I WOKE UP IN NEW YORK and thought it was going to be a normal day. Then three things happened: 1) A friend of mine in The Hague emailed to say that it was a holiday week in Holland; 2) Another friend in Amsterdam emailed to say he was going away for a few weeks, leaving his apartment empty; and 3) Continental Airlines was having a sale on seats to Amsterdam. By 10pm I was on one of those seats. After a few hours of sleep, I was having dinner at a nice restaurant on Prinzengracht, one of Amsterdam’s many canals.

It was Queen’s Day, which means everyone is in the streets drinking and buying everyone else’s junk. Primarily drinking. For one day, the city turns into a giant flea market. Giant fleas are everywhere. The world’s tallest people (more on this later) circumnavigate the canals soaking up the local brews (it’s the birthplace of both Heineken and Amstel, among others), plying the narrow sidewalks, looking for new junk to replace their old junk.

The first week, I did a little traveling. I went to The Hague, a nice conservative small city with 3-story houses set above elegant boutiques. A bike ride in The Hague is extremely pleasant. It’s only a few kilometers to the beach, where you can see the North Sea waves whipped by the near-constant wind. It’s my second trip to Holland’s coast. I’m sure they get a few sunny calm days each year, but all the glass screens around the tourist restaurants don’t lie – they keep the sand out of the pancakes most of the time.

Next, my friend Anna-Maria and I went to Maastricht, which is at the very southern tip of Holland, just a few miles East of Belgium and a few miles West of Germany. Maastricht is a pretty hip town, where shopping comes before visiting churches on most tourist’s agendas. Unfortunately, it was quite rainy that weekend. We wandered around, shopped, and found warm things to eat and drink. We found a really ugly new museum with really bad art, all except one cool thing: it was a video of what looked like a 15-year-old girl balancing a soccer ball on her head. The video was on and she was doing it when I entered the room, and I watched her balance it for 15 minutes in one take (no cuts), and she was still doing it when I left. The piece was about focus, and you could just see her eyes turned up into her head watching that ball and doing absolutely nothing else. It was intoxicating to watch and I think I could have watched an hour of it. But we had to go.

I settled into my friend Philipp’s flat in the heart of Amsterdam. I would call Amsterdam the largest village in the world. Anything built after 1800 looks uncomfortably new. It’s built in the shape of a semicircle around the town center, which includes the train station and several churches. The canals run in concentric semicircles, and they also radiate out from the center. You can walk across the center of town in 15 minutes, so walking is the best way to get around. The canal system is so extensive that a few have been filled in to accommodate heavy foot traffic. The entire city is built on 400-year-old piles, well preserved by the bog-like conditions of the water underneath – if you drained the town, the buildings would likely collapse. Houseboats, barges, and liveaboard boats line the canals, as do trees – there seem to be trees everywhere.

The roads and sidewalks next to the canals are paved with bricks on a layer of sand. This makes it very easy for the city to change or maintain the roads – the only tools you need to open a big hole in the street are a screwdriver and a shovel. Because of this, there are no jackhammers, even though there are plenty of ongoing street improvements. Many parts of the inner city are serenely quiet. It’s so nice to walk the canals in the morning when all is fresh and the birds are singing, or at the end of the day, when the water is calm and people are sitting outdoors at tables on the bridges having drinks.

The Canal Houses

Most of the canal houses are 3-5 stories tall, and most have been standing for 300 years or more. The original buildings were homes, much like New York’s brownstones, but they’ve all been completely renovated at least ten times. Consequently, they’ve been cut up into flats, and many of the staircases are extremely steep – so steep that old people live on the outskirts of town in special two-story communities usually based around gardening.

So steep are the stairs that no couch or bed could go up them, and getting a television set up a set of stairs like this could prove fatal. So most of the buildings have large center windows on each floor and a hook hanging from a beam extending from the gabled roof. To get a couch into or out of your apartment, you wait for a nice day, hang a pulley and a rope from the hook, and haul it up and in through the window. Strange as it sounds, the fronts of many buildings are not vertical – they “lean” out over the street to help keep the furniture from banging windows on the way up. Some buildings actually have bricks that angle up and away a full foot at the top, which can look odd right next to a house whose bricks follow the plumb line straight up (and have longer beams to hang the hooks farther out). In the late 1500s, the city had to pass a law preventing people from building houses that leaned out too far over the sidewalk! It’s a mystery to me, however: I’ve spent dozens of hours prowling the canals on nice days, and I still have yet to see a piece of furniture hanging from a hook in front of a house.

