A Final Brussels Bout

A photo album that has some Luxembourg, a little Independence Day (a little on that later), and some images of this final border-skipping gallivant. In the next few posts it will all make sense.

I’m feeling nostalgic. I’ve been flipping through digital photo albums from last August, musing on how far I’ve wandered and how little I’ve gotten done. In less than two weeks I say goodbye to Deutschland…kind of. Carolyn is meeting me in Dublin at the beginning of August. We’ll wander for ten days then I fly back to Frankfurt. The next day I fly out again, bound for parts west. So technically, I say goodbye to Germany on the 14th of August, but my real goodbyes have been going on for a while. Here I say goodbye to Continental exploration:

Two weekends ago I took my last international weekend ramble with Marty who you may remember as the Aeronautical Engineer who accompanied me to Prague, Vienna, and Copenhagen. His stated goal in taking on this Fulbright thing was to visit every country that borders Germany. There are nine. Can you list them (hint, how well do you know your WWII trivia?). In case you missed one or two, here’s the rundown: Denmark, Poland, The Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and The Netherlands. He had knocked seven off the list leaving Luxembourg and Belgium as the only obstacles to his Circumnavigation of Germany Merit Badge.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to accomplish this goal. A jaunt to Krakow or Warsaw will have to wait until I take a trip to Eastern Europe to check out Russia, Estonia, Poland etc. at some distant, as yet determined time (I have determined it will be at a time when my wallet isn’t quite this lean). But I'll be damned if I was going to watch someone else get so close to this noble goal then stumble at the finish because no one wanted to see Brussels. So, I was going back to Belgium.

Marty met me in Bonn. Both of us had spent the previous week furiously working on our projects since our time is quickly winding down. Our preparation for the weekend basically consisted of Marty saying, “Hey, I’ll be in around 8. Oh, and we might be meeting a friend of mine in Luxembourg.” So, when he arrived, one would think we would sit down to do some itinerary work. Neh, we had Kölsch to sample.

We bar hopped and re-hashed the following conversation for about two hours:

Me/Marty: I can’t believe it’s almost over.
Me/Marty: I know, isn’t it crazy?
Me/Marty: Yeah. Yeah, it’s crazy.

When we decided to call it a night, we remembered to check our train times. We would go to Belgium first, getting there as early as possible, explore Brussels, then drop down to Luxembourg for the night. It was also established I should bring my tent. We didn’t bother to look up campgrounds, but figured we might as well have a place to sleep in case the airport was booked for the night.

We discovered there was only one way to get to Brussels before 1PM (I really don't understand how the city functions with so few connections to the wider world) and that was on a train that left at 8:30AM from Cologne. It would be an early morning, but we managed to drag ourselves out the door and caught the tram to the Bonn station. About 1.5 km from the station, we came to a screeching halt and sat…on…the…tracks for about ten minutes. Our connection to Cologne was long gone.

Desperately we tried to figure out a way to get to Cologne so could catch that 8:30. We had one shot. The our train pulled into Bonn at 8:08 and into Cologne at 8:28, leaving us about a minute-and-a-half to make the jump to our Brussels-bound train somewhere in the massive Cologne train station. We were pacing by the doors as we pulled into Cologne, throwing ourselves onto the platform as soon as the door rattled open. My lopsided, tent-filled pack threatened to take out septuagenarians and four-year-olds as we sprinted down the stairs, got held up by a woman really taking her time with those steps, and up to our Brussels-bound platform.

We hopped onto the train and slowed down to look at the platform’s sign. It declared half the train was headed for Amsterdam, the other half for Brussels. But which half were we on? An overheard conversation told us Amsterdam. We tried to jog through the aisle to make the Brussels section, but middle-aged women carefully arranging their overhead luggage, and giggling tweens clogged the flow. Then we reached a dead end. The aisle terminated into an engine. We hoped off and had the distinct pleasure of watching our ride to Brussels receding to the horizon after disconnecting from the engine we had just discovered. Damn.

We found an automated ticket machine and established that the next train to Brussels wouldn’t get us there until 1:20PM and would involve two half-hour layovers en route. This would be a long ride.

The up-shot was we had a half-hour to kill in Cologne, so Marty and I were able to scamper to the neighboring Cologne Cathedral. Marty was properly awed by the towering height of the Gothic structure and it's soaring windows and I provided a little of my commentary, but not too much. We had the first of three trains to catch.

It dumped us off in Aachen, a German town on the border of The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany (where they have the best deals in the Tri-Country area). We had a half-hour. Anyone up for another cathedral?

