Patrons of the Arts

Grace and I have become patrons of the arts. We are now "Friends of the Royal Academy," after paying for a yearly membership. This means we get free entry to the exhibits for a year (normally you have to pay about £10 per person), we don't have to wait in lines, and we are allowed in the secret 'Friends' room for tea. It has couches.

We have realised that this is almost certainly the last six months of our life in London. Next fall Grace is going to Law School and, with luck, I'll get into a PhD program nearby. Since Grace hasn't applied to any schools in London, this is it for the two of us. We may not be coming back to the US, depending on the schools we get into, but we won't be living in London. End of an era.

So, we're (sort of) going out with a bang. We've decided to cough up the money, and finally see the things that cost money. Like art shows at the Royal Academy. Or special exhibitions. Or the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral. The list goes on. There should be some photos.

Oh, by the way, the first free exhibit we saw at the Royal Academy? Sculpture by Anish Kapoor. I have been wanting to go ever since I saw his beautiful sculpture in the Royal Academy courtyard.

It turns out the sculpture in the courtyard is the best thing. At least in my view.

Um, sorry

Hey everyone, sorry about the six week absence. The truth is, there's probably going to be a lot of extended blank spots in our blog for awhile, at least from me. Basically, I've got almost no time anymore, thanks to the course. I am highly enjoying the course, but its pretty demanding on my time. I basically work all the time except for Wednesday night (when I give myself a pass to go see a movie on 2-for-1 night), Friday night, and part of Saturday. That's how it is.

Since our last post though, we've moved into our new flat, gone to Ikea and put together three sets of shelves and a big long, tall, table, which serves as our counter. We now live about one-minute's walk from a video rental store, and that's been disastrous. Grace has become obsessed with Alias, and has been working her way through the series over the past few weeks. Since we only have the one main room to hang out and I like being home more than being at the library (it's all about getting tea), we've devised an ingenious system, where Grace can watch TV while I study. Basically, I wear a set of earplugs and those sound dampening earmuffs worn on construction sites, and the TV set is reduced to the sound of some people having a conversation in another room, through a door.

We've also submitted an application for Grace to get a 'British Resident card', which she is eligible for now that I'm an Irish citizen. Once we get it, we should be able to enter the UK in the EU line, and also go to the continent without getting visas. Not that there's any time for that. But maybe in the summer...

The next big thing on our agenda is our trip back to the USA for Christmas. We're flying home on December 18th, and returning to England on January 5. While we're stateside, we'll be splitting our time between Iowa City, where my family lives, and Pittsburgh, where Grace's mom lives. We'll be in Pittsburgh from the 25th through the 28th or something, and in Iowa for the rest of the time. During that time, I'll probably be putting together the finishing touches on some Graduate school applications, but fortunately we don't have a test after the break is over, as was the case when I studied in Cambridge.

Anyway, that's all. We're going to take some of Saturday afternoon to go visit a free museum we've never been to. Adios!

Done, Done and Done

Since our last post, I've completed the LSE math boot camp, Grace has finally taken the LSAT and we have secured a new flat to move into.

The new flat has ended up being just up the road from where we live now. It's nicer and more private than our current flat (where we have to enter via our landlord's home), but it's a bit smaller and probably slightly more expensive. Anyway, we're happy with it. We're thinking of having a house-warming party sometime. We move tomorrow, and right now I am procrastinating instead of packing stuff into boxes.

Also, it has an attic, which I am definitely excited about. It's too small to make a room, but it will be our storage space.

To celebrate all these accomplishments, Grace and I went out for dinner and a movie last night with some friends. We saw "Away We Go", which we liked, and ate sushi at a conveyer belt sushi place. Yum.

Also, please be advised that the new book by Audrey Niffenegger (who wrote "The Time Traveler's Wife") takes place in Highgate, where we live. It's a ghost story. The only other famous story I've heard about which takes place in our area is called "Crouch End." It's by... Stephen King. I think we must live in a spooky part of London.

