I flew into Frankfurt and stayed there too long. Since I wanted to be in Zurick three days later to meet my sister, Tree, I didn't think it made sense to go too far away. Silly me! I'm not driving. So the thing to do is hop a train and wake up in a new place. Well, I know better next time. Not much else to say about Frankfurt: some interesting history and good sausage.

Tree rented a car and we got out of Zurich right away. Unfortunately we didn't know where we wanted to go and we drove around until 2-3AM looking for a place to stay, so that day was pretty much wasted. The next day we headed for Lake Geneva, by way of Bern. Beautiful river, nice glockenspiel, delicious fondu. We spent the night near Lausanne on the lake. Tree wanted to show me some citadel or something, but it didn't happen. The next day we travelled to Luzern by way of "Heidi Country" (Interlaken, et al). Gorgeous.

She flew back to Moscow the next day and I hopped the train to Copenhagen. At this point, I was booking 1st class sleepers, which held two people, and they didn't book anyone else in my cabin this time. Boring. Note to self: pack books. Anyway, Copenhagen was nice. I hung out mostly at historical sites, like the most excellent WWII Resistance museum. I also went by to see the mermaid statue in the bay.

That night, I took the train to Oslo. I called the Dolphin office and asked if I could drop by. They were very accomodating; they even bought my lunch. Not bad, considering I really didn't know any of them--in fact, I didn't even know their names. Oh, well. After seeing the office I checked out some more historical stuff and a sculpture park (humans in different poses and intertwined and stuff). It started raining. I had dressed up a bit to visit the office and was walking around in boat shoes. Mistake! Plus my socks were getting wet and rubbing. Blisters and fallen arches--not recommended for touring.

The next day I woke up in Bergen on the western coast of Norway. I futzed around at the station and getting breakfast and got to Tourist Info just in time to have missed the bus to the fjord tour. Oh, well. This gave me the opportunity to take a neat shuttle to the top of the nearby mountain (Bergen is on a fjord anyway, it's just big, populated, and not as picturesqe--but I wasn't taking pictures anyway). I also dropped by thier Resistance museum (or was that in Oslo?) and the best acquarium in Norway. Somewhere I also went to a maritime museum.

That night I rode back to Oslo. Then I transferred to a series of trains back to Copenhagen, where I would change to the night train to Amsterdam. This was the most interesting one of my train rides. After leaving Oslo, I met three young ladies from the north on their way to a rock concert in Sweden and we talked for quite a while. They invited me to join them, but "No, I'm on my way to Amsterdam." What was I thinking?! Then I met some 15yr old kid who, to hear him tell it, was rich beyond my imagination, lived alone in Copenhagen, just bought the most expensive moped (can't drive a car, yet), blah, blah, blah. While I didn't believe all he told me, he was entertaining. Then I met another woman who was on her way home, where she would be checking in to the hospital. Observations or minor procedures, as I recall. She spoke English better than I spoke Swedish, but that ain't saying much. She offered to let me use her shower, but I had to transfer before her stop. Then I met a Belgian and an older couple from NC. We compared notes and he told us where to find windmills.

I didn't take his advice. I should have. It had rained all the way back from Bergen and I had hoped it would be all rained out by the time I got to Amsterdam. Well, off and on. More on than off. And my feet still hurt (I had switched back to sneakers). So Amsterdam was cold and wet (off and on) and I found it a little confusing. I took a canal tour, which was interesting. We passed the Anne Frank house. After the boat docked, I tried to find it. I kept getting lost (or distracted) and by the time I did get there, it was closed. Same thing is true about their aquarium. The red-light district was "interesting" but got old pretty quickly. I did take one small piece of advice from the guy on the train. I didn't bother to stay the night. I moved on to Paris.

I didn't like Paris. It was cold and wet, too, which I'm sure didn't help. Plus, I'm not really and art and architecture kinda person. I took a boat tour and they pointed out the Eiffel Tower. That was close enough for me. It was (in my opinion) just as tacky as those little plastic replicas. My hotel (I did stay one night here) was right on the river across from Isle de City or whatever, a five minute walk to the Latin Quarter.

Paris. Kinda like NYC and Boston combined. Every bit as ugly, dirty, cold, and unfriendly as NYC, but at least in most of Manhattan, you can't get lost as long as you can count.

Well, you may already realize, I much more interested in science and technology than in art and architecture. I was about a block from the Louvre; I didn't visit. I saw the Eiffel tower from the river--plenty close enough (you know those tacky, little, plastic models? the real thing was no less tacky). Notre Dame was a beautiful old church, but you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

But on the good side, there was an aeronautics and space exposition on the sides of the Champs, which was pretty neat. And just a block from there on FDR was a touchy-feeley museum (like the Children's Museum in Boston or the Exploratorium in San Francisco). Even though it was one of only two museums that I visited in Europe that didn't include English translations, this one still ranks as my favorite of all.