Back in November I visited Charlemagne’s Byzantine-inspired church and saw his golden casket, but I wouldn’t see it a second time. A couple hundred yards from the steeple we had to scramble back to the station for a ride to Liege, Belgium on a train that somehow timewarped from 1880s Wyoming. The red paint was photogenically peeling from the battered exterior as we slowly chugged across the border to the grungy, industrial city that is best known for its less grungy waffles.
A Liege waffle is an ovoid affair with caramelized sugar grilled right into the dough. We were able to track down this Belgian staple near the space-age station before finally boarding for Brussels.
With three and half hours of travel under our belts we rolled into capital of Europe, a third visit to a city I never expected to see once. Despite previous experiences, there was still confusion over where exactly to get off. Instead of building one massive station as a central hub for trans-Belgian travel, Brussels has three stations. Each sports a Flemish and French name giving a person six unfamiliar words to juggle as they try to plan an excursion. Of course, we really didn’t plan our excursion, compounding our confusion when we stepped off at “Midi” then decided to hop to “Centraal.”

At the station we found out we would need to leave in about three hours if we wanted to make it to Luxembourg to see Marty’s friend who was being frustratingly coy about when/if he would even be able to meet us. After following a winding route that might have doubled as a rat-maze experiment, we dropped our bags and scrambled for food. We managed to take out two-birds with one stone by getting a Frikadeller (fried, meat-ball like sausage) sandwich with fresh Belgian French fries between the bun. I don’t recall the Flemish word for this entree, but I think roughly translated it meant “Heart attack on a bun.” It as also delicious.

As we strolled through the streets of Brussels in search of the Mannequin Pis, Marty managed to find an internet connection outside a bar. He checked his e-mail and found out his friend wouldn’t be able to meet us that night and would shoot for a rendezvous the next day. Through the wonders of technology we discovered we had the rest of the afternoon and evening to spend savoring Brussels rather than sprinting off for a 6th city in one day. This newly discovered time was crucial because Marty had one Belgian goal: sample as many varieties of their legendary beers as possible before moving on to wine-guzzling Luxembourg the next day. With that goal in mind I had a new appreciation for the Mannequin Pis as a symbol of the city.

I led a now practiced tour through the winding Medieval streets of Brussels. I will freely admit I never planned to have the capital so perfectly mapped in my head when I touched down last August, but I can now describe the most efficient path from St. Michael’s Cathedral to the Grand Place. Just in case you need it at some point.
As we swung through the tangled mess that is the seafood café district I pointed out Delirium Cafe, an establishment that holds the record for most available varieties of beer in one establishment. Erin and I checked it out back in February. Marty wanted to check it out today. It was time to start checking brews off the list.
Because it was early in the afternoon, the place had a subdued local vibe with people sitting around massive barrels discussing their beer selections and circuitous routes to Brussels (it’s never direct unless you’re Eurocrat). Marty drank a sweet thing called a “Pink Killer” and I had a Trappist triple. We had no idea where we were spending the night, but we knew we would feel good once we got there.

For a shift from the shadowy subterranean to the roaring ‘20s, I lead the way to Mort Subite, the bar Mike, Tim, and I discovered two weeks earlier, and I would happily revisit any chance I get. The waiters are appropriately brusque and home brewed beer appropriately delicious. The clientele ranged from families of exhausted tourists to elderly, Belgian couples out for some Saturday shopping (who managed to look much peppier than the Italian ten-year-olds).
It was time to sort out where we would rest our heads for the night. While the airport sounded appealing, I was short on digestive biscuits and had hauled my tent along, so I miraculously remembered where the youth tourism office was and inquired if there was a campground within an easy bus ride of the city center. They said they could do me one better and circled a campground within walking distance that called the European Parliament its next-door neighbor. This we had to see, so we went back to the station, saddled up with our gear and started the familiar walk uphill towards the Old England and the Royal Palace.

The U.S. really needs to import some better street performers. I would pay good money to watch something like this parade by my window on a daily basis. To pay up I would put it on my bill.

After a stroll through more suburban Brussels we arrived at the designated address. We saw a small neighborhood church and a cracking asphalt driveway leading into an unseen parking lot. Things weren’t looking too promising. We ascended a short flight of crumbling concrete steps and discovered a storage facility and parking lot that would have worked for a West Side Story set.
I briefly scanned the ground for a tent-sized patch of gravel and pavement without obvious shards of glass. As I tracked the parking lot, Marty noticed a promising sign for “Camping” pointing to an enclosed lot next to the storage yard. We stepped through a chain-link gate and a wild garden spread before us, punctuated by neon rain-flies. This would be a good place to call home…assuming it didn’t rain. We paid our 9 Euro, probably the most expensive camp site I’ve ever stayed in. To be fair, I would be sleeping on the most expensive ground I’ve ever pitched a tent on, so it all worked out.
Following a Lonely Planet tip, we found a tiny pasta café along one of the fashionable shopping boulevards just outside the Old Town. There were three items on the menu: spaghetti carbonara, Pasta Bolognese, and Pasta Marinera. There were three drinks: soda, beer, and wine. Nine combinations yet the waitress brought along her notepad in case things got complicated.

