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albadgerFunny how we can panic when are denied a service that we did not have 10 years ago, that was pretty much inconceivable 20 years ago. How did your ancestors survive? Truth, of course, is a lot of them didn't. We're the product of millenia of natural selecction favoring skills required in a non-internet environment. Next generation is going to be soft, softer even than the Pennicillin Generation. I gotta lot of stuff saved up.
- Tuesday was still Vienna, until the night train left at 8:45pm (2045 as they call it), so I left my bag at a train station locker and wandered about. Vienna is a freakin' maze, twisty, windy streets that change name every 5 seconds, almost-identically-named streets on opposite sides of town, for every Seymourstrasse there's a Seymourgasse and a Seymourguste, all clearly designed to mislead the foreigner... yet, weirdly, I could imagine living there. For starts, there's a great subway system (my favorite station name is "Gasometer"), and with the museums and theaters there would always be something to do. And the Viennese seem to love American science-fiction TV; on one channel or another, an episode of Next Generation or Stargate would be playing. Much higher-brow than the Munich appetite for SpongeBob and Big Bang Theory.
I spent most of the afternoon at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which lives up to its billing as Vienna's Louvre. The Flemish section alone could take days, and I fell in love with a painting by Lorenzo Lotto. Unfortunately, the museum doesn't ship the original paintings to your home address & I'm not carrying that thing for two weeks.
Also, the Danube really is green. Pea green. "Green as a bean," as Spike Jones had it. - Then the night train to Venice, one of the key ingredients in my stumble. "But why would you want to sleep through that drive?" asked my friend Mike A. "It's one of the most stunning drives in the world!" And I hope to see it when I come back & have a car, but I love the idea of waking up and being in Venice. I woke up early and caught the last part of the scenic drive Mike was talking about, as the train came down from the mountains through a steep valley lined with eerie tors, the tallest still with snow. The scene flattened out, of course, and then we were crossing the lagoon into Venice. Good lord...
- ...Talk about Venice? Here's my take. Imagine Disneyland, except instead of lots of rides and some restraunts and a few shops, it has a billion shops, some restaurants, and exactly one ride, and that ride is Storybookland Canal Boats. That's a bit harsh, I know, and the architecture IS stunning... but this is the first place I've been on this trip where the tourists clearly outnumber the locals. I suspect that Venice as anything but a tourist draw actually ended 50 years ago, but it's certainly worth the Italian government's pennies to keep it afloat.
I accomplished my goals there in three hours (send postcards, buy a souvenir for a friend who had specifically requested one thing, and find the Teatro Fenice), and then off on the high-speed train to... - Milan. I had ONE goal in Milan, to gaze lovingly but sternly on the facade of La Scala, but they didn't have lockers, I didn't want to lug around my bag or wait an hour in line to check the bag, so I told La Scala that I will stare it down on a later trip, and had Frutti di Mare with linguini at a farily nice restaurant overlooking the main train station hall. Which is so damn fascist you could spit. Fascist, but beautiful! The off on...
- the even-higher-speed Swiss train through the Italian Alps up to Lake Geneva. Could there be a more stunning, beautiful train ride in the world? I haven't been on one. Breathtaking pretty much from leaving the Milan sprawl right up to...
- Geneva! For the very first time on this trip, my hotel is in the red-light district. In ONE of them. There seem to be a lot of hookers in Geneva. Must be all the diplomats.
