The incredible expanding brain.

I'm actually not too fond of Hungary. It seems sort of trapped in a second-world frame of mind. I bet it's just Budapest that is so grubby and needful, and that the countryside and smaller towns are great, but this isn't my favorite place on this trip. The bootstraps the Budapestians are pulling themselves up with are the tourists', not their own, and even the grubby hostels are expensive. I got warned about scams by almost everyone I met.

I did like seeing all the copper statues. They're everywhere, and they tell the history of the town if you can read them in the right order. Instead of puzzling it out, I went to the Hungarian History Museum. They started with the Romans in the basement and worked their way up to the fall of the Iron Curtain and modern times. Either I forgot everything except the Austrio-Hungarian Empire at the end of my history courses, or Hungary's getting largely skipped. I learned a ton. Every exhibit had something else to say about Hungary, something I didn't have any idea about. They've done a great job with their museum.

I also stopped by the synagogue and the incredibly Gothic Parliament building before crossing over to the Buda side of town to climb up to the Citadel. I think it was a fortress for a while, but now it's a museum and tourist trap. It does have great views, though. I hiked over to the castle afterward and checked out the National Art Museum. If you stay out of the downtown area, Budapest has some decent places to go. I don't think I could find anything for a second day, though, so I'm going to catch a night train to Kraków. I'm a bit wary of security and my ability to sleep on a night train, but they seem like a good deal and a great way to skip some travel time. I do like watching out the windows on trains, but these trips are such long distances that I probably couldn't stand that much countryside.

Kooooonst!

Today was all about art. I dumped my bag at the train station and started in the Belvedere. There were these fabulous character heads, though I forgot the artist. I can't imagine modeling for this guy. The expressions were all so extreme, with bulging platysmal folds and scrunched eyebrows and noses. I enjoyed Max Oppenheimer's works, though I got a little sick of Klimt by the end of the exhibit. His Kiss is there, though, so I could see what all the fuss is about. It's difficult to tell, sometimes, when you're looking at a picture. Happily, they also had a lot of Egon Schiele.

I spent the afternoon in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Words cannot describe the wonders within. I need to come back to Vienna, pitch a tent in the museum, and not leave for at least a week.

And then maybe I'll see an opera and check out the Schönbrunn, the Hapsburg's larger estate. It's kind of like their version of Versailles and sounded like too much for me to take on. Oh, and the Wienerwald, and the wine gardens, and the sculpture at the Leopold Museum.... I've got to catch a train to Budapest now, so the rest of Vienna will have to wait until I return.

Dodging east.

I went to the Sacher Café this morning, and then to the WW I/II monument across the street. It's not a serious boxy one, but rather a powerfully moving one, with people struggling to escape from the rock and guns poking out here and there. I thought about it all the way down to St. Stephen's church, which was huge and captured my thoughts. You can see the outline of the old graveyard around the church, where it was before some Kaiser (Franz Josef I, perhaps?) moved it out of town, and I wonder what it would have been like to walk through the aisles, those huge towers looming above. It would be nice to see all these churches and cathedrals without any other tall buildings around. No skyscrapers, no offices, just humble little huts and one HUGE church. Instead, the area where the cemetery was is a giant square, chock full of shoppers and tourists.

Vienna also has the Kaisergruft, where the famous people are buried. Clearly, only the commoners are a contagion risk. Wealthy people can be buried in the middle of town. There are giant pedestrian shopping boulevards, and there are tiny little squares where you can find a great Biesl, a local coffeeshop, and chill out with some pastry. The square with the Jewish memorial (Judenplatz, naturally) is a good one for that. The memorial is nice, too: it's a cube covered in books, kind of like a library built on revolving theater stage walls that have been flipped outward. Yet another giant pedestrian street is the Graben, which as the name implies, used to be a huge ditch. The Romans used it for defense. This street has Vienna's plague monument. I've noticed that a lot of cities have one. The survivors were so excited to be alive that they all built fancy statues and columns all over the place. Understandable. I ended up back next to the Imperial Palace, where I found some Roman ruins I had overlooked the first time. I don't think I made it all the way around the palace to that particular square before. I treated myself to a smoked salmon, strawberry, sprout, and vinaigrette salad before hopping on another train. It was crispy and delicious.

