Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them: Our Scandinavian Trek

May 20, 2019

Time for the annual Kunz Europe Trek blog post. Let’s get right into it, ja?

STOCKHOLM

Our trip began in the lovely city of Stockholm, Sweden—a bustling fusion of the old and new atop fourteen islands on the mouth of the Baltic Sea. It’s a city full of history and culture, founded by Vikings in the Middle Ages. Both Norwegians and Swedes love their Viking forebears, whose legacy lives on wherever you look. They’re not allowed to openly raid and pillage anymore; instead, they just charge you $20 for a burger.

The oldest part of Stockholm is Gamla Stan, the Old City. Back in the Middle Ages, this was Stockholm. I’m not sure they had all the tourist shops selling souvenir Viking mugs back then, but I’m no historian. Still, if you’re after an immersive walk back in time, the quaint, medieval-style buildings and narrow, cobblestoned roads are something to see. (Surprisingly, there’s also an excellent, modern-looking sci-fi/fantasy bookstore tucked into an ancient row of shops. I think it’s just called Sci-Fi Bookstore. The Swedish are nothing if not straightforward.)

On our first night, we stopped at Meatballs for the People, recommended as one of the better purveyors of genuine Swedish meatballs in the city. We put our names on the waiting list and came back an hour and a half later to sample some truly excellent meatballs. Now, much of Scandinavian cuisine involves fish, which is basically meat’s version of salad, but meatballs are a notable and tasty exception. (I think they may have had fish meatballs among the many varieties available, but we passed.)

In the morning, we went for a run to one of Stockholm’s many parks. Scandinavians are very active—no matter where you are in the city, there’s always a jogger or a cyclist trying to pass you. It’s a wonderful thing. They could teach Americans a thing or two about getting off our butts and exercising. Speaking of butts, Europeans paradoxically also seem unwilling to give up their smoking habits. Sweden isn’t as bad as some European countries in terms of cigarette use (looking at you, France and Italy, which are Little Tyke cars driving around in giant ashtrays), but come on, guys.

Stockholm is built on 14 islands, so the canal tour was a must. After that, we visited Skansen, which is like This is the Place (if you’re from Utah), except larger and Swedish. It’s a bunch of original Scandinavian buildings transplanted into one spot and populated by guides in period clothing who will happily tell you about how Sven Kjieldsen or Lars Svenssen lived in this tiny one-room farmhouse with his family over the winter, eating nothing but frozen fish.

Next came one of our Stockholm highlights. Djurgården was once the king’s private hunting ground; now it’s a public park. We rented bikes and explored the shores, riding past grand mansions and watching boats sail through the bay.

The next day was full of beautiful old buildings and one really cool ship. We saw Stockholm’s main cathedral, where the princess of Sweden married her personal trainer a few years ago. (True story.) We also toured the royal apartments, the treasury of Sweden’s crown jewels, one random Swedish king’s collection of statues, and a museum dedicated to the old Stockholm castle, which burned down in the 1600s. (The chief fire watcher, who had one job and apparently sucked at it, was executed by running the gauntlet through hundreds of soldiers who had permission to beat him as hard as they could with clubs.)

(Another true story: Stockholm was founded in the Middle Ages by a guy named Birger Jarl. “Jarl” was just a title for high-ranking Scandinavian chieftains. Some historians think he was technically a king, but my guess is they don’t call him that, because nobody wants their city to have been founded by a dude named Birger King.)

And then came the Vasa, which might have been both of our highlight of the trip. In 1628, the king of Sweden really wanted to show the other powers in the area not to mess with him, so he had a giant warship built. The Vasa was the pride of the Swedish Navy, its hull decorated with hundreds of intricately carved statues, each gunport adorned with a roaring lion. It’s five stories tall, not counting the masts, and must have been a truly awesome sight sailing out of the Stockholm harbor to go kick some Danish butt…until, that is, it capsized before even making it out of the bay. It was built far too narrow and high, so it took on water and sank to the bottom. About 30 people drowned.

333 years later, the Vasa was raised to the surface. It’s still remarkably preserved. I’m a firm believer that every trip to Europe needs at least one moment where your mind gets blown, and for me that was when I walked in and saw this once-mighty warship, a titan of wood and rope rearing up to do in death what it never could in life: strike awe into the hearts of people from far beyond Sweden’s shores.

The museum itself is pretty great, too—you can walk through a replica of the gundeck, read the stories and see the bones of the people who died, and get up close to see the intricate carvings on the stern. It’s worth a trip to Stockholm just to see the Vasa.

But that wasn’t the end of our Stockholm adventure. In our quest to find the best Swedish food, we were led to La Neta, which the Internet called the best Mexican food in Sweden. This might sound like an easy claim—like having the cutest outfit in a nudist colony—but it was as good as pretty much anything I’ve had in the States.

I should mention that not everything was a source of wonder and joy: Stockholm provided us with the first negative Airbnb experience either of us have ever had. We’re familiar with the camera’s ability to add a hundred square feet to any Airbnb dwelling, but this one was more than just smaller than it had appeared: the broken couch looked like a sinking ship, the pillows were has lumpy as gunny sacks full of dead cats, and the mattress had actual bloodstains on it. (Fun!) We took one look at the place and bought our own sheets, pillows, and blankets, hoping that the Oslo place would be a bit better.

OSLO

Our Airbnb in Oslo was a huge step up. But we didn’t stay there for long before dropping off our stuff and heading off on a hike. Kolsåstoppen is a scenic overlook over the Oslofjord. Whichever Norse god is in charge of weather (I think his name is Freyr, but I had a really good joke in mind if it were Thor) blessed us with a clear blue sky that day as we hiked up and took in the vista we would be exploring over the next few days.

Our Airbnb was right next to Vigeland Park, a lovely park full of sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. Vigeland was a sculptor who promised to spend the rest of his life beautifying Oslo in return for a stipend. Whether he succeeded mostly depends on your feelings toward nudity. The sculptures include hundreds of nude figures engaged in a variety of different activities, some of which are left to the imagination. I call this one “First Day of School”:

He’s probalby wearing an invisible Fjällräven Kanken backpack.

The centerpiece of the park is this weird obelisk full of naked people. I’m fine with nudity in art (we did go to Italy last year, after all), but I also have no problem with clothing.

