Dayton is my Middle Name

This blog post is brought to you by Pat, who listened to the rant and asked me to write it down. If you don’t like it, go harass him on Twitter.

So, I was in Berlin.  One of the things you do in Berlin is learn about World War 2, the Nazis, Hitler, the Holocaust and all the associated atrocities. Growing up when and where I did, I actually have a pretty good handle on this, I think. True, none of my family were killed (to my knowledge), but I have visited Holocaust museums and memorials all over the United States. Now I’ve also seen several in Germany as well.

What follows is a criticism of these things that applies to all but one of them. To be clear, I am not criticizing nor questioning the need for such things, simply the manner in which they have been executed.

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was designed by an American architect. It’s stark and stolid and, according to our tour guide, intentionally vague. She said that the artist’s idea was that by making it vague, the viewer would be forced to consider it and, in so doing, consider the Holocaust.

The truth is, I found it pretty moving. It’s sort of bizarre to be asked to consider something like the Holocaust with kids treating the thing like it’s an amusement park maze, but whatever. At the time I thought it interesting, and so laden with symbolism and meaning that anyone who stopped to think about it would certainly ballpark the intent, or lack thereof.

Still, as I considered it more, I found it was wildly dissatisfying to me, so I’m just going to come out and say it: Considering is not enough.

Of course these people and their struggles and suffering should be remembered, but what good are those memories if they are not doing anything about those who today experience the same struggles and suffering?

Here’s what I think the perfect Holocaust memorial would be: I want a HUGE screen. Huge. Permanent. In front of a huge public square where people gather for national events, picnic, walk through on their way to work, whatever. On the screen, 24/7 in a wide variety of languages is a never ending and current broadcast, piecing together all the news of the day from around the world where genocides and genocide-like events are occurring.

I want people not just to remember. I want people to know that we’re not beyond it. We’re not through it, we’re not over it, and we are certainly not above it.

Holocausts are still happening, but for some reason our awareness of them is stuck in the past. Wouldn’t it be the most beautiful monument to those who perished to prevent more senseless suffering in their memory?

Okay, three weekends ago now. Also, a warning for those afraid of wikipedia holes: This post is a wikipedia vortex. Enjoy.

It was more than a weekend, actually, we were there for four days. And boy, did we do tourism. I mean it. We spent every morning (including the day we arrived) taking advantage of the hostel’s free and strong wifi signal and actually worked. Once that was done, though, we were motivated tourists full of hustle and curiosity.

Things we saw: Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, bits of the Wall, the Sony Center, the Reichtag, the East Side Gallery, TV Tower, Berliner Dom, the Book Burning Memorial, the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Jewish Museum, the Bauhaus museum, the Memorial for Victims of War and Tyranny, the New Synagogue, Hitler’s bunker, the old SS Headquarters, and of course tons of squares, churches, and other beautifully rebuilt buildings.

A quick plug: We did two walking tours with NewEurope, one free and one paid. I also did one of their walking tours in Ireland in February. Seriously, seriously, if you are ever in a city where they are operating, DO IT. The tour guides are consistently entertaining, knowledgeable, and the tours are really complete and fascinating. I’m going to try to squeeze in one or two in Edinburgh before my time there is up, and hopefully several more on the continent. /commercial break.

So, what did I think of Berlin? Well, the honest truth is that the first few hours we spent walking around the city, I really didn’t love it. It was my first trip to Eastern Europe and I guess I hadn’t really thought too much about what to expect. The architecture was so remarkably stark, the buildings might as well have had huge neon hammer and sickle logos on them. There was unkempt parkland, dirty streets, and a feeling of unclaimed urban-ness.

But that was just the first few hours. Pretty soon, we started to see some really cool things. Then the things got cooler and older. Then we started to learn some things, and then we drank some beer. Needless to say, by the end of the weekend my opinion of Berlin had completely turned around. For the record, Paul liked it from the start. He has a thing about post-communist places.

Other things that we loved were the hostel that was actually a boat in the river, the church that didn’t get rebuilt, and the neighborhood crepe restaurant near where Pat was staying. More soon!

