A Year and a Day Ago

This is my journal entry from a year and a day ago. It’s a particular favorite of mine.

Watercolor Saints: 9/12/07

After a morning of class, I headed to Stefansdom with a group of girls. As you come up the escalator from the Underground, Stefansdom’s formerly white facade gazes down with a looming darkness. Its spires are beautiful, yet imposing. For the feeling I get when I see the outside of the church, I experience the opposite upon entering the church.

It is as if the flying buttresses stretch their arms to reach toward God. My gaze inevitably reaches heavenward. The towering stained glass windows raise their eyebrows to let in enlightenment and possibly distort it as they cast watercolors on saints below. There are pews for every saint-pews to worship, to observe, to sit and write. As I sit and write, a woman whose language I know not joins my pew and prays to a saint I know not.

The floor to vaulted ceiling pipe organ stands full of potential. I would love to hear it play. Its pipes have likely never heard of a cappella and the strength of his lungs will always outpower mine, yet its mechanical heart cannot worship alone. Then again, was mine ever intended to worship alone, either?

The Gothic speaks to me. Power and might shake hands with intricacy and air to point toward God. God of streaming light and dark wood. God of confession and crusade. God of Eucharist or communion, but don’t get  caught in the crossfire.

There’s a lot to be said about the cathedral’s worth-whether the money could be better spent, the praise more well-directed. Personally I think that when I walk into that church, I see God. As the church at the time of its construction was the sole means of communicating to the people about God, the most lavish building possible could not have expressed the nature of God that they wanted to communicate. The church is beautiful, towering, commanding, delicate, complex, powerful, gentle, masculine, feminine, deep, dark, light-it is in itself characteristics of the God toward which it points.

The End.

What am I doing a year and a day later? Watching a tivoed episode of yesterday’s The Soup, grading persuasive letters, and eating Poppyseed Chicken Casserole. But hey, tomorrow I’ll go to Charlotte.

I am inept

I realize that in regards to blog upkeep and information sharing, I am an abysmal failure. I haven’t blogged since Budapest. Budapest! In the time since Budapest I’ve been to Vienna, Rome, Florence, Venice, Messina, Ali Terme, Acireale, Palermo, Nurnberg, Erlangen, Copenhagen, Mjolby, Stockholm, Oslo, the Fjords, Munich, Bruges, Gent, Brussels, Berlin, and Prague. Even I didn’t realize it had been THAT long until I typed all of those out.

Obviously I can’t revisit all 21 of those places…Let’s see what I can do…

Italy: Was delicious and charismatic and chock full of history. Rome was…overwhelming in its significance. For so many reasons there is so much to take in. The Colleseum, The Roman Forum, Caesar, Diocletian, Nero, Christian persecution, Christian perseverence, Christian domination… Rome was heavy. I also ran into my roommate from my sophomore year (Jenni Stanley) in Florence-at the Colleseum and at the Trevi Fountain. Florence was great, especially for me. I spent the summer researching the Medicis, which turned into researching Florence and Michaelangelo as well. I saw the David. THE DAVID. And I got an offer to stay and live and eat in Florence. Venice was beautiful, but it didn’t treat me very well until the last day. It was rainy and cold and I repeatedly got lost for the first 2, but the extra day my group of girls spent in Venice was beautiful and perfect. Sicily was magical. It was a charmed trip. I ate the best food in all of Italy in Sicily. Some natives took me up a volcano and I rode a train on a boat.

Scandanavia: It was scandalous. It was cold, but not as ridiculously piercingly freezing as I expected. The fjords were beautiful, the food was amazing (the one time we ate it), and Mjolby was a gem among metropoli. Mjolby is the undiscovered diamond of Sweden. It has been said that Stockholm is the Venice of the North. Nay. Stockholm is the Mjolby of the West. Eat your heart out, Rick Steves. Mjolby is the place to be. Oslo was really great. It oozed culture from its pores, compensating for its tundra-like situation by appealing to the senses from every angle. And its museums were free. We showered very little, slept very little, but saw much.

There is, in fact, Thanksgiving in Europe, but only when the Americans make it so. We had a rousing, bustling, delicious dinner. It wasn’t home, and could never be, but it was a fitting tribute to that which we missed. There was green bean casserole.