The next day, the weather turned decidedly less welcoming. Which was ideal for a few more museums, and less ideal for certain outdoor activities, which I’ll get to momentarily.

We saw a lot of boats on this trip. Seriously, we should have called this trip Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them. In addition to the aforementioned Vasa, we saw two of the best-preserved Viking ships in the world, as well as a third ship that didn’t look quite as seaworthy these days; the polar exploration ship Gjøa (your guess is as good as mine as far as pronunciation goes); and the Fram, the ship that carried Roald Amundsen to Antarctica on his daring journey to claim the South Pole. (That was after it had already taken the explorer Fridjolf Nansen near the North Pole, where it was trapped in the ice for five years. That ship has seen more than any Instagram travel influencer.) We also had the chance to see the Kon-Tiki, the raft Thor Heyerdahl used to prove that ancient South Americans could have settled Polynesia, but by then we had seen enough boats to last us a while.

The story of the race to the South Pole is fascinating. It involves two men—the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Both desperately wanted to be the first man to set foot on the Earth’s southernmost point, and each took a harrowing journey to get there. Amundsen brought sled dogs, while Scott brought motorized sledges that immediately crapped out when they tried to start them in the freezing air. Most of the Amundsen’s dogs died along the way (and were eaten), but Amundsen made it to the Pole first, leaving Scott a letter to deliver home in case he (Amundsen) didn’t make it back. But that proved unnecessary; Amundsen returned a national hero. After a grueling journey, Scott and his men arrived at the South Pole, only to find the Norwegian flag flapping in the freezing air. I can’t imagine the disappointment he must have felt as he turned around to go home, but it only got worse for him: he and his men were trapped in their tent for weeks on the return journey while a blizzard raged outside. Their bodies were found several months later.

You could walk around the Fram’s deck, exploring its cabins and imagining what it would be like to brave hostile conditions, get trapped in the ice for years, and eventually kill and eat your sled dogs. (They do not sell sled dog jerky in the gift shop.)

Speaking of hostile conditions, we had a tour of the Oslofjord scheduled for that morning as well. We had hoped it would be enclosed, with nice dry seats, like our tour of the Stockholm canals a few days before… but alas. The fjord tour was to take place from the upper deck of a small sailing ship, with only a tarp to protect us from the elements.

That, it turned out, only enhanced the experience—at least for me. We cruised around the fjord, getting a good look at lonely lighthouses and clapboard houses hugging the sides of stark green islands. There’s a kind of cold, austere beauty to the Oslofjord. The rain lashed the ship entire time, but it wasn’t hard to imagine myself as an explorer or Viking (or at least, something other than a tourist who had paid 330 Norwegian krona to sit on a boat in the rain).

While on the boat, the guide mentioned a ruined monastery on an island named Høvedoya. So of course the next day we took a boat out there and explored it. The monks here were apparently beholden to a rule where they had to get up and dawn and go to bed at dusk, which sounds fine until you remember that during certain parts of the year the sun rises at 4am and goes down at 10:30pm.

While in Oslo, we also met up with my famous YouTuber cousin Zack (Jerry Rig Everything, 3.7 million followers) and his famous YouTuber friend Dan (What’s Inside, 6.5 million followers) . Zack had seen my Instagram and messaged me, telling me he was on his way to Oslo right then to do something for his channel, filming Mercedes’ new car or building a rocket or something. So we had dinner. (See, Mom, I do hang out with my cousins.)

We were only in Scandinavia for slightly less than six full days, but we packed a lot in there. If you have a week to spare to take a look at beautiful scenery, cool cities, and lots of boats, you know exactly where to go.

For the Flat Creek Blog: Hiking from Driggs to Jackson Hole

September 17, 2018

Here’s a post I did chronicling a 24-mile hike across the Teton mountain range. Enjoy.

Read it here.

Heaven on Earth: Gimmelwald, Switzerland

April 30, 2018

This post was adapted from a segment in last year's blog post about my trip through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Certain passages were adapted into a more serious contemplation of spirituality and nature. Enjoy!

To some people, heaven is a literal but unseen plane of existence, the dwelling place of the divine. To others, it’s a fleeting but attainable prize for the here and now, glimpsed in a sunrise or through the shining curtain of a waterfall. To me, it’s both—and I found them in Gimmelwald.

Above the village of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, there lies a hamlet cut off from the inexorable flow of time by a five-hundred-foot sheet cliff. It’s insurmountable but for a dutiful cable car that makes hourly journeys up the mountain. Below, Lauterbrunnen bustles with all the trappings of modernity, but above, the hamlet of Gimmelwald, home to less than a hundred permanent residents, is a place apart.

You’ll find no cars in Gimmelwald, only a few golf carts that traverse a winding road up to the larger resort town of Mürren. Even the largest buildings are creaking, overgrown cabins, and through the trees up the slope you can glimpse cheese-making huts peering down at you. The verdant flanks of the mountain are speckled with cows, the bells around their necks tolling the coming of morning as surely as any rooster call. But even if Gimmelwald were stripped of its quaint charm, it would still be a place I could never forget.

For me and my companions, our initial ascent in the cable car was marred by sinuous veils of rain that hid much of the scenery from view. Still under the cover of an insistent deluge, we made our way to the Hotel Mittaghorn, a dark old edifice run by a nearly deaf old Swiss gentleman named Walter. The coin-operated shower was located in a separate room, but what the hotel lacked in convenience it made up for in homely appeal. Walter—the only employee for most of our stay—made a mean breakfast of sausage and eggs.

In the morning, after we were awakened by the crescendo tinkle of cowbells as the dairy cows made their way underneath the hotel window, we saw what the rain and mists had hidden from us the day before. Our bedroom window framed a view unlike anything I’d ever seen, a massive cliff practically pinstriped with waterfalls, rising from the valley below like a snowcapped bulwark of basalt.

That was when it sank in for us that in Gimmelwald we had wandered into a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. It was as if our front porch was a portal to another world, a panorama of natural majesty whittled from the bare rock by a masterful Creator.

