Austria - Slovenia

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA



Alas, it is not me.
I only dream of kiss.


I am 16 going on 17
I know that I'm naive
Fellows I meet may tell me I'm sweet
And willingly I believe

I am 16 going on 17 innocent as a rose
Bachelor dandies
Drinkers of brandies
What do I know of those

Totally unprepared am I
To face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared am I
Of things beyond my ken

I need someone
Older and wiser
Telling me what to do
You are 17 going on 18
I'll depend on you



Phyllis and Charly in Austria

After 5 weeks, Phyllis and I parted in Salzburg, Austria and I returned to St. Gilgen for two nights by myself.
The area reminded me of where I live in Colorado - resort town by a lake.

St Gilgen color, detail, balconies, flowers, and dollhouse perfection

Pink ceiling vault in a cathedral

Austrian color



LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA
(lube-lee-ana)
[at least, the Americanized non-Slovene pronunciation]

Two Summit County, Colorado residents in Ljubljana
Ann who lives part-year in Ljubljana is a friend of my sister's, fellow Rotarians.

Ljubljana is the largest city and capital in Slovenia.
A city of canals, color, and calm...

I want to be a painter in Slovenia.

Pope heads on a church.
Dog bowls outside a grocery store...

Bled, Slovenia - a day-sidetrip on a bus
Famous for the cream cake and lake
Reminded me of Lake Dillon, CO

I enjoyed Ljubljana.
Old town felt safe, clean, warm, inviting, and stimulating.
History abounds and the people were proud of their country.

I do things in other countries I would never do in America.
By this beautiful romantic river, I saw a man dining alone, as I was.
I watched, observed; then introduced myself.
We shared drinks, laughter, conversation.
He was a businessman from the Netherlands
who looked like he spoke English.
He did.

Augsberg - Dachau - Munich

Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany



Dachau Sculpture - a tangle of living skeletons
Living because they reeked with the memory of movement.

The open square where roll call occurred and the point of a finger or gun determined fate.

1933 to liberation 1945
The first Nazi Concentration Camp, it opened only 51 days after Hitler took power.

The entrance and guard house through which every prisoner entered.
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
works sets you free
the motto molded in metal in the entry gate
the (meaningless) phrase was used at other concentration camps also

Blood wall at the firing range where people were executed.

The barbwire was old, rusted,
and the same in-place barbs that extinguished the future.

The first year, Dachau housed 4,800 prisoners. By 1937, 13,200 in 32 barracks.
One barrack was reserved for clergy who opposed the Nazi regime
and another for medical experiments.

Today there are memorials on site, reflecting different faiths.

The sculpture, the barbwire, the prisoner poetry, and the row of poplar trees 
impacted me the most.
The poplars were the one place that selected prisoners could walk at designated times.
Free time, if you will.


If only the trees could talk...

And as far as I'm concerned, they do...

From Dachau to Oktoberfest 2011 in Munich on the same day -

the exhaustive gamut of human display.

The light-hearted in Munich: watching the Glockenspiel with Travis and Phyllis
The crowd waited with palpable enthusiasm for the twisting turning dancers;
instantly, the crowd was "done with it" 30 seconds before the wooden characters stopped.
Is it the anticipation that stirs us?

Munich: it was brilliant how scaffolding and buildings under construction
were covered with silk-screen (?).
The fabric was imprinted with the coming building-to-be, a preview...

The random meetup with Travis in the Munich bus/train station.
He's the physics guy we met in Scotland from the Pacific Northwest.

Chocolate heart cookies given as a sign of affection and freely worn around the neck at Oktoberfest.
I love chocolate but these cookies seem more like heavy cowbells.

The tables were full in the biergarten but we were invited to share the table with a group of work colleagues. All were from Switzerland except the young woman above from Germany. She was the coordinator of the Swiss men.

I had only one beer but at this size, it was capital E Enough.
I won't say how many the men had!

We are singing and dancing on the benches!
The blurry picture reveals it all.
Swiss men are boisterous!

Downtown Munich - flower baskets adorn Munich.

The national fabric of Oktoberfest!
Dirndls and lederhosen



Totaled by Accident

The one key woman went keyless
By jolt
Not setback

A friend who knows me only by common high school said,
I can't keep up with you. I hope you enjoyed your vacation.