The most recent (and last…wow…last) trip:
~Munich for the second time: Zak and I took a walking tour, which was great. I highly recommend the NewEurope free walking tours as a great way to spend time in a city. You learn things you never would just by walking around. That was the only city I’ve visited a second time, and it was a strange, slightly vertigo-esque sensation. We ate at the Amazing Hofbrauhaus for a second time, and I bought myself a small stein. I think it was better the second time than the first time. That could be said for all of Munich.
~Bruges: I wasn’t that excited to go to Bruges (Brugge), but it was all charm. And food. Our time in Bruges (in all of Belgium, really) focused on food. In one day I ate fries with samurai sauce (wow delicious), a waffle with strawberry sauce and whipped cream, hot chocolate with baileys, and some potato/cream/ham conglomeration of amazing. As early afternoon waxed into mid afternoon, we rented bikes to ride along the canals, the back streets, and into down until the late afternoon darkness.
~Gent: We stayed with the Brazles. It was so surprisingly welcome to stay in a house. They were so comfortable, had an adorable baby, and we ended up staying an extra night. Gent was as charming as Bruges with no tourists. But also with less food stands. We had a friend, Pieter, to tell us which waffles to eat in Gent.
~With our extra Belgium day, we went to Brussels. Capital of the EU, we also got along with Brussels famously. Same charming story in a huge city setting.
~Berlin: I loved Berlin and slightly lament the day of Berlin we sacrificed to stay in Belgium (while still cherishing that extra time). With the mere six hours we had in Berlin, we took the free walking tour. It was priceless. Our guide was excellent. He had a degree from Columbia, but decided to move to Berlin to be a dancer. It was just so obvious that he loved the history and the city. He was open and honest and charismatic, and you could see him baring his thoughts and growing as he retold a history that has shaped him. However many times he’d done that tour, he was obviously still processing and  evolving through it. At first I didn’t know what to think about him, but I really really appreciated him by the end. I want to go back to Berlin. Actually, I’d love to spend a really substantial amount of time there-to learn as much as I possibly could and then figure out how to convey it to future generations in a way that brings them as close to being there as is possible. There is an understanding that delves so much deeper when you’re processing war while standing on top of the parking lot that is formerly Hitler’s bunker where he poisoned his wife and dog and then blew his brains out as the Allies invaded. 
~Prague: The city and the architecture are gorgeous. The Kafka museum was great-wonderfully informative, and presented in a creative and powerful way. We also saw the Kafka statue. You should probably look it up on wikipedia. I won’t tell you what it looks like.

I have seven days left in Vienna. Seven days left in Europe. Seven days left before I grow up and step reluctantly into the real world (until some other avoidant scheme pops up, of course). I’m pretty excited to go home, but I feel like there are a thousand things I still want to do in Vienna. This three months has felt like forever and like no time at all. There is no way I can describe the passage of time here. As the friends I’ve made here become IM friends instead of communal comrades and experiences become memories, only time will determine how I’ve grown or changed over the last three months.

The Calm Before The Whirlwind

So tomorrow we go to a concentration camp. I feel like I should be more emotional about this, but alas…forcing yourself to feel emotional is worthless-canned and insincere. I am very interested in the holocaust. I think its fascinating. Possibly its because of that that I am desensitized to the atrocities (and they are just that-atrocious. Its not that I don’t think it is horrific. It just doesn’t make me cry as others emotions make me feel that it should.). I think it will be a really good thing to see, though.

Today was castle cleaning day. I haven’t actually done my castle cleaning duties yet because they don’t commence until midnight, but I did successfully pack nearly all of my stuff. We have to pack all of our stuff in a storage room while we’re gone on our 14-day trip. For dinner I went to this hole in the wall place on the 43. As we walked deeper into the “hole” it revealed itself as a charming cafe with outdoor seating. I ordered an Austrian Princess Brot which was a mystery to me. I knew it was bread with at least ham and cheese. When it came it was what I’ve been hoping for-to order something and get a dish I completely didn’t expect. It was a huge piece of baguette toast with sauerkraut, onions, cheese, ham, and a sunny-side-up egg! And it was delicious. I also ordered a Nutella Latte. It was also very delicious. This hole in the wall is now on my list of favorites.

So tomorrow after Mauthausen we’ll get back, eat something, and go to bed. My group is leaving around 5-something (I’m not sure of the exact time the train comes, so I’m not sure when we’ll leave) Monday morning to catch the train to Salzburg. In Salzburg I plan on strolling through the town as I have little to no interest in the Sound of Music tour, seeing as I’ve never seen the Sound of Music.