Copyright (C) 2003 Adam Boggs
Hello Again from across the creek...
Last time I wrote I was leaving Barcelona. I mentioned the Gaudi park and cathedral, but left out a couple of key experiences from Barcelona. First, the name of the Gaudi Cathedral is Sangrada Familia. I forgot to mention it, and a couple of people asked. Very cool architecture. In addition, I went to the Picasso museum which had a bunch of early works of Picasso. Many of them were from when he was 15 years old or so, and are absolutely amazing. Very different from his later cubist work which I really don't appreciate as much as some people do. I mentioned that I saw Velazquez's "Las Meninas" at the Prado museum in Madrid. Picasso became obsessed with that painting and did a series of paintings in his own style that were very interesting. It was a thought experiment on what happens when you take someone else's vision and transform it into your own by shifting things a little, changing the quality, etc, but maintaining the theme of the image. I enjoyed looking at them very much after seeing the original Las Meninas in Madrid. Interestingly, Dali also did a few paintings of the girl from Las Meninas that I saw in his museum in Figueres, Spain.
One of the more memorable experiences from Barcelona that I forgot in my last message too was the bullfight I saw. I have to say that I have really mixed feelings about it! On one hand, I thought it was something I should see since it really is part of the history and culture of Spain. The killing of the bull can be rather gruesome though and it made me feel a little ill. I felt the bulls were basically toyed with (albeit typically in a very elegant and skilled way) before being run through with the sword, and even then it takes a minute or two before the bull goes down. It's not always so clean and sometimes they had to try multiple times. It would be ok if they did one or two, but I left after the 5th bull, feeling like I had seen enough.
From Barcelona I took the night train to Arles, France. Arles is a tiny little nothing town in the Provance region of France, which is south and east. It gave me a little time to decompress after spending time in Madrid and Barcelona, and practice my French... "Bounjour! Merci! Au Revoir!" They have a very sing-songy way of speaking there that I guess is characteristic Provance French. For the life of me I have not been able to find an English/French phrasebook anywhere, which surprised me because considering how proud of their language the French are, I would have thought a phrasebook would be much more common. As I was warned, the French are reluctant to admit they know any English, and I'm convinced they're reluctant to admit they speak French too. I sat down at a Cafe my first morning there, and ordered some coffee successfully. Then I wanted a croissant, so I said in my best (bad) french accent "Kwa-SANT" and she looked at me funny for a minute. So I tried again, a little different. "QUA-sa" She kept asking other english words that were nothing like the little pastry that they have that is normally served with COFFEE for BREAKFAST. So I tried a couple of more times for saying in a flat english accent "Croissant". "Ahhh! Kwa-sant!" Isn't that what I said the first time? Anyway we did eventually communicate, but it seemed more difficult than previous experiences.
In Arles I met a couple from the US who had a car and were heading up to Avignon, where I was thinking of going. I wanted to see a beekeeper who gave tours right outside of the city and they had a car which made it easier. Unfortunately, we never made it. But we did see the Papal Museum in Avignon, where the Pope moved Rome (since Rome is wherever the Pope is) during the 14th century when Rome had a lot of political unrest. It was interesting, but a long tour.
Time to get out of Arles, and instead of heading down to Nice, the center of the French Riviera (and major tourist destination), I went north to Lyon. My friend Lara who is living in Switzerland was going to be out of town when I finally made it by there, so I decided to beat the heat in Italy and go to Switzerland first. So Lyon was on the way. I ended up staying in my first real youth hostel, which had an amazing view of the city from on top of the hill. There were a bunch of people to socialize with, and I ended up touring around the city with an austrailian girl I met who was teaching english in Hong Kong. We managed to see a good chunk of the city in one day... good views from the hill, art museum, park, square, etc. It was fun to just wander around. The city (3rd largest city in France) had a nice feel to it, but nothing extremely interesting to do.
After Lyon, I headed to Lausanne, Switzerland to visit my friend Lara who is going to school there. It was so nice to be able to meet up with an old friend. We grabbed some dinner and spent Sunday walking on Lake Geneva, which is also bordered by Geneva which I didn't stop in. Lara has a busy schedule with school though, so on monday I headed into the heart of the Swiss Alps: Interlaken, which, as the name suggests, sits between two lakes, the Thunersee to the west and the Brienzersee to the east. I got off in Thun (pronounced TUNE) at the last minute instead of taking the train all the way to Interlaken, and caught the ferry which goes across lake Thunersee in a roundabout but very scenic way. And, with my Eurail pass, it was totally free. Nice last minute decision! The mountains here are amazing, even by Colorado standards. They are rough and rocky, and Heidi is really running around in pigtails.