So steep are the stairs that it’s a pain to go down and see who’s at the door. Because there was no closed-circuit video for most of Amsterdam’s history, many people have attached auto mirrors outside their windows so they can conveniently look at the doorstep without opening a window. It’s funny to look up at the buildings and see all the mirrors hanging on.

The steps in the houses are so steep, you wouldn’t think of hauling a bicycle up or down them to go about your business in town. Instead Amsterdam, like all Dutch cities and towns, is full of functional, sturdy, but not particularly valuable old-fashioned bikes. You leave your bike locked to the canal railing and you don’t worry if it gets stolen. The bikes are so disposable that my guidebook says around 10,000 bikes end up in canals in Holland every year, along with hundreds of cars (remember, beer is the national beverage). It’s common to see two people on a bike together, or a parent with two small children clinging to the handlebars and behind the seat. Cars are clearly third-class citizens here. They seem horribly inefficient amidst the bicycles whizzing by, tinkling their small bells to keep pedestrians on their toes.

Auxologists – people who study heights of people – tell us that the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, with the average Dutch man standing six feet tall (3” taller than the average American). You feel it when you’re in Holland. At my height – 5’ 10” – I’m often dwarfed by a group of Dutch women walking down the street. In addition, the Dutch have a very distinct look. I can’t define it exactly, but I believe they have tall heads, leading to long cheeks, and these long rosy cheeks are everywhere. They’re easy to distinguish from the round Danish cheeks and closer, in my opinion, to Swedish cheeks. I don’t know what you call a person who studies cheeks, but in Holland you become one.

Here’s an interesting observation. In Paris, where most buildings date from the 19th Century, the key to your apartment does also. It’s usually a cylindrical piece of steel with odd-looking flanges. A French key is a medieval piece of equipment that in many cases actually has moving parts on it. The keys are heavy, make excellent weapons, and are extremely expensive to reproduce. In contrast, in Amsterdam – where most buildings are at least 200 years older – the locks are modern, with keys to match. This pretty much exemplifies the difference between France and Holland.

A Place for Birds and Birders

You don’t have to be a bird watcher to notice that Holland is full of birds, and so is Amsterdam. The winter of 1963 was so severe that many of the gray herons died. The few that survived had grown habituated to humans and were able to steal or beg scraps through the harsh winter. In the following years, the brazen gray herons multiplied. Now they roam the canals in packs, practically demanding handouts with their scowls and stoic stances. It’s not uncommon to see half a dozen of them standing on a few cars waiting for some old person to arrive with lunch or a snack. A mature gray heron stands about 70 centimeters high and has a wingspan of close to two meters. Their long sharp beaks can spear a good size fish – or sausage, depending on what’s being served. They wing their way along the canals like small aircraft, rarely rising above the rooftops, looking for their next meal around the corner.

One weekend I took the train to visit my friend Siegfried, who lives in Giethoorn, a small village on the edge of a large marshland preserve. There are no cars or roads in Geithoorn; people drive their boats through the network of canals. Siegfried and his wife Katja have a beautiful spacious home with an incredible view of nature on all sides. As soon as I arrived, we went out on the boat for a tour of the neighborhood, and Siegfried knows all the residents. There were marsh harriers, cuckoos, swans, ducks, great crested grebes, bittern, bluethroat and Savi’s warblers, purple herons, cormorants, coots, curlews, black-headed gulls, and others I can’t remember. Siegfried knows these birds and behaviours so well, he can tell you a story with every call and whoop. It’s really great to go birding with someone who knows so much about nature.

One thing that fascinated me was the thatched roofs of the houses. They’re made of reeds collected from the marsh and dried out. They stack the reeds on the rails of the roof and then shear them to a thickness of about 20 centimeters. That’s it. The reeds are waterproof and keep out the fierce weather while insulating the house. (See www.roofthatchers.com/Photo.htm for some nice photos.)

Siegfried promised me that when the water freezes I can come back and he’ll teach me to skate with the long-bladed boots we would call track skates. He showed me a pair of carbon-fiber clap skates that made my mouth water. In fact, in Amsterdam you can even buy clap-rollerblades! Skating will be another story, but here’s a preview of canal-skating in Holland.

Frisian

The next day, I took the train to Leeuwarden, the capital city of Friesland. I have wanted to go to Friesland for about eight years. Since the weather on the island of Texel – home to Holland’s major skydiving center – was looking terrible (what a surprise, huh? Dutch skydiving is a conflict in terms), I decided to take a tour of this enchanted place. Friesland is the northernmost area of Holland and by far the most isolated. There are few tourists here, save for the Dutch who come to visit relatives or enjoy boating. Friesland is mostly water, more water than even the rest of the Netherlands. And I have wanted to come here for years because in Friesland they speak Friesian.

