Tomorrow – Madrid!

Also, this is embarrassing.

Back in London

I really wasn’t expecting to be back here until June, when I’d be catching my flight home. Fate had different plans for me, apparently. I ended up catching a Eurostar from Brussels to London on the first of the month in order to meet my cousins from Israel, who were staying by the Marble arch for a week.

It’s a good thing they’ve been a few times already, because it meant that I didn’t have to go see the usual sights again. Not that I have anything against Big Ben, but I just saw him less than a month ago!

It’s also a really good thing that Apratim’s (the guy who roomed with me in Dublin) family is so amazing and welcoming. I stayed with them for about a week, and they didn’t even bat an eyelash. I ended up extending my stay, up from the original three nights, and they remained warm and inviting. They didn’t waste any time making fun of me, however. (To be fair, I deserved it.) Apratim’s mother Mira took to calling me ‘Professor’, the Harvard physics student who got lost on the London trains and ended up having to take a cab home at three in the morning… Seriously, though, they were absolutely awesome, and if anyone can think of a better way of thanking a family than pie and donuts, I’m all ears.

London is really great. I could easily see myself spending a lot more time in this city. (The fact is, I might have to, what with my Eurail train pass expiring weeks before my flight home from Heathrow airport!) With my cousins, I hopped onto the metro and got off at random stops to experience London. Like Covent Gardens, for example:

or the markets at Camden Lock:

or Chinatown:

Or Trafalgar Square:

They also took me to see a play – Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Pretty awesome – tells the story about drag queens on a road trip in the Outback in Australia. I definitely recommend it, if my opinion is worth anything to you.

I spent quite a bit of time with Apratim and Ankita’s family, as well. This stop (in London) felt much more like ‘coming home’ than being on the road traveling, and I really enjoyed it. It was nice to have phone numbers to call and people my age to hang out with and not feel under too much pressure to see sights and find where to live. London is a pretty awesome city, as well, so I really don’t have much to complain about.

Londonism time!

-Diet Pepsi is called “Pepsi Light” here (and, I suspect, in much of Europe as well):I’ve noticed many marketing differences like these, and I find it interesting how international companies seem to think that certain things just can’t be marketed the same way to different people on the other side of the world… even though we’re all just human anyway…

-A Shell gas station:
 I haven’t seen too many gas stations around, but this is the first I’ve noticed with a brand I recognize! And, apparently, gas is ridiculously cheap at it!

-A restaurant by a Dr. Seuss fan, I guess:

-Speaker’s Corner: It’s an amazing concept – every Sunday (and Easter Monday), people can go to Hyde Park and stand on a box and yell out their thoughts. I think it’s an amazingly powerful democratic ideal, but the day I went, at least (and hopefully not too often), it was only being lead by a bunch of crazies.

Right now, I’m on a 10 hour train from London to Paris. I’m going to spend the day in Paris, and then ride an overnight train to Madrid. While traveling around, I’ve met a few people in Madrid, so hopefully one of them will reply to my e-mails.

Oh, an update on me? Well, I’ve lost about 15 lbs since I left home, and I’ve started actually budgeting properly. I broke my camera (documented), busted my GPS (it won’t charge – I must have fried it)  and have left behind half a dozen socks and a tube of toothpaste (all restocked, so far). I’ve been trying to compulsively back up my images online, in case my laptop croaks as well. (Try and get a good night sleep tonight, Mom. :p)

I’m beginning to learn when it’s worth it to bite the bullet and spend more money on travel (no Ryan!) and about how long in advance is late enough to book hostels. I’ve also learned that every “city center”, though interesting and most accessible, is not where the real heart of a city is. (It’s almost impossible for a tourist to find that without any help, though, as both your intuition and your guidebook always steer you towards there.)

Brussels, Belgium

I’m not going to lie, Brussels began as a huge disappointment. But, as time passed, I ended up regretting the fact that I had to leave so soon. (I ended up only spending about 24 hours there!)

What gave me the bad first impression? Well, for starters, the Brussels municipality has made no effort to keep its city clean:I have about a dozen pictures of graffitied walls and houses. Even some statues and monuments are graffitied. It’s on the buses, too. It just makes the whole city look disgusting, and makes a lonely traveler really not feel safe.

Besides this, the buildings aren’t even as grand and majestic as they were in other cities:
As you can see, the day I arrived on  was particularly gloomy, as well.