That point was driven home for me as the day progressed. The morning continued with a morning run up the trail to the neighboring town of Mürren, and later a hike down from the Männlichen station down to the resort town of Wengen. That hike provided us with our most stunning view yet. I would never consider myself cultured enough to be an expert on great literature, but I do dabble from time to time, and the descent brought to mind a passage from Frankenstein, where the eponymous doctor wanders the Alps in search of solace after abandoning his creation:

"Still, as I ascended higher, the valley ... was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings."

For me, instead of seeing evidence of some alien race, I saw the unmistakable fingerprint of the divine. The endless vistas lent me a newfound appreciation for the glories of the natural world—and for the powers behind them.

It’s hard not to look out on the majesty of creation and not feel some small measure of reverence. Even the most avowed heathen feels it, even if they choose to ascribe it to another source. There’s no doubt that the mighty glaciers and jagged peaks and filaments of water cascading down the sheer face of the mountain were created by natural processes, entirely explainable by science, and yet to me the evidence of a supreme Creator isn’t in the sights themselves but in the irrepressible, undeniable deference to the divine we feel when we gaze upon their wonders.

I’ve always been a religious person, but I sometimes struggle to connect with my conception of the divine while sitting in a pew. God can seem a little distant when someone forgot to turn down the thermostat or the kid in the bench in front of me is wailing for his Cheerios. That kind of worship will always have a place for me, but in places like Gimmelwald I can seek the heavens in both a figurative and literal sense.

In the Alps, I felt detached from the fallen earth to which I had been born and could almost stretch my fingers, like Adam in the famous Michelangelo masterpiece, to meet the outstretched hand of God. Atop that mountain cliff in Switzerland, it was as though a mere five hundred feet above the valley floor could lift me to touch the firmament itself.

How Was Your Trip? (Italian Honeymoon Edition)

April 28, 2018

It’s that time of year again, when I undergo my millennial duty to go on a European vacation and exhaustively document it on social media. This year, however, it was the honeymoon, the lovely Breanne Anderson and I having just joined ourselves together in holy matrimony. We could think of literally no more romantic place on Earth than Italy, so we thought, Hey, let’s go see if the gelato really is as near-narcotic as people say it is.

We flew into northern Italy, into the city of Milan. And so began our adventure…

Milan

The actual city of Milan rates a solid thumbs-sideways. There’s nothing wrong with it—it’s just another generic European city where everyone is smoking and driving comically tiny cars. (Seriously. Europe is basically a giant ashtray underneath an armada of Little Tykes cars.) It’s somewhat charming in its own right, but Milan is best appreciated before you have a chance to take in the more vacation-friendly Florence or Rome. As a jumping-point to the scenic Lake Country, Milan is great (though next time we might stay right in Varenna, on the lake itself). But by itself, it’s pretty skippable. Sorry, Milan. I’m sure lots of people like you, and you’re good at stuff.

Attractions seen in Milan: Sforza Castle, Milan Duomo

Lake Como

You know that scene at the end of Casino Royale where James Bond catches up with the bad guy at an exotic lakehouse and shoots him in the leg? (It’s a great scene.) Or how about that scene in Attack of the Clones where Anakin tries to woo Padmé by comparing the smoothness of her skin to the roughness of sand? (It’s a terrible scene. I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work.) Turns out both scenes were filmed in the same place. It’s this villa here:

All of the worst scenes of the worst Star Wars movie were filmed here, which makes it sort of a holy place, in a weird way.

That fancy house sits on the shore of Lake Como, a lovely little postcard-generating body of water about 45 minutes north of Milan. Breanne and I took a water ferry from the town of Como to the little village of Varenna, which is a honeymoon destination if there ever was one. You can stroll along a sunlit promenade, hike up to a castle with stunning panoramic views, or get lost while trying to find the tourist information center in order to locate said sunlit promenade and castle. We did all three, and we definitely didn’t spend enough time in Varenna.

Check out the stunning beauty here in Italy. (Also pictured: the town of Varenna and accompanying scenery.)

Attractions seen at Lake Como: The lake, lots of fancy houses, possibly George Clooney’s house, Vezio Castle

Florence

Florence is, in short, a wonderful place. What is about this city that earned a hearty recommendation from every Italy traveler on Facebook while I was planning the trip? What is it about Florence that earned it spot as our favorite city we visited? Maybe it’s the fact that it’s full of sights, all packed into a helpful, walk-friendly handful of square miles. If art is your jam, Florence has you covered. If cool old buildings are your thing, Florence comes through. Food? Got it. Shopping? Got that, too. Quaint little medieval-looking streets? Check. More gelato than you can possibly eat? Challenge accepted.

The centerpiece of any Florence experience is the majestic Duomo (Italian for “cathedral”), which was designed by some Renaissance guy sometime between 1000 and 1986 AD (after a while, all that stuff gets a little hazy). It’s a striking example of early Renaissance flavor, or possibly Baroque. I don’t remember, but its super amazing. The architect eschewed the typical white marble of other cathedrals in favor of an exterior that’s a striking maroon, dark green, and eggshell white.

The interior of the Duomo’s dome is an arresting 360-degree panorama depicting, among other things, the final fates of the wicked. It’s just like Where’s Waldo, except instead of a man in a striped hat you can find goodies like a frog-man beating a guy with a club, a winged goat demon devouring people whole, and some poor soul being flayed alive in graphic detail. Those Renaissance artists sure did a lot of thinking about the final fate of the wicked. I bet they were real fun at parties.

This is the happy part of the underside of the dome.

And this is the scary part.

No trip to Italy would be complete without acknowledging the contributions of Michelangelo, who labored tirelessly so future tourists would have lots of stuff to visit. No, seriously—everywhere you look there's something else he designed, painted, or sculpted. The guy was a master at everything he put his mind to. It’s surprise he’s only my third favorite Ninja Turtle.

This is the tomb of Michelangelo in the Santa Croce cathedral. The three statues represent painting, sculpture, and architecture all mourning his loss. There's no indication that Michelangelo was buried with his nunchucks, which is a shame.