I figured I could use a break from all the opulence of Vienna, so I popped out to Bratislava for a little while. It was fantastic, all onion domes and towers and crooked little old town streets. You can really see the influence Vienna has had on its neighboring city. When you hike up to the castle and look across the Danube, you can also see another architectural influence: the dull, squat, concrete housing blocks of the Soviets. I really liked seeing all the contrasts in Bratislava. Also of note: Bratislava had signs all over the place advertising its "twin cities" relationship with Vienna, but I saw only one such sign in all of the latter city. Poor little sib.

I had dinner in Bratislava, since I wanted to try Slovakian food and I figured it would be a lot cheaper than in Austria. It was. Though it cost 283... um, Slovakian currency units, it amounted to about twelve dollars for a large, rich, and garlicky fish soup, flamed crepes stuffed with walnut paste and lounging with some fruit in an orange zest sauce, and a huge Czech beer. That would easily have been double the price in Vienna, if not triple. The waitstaff were also very attentive in Bratislava. In Switzerland and Austria, they basically ignore you, thinking that they are letting you savor the meal and not feel rushed to pay. I savor, yes, but when I'm done eating I want my bill and I want to get out of there so I can see something else.

When I got back from Slovakia, the Österreich-Polska match was on. I joined the crowd standing outside the Fan Zone (they pat you down and take your water and all that if you actually go in), since we could see the huge projection from there. Poland led for the entire game, but both sides' fans kept up the cheering and good mood. In the 92nd minute, during the last bit of makeup time, Österreich's captain scored. You would have thought the guy had won every single gold medal there is at the Olympics. The match ended in a tie, but you couldn't tell the Austrians that. (I think their team usually loses.) They cheered and hollered and jumped for at least fifteen minutes straight, then went off on parades around the Hofburg Palace and through Stevensplatz and all along the pedestrian avenues. Naturally, I tagged along.

I'd ended up watching with a group of architecture students. They adopted me into their fold for the evening, striped facepaint and all, especially after I used my best German to say hi and ask questions. One of them proceeded to explain every single football cheer and pulled me off to the side when she thought she saw some Polish hooligans coming. She says they felt like the game was stolen from them and the Polish hooliganism is second only to that of the Brits. The architecture students and I stomped around chanting and cheering for a while. I tried to duck out when they headed for a pub, but the one girl made me come to a different pub for just a few minutes more. A guitarist was singing famous Austrian songs, and I just had to hear a few. She was right. They were great.

The football cheers are still cycling through my head. One translates to "Austria, now and forever," while another brags about how they're going to win their next game, against Germany. (Deutschland, Deutschland, alles historie!) Not likely. Another is pure Viennese slang: they shorten the captain's name down to Ivo and then uses contractions that supposedly mean "kicked a goal" afterward, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It sounds like "Da Ivo pitta manna, dunh dunnnnh dun-dun dunnnnh dun da!" The one that really stays in your head is to When the Saints Go Marching In and just consists of nonsense cheering about Rot, Weiss, Österreich!. All in all, a great day.

Tiring.

I stayed up late to watch the end of the Switzerland-Turkey match. It was tied till the 92nd minute, when Turkey scored a second goal. Most of the crowd was for Turkey, so they´re all out dancing singing and and drinking and honking their car horns.

Before that, I went to the ballet at the Vienna Opera House. Before that, I spent three hours in the Albertina Museum: Rubens, Albrecht Dürer (wow), Michelangelo (also wow), Egon Schiele (whom I love), Renoir, Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Latrec, Cézanne, Matisse, Signac & company, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Chagall, Miró, Picasso... they also had a huge Klee show, and some of the state rooms were still open and as they were when the wing was built. The Albertina Museum is part of the Hofburg, the Hapsburg city residence, aka the Imperial Palace. It was built for some queen-type person. The really nice-looking (neoclassical?), semicircular wing is my favorite, though. Franz Ferdinand built it while waiting for his turn, but he was assassinated (WWI!) before Franz Josef I finally died of old age. Anyone else miss AP Euro? Anyway, it was a nice addition to the palace.

Before the Albertina, I was having a Viennese lunch. They put potatoes, corn, and lentils in their green salads, then drown them in dressing.