Since Germany

We got back from Germany almost a month ago and a few things have happened since then, despite indications to the contrary on this blog.

First, I quit my job and went back to school. My last day as a sub-Saharan Africa Analyst was September 4 2009, roughly 23 months after I started. On reflection, is was a really good job. I think I solidified my understanding of general economics (it's one thing to learn about exchange rates, stock markets, GDP and inflation in class, and quite another to track these things in the real world for nearly two years), I've tightened up considerably my writing skills (though maybe that's not reflected in this blog), I've been given the opportunity to show I can handle actual responsibility and, you know, I met a lot of really good people. I'm still going to try and freelance for the company, and going into the course, I've got an informal contract to produce one 6,000 word report per month. I like the opportunity to stay in touch with real economies and also to keep my writing skills fresh. The money is not bad either. Still, we'll have to see how busy the course gets.

Yes, the course. I've started a one-year programme at the London School of Economics. It's called the MSc in Economics - it's basically a master's degree in economics. No specialty, not even a dissertation. Just intensive general economics for one year. I'll be taking three mandatory courses - microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics (basically statistics) - and one elective course (probably economic development). Right now, though, there's none of that. Since September 8, I've been doing one thing, and one thing only: math. I'm in the midst of the MSc Economics three-week math boot camp. At the end of September, we take two tests and if we don't pass... well, nothing bad happens. We have already been accepted to the course and nothing will change that. We just get 'encouraged' to get our act together, and they provide some extra tutoring for us.

Anyway, I've been at it for a bit over two weeks, and it is extremely intense. I haven't had a spare moment since the course began. I get up at 7, go to school at 8, stay there till 5, working on homework during the two hour break we get between morning and afternoon classes, and then I come home and work till 11 or midnight. Tonight is the first night I finished everything early, which is why this blog post is being written. I'm also in a study group that meets for five hours each Sunday (and they actually use the whole five hours to work!), which, when combined with weekend homework means I don't have any time then either.

But, those aren't the only things that have been changing. My course started on a Friday and the following Sunday night our landlords called us down to have a chat. We immediately knew this was trouble, as this had never happened in the one year we've lived here. So, agonizing over what it could be about all afternoon, we finally found out at 7:30 pm that our landlords needed their flat back. It was our two month's notice to find somewhere new. With the course starting for me and Grace cramming for the LSAT (which she takes on Saturday), it was hardly an ideal time to go flat hunting for either of us.

However, on the bright side, as we started looking it became apparent that we were probably going to be getting a flat upgrade for roughly the price we are paying now. I'm not sure if its the recession, or the fact that Grace and I are better flat hunters now (we will have moved SIX times since 2005), or merely that we've been in London long enough to be comfortable living in 'regular' parts of London instead of the nicest (and most expensive). Whatever the case, we're seeing flats that are closer to central London, cost about the same as ours, have roughly the same amount of space, but do not require passing through your landlord's house for access. Granted some have been real stinkers. We saw one flat with no shower, just long rubber tubes attached to the bath taps. Another didn't have space for a shower in the bathroom, so it was in the main hallway, behind a curtain (not even a door!). But we also saw places that would work. We're holding out for something better, because it no longer seems like you have to grab a flat within 10 minutes of viewing before someone else snaps it up. Our dream is to have a dishwasher.

But this is probably not a dream that will come to pass.

Germany/Austria Photos - The Rest

The second half of the trip. In color!

Germany - The Good Ones (Part Two)

Part IV: St Johann in Tirol and Salzburg

Okay this is taking forever. Let's wrap this up.

We had a wonderful time in this little village in the Austrian Alps. The reason we went there is that it is the hometown of Matt's Austrian boss, Marcus, and he recommended it and gave us lots of ideas of available activities in the area, especially skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. He told us that when he was a child, the cable car was only 5 minutes from his house. For a while last year, Matt and I and a bunch of friends from my master's programme were trying to plan a skiing trip somewhere cheap and tried to organise the trip for St Johann. Unfortunately no one was able to afford it in the end and it didn't work out. Since that fell through, we figured we would go to St Johann on this trip and hike instead of skiing.