It was delicious and relatively cheap for a mountain of noodles. With a solid base, it was time to pub crawl. As we dove into the winding alleys of Brussels, we heard thudding bass echoing off the baroque façades. We followed the music to the Grand Place where a massive stage had been erected to support a twenty piece band, a half-acre of LCD screens, and a lead singer belting in Spanish. You will understand our confusion when we learned this was in celebration of Flemish Pride.

Belgium is a divided country. The Northern half is Flanders and when they look south to Wallonia, the southern French speaking half of Belgium, they see nothing they like. Okay, it’s not that rabid a rivalry, but there is a political party in Flanders that agitates for secession from the French. This concert wasn’t really a demonstrative political act, it was just an event on a day that celebrates Flemish pride, but I did wonder what the Wallonian perspective would be on the whole undertaking. I guess it’s like going to a Civil War reenactment, or Alaskan Secession meeting, and wondering what people in the North or the lower 48 think. In all probability, no one really cares. They just want spectacle.
And spectacle we got as digital fireworks exploded behind the troop of artists who had performed and now joined voices in what Marty and I assumed was a Flemish standard. The crowd didn’t seem to know the words. Everyone lingered on stage after their bows hoping for a call for encore. None came. The square, filled with mostly subdued gawkers to begin with, quickly drained to the bars. Marty and I followed.

We settled on the pub Marty had used to check his e-mail earlier so he could digitally touch base again. After leeching their wi-fi, it was the least we could do to buy a drink. That is, if they wanted to sell us one. We sat in the Biergarten for fifteen minutes, then a half-hour, then forty-five minutes, praying a waitress would arrive. People around us had beverages, maybe we should go in? I checked after waiting twenty and was shooed out the door by an overwhelmed waitress who had a bachelor party on her hands.

So we sat and waited. There’s nothing as sobering as sitting in a bar without a beer. Another pair was also waiting. We would make disbelieving eye contact then look hopefully towards the door. After a certain amount of time elapses it becomes an investment. You continue to wait because leaving would prove the preceeding minutes were wasted. When our drinks finally arrived we could say we were drinking 3.50 Euros and 45 minutes of sitting worth of Belgian beer. After one we were done with Kwak Café.

Marty enjoys his Kwak, a type of lambic beer named for the sound the liquid makes when it sloshes through the neck.

We were getting tired and ready to collapse into the tent, but decided we needed at least one more authentic Belgian brew in our systems before calling it a night, and Marty had a hankering for some superlatives. Back to Delirium.
This time it was late on a Saturday night. Two floor of bars were operating and the local dive bar had evaporated, leaving a fraternity residue. The place was packed with young tourists from roughly 20 different countries. Indians carried two liter boots of beer, and Canadians drained a dozen varieties before shouldering their way back to the bar for another round. Marty was a little disappointed that the atmosphere had lost a little local flavor. The laughing and people-watching at least re-energized me (along with my honey beer) for the long walk back to the campsite where we could bask in the glow of European Unity and broken fluorescent street lights before drifting into a well-earned dreams of sampling each of Delirium’s 2,200 offerings.

The photo album of random excursions from the final weeks.

Luxembourg City, or, Crossing Three International Borders in 12 hours,

My alarm beeped me awake just in time to hear a flight bound for Budapest was going to be delayed. I was only a little stiff from a night on an airport bench and felt ready to finally get home. I had a breakfast of chocolate-dipped digestive biscuits and rode back to the Brussels Midi station to catch my ride to Cologne.

The train was a German ICE (high-speed rail) and I felt like I was safely back in Germany as soon as I saw the royal blue upholstery and “Mobil” magazines. We were flying across the Belgian country side, bound for Aachen, a German town on the border, when we had to stop. No explanation was offered. All we could do was stare out the window at the confused horses and sneaky barn cats who took a passing interest in our presence. We continued to wait. Then we backed up on the tracks and waited some more.
Eventually an announcement came over the intercom. There were electrical problems at the Aachen station. It would be a while longer. And it was. After an hour-and-a-half sitting on the tracks we slowly ran backwards to a tiny Belgian station that already had a massive Thalys (an independent French/Belgian/German company) train unloading its passengers. Lemming-like we followed each other around the station and waited by the curb for the buses the conductors promised were on their way. We waited for another half-hour.

