Street Parade

In Frank Herbert's Dune, the Fremen are a very serious people. They hardly let anyone get close to them. Every moment of their lives is about the business of living on the harsh planet of Arrakis. That is every moment except for the one day a year when they drink the transformed water of life and then let it all hang out. All the barriers drop and they revel in communal love. Street Parade reminded me a lot of this.


One day a year, thousands of people fill the streets of Zurich for a huge rave fest. The parties start on the Friday before. Then at 1pm the next day dozens of stages start playing electronic music. All the streets around the north side of the lake are closed to cars and are swarming with all types of partiers: American tourists in baseball caps and hoody sweaters, ravers wearing nothing but tall boots and fuzzy cheetah shorts, Swiss families with their children in strollers all wearing ear plugs.

At 3pm the lovemobiles start down the parade route. Each one is a semi truck pulling a stage with ravers and booming speakers. Some of the trucks really went all out on their theme. One had everyone in all white, another in all red. The house truck had the coolest feature of all, a huge bubble spout that covered the street and some lucky ravers with buckets of foam.


For breakfast we grabbed some Doner Kebab. In the store next to the cafe we were eating at, there were two scantily clad women and one scantily clad guy on the roof throwing condoms into the crowd. When they ran out of condoms, they started throwing raver hats and I managed to grab one before they ran out. We picked up a bottle of Rioja and danced to the music from the lovemobiles for 4 hours. Then we rode the Ferris wheel and marvelled at the mass of people and music beneath us before we went home to take a break.


Once the sun went down, we went out for some fondue. On the way, we noticed that even the McDonalds had put up strobe lights and speakers and was blasting the square with techno.


After dinner we went to the laser light show at Bellevueplatz. They had three huge lazers that you could see all the way from Centralplatz. Although we stood on the opposite end of the square, the music was so loud that we still wished we had earplugs. We wandered up and down lake from one venue to the next until just past midnight and then caught the tram back home.

Olympia Park

When we woke up, it looked a little clearer, so we thought we'd get in some rollerblading at the Olympic Park. However, once we got off the U-bahn at the park, it was pouring. It let up just enough for us to run over to the amusement park and get in some old time carnival shooting games. It was so cool to be able to shoot little metal bunnies with a pellet gun. I managed to hit 10 of 13 and won a little stuffed beer keychain. At the next game, I hit 2 out of 3 hearts and won Lexi a plastic rose. Lexi hit 3 of 5 balloons with darts to win me a little keychain lantern. I really like how you can actually win prizes, even if they are small ones, at this carnival.

We decided to go back to Switzerland early as the weather looked like it wasn't letting up and we had exhausted most of the indoor entertainment in Munich.

Pinakothek

Munich has free museum entries on Sundays, which was good as it was raining again. We went to the Alte Pinakothek (Old Pinakhotek). Thankfully, they had an English audio tour.

The museum had lots of Ruben. The museums top floor was even designed specifically to hold his painting of the war between heaven and hell. His most gruesome painting in the museum was one of the sinners being thrown into hell. He has a style that strikes a nice balance between anatomically correct representation and emotional exaggeration of features.


There were also several portraits of educated French women of status. One was reading Isaac Newton. The other was the famous Madame du Pompadour, Mistress of King Louis XV of France. A talented and educated women who used her affair to establish herself in the court and then used her influence to avert a war with England. She had the artist add in books, musical instruments, and correspondence to show that she was a talented woman. The best detail of the painting is it's size. It was painted on the scale of a royal portrait. As she commissioned it herself, she was telling everyone that she saw herself as the equal to royalty.

Though most painters of the eras represented in the museum supposedly only did commission portraits or religious paintings, there were two guys who seemed to only paint peasants. There are great paintings of drunken fighting peasants with old fashioned dutch pipes.