And now it comes to that time in my blogging where I get a little introspective and maybe just a touch self indulgent.  The third thing I need to blog about my trip to Norway is this creeping feeling I experienced that I really am Norwegian. Okay, obviously, my grandmother’s parents were born there, so my actual heritage is not in question. But while I was there, learning about the people and the land, I started to seriously wonder about the subconscious, unconscious, sometimes unwilling carriage of culture through generations.

So, you already know I have a thing about fjords (this is not evidence of my Norwegian-ness–just go with me for a minute). What parts of the country are not threaded by fjords are still subject to incredibly steep mountains and vast wilderness, but rather than inlets from the sea, they are strewn with lakes. The landscape is beautiful and dramatic, but the climate is unforgiving and the land itself is actually quite scarce. It’s as if anyone who doesn’t live in Oslo has their back to a sheer granite face and their big toes in the water. (If you need evidence, look at my pictures or do a flickr search for the  Kjeasen Farm. No lie, it’s 500 feet above sea level on a cliff, because that was the only farmable piece of land.)

It’s not surprising then, that the characteristics of Norwegians that I heard repeated over and over again include stubbornness, an ability to make the best of things, and a quickness to laughter.

So, I wonder, if I also posses these things, how much of it was my choice or my parents’ biology, and how much of it was handed to me unknowingly through generations. I wonder about that, and then I wonder if someone ever had a cheesier thought.

Just for the record, the other thing that I really like about the current culture of the place is the guilt the society seems to feel over the source of their great wealth. Though Norway has one of the smallest per-capita carbon footprints of any industrialized nation, they know that’s really the least they can do, given that they are rich and comfortable because of the untold barrels of crude oil they are supplying to less guilty, less rich nations. On the other hand, considering they’ve only been this rich for half a century, they seem have adopted socialist ideologies with gusto.

I’ve read a few other things lately (specifically Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers) that suggest that this culture thing is passed on through literally countless generations–long past the necessity or cause of the characteristics.

Am I the only one with this kind of heritage fantasy?

Another, far less poetic post about my visit to Norway. This time:

It’s not just bad PR. It really is fucking expensive.

Forgive the profanity, but I was always taught that if you know how you use the language well, then you know when it is appropriate to use profanity, and let me tell you, it is appropriate.

So, yeah, it’s pricey.

To give some context, at the time that I went to Norway, I had been in the UK for about 8 weeks. I’d been spending pounds, not dollars, and the conversion happens pretty smoothly in my head, when I need it to. Generally, I just assume that stuff costs twice as much as it does at home and I’m almost always pleasantly surprised. Not to mention the time that I have spent living in the Bay Area and San Diego, where the climate is welcoming enough to overcome a cost of living that says, “get out! go away! we don’t want any!”

The Norwegian Kroner, at the time of my visit, was 10 to the pound. Most of the time, I only did one currency conversion in my head and I told myself that this trip was being financed by my savings, every birthday gift I received, and a need to visit my cultural homeland and get it out of my system.

So, a quick overview of some things I paid for (go ahead and use the MasterCard commercial guy’s voice instead of mine):

Private room in a YHA Hostel with breakfast: 880 kroner
Tea in a YHA hostel: 20 kroner
Glass of draught lager: 67 kroner
One bed in an 8 bunk room in YHA Hostel: 220 kroner
Lefse with butter at a farmer’s market: 40 kroner

Seeing the very scenery that gave the fjords their name: priceless. (Unqualified apology goes here.)

So, just to review. Yes, I did spend well over $3 for hot water in a cup with a tea bag and a teaspoon of milk. Also, I really did spend $11 for less than one pint of beer that could be most reasonably compared to MGD. Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, I spent that $11 at least once every night of my trip, and on my very most self-indulgent moment (the night of the 8-bunk dorm that was the result of a pension house that had double booked), I paid that $11 three times.

Now, about this lefse stuff that cost me six and a half bucks. Twice. If you don’t know what lefse is, it is the only purely Norwegian food item that I grew up with. To me, it is a very, very tasty symbol of my cultural heritage. It is essentially mashed potatoes with enough flour and butter in them grill them into large pancake-y, tortilla-y things. When they sell them at the farmer’s market, they are spread with and folded around the most wonderfully tasty homemade butter. So tasty, in fact, that you recognize the price might well be reflective of the calorie content and you no longer care.