Prior to that, I spent all morning in the inner sanctum of the Hofburg, looking at all of Emperor Franz Josef I and Empress Elizabeth´s belongings. I cannot begin to describe the size and complexity of the imperial dinner service. They had between eight and thirty-something courses per meal, depending on whom they were impressing, and I lost count of how many different types of plates there were. The decorated porcelain services were outstandingly well painted, but the silver and gold sets were jaw-droppingly shiny. I can´t think of any better way to show off such massive wealth.

The staterooms were neat, too. The exhibits reminded me about the lives of the Hapsburgs, then took me through the daily life of FJ I and his wife. It turns out she was fanatical about exercise, unheard of for a woman in those times. She had a pull-up bar and gymnastic rings in her study, between her writing desk (poetry, mostly) and her massage table (for after all that exercise, of course). Rings are ridiculously difficult. I had a hard time imagining an empress up there, doing all those shoulder and ab exercises, and it only became more difficult to picture when I saw her workout skirt.

Before that were a few churches, including the one they built as thanks for a failed assassination attempt on FJ I, and the Parliament, which is tying their tour into EuroCup 2008 to try to get people in the door.

So. I´m somewhat tired from staring at things all day. But I´m still excited for tomorrow.

EuroCup2008 madness.

Salzburg is all a whirl of yellow and blue and white. I arrived last night in time to watch the Polska v Deutschland match, and all the Sverige and Hellas supporters were out in their garb. The official Fan Mile had been hijacked by Sweden before I got to town, but the hardy Greeks had set up their own on a street right by my hostel. I watched the above match from a Greek tavern, and got to see a group of guitar players belting out traditional Greek tunes during half time. They even had a Swede up there with them, clapping along. I was on the lookout for hooligans when the EuroCup first started, but all I've seen everywhere is good cheer. Probably because the Brits didn't make the Cup. Heh.

I got up early this morning to see as much of Salzburg as I could before it got swamped with tourists and EuroCuppers. In addition to regular fans absolutely everywhere, I met a fancy Swede in a full tux, bow tie and all, except that the shirt was replaced with a signed, yellow Swedish replica jersey. It looked quite nice. I will have to try that if ever I get invited to a ball. At any rate, we both went for the local second breakfast of a light pint. I had my Trumer Pils with a Brezl (pretzel, natch) and apricots from the farmers' market in the square (Universitatsplatz).

I also saw lots of old streets with elaborate gold signs, Mozart's home and birthplace, the park from Sound of Music, and churches with tons of graves. I'm getting sick of church art, but I will press on. Also in the squares and streets were French schoolchildren doing their darndest to incite football violence. They chanted their little lungs out every time they saw a guy in a Sweden shirt. Most of the Swedes and Greeks just chuckled, but a few Swedish youths chanted back while grinning madly. My favorite find of the day was a local Schnapps maker. He must have had thirty or so kinds in the storefront. I wish I had tried a few--it was ten in the morning when I passed by, and I didn't think I could take them to go. I forgot to go back until too late in the day.

Return of the Alps.

It's official: I love Austria.

Everyone is nice, the tortes are delicious, and it's all mountains and rivers and lakes and farming again. I think also I might be homesick for Schweiz.

I arrived in Innsbruck at about 18:30 last night. The Austrian team kicked off its first match of the 2008 Euro Cup at about 18:00 in Wien. The 2008 Euro Cup is being held in Austria and Schweiz this year. Needless to say, the whole town was a swirl of red and white: facepaint, flag capes, t-shirts, crazy hats, and various banners and scarves. I had meant to get a Hopp Schweiz scarf before I left; perhaps I will pick one up right before I fly home. Innsbruck's main street is the official Fan Meile for the whole month. (Ha ha, take that, metric system! Fan Kilometre sounds stupid and isn't as long.) The whole street is swarming in tent pubs, pretzel stands, and young men. The Croat supporters held their own parade in the middle of all the Austrian pride, and were fairly well tolerated. I tried to check out the major touristy sights for a few minutes, then gave up, donned all my red clothing, and watched some of the game from one of the ubiquitous street monitors.