Two city buses had been drummed up on a Sunday morning to rescue us. Each was packed with luggage and people (I should note my ICE was bound for the Frankfurt Airport so a lot of people were schlepping some pretty chunky bags) but everyone couldn’t pile on. Another half-hour and another bus pulled up.

We drove across the Belgian border and, 14 hours after I had hoped to do so, we crossed into Germany. I was finally free of Belgium's surprisingly tenacious grasp. Tired and frustrated, the passengers tried to sort out their connections at the Aachen station, debating if they would need a separate ticket to get to the next stop. I had my rail pass, so I just stepped onto the next regional train bound for Cologne. I’ve never been so happy to see the Cathedral pull into view.

I arrived in Cologne just in time for noon Mass. Before going to the service I remembered to check my options for getting to Bonn. In five minutes there was a train leaving for my home Bonn. That wouldn’t work. I wanted to get to Mass. Then I noticed its terminal destination: Luxembourg. My rail pass covered me for the day and it was good for Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg. Only one left on the docket. I was going to Luxembourg. I think God will forgive me.

The problem was I really had no idea what there was to do in Luxembourg. I knew it is a small place and it has a lot of important European Union Buildings and…no that was about it. I also didn’t tear the Luxembourg pages from my guide book to bring with me so I was flying blind.

It took about three hours to get to Luxembourg so I had plenty of time to stare idly out the window, reflecting on the beautiful castles and vineyards that populate the Rhine river valley. I really did luck into living in one of the prettiest corners of Germany.
When the train finally pulled into the station I checked my escape routes as only someone who spent the previous night in an airport can. If I wanted to be home by midnight, I had to leave on the 6:30 train. That left three hours in Luxembourg. It’s small, right?

I stashed my bag in a locker (apparently Luxembourgers don’t worry about their homeland’s security like the British) and found the tourism office. They provided me a map of the city that had all the major sights numbered with pictures of them along the margins. Of course, there was no explanation of the importance of each sight. The map just proved they existed. Well, I wasn’t going to pay for a tour guide, so the map and context clues would do.

Luxembourg takes a lot of pride in its architectural diversity. A street lined with Art Nouveau buildings? Yes please.

I set out along Avenue de la Liberte. I felt pretty free. A street festival was underway with a carousel blasting “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood while seven-year-olds pretended to drive motorcycles and pick-up trucks into each other. Then the ground gave out.
One of the reasons Luxembourg has managed to remain neutral for decades is because it started life as a fortress. The city is perched on a plateau surrounded by rivers that carved deep chasms into the rock around town. Now you cross massive bridges to actually get into the oldest part of the town.
Far below the bridges are parks and entire villages that can only be reached via tight winding roads or Dr. Seuss-like staircases. I could have taken in the view for hours. But, I only had three.
I walked along the valley’s margin and spotted a soaring steeple. If there’s a massive church, I’ll check it out. It’s usually a free art and history museum coupled with a few meditative moments. The church was the Gothic Notre Dame (Luxembourg speaks a dialect of French).
It was renovated throughout the 20th century and didn’t have the ancient, dignified feel of most Gothic churches, so I spun out the front door towards the sounds of live music.

I walked into one of the main squares of Luxembourg City where the town was celebrating Latin Day. Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and Cuba had booths set up with freebies and beverages from each country. The stage was being prepared for the next act and mariachi music filled the silence. When I think of celebrating Hispanic heritage I naively imagine a lot of color and dancing with some spicy food and beautiful people. None of these things seemed to be present. There were a few Brazilian soccer jerseys and people were sipping the caipirinhas, a South American rum cocktail. But that was about it. No tango. No salsa. I’m going to the park.
On the site of a fortress from the middle ages sits a beautifully groomed English park where I heard weird combinations of French and German being tossed through the air along with Frisbees. When I got through all the greenery, I decided to see the rest of the European Union. In Frankfurt I had seen the EU’s Central Bank, and in Brussels I saw the Commission and one of the Parliament Buildings. Might as well complete the collection (except Strasbourg, still need to see the Parliament in Strasbourg).
I crossed John F. Kennedy Bridge towards the campus which was originally home to the European Coal and Steel Community, the proto-EU which was established by Western Germany, Italy, France, and the Benelux countries after WWII as a supranational trade organization that would hopefully prevent WWIII. The buildings are showing their age.