I still sort of plan to do a final accounting of my trip, though I’m not sure what purpose that will serve. In the end, I could not imagine doing it for less. I ate nutrition bars for all meals, save dinner each night, and aside from that one cup of tea in the hostel in Voss, I indulged in exactly one cup of coffee to accompany my second lefse. No kidding, I wasn’t this frugal when I was a public school teacher.

For five days near the end of July I went to Norway. There are only three things I need to say about this trip, and here’s the first.

It’s not just clever marketing. It really is breathtaking.

The biggest reason that I chose to go to Norway was to see the fjords. I got my first taste of fjords in Alaska a few summers ago, and that experience did nothing but fuel my geological geekery. My absolute favorite kind of land form (see? geek is not too strong of a word–how many of you have a favorite kind of land form?) is granite carved by glaciers. Absolutely, hands down, the most beautiful, striking, dramatic and wonderful kind of land, in my opinion.

The fjords along the northern coast of Norway are just that. They’re not really different from Yosemite in how they were created, except that instead of a valley floor that is several thousand feet above sea level, the valley floor is several thousand feet below.

My need to see fjords actually informed the entire trip. I went to Bergen, in north, called the “cultural capital of Norway” as well as the “gateway to the fjords.” Aside from Bergen, I spent a few days in a lakeside town called Voss. My experience of these two cities was interrupted by one very long day where I rode no less than three buses, three boats and a train in order to see as much fjord as possible.

Some Fjordy Goodness

We cruised the Hardangerfjord, the Eidfjord, and a couple of other narrow inlets. We saw glaciers, salmon, seals and sheep. We went through many many tunnels, including one that was an actual spiral, curving dramatically down the inside of the mountain. We visited the Hardagervidda Nature Center, where I had to come to the very frustrating conclusion that my love of all things granite-carved-by-ice had gotten me to a place where I can no longer learn anything about geology from your average interpretive center or tour guide. The Hardangervidda Nature Center was also where I photographed goats grazing on the roof of the restaurant/gift show. So, at least it’s got that going for it.

Goats on the Roof!

As far as it goes, I am very glad that I made this trip a priority for my summer. Every day I see things that strike me as beautiful. Even as I write this, I am watching rolling green hills quilted by dry stone walls and dotted with clean white sheep whiz by and it is really quite grand. Still, just a few days in Norway sort of changes your perspective on just how literal breathtaking can be.

Go check out the flickr set of pictures. Of course, I recommend the comments as I do tell some stories.

Cory and Jaime came up to Edinburgh last weekend for a bit of castle, a bit of drinking and a bit of theater. It was the last leg of my brother’s London to Edinburgh adventure which also included stops at Stonehenge, Manchester, and Liverpool.

The absolute most disappointing thing about the entire adventure is that there is not a single picture of the three of us together. I’m not even sure there’s a picture of any two of us together. Paul was here, too, and we still didn’t get any. Boring.

Oh, except this one of my sister, eating an exceptional jacket (in the U.S. we say “baked”) potato, is too cute not to share:

Jaime calls this breakfast.

Aside from not taking pictures, there’s not a lot that we did not do.

We did tour the Castle. We did walk the length of the Royal Mile. We did tour Holyrood, the Queen’s summer home. We did visit the cafe where one J.K. is said to have created one of the most popular fictional characters of our time. We did go to a (disappointing) art museum. We did see a puppet dry heaving with a bra around his head and a stand up comedian from Liverpool that we had to fight to understand. We did eat at what must be some of Edinburgh’s best restaurants. We did drink, every night of their visit, at Lebowski’s (which is, not surprisingly, “More than a restaurant, a way of life.”). It was also at Lebowski’s where we did (well, Cory did) trick the same guy with the same bar trick on two consecutive nights.

Of course, we did also argue, analyze, chatter, discuss, disagree, chuckle, chortle, laugh, giggle, and enjoy each other’s company immensely.