Trans fats are probably more responsible for the increase in American obesity than any other single ingredient. We get trans fats in everything from cakes and cookies to cereals and crackers. The average American gets 11% of his/her calories in this form. When you see the word “hydrogenated” – partially or otherwise – you know it’s every bit as dangerous to your health as eating bacon.

After switching to Crisco, McDonald’s had to add the taste back into their fries, so they dunk them in a vat of special flavors made in a laboratory in New Jersey. Not surprisingly, these special additives come from beef extracts, returning to McDonald’s fries their good-old comfort-food flavor. (McDonald’s doesn’t use these flavors in Muslim and Hindu countries.) Even though the fat companies could make a more healthy vegetable oil for frying, almost all fried foods you eat today are fried in trans-fat oil. Think of it as eating candle wax and you may want to reconsider your order of calamari.

I ate the fries, but I wasn’t too happy about it. And I don’t expect to eat fries again for another twenty years or more. They made my stomach upset. But I forgot about that when I arrived at Enkhuizen, a charming seaport town where I was able to find a health-food store. A few hours later I was back in Philipp’s comfortable flat in Amsterdam, listening to the obnoxious quarter-hour chimes of the Western Church across the canal.

The Dutch Way of Birth

One night I went to an excellent lecture by Naomi Wolf, discussing her new book, Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood. The church where they held the event was packed, mostly with women but with a few well-dressed men. It was part of an ongoing American lecture series by the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam (www.john-adams.nl). Although the talk started at 8pm and was supposed to end at 9, it ran until 10:15. The subject was the differences in birthing methods between the US and Holland.

When it comes to birthing, the two countries are on extreme ends of the spectrum. In the US, birthing is extremely medicalized and institutionalized. The United States, with the highest per-capita expenditure on health care of any nation in the world, now ranks 25th among Western industrial nations in infant mortality. Almost every other industrialized nation in the world has better infant survival rates than we do. The reason is that doctors, insurance companies, and legislators have conspired to McDonaldize childbirth in America. Why? For the same reason that McDonald’s opens a new store ever 9 hours – profit. There aren’t enough good books on the obstetrics scam in America, but I’m not going to write one here. I’ll limit my discussion to a few facts and point you to more resources that might be worth following up.

Facts:

• In 1970, 5% of US births were by cesarean section.
• Today, 27% of US births are cesarean.
• Today, 81% of US women who have had c-section births also have them for subsequent births.
• 16 US hospitals had Cesarean section rates of 45% or higher in 1994.
• 106 hospitals had Cesarean section rates of 37% or higher in 1994.
• The US cesarean rate for mothers using midwives is between 5% and 12%.
• US cesarean sections account for over $1 billion dollars in revenue to hospitals annually.
• In 1991, the US national average was 8.1 infant deaths per 1000 births.
• The rate for midwives was 4.1 per 1000
• In the US, over 60% of women have epidurals during childbirth.
• The rate of epidurals has tripled in 20 years and continues to rise.
• 90% of American women receive some sort of pain medication during childbirth.
• In Holland 30-40% of births still take place in the home under the care of a midwife.
• Holland has a cesarean rate of 10%.
• 92% of Dutch women give birth with no pain killers or medicines.
• 95% of Dutch mothers say they would use the Dutch system again for a second birth.
• Holland has the lowest perinatal mortality rate in the world.

Obstetrics Links:

Many of these sites have further resource lists and book recommendations:

• www.ounceofprevention.org
• www.lamaze.com
• midwiferyinformation.homestead.com
• www.childbirth.org/
• www.naturalchildbirth.org
• www.birthingthefuture.com
• www.waterbirthinfo.com
• www.aqua-baby.nl
• www.healing-arts.org
• http://www.joannedozor.com
• www.birthlove.com/anatomy.html — photos of a c-section (not for the weak)
• www.pregnancy.org
• www.pregnancytoday.com
• www.gentlebirth.org/

The Flower Market
One day I decided to go to the famous flower auction outside of Amsterdam – the Aalsmeer flower auction, where 55% of all Dutch flowers and plants are auctioned every day. The facts are staggering. Here over 2 billion cut flowers are auctioned every year – about 19 million flowers and 2 million plants every day. The place employs 1,800 people and has over 100,000 visitors every year. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this is the largest commercial building in the world, with almost 1 million square meters (10 million square feet), most of it refrigerated. Roses are the number one product sold, followed by tulips and chrysanthemums.