We visited the Accademia, the Uffuzi Gallery, and several other places loaded full of art. We saw Michelangelo’s David in all his naked, 13-foot-tall splendor. We saw more Madonna and Childs than I knew existed. Now, I like art. But I like it in small, digestible quantities. After several days of seeing the some of the greatest art in the Western world, every random naked Greek statue starts to blur together and their explanatory plaques all sound exactly the same:

Madonna and child, ca. 1323, Florence. Marble. Created by Italian sculptor Luigi Supermario under the patronage of Lord Tywin Lannister, this work represents the artist’s early attempts to merge Baroque neoclassicism with Renaissance neo-hyperthyroidism. We swear this Virgin Mary is totally different from the 139 others you’ve seen.

Side note: No matter where we went, many of the nude male statues were missing certain bits. I found this fascinating, despite my new wife’s exasperation every time I pointed it out. Apparently, someone freaked out at all the nudity and tried to take action. (Nobody let my mom in there, did they?)

On that note, let’s talk about another of Italy’s major contributions to Western society. If you’ve never had gelato in Italy, especially Florence, you’ve never had gelato. It’s a sort of really soft ice cream, hand made from angel tears and 100% real fruit. (I think it’s organic, too. They only use free-range, pesticide-free angels.) We started off with gelato once a day, then progressed to twice a day, and we were up to three times a day by the time we left. I think both of us were secretly okay with four times a day, but we were reluctant to voice that opinion.

My favorite flavor was the fragola, or strawberry.

Our most invigorating experience in Florence came when we rented bikes and attempted a nice, pleasant ride through the city streets. I guess I had in mind an experience similar to the one I had in Austria last year, where there are dedicated bike lanes and the only danger is from absurdly fit septuagenarians who want to run you over. In Italy, however, I suspect motorists get tax breaks for each cyclist they maim. Whatever their incentive, I’m confident that drivers in Italy are actively trying to kill you. We learned this quickly as we wove through the narrow streets, dodging cars, motorcycles, and Florence’s cute little half-sized buses, which are still more than large enough to render any cyclist suddenly two-dimensional. Breanne compared it to a game of Mario Kart, which was an unsettling comparison for me given that I consider it a major accomplishment if I get anything other than last place in that game. Nevertheless, biking was one of our highlights. It really did get the adrenaline up.

Attractions seen in Florence: Duomo cathedral, dome, baptistery, bell tower, and museum; Accademia; Ponte Vecchio; Medici chapels, Uffizi Gallery; Galileo museum; Piazza Michelangelo; Palazzo Vecchio; Palazzo Pitti and gardens; Santa Croce

Rome

Speaking of wanton bloodshed, our first stop in Rome was the Coliseum. I apparently missed the memo that the purest tourist experience is as part of a gigantic tour group. We experienced them in Florence, but it wasn’t till Rome that tour groups really got on my nerves. It’s hard to get anywhere without a legion of squealing schoolchildren blocking your path. Once we got in, however, we saw the Coliseum is a grand old edifice so like our modern sports stadiums that while you’re pressing through the throngs in the lower levels, you can easily forget you’re not at the LaVell Edwards Stadium at BYU at halftime, trying to score an overpriced hot dog. Then you wander up into the sunlight, where you can imagine gladiators going to the deaths or Christians being fed to lions. Or in my case, you can imagine tour groups being fed to lions. Are you not entertained?

The Forum was less crowded, maybe because the Coliseum was too packed for most people to escape. It’s one of Rome’s most visited sites, and for good reason. The Forum was once the political center of Rome, bursting with temples, palaces, and thoroughfares. There’s enough left over that you can still fill in the gaps in the rubble with your mind, imagining a glorious empire at its zenith. It’s really quite something to behold, and I say that without an iota of facetiousness. Check this out:

There's a super famous Percy Shelley poem that makes the rounds in pop culture every few years. It was on Breaking Bad and one of the Alien movies. Anyway, it's what I was thinking about when I saw this place. It goes like this...

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

We visited the Trevi Fountain, because I was informed it was in the Lizzie McGuire Movie and was therefore a must-see.

Another highlight of Rome is St. Peter’s Basilica. This may just be the most impressive church in the world. It’s so huge that you could fit at least six of the Salt Lake Temple right inside, by our estimation. (We live in Salt Lake City, so that’s our most readily available comparison.) Not only that, but every inch is covered in ornate scrollwork or gold or marble or some towering statue of a saint.

This picture doesn't really do it justice.

Less impressive, unfortunately, is the Vatican Museum. This sprawling complex had its moments, but we happened to be in Rome during Holy Week, which meant we were basically sharing the city with all of Catholicism, most of whom were in line with us. The Vatican Museum walks you through all the fancy art the Catholic Church mysteriously ended up with over the millennia (maybe all those ancient empires just left their priceless artifacts in the lost and found, who knows?), terminating at the Sistine Chapel. During peak season or Holy Week, visitors can stand in line for an hour or two for the privilege of squeezing even tighter into narrow corridors, vaguely aware of the art they can glimpse over other visitors’ heads.

I did enjoy the map room, where the crowd eased up long enough to enjoy these incredibly detailed room-high maps, which put any fantasy map I’ve ever seen to shame.

You can't see it here, but every little town is represented with a unique cluster of tiny buildings, each artfully detailed. It's incredible.

You can see the detail a bit more in this one.

I imagine that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel to evoke a sense of reverent awe. Unfortunately, by the time you’ve been herded like cattle for upwards of two hours through densely crowded rooms, the chapel instead evokes a feeling of a very full bladder, accompanied by anger and vaguely murderous impulses directed toward the people blocking the exit.

Contrast that with Ostia Antica, a well-preserved port city an hour from Rome, where the crowds were sparse, the sun was shining, and you could basically walk wherever you wanted. You could sidle up to the bar in the ancient tavern, climb up onto the roof of the surviving apartments to get a better look, or walk along the mosaics in the public bathhouse. The atmosphere there is so relaxed that there was literally a class of high schoolers having some sort of talent show in the ancient amphitheater, which we discovered after wondering why a quartet of long-haired hoodlums were lip syncing to System of a Down in the middle of a bunch of Roman ruins.

You pretty much have free rein of the place, whether it's the sprawling cityscape...

...the ruins partially reclaimed by the earth...

...or the elaborate mosaics.

The Castle of the Angels, overlooking the Tiber, is also worth a visit. It used to be a fortress, then it was a hideout for the popes, and now it's a museum.

