Greats and Gas stations

Friday, July 1

So, the rest of Amsterdam.  On Tuesday, I met up with Glenn (my mom's cousin) and his fiancee Alissa for dinner with the Greats (great aunt and uncle, Missy and Chuck), who, coincidentally, were in town at the same time as me.  We met at the hotel for drinks, and then disembarked in a beautiful canal boat set up with a dining room, making stops at various restaurants to have food run across the street and deposited through the window.  Several members of the team at Chuck and Glenn's company, Network Hardware were there, and they were all very fun and interesting to talk to.  It was pouring rain outside, which made the boat even more cozy and enchanting.  All-in-all, a truly singular experience!

Glenny!

Since the Australians left, I've been hanging out with Kai and Andre, from Bad Oeynhausen, Germany, in town for a 2-day mini-vacation.  We went out for pizza, and saw the Source Code (the new Jake Gyllenhaal movie) in the Pathe de Munt theater, which was cool, although I was distracted by trying (failing) to read the Dutch subtitles.
We walked through the park, where they have these found-item racks where people can clip up lost keys, earrings, hats, cards, and even a condom (although I don't know that the owner would necessarily want that back...)

We broke the rules (See the "Please do not sit here" sign directly under Andre's ass)

We were bewildered by the street signs and their potential meanings.

We were (I was) excited about the big red bike sign.

Also, have I mentioned that there are bicycles everywhere here?  Because there are.

The following is my process of getting from Amsterdam to Berlin, ready?  After a genuine clusterfuck situation at the train station in which you were assigned a queue number that then appears on a screen, letting you know that it's your turn to talk to someone and indicating which ticket/information desk to go to... but only after a 2-hour wait, I gave up and decided to go back to the hostel to buy my EuRail pass online, only to be met with the sinking realization that in order to do this, you have to provide a shipping address so they can mail it to you.  It's almost like they expect you to have already made travel arrangements BEFORE you show up in a new country - crazy, right?!  As fate would have it, my new German friends were leaving to hitchhike back home on Thursday morning.  We talked about it, and came to the consensus that while they might be less likely to get picked up with 3 people instead of just 2, any potential difficulties that arose would be outweighed by the benefit of having a female in the group.  So we set out for the A1 around 9:30 that morning.  By 12:30, we had made it about 5 km (3.1 miles).  Finally, we were picked up by a 40-something-year-old business man in a fit of nostalgia for his free and easy youth.  He dropped us off at a rest stop about 20 minutes out of the city, but it turned out to be basically just a hotel with a popular cafe for business guys to have lunch meetings before going back to the office, which was, incidentally, not in Germany.  We had just started to flirt with the idea of scoping out potential camping spots when a guy in a delivery truck pulled over and offered to take us to an actual gas station out of town where road-trippers and truck-drivers might stop.  From there, it was pretty smooth sailing.  Over the next 80 km (50 miles), we were driven in short legs of 10-20 km by a British businesswoman with a German husband, a pair of electricians in their company truck, and a Moroccan guy driving a moving van full of "documents" who, as a parting gift, gave us a large nugget of his own homegrown weed with such a ceremonial flourish that you'd think he was handing over his firstborn.  Each time, we would get dropped at a prominent gas station off the freeway, where we parked our butts, drank wretched coffee, thumb-wrestled, and hassled unsuspecting motorists.  I downright pity anyone who crossed our line of sight with German license plates.  Finally, an enormous asthmatic man who looked rather like Santa Claus in a suede vest and a chain-mail necklace piled us and our bags into his tiny two-door hatch-back and deposited us just behind the border to Germany.  At this point, it was about 6:30 pm, and Kai and Andre only had about 150 km (93 miles) to go til Bad Oeynhausen.  I, however, still had to go another 400ish km (250 miles) til Berlin.  In a stroke of luck, Kai and Andre found a guy who was going straight through their city, all the way to about 100 km (62 miles) outside Berlin.  His name was Stefan, and he didn't speak any English, but via K and A, we communicated that he could take me right into the heart of the city.  The boys said that from what they could tell, he seemed upstanding, but took down the license plate number anyway and told me to call as soon as I got dropped off, which was nice.  Stefan turned out better than any of us had hoped for, and dropped the guys off right at their front door around 8:30 pm.  For the remainder of the trip we alternated between 180 km/hr autobahn-style driving, and 40 km/hr traffic jams.  The single and only uncomfortable part was driving for 4 hours in dead silence, save for Stefan occasionally pointing out the window to indicate a specific city or landmark we passed.  We reached the city limits around 11:30 pm and he ended up driving me all the way up to the exact address where I was supposed to meet people, about a hundred km out of his way.
So all in all, despite our slow start, once we got the ball rolling we couldn't have asked for a more successful hitchhiking trip.  And to think - none of us even had to take our shirts off!