Tarnished windows framed in ugly steel and concrete populate the plateau. My impression of the place wasn’t improved by the poor signage and an ambiguous map. Was this the Secretariat of the Parliament or the Court of Justice? Was it just an unsightly building ripe for destruction? Could it be all of the above?

As I grumbled about modern architecture, I took a moment to reflect on the symbolic meaning of these buildings. Nearly sixty years ago, Europe decided it was done beating itself up. People transcended their national biases and worked to build a peaceable community through economic obligations to each other. The EU continues to grow, but has reached the critical point of deciding on a constitution. How much sovereignty should countries be allowed? Should people be Germans first then Europeans or vice versa? It’s big stuff, and it’s fascinating to watch millions weigh in on the role they think government should play in their lives. Then I stopped reflecting. It was time to eat.

I had worked my way into a far corner of the city that lacked restaurants. What the “Eurocrats” do when they need to get a bite after work is beyond me. I pivoted and walked back through town. Because it was early on a Sunday night, most people seemed to be out for drinks. I was still feeling very poor and Luxembourg is a pretty expensive place, so I kept walking past swanky bars and swankier cafés.

Newer additions to the EU campus landscape. On the left is the Philharmonic where they probably play Beethoven's 9th, the EU anthem, on a regular basis. On the right are the towers of the European Conference center. Not sure who convenes there.

I eventually found myself back at the street festival with the carousel. This time it was blasting a country version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” Nothing makes me think of good times with the family quite like Madonna. I ordered a Luxembourger sausage – it tasted just like a German sausage – and a beer. My hope was to try the local brew. Again, it would probably taste very familiar, but I wanted to find out. When I got to an empty picnic table I read the label and found out I was sipping Portuguese beer. So much for exotic local fare.

Festivals offer the lone traveler a feast of people-watching opportunities and I tried to take full advantage of my solo status: An exhausted father and his exhausting four-year-old son sat down nearby. They each had a sausage for dinner. As dad dug into his meal, the boy tried to do likewise. The mayo-slathered bun shot the wurst through his tiny fists and onto the gravel. Dad looked like he was on the point of collapse. The boy tried to eat the sausage off the ground while dad shuffled back up to the counter to get another. I watched anxiously as the boy got ready for another bite. Would the meat slip-and-slide its way to the floor again? Fortunately dad intervened at the last minute, breaking the wurst into bite-sized pieces. This scene concluded, I could leave Luxembourg behind.

As the sun set over the Rhine, I finally pulled into Bonn, nearly 24 hours later than I had originally intended. It had been an exhausting trip, the kind that seems impossibly long, the kind where you make a reference to the events of yesterday as if they occurred a week previously. But, as I stood at the Bonn Central Tram Station, I felt like I had never left. Except now I was packing digestive biscuits.

The next day I was back in the office, scrutinizing little fossil claws and feeling like I had just left this routine for a weekend. Regardless of how much time had passed, after all that exploring, it felt good to be home.

Tschüss!

Breaking with Britain

As my train rolled back towards London I realized I didn’t really know much about English art (Feel free to gasp in horror). I can rattle off the names of famous Spaniards, Italians, Germans, and Dutchmen (I really am the coolest kid at every party), but I was at a loss when it came to my direct cultural ancestors. It was time to remedy the situation, so I pointed myself towards the Thames and the Tate Britain, the home to British art preceding the 20th century.

The imposing facade of the Tate Britain. You know you're in London because they're are more columns than they have in Greece.

One of the advantages here was I could briefly drop my bag. They suggested a two pound donation at the bag check. Someday I will come back with many more pounds in my pockets. But today I was running low and the bag check man got merely a sheepish smile of thanks.

The exhibit moved chronologically through art history, demonstrating how trends on the Continent affected the British Isles. The staples of British art are the portrait and the landscape. Britain had a wealthy middle to upper class and it cherished a good family portrait over the mantle.

The landscapes reveal the deep British love of the natural world. Parks today are maybe cynically seen as a kind of human domination over nature. I think the English garden gets at a deeper British desire not to dominate nature but to interact with it. There’s a reason wealthy gentlemen occupied their lazy days by playing naturalist. Catching butterflies and identifying mosses allowed a gentleman to get outside to explore the countryside. As Americans, lovers of open spaces and natural beauty, I think we own our British cultural ancestors our thanks. Even if it means looking at a lot of landscapes in oil paint.

In the 18th century British nobles, especially young men, started taking jaunts across the European continent. This gave them a taste for Classical and Renaissance art. Over the last couple of years I’ve become a happy advocate for the Grand Tour. It’s been a blast and listen to learn to ramble about art and culture.

A 19th century sculpture outside the Tate Britain that was...