At the top of the castle is the Archangel Michael, depicted in the act of heroically slaying tour groups.

This is obviously a bust of the great Roman Emperor Voldemortus Tomriddlus.

Oh, one more thing in Rome.

They wouldn’t let us take pictures of the Capuchin Crypts, so I’ll supply some pictures from Google. We’re still a little hazy on how all these bones ended up there, but at some point some fun-loving person decided to take the bones of the deceased Capuchin monks and arrange them in interesting patterns. The result is some rather macabre art.

Nothing weird about this. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons.)

Nothing at all. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons.)

Rom,_Santa_Maria_Immacolata_a_Via_Veneto,_Krypta_der_Kapuziner_2.jpg

The creepiest part is the sign over the door:

What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.

I think that's a good place to end the blog post, don't you? Sleep well tonight.

Attractions seen in Rome: Pantheon, Coliseum, Forum, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, Castel Sant'Angelo, Spanish Steps, Capuchin Crypt, Trevi Fountain, Ostia Antica

How Was Your Trip? (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria Edition)

April 25, 2018

Arrival

Originally published July 5, 2017.

There’s an old superstition that if you see actor Henry Winkler in an airport bathroom, you’re in for a great European vacation. (Don’t bother looking it up. Just trust me on this one.)

My unforgettable two weeks in Europe got off to an auspicious start when I met the aforementioned actor in the men’s room at LAX. For the more seasoned TV viewers, that’s Arthur Fonzarelli from Happy Days (or for my millennial friends, that’s Jean-Ralphio’s dad from Parks and Recreation and the hilariously incompetent family lawyer from Arrested Development). Probably unaware that he was a harbinger of good fortune, he did me the honor of asking me if the touchless faucets were working for me, which I figure is celebrity-speak for a warm greeting.

With my trip properly blessed by the gods of travel, my hearty band of travelers—myself, my mom, my 18-year-old sister Abby, and my 16-year-old brother Quinn—traveled to Stockholm, Sweden. We didn’t get much of a good look at the country outside the airport windows, but it seemed like a pleasant place. From Sweden we went to Munich. Our first minor hiccup of the trip came when I couldn’t figure out which button in German disengaged the parking brake on our rental car, but crisis was averted and we found our way to a pleasant little hotel on the outskirts of Munich. We would only stay here one night, but we would return to Germany later in the trip.

In the morning we sampled the local bakery and found, to our delight, that German pretzels are made from fairy dust and children’s laughter, in addition to regular flour and salt. No pretzel I’ve ever had is as good as the pretzel bread I had that morning in Munich. We set out toward Switzerland, stopping at two castles on the way. Lichtenstein Castle was notable because, as the tour guide informed us, it once housed the guy who invented the pretzel. Since said baked bread product was still warming our bellies, we were infinitely grateful for that guy’s contributions to culinary science. Next we visited Hohenzollern Castle, a grand fortress looming over a wooded hill. It’s a stately edifice, still in use for ceremonial functions and even a summer camp for needy German children, but as far as we could tell its owners have yet to make contributions to the field of pretzel-making. Keep trying, guys.

This is Hohenzollern Castle. Europe just has castles lying around everywhere like we Idahoans have old tractors.

Switzerland

That night we slept in Zurich, Switzerland. We wandered the streets around sunset, appreciating the cleanliness and friendly people. The public parks have giant chess sets full of old men of various ethnicities squatting around with looks of intense concentration. Some of them broke concentration long enough to look at us funny when we used the giant chess pieces to play a rousing game of checkers, the uncultured Americans that we were. (In case you’re wondering, I soundly defeated my little brother Quinn.)

From Zurich we headed into Switzerland with the vague intention of finding something called Trift Bridge, a suspension bridge over a 300-foot gorge. For a few hours we corkscrewed around winding mountain passes, each successive turn bringing us to quaint alpine vistas that looked more and more like our mental image of Switzerland. After driving our car past several no-vehicles-past-this-point signs (they were in German, so cut us some slack, please), we found out that the the bridge was only reached via several hours of hiking. After two hours, some ominous-looking stormclouds started to roll in. A seasoned-looking Swiss hiker warned us to turn back, but we pressed on, undaunted, and reached the bridge late afternoon. (They were Swiss stormclouds, after all, so they never really threatened anybody.)

Trift Bridge is a dizzying suspension bridge over a yawning expanse of granite and icy water far below, the kind that conjures up completely irrational images of crocodiles snapping below, a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, because most things make me think of pop culture references. My pride compelled me to cross the bridge before my mom and younger siblings, but I did it slowly and while repeating I am not afraid of this under my breath.

Not pictured: certain death far below. I'm not lying whenI say that one of Google's search suggestions for Trift Bridge was "trift bridge deaths."

We stayed that night above Lauterbrunnen Valley, a picturesque Rivendell of a community where the cliffs are practically pinstriped with gorgeous flowing waterfalls. A cable car brought us to our destination, Gimmelwald, a hamlet of less than a hundred people inaccessible by road. The Hotel Mittaghorn, our sleeping accommodations for the next two nights, was a creaky three-story building run by a mostly deaf old Swiss gentleman named Walter Mittler, where the shower was a coin-operated contraption located in one of the other rooms. Whatever inconvenience the showering situation presented, it was more than remedied by the realization that we had wandered into a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. Our front porch was a portal to another world, a titanic panorama of natural majesty whittled from the bare rock by a masterful Creator.

Anyway, here's the view from our balcony.

The next day began with a morning run up the trail to the neighboring town of Mürren and continued with a hike down from the Männlichen station down to the resort town of Wengen. That hike provided us with our most stunning view yet. Because I’m the super cultured type who occasionally takes a break from books with titles like Monster Hunter Nemesis and Star Wars Battlefront: Twilight Company long enough to delve into great literature, I likened it to a passage from Frankenstein, where the eponymous doctor wanders the Alps in search of solace after abandoning his creation:

The endless vistas helped me gain a newfound appreciation for the glories of the natural world—and for the powers behind them. It’s hard not to look out on the majesty of creation and not feel some small measure of reverence. Even the most avowed heathen feels it, even if they don’t choose to ascribe it to the same source I do. There’s no doubt that the mighty glaciers and jagged peaks and filaments of water cascading down the sheer face of the mountain were created by natural processes, nothing unexplainable by science, and yet to me the evidence of a supreme Creator isn’t in the sights themselves but in the irrepressible, undeniable deference to the divine we feel when we gaze upon their wonders.