For dinner we went to Vinothek, a restaurant with an impressive wine list. We asked the waiter to choose a wine for each course. Lexi had the 3 course surprise menu, which turned out to be an eggplant remoulade, baked salmon and a coffee cream dessert. I picked out a truffle cheese appetizer, beef with the best scalloped potatoes I've ever had, and a trio of creme brulees. The chocolate and vanilla creme brulees were excellent, but the last one was nasty, like mayo and honey left in the sun. I also tried an orange Armagnac with dessert. It was like a whiskey cointreau, not bad.

We were unable to find any live music on Sunday so we packed it in early.

Residenz

We grabbed some quick sandwiches for breakfast and headed to Allianz stadium. Unfortunately there wasn't a game there, which was contrary to the information on the website, but we still got to wander around inside as they had an open training earlier that day. It's still an impressive stadium. I wish that we had the chance to see it all lit up. Apparently you can see it for miles around.

We went down to the Residenz, the old home of the King of Bavaria. We accidently entered the Egyptian exhibit first as we didn't know that it was separate from the rest of the museum.

We eventually found our way to the real entrance and were relieved to find they had an English Audio tour. The entire egyptian exhibit was in German, so it took us five minutes of looking things up in the dictionary just to find that they said, "collection of various containers".

Inside the Residenz all the old crown jewels are kept. There was the same collection of bejeweled crowns, swords, wine decanters and a huge panel of medals. The piece I found most interesting was a complete makeup box for a queen in the 1600s. It looked like it would take 4 hours to get ready each morning.

In the main section of the residenz, there was a hall of forebears proving the legitmacy of the King's claim. It was all done in South German Rococo, which is where they paint tons of gold leaves that intertwine with animals. It all seems so ridiculously gaudy. Whatever would possess a man to carefully craft a golden goose spewing a vine into the ear of Poseidon?

There was an impressive fountain done almost entirely in sea shells in one of the courtyards, but it was nothing compared to the Antiquarium. It's a giant hall done almost entirely in different colors of marble and flanked on both sides by busts of all the famous Roman Emperors. The king that built it must have had a major inferiority complex. Lexi and I wondered what we would put in ours as we don't have any antiques and you could never get ferrets to sit still long enough to flank a room.

Upstairs were the Red and Green rooms, where the king held his meetings and parties. There were apparently very stringent rules regarding royal furniture. It had to get fancier as you got closer to the King's main room and you had to be of a certain rank to get a certain type of seat. The king got an armchair. Important nobles got seats with a back but no arms. And others got stools and so on.

The most ridiculous room was the bedroom that no king ever slept in. It was a public room where the king would tell everyone he was going to bed at the end of a party so they all knew to leave. He actually slept in a more modest room with a more comfortable bed downstairs.

The freakiest room was a room of religious relics. Most of them are mummified hands in elaborate gold cases or skulls covered in silk. One of the skulls is supposed to be John the Baptist's. I rarely succumb to superstition, but I couldn't take any pictures in there. It just felt wrong and wierd.

Along the "Ewww" theme there was a statue of persius killing medusa with water flowing out of head and the severed neck. It is an impressive statue with dynamic posture and exquisite detail. Still, I wonder why the king wanted it in his garden where he went to escape the pressures of the royal court.

After we left the museum, we went to a nearby candy store and picked up some fresh meringue. It was so good. I rarely get meringue so fresh that the inside is still gooey.

We had a giant plate of meat for dinner. It was supposed to be a variety plate for two, but it could easily have fed four. We hardly made a dent in it, even though we were starving. Next time I go to that place, I'll have to ask him to bring me two of every animal instead. It would be less food.

After dinner we went to the Augustiner beer garden, but it was late and there weren't many people there. It was still cool to see the guy tap a wooden keg for us. We had a giant german beer and then went back to the hotel.

Munich

We arrived in Munich after a short night's sleep on the train. The only places open for breakfast at 6 a.m. are hotel restaurant buffets, so that meant hunks of meat and cheese. The museum district opens early, too, so we spent the morning in the Deutsches museum. It's a gigantic science museum with some pretty neat stuff, although there's English notes for only some of the exhibits. I got to see the Enigma machine.


On our way back to the hotel we wandered through the Farmer's market. Blueberries and Blackberries are so cheap and delicious here. All around downtown music they have painted lions, similar to the painted bears in Zurich.