Clearly inspired by this massive sculpture of Dirce on display in Naples. The Brits know how to take notes.

The Brits started fusing all these influences, creating compelling sculpture and luminous Pre-Raphaelite images that sought to throw out Renaissance and Mannerist ideals, creating “true” images that captured Nature as it is. They also started illustrating British mythological and legendary figures, seeking a rich ancient English culture that was as fascinating, but distinct from, the mythology of the Continent. J.R.R. Tolkien might have been influenced by such thinking when he wrote The Lord of the Rings, his version of English pre-history.

Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse. This is Pre-Raphaelite painting at its pre-est Raphaelite-est. Anne of Green Gables was a fan.

Then I wandered into the William Blake room. My first encounter with Blake came at the Cincinnati Zoo where they have his poem “The Tyger” on display in the Cat House. In seventh grade we belted an arrangement of this poem. Somehow I missed this man’s biography. I just thought he liked “Tygers.”

He was a painter, poet, and printer who is probably best known for this iconic image of God (or Urizen) as the divine clockmaker:

He was a proto-Romantic in the mid 1700s who held an intense, spiritually infused perspective on the world. He saw contemporary figures like Nelson, Pitt, and Newton as Biblical warriors in combat with chaos and evil, so he illustrated them as such. In a dim room above his print shop he exhibited a series of 17 paintings depicting Biblical scenes, historical scenes, and images from his own rabid imagination. Each image was accompanied by a poem or extended, rambling essay. At the time he was basically considered a nut. Now he’s a genius.

Nelson taking on the Biblican Leviathan (and Napoleon) while whereing his briefs.

The Tate exhibits many of these 17 pictures with better lighting and excerpts from his original descriptions. Wandering through that room was a chance to immerse myself in the mind of a creative personality who I hope to get to know a little better when I get closer to an English language bookstore or library.
My final goal for my day was a trip to the National Portrait Gallery. In my previous trips to the city I heard the name and ran the other way. Who wants to spend their afternoon looking at a bunch of blank faces? Well, either I’ve gotten wiser or just more boring (you don't need to weigh in on that). Now this sounds like a great way to while away some time in London and maybe brush up on my English history.

The walk from the Tate Modern leads along the Thames, past the Houses of Parliament and through Trafalgar Square. I passed monuments and hoards of tourists on my walk.

A memorial to the women of world war two who hung up their hats and gave the Nazis the old one, two.

I felt exhilaratingly independent following my feet. Please note that I enjoy the company of a travel partner, but there’s something to be said for an unanalyzed reaction to a new place. There was no effort to discuss where I was going or how I would get there. I could simply act without justification.

Nelson holding court over the double-decker busses and wandering tourists.

Unfortunately my glowing sense of independence was quashed when I got to the Gallery. They would only be open for another half-hour and they didn’t want new ogglers clogging the guards careful removal of patrons from each gallery. Oh well, there was walking to be done. Unfortunately storm clouds were gathering ominously as I walked through the theater district one more time.

Bent over a map I heard an American family debating the merits of a cheap theater ticket kiosk.

Dad: It says ‘official seller’ over the door, Honey.
Mom: Yes, but this place has too much…glitz. It’s supposed to be less…glitzy.
Me: Are you looking for the half-priced ticket booth?
Mom: (A little confused about this American-accented loner suddenly imposing himself on a domestic dispute) Yes we are.
Me: Well if you go back to that big square (waving towards Leicester Square) that’s a big, wood-paneled…kiosk. It’s called TKTS and I think they’ll have what your looking for.
Mom: Well, we walked by that, but the guidebook says there’s a clock tower, and we didn’t see a clock (subtext: You’re holding a damn map and all your luggage. You clearly have no idea where you are let alone where we are.)
Me: Oh, well, I know you’ll find half-priced tickets there. Good luck!

If they didn’t want my advice, let them wander through the storm. I toyed with asking what show they were going to see. Probably Grease or We Will Rock You. Yes, I judge people for such things. Let them get soggy. I had a train to catch. Oh, and there was a clock on the roof of the kiosk in the square. It even had a half-crazy homeless man staring up at it trying to get his watch to match the second hand.

One last ride through the underground and into St. Pancras where I blew my final pounds on a meat pie because Sweeney Todd is never far from my mind when I’m thinking about his city. I also made the key decision to grab a pre-packaged sandwich and a package of digestive biscuits (in classic British fashion, these mealy cookies taste better than they sound).

The best part of my return via the Chunnel was the security check before boarding that got me a French passport stamp. One of the tragedies of modern Europe is open borders have largely obliterated passport-stamp collecting. Any excuse to get more ink in my book is welcome.