Or maybe, to paraphrase Paul Bettany’s Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale, sights like these are far too rare to cheapen with heavy-handed words. So here's another picture.

No caption needed.

Germany

But I digress. We left Gimmelwald after two days, sad to have spent far too little time in so heavenly a place. We hit the road to Germany again, stopping at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen. I’m not ashamed to admit it—I’ve always had a weird fixation with the glory days of lighter-than-air travel. There’s a stately grace to an airship that no fixed-wing aircraft can equal. Or maybe their abrupt departure from public use early last century earned the airship a permanent place on the shelf of mankind’s most tantalizing might-have-beens. Whatever it is, I’d have loved to board one and see the world from within that rumbling chariot of steel and cotton fabric. At least until its gas cells caught fire and exploded and everyone aboard died a horrible death—which, as the museum informed me, was pretty much what zeppelins liked to do from time to time. (You can’t have everything, I guess.)

And so we were back in Munich—for a few days this time. It's a clean, orderly city. A sprawling park near our Airbnb provided a place for us to run every morning, and the fish market in the middle of town afforded us a pleasant place to eat. The town center is home a various cathedrals and medieval-looking buildings. One of the most arresting sights for me was a glass casket in an alcove in St. Peter’s Church, where the bones of a saint named Munditia are coated in jewels. She died a martyr at the hands of the Romans. Hundreds of years later, the Pope decided that dying a martyr was a pretty swell thing to do for the Church, so he showed his appreciation by having her bones plastered with shiny rocks. (If it doesn’t work for me to be frozen in carbonite when I die, Han Solo-style, I would like my next of kin to consider a similar method of interment. Maybe have a bake sale at the funeral to pay for it.)

St. Munditia: rest in bling.

While in Munich we visited Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, now converted to a sobering memorial and museum. More on that later. It should be noted, however, that we saw Henry Winkler for the second time there. Seriously, what are the odds? The Fonz followed me from Los Angeles to Germany. I thought about approaching him, but there are probably better places for that than outside a Nazi barracks. Regardless, I took it as an omen that our trip was still blessed by the travel gods.

Two nights in Munich later and we were on our way to Vienna. For this we ditched the rental car and took a train. A multi-country European train ride is something everyone should experience at least once, so we did. More than enough for our liking.

Austria

I had heard a lot of favorable things about Vienna, and for the most part it didn’t disappoint. Most of the things people recommended to me when I asked about Vienna dealt with Mozart or The Sound of Music, which are both things I have only a distant, detached appreciation for. So I wasn’t in Vienna to visit any Julie Andrews sites or embed myself in the classical music scene, but there was still plenty to do. For instance, there was the ice cream.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had whatever Viennese ice cream we had, but to say it is the best dessert ever created by the hand of man is to slightly undersell it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the recipe included ground-up Prozac with a sprinkling of that really good cocaine that movie stars take. I may never love a woman like I loved that strawberry ice cream.

This ice cream is fluffier than a box of poodles. And way more tasty.

Months before, my mom, sister and I decided to partake of some real Vienna cultural experience, and I saw that Swan Lake was playing at the Vienna State Opera House, so that seemed like as good an idea as any. For Mom and Abby, this turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip—to see world-class dancers exhibiting nearly inhuman levels of athleticism and grace, accompanied by one of the finest orchestras Europe has to offer. I appreciated everything about it, but it was three hours. I mean, three hours. If I'm gonna watch something for three hours, there better be hobbits destroying a ring in there somewhere. If you don’t know the story—and I still wouldn’t, if I hadn’t read the helpful synopsis in the program, because there’s zero dialogue—Swan Lake is the story of a prince in really tight pants who falls for a girl who’s been turned into a swan by an evil magician who turns girls to swans and keeps them in a gigantic magic swan preserve for some reason. Prince Tight Pants promises to break the spell by falling in love with her, but the evil magician tricks him into falling for her doppelgänger, a mysterious black swan. (Which I guess is a risk when you’re in love with a bird.)

Halfway through, I found myself wondering if there was an alternate production I could watch that just had the highlights, like maybe just one of the times the prince did that twirly thing. Still, there were several truly arresting moments, like the dramatic finale, where the famous theme plays (you know the one, you’ve heard it) and the hapless prince is swept away by a flood conjured by the evil magician, his tragic fate accented by the thrilling swells of the music.

Here's the opera house. I didn't take any pictures of the actual performance. I'm pretty that would be punishable by death.

We went to church in Vienna. Mom convinced me to depart from my preferred travel church policy and go to all three hours, which—are you reading, Mom?—turned out to be a good thing, because one of the people we talked to there recommended that we take the train to the neighboring town of Melk, see the abbey there, and then bike back in the direction of Vienna.

We took our fellow traveler’s advice. Melk Abbey sits atop an outcrop of rock overlooking the Danube. Our favorite feature was its expansive, elegant library, the kind of thing Belle from Beauty and the Beast would really fall in love with a giant hairy buffalo-man for. But the best part was the ride back. We rented bikes and cycled twenty miles or so along the Danube, where every bend in the river concealed a new castle and every pit stop proved to be another charming Austrian town.

Here's me biking by the Danube. This is just before I was passed by another pair of extremely fit septuagenarian cyclists.

Our last night was spent in the Klastergastof Raitenhaslach, a mouthful of a monastery partially converted into a lovely hotel. There were no monks in sight while we were there, but upon checking out our hosts proudly presented us with some monk-brewed beer. None of our party are beer drinkers, but our hosts were so earnest that we didn’t dare reject the gift. We ended up giving both bottles to our very appreciative taxi driver. He didn’t speak much English, but I guess the gift of alcohol is a universal language.

The monastery took a leaf from Gaston's book, using antlers in all of their decorating.