Astonishingly, the 19 million flowers sold here each day are sold by the stem. The “dutch auction” takes place in a large room that’s about the size of a small wide movie theater. Buckets of flowers come in on automated trolleys, then an employee takes a bunch of stems out and shows them to the buyers, who sit in rows of seats with telephones and buttons. There’s a huge electronic “clock” on the wall that starts at a high price and swings down until someone presses the “buy” button and indicates how many stems he/she wants (almost everyone working here is male). If all the stems are purchased, the clock resets for the next group of flowers. Otherwise, the board shows how many stems are left and the auction continues, with one trolley floating through the room every 30 seconds from 7am until closing time.

Almost all tourists here are women, and they come to look at the flowers and marvel at the efficiency of the auction. Not me. I am dumbfounded. I can’t believe all these people wake up early in the morning to bid on commodities. No one’s really looking at the quality of the stems; they seem bored and pay more attention to their cigarettes and cell-phone conversations. With few exceptions (like the Tokyo fish market), most of the world’s large perishable-commodities markets operate electronically, with just a computer network and servers rather than thousands of employees. It’s easy to quantify the condition of the flowers and then make sure you receive what you ordered. I can’t understand why such an inefficient system has been allowed to stand, especially in Holland, unless of course the tourist dollars support it.

If you want to see flowers in Holland, don’t go to the auction. Go to Floriade, the outdoor spectacle instead.

I had a great trip to Amsterdam. I’ll be back, because I still haven’t spent enough time there.

If you’re going to Amsterdam:

Stay in a nice hotel:

• www.pulitzer.nl
• www.dikkerenthijsfenice.nl
• www.blakeshotels.com
• www.designhotels.com

Museums

• www.annefrank.nl
• www.amsterdam-museums.com/

Vegetarian restaurants:

• www.happycow.net/europe/netherlands/amsterdam/

The Hip Guide to Amsterdam:

• www.hiptravelguide.com/amsterdam

Finally, I’d like to take you to Rotterdam, the world’s largest port. I spent a day there and walked on the Erasmus Bridge, designed by the talented team of Van Barkel and Bos. They’ve designed award-winning projects around the world, and this is their portfolio page. Click on “Erasmus Bridge” to see breathtaking photos of this stunning bridge:

www.unstudio.com/html/proj_all.htm

I RAN AROUND NEW YORK like mad for a few days, getting everything I needed. I decided to buy a new backpack and carry everything on my back, rather than trundle a wheeled suitcase around behind me. I knew I would be arriving in various cities and using public transportation to get around and find a hotel, often without a reservation ahead of time. I wanted to be able to wander on cobblestone streets easily, not needing a taxi.

You won’t be surprised to learn that I bought about the most expensive backpack on the market, the Arcteryx Bora 95 – the largest pack they make. I love this Canadian company’s stuff and have quite a bit of it. It’s outrageously well built and makes you feel like Reinhold Messner.

On July 30th, I filled my new pack with 50 pounds worth of gear (including a small day-pack full of books, computer, and other on-plane necessities) and walked out the front door of my building, down the street to the metro station, and took the subway to JFK airport. It went so smoothly I don’t think I could have arrived any sooner had I taken a cab.

Paris
I spent three days in Paris, mostly laying down shoe leather, walking places I know and love, taking the metro, going to museums and galleries, hanging out in parks, reading Harry Potter in French, eating a falafel at the Place des Vosges. I stayed with friends and had nice meals getting caught up with people.

As usual, I stayed with Cory and Sophie. One night, Cory came home completely rattled, scared, and full of energy. Here’s his story:

“I was walking home from work at 9:30pm on Rue Turbigo, with my bag over one shoulder. My bag had everything I needed for my two-week trip to Viet Nam the next day: laptop, passport, credit cards, cash, etc. Suddenly, two teenagers came up from behind: one knocked me hard to put me off balance, while the other grabbed my bag and then started running. I picked my phone up off the ground, and, thanks to my brand new Nike running shoes, I ran after the thieves, screaming at the top of my lungs. After one block, I started gaining ground on them. They turned left down a small side street. I chased, and within one more block was able to lunge and snag the foot of the one who had my bag. He went smashing down on his face, split his lip open, blood all over the place. My bag flew apart, spreading my stuff all over the sidewalk. His friend was long gone, and I had to choose between retaining him or gathering my stuff. I was furious. We exchanged a look that said we were both going to kill each other. He picked himself up and ran off, my heart pounding out of my chest. I gathered my stuff and went back to the apartment, thinking of all the possible things that could have gone worse or could possibly happen in the future. Thanks to my Nikes and adrenalin, I was able to leave the next morning for our trip to Vietnam (where, it turns out, my shoes were made).