You get faint reminders that it’s still a European city like the others, though. For example, the Grand Plaza:
 The picture linked to above in wikipedia is taken on some national event and is much more glamorous – I encourage you to take a look.

But even then, you really feel like you’re in tourist land. You walk over to see the Manneken Pis:
But are then mobbed by tourist shops, waffles shops, and little Pis figurines. Let me tell you, these people really do love their Manneken Pis:
I’ve read that “the pissing boy is the ideal national symbol for a country that is also very small and absurd.”

It takes a bit of walking out to start really getting a glimpse of the appeal of this city:

I found this awesome map made by locals that said it best:

Brussels is ugly, and we love it. And if we don’t love it, we live with it. So don’t be surprised that we built a terrible apartment block next to an Art Nouveau jewel, or a pseudo-classical monster in front of the Central Station.

The city certainly doesn’t wow you, but you must admit that it has a certain charm that grows on you with time. I mean, fair is fair – Montreal certainly doesn’t stack up with any of these European cities, but I still believe it’s the best city I’ve been in so far.

I went to go visit the Magritte museum. After walking out, I had a better appreciation for what was being displayed outside of it:

Speaking of Magritte, it’s easy to understand what inspired him in this city. On the first day, it rained, but look at how amazing the sky looked afterwards!

During my stay, I got to the musical museum – it’s known to have many kinds of instruments. It’s also laid out pretty interestingly – you’re given a headset that somehow communicates wirelessly with the instruments displayed in front of you, and you get to listen to them as you watch them!  This museum had a whole bunch of intricate, beautiful and obscure instruments:

I also went to the ‘Délirium Café’, a bar that’s famous for having the most types of beers available in the world. I was recommended to go there by these Americans I met in Amsterdam. “Was it fun?” I asked. They answered, “I don’t remember, so, yea.”

I also went to the European Union Parliament. (Did you know that Brussels was the capital of the EU? For this reason, Brussels is an incredibly European city – there’s a ‘Europa strip’ that has restaurants and stores from every country in the EU.)

It turns out that Brussels is actually a beautiful place. It’s just that, contrary to Paris, where you might accidentally stumble upon a gorgeous statue or building, in Brussels you might have to look for it.

Belgisms:

- I had a Belgian waffle:
Standing beside me is a Scottish girl named Catherine who, it turns out, actually knows my friend Stuart from McGill. Small world… (Also I learned that Scotland is part of Britain, not England, and that Britain along with Northern Ireland form the United Kingdom. Mustn’t forget, mustn’t forget…)

-I had fries (“chips”) in a cone:
and yes, I had to pay for the sauce on them.

-Brussels has the most wicked metro-warning-system-thing:
So get this – the little red dots actually tell you where the other metro cars are on the rails! I think that’s phenomenal. It also tells you how long until the next car shows up, but the metro systems in Paris and London also do that, so it’s less awesome.

The next stop is London (again) for about a week – a pair of Israeli cousins let me know (kind of last minute) that they were going there, so I hopped on a Eurostar to join them. After that is Paris for a day, then Madrid!

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting: Amsterdam.

     
I am such a huge fan of this city’s look and feel. Every other street has a canal on it, and the buildings are all skinny and tall, and completely mismatched. You usually have to walk up several floors of a winding staircase to get anywhere in any of them.

People are also crazy into biking. I mean crazy:

There are bike lanes everywhere, and bike-specific traffic lights.You can also rent a bike for cheap. Locals usually own several bikes, as well. The reason for all of this is quite clear immediately – the whole city only spans several blocks. You can comfortably walk from the furthest canal to central station in about 30 minutes, so with a bike you’re always at most 10 minutes away from anywhere else in the city. In fact, now that I think about it, the streets aren’t all really designed to accommodate car traffic, but that doesn’t really seem to bother anybody.

It’s also quite a relief to be somewhere (relatively) affordable, for once. London, Dublin, Paris… then losing my camera! My wallet was starting to cry for help.

So, how’s Amsterdam? This place is basically a giant tourist trap. Everyone speaks an almost fluent English, and there are hardly any locals around. The few I found said they actually live (or were born) outside of Amsterdam (--which made me realize: in my whole life, and all of my travels, I’ve never met anyone who said they were ‘from Amsterdam’. Have you?)

This revelation makes their slogan incredibly awkward:
This is Amsterdam’s response to ‘I (heart) NY’. This might be a veiled reference to the fact that most of the population consists of tourists or foreigners.