Road-weary travelers outside one of Holland's scenic truck stops.  

So, now I'm in Berlin, but I'll go into that later.

Spliffs and Spuistraat

Tuesday, June 28

Everyone was pretty skeptical when I said that I wasn't planning on getting stoned in Amsterdam, and while I have held to that, I swear to god, you can get a contact high just from stepping outside.  There are three coffee shops with outdoor seating on the same block as my hostel on Spuistraat.  They are all pretty pungent, and need I say, it's not the coffee you're smelling.  I was pretty amused to realize that when I asked the guy at the desk for a recommendation of a good coffee shop, I had to specify that I meant actual coffee.  He thought I was being euphemistic, and informed me that here, you don't have to beat around the bush - you can say what you mean: "Hello, I'm looking for marijuana.  Drugs.  To get high.  Where are the best drugs? - You can shout it from the rooftops!"  Over the next few days, he and I took to chatting whenever I was on the way in or out. Vratislav from the Czech Republic.  Hostel receptionist, and self-titled "everyone's Eastern European bitch for everything," he lived in Ireland for a few years before moving to Amsterdam, gave me all the best tips on the city, and made a point to balance out the universe by enthusiastically countering the tour guides' romanticized, idyllic representation of the Netherlands whenever possible.  "Holland:" he said, in a residually Slavic accent, "finds ways to be fucking you over at every turn."  I had walked in as he was on the phone screaming in Czech at a Dutch contractor (who almost certainly does not speak Czech) about a broken sliding glass door.  "Yes, they have their scenic windmills and adorable wooden shoes, and a CENTURIES LONG NATIONAL TRADITION OF BEING A CUNT!  God bless Eastern Europe."  

Besides Vratislav, I also spent a few days hanging around with Lynden and Cameron from Melbourne, Australia.  I gave Lynden a haircut in the middle of Volden park, attracting a few strange glances, then we walked around the city getting lost in the horse-shoe-shaped streets and canals, and visited the red-light district.  

An Australian and some street art

Space Invader!

Another Australian and some more street art

Canal.

The red-light district:  It's an interesting phenomenon - very like window shopping, each girl is displayed in a small room with a bed and a bay window lit in red neon with curtains that could be drawn when she got a customer.  Outfits ranged from see-through baby doll negligees to glow-in-the-dark vinyl bikinis to lace-up leather bustiers, and even an Eve-style, strategically placed adhesive fig-leaf sticker.  While people are usually fascinated and a little revolted by this street, I actually think it's a pretty good idea.  It's a much more honest approach to a situation that exists in pretty much every metro area of the world, and the official recognition of its existence makes it much safer for the women.  There are rules and codes of conduct, and if anyone tries to take pictures or get out of line, each girl has an alarm she can ring, which sets off a siren outside the building to alert the many security guards roaming the street.  While the girls aren't completely independently in charge of their income, it's more like renting a chair in a beauty salon than being a wage-slave or having an abusive/exploitative pimp.  The simplified version is, they pay for their spot in the window and for any advertising, and keep the rest.  It's certainly not perfect, and there are always the very sad cases of women who end up turning to it out of desperation, but for the ones who actually choose it and like doing it, it apparently works quite well.  To each her own - food for thought.  Having dinner with Glenny and Alissa and Missy and Chuck and co. tonight - more later!

Flights and Finals

Sunday, June 26

So concludes the Burren College of Art experience.  As I go back through all my photos I might revisit a few key points in my posts, but from here on out, it's continental Europe on the go!  I'm currently sitting in the Dublin airport, reflecting on the mad dash that has been this weekend.  Thursday was our final exhibition and bar-b-cue WITH veggie burgers!  The two Roberts took on the title of co-grillmasters, to add to their already impressive resumes.  (Bus driver / AV guy / sculpture studio trainer / sink declogger / art supply shop-runner / groundskeeper / camera, bicycle, car and copier mechanic, and librarian / photographer / bartender / G5 lab expert / cafe assistant, respectively.) 

Also, Joe and I realized partway through the picnic that we matched almost exactly.