I had to think
Where did I go?

I was gone ten weeks traveling
And didn't once think of it as vacation
I was building foundation
Setting mortar of me
Roaming for five years
Working National Parks
Learning new skills
Imprinting faces

My Honda was my house key
My faithful companion
I have slept in it
Cried in it
Mourned in it

It was the last family vestige
The only car Steve and I bought new for our family of four
Divided in the divorce
I got the car
No one got the family

A car accident totaled the Honda
My one key gone
My distraction, my fault
I am unscathed
No one else hit
Except the semi-truck
And the Honda was his tease
A man who examined it said,
The Honda did what it was supposed to do; it saved your life.

It did
I was
Saved
But not the ugly way
In church

As is more fitting,
On a mountain road

No spiritual spiral of depression
For I was shot up forcefully new

The Honda released to its history
I acquire a new key
In fact
Two new keys
A car
And a front door

I am settling down
For a while anyway

New adventures await
A home of my own
In one place

For I learn and relearn
That home is
In the heart
In who we know
In the community we build
In the love we have shared

It matters not whether
We know someone for twenty minutes or twenty years
It is how we are reshaped by ordinary human beings

Not to say beginning again is easy
But the challenge, the new, the hope, the twirling of spirit
Keeps the spirit free and fluid

And always acquiring

Acquiring...

Amstahdam Amsterdam

Amsterdam was a contrast of the most disparate and unutterable present and past:

Anne Frank House with the family bedrooms, Peter's bedroom-stairwell, attic steps, and bookcase
the Dutch Resistance Museum
the streets where people were rounded up and hauled away by the Nazi's
the art of Van Gogh
diamond factories
windmills
flowers and clogs
riverboats and canals
Dam Square with magicians, Darth Vaders, and people painted gold
drugs and drinking
young men whose teeth resemble those of meth addicts
women for 40-50 euros
porn shop products displayed as front window dressing
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

American politically incorrect is Amsterdam's politically correct.
Phyllis in front of CAMEL store.

Van Gogh shows up everywhere - on bikes as well.
I went to the Van Gogh Museum.

Note the waffle cone - Van Gogh increases sales(?)

The architecture is reminiscent of Universal Studios with false fronts (the curly-cue peaks).

The New Church or De Nieuwe Kerk at Dam Square
Oddest display inside a cathedral
300 silver naked women and designer wedding dresses

Is this wedding dress like a brown paper bag where you cannot see the intended?

Politically incorrect and odd

The Van Loon double-canal house - one of the sixeen founders of the Dutch East India Trading Company in 1602. House-gardens-stables are bordered by two canals. The red-head eccentric aunt lived in the house even when it was designated a tourist site and opened at 10 a.m. for tours. Asked to vacate by the time the doors opened to the public, she surprised many a tourist when they opened the door and found her sleeping in bed.
She reminds me of my red-haired aunt who is as colorful and eccentric.

Phyllis bought flowers at the flower market.
Our room had a double bed, sink, and scant floor space.
We moved the chair to get to the sink, and again to get out the door.
There was so much "smoke" in this hostel we could lay in bed and get high.
The smoke alarm went off at 2 a.m. from party-ers.
Amsterdam was the 2nd Hostel from Hell.
(a young man passed out with feet barring our door and
 his head barring the bathroom door)



Vowels trip the American tongue.



One last wedding picture in the cathedral - this is a TRAIN - as in dragged behind a wedding gown.

Poor man's paint - originally black from tar.



Red Light District without the women...

When one walks by, he is literally 18" from the skimpily-clad woman.
She will beckon the men directly but have zero eye-contact with women.



Canals, houseboats, flowers

One of the many ways to get hit - the lanes and streets were "kill zones"

Dead skin removal by guppies

Outdoor tubs of goldfish that nibble dead skin.

Vend-o-mats: burgs, sandwiches, fries, pastries, puddings.
I saw these in the late 70s at one of the Smithsonian cafeterias
when I worked at the Lincoln Memorial.
Amsterdam's vend-o-mats did a brisk business because it was cheap.