Three hours and one time zone later, I was back in Brussels and hustling towards the long distance train tracks, hoping I wouldn’t have long to wait before going East towards Cologne. Turns out I did have some time.

Normally I’m on top of my train schedules, but I guess when I scheduled my return from Britain I just assumed there would be German-bound engine waiting for me. While I can’t praise German rail enough, their personal door-to-door service has a ways to go. Apparently the last train to head for Germany left at 7:20. I was somewhere under the English Channel when that thing took off for home. There had to be a way to escape Belgium via night train or regional rail, right? It wasn’t that late.

Maybe Belgians just see Brussels as a place you would never want to leave. The next train leaving for anywhere else in Europe wouldn’t depart until 6AM the next morning. I was stuck in Belgium, information that was presented on a confusing French and Dutch chart in a dark corner of the station. I weighed my options. I could stay in the station. I had friends who had done as much in Munich and Bern and had lived to tell the tale. Then I saw two thugs start to tussle and frantic security guards sprint down the terminal. Hmmm.

Then a gentlemen who hadn’t bathed in three months sat down next to me and hungrily eyed the laptop I had opened to double check train times. Yeah, not staying. It was also a Saturday night. Hostels would likely be booked. I only had a few cents on my cell phone anyway and only a few cents in my pocket. So I made a last-minute decision to get out of the train terminal. I would head for the airport terminal and never tell my mother until I safely survived a potentially stupid decision.

The final express train for the airport was leaving in a minute. Hobble-running up the stairs, I dove onto the last car as the tired ticket-checker gave the engineer the “all clear” whistle. For fifteen minutes we chugged through Brussels and finally pulled under the International Airport. I checked my morning schedule and rode the escalator into the departures terminal with bored business travelers who were catching the Red Eye for parts distant. I was just looking for a bench.

Behind the elevators I found a secluded ring of lightly padded seats for weary fliers. One row was already taken by a young couple who appeared to be backpacking Europe. She was lying across several seats with a sheet pulled up to her neck. He was on the floor in a sleeping bag, already snoring. Perfect.

I found a vacant spot, ate a few necessary digestive biscuits and lashed all my luggage to the bench. My original plan was to be secure in my bed in Bonn by this point but I had to break the oath I had made to myself that morning. I set my alarm for 6AM. I had a train to catch…

Stay tuned for the epic struggle to break across the Belgian/German border and finally return to my much-neglected fossils!

The Lost World

The London album again. The latter sections feature pictures of the models I describe in this post.

At 4:15 the next morning I was awake to see Tim and Michael safely hustled off to the airport. The second time I had seen this side of 5AM in 24 hours. Ugh. Hugs and well-wishes were exchanged. Privately I swore I would never wake up before 6AM for the rest of my tenure in Europe. Then I laid back down and forgot to set the alarm.

I naturally woke up four hours later. 8AM never felt so late. I had been hoping to meet a friend somewhere in the city, but after checking facebook, my e-mail, and phone, I decided I should go about my day without hoping for a reunion with someone I haven’t seen in 18 years (we were friends when my family lived in Japan). The problem was that I hadn’t really thought about my day. All of London was mine until 7PM when I would once again shoot under the English Channel and return to the Continent, but I didn't know where to head first.

I started flipping through a book Yoonhee had left for perusal called 1000 Things to Do in London. That seemed like a few more than I could wedge into 11 hours, but one image caught my eye. It looked something like this:

This is the Crystal Palace Iguanodon. In 1851 Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, an English sculptor, was commissioned to build the first life-sized reconstructions of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures from Earth’s history. He was advised in his designs by Sir Richard Owen, the first director of the Natural History Museum. Owen was a fiery personality who coined the word “Dinosauria” in 1842. He was also a prolific scientist, who specialized in describing new species living and extinct. He was also a famous opponent of Dawin’s ideas on Natural Selection as he saw this as too simplistic a mechanism to trigger the diversity of the natural world.

But his biography isn’t really important. His dinosaurs are. In 1851, the Victorian world was finally coming to grips with the idea that the world might be really old and much more mysterious than anyone suspected. These models would present fragmentary bone and rock as the living, breathing animals the fossils once supported.

The problem: most of the material was, let me reiterate this point, fragmentary. They wanted to build an Iguanodon, but had four fossils to go on: Two teeth, a long bone, and a cone-shaped horn. Well, the teeth looked iguana-like, so maybe the animal looked like a massive lizard? Owen then crossed the iguana idea with an elephant and voila. Giant dino statue. So what if that spike was supposed to be near the wrist instead of the nose. The things were gargantuan. Shock value can go a long way.