I Skyped home during the Germany-Poland game, but I stayed long enough beforehand to witness a flurry of Deutschland supporters jumping around to the blasting pre-game music. On my dusk wander through town, there were still enough fans out to elicit chants as they passed each other on the streets. My favorite starts "Ohne Deutschland!" as bold as can be, but I lost the rest in a garble of drunken Austrian-flavored German.

I found a great hostel/bed and breakfast, above a fancy cafe. Yep, that means the included breakfast was superb, which was especially welcome after Italy. The swirly, creamy bread delighted me, but then the owner came by to drop off my torte and it was all over between me and that roll. Breakfast dessert! What a great country. I chatted with the owner a bit over the pastry case afterwards. You get something different each morning, if you stay a while, and it can be anything they make. That case had dark and milk chocolate, hazelnut, strawberry, passionfruit, vanilla creme, orange, raspberry, and all sorts of Austrian wafer cookies combined in various ways. They had Sachertorte, of course, but I am holding out for the time being. Besides, the cheese torte I had at breakfast had filled me up.

I saw Frederick IV's Goldenes Dachl, a fancy, gold-roofed balcony he built to watch his people dance in the square, climbed the Stadtturm (town tower) for a better view of the Olympic ski jump and city, looked at the column and arch along main street, strolled along the Inn river and through the town park, and visited three churches. The Jesuit one has Leopold V's and some of the Medicis' tombs. The Hofkirche held a huge monument to Maximillian I, complete with oversized bronze statues of all his most important relatives (mostly also royalty). The Dom zu St. Jakob pealed out its daily carillon just as I arrived, the bells somehow both jangling as well as light and wistful. This one had mostly stucco, thank goodness. The Jesuits were big on gold, and I'm sick of looking at it all after the Basilica and Ca' d'Oro in Venice and the Goldenes Dachl this morning.

I need to come back to Innsbruck again. I want to ski and hike, I want to try the bobsled and luge runs, and I want to see the folk museums. There are a lot of castles not too far from here, in very southern Germany, Bavaria really, that are probably best reached from this area. I also want to see the archeological and especially anatomical and apothecary museums. I could do with some more Tirolean history as well. A number of last night's revelers had flags proclaiming their love of Tirol or t-shirts and stickers insisting that Südtirol ist NICHT Italian. I faintly remember Austria regaining some of this region from Germany, then losing some to Italy.

Escaping the trains.

I like Italy, but I am honestly excited to be out. After living in Switzerland for so long, I started taking public transportation for granted. I am actually sort of surprised that the Swiss don't use seconds as well when writing out their train schedules.

Italy? No. Not a single train was on time, and they have all sorts of secret rules. There are about twelve different types of train, depending on their makeup and how fast they're going to go, and you have to remember which ones require reservations. Inevitably, every train I got on did. I got on one train in Cinque Terre at slightly after 16:01, on track one, expecting it to be the 16:01 track one train that stopped at each of the towns along the coast. Ohh, no. This was the previous train, late, not my train, also late, going in the same direction. This train wasn't stopping until the last town, and it only had little cabins, none of which I was allowed to sit inside. And I needed to pay an extra thirteen Euros for the reservation I needed for the privilege of going to the wrong town late. I grumped at the ticket collector while he yelled at me in Italian. Eventually, he gave up and I jumped out at the first stop.

I had trouble again when going to Pisa and Firenze, and I had trouble again on my way to Venezia. In Verona, the ticket office woman yelled at me when I asked if I needed a reservation for the train up to Bolzano (NO RESERVATIONE!), since it was the exact same train as the train to Innsbruck (SI RESERVATIONE!) and the ticket guy on my previous train, the Venezia-Milan run, had informed me that I needed one even if I was only going a couple stops, to Verona. She snatched back the reservation she had sold me for the Innsbruck train, refunded my Euros, and informed me that that sort of question should be directed to the station info people, not the ticket people. Even though the info people seemed to be touristy stuff like hotels and sights, and I would need to be at the ticket window anyway if I did need a reservation. I dutifully trekked to the info people, found that I did need a reservation, and bought it again from a different person back at the ticket office. Even the train station people don't know what's going on with their trains.

Verona smelled like vomit, by the way, so I spent less time than I had allotted for the city. (I also arrived late because guess what: my train was late.)