Ok, not really, but there are a lot of cows here. I took the train up into the mountains to a small town called Grindelwald, and then on to Kleine Scheidegg, which lies right at the base of these amazing mountains I keep speaking of. I had just a daypack and a bib to catch all the drool. I took over 100 pictures, but don't feel any of them did any justice to these amazing views. Oh yeah, back to the cows... so I was gawking at the mountains on my hike when I came over a hill and stopped, just as a whole heard of cows looked up at me. They all have bells on, and I listened for a minute as the bells rang all around at different pitches and intervals. The sound was very cool. A group of cows stared me down as I did the same to them, like a real western shootout. Still chewing their grass, they started walking towards me. I got a bit nervous as the group of 4 or 5 walked right up to me, and stopped about a foot away and just looked at me. I slowly clicked on my camera and caught some great closeups of the cows with the sound-of- music mountains behind them. I had a moment with the cows that was very cool. Apparently they're having a lot of trouble this year due to the heat and drought, and are combing hay from any hillside they can to keep them fed.
That night I hiked up to a tiny little cow town called Gimmelwald and stayed in a "hotel" with a bunch of bunks in a loft and a wonderful view of the mountains. They have a saying here, "if heaven isn't all it cracked up to be, send me back to Gimmelwald!" The hotel manager pointed me down the street for some provisions: a house with a picture of a cow over the door answered by a little german woman who did not speak any english. "Cheese?" "Yes, yes, vee have cheese und meat." I bought some real swiss cheese and some homemade salami, and headed up the hill. The tram took me to the peak where there was an amazing view of the mountains and a restaurant that turned around. I had some coffee and a piece of pie and watched the backdrop revolve around me. It's interesting how mountains as everpresent as these become almost like a surreal painting, like you're going to have your picture taken at one of those portrait studios and they just lowered the "swiss alps" backdrop.
I decided to spend an extra day there because of the cooler weather, even though the cooler weather meant I got poured on while up hiking. It was miserable at first, but I changed my attitude about it and in the end enjoyed hiking in the rain. I was running late though and it was getting dark before I was going to make it to my destination, but I happened to walk by a little "Hotel" and restaurant right on the trail and at the base of the big mountains with a great view of the little town I was going to hike into. I got a cheap room there, a local beer called "Hell Beer", and watched the sun set on the picturesque rocky cliffs as the lights from the little village below came alive. It was great. The next morning I woke up early, finished my hike (in even more rain), and decided it was time to move on... next stop, Chamonix, France, via the Golden Pass scenic railway. They had special cars with huge windows and part of the ceiling window as well. I wasn't as impressed with the scenery as the people who wrote the literature on it, but it was beautiful, and totally free with my Eurail pass anyway so nothing lost!
Chamonix is a ski town right next to Mont Blanc, which the French are very proud of. In fact, if you look at the map, it looks like they went out of their way to include Mont Blanc within the French border. But that's ok. It sort of felt like vacationing in Vail, was difficult to find accomodations, and was quite expensive. However, I had a good time the day I spent there. First, I got to go paragliding, which I tried a few times to do (with some frustration) in Interlaken but was foiled by weather and bad timing. Paragliding is incredible!! What a blast. It was a tandem flight so I was attached securely to a trained professional. The view was fantastic (of course I didn't have my camera, darn it!). Then I went and rode the luge, the concrete tube thingies with the little carts. They have one of the best in the world there apparently. Then I crossed into Italy on one of the most spectacular border crossings ever... they have a tram that takes you way up into the French Alps to a great view of Mont Blanc (and the Matterhorn in the far distance on a clear day). From there it's a 40 minute tram ride at 12,000 feet across a huge glacier to the Italian border. It's a totally different world up there... you're giddy from hypoxia, the sunshine is even cold, and the view is spactacular!
Now I'm in Italy, in a region known as the Aosta region in the far north, soon to be heading down to Cinque Terra, Tuscany, Rome, Florence, Venice... I'll be in Italy for a while! And, unlike France, the very first book store I walked into had a dozen different english/italian phrase books! Needless to say, I will speak Italian better than French when I'm through.
Hope everyone's doing well. I'll let you know how Italy goes next! So far, I think Switzerland and Chamonix have been the highlight of my trip.
-Adam
