Český Krumlov

"Really, Český Krumlov thrust itself upon me. There, one learns to appreciate the world from above."

- Egon Schiele, 1911

The town of Český Krumlov, pictured and described above, is really beautiful. It was about a 4-hour train ride from Prague, populated by about 15,000 South Bohemians, and home to a very pretty old medieval castle. The real reason it's famous, though, is because of this guy:



That's the painter Egon Schiele, and yes, I'm working on a hairstyle like his. He spent most of his time in Vienna studying with Gustav Klimt and painting with the other members of the Vienna Secession, until he died of Spanish Flu at age 28, but his mother was a Czech from Český Krumlov, and for a year or two in his career, he lived there doing landscape paintings and living, quite scandalously, with a 15-year-old model called Wally, who he later married. He was run outta town by the locals because he used to paint Wally naked in the garden all the time, which was pretty unacceptable, I suppose. He also painted creepy erotic portraits of her like this one.

After this trip, and after seeing his work at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, I'm a huge fan of Schiele, and it was cool to see his ancestral town, including, the Cafe Fink, where he used to drink and soak in the Bohemianness:



Here's me, soaking it in, too:



When we arrived at the train station, we saw a sign advertising free lodging in return for work, pinned to the station wall. We called the number and it turned out to be an American transplant called Bryce, who was totally hilarious. He picked us up from the station, and asked me what my mandolin was (my case was slung over my shoulder). When I told him, he said, "Dude, I've got some Grisman on in the car right now!" and we sped off to his 16th century farmhouse, just outside the town, where we spent 3 days hauling huge trashpiles of broken concrete, cleaning out store rooms, and burning brush so that he could get the place in working order. It looked like this:





We only worked in the mornings, then explored in the afternoons. It was a beautiful town. Here are some images.

A yellow house on the canal:



The chimney above the bicycle factory:



An old Catholic shrine, obviously torn out by vicious, godless, bloodthirsty Soviets of the bygone days:



The Hodinarstvi:



The castle, the Lord:



When we left, Bryce, who had been smoking a lot all week, said to us, "Yeah guys, go on, don't worry about it... The cycle must continue." We nodded our heads. It was the truth. Then we drifted down to Vienna.

Prague of a Good Time

I had been to Prague before, and wasn't wildly impressed, because when I was there it was summer and absolutely flooded with tourists. The Charles Bridge looked nice, I guess, but you couldn't see a single cobble stone for all the foot traffic. So this time, after Marmar and I conveniently missed our flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Bratislava -- a flight we booked 100% because of its low price tag -- because we went to an Eintracht Frankfurt soccer game, we sort of had to go somewhere, and an overnight bus to the capital of Bohemia was really the only option.

The story of the missed flight is this: We arrived at the train station in Frankfurt and noticed that everyone was wearing jerseys and scarves. Upon inquiry we found that this particular Saturday was a big grudge match -- Eintracht versus the East German team Energie Cottbus. We figured it would be scrappy. Cottbus won. We missed our flight because it turns out that RyanAir's crappy discount airport is 2 and a half hours outside of Frankfurt and there's only one bus. Word to the wise: never fly RyanAir out of Frankfurt.

Long story short is that the same thing sort of happened in Prague. We heard that Sparta, the local (and probably best Czech) hockey club was in a playoff game that day (I don't remember the name of th other team), but Czech hockey is totally ridiculous. For starters, you can take a look at the above picture, which shows some guy, most likely just a fan who they plucked from the beer garden outside, getting ready to sing the national anthem while surrounded by kneeling Spartans, in full battle regalia, making a wall of shields and spears around him. They kept showing scenes from that movie 300 on the Jumbotron. And the guy sang the entire national anthem with his microphone switched off.

It's a bit difficult to see here (even though that's sorta the point), but the ice was so covered with sponsor logos that you really couldn't see the puck at all. The same goes for the uniforms. You have to be a walking advertisment for like, Cserezky Roofing Co., if you wanna wear a Sparta jersey.



This is how close we were. Notice the Skoda logo. On the other side of the rink, there was an actual Skoda car, set up on risers, right next to the boards, blocking the view of an entire half-section of fans.



