Another Here

Today is the last day of the Month of Pictures, or whatever I decided to call it. I think it’s safe to call this month a complete fucking failure. I just looked through the photos I’ve posted so far on Flickr: only one has 30 views, one has 20 views, and the rest have less than that. Most of them have around five views, and of those five, probably one or two are from me. If the measure of a photo is whether or not anyone wants to look at it – because who gives a fuck about photos nobody wants to look at – then it’s pretty clear that I took a bunch of lousy photos in Europe.

Since this is the final day of the month, I’m going to post the remainder of the photos all today, for both of you who want to see them. I won’t comment much on any of them, since what would be the point.

I’m leaving town on the 2nd, so if I do a YoE project next month at all, I won’t start it until I get back next week. Right now I don’t see any reason to continue the YoE, due to the aforementioned turd-polishing issue. My problems are too fundamental for a bunch of stupid one-off projects to be worthwhile. And if I’m not going to keep doing the YoE, there doesn’t seem to be much point doing the blog at all any more either.

If you have the opportunity, I urge you to take one of the guided tours of the Hackenberg fortification of the Maginot line. Bring a warm jacket.

We left Amsterdam and took the train to Luxembourg.

Luxembourg is an…unusual city. There is a lot of money in Luxembourg due to some amazing tax loopholes; the kind of loopholes CFOs masturbate to. Some of the European Commission is headquartered there as well. Those seem to be Luxembourg’s principal claims to fame right now.

If I were to describe to you a place where people worked but didn’t actually live, and many of those people fled to neighboring countries on the weekends, the city you would picture in your head is probably not that far off from what Luxembourg is actually like.

The population of the city is around 84,000 people, according to Wikipedia. Now, I’ve been through cities that are around 30,000 people, and Luxembourg is much more than three times their size. The population density is even lower than the pissant little city I live in. You can walk through the center of town at 7:00 in the evening and be totally alone on street after street. It’s like walking through the set of a disaster movie where all of humanity has been wiped out.

Even the stores are what you’d expect for a place that’s home to nobody, but through which an enormous amount of wealth flows: lots of shops selling jewelery, expensive clothes, that sort of thing. Another thing about the stores is that Luxembourg seems to pride itself on having crap service. I didn’t really take Adam seriously when he said the service in the restaurants there was bad, but he wasn’t kidding at all. You could walk in ready to drop $400 on dinner and they just don’t give a shit.

At this point, I should mention one place we ate that absolutely did not have terrible service, called Star of Asia. It’s a family-run Indian restaurant which serves fantastic food, and is one of the friendliest restaurants I’ve been in, probably ever. Maybe it was just because my expectations were so low after a few days in Luxembourg, but I loved the place. If you’re in or going to be in Luxembourg, definitely go there for dinner at least once.

I guess it sounds like I hate Luxembourg or something, which isn’t true. I’m just baffled by it. It is very clean and it’s a lovely place to walk around, but it’s like there isn’t any there there.

I can’t comment much on the rest of the country of Luxembourg outside the capital, except to say that it’s very beautiful.

The following day we got some bikes, took the train to a city on the border of Luxembourg and Germany whose name I forget, then rode into Trier. The scenery was great and the weather was perfect for the ride.

A structure we saw on the way. I believe Adam said it’s the original structure the Romans used, still in service to manage grape growing or something.

Very scenic. All along the river we saw the stereotypical image of small villages nestled away in the European countryside.

The Porta Nigra in Trier.

Inside the Porta Nigra.

Some ruins in Trier. It’s a very old city.

Adam’s wife wanted a scanner, and since there’s a store that sells electronics in Trier (a tourist destination and the oldest city in Germany), but none in Luxembourg (a modern city practically vomiting up money), she called Adam and asked him to bring a scanner back.

How does one transport a scanner on a bicycle?

Duct tape, naturally.

Hey look, Portugal won.

Mind getting the fuck out of the street, lads?

And so, we arrived in Amsterdam. By this time I had really had it with carrying my camera around, so I took very few pictures here. Plus, it makes the hookers mad.

Amsterdam was the first city where we didn’t see any Starbucks at all. We saw them every 15 feet or so in London, and we even saw a few in Paris, but after that we didn’t see any. We didn’t go in to any, obviously – there were better options available – but it was interesting to keep track.

Adam in our hotel room. Fabulous!

Yes, that’s a glass door to the bathroom and shower. The entire sink was glass too, actually, which is not nearly as cool as it sounds.

Adam swears they asked for double beds, and technically there are two mattresses on the bed, so I guess I have to believe him. But if they managed to push the mattresses any closer together, they’d actually intersect one another.

I have a new rule about hotel rooms: don’t share them with anyone you aren’t fucking.

The following morning, we took a 90-minute boat tour of the central part of the city. It was a good time, but overall it seems like you could get almost the same experience – minus the live tour guide and plus a lot more people – from the canal bus, for which you can buy a 24-hour pass and go from place to place. They even have recorded information about the city that they play, which is nearly identical to what we heard on the tour.

It looked to me like driving the canal bus is probably the coolest fucking job in the world. I asked the driver if it was, and he said no, but I think he was lying. I want that job.

I amsterdam what I amsterdam.