Back at the hotel we collapsed for a 6 hour nap. We'd been shorting ourselves on sleep throughout the trip so it felt really good. The bed was really comfy

We had dinner at a sushi place in downtown. I know it's not very German, but we missed sushi. The sushis was smaller than the sushi at Aya Sushi back home, but it was still filled with tasty fish. One of the side dishes was spinach mixed with sesame paste, which was delicious.

Ironically, we found a venue with a British Indie Rock band that night. Though we had struck out for British Music in Britain, we found it in Germany. The band was called apartment and they were pretty good. At times they sounded like punk and at other times they sounded like wishy washy alternative so they were atleast pretty unique. There were even some fans from Britain there with them, getting the crowd revved up.

Belgian Beer in Amsterdam

For breakfast we went to a nice dutch restaurant. I had beef with cheese crackers and scalloped potatoes and Lexi had chicken with tiny little potatoes.

After breakfast we went down to the MOMA only to find that it had moved near the Centraal station, which we had just left. After retracing our steps back to the station we found the museum. Their minimalist exhibit was mostly uninspiring, except for a series of photos of paintings on walls that were done with a skewed perspective so that they look like flat 2D additions to the photographs. I think I could pull off a similar effect by taking a picture of a wall at an angle, taking that picture into photoshop and drawing a flat image on it, then projecting the picture from the same spot I took it so that the features of the wall line up and then tracing the picture on the wall. Still there's not much to minimalism, but I guess that's the point.

There was some great graffiti outside the museum, including this knocked out ferret and ninja penguin.



Some of the art was completely forgettable. The fact that it's up in a gallery seems to show that the art world shares the peewee football belief that everybody gets to play an inning no matter how much they suck. The anarchist video exhibits fall into this category too, B-movie wannabees haltingly reading a ridiculous list of bomb recipes. I don't have any patience for anarchists any more. The system may be flawed, but chaos is worse.

After the museum we went to this little Belgian beer bar. I tried some new kriek's and an abbey style blonde ale that was very tasty. The place was tiny and dark and had candles at each of the tables. Everything in Amsterdam is so much cheaper than in London or France. I love the lack of pretence here. Nothing's too fancy or too hoity toity. It's all simple pleasure like FEBO, cheap off brand clothing, chocolate waffles, belgian beer and poker.


The Belgian Beer Bar bartender pointed out a Belgian beer store that had a dream selection of beers. They had a whole case of lambics that I had never tried before. For the first time, there was someone who knew all the beers that I mentioned. We even found this cute English Ale called Fursty Ferret.

After picking up some beer we stopped for our last FEBO of the trip to take with us on the train. This time we had a private two bunk room on our train so we celebrated our 4th anniversary with FEBO, beer and the Buffy Musical while speeding across Germany.

Great British Beer Festival

For breakfast today we picked up some traditional Cornish Pasties (pies filled with potato and steak). They are definitely the best way to get the most calories for your money in England. They are also very tasty, though they could have done with a bit more steak.

So, if you are planning to get to the netherlands from England, buy your tickets in advance and understand that the high speed boat still takes 3 hours. It took forever to get the tickets at the train station. For some reason, they don't have automated tickets for the boat service.


We still had time to finally go to the Great British Beer Festival. There was so much ale. The booths all had rack upon rack of kegs with delicious bitters, ales, ciders and lagers. The belgian booth had a great traditional lambic. Lexi found a porter that she really liked as well as a great silly hat.


The festival had traditional pub games that involved throwing cheese shaped projectiles at a bunch of bowling pins, landing rings on a beer pump, or landing pucks into point bins. Lexi and I tried the cheese throwing one but didn't get any prizes. All the money from the games goes to the Campaing for Real Ale, a non-profit group focused on preserving pub tradition and defending drinker's rights. I don't exactly know who's attacking drinker's rights but apparently they need a non-profit to defend them.

There was even an American stand, serving up mostly Sierra Nevada and some Arrogant Bastard Ale. It seemed to be doing brisk business.