St Johann in Tirol
Source: Wikipedia

The day after we arrived we were planning to do a big walk, it was a Sunday and all the grocery stores were closed, so we couldn't buy a cheap grocery store breakfast. Instead we spent a pleasant morning in a little cafe (where we encountered a drunken psychotic German guy who we labeled 'alternate path Joel'--this is the guy Joel could have become if he'd taken a different path). German tea was a perfectly adequate substitute for English tea. German pastries however have a very different flavour from American and English pastries, I think because they use a lot of almond paste or ground almonds. They're less sweet and have a slightly grainy cream. My standby became the apple strudel with tart soft apples and a thin crispy pastry wrapper.

Apple Strudel
Source: Wikipedia

So after breakfast, we wandered over to the Tourist Information Office, which was open at 10AM to see what hike they could recommend to us. None of us had brought hiking boots, we only had tennis shoes. The lady at the Tourist Information Office seemed to think we wouldn't make it 10 feet without hiking boots. At first she said the only walk we could probably do was a paved walking path along the river, ie flat and boring. We were in the mountains and were determined to walk up in the mountains. She suggested a different walk for us, which she said we could maybe do without hiking boots and that's the one we did.

In the cable car
Source: Matt

It was really, really cool: we took the cable car 1000 feet right up a mountain called Kitzbuhler Horn and proceeded to walk down back into the village. The cable car did not go right to the top, there was a summit higher up which we briefly contemplated going up, but it was actually very rough terrain and we thought we legitimately couldn't do it without hiking boots. Our path down was--a paved road! And on the way up, we saw families with small children and dogs walking down on the same path. You definitely didn't need hiking boots for that.

At the top of the cable car ride. Pretty high up, surrounded by mountains.
Source: Matt

Walking down the mountain was great. We were surrounded by mountains on all sides, the mountain sheep and cows in the fields, and the river snaking in between villages in the valley below. Very, very beautiful. And one of the best views, when we came around to the north side of the Kitzbuhler Horn, was a full view of this range of mountains called the Wilder Kaiser--Crazy King, after King Ludwig II. They were rugged, snow-topped, forbidding, dangerous. And so beautiful.

Wilder Kaiser Mountains
Source: Wikipedia

Around lunchtime, we had been walking only about half an hour but we were coming up to a little restaurant/pub. It was simply irresistible. Having a pint of wheat beer on the shoulder of a mountain, surrounded by peaks and breathing in the sharp alpine air was pretty brilliant.

Matt and Keith enjoy a Konig Ludwig beer.
Source: Matt

Oh yeah this is for real!
Source: Matt

Source: Matt


And for some unknowable reason, the alcohol went straight to my head. I was pretty goofy for the next 40 minutes, as Matt will attest.

Ahem
Source: Matt

The walk took about 3 hours, sharply downhill the entire way. By the end our quads, knees, calves and feet were burning up. Keith, who is very fit because he's training for a triathalon, was less sore than us.



When we got down, we got in touch with Marcus' mom. Marcus said his mom would like to meet us and have us over for tea. After a quick shower we went over to Marcus' mom's house, which was only around the corner and talked with her and Marcus' dad for about an hour. They were really nice and talked a lot about how Marcus doesn't come home anymore. Instead they are moving to England in a year or so. That's the nice thing about the EU, you can move wherever.

Afterward we headed to find some drinks and dinner. Marcus had told us, he said, 'No trip to St Johann in Tirol is complete without a trip to the beer tower.' Beer--yes. Top of a tower--yes. It checked all our boxes so we went. And we decided to stay for dinner. It was our first real Austrian meal and I had a pork chop with a stuffing ball and saurkraut. Keith had Hungarian Borscht, which is a thick stew of tomato sauce with big chunks of beef and potato. Matt had some kind of vegetarian crap, I can't remember what. After we ate inside the beer tower, we moved to a table on the outside terrace and watched the sun go down behind the mountains.