The show went beautifully, although none of us had any idea how formal the evaluation was - before the exhibition opened, we artists were all exiled from the gallery while a panel including the dean, the president/co-founder of the college, a guest artist, our TA (a fine arts PhD at the Burren) and the local ecology and environmental science expert and founder of the BurrenBeo Trust went around to each of our displays and discussed them privately, and then called us in one by one to present our work and conduct an interview with the panel, after which we were all banished again, and they collectively decided our final scores.  Nerve-wracking!

Here are a few people's final products:

This is Joe's sculpture - one of the ubiquitous rock walls, rendered out of painted bottles.

Mahla made art books - she cut out overlapping circles in the pages, and then passed out each page to a different member of the community, asking them to write about their experience with the Burren.  Then she bound them such that you could see snippets of people's handwriting in the layers of paper.  Super cool.

Lily welded a hollow tree stump out of found rusty metal objects, then placed it out in the landscape and photographed it, to comment on the way human intervention has shaped what we view as natural over time.

Rachel identified similarities to human body shapes occurring naturally in the rocks, and did a series of drawings representing these formations.  

On Friday, I cleaned out my studio, returned my books, booked my flights and bus tickets, printed out the requisite paperwork, got a formal statement from the school verifying that I am a student in the EU (for discounts on trains and stuff), and washed all my clothes (really - I did laundry!).  Then our new friend Stuart, who does traditional woodworking, came over to our house with his tools and showed us how to make wooden spoons, and Mahla (my roommate) made us all a fantastic Shabbat dinner of matzo ball soup and homemade challah bread.  This is the spoon I made:

On Saturday morning, I packed up my big backpack and shoulder bag, my poster tube with my final project, and a box of all my art stuff and extra things to ship back, caught a bus to Galway, changed buses, and headed for Dublin.  Once here, I found a post-office to ship all my shit, an out-doors/camping store to buy a tent and sleeping bag (on clearance no less!), a super nice hostel right near the bus stop, and two Australian dudes who, despite their incomprehensible accents, made great company for navigating the pubs.  

(Here's the front of the hostel - nicer than a lot of hotels, and only 14E a night with sheets, internet, and breakfast included!)

Now I'm in the airport, and we have come full-circle.  Stay tuned - next stop: Amsterdam!

Free wheels and Feuchtigkeitableitend

Entry from Monday, June 20 (with a little backdating magic)

It has been quite a week.  Tobi and I have been camping in the woods near the school since Thursday, as a fun excursion, and some well-needed space from a few of the housemates.  We took some backpacks and groceries and found a tiny clearing in the dense bushes at the base of the mountain next to the school.  In the mornings, I have breakfast (banana and PB or granola made into oatmeal, and coffee) walk to the studio (about 10 min.) come back to the tent for lunch (brown bread with sun-dried tomato paste, sauteed spinach, avocado slices and melted cumin gouda cheese - go, go mini campstove!) back to the studio, then go hiking if it's nice weather, or if it's raining, hang out in the tent and learn German. I now know how to conjugate "to be," "to have," "to eat," "to speak," and "to go" and such useful expressions as "where are you from" (von wo kommst du), "what time is it" (wie spät ist es), "you're one to talk" (das sagt der richtigen), "now we're even" (das ist auf gleichinder gerechtigkeit), "I speak no German" (ich spreche kein Deutsch), and "moisture-wicking" (Feuchtigkeitableitend).  In the evening we go for dinner and pints at one of the many pubs in town.  It's pretty ideal - even the extremely intrusive thorn bushes and stinging nettle patches serve the useful purpose of keeping wandering hikers out of our little camp.  

This is it, as seen from the "path" coming in.  Can you spot the tent?

Here it is again, from the other side, once inside the clearing.

And here is a demonstration of how to get around when you have horrible blisters from running 4 miles barefoot on gravel roads, by our resident German:

Saturday was the AnPost Tour de Burren 160km bicycle race.  Ever so cruelly, my knees and shins were so bad from running that I could barely walk, let alone ride a hundred miles.  Have you ever seen the heartbreaking combination of incontinent excitement and intense desperation that possesses a golden retriever on a leash when someone throw a tennis ball just out of reach?  After watching 2500 cyclists flood the streets of our town of 250 and not being one of them, I have a deep and personal understanding of exactly what that golden retriever feels like.  

I managed to keep the wailing and gnashing of teeth to a minimum long enough to take a few pictures.  