Oh, yeah, and there were cheerleaders. Who were made to sit in the aisles and get up and move whenever someone came back from the food stands with a large sausage and a beer.



And then there were the girls in mini skirts that had to sweep the ice between face-offs. Sort of a cut-rate zamboni. I liked this.



Cheerleaders danced at every whistle or stoppage of play.



And oh yeah, we saw all those regular Prague landmarks too. The astrological clock...



Casa de Kafka...



Casa de Mucha...

Haarlem World

Marmar and I decided during one of our days in Amsterdam that we wanted to see the real thing -- the place where hip-hop began, home of Puff Daddy, Langston Hughes, and recently, Bill Clinton. So we hopped on our bikes and rode southwest outta Amsterdam, along the canals and past a few honest-to-goodness windmills...



When we got to Haarlem, we were totally shocked. Where were the drug-corners? The drive-bys? Where was the Danger Zone that Big L used to talk about, with bitches, hos, and pimed-out rides? All we saw was gorgeous neo-classical architecture, clean streets, and people dressed in freshly-pressed Lacoste!



We rolled up to the club, expecting to get crunk, or at least a little hyphy, but found only craft wheat beers and portraits by Flemish masters...



Marmar got a little crunk, anyway, to liven up the bikeride home...



Where was the fried chicken? All we found were smoked herring sandwiches. And yes, Lunzaat's herring was in a class apart, but we were looking to suck on some marrow with our 40s. Shee-yit.



What a weird, confusing trip.

Utrecht

After a few days at Gutman Villa, we felt we had worn out our welcome, so Marmar and I skipped over the Utrecht, a banking/student town about 25 minutes' train ride away, for a visit with the ridiculous Rogier Jacobse, of Rickshaw Run fame. Utrecht is in some ways more beautiful than Amsterdam, because the embankments that run down to the canals aren't just walls that you bump your boat into when you dock. They have restaurants, shops, and promenades. Which means the canal-pathways of Utrecht are both two-levelled and twice as wide. To illustrate:




I'm not going to lie, I spent most of my time in Utrecht drinking and playing guitar while Rogier made silly and misogynistic R&B songs (most of which were variations on Akon's subtle, yet classic "I Wanna F*%k You"...). I did take in a few things, however. First of all, it is tulip season, as you all saw above, and here's the word "tulip" in Dutch:



This is the archway of the 15th century church. It was surrounded by outdoor cafes and pubs, thankfully, which made it a worthwhile thing to sit next to while drinking...



Oh, and Rogier illustrated to us, in no uncertain terms, the mediocrity of Dutch cuisine, by ordering this dish for dinner one night -- an appetizer platter of kroketten brood (Dutch croquettes), liver, and some other sausages...



Mmmmm, look at dat liver!



And then, the weirdest thing. Many of my Baltimore readers might recognize this sculpture from the BMA sculpture garden called "Large Boxing Hare on Anvil" (if you've never been to that particular sculpture garden -- go; it's got amazing work by this guy and by one of my favorite sculptors, Pablo Gargallo). Well anyway, this weird but awesome sculpture is by this dude called Barry Flanagan, and one of my days in Utrecht, we were walking down the street, and I saw a large bronze rabbit thinking, like the Thinker, with its paw under its chin.


[Large Boxing Hare on Anvil]


It looked like this:



Turns out Barry Flanagan makes weirdo sculpture of hares doing odd things like kicking and thinking and boxing, all over the world. There's one in the middle of Dublin, I hear. Anyway, "Thinking Hare," was an excellent piece, and I've decided to buy a Flanagan for my future front lawn. I'll commission it specially. It will be disco-dancing.

Whattaya think about that, Rogier?



Nevermind, he's not paying attention.

Passover in Amsterdam

I travelled central Europe with Alexander Marmar (nee Marmarovich), Esq., a good friend from college. He is seen above, in the composition "Hammerfest: Outside the Gate, 2007," which is a photograph I shot not 5 weeks ago outside of the casa de Gutman, on the Brauersgracht in Amsterdam. We stayed with the family of Felix Gutman, the uncle of my other good friend from college, Roy Blumenfeldensteinmankrantzblatt, for Passover. The house was absolutely amazing, and there was good cheer all around in commemoration of the Jews' liberation from slave life in the Land of Narrows to split-subdivision pre-med life in Garden City, NY. Rejoice!