The journey home would have benefited from another Henry Winkler sighting. Several hours on a train took us back to Munich, where we flew to Sweden, then to Malaga, Spain. You can imagine our sheer delight when we checked our itinerary and realized we had a seven-hour overnight layover in Spain before our long transatlantic flight. (It was similar to the delight you might feel if somebody told you it would be necessary to rip off all of your body hair with duct tape, or maybe watch an Adam Sandler movie marathon.) We were already plumb tuckered out (a phrase that leaps inexplicably to mind), but no weariness is enough to make the prospect of sleeping on an airport floor appealing.

We soon traded not sleeping in Malaga to not sleeping on the plane to Los Angeles. And, just like me on the ride back, you’re probably ready to be done with this, so let’s just get to the end.

We made it back an indeterminate time after leaving Germany. Honestly, I have no idea. Between the time change, several trains, and four flights, our journey home lasted anywhere between a day and the length of the entire unabridged works of Tolstoy on audiobook. But in the end we staggered back home to our own beds. Thrilling vistas are nice, but sleeping in your own bed after a long journey, it turns out, has a certain thrill of its own.

Afterword: Dachau

It seemed a sacrilege to sandwich my experiences at the former Nazi concentration camp between jokes about funeral bake sales and ice cream cocaine, so there's one more section this post, presented out of chronological order.

This arresting sculpture captures some of the horror we can't afford to forget at Dachau.

The words “Arbeit Macht Frei”—“Work Makes Freedom”—are wrought in iron over the gates of Dachau, after which you stroll through a devastating tableau dedicated almost entirely to man’s utter inhumanity. It’s hard to stomach at times, but it’s worth the visit. At Dachau, the Nazis not only subjected prisoners to hellish conditions, but they also used their victims for human experimentation and denied them the most basic human dignities. It was my second visit to Dachau, but the impact was no less vivid for me.

I don't know which was harder to believe—that my fellow humans were forced to endure such horrors, or that it was other fellow humans that inflicted those horrors upon them. My brief time at Dachau made me reflect, readjust my perceptions of the world around me, and resolve to do what I could next time I saw the chance to keep another Dachau from happening.

There's no denying that such a shift in perception is part of what makes travel appealing. It's not the only reason, of course—who doesn't go for the new cuisine, Instagram-friendly vistas, or the chance to tell stories? I sure do. But I count a trip successful when something happened that forced me to shift my view of the world around me, to add a few strokes to the mental picture I've painted about humanity. That's something no hashtag can accomplish.

How Was Your Trip? (Britain Edition)

April 25, 2018

Originally published September 6, 2015.

Any mention of the mythic land of Britain has always evoked images of castles perched moodily on windswept moors, boy wizards and boy bands, licenses to kill, detectives in deerstalker hats, blue police boxes, coconut-laden swallows, and a couple of royal babies who have got to have realized by now that they pretty much won the lottery as far as birth circumstances are concerned. I’ve been captivated by all things British (and especially Scottish) since I was young, and my steady diet of British pop culture only increased my desire to visit the magical land where people somehow manage daily to survive despite driving on the left side of the road.

And so, about a year ago, I made up my mind that I would make a pilgrimage to that extraordinary place. I gathered an intrepid fellowship consisting of two of my brothers, Connor and Dillon, and my cousin Zack. After months of planning, we departed for Britain near the middle of August.

Britain is a wonderful country, especially when you get over the fact that its every inhabitant is on a single-minded mission to take all of your money. The exchange rate during out stay was about 1.5 American dollars to every British pound, which means a decent plate of fish and chips costs about fifteen to the twenty dollars. Fuel costs £1.13 per liter, which adds up to a punishing £4.28 ($6.42) per gallon. And then there’s the cost of the attractions. Getting into Buckingham Palace, for instance, is a whopping £35, which perhaps offers insight into the source of the Queen’s wealth.

Despite this, everywhere we went, Britain was full of charming, delightful people. I never tired of hearing their pleasant accents, even if I occasionally had to squint, tilt my head, and ask them to repeat themselves.

Among the first things we saw upon arriving in Britain was the Tower of London. There we saw the crown jewels, and like any normal people we immediately began plotting an elaborate heist to steal them. We proceeded to visit most of the stops along London’s tourist trail. I fondly recall the moment we came out of the Westminster Underground station and saw the majestic Palace of Westminster and Big Ben clock tower, larger than life and ready to hit us over the head with that “Holy-crap-we’re-really-in-London” feeling.

We saw the city from the apex of the London Eye, the massive Ferris wheel beside the Thames river. We attended an Anglican service at Westminster Abbey (in addition to an LDS service at the Hyde Park chapel) and watched people attempt to foment street riots at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. We took the London tube—the subway—everywhere, and I remain impressed that such a large city can have such an efficient, clean, and comprehensive rail system. To whatever British person designed it, nice work. You deserve an extra crumpet.

Driving, however, is another cup of afternoon tea entirely. After a few days in London, we rented a car and made the first leg of our drive across Britain. This involved getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Where America separates two lanes going the same direction by a white line and two lanes going opposite directions by a yellow line, Britain uses white for everything, which forces you into a fun guessing game about whether the lane you’re turning into goes the desired way or dumps you into oncoming traffic. On at least one occasion, I turned onto an innocuous-enough lane that turned out to be a one-way street. One British driver launched into a series of helpful gesticulations to inform me that I was an idiot, probably assuming that I, as an American, lacked the Sherlock Holmes-like ability to deduce it by myself.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the fun that results from having a car with a steering wheel on the right side of the vehicle. Driving on the left side of the road is one thing, but American drivers have been conditioned to guide their vehicles while sitting on the left side of the car. This means there’s a certain place for your body and a certain place for the rest of the car, and as long as you keep your body positioned in the lane the rest of the car will sit where it’s supposed to. Driving on the right side of the vehicle throws everything off. If you position your body where you’re used to positioning it in the lane, it means half of your car is in the next lane over. Zack did a lot of the driving, and we worked out a signal to let him know he had started to drift over and was about to lose a mirror to whatever obstructions lay on the left shoulder of the road.

Once we were out of the city, we drove toward Stonehenge. There we paid an exorbitant sum to hop on a bus and stare pensively at some large rocks in the middle of a field. (We tried to sacrifice a virgin on the Druidic altar, but it was £30 per virgin sacrifice and we’re not exactly made of money.)