But it wasn't enough to change my perception of Paris. The weather and the people were cold and I was tired of rain and walking and "culturing". I was ready to veg. So I hopped a night train to Nice on the French Riviera, planning to just hang out on the beach until my flight home. Well it worked, sort of. That is, I did rest and relax and recovered from the blisters and fallen arches. Then I wondered if I could squeeze in one or two more stops. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The beach in Nice was busy, but not terribly crowded. Perhaps it was late in the season, but I think rather it was the fact the beach was made of large gravel. It wasn't too bad to sit or lie on, but walking, especially into and out of the water was uncomfortable, to say the least.

Just down the tracks is Cannes, which has a nicer beach, in terms of texture (coarse sand), but more of the beach is "private", belonging to various consessions, so it's a little more crowded on the public ends.

At the beach, I realized one advantage to travelling with one or more companions. When I went into the water, what would I do with my stuff (which I knew better than to leave in the room--tickets, passport, etc.)?

Well, I kinda buried it (so only the theives watching me would know it was there) and swam where I could see it, so although I wouldn't be able to swim back in time to save it, at least I'd know when it was stolen and I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore! :)

Anyway, after three days at the beach (two nights in Nice), I grabbed the overnight to Venice. I won't bore you with the entire morning I spent in the train station in Nice trying to get booked. Suffice it to say that Eurail could use a central booking system (they wanted to route me from Venice to Munich, via Paris!).

On the train, I was in the honeymoon suite; my roommates were a newlywed couple from the states. They had already stayed in a castle and in a Provencal farm. He was very excited about the train and was following our progress on a map until we went to sleep. The next morning, he was up with the sun and was packed and in the hall when the train came into the station. His wife reluctantly rolled out of her bunk and began to pack up her stuff, and I did the same with mine.

Picture this: A row of bunks on either side, a window at one end of the aisle between them, the door to the corridor at the other end. Me by the window, wife in the middle, hubby in the hall. I notice her squirming around a bit and realize that she's attempting to put on her bra under her shirt, so I focus on my packing as much as I can, since I can't give her privacy by getting out of the cabin. Since there's a window in the corridor, she asks hubby to please close the door. Which he does. While remaining in the corridor himself. I pretty much buried my face in my backpack. I mean (1) she's facing away from me so I'm not going to see anything anyway, (2) we're all adults here anyway, and (3) if I hadn't already seen her on the beach in Nice, I'd seen lots more like her, so it didn't matter to me, but my mother taught me to be a gentleman. Anyway, I thought it was kind of amusing (but probably too much reading). Nothing was said about it and we went our separate ways.

Drat! Gotta go again. Stay tuned for the next installment of Joe Goes To Europe! Same bat-time, same bat-channel!

I took three travel guides with me. Fodors (a little to ritzy and way too many choices for me), Steve's (? the one you recommended, but not the right one--I grabbed his general travel guide and not the one for Europe--sigh), and Let's Blow (thru) Europe, a tongue-in-cheek book written by a couple of frat boys mostly interested in getting drunk and laid, not necessarily in that order.

Now, I assure you that I bought the frat boys' book because I thought it was a humorous read, not because I planned to take their advice seriously (be sure to take pictures of the ladies in the windows in Amsterdam--they'll act angry, but it's all part of the act--yeah, right!). But they did have one thing going for them. They were describing a whirlwind tour like I was on. While they feigned disinterest in culture, they did a pretty good job of mentioning one or two places to visit in each city that were interesting and less crowded (and cautioned you about the places every tourist goes). And every city had "a tall thing to climb" (e.g., Eiffel Tower).

In Venice, they failed me miserably. Their two recommendations were the Piazza del San Marco(sp?) and the Rialto bridge. You know what a typical High School football field looks like? With a simple grandstand on either side of the field? Fill all those seats with people. Take all those people and put them on the playing field, in bounds, between the endzones. Now add two pigeons per person and you have Piazza del San Marco. Yuck!

To be honest, this time of year (Dec) it probably isn't so bad. It was a beautiful plaza, and I'm sure the church was nice, but I wasn't about to wait in line to see it. Nor the "tall thing to climb" (still not sure what it was--just a tower of some sort). However lining one side of the plaza is the Doge's Place, the residence, courts, and chambers of some magistrate or governor or something. It wasn't so crowded, so I went in. Mostly big, beautiful, empty rooms. Then the armory, which was neat: from swords to early gunpowder weapons, plus armor and stuff. Then we went to the dungeon. I was hoping to see some torture implements, but there weren't any on display.