...a hearty dayenu


...brisket, game hen, lamb chops


...old Israeli conversation, between old Israeli men

The craziest thing about Amsterdam (besides the weed), was once again the degree to which rich Europeans exaggerate their problems. Amsterdam is, quite literally, one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world, but all you see is stuff like this:



I'd live in a police state too, gladly, if half my income was subsidized by the government, if the entirety of society got off work at 4:30 and lounged at canal-side cafes, if marijuana was not only legal, but bred, studied, and produced by the world's top botanists, and if my house looked like this...



And if evenings on the Amstel looked like this...



Roy's uncle Felix owns Canal Bus and Canal Bikes, the two biggest boat services on the canals of Amsterdam. There is minimal competition, and if you've been on a tour there, you've probably padded Felix's retirement fund. It was good for me and Marmar, though, because we got free rides everywhere, with open bars and delicious dishes...



Indonesian soup with bamboo shoots and green veggie broth...



Various peanut-sauced and spicy wet-gravied Indonesian meat dishes. Indonesian food is the jam right now, all over Europe. It's delicious...



This is what a staircase looks like in a canal house. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of an 80-degree angle. The house are buily high and narrow, understandably, to fit around the canals. In addition, some of them are about 400 years old, which is an amazing thing to see, especially when the years are carved into stone plaques on the outside...



Some of them have been slowly sinking into the Dutch mush over that time. This picture is not taken with a fish-eye lens, but it looks like it. The houses are actually tilting in on one another. This is a back street somewhere in West-Central Amsterdam.



Here are some of the "modern" canal houses. It literally doesn't stop. Just miles and miles of houses with incredible views, beautiful facades, and monthly rents that make you turn down your ears and let your tail go limp.



The Bjorn Borg motorboat. Amazing. There's a hot new clothing brand in Holland named after the fashionably ridiculous Dutch tennis star. We wanted to buy some underwear -- you know, to gird our loins in the glory that is the John McEnroe foe who inspired the character of Richie Tenenbaum. We never got around to it. So we took a snap of this boat instead.



A bike, strapped to a canal overpass. Discuss.



Lovely day near the Anne Frank House.



And the man, himself, Felix (center) instructing Roy and friend Joe in the intricacies of billiards. We had a tournament later. I out-drank everyone, but ultimately lost the table games. I won in spirit, though. Damned if I didn't...

First Impressions of Europe

I arrived in Frankfurt from Madras, on my way home from India, after a long debacle that involved me losing my ticket (I left it in my apartment in Bombay), paying several hundred million dollars, purchasing some rugs from a newly-befriended family of Kashmiris in Madras, and falling asleep in the 104-degree Mahabalipuram sun (yeah, I used an internet Celsius-Fahrenheit converter) and waking up the color of raw London broil.

I keep telling people that no, I'm not culture shocked to be in America, because I spent two weeks in Europe first, and going from India to Europe to America is like going from 0 to 100 to 50. I remember on the ICE train from Frankfurst to Amsterdam, I looked out my window and saw a river, and that river actually had clear water in it. Then I looked a little longer, and noticed that the water had a swan swimming in it! And the swan was alive! It was unbelievable. I knew I was not in India.

In any case, here are the first three things I saw in Germany:



donuts.



sausages.



incredibly fast trains.

Coming to America

"Maaa, baaa, daaa-daaa...."
- Josie

Ok, so I'm not in India anymore. My Indian compatriots may have noticed this. I miss it like crazy. Right now I'm in Pittsburgh, but I've passed through 5 other countries and a few other American cities before I got here. I'm going to try to sort through my travels and post about them retrospectively over the next few days. But, as we all know, memories slip away by the day. I'll do my best.

In the meantime, it's important that you all realize that all travels end with a visit to Josie, who is shown here, after laying waste to some spaghetti, scarfin' on her current favorite victual, corn on the cob. Girl's got like 6 teeth now! And she talks! (sorta).

Stay tuned,
-Robbie.