After the festival we caught the train to the port and boarded the boat to the Netherlands.


The boat had mini casinos, theatres, restaurants and shops. It was like a mini resort on the water. We had already seen the only good movies they were showing and we didn't much feel like watching the pacifier. The casino had no poker though, so it was of no use to us. We ended up spending the time on the boat reading our novels. When we finally landed and caught our train to Amsterdam, it was 2am.

Our hotel room was great. It had a living room with a great view of Amsterdaam Centraal and a huge tub. I wish we had gotten in earlier so we could have enjoyed it more, but we atleast got a good 9 hours of sleep.

Queen the Musical

We had our final breakfast at Jumbo's today. It's like our depot cafe in London.

After breakfast we went to try to get into the beer fest, but we hadn't noticed that the first day it was only open to industry people. We were right next to Holland Park (which is where Adina from AbFab likes to say that her house is even though everyone else thinks it's in Shepherd's Bush) so we took a quick stroll over to Kensington Gardens.


By round pond we grabbed some of the cool lounge chairs for a break. I thought it was great that the London Parks Service provided them and I wondered how they could afford to keep nice chairs around that could be easily carried away. I quickly found out how when someone approached us and collected our 2 pounds each chair rental fee. It was still worth it.


After getting our money's worth of comfy chair sitting, we went to Serpentine Gallery. I managed to fit 3 pieces of cool puzzle together.


We caught the tube over to the National Gallery. My favorite display was a set of paintings on the failure of an arranged marriage.
Panel 1 - A rich merchant is marrying his daughter to a broke Duke's son to gain title.
Panel 2 - The wife lounges about taking breakfast in the afternoon after a party while her
husband sneaks in with a maids bonnet in his pocket
Panel 3 - The quack doctor is administering leeches to sores that the wife
Queen the musical
Panel 4 - The husband is jumping out the window after killing his wife's lover.
Panel 5 - The wife has poisoned herself after losing her lover. Her miserly father is removing her rings while the head of the house scolds the servant who brought her the poison.
It's a disturbing story even by today's standards and back in the day this must have been absolutely shocking.

The Queen musical was silly fun. It is based in the year 2300 when all music is computer produced. However a boy and a girl refuse to be part of the mall culture. The boy keeps getting visions of bits of Queen songs. He eventually frees the magic "axe" and rocks the mall culture into dust. The band was excellent as was the encore of Bohemian Rhapsody. The set had 6 large independent video screens that were constantly reconfiguring themselves as well as a hydraulic podium that could be raised and rotated, all very impressive.

We walked for a long time, searching for a sushi place, but they were all closing. We finally found an italian place with a good mushroom sauce and some potatoes that were dripping with butter.

Back at the poker table we found an easy table and made back losses plus a lot more. We knew who was giving us their money and why. We were able to bet for value against the calling stations, raise the rocks out, and semibluff check raise the good players out. We were up to 4AM though.

London Zoo

Beware. Do not order Jacket Potatoes unless you check that you aren't getting the ones smothered in mayo. It sounded tasty on the menu: Ham and Cheese Jacket Potatoes. However the first ingredient in the dish was not cheese or ham or even potatoes, it was mayo.

We took the tube to Regent's Park and walked up to London Zoo. It was kind of overcast so not many people were there. They were feeding the Kangaroos when we arrived. Apparently, kangaroos can not work their back legs independently. They had a huge canopy forest filled with tiny monkeys that were playing tag. On our way to the bird show, we passed some very sleepy tigers. The leopard had just woken up and was pacing his tiny cage. You could just see in it's eyes that it wished there was no fence between it and the plump tourists just a foot away. The Bird Show had this long legged bird from south america that repeatedly killed a rubber snake by beating it against a rock. It was cute, but not as cute as the penguins. The penguin feeding was a frenzy of tuxedoed fury. The poor zookeeper feeding them kept getting pecked from all side by impatient penguins. They had two rockhopper penguins (they have big yellow eyebrows) in their display the rest were a different breed. The two rockhoppers came from a different zoo and were sent to this zoo because they were playing soccer with the rockhopper penguin eggs. Apparently they don't do the same with different penguin breeds eggs, but they still had a lot of attitude. The zookeeper had to keep breaking up fights that the rockhoppers kept starting.