Towards the end, you cross the (enclosed) Bridge of Sighs, over which prisoners were taken to/from court. There were tiny windows you could stick your hands through to provide a photo op for the tourists down the canal. There are actually two passages (in and out) separated by a wall and, at this point, a window with bars. I glanced across and saw the honemoon couple from the night before. We said high, and the customary "maybe we'll run into each other again" and that's the last I saw of them.

Then I followed the "Per Rialto" signs. Why, I don't know. I'd already read in both Fodors and Let's Blow that this was just a wide bridge covered with shops. Since I'm not a shopper and I don't buy souveniers or trinkets, what possible interest could it have? Maybe I set myself up for disappointment, but in any case that's what I got. Tons and tons of shoppers, but somewhat fewer pigeons. So I went back to the boat-bus landing. On the way, I discovered a small park just off the Piazza which hardly anyone was in. It was remarkably quiet given the din of the Piazza just next door (all that marble, plus several different languages-- tourist spot, you know).

After relaxing a bit, catching up several days of my journal (still not completed) and regaining my sanity, I boarded a boat-bus for the Lido: according to the frat boys, Italy's version of the Jersey Shore. Maybe it was too late in the season (~19 Sep) or late in the day (~5) but there was practically no one out there. The sand was nicer than that in Cannes (no comparison to Nice). I don't know what the water temp was (BTW, the water on the Riviera wasn't as warm as I'd expected, but it was September after all). No one was in the water and only a dozen or so walking along the beach. I headed back to the train, along the way getting myself yet another gelato (yumm! I must've had ten in so many hours!).

I grabbed a bite to eat and went to wait for the train. I had been unable to reserve sleeping accomodations on either the train to Munich (first choice) or to Zurich and the limited seats were first come first served, as best I could understand. The train (to Munich) was already being boarded when I got to the platform. I hooked up, somewhat, with a quad of college students walking through the car, poking our head into every compartment. "Are these seats taken?" Bewildered look. "Seat. Someone here?" Bewildered look. "Me sit here?" Finally "No. No. In WC!" There must've been twenty or so people in the tiny bathroom!

Eventually, we grew weary of the game and discovered that there were these little plank seats folded down from the wall in the corridor and there were luggage racks above. We decided to make the most of it. People continued to board the train. Sardines came to mind. So did cattle cars, but combining that image with Germany didn't seem politically correct. Another couple more or less joined us (the quad and I) but pretty much people were packing in from both ends.

We managed to convince a family of four that they really didn't need six seats. I took one and the girl from the couple took the other. She was going to swap with her boyfriend during the night. I thought about being gallant and letting them have both, but...well, I just didn't. Anyway, as soon as the train started moving, Mom got up and closed the door and the window. Four adults and two children in a heated cabin with no fresh air? The girl went out into the corridor.

The cabin wasn't airtight so, while we were moving I could handle it. But when the train stopped (I forget where, Verona?) and split apart (half to Zurich or somewhere and our half to Munich), We sat still for seemingly half an hour. I had to get air. I dashed into the corridor and stuck my head out the window. The couple laughed knowingly. "I wondered how long it would take you!" she said. Anyway, the mood in the corridor was "party".

There was a glee club in one of the compartments singing whatever they could remember. Some guy pulled out his guitar and began the traditional travelling music (like Simon and Garfunkel, mixed with a little Alice and Chains). It was fun, and I hung out for a while after the train started moving again. Someone had gotten off the train, so the couple found accomodations elsewhere. That left me with two facing seats that folded almost flat and met in the center. The cabin was still too warm, but I arrived in Munich feeling much better than I thought I would.

The reason the train was so packed is that the day I decided to visit Munich was day one of Oktoberfest. Of course, this didn't interest me too much; I was there to see the Toy Museum and the Deutche Museum. But I checked out some of the parade and had a cup or two of hot chocolate (it was cooler here). The toy museum was disappointing. I couldn't discern the organization or structure, so it was just a bunch of, albeit neat, old toys. Four (really small) floors worth.

The Deutche Museum was more interesting, but I was hoping it would be much more touchy-feeley. It was just a good science museum. Some of the displays had buttons but, some of those were broken, others still were "controlled" (lecture at 11:30). But it was quite interesting. Way too much to see and read and I stayed at least five hours (until closing).

Then I caught the train back to Frankfurt, got a room for the night, and flew back to Boston on the 21st. It felt good to get home, but at the same time, I wish I could have stayed longer. I had sent Melanie a postcard asking that she postpone the wedding I was in (no, not the groom), but I didn't expect she would, so I came home. THE END.