Oh, and another point: the Swiss have organized their train schedule so that the trains going in directions you might ostensibly want to go in after hitting a hub leave five to ten minutes after you get to the station. You just get off, flit over to the schedule board, get on the next one only a track or two over (or possibly on the same track, pulling in four minutes after your previous train leaves), wait three minutes, and you're off. Italy, on the other hand, has optimized missed connections and waiting times. I think they must anticipate late trains in this scheme, too, planning their departures to cause the maximum possible aggravation. It worked, or at least it did until I left the train station to wander in a new city.

Not Verona, though, because as I said, it stunk. The Dolomites and Bolzano were a pleasure as I rode north, up to Austria and away from ferriovia hell. I shared a cabin with a mother and her early-teen daughter, the latter heading up to boarding school in Germany. As the mother left the train, she appointed Anastasia my little sister for the duration of my trip, sealing the deal by handing me the rubber dinosaur that had come inside Anastasia's chocolate Kinder egg. I was happy to hang out with Harry-Potter-reading Anastasia, especially because she was able to converse in both Italian and German.

Still lost.

Italy has hands-down the worst breakfasts I have ever had. They call it good after a coffee and a styrofoamesque roll, possibly with jam to hide its lack of taste. The Australian doctor I sat with at the table and I managed to discuss the horridness of the rolls for a good five minutes before he told me about practicing overseas in Ireland. Cool.

I supplemented the "roll" with a yogurt-flavored gelato (close enough, right?) and headed off to Touristville, aka Piazza San Marco. First stop: the Doge's Palace. The Doge is basically Mr. King Aristocrat, though he doesn't have much power by himself, and he was elected for life. Nobody else in Venice is allowed to call their abode a palace, so all the other waterfront mansions are just called Ca' (house). The palace is both the Doge's living quarters and statehouse, so it's truly immense. I didn't grasp the size of it until I had been inside for a couple of hours. You can't really see how big it is from the outside, since it's overlapped by the Basilica di San Marco, and the whole piazza is so vast it downplays all the surrounding buildings. The Doge had it all: incredible art, gilt everything, senators, statesmen, giant halls, and secret passages. Most of the paintings are basically about how great Venice is, how just and fair her government is, how the Doge is the best guy ever, and how both Jesus and all the old Roman gods are definitely big fans of all of the above. I enjoyed the vast Grand Council hall, with space for 2600 people, enough for all the nobility to come in and vote. The frieze (see, I'm sort of learning archtitectual terms) is paintings of seventy or more ex-Doges, placed up there one by one as they died. One of them was traitorous and has been blacked out in punishment, a bad egg. In the same room is the biggest oil painting ever, Paradise, by Tintoretto. It's absolutely massive, and as usual, about Jesus and company (500 saints), with a holy light shining down to the Doge's seat.

The courtrooms, if I may call them that, were also impressive, this time for the mood they instill. Even as a tourist, I immediately felt small and oddly guilty as I stepped inside. The judges are a team of the nobles, plus, naturally, the Doge and his cohort, and you don't even get a chair during your trial. It feels like you don't get a say, either, though the paintings of Justice and Honor imply that all evidence will be examined. Government propaganda? You decide. Or they will, really. Off you go afterward, across the Bridge of Sighs and down into the dungeon. The cells look as cramped as I would have expected, and the Doge's new jail, despite plans for more light and comfort, looks no better.

Just in case you escape a sentence, the court has its initials emblazoned on an awful lot of weaponry, so they will still be hanging over your head. The armory was crammed full of swords, maces, suits, clickity guns, and all sorts of fearsome, pointy bits I couldn't name. There was also, inexplicably, a chastity belt and a few other metallic objects that weren't made for hurting someone. I enjoyed the display with a gun taken to pieces so you could see how it worked.

After the Doge's pad, I toured the Basilica di San Marco itself, in all its intricate, Jesus-y splendor. The Basilica was nearly dripping with gold, as though all I had to do was wander through and I would come out shiny. My favorite part was the floor, an impressive mosaic of beautiful bits of stone. The whole floor is in waves, since it is slowly sinking into the mire below Venice, but I think I like it even better because of its extra dimension.