After the penguin feeding we went to see the porcupines exhibit, which was in the old penguin exhibit. Apparently the porcupines found the nozzle for the penguin pool after they were first moved there and turned their sand box into a mud hole. The zookeepers had to further porcuproof the exhibit and they haven't muddied it up since, though they still keep digging out the fake trees.


We had just finished seeing the otters when a torrential rain started falling. We took cover under the tarp at another show with a cute meerkat and a huge owl.

After that we went to the British museum where we got in about an hour of looking before they closed. There is way too much to see there for even a whole day. But it is still impressive to see scissors and glass from before the birth of Christ.

We rushed over to see the 5678's play at the Boston Arms, but we and about 200 others were too late.

Thwarted in our attempts to find live entertainment we went back to Gutshot. We had a bad session and lost some money. There were some brutal out draws. Nut flush to full house, Two pair to trips and the like. The nut flush draw out was my own fault as I thought I could slow play it. When the board paired on the end I wasn't worried about it and went all in as I thought the other guy had top pair. Instead his two pair had become a full house and he took a huge pot. It has reminded me just how dangerous it is to slowplay.

Tower of London

The next morning we had a traditional English Breakfast - Beans, Hammy bacon, eggs over easy and toast at a local sandwich shop named Jumbo's. It was a great little place that was packed with locals. Breakfast cost only 6 pounds and might have weighed more than it cost. I love British bacon. It's more like slightly fatty ham that is fried crispy.


After breakfast we went to the Tower of London. If you ever go, the only way to see the tower properly is by taking a tour with one of the Yeoman Guards. The guards are actual military servicemen and live in the tower with their families. Our guard had a great act worked out. He described all the gruesome deaths that occured, interjecting angry shouts whenever he described something especially gross. My favorite detail from the tour is that condemned inmates bribed executioners to get a swift, painless death. So you would commonly see a condemned man hand a bag of gold to the executioner right before he was killed. One of the inmates who didn't bribe the executioner took 4 whacks of the axe before he died.

We wandered through the fusiliers museum, which wasn't that interesting, except for the story about the troop that took a pet duck named Donald with them throughout their campaign in WWII.

The crown jewels truly encompass the bling of yesteryear. My favorite piece was a 20 gallon golden wine bowl with a giant golden ladel in the shape of a sea shell. The ladel itself is big enough that if your royal feast is interrupted by a castle storming you could raise the mighty ladel and brain the raiding barbarians.

The armory museum was my favorite part of the tour. You can see for yourself just how redickulous Henry VIII's armor is.


They also had a jousting lance, which is so huge, I could only catch it on video. Among the typical diablo style weapons you expect to see (brandistocks, pikes, flamberges, javelins, spears, etc) there were also some experimental weapons of the day that didn't work out. My favorite were the gun shields. They patched in some guns to allow people to be safe and shoot the enemy at the same time. The shields were too small and the patching in of the guns weakened them as well so they didn't really function well as shields. They were also difficult to hold steady because of their odd shape and bulk so they didn't work well as guns.

On our way out of the tower, I collected a lot of cobble shots to use as textures in Cinema 4D.


We tried to get some tickets to Billy Elliot the musical, but the theater was closed on Sundays so we went to the British Library instead.

After the library, we went to Gutshot to play some poker. It wasn't a bad table and we were up a little bit because we were able to single out a few loose callers and play only against them.

We then went to Dinner at the Lowlander where we tried a sampler of every belgian beer they had on tap. Their kriek was delicious. For dinner we had double dutch fries with mayo (holland style), Chicken and Waffles (though not like they come in the states). And of course I had another Rodenbach. I'm so happy they're still making it. The new adds show pictures of saints being tortured while they're drinking rodenbach and the tag line is "You love it or you Hate it". Preach on.