“Over the past 15 years, NY has become more safe, while Paris has become more dangerous. This year in Paris my apartment was broken into and I was mugged in my neighborhood. Colleagues of mine regularly have cell phones ripped from their hand while they’re talking. I know a French publisher who spent a week in the hospital after he was yanked out of his Jaguar at a red light and brutally attacked.”

Amsterdam
I took a train to Amsterdam, always an easy experience from Paris. Soon, I was walking with my pack on my back down the Haarlemerstraat, which I know well, and turned left onto LangeStraat, which I also know well. I noticed the “for sale” sign still up on the apartments I wanted to buy two years ago, so that gave me a project. I spent a couple of days reviewing the idea of buying them (the price had come down but the euro had gone up), and in the end it was the same – I couldn’t make it work. Some day I will.

I stayed on a boat on the Prinzengracht canal, which turned out to be perfect — that weekend there was a huge gay-pride parade that took place on the canal right in front of the boat. Something like 400,000 people show up in town to watch this boat parade, and I had a front-row seat, as you can see from the photos. (Did you click on the photo at the top and are you going through the photos in a separate browser window as you read the text? Good! I knew you were.)

I spent a day in Leiden, where I saw a great interactive exhibit on Herge, the author of the Tin Tin series of Belgian comic books I love so much. It was great to see many of his original drawings and learn about his methods. Herge did a tremendous amount of research on all his subject matter, and he is practically the only comic-strip artist to draw humans and animals with the correct number of fingers and thumbs. Even though they’re terribly politically incorrect, environmentally unsustainable, and fashionably out of date, the nostalgia factor is very high and the stories still engaging. I have an almost complete collection of the Tin Tin comic books in French. I hope when I have kids one day they will read them.

I love Amsterdam. I ran, I walked, I hung out at the canal-side cafes. I explored the parks thoroughly. I smelled the tulips. I wanted to get email a few times a day, so I started going to Internet cafes, but they usually smelled like pot. You can buy a small bag of pot pretty much anywhere in Holland, and you can smoke it anywhere you like. But you aren’t allowed to be caught with a large amount, like a kilo. Somehow, that’s illegal. If you think about it, all the retailers need distributors who distribute larger amounts, which are then broken into smaller bags to sell. The larger bags are illegal for anyone to have, so I guess it just gets there by magic.

I found a cheaper way to get online. I just wandered the canals with my laptop open, looking for any free wi-fi signal I could get. I spent a lot of time on people’s stoops sending emails, reading the New York Times, and doing online research for the next leg of my trip. Almost invariably, a seat at an outdoor restaurant had no decent signal nearby, but then a short walk away, a stoop or gutter offered perfect reception. I just had to watch for passing motorists whizzing around corners while sitting in the gutter in the perfect spot to catch the best signal.

As a nation, the Dutch are the world’s tallest people (they average 184cm, 7 cm taller than I am). In many bathrooms, the men’s urinals are mounted so high that I feel like I’m 12 years old. I have to stand on my tip-toes to pee, which can make for some interesting experiences. Okay, not quite, but let’s say the urinals are “uncomfortably” high.

I love the bicycle culture in Amsterdam. You really don’t notice the cars much. You see two people on a bicycle all the time, especially with small children riding in special handlebar baskets, bumping along as the father or mother talks on the cell phone while riding with the groceries in the back. About half the people you see riding by are talking on cell phones. You often see someone riding sidesaddle on the rear rack. A common move is that when they get to the hump leading to the bridge over a canal (which occurs at the end of every block), the rear person will get off and trot up the little hill, then get back on at the top and they glide off together down the other side. Another thing you see is a guy riding his bike while pulling a second bike alongside, making it look easy. You might want to try this sometime if you think it is. One day I saw a couple riding along next to each other, talking, and just as naturally as breathing he had his hand on the small of her back and was gently guiding her along so she didn’t have to pedal. It’s little things like that that remind me why I like to spend so much time in Europe.

Poland

Time for my 51st country. I wanted to take the train to Warsaw from Amsterdam, but that requires an overnight stay in Berlin. So I put my pack on and took the train to the airport, where I was told to go to gate 59A. I went to the gate with 20 minutes to spare, only to see that no one was there and the gate wasn’t active. I had to backtrack the entire length of the “A” concourse to learn on a screen that my flight had been changed to 43D. When I got to the gate, I told the Polish Airlines representative that I had gone to gate 59A and there was no sign saying to come here. They told me that was because there had been a gate change. Thanks, I said.