Speaking of ‘English’, I wanted to mention how amazing the universality of the English language is. This trip has made me realize how so very lucky I am to be born in a country whose first language is English (well, mostly). The fact that everyone here speaks English makes it feel like everybody’s catering to me. More interestingly, however is that English is every foreigner’s language of choice, too. Everybody I’ve met, be they French or Israeli, uses English to get around in a country where Dutch is the official national language. I’ve found myself in many awkward circles with a German and a pair of kids from El Salvador, all speaking in broken travel English, in Holland. It’s so easy to take it for granted when you’re in Canada, but out here it makes me feel very lucky.

Here are pictures of the famous sights:

Dam Square:

And right across from it, the Royal Palace:
Yea, I totally came during the right time of the year, eh?

The Red Light district:

And while we’re discussing that, here are a bunch of swans and ducks chilling in a canal on the district:
I’ve actually met quite a few swans in my travels. I really don’t know why they keep following me…

Amsterdam is peppered with what they call ‘coffee shops’. In my naiveness, I didn’t pick up right away why they weren’t calling them cafés, but I learned quickly. There is basically no equivalent to this kind of store in Montreal, or, well, in much of the rest of the world, for that matter. You step in and are presented with a menu which lists any and every breed or type of drug, priced by gram. From my experience, these stores are never run by locals,  and nobody let’s you take a picture of them… or of, well, many of things in them.

However, like in much of the rest of the world, you’re not allowed to smoke in bars, tobacco or otherwise. You are often provided with a smoking room, though.

Now because of these coffee shops, many of Amsterdam’s streets smell, which is incredibly unfortunate for the image of Amsterdam I tried to describe in the opening paragraphs of this post. Just walking through the streets is such a pleasure, and getting a sniff of drugs often spoils the ambience, in my opinion.

Speaking of streets, what the hell is up with their crazy naming scheme? Everything from the restaurant menus to the tram system  are designed to cater to (American) tourists, but none of the streets have a name that’s even pronounceable by an uninitiated Anglophone. Just pick a spot at random on googlemaps to see what I’m talking about.

Oddly, for all the partying the tourists do, this city more or less shuts down at 1 o’clock. Surely, the red light district stays open for business, but I’m not really into that, I guess, so I had nothing better to do but walk home.

What was the coolest thing I did while in Amsterdam? Attended a Passover Seder:
(Obviously I’m not allowed to take pictures inside…) The more people I mention this too, though, the less awesome it sounds – people keep bringing up friends who went to seders in more exotic parts of the world (Nepal, the Philippines…) so, yea…

I also went to the Van Gogh museum. Just as I went to see the London Eye on its anniversary, I was lucky enough to visit Gogh on his birthday! There were no celebrations and nobody else seemed to have noticed. (Pictures are not allowed in that museum.)

I also visited Rembrant’s house.

Time for Amsterdisms!
(or Dutchims..? That’s not as funny…)

-Coin operated food!
 

-The tram/bus system is really weird. For starters, it almost operates on the honours system – if you dont swipe, the driver will likely not say anything. In many cases, nobody’s actually monitoring you to see if you do swipe your card. Besides that, they have a few ticketing systems – the first, for 2.50 Euro a ride, you get to travel for free for an hour. They also have a strip card, (which you can’t even buy in the subway system, only in book stores or grocery stores) which, for only 7.60 Euro, gives you 15 slots to punch in. But every ride costs you 2 slots… I have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with this system…

-Another outdoor bathroom! (I only saw one my whole stay there, on my way to the train station.)

-Tulips!

-In Holland in general, apparently, you have to pay for ketchup…? (or mayo, or any kind of sauce with your fries…)

Finally, on the topic I brought up a couple of posts ago discussing the difference between North America and Europe, I stumbled upon a funny and topical image on reddit the other day (Click to enlarge):
(By the way, you might not have noticed this, but the European ‘natural wonders’ listed are the Cliff of Moher that I visited in Galway on March 14th.)

As usual, I’m on a train while typing this – I’m on my way to Brussels for a day or so. I actually have no idea what to expect there, so I’m going to snap this laptop shut and read up on it in my trusty guidebook.

PS: I’m sorry that these are getting long; I had originally intended for each post to be bite-sized, but for that I’d need to post more often, and I’m often too tired or busy to do that when I’m not on a train. It looks like I find it easiest to post once per city, which is about every 4-6 days.