On top of the beer tower
Source: Matt


Sunset
Source: Matt

That week there was going to be a big international biking championships in St Johann and the town had put on this festival to coincide with it. As part of this festival they had a stage with traditional Austrian folk music along with a troupe of people doing traditional dances, wearing traditional costumes and doing little skits. It was pretty funny stuff and they had audience participants come up and dance with them.

Dancing!
Source: Matt

(On a side note, Austria is highly insular, they hate immigrants and I got stared at everywhere we went in St Johann. I never saw another non-Caucasian person there. They don't seem to like foreigners in general though. Most of the people who were there for the biking championships were Italian and one time one of them nearly ran into an Austrian on his bike, and the Austrian woman shouted something at him, including something about 'Italians!'.)

Anyhoo, that evening we were quite exhausted and went to bed.

The next morning, we had some time before check-out and decided to buy some souvenirs, write and post some postcards, and do some grocery shopping before we got back in the car for the drive to Salzburg. We had tea at the same cafe and got a baguette and some lunchmeat (PB & J for Matt), fruit, granola bars, etc, from the grocery store which was now open. While we were waiting for Keith to buy some postcards, we ran into Karl, the guy running the hostel. The night before, the Aussies had lost the Ashes cricket series to England for the first time in several years, much to the disappointment of the many Aussies staying at our hostel. In passing, I gave my sympathy to Karl about his team's loss, upon which he became rather piqued, telling me tersely, 'I'm a kiwi.' Yikes.

So we hit the road again, heading for Salzburg. The road was for a while as exciting as when we drove into the lps. Eventually though we left the mountains behind and everything was suddenly flat as a pancake again. The place we were staying was called Haus Christine, a bed and breakfast on the edge of Salzburg. When we got there we were amazed. It was a really lovely family house. We seemed to be the only guests, and it was located on a hill overlooking Salzburg. We sat at a table on the terrace and put together our sandwiches for lunch. Then we dropped off our things in our room, a comfortable and clean 4-bed dorm room, and headed off to take the bus into Salzburg.

Outside Haus Christine
Source: Matt

Oh yes, the hills were alive.
Source: The Internets

Salzburg is probably most famous in the US for being where Maria lived in The Sound of Music. I love The Sound of Music and we spent most of the day humming the songs under our breath. We walked leisurely through the old town, the famous market and then went up (of course) a huge cliff to get a view over the city. While we were up there I narrated the entire story of The Sound of Music for Keith because he'd never seen it. On the other side of the cliff was exactly what we had been aiming for, a beer garden. This was called Augustiner brauhaus, after the Augustinian monks who had started it at their monastery centuries ago.

Top of the heap
Source: Matt

Augustiner Brauhaus beer garden
Source: Matt

Salzburg is also famous for being where Mozart lived during his most productive years. There is a candy that is widely sold there called Mozartkugel, which translates to Mozart balls. Of course Matt had to get some for his office.

Mozart Balls: Not a joke
Source: Information Superhighway

Salzburg was kind of an example of how you can roll into a town, not know anything about it, try to see tons of things and fail, and not really care that much because you're enjoying it anyway. We tried to see a marionette show (who wouldn't want to see a puppet show after that horrific museum exhibit from Munich?) but it was too expensive. We tried to go to the egg museum, but it was closed. The Christmas museum was also closed. We tried to find an internet shop to get driving instructions back to Munich and wandered for about an hour before we found one. I tried to get something to eat but grocery stores didn't seem to exist. I finally got some snitzel (pounded flat, breaded pork) from a cart. Then we got on the bus and were immediately told we couldn't eat on the bus. Embarrassing that. We were bumbling tourists. In the evening though we went back to Haus Christine and read books on the terrace, watching the sun go down behind mountains again, until it was too dark to read.

The next morning we had our breakfast (which included meat) and then packed up, heading out back to Munich. The driving was not as exciting, but we drove through the Black Forest which must indeed have been something spooky and mysterious back in the days before the Autobahn.