Rijksmuseum in the background. We didn’t go inside.

The Van Gogh museum. I believe that’s actually the rear section of it, which was closed when we were there. The main collection of paintings was in another building. As a long-time admirer of Van Gogh’s work, I enjoyed going to the museum, which also contained a bunch of his paintings, a good accounting of his life, and a collection of works that influenced and were influenced by Van Gogh.

I didn’t see either Starry Night or Self-portrait with a bandaged ear, which surprised me, since they’re two of his most well-known paintings. I guess they are housed elsewhere, according to those links.

Obligatory (?) photo of a canal.

---

Adam and I split up for the second day in Amsterdam. I forget what he did, but I went on a bicycle tour out into the countryside, which was fantastic. I think the whole thing was about six hours or so, and it started and ended directly across the street from our hotel. It was definitely one of the high points of the trip for me. If you’re ever going to Amsterdam, I really recommend you check it out. See if you can schedule a tour on a day when Bart is the guide.

No pictures from the bicycle tour, because I left my camera in the hotel (on purpose). This was also where I got sunburned. I figured if the past week of walking around outside hadn’t cooked me, neither would this. I was wrong. Wear sunblock.

I forget what all we did after seeing the Louvre, but we did go later in the day to see this thing, which looks to me like the French telling the English that they don’t have a monopoly on goofy street art.

This may have also been the afternoon when we went to a bookstore to look at comics. I’d heard that the French are really into their comics, which intrigued me since I didn’t know they had such a large comic scene, so I had to go check them out while we were there. There was a whole variety of stuff – some great, some not – but overall I was impressed. I bought a couple books to bring home with me. All the books we saw – except the imported manga and American comics – were in hardcover, and larger format than what I’m used to.

The next day, we decided to check out the Galeries Lafayette, as recommended by our guide book. It would have been nice if the writer had been considerate enough to tell us it’s nothing but crap for chicks. We stayed about as long as it took to take this photograph.

We then went to Montmarte, saw the basilica, and did the circuit around the inside. After that we went to the Dali museum a few blocks away, which was much more interesting. Then we made our way back down the hill, during which Adam showed me some “famous” restaurant – so famous I can’t even remember its name – that was apparently in a movie or something.

Later in the afternoon we headed back to the East side of the street to see the canal St-Martin, which was pleasant enough. We watched a ship go through one of the locks and headed back to find a bar to watch the football game.

The final morning in Paris we went to the Musee d’Orsay, then walked by the cathedral on the islands on the way back. We’d been one or two blocks away from it several times, but didn’t get over to actually see it until then. It was crowded and we didn’t have a lot of time, so we didn’t go inside.

By the time we left Paris, I had seen enough museums to last me the rest of my life. I checked over my guide book a few more times to see if there was anything it recommended that we skipped, but it was mostly chock full of museums. I refuse to believe that the only interesting thing to see in Paris is museums, so if you’re going to go, I recommend spending a little more time than I did checking out the guide book you’re going to buy.

The following day, we went to the Louvre. 9 Euro to get into that place is the deal of a lifetime. We probably spent at least four hours in there, and if I knew jack squat about what we were looking at, we’d have probably spent the entire day. Regardless, I took a few dozen photos, so I’m only posting a sample here.

You enter the museum via the pyramid there. I was expecting to wait forever in line to get tickets, but in fact we just walked right up and got them in no time from the automated machines. There wasn’t any line at all.

A statue of St. Joan. There’s a huge, multi-level courtyard with many statues of this style. I really dug them, but Adam didn’t seem interested, so he took a rest while I wandered around and took a bunch of photos.

Inside the Napoleon Apartment. The whole thing is decked out like this. You kind of get numb to it, but if you stop and look at any one individual item – say, a clock – and examine the craftsmanship that went into creating it, then consider that a similar level of work went into every single thing in every room you’re walking through, it’s really remarkable.

The presentation of the Mona Lisa is more interesting than the painting itself, because it’s so patently ridiculous. There’s this enormous free-standing wall in the middle of the room, with this tiny little painting mounted on it and hundreds of people shoving to the front, trying to get photographs or whatever, completely ignoring the dozens of other works of art surrounding them in the very same room.

The whole setup is so absurd that I desperately want to believe it’s a big joke by the people running the museum. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case, and that they set up this one little painting as an object of worship in absolute seriousness.

I forget the title of this image or who painted it, but if I remember the description correctly, it was a modern interpretation of classical paintings. I include it only because I was intrigued by the face of the sick girl in the middle of the picture.

When you’ve got 45 paintings to do and only one canvas, there’s only one thing to do.

---

One of the things that impressed me the most about the museum was how much of the contents were not behind glass or any real sort of protection at all. Putting that level of trust in the visitors is something I wouldn’t even think of doing.

I couldn’t help but think of the Centre Pompidou the day before, in which nearly every lame-ass exhibit had a rope around it ordering you not to get any closer. Visiting the Louvre just made the egos of all those pathetic little “modern artists” back in Pompidou look even more overinflated than they already did.

---

I think we got out of the museum around 2:30. We wanted to go get something to eat, but finding a restaurant that was open was difficult.

After all, it was lunch time.

Ms. Lagarde, you’re fighting a losing battle.