I felt like I was in Poland already.

I took the public bus to the train station in Warsaw and took the express train to Krakow. The minute you arrive in Krakow you are greeted by a phalanx of friendly young greeters who hand you maps that show you the way to the various youth hostels scattered around town. I declined and found a lovely but expensive hotel right in the center of town, just a few steps from the central square.

Krakow

Unlike the rest of Poland, Krakow was not bombed during the War. There are still several medieval churches, statues, etc. The center is a tourist area with a huge square (largest medieval square in Europe!), terrible restaurants, and plenty of locals passing through. It’s a tourist destination with plenty of Americans in attendance.

First things, first. The people here all look the same. They look like Lech Walesa, only the women’s moustaches aren’t as prominent. Even the teenagers look like they’re about to turn into Lech Walesa any minute. In Krakow, the women make an attempt at being stylish, but it reminds me of the British attempt to cook good food. The footwear here is as bad as the haircuts in Bolzano (you may remember from my previous journal that the people there had universally bad haircuts). I spent a few hours in the square trying to take some clandestine photos of the women’s terrible shoes “on the hoof,” but all I got was a lot of blurs.

One afternoon, I was hungry so I ducked into a middle-easterrn fast-food place that had falafels on the menu, but they were out of them. Even though a large percentage of their tourists are American, very few people speak English. The guy offered me a “Wegeteriasky kebob,” and I nodded, expecting some veggies on a stick coated with lamb residue. Instead, he gave me some shredded cabbage, both purple and white, in a pita pocket. Mmmmm.

I managed to find two vegetarian restaurants. The first night, I walked into one of these places, which looks more or less like a student café. I saw a few people at tables and a young woman sitting by herself having a bowl of borsht. I looked at her and thought I would order and then offer to join her and see if she wanted company. I ordered my mushroom barley soup and mushroom piroshkis and some potatoes, and when I turned around to walk toward her she had left, leaving her soup and food half eaten. I really think she got the idea that I was going to go say hi, and she was too frightened to deal with it. I felt sorry I had somehow chased her out of the restaurant. Was it that I was twirling my moustache or licking my eyebrows too much? I really don’t know.

Oh, one of the greatest things about Poland is that the word Alcohol is spelled ALKOHOLE, and you see this on signs all over the place. I think there’s a world of possibility here, but I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore.

One of the churches, the Basilica of St Francis, was truly memorable. I’ve been to a lot of cities and seen enough churches to make Mother Theresa smile in her grave. And I can tell you the naves and transepts tend to blur together. Sure, there’s Saint Peter’s in Rome (built for giants), and the Koln Cathedral (tallest structure in the world at one time), and St Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle (silver casket), Siena’s amazing duomo (decorations and illustrated books), the church dedicated to sailors in Marseille (hand-written notes all over the walls), the Church of Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg (onion-shaped spires), and of course Westminster Abbey (everyone is buried there), Notre Dame (watch your wallet), and Sacre Coeur (hang on the steps and sing Simon and Garfunkel tunes). I see about 20 cookie-cutter cathedrals for every one that really catches my eye.

The Basilica of St Francis in Krakow is one that caught my eye. It has some of the most amazing stained-glass windows in the world.

I’m a fairly keen student of semiotics – signs and their meanings. One thing I found amazing was the signs for male and female that mark the doors of the bathrooms. One is an equilateral triangle, the other is a circle. Can you guess which is which? The triangle is for men, and the circle is for women. Where did this come from? I’ve been to 50 other countries and have never seen it. Does anyone know about this? Please tell me if you have any information.

Back to the Salt Mines

Many tourists are here to see Auschwitz, which I decided not to see this trip. Instead, I went to the Wieliczka Salt Mines. For some reason, I manage to find the Unesco World Heritage sites all on my own, without having to consult the Unesco Map of World Heritage Sites.

The salt mine has been in operation for the last 900 years. It has over 200 kilometers of passages, over 2,000 caverns, 40 chapels, and several chambers carved to give good acoustical properties for concerts. We started by going down 64 meters of steps. I got stuck behind an elderly American couple that was really having trouble on the steps. The wife, apparently, had very limited vision and was having difficulty seeing where the steps stopped and she should turn around for the next set. So her husband would wait at the bottom and tell her when she was on the last step. This really didn’t work, because by the time he said anything she was already down, so she got more and more tentative. So finally, I said “There are seven steps,” and she started counting. He kept telling her what to do, but she got faster and faster, going down seven steps at a time. Soon, she told him she didn’t need him anymore, and the pace picked up quite a bit. I’ve since noticed that on most fire stairs the standard is seven steps per turn, 14 steps per flight.