I also saw the art in the Dicosean Museum, which included a reliquary containing an entire human hand, all mummified and grey. Ew. Cool. There was more gold, more church stuff, and some great paintings. Sadly, I was starting to get a bit over-Jesused, so I took a break for a boat ride.

The vaporetti aren't fast or romantic, but these water buses are a great way to get around. I got a 24-hour pass and watched the canal-front buildings slowly sink as we powered up the Grand Canal. I got off at the museum of modern art and enjoyed some marvelous sculptures and paintings (Klee, Klimt, Chagall, Kandinsky, etc.), mostly secular. I also popped into the Oriental Museum while I was there. They kicked me out at closing, so I wandered the Jewish district for a while. This was the first ghetto, I heard, so named because of the copper foundry (geto, in Italian) in the neighborhood they gave the Jews. Venetians sent them all to one island neighborhood in the 1500s, closing the bridges at night except for Jewish doctors. After more gelato, I hopped back on a vaporetto and scouted famous buildings: the Byzantine-inspired oldest building in Venezia, the Casino ("little house"! I get it!) in which Richard Wagner died, the fancy Ca' d'Oro, the Rialto and Accademia Bridges, all the stripey docking poles, and La Salute. This last church's dome is currently surrounded by scaffolding, but it's still gorgeous inside. The plaque says Venetians built it to thank Mary for not letting them die during the plague of 1630. I think. My Italian is terrible. I went all the way out to Lido beach before coming back and wandering town some more. Despite signs everywhere for idiot tourists, I kept getting distracted by alleys and shops and it took me an hour and multiple wrong turns to get back to the Rialto. In truth, I think I am finally getting the hang of navigating Venice. I can make it to the Campo S. Maria Formosa, right by my hostel, from anywhere. It took more than two day to accomplish this, though, and now I'm leaving again.

A few other notes:

• I successfully haggled for the first time in my life, over a few bananas.
  
• I am getting freckles. I don't think I used to get them. Perhaps the sunscreen does it? I am wearing more if it than usual.
  
• The police-, mail-, and fire-boats are a kick. There's an honest to goodness traffic light outside the fire station, unlike the rest of the canal system, and the post office has one of the biggest docks anywhere.
  
• I tried Venetian cuttlefish for dinner. Alarmingly black, but delicious.
  
• A lot of these houses look empty on the ground floor, then cheerily inhabited above. The water damage must be terrible. I kept thinking about The Italian Job when the speedboats buzzed past.

Water everywhere.

I caught an early train to Venezia this morning, then dropped my bag off at what I think used to be a convent and promptly got lost. Astoundingly, dead-endingly, completely lost. Four hours with quite probably no repeats in path lost. It was great. Along the way, I saw pastas in an entire rainbow of colors, with flavors to match: curry, mushroom, cocoa, pizza, cuttlefish, smoked salmon, pesto, beet, artichoke, blueberry, pepper, and chili/garlic. I wonder what kind of sauce you would put on some of those. My pizza-and-espresso lunch was super, and I of course hit another gelato stand right afterward. The specialty here is Crema de Dogi flavor, which is a vanilla-lemon base with chocolate-hazelnut paste swirls. It's better than it sounds. There are masks everywhere, due to Venezia's reputedly excellent Mardi Gras, plus glass in every shape and size, due to the island of Murano's famous glassmakers, and even a few stores with lace, the other regional specialty. One store displayed a windowfull of lace baby bibs. Really? What disturbed parent would put a scratchy bit of expensive, handmade art on an infant about to smear itself and its immediate surroundings with anything it can get its hands on? The glass was neat, though. I saw some great beetles, but that sort of thing is impractical to carry around Europe in a backpack.

The tourists in Veneza were even more endless than those in Firenze, but I managed to ditch them for a while and explore some side streets. You can't escape the gondoliers, though: they lurk in every cranny, ready to take you past the labyrinthine network of streets in the most romantic fashion. A few of us at the convent-cum-hostel tried to get a group together, but our travel schedules conflicted and we never managed a full, cheaper boat of six passengers.

Back in the touristy portions, I marveled at the gouging. Two scoops of gelato goes for anywhere between 1.70 and 3.5 Euros. A single espresso is from 0.90 to 2.50 Euros, depending on the location and clientele. I stuck to the cafes frequented by locals, obviously. There's also more interesting information there. Instead of umbrella salesmen, you can find out about the upcoming regatta between Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, and Venezia. Sadly, I will miss it by a day.