Owen and Waterhouse were so excited about their project that they hosted a New Years party in the nearly finished torso of one Iguanodon. Every paleontologist is familiar with this image, one we recreated back in November at an outdoor dinosaur park near Gosslar.


Seeing the brief description of the site in 1,000 drew me on. I was alone in London with no one to roll their eyes at me or wonder how many more cultural touchstones we could see in the 45 minutes it would take to get into the southern suburbs of the city. I was going to make a two dimensional childhood image pop into the third. The added bonus here was I would get to ride an English train.

I keep a running tab on the quality of each nation’s rail service. I can happily report that the British did not disappoint, though the Germans really do excel at quality rail transportation. I unhappy to report that the English have decided lockers are a national security threat. Instead of convenient lockers in every station for a couple of pounds, they have luggage check stations where you send your bag through an x-ray and can leave it with the attendent for 8 pounds a bag. That’s insane. I’ll schlep my backpack across town, thank you.

I stepped off the train at Crystal Palace Station onto a platform that looked like the set from Waiting for Godot. Things looked a little more cheery when I got to the park. A colorful mural pointed the way towards the three islands that are home to the recently renovated animals.

The display was lauded when it was first unveiled, but by the turn of the century the sculptures were ridiculed as laughably inaccurate representations of ancient beasts. Iguanodon was supposed to be on two feet, not four (they also though his tail should drag through the mud). Dicynodons looked nothing like turtles, and Megalosaurus had nothing to do with medieval dragons. Scorn for the hypotheses of their creators meant the park’s animals were not well maintained through the twentieth century. In 2002 the display was restored and everyone got a shiny new coat of paint.

As I got closer to the man-made lakes that house this primordial menagerie, I started to pass families out for a walk or moms out with their pram. The grass was luminously green, and the hedges well maintained. It was everything I imagine an English Garden should be. Plus there were “Dinosaurs!” as I heard a four-year-old squeal.

Yes, there were dinosaurs. The iconic quadropedal herbivores leered across the pond and I sat in rapture. In case you’ve forgotten (and I’ll forgive you this time) here’s what the skeleton of Iguanodon looked like:

And here’s a reconstruction of the animal.

So, Waterhouse and Owen were pretty far off their mark, but they never claimed to have created the perfect models. In fact, as more complete material was being discovered in the American West, Waterhouse was commissioned to create a Mesozoic tableaux in Central Park that would have state-of-the-art reconstructions. Unfortunately Boss Tweed cut his funding and New York was left without life-sized dinosaurs. Damn bosses.

What Owen and Waterhouse did achieve was a rabid public interest in ancient life. Big creatures like Giant Ground Sloths and Ichthyosaurus are ready mascots for science. You can’t help but look at a giant bone and wonder how the animals got so big, what it ate, or what the world was like when it was stomping around. These creatures seed a germ of curiosity that drives the best scientists to pursue their questions about the natural world. Owen made this park and his museum public spaces where people could encounter the latest discoveries and explore the evidence on their own, personal terms.

I walked past the grinning Megalosaurus, who was reconstructed with a single jaw fragment and a chunk of leg bone. They were a little off here, too.

Again, they never swore these were completely accurate. He sluggishly stalks a still poorly known armored dinosaur called Hylaeosaurus.

Next to the dinosaurs is an island surrounded by goose-necked and dolphin-beaked reptiles gliding through the water. You might recognize these guys from my posts on the famous fossils of Germany. If not, here are the fossils and the sculptures.



Not bad. Not bad at all. The amphibians and mammal-like reptiles around the corner would dramatically change appearance over the next century and a half. The mammals were much more accurate. They occupied their own island set across the pond from the reptiles. There are just more rocks on this Earth from the last 65 million years, so the skeletons tend to be more complete and Owen and company were able to connect ancient fossils to living relatives. The Giant Ground Sloth shows the sculptor spent some time with modern sloths

The giant deer Megaloceros was tough to screw up since it’s really a massive elk.

I walked two circuits around the park, reveling in the details the Victorian scientists were able to include in their models, musing on what these paleontological characters would think of the modern state of the science. Recently, paleontologists graduated form idyll speculation and description to active reconstructions of ancient ecosystems. We delve into the biology of the animals we study, no longer content to simply name them. Now we want to understand them and their family's evolutionary history. We long to understand how their presence affected the biosphere we call home.

Still glowing with the rush of historical and scientific convergence, I went back to the dreary platform and shot back into the city, unsure where I would wind up next. A hint: It might involve art.

Until then,

Cheerio

Photos of dinos.