I enjoyed the tour of the salt mine, learning about mining techniques and seeing all the sculptures carved out of pink rock salt. I saw tons of wood in the mine, holding up all the passages, caverns, and stairs. Some of the caverns are set up for large social events, with statues and staircases all made of salt; even the “tiles” in the floor are simply carved and polished salt. I asked if there were ever any fires, and our guide said there were always fires, some that lasted for months, killing hundreds of men at a time.

A Brief History of Poland

The Slavic groups that occupied the area of present-day Poland were first Christianized and began Poland under the Piast dynasty in 996. The crown eventually passed to the Jagiello dynasty (r.1386-1572), under whom Poland enjoyed its golden age. The arts and sciences flourished, and a Polish-Lithuanian state, created in 1569, maintained an empire that reached from the Baltic to the Black Sea. From 1609 to 1618 the Poles invaded and occupied Russia, including the Kremlin in Moscow. Probably bit off more than they could chew, because it was all downhill from 1618. The Swedes and Russians promptly pushed them back until the empire was no longer. In the 18th Century, Poland was divided and occupied by Sweden, Prussia, Austria, and Russia until Poland as a country disappeared from the map of Europe. Napoleon occupied the region until the Russians kicked him out. Following World War I, after 300 years of occupation, in 1918 an independent Poland was proclaimed, with Joseph Pilsudski as chief of state. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) redrew Poland’s boundaries, but a dispute over the eastern border led to war with Russia (1920-21). A Polish constitution was adopted in 1921, and Poles were free for five short years. In 1926 Pilsudski assumed dictatorial power, which passed to a military junta after his death (1935), and then came the Nazis, and then again came the Russians. People in Poland thought the Russians were better than the Nazis, but not by much. After having been occupied for most of the last 400 years, Poland finally got its freedom in 1989.

Warsaw

Soon I was in Warsaw, a city that has come a long way since Independence. Now it looks like many other European cities, with glass office towers and people talking on cell phones everywhere. I spent quite a bit of time in the “Old town,” which I found interesting. I know enough about construction to know that everything there is fake. The medieval town center was completely destroyed during the war, and the Soviets rebuilt it to look approximately the way it did before the war. They did a decent job; the tourists think they’re in an old town, but to me it feels like Disneyland. Same stucco on every building, but different color paint. Same windows, but in different places. I’m told the Soviets relieved several nearby towns of all their remaining bricks and trucked them to Warsaw to rebuild the Old Town.

For me, it was hard to walk through the town without hearing gunshots, imagining people trudging through trenches, Nazis shooting into buildings, bombs exploding, people hiding, fires burning, bodies piled up in the streets. For me, it’s a surreal experience. I faded in and out of past and present. I went to the art galleries and ate in the restaurants, but ghosts kept running by, emaciated, desperate.

Almost the entire city of Warsaw was rebuilt. You see a lot of gray concrete everywhere. In the neighborhood that used to be the Jewish Ghetto, there are now rows and rows of concrete housing projects with children playing in the street. All the homes are identical. Sixty years ago, 300,000 Jews were packed into the Ghetto and sent off to camps. The only thing left to remember the ghetto now is the memorial to Pawiak.

Pawiak – a name that hangs over the neighborhood like a dark cloud. Built by the Russians in the 1830s, Pawiak Prison became Warsaw’s death camp. Over 30,000 Jews were killed here, many were tortured. It was completely destroyed in the War, except for a single tree that still stands outside. Now there’s an underground museum that recreates several of the cells and has photos from the Ghetto.

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising, so there are many events, artworks, and celebrations. The sign of the Uprising is everywhere in town, painted on buildings, on sidewalks. Many exhibits show photos and tell stories. There are many names, names of Jews who didn’t survive the War.

Wisnia

One name I was looking for was Wiesha Paryzenberg, my mother, who was born in 1939 and was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. My mother had always told me that there would be nothing left if I ever went back to look for information on her. She said everything was destroyed. I went to an office that collects information about survivors and found her name on a list of surviving children in 1946. They also had an ID card on her, with the name Wisnia, which was probably a misspelling of Wiesha, which means “Cherry” – a child’s nickname. My mother’s real name was Wislawa (sounds like “Viswava”). I found her mother on another list, and I learned that my mother’s birth certificate may still be on record there. A friend from Warsaw said she would help me file the proper requests and keep looking for information. I’m particularly interested in learning about my grandfather, Rudolph Paryzenberg, who was supposed to be a well known inventor and engineer in the 30s.