I spent the afternoon in the Correr Museum, staring at Venetian art and learning about its history. They had a lot of Bellini paintings, plus a great armory, tons of old coins, and all sorts of nautical gear. The museum is on Piazza San Marco, the main square, so it also had good views of all the action down below. I hung out along the waterfront (I know, everywhere is the waterfront, but I mean where the Grand Canal comes out) and in Piazza San Marco till the sun set, then swapped travel tips and itineraries with brothers from Nashville and a few Canadians.

Change of plans.

I was on my way to Venice when I just didn't get on the train I needed to transfer to in Firenze. I knew where it was and what time it left, but I just went outside and headed for the Duomo instead. Via a gelateria, of course. I keep falling into delicious trances while I'm staring at Renaissance art and when I snap back out, my tongue is happy and I'm missing a couple of Euros and there's a gelato receipt in my pocket. I hear somewhere around here has a rice flavor I'll have to sample.

Today was a whirlwind of sightseeing. Khiv, I have now had gelato at the top of the tower, and it was every bit as wonderful as you said it would be, though it was warm enough that I had to run up those 414 stairs while trying to catch the drips on my tongue. Giotto's Tower, for everyone else, is right next to the Duomo and has powerful views. I also managed to see the Duomo museum, where all the sculptures (Donatello, etc.) that ought to be inside the cathedral are, the Baptistry, Dante's House (more like mini-castle), the Piazza della Repubblica and its Abbondanza Column, Palazzo Vecchio, Pitti Palace, Chiesa del Carmine, Orcagna's Loggaria (ex-granary), the Uffizi Gallery (though I would like to spend much more time there), Ponte Vecchio, with its row of old shops, Palazzo Strozzi, Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella, Chiesa della S.S. Annunziata and the nearby orphanage (which is supposed to be the first Renaissance building), the Medicis' palace, chapels, and library (woo!), and the Orsanmichele, which has great statues on its external walls. Tired, I had another gelato and two cannoli to fortify me until I could get back to the hostel to make myself some pesto pasta.

I bought this jar of pesto in Cinque Terre and WHOA. It turns out I had never had real pesto before. It dances in my mouth. I have been having ciabiatta and focaccia with pesto at every snacky opportunity. I think I will go out for dinner when I get to Venice, maybe have some fresh fish and vino.

Firenze is so full of Vespas that I think I couldn't survive Rome. They're everywhere, rows along all the streets and zipping past the cars in silver flashes. This city is also full of gelaterias, as you can probably tell, tourists, stores like Bulgari and Louis Vuitton, gold leaf, and statues. The statues outside of the Uffizi remind me that Dante, Leonardo DaVinci, Donatello, the Medicis, Michaelangelo, Macchiavelli, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci, and many more famous names all called Firenze home. Finally, the sun set, and I admired the ability of these suit-wearing Italians to weave home through mobs of visitors on their bicycles while carrying on a conversation on their mobile phones.

Cinque Terre!

I am terribly sorry that I am not allowed to upload pictures from this kiosk computer, as the views here are incredible. I have been staying in Riomaggiore, one of the Cinque Terre, in Liguria, Italy. It's on the west coast of northern Italy, along the Mediterranean, and it's got lots of rosemary, agave, prickly pear, and shockingly red poppy. The locals have built enough mortar-free stone walls (3000 miles) to rival the masonry of the Great Wall of China, all to hold their terraced vineyards up on the hills. Where they aren't growing vines, they're growing lemons. I love it here.

I hiked up to a nature sancturary on a bluff my first afternoon, then explored Riomaggiore before spending sunset on the beach. Riomaggiore has a pebbly little cove under the old railroad arches, but some of the other towns have actual sand. Yesterday, I hiked through all five towns. Riomaggiore leads to Manarola, which had a great swimming area with lots of fish. These two were the most undeveloped towns, it seemed, with fishermen heading in from their boats as the tourist flock headed out. I people-watched with a delicious espresso. Corniglia was the next town on my hike, after I climbed up the hillside to wander through Manarola's vineyards and check out it's cemetary. The cemetaries here are outside of town, to protect from disease, and they're mostly above ground, in stone crypts. Wealthy families have their own little houses, and nearly everyone's got a little stone flower vase (always full) and a photograph. Many also have a space for a light, usually holding electric candles.

