A Broad Goes Abroad

Living in Geneva with my fella for a year or two and traveling as much as possible.

[nicdagon]

We went to Lyon for a few nights in mid-June to see Ukraine play Northern Ireland in the EuroCup. It was fun even though I don’t know much about non-US football beyond the basic rules (though I supposed that’s also true for US football). We also lucked out by buying the cheaper seats, because it rained pretty hard and we were far enough back that the half dome kept us dry. The rest of our stay was spent in the city - walking around the Old Town, visiting museums, and eating lots of food, some of which I’d rather not remember. There was a mystery sausage in a prix-fixe menu that I’d be happy to never see again. 

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We took a day trip to Grenoble when Remy’s parents were in town. It’s a nice little city surrounded by mountains. Our first stop was the Bastille, a hilltop fortress. Then we walked around the city center. We happened to be there on a Sunday when the city streets are taken over by a ton of outdoor markets. We also visited a church, because there’s always a church to visit.

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I had a birthday! Remy made me a carrot cake and gave me a ukulele. I haven’t practiced consistently enough to play decently (travel gets in the way), but when I’m home I do enjoy practicing my strumming and trying to remember the six chords I taught myself.

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We headed to Sweden after Copenhagen and spent time with Ina, an exchange student who stayed with Remy and his family way back when. We spent time in Lund, Gothenburg, and the surrounding areas, although I again did not take many photos. It looks like we just went to a botanical garden, saw a brick building, and hung out with a super cute corgi named Buster. Not quite representative of the trip, but Ina’s dog Buster was probably the highlight so it makes sense that most of my pictures are of him. That’s not a knock on Sweden. Buster is just a really great dog. 

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After Germany, I headed up to Copenhagen - first to meet up with Remy, then to spend time with his parents. There are a lot of great things about the city, but it’s one of the few places I’ve traveled that felt just as or more expensive than Geneva. We did a walking tour and boat cruise and visited  Freetown Christiania (a self-proclaimed autonomous anarchist district within the city of Copehagen). Remy and I also rented the Rolls Royce of city bikes - electric and with a touch screen navigation system. We rode them out to a star-shaped fortress (Kastellet) and the Copenhagen Street Food Market, a massive warehouse filled with food trucks and located on the water. 

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Beethoven in Bonn and wall etchings in Cologne.

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I went to the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden over a year ago, and here are some pictures after a very very long delay. Photos from this trip are sparse because I seem to have “misplaced” some of them. I know I took an excessive amount because that is usually my way, but I cannot find them on my computer or external hard drive. It happens?

This trip was in May 2016. I’d visited Amsterdam before so skipped some things like the Anne Frank House, but I did finally visit the Van Gogh Museum. I also saw a bit more of the Netherlands, taking a day trip to Haarlem and heading to Utrecht for a nighrt. Amsterdam was prettier than I remembered; a crowded city with a lot of charm. Haarlem and Utrecht were like Amsterdam but scaled down by a thousand - the same tall homes, canals, and everyone on a bike, but with far fewer people. In all I spent about six days in the Netherlands before leaving to meet Remy in Bonn, Germany, where he attended a meeting.

I arrived in the eveing which made sense with Remy’s conference schedule and had just one full day in the city, most of which I spent wandering around, popping into churches, and staring at a statue of Beethoven, who was born there. Remy and I met when he was done for the day and visited Haus der Geschichte. It covers the city’s history from 1945 through the present. Super interesting, especially the period immediately following the end of WWII since Bonn was the de facto capital of West Berlin. It was, however, a lot to absorb.

Remy had to return to Geneva before we headed to Copenhagen to meet his parents, all thanks to some strict rules about travel reimbursement. While he did that, I headed to Cologne for one night, mostly to see their Cathedral. You can slide into church fatigue here without much trouble. Catholics love building churches, often so many in a single town or city that I wonder how it’s at all sustainable. This isn’t just any cathedral, though. It’s a World Heritage Site, Germany’s most visited landmark, and the world’s tallest twin-spired church. It’s all very impressive. I have one crappy picture of its exterior (not included here). Oh well. In additional to walking around the Old Town, I also visited the NS Documentation Centre. The building was used by the Third Reich during World War II and was both a prison and execution site. There’s a memorial in the basement where prisoners were held. You can still see the 1,800 inscriptions and drawings etched into cell walls by prisoners. The upper floors hold exhibits on political and social life in the city during the war, including its active and passive participants, victims, and resistance fighters.