Conflict

In Warsaw, you see lots of young people with plenty of energy. There are lots of new bistros, cafes, restaurants, and shopping malls. I found two vegetarian restaurants in Warsaw, one of which was a nice cheap little cafeteria, the other of which was a dining room with no one in it. I went in one evening, hungry, and asked to look at the menu. EVERYTHING was either deep fried or tried to be fake meat. I looked at the 40-some tables and the fish in the fish tank and the waiters standing by. I observed to the pretty young hostess: “Nobody is here,” and she replied, sadly, “We are here.” I felt sorry for them. I like to support vegetarian restaurants, but I had to pass that one up in favor of a cheeseless pizza.

One night, I was walking down the street when a young man ran right toward me, full speed, carrying a bag. Another guy was running behind him, yelling in Polish. I stepped aside as the first guy ran past, then I realized that he had just ripped off a woman’s purse and was running with it. He darted into traffic, across the street, and out of sight before I put it all together. I thought about Cory – I had my running shoes on and could have done something, but it all happened so quickly that there was nothing I could do. I felt bad for the American woman, who came along crying and saying everything was in her purse.

In general, Warsaw is safe, but the bag-snatching is legendary, so you have to keep your eyes open.

Why do we live in a world where people do mean things to each other? Why is my country waging a war and occupying another country that doesn’t want us there? Why does our government put so many people in jail for having drugs, while 25,000 people die every year from alcohol-related causes? Why does so much of our tax money go to defense ($400B) and only a tiny amount to help people in other countries ($8B)? Why do we spend so much on health care (15% of US income) and yet 62% of Americans are obese, the US is 42nd among industrialized nations in infant mortality, and 100,000 people die from medical errors every year? Why do people who promise to make government smaller actually end up … oh, sorry. This is my travel journal. On to Norway.

Oslo

I spent a week in Oslo (had never been to Norway, so this is my 52nd country), and I can’t say it did much for me. It was the third week in August, and already it was getting chilly. It’s probably tied with London for most expensive city in Europe. I asked for a Laundromat, so I could do a large load of laundry, and I was told there was no laundry (wash-and-fold) service in the city. I didn’t believe it. I went to a few dry cleaners and they told me they can get my laundry done for about $100 and it would take 10 days. I asked about a Laundromat, where I could do my own. As it turns out, there was one. Exactly one. It was about a 25-minute hike from my hotel. I found it and did my laundry, and people I met there confirmed that this, indeed, is the only laundromat in the city. Someone said the same was true in Sweden. Why is this? It must be the serious focus on white goods in Scandinavia. Everyone, I suppose, has a washer and dryer. What a contrast from New York, where few people do.

I’d like to go back to Norway someday and explore the fjords and the countryside, but Oslo didn’t feel like home the way Zurich does. Or anywhere in the Alps – like Verbier, for example.

Verbier, Switzerland

I spent a week in Verbier with my friend John, who is always great to reconnect with. We were high up in the Alps and spent several days hiking and exploring. It was already starting to get chilly, but the afternoons were sunny and warm. I think the part I liked the best was hiking and discovering tiny wild strawberries that are 100 times more flavorful than any strawberries you can buy. They were the size of raisins. We hiked slowly, watching for them and snatching them up as we went.

One day we took a nice hike above the tree line (see photos) and then decided to take these two-wheeled mountain scooters down the hill. They just had a platform to stand on, handlebars, two wheels, and two brakes. Whoosh! We went flying down the mountain! John was out of sight before I could get going. It went quickly, but we had a blast.

I spent a day in Geneva looking at watches, as is my custom. I spent two hours at the Patek Philippe Museum and a very informative hour talking with my friend Denis Asch. Denis has a very special little watch boutique in Geneva. Whenever I’m in town, I drop in and we discuss the latest in escapements, tourbillions, hairsprings, dials, and gear trains. He’s great. One day, we want to put together a “Watch Tasting” tour of the Jura region, taking rich people from watch factory to watch factory and giving them imaginary “watch bucks” to spend on their dream watches. I guess there are more important things to do in the world, but a day in Geneva thinking about nothing but watches is one of life’s little pleasures.

That was my month backpacking around Europe. I didn’t meet my future European wife, but I did have a great time. Now I have 52 countries down and 48 (at least) to go. Stay tuned.

Links

• ArcTeryx – the world’s best outdoor gear
• Awesome landscape-format Paris Metro photos
• Wireless Leiden – a cool project to make an entire village wireless
• History of Poland
• The Warsaw Uprising in words and pictures
• The Holocaust in words and pictures
• The Warsaw Ghetto
• Pawiak Prison