Back in Munich we dropped off the trusty Picasso and shared one last lunch together at a train station. Keith's flight was much earlier than ours, so he left after lunch but Matt and I had the better part of the day left in Munich. We took the tram to another fancy castle/house called Schloss Nymphenburg which is still in Munich. The house itself was not as impressive as some of the other places we had seen. The grounds were very large but it was very hot out. We tried to buy a Coke at the garden cafe but it was EURO4 for a 500ml bottle and we refused out of principle to pay that much. The real surprise winner at Schloss Nymphenburg and a real pleasure was the carriage museum. Sounds lame right? Well, it was amazing. I have never seen such regal carriages and can imagine how imposing it would have been to lowly peasants working the fields to see their masters and overlords ride by in these extraordinarily decorated and fantastical moving houses.

Schloss Nymphenburg
Source: Matt

Who wouldn't want this ride?
Source: Matt


Sweetest sleigh ever? Probably.
Source: Matt

Then Matt and I headed to the airport to catch our flight. We arrived a bit early, at about 5 for a 9 o'clock flight. Guess what airline once again wasn't manning their desks? For some reason, even though I had eaten more meat in the previous week than I probably had for the previous six months, I craved a cheeseburger. Happily Burger King obliged and provided me with a cheeseburger plus bacon plus BBQ sauce. Matt and I went back to the check-in desks and through security. I forgot to mention before that we had to pay to check our one bag-- GBP15 on the way over and again EURO18 on the way back! Honestly, what happened to the discount in discount airline?

Before our flight we had some time to kill. So we had a beer. In the end we realised we didn't go a single day in Germany or Austria without a drink or two but we never got drunk (except that one day and it was only me and I blame it on the altitude).

Back to London Gatwick, train to Victoria Rail Station, Tube to Archway, bus to our flat. Phew.

It was then that Matt realised he left his toiletries bag in Haus Christine containing his six month supply of contact lenses, razor blade, spare blades and most disconcertingly our toothbrushes.

We bought toothbrushes the next morning and never recovered the rest.

So ended our trip.

Review:

Meat Eaten: Equivalent to one cow, 2 pigs and 3 sheep.
Beer Consumed: At least 1 pint a day.
Miles Walked: Probably a million.
PB&Js Eaten: Equivalent to the living weight of George Washington Carver.
Castles/Fancy Houses: 4
Crazy Kings: 1
Weight Gained: 6kg (between the two of us)

Part III: On the Road; or Castles

This is the third in a multipart series about our trip to Germany and Austria.

This is the part where we get the car! It was a hideous car:


The Citroen Picasso (Would Picasso approve? Debatable.)
Source: the intertubes

But boy it drove good! Keith did all the driving actually because it was a stick shift and Matt and I can't drive them. It saved us EURO30 to get a manual though.

So we got the car and drove on out of Munich. Soon, we were on the Autobahn! Most people drove at the same speed they normally would have if there were a speed limit (70-80MPH) but some people--man!--risk-takers--they drove FAST. Don't get in front of one of them, you'll feel before you see them barrelling up behind you.

We were driving that day to our next destination--a small village in the Austrian Alps called St Johann in Tyrol (meaning the Tyrol region of Austria). On the way we took in several of the most famous sites of Germany: Crazy King Ludwig's castles at Hohenshwangau and Schloss Neuschwanstein. These two castles, built within sight of each other were commissioned by the king, Ludwig II of Bavaria. I like this description of him from Wikipedia:

"Ludwig was notably eccentric in ways that made serving as Bavaria’s head of state problematic. He disliked large public functions and avoided formal social events whenever possible, and preferred a life of fantasy that he pursued with various creative projects. These idiosyncrasies caused tension with the king's government ministers, but did not cost him popularity among common Bavarians."


King Ludwig II of Bavaria
Source: Matt

One of these creative projects was Schloss (castle) Neuschwanstein (new swanstone). As you can see, it is highly whimsical and is very big and expensive. The design of the castle is an ode to the composer Richard Wagner, whom Ludwig (and at the time only Ludwig) loved, as 'a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world.'