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Nicki and Mat headed home after three nights, and Remy and I took a bus to Milan to spend just one night there. It’s a city we heard and read somewhat negative things about, like it’s not worth visiting, which is obviously ridiculous. While it might be more modern and industrial and not have the impact of Florence or Rome, there are still cool things to see: one of the most impressive cathedrals I’ve visited in Europe, many museums, a castle, a galleria, and tons of shopping if that’s your thing. You can also see da Vinci’s The Last Supper if you plan in advance more than we did. Tickets for that book up very quickly (I think mostly by third party vendors who then jack up the prices, but I digress). During our first half day, we walked around town, climbed to the top of the massive Duomo to see some of its 135 spires and 3,200 statues up close, and visited the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – one of the world’s oldest shopping malls. We went to a big outdoor market located in the Castello Sforzesco and walked through Parco Sempione on our second half day. We also visited the impressive Cimitero Monumentale di Milano, which is part burial ground and part sculpture museum thanks to the massive headstones, obelisks, and mausoleums that fill the space. Though it was a quick visit, I can say with confidence that I don’t think the city’s negative reputation is deserved. Plus the train ride between Milan and Geneva is beautiful.

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Our next set of spring visitors were Nicki and Mat, Chicago friends who now live in Denver. They came down for a few days in Geneva after visiting parts of France, and then we all drove down to Italy’s Aosta Valley for a few nights. Aosta is just over the border from France and is an interesting mish-mash of Italian and French influences. During the drive, I got to see Mont Blanc up close for the first time and marvel that we could travel beneath it via a long tunnel. We stayed near but not in the center of Aosta, a small city surrounded by mountains, vineyards, and castles. The town is a former Roman settlement whose ruins still fill the area. We spent time exploring the city and visited the nearby Castello di Fenis, led by a guide who said she would have to give the tour in French (or maybe Italian?) because her English was not good. She then proceeded to provide an hour’s worth of info on the castle in very good English. Her standards for what it means to know a language are much higher than mine. We also went to two wineries for tastings. The first was in a lovely spot, but the wines were a bit salty. It was as bizarre as that sounds. Not necessarily bad, but not necessarily good. Maybe it would be better with food? The second place was tasty, and the guy who owned the vineyard and led our tasting was very welcoming and gregarious. He also shared Fontina cheese, a specialty of the area, to eat as we tasted. It was very different from any Fontina I’ve ever had, stinkier than I usually like, but I’m glad we got to give it a go. We also attempted to go hiking, but the ground was still snowy and muddy from the thawing peaks. Instead, we just enjoyed the view and had a drink at the sole open restaurant.

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April was the start of having many visitors in Geneva. It began with the Love & Davis crew spending the final couple nights of their trip with us in Switzerland. Our one full day was rainy, but we managed to walk around the old town and along the lake. Theo, who has a love for trucks, buses, and trains, was in heaven in Geneva and all its public transit glory. Before that group left for the airport, our next guest arrived - Alison, a Chicago friend who I met during grad school. She spent a few nights in Geneva. We covered a lot of ground during her stay: the Museum of Art and History, the Ethnography Museum, a CERN tour, the UN, climbed up the bell tower of the St. Pierre Cathedral in Old Town, and wine tasting in the small villages just outside of Geneva. We also did a walk along Lake Geneva and the Lavaux Vineyard Terraces that was beautiful. There is a rough walking route (rough as in not always clearly labeled) connecting all the towns sitting on the lake. We took the train to St. Saphorin then walked the 7 miles between there and Lutry. Along the way you pass places where you can taste wine, and basically everything you see along the way is lovely: the villages, the vineyards, and the natural scenery of Switzerland. We stopped once for a snack and a glass of  Chasselas, one of the varietals for which the area is known. It’s definitely something I need to do again! Alison left for Germany on her birthday, so we toasted her on her final night with bubbly wine and macaroons, a good end to any visit. 

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Here are a few more from Croatia.

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In April, Remy and I traveled to Croatia along with some family: Andrea, Jeff, Theo, and Crystal. We split our time between cities and national parks. I didn’t fully know what to expect but loved Croatia. The country is beautiful, lots of good food and wine, and everything is relatively inexpensive. First up was Split, which is located on the water and has the incredible Diocletian’s Palace as its centerpiece. The palace was built by the Roman emperor Diocletian during the early 4th century.  It’s massive, composed of more than 200 buildings made of limestone and marble, and was built to be part royal residence, part military base, and part just a town where people lived. There are also a couple of 3,500-year-old sphinxes taken from Egypt thrown in there for fun. We spent a lot of time wandering around within the palace walls. We also took a walk up to Marjan, a hilly nature reserve near the city center that had a playground with a view. After two nights, we headed toward Krka National Park, making a pit stop in Trogir along the way. Trogir is a pretty little medieval town, all windy streets and old churches.  At Krka, some of us took a boat to Visovac Island to visit the 15th century Franciscan Monastery built there (others of us skipped the boat to nap in the car). We also did a hike out to some waterfalls. We used the smaller city of Zadar as our base for the next two nights. The main selling part of Zadar was its proximity to the two other national parks we wanted to visit, though the town itself had a nice little old town and we saw an incredible sunset our second night.