From Stonehenge we headed to Conwy, Wales. The road from London to Conwy took us through picturesque little villages with names where we spent a pleasant night. As we approached the city, we amused ourselves by trying to pronounce the Welsh words on street signs, like “Mold yr Wyddgrug." (I later looked up how to pronounce that one, and it sounds very little like the strange guttural sounds my unpracticed lips made when trying to say it.) In the morning, we toured the nearby castle. Most of the ancient city walls are still standing. This proved to be one of our favorite castles we’d see on the trip. It was ruined enough to retain a sense of authenticity, unspoiled by modern enhancements, but complete enough that it didn’t require extensive imagination to visualize what it must have looked like when it still guarded against invading armies.

A night in Edinburgh, Scotland, followed. Edinburgh is a charming city, eager at every turn to show visitors what it means to be Scottish. Lest you forget where you are, there is a shop or two about every twenty feet dedicated to assuring that no tourist leaves without authentic tartan kilts, scarves, and hats.

This tower looks rather ominous at nighttime, prompting my brother Connor to dub it the “Sith temple.” It’s actually a monument to the great Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, the guy who's credited with revitalizing the image of Scotland in the popular imagination.

After Edinburgh, we left the metropolitan Scotland behind and headed for the austere expanses of the highlands. The roads, narrow enough to feel a little perilous, shrank to basically the size of a bike lane in the States. On both sides of us, undulating green hills, framed by stone fences and flecked with sheep, unfolded. You know when people make references to “God’s green earth”? I’m convinced that the divinely favored landscape they’re referring to is the Scottish highlands, a verdant Elysium that tends to rob you of any response other than “Whoa.” I’m specifically referring in this case to the stretch near Glencoe on the way to Fort William, which inspired us to pull over three times in the space of half an hour to take pictures and just gape.

While Scotland’s people welcomed us with smiling faces and outstretched arms, at the same time Scotland’s terrain did its best to let us know we were unworthy creatures unfit to defile its unspoiled paradise with our presence. From the beginning of the planning process, one of our goals was to spend a night camping in the rugged, mist-shrouded wilds of Britain. You know those scenes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where Harry, Ron, and Hermoine spend half the book camping? We sort of hoped it would be like that, though admittedly with an unfortunate lack of Emma Watson. Our hopes were kindled anew when signs informed us that scenes from the Harry Potter movies had indeed been filmed nearby.

After driving around for an hour looking for a campsite, we eventually found a spot where we could pull over and set up the sleeping bag and tarpaulins that would protect us from the elements. (We didn’t want to being a tent, because anything we brought along with us would have to be dragged around Britain for a week and a half.) No sooner had we set up the tarp than we were introduced to the highlands’ dominant lifeforms: the midges.

The Harry Potter movies neglected to mention that the marshier areas of the highlands are the dominion of midges. Everything in Scotland is just a little more rugged, and that includes the insect life. The midges form swarms thicker than anything I’ve seen in the States, impenetrable little storm clouds hellbent on gnawing your face off. We quickly realized that sleeping outside would expose us to the wrath of these tiny satanic legions, so Zack, Connor and I decided to sleep in the car. Our rental car was a Jetta hatchback, which isn’t usually designed for three grown men to sleep in, but we managed it, because the alternative was a slow and painful death. Dillon, however, weighed his options and decided it would be more comfortable to sleep outside underneath the tarp than in close proximity with three other men. I actually slept fine until a few hours later, when a panicked Dillon jumped inside the car and told us he’d heard the footsteps of something large outside the vehicle. It was too dark to see what it was, but something then brushed up against the side of the car, setting off the car alarm. Nobody had the heart to tell Dillon to suck it up and sleep outside, so we spent the rest of the night huddled together, our knees in each other’s faces, listening to mysterious shuffling sounds outside and wondering if the midges and the large unidentified creature would kill each other in a titanic battle that would maybe allow somebody to sleep outside.

In the morning, we found the midges buzzing around the desiccated corpse of a bear. Just kidding. The mysterious large animal seems to have escaped. The midges, however, were so thick that we didn’t bother putting our gear and tarps away: we simply threw everything into the back, unpacked and unrolled, and drove several miles until the midges were far behind. However, the fearful specter of the midges loomed over the rest of the trip. Even our brief time spent at the mercy of the midges the night before as we set up the tent resulted in tiny bites that didn’t stop itching for a week.

Here we are hiding inside the car from the midges.

In the morning, we set out to climb Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Britain. I’ve climbed Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US, and ascended dozens of smaller peaks over the years, so I thought that one measly little British peak wouldn’t pose that much of a challenge. In some ways I was right—but while the elevation gain probably wasn’t enough to deter a hiker who takes decent care of himself, the weather kicked our butts. It was beautiful, of course, even cold and wet as it was. As we began our ascent a halo of mist encircled us, the slopes of the mountains disappearing into the mist's hazy embrace. Higher on the mountain, the mist swallowed everything, and then omnipresent drizzle turned into a pummeling deluge. We were a little over halfway before we decided that we were unprepared for the weather and risked hypothermia if we tried to gain the top. (Or maybe we would have been just fine. We’ll never know now, will we?)

In other words, Scotland as a whole pretty much pulled up its kilt and mooned us. Nevertheless, when we finished our time in Scotland, we were left wanting more. Four days is too few to spend in such a remarkable place.

On the final day in Scotland, we visited Loch Ness and several of its attendant Nessie exhibits. This yellow submarine was used back in the '60s to search the depths of the loch for the monster and gave us all a chance to make any Beatles references we'd been holding onto the whole time.

We had a pleasant night’s sleep aboard a sleeper train from Inverness back to London, where we spent two more days. In those two days we managed to finish up our list of London to-dos, including the British Museum, seeing The Phantom of the Opera in the West End, the Churchill War Rooms, and the Imperial War Museum. Phantom is the timeless story of the love between a possibly underage girl with father figure issues and the creepy, sociopathic stalker guy who lives in her basement. But seriously, folks, the moment when the chandelier rises from the auction room floor, blazing to life to the keening accompaniment of the organ, is pure delight.

After a week and a half in this wonderful, scenic, friendly, slightly overpriced land, we came back to the States. Someday I'll return to ride the London tube and walk the highlands of Scotland again, but until then, I'll just have to drive on the left side of the road occasionally and pretend it's Britain.