In any case, Tobi left this morning to go on a canoe trip through the fjords and lakes in Sweden.  As it happens, he gets back to Munich 2-ish days after I leave the country.  Unfortunate timing, but I'm still way excited to see Germany on my own!  

In any case, today marks the first day of the last week of the first month of my trip (aka, I only have 4 days left of school).  I'm a bit shocked at how quickly it's gone by, but then again, I'm only halfway through my travels!

Street signs and Studios.

I just realized that I have yet to post any pictures of my studio, and it is rad, so here you are.  (Robert the store manager / bus driver / groundskeeper / tech support guy / man of a zillion hats had moved all the extra furniture into the unused half of my space, so I put it to good use.)

So I went from working in a glorified storage space, to being the proud occupant of a studio with a couch/bed, wraparound workbench, full-length mirror and coffee table.  Redecorating win!

Also, I have been collecting pictures of interesting or entertaining street signs.  Here are a few.

 "Please run over pedestrians here"

?

Or, if you'd prefer,

Or just look back and forth several times.

 "EVERYONE.  Go this way regardless of what color your shoes are!"

 "Please leap here."

"Please refrain from leaping over pits of fire in pursuit of the seagulls."

Your guess is as good as mine here.

Hostels and Hen nights

Every city and county in Ireland has a nickname.  For example, Armagh is called the Cathedral County, while people from Carlow are the Fighting Cocks, from Cork (from whence we Mahonys originate) are the Donkey Eaters, and those from Donegal are the Herring Gutters.  The more contemporary nicknames are not as creative, but perhaps clearer.  Dublin is the Big City, Limerick is Stab City, and Galway is Party City.  This weekend, I went to Galway.  I took the bus out with my lovely housemate Caitie on Saturday morning.  We found an art store, and yarn and food and buskers galore.  She went back on the bus that evening, and I stayed overnight in a hostel just off of Eyre Square.  It was super fun, and I met a whole load of Canadians, and befriended a backpacking physics major from Germany named Tobias.  The rest of the housemates joined us on Sunday afternoon, and we all walked around exploring together before sharing a cab back to Ballyvaughan that evening.  We brought Tobi back with us so he could see more of the countryside (instead of just the big cities with train stations) and now he is camping in our yard.  Galway was fantastic - almost all the central streets are foot traffic only (Fußgängerzone, my new favorite word in German).  The following photo is directed at Kent Van Note, and is unfortunately NOT the hostel I stayed in because it was full.  But I almost stayed there, so... good enough.

What they don't tell you, is that when they say "Party City" they mean specifically bachelorette parties.  Here they call them "Hen nights" and Galway is apparently the one single destination for every girl ever about to get married, ever, to get ridiculously drunk and embarrass herself and her future children.   Literally the entire city was swarming with herds of women dressed in ridiculous costumes, sashes, tiaras, glitter, and cowboy hats.  Every fifth female you saw was wearing a banner reading "BRIDE" with the other four masking their resentment with a maniacal will to be celebratory.  The ladies weren't the only ones partaking in the shit show that weekend - we went for pints on Saturday, and grabbed a table at the top of the stairs.  We were about halfway through our respective Guinnesses, when a young man sprinted up the steps, promptly vomited all over the floor, and proceeded to fall down in it.  Needless to say, we relocated.  Excitement!!

Shortcuts and Sheepdogs

I have a new friend.  An elderly border collie has taken to guiding us home from the college.  There is a "lovely little shortcut" that was recommended to us by our professor, in case we want to walk home instead of taking the bus.  "Fairly clear path," he said. "You can't miss it," he said.  The weather has been inordinately pleasant lately, so walking seemed like a fine idea, and we all liked the sound of a lovely and fairly clear path.  The route unfolds as follows.  First you walk down the back road for about a half-mile, then you turn onto a gravel side road bordered by the occasional farmhouse.  So far so good. (This is where we met the dog.)  Then you climb over a low wall, and shimmy the length of a cow pasture, trying not to touch the electric fence, or agitate the cows who are very unsettled by the presence of the American art students intruding on their field.  Next you go down a wooded path, with a beautiful view of your own feet, as the clear space is about 4 feet tall, and requires some severe hunching.  Then you climb over some boulders, fight your way through a gauntlet of thornbushes, climb a few more walls and bother a few more cows, and finally empty out onto our road, just past the school and the field.  If it hadn't been for this dog's saintly patience, we might very well still be wandering around amidst the cows.

Also, this is a picture of our house, as seen upon our epic return home.