Corniglia is up on a hillside, the only town without a good harbor. The locals still fish from there, though, hoisting their boats all the way up the cliffside when finished. I was temporarily out of money (1.57 Euros left) at this point, since my apartment-hostel made me pay in advance and the bank machines in the first three towns were either down or out of cash, so I couldn't splurge on a pastry. I continued along the path, more heavily forested now, to Vernazza, with a bigger "downtown" and working ATMs. After wandering town, I picked the best-looking gelateria for my first cone of the day: chocolate and pistachio. Then it was beach time for a while, alternately reading and watching the bambinos splash around sandily. I also visited the wine museum and tried the local honey (very flowery and herby) and wine specialty, a sweet, tawny white called Sciacchetra' (shah-kay-TRAH). They gave me free biscotti with it, which went nicely.

I left Vernazza a bit late, on account of my extended beach time, but I still had time to see the Oratory of the Dead and hike up to the Cappucin Monastary, a former convent. The steps up are so steep and long the locals call them the Zii di Frati, the Brothers' Switchbacks. Higher still is a great view of the old town, which lurks behind some forested hills to hide from invading pirates, and the town cemetary, filling in the ruins of an abandoned castle. It was spooky, since the sun was setting quickly by now, but what an incredible location for your remains. I met up with Olivier, my Croatian flatmate, at the train station. He's been living here for a while, selling his paintings to the tourists. We chatted a bit, then went back to Riomaggiore to catch up with Davide, my Italian roommate, and the Canadians and Atlantans who occupy the rest of the flat. I met Olivier's Dutch and Portugese friends at Bar Centrale, where they bought me a limoncelo. It was sweeter than I expected, more like a lemon drop candy than spiked lemonade. No thanks. If I was going to have sweets, I was going to have another gelato: chocolate and creme, this time. It began to rain soon after, thankfully, so we got to bed at a reasonable time.

Holiday.

I'm off on the traveling portion of my time in Europe now. First stop, Stresa, along Lago Maggiore. It's a bit west of Lake Como, in northern Italy. I just rambled the town yesterday, then hung out along the lake. I needed a bit of a break between work and mad-dash sightseeing. None of the accomodations were less than 45 Euros, but I found a kindly hotel manager who said she had a spare room in her home. If I would put up with an outdoor shower and toilet, plus her whining dog shut in a few rooms away, I could sleep for 25 Euro, including breakfast. Woohoo! Breakfast in Italy is less than a meal, though. I got some rolls and packet toast. Oh well. The coffee more than made up for it, as did my gelato last night: a chocolate & forest berry (blue, huckle, rasp, straw) rose on a cone-stem.

Departures.

Things are getting a bit sad around the chalet. Bowie & Sloan left on May 30th, and Brazil left on the first. I was supposed to leave on June first as well, but I didn't. I'm due to leave in the morning, though I haven't gotten my act together. I have yet to finish packing, and it's taking forever to gather up the photos we've collected over the past three months. I know what I want to take and what I want to leave, however, so it won't take me long once I start packing. I haven't done this sort of backpacking trip before, just forest/mountain/river wilderness backpacking, so I will let myself bring too many things. It's uncouth to stink in public, so I will bring extra clothing. I hope my bag doesn't weigh too much. [Edited to add: it weighed sixteen kilos, which is quite a bit considering my weight of fifty-one, but I stocked up on snacks at the grocer right before packing and it should drop down once I eat some food and jettison one of my travel books. I secretly also have two books of poetry and a novel. Don't tell.]

Irish is back, at least, with her husband, and the new team is cohesive and happy. They will do well. I will see everyone in about four weeks, when I pass through again to grab my bag. I left a suitcase in the attic. Finn might bring it to me later, but I will probably just pop in to grab it. I will feel comfortable being in Switzerland right before I fly out of Zurich, since I know the train schedule and all that.

So. I leave tomorrow, heading for Italy. I'm tired, excited, and a little nervous. Heading to the beach should clear up any misgivings.