Paklenica was the second national park we visited in Croatia. It contains the Velebit mountain chain. There were a ton of rock climbers scaling to the peaks. We were not among them and opted to walk. The climb and views from up to we’re both nice, a bit steeper than at least I was expecting. It was during this climb that Theo sweetly decided he wanted to hold my hand, even as we made our way up narrower switchbacks built more for single file walking. You can’t say no to nephew hand holding, though, so we just walked with caution. The next day we went to our final park stop and probably my favorite: Plitvice Lakes. This forest reserve is filled with incredible lakes and waterfalls. Paths are built around and across them. At times it seemed too pretty to be real. Remy and I parted ways with everyone after Plitvice. They were headed north, driving through Croatia and Italy en route to Geneva. Remy and I were flying back home and decided to spend a couple of nights in Dubrovnik before heading out. The drive down south included a jaunt through Bosnia & Hercegovina. We hadn’t realized that it cuts through Croatia and were surprised when we had to go through a border crossing. Dubrovnik has an old town encircled by massive stone walls, and it sits right on the Adriatic Sea. Mount Srđ also starts at the water which means getting around usually involves climbing up or down. We stayed on Mount Srđ and had a view of the entire walled city and the coast. It was all pretty perfect. While in town, we walked the city walls, visited a few churches, and spent a lot of time wandering/getting lost in the city streets. The whole trip made me want to see more of Croatia because there’s a lot we didn’t visit. Remy even loved it despite dealing with pink eye for most of the trip. Hopefully we can make it back someday.

[nicdagon]

Budapest overflow.

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Two of our friends from Chicago planned to visit Prague, Vienna, and Budapest and asked if we’d like to join. Since neither Remy nor I had ever visited Budapest, we tagged along for that. We had a couple of days with just the two of us and then a couple of days with our friends. During our first day we climbed up Gellért Hill to the Citadella. It’s the kind of walk that doesn’t seem like it’ll be too bad, but then you start going and realize the path is a steep vertical climb and involves a million switchbacks. You can see the entire city from the top and, in addition to the Citadella, there are monuments and statues along the way. After dinner we went to a ruin bar. These are bars opened in formerly abandoned buildings. They’re fun, kind of haphazard looking, and very popular. The next day we walked along the Danube River including by the Parliament building, which is based on London’s Parliament. The building in Budapest was designed to be one meter wider and longer, just because. We looked into a tour but decided against it and headed to Margaret Island instead. It’s in the middle of the Danube and has ruins of a Franciscan church and monastery, a Dominican convent with the grave of St Margaret, and a 12th century church. We rented a bike-car contraption to traverse the island. That evening we had dinner at a traditional Hungarian restaurant with an exchange student that Remy’s family hosted when we was younger. He then took us Heroes’ Square, with statues of the founders of Hungary, and City Park.

We met with him the next morning to leave Budapest and visit a place with Hungarian homes from different eras, which was a nice way to learn more of the country’s history. We stopped at another uber traditional restaurant where I finally had some goulash. Once back in the city, Remy and I had some bad timing luck. We arrived at Central Market Hall, the city’s big indoor market, just after it closed for the day. We then crossed the river to Gellért Hill Cave to visit a chapel built into the side of a cliff. We got there just as a service was starting, though, which means we couldn’t take a tour. We also visited the Basilica of St Stephen and just missed being able to see the Holy Right, the mummified right hand of St Stephen. After those misses, we wandered around until it was time to meet with our friends for a boat cruise down the Danube. We did another tour the next day, this one a free walking tour of the city that covered some of the same ground we already saw but with more context and history. We also went up to Castle Hill, which towers 170m above the Danube and is home to Budapest’s main museums and medieval monuments. It’s the location of the city’s old town, the former royal palace, the Fisherman’s Bastion monument, and Matthias Church. It sits atop a 28km-long network of caves formed by thermal springs. Within these caves is the Hospital in the Rock, which we visited next. It’s literally a hospital built into the side of a cliff and was used extensively during WWII. Our final stop before heading to more ruin bars in the evening was The House of Terror museum. The Fascist Arrow Cross party was headquartered in the building during WWII. The space was used by the equally repressive communist party in the decade after the war for similar purposes (i.e., a place where prisoners were held and tortured). It includes exhibitions detailing the fascist and communist regimes and their impact.