The castle was begun in 1869 but before it was finished in 1886, King Ludwig was declared insane by a doctor who had never even examined him, arrested and taken away to Castle Berg. On the next day, he was found drowned in the nearby lake, along with his personal physician. It was considered an accident at the time, but no one really knows what happened.

So these two castles are shrouded in mystery and, when we arrived, shrouded in mist. It truly is something out of a fairy-tale.


Schloss Neuschwanstein
Source: the interwebs

We collected our tickets to see both castles in one day (more expensive, but when in Germany... Also, they came with English language guided tours and I love a guided tour). We saw Hohenschwangau first, which was a good thing because we got lots of information about both castles from our very good tour guide. It was a small group of about 8 people and we got to see pretty much the entire castle.


Schloss Hohenschwangau
Source: Wikipedia

One complaint we always had about fancy places like the Residenz is that they look like they'd be terribly uncomfortable to live in --they are so opulent you hardly want to touch anything, and all the rooms are extremely sparsely furnished, because that was the style for public rooms at the time. When we saw the Residenz I even said to Matt and Keith I thought that in addition to the richly decorated rooms containing a single chair, there must be other secret rooms where the families who inhabited these palaces actually spent their time. More sensible rooms with comfortable furniture, beds with blankets and pillows and--most crude but most necessary--bathrooms.

Hohenschwangau was a refreshing change. It was a summer hunting lodge for the royalty, but it was much smaller and much more comfortably casual than the Residenz (though still more opulent than where normal people live today). There were no 'state rooms' as such, just actually family rooms--bedrooms, dining rooms, libraries, childrens' playrooms, guestrooms--no bathrooms however, still too vulgar for a guided tour apparently. We all agreed that we would be delighted to live in such a place.

Then we had to get to Schloss Neuschwanstein which is annoyingly on the top of a major cliff which we had to walk up. The inside was... ridiculous. Three examples: First, there is an indoor artificial grotto, designed as a stage for some Wagner opera. Second, the throne room contains a chandelier which is a giant replica of the king's crown. Third, the king's bed was covered with carvings of all the great European church spires. It would be like sleeping in a nightmare.

When we had seen the castle, we walked up a little higher to a suspension bridge behind the castle just underneath this massive waterfall. It was pretty cool.


Schloss Neuschwanstein from the bridge
Source: Wikipedia



The three of us in front of and below Schloss Neuschwanstein
Source: Matt (and some other dude who we asked to take the picture)

So after the castles, back in the car. We were just on the boarder with Austria just north of the Alps, which seem to shoot straight up from the plains of Germany without any foothills. We got to a mountain, drove through a tunnel underneath it, and we were in Austria! Our destination--the village of St Johann in Tirol, the hostel above Bunny's Australian Pub. We drove and drove through amazing mountain passes, swooshing and zig-zagging, skating along cliff-edges where if we slid off we would have fallen a thousand feet down. Lucky, Keith is a very capable and confident driver.

Finally in the early evening we got to St Johann and navigated to Bunny's Pub... Which was clearly closed and under construction! Perhaps even out of business! So we wandered down to the pub next door, also Australian, and talked to the owner, an Aussie named Rogi, who called the Bunny's Pub people for us. Turns out it was just being renovated, and they had arranged to have their guests housed in a neighbouring hostel. This hostel turned out to be very nice and comfortable so we were pleased. It was also filled with Aussies and Kiwis, who are attracted there for adventure sports in the Alps. We were invited to participate in some adventure sports--parasailing, toboganning, that sort of thing. Unfortunately it was a bit too expensive (and dangerous) for us.

We set out to explore the town which was really small and beautifully quaint. Very Alpine village-y. We wandered around a bit. There was no kitchen in the hostel so we knew we would have to eat out or make more sandwiches. We were starving and had previously been recommended the pizzaria--we went and it was reasonably priced with huge, huge pizzas and good local beers.

Then we went back to our hostel to relax and prepare for a good hike in the mountains the next day.