[nicdagon]

The haul between Salzburg and Geneva is long, so I broke things up and stopped in Zurich for a night. I had less than 24 hours there, but it was enough time to get a good gist of the place (although I basically forgot to take pictures while there). Anything that wasn’t a bar or restaurant was closed by the time I arrived on Saturday, so I walked around and had an inexpensive (for Zurich) dinner. The next morning I got up and out pretty early, left my bag in a storage locker at the train station, and started with a self-guided walking tour that brought me along the city’s main sites. It included Grossmünster, a church with stained glass choir windows designed by Augusto Giacometti, and Fraumünster, a church with five 30-foot-tall stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall. I also saw remnants of a Roman bath discovered during construction in 1984 and the Cabaret Voltaire, a club founded by several artists in 1916.  It became an early meeting place for Dada artists who left (or escaped) their warring countries for neutral Switzerland during WWI.

After that, I visited the Kunsthaus Zurich, the city’s main art museum. Their regular collection is great and has a much larger focus on pieces that fall under the modern art umbrella than you normally see in a fine arts museum, which is a good thing for me. They also had a big exhibit on the Dada movement. I finished up at the Hiltl Restaurant, which may be Europe’s first vegetarian restaurant (opened in 1898) and is definitely the longest continually operated vegetarian restaurant in the world. I ate at their self-serve buffet which was a bit terrifying because you pay by weight (45 CHF/kg), and I’m bad at knowing what a kg feels like.  I didn’t want to accidentally have a 50 CHF lunch. Thankfully it was nowhere near that and was really tasty. Then it was off to the train station for my ride home. I’m happy I was able to travel through three countries for a week only by train, and it makes me wish the US had a more extensive rail line. For the most part, it’s so much more peaceful than dealing with the airport, and I love how much more of the country you get to see.

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A few more from Salzburg.

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Salzburg is a compact city filled with baroque architecture. It’s primarily known for two things: being the birthplace of Mozart and a filming location for The Sound of Music. I visited Mozart’s childhood home but skipped most of the Sound of Music stuff save for Mirabellgarten. Those are the grounds of Schloss Mirabell, a 17th century palace where several scenes from the movie were filmed. It’s a pretty city that’s just enjoyable to walk around. It straddles the Salzach River, is surrounded by hills and mountains, and has an old town filled with cobbled streets, fountains, and city squares. I visited Hohensalzburg Fortress, a castle overlooking the city that dates back to 1077. On a nearby hill is the much more recently built Museum der Moderne. They had an exhibit I enjoyed, Affichomanie (poster mania!), about advertising posters at the turn of the 20th century. There’s Petersfriedhof (St. Peter's Cemetery), which dates to the early 8th century and is adjacent to catacombs and two chapels that are carved into the side of a cliff.  Then there’s the Dom cathedral and Dommuseum, a collection of art and religious items. It had a really cool room – the cabinet of art and curiosities – which were displays of random and sometimes bizarre items grouped together. It’s hard to describe but was unique. I wish I could have taken a picture, but they were verboten. During my final evening, I went to Augustiner Bräu, a monastery-run brewery that began in 1621. It has a massive beer hall and garden and is surrounded by food stalls where you can get the perfect side for your beverage like a pretzel (my pick), a brat, or potato pancakes.

I bought the Salzburg city card to cover my entry fees for these things, and it motivated me to do something that I would have otherwise skipped: taking a funicular up Untersberg Mountain. You have to take a bus outside the city for this, and the timing is infuriating. The bus line terminates at the funicular station, and the bus is always scheduled to arrive a few minutes after the funicular departs. It then leaves the station 30 minutes later, just before the next funicular arrives from the top of the mountain. It’s maximum inefficiency that forces you to wait around a transit station for an hour. It’s worth it though. Both the funicular ride and views from atop the mountain are beautiful. It was snowy and quite icy up there. I walked around some but was limited by not having the right shoes – trudging atop a snow-capped mountain was not a thing I expected to do on my three city trip, and I only had my trusty canvas Vans. There were other women in heels, though, which blew my mind and means I was far from the least-appropriately outfitted person up there.