Returning to Norcia

I arrived in Norcia in the evening after a day on the train. I entered the Basilica just as the monks finished vespers and were beginning a first-Friday holy hour. Brother Anthony met me and took me to my room and brought me dinner. I got settled in and had some monk-made tuna pasta and beer. Afterwards I returned to the Church for the conclusion of the holy hour and for compline. After Compline all went to bed.

Saturday morning, 3:40 wake up for Matins at 4 followed by coffee and spiritual reading until Lauds at 6. After Lauds there is a simple breakfast, bread and more coffee, and then about forty-five minutes of free time until Prime. There was then Terce followed by Mass, afterwards I helped moves some chairs for the monks. Sext at noon and then lunch. None, a short nap, and then I helped with labeling and packaging some beer followed by vespers. Then I went for a short walk through the town, and checked the bus schedule. Before I knew it, it was time for compline and then bed.

Sunday started at 3:30 with Matins at 3:45, and then a quick cup of coffee and back for Lauds at 6 followed by a nice and quiet Sunday breakfast in the refectory. Then Prime and Terce of course, after which there was a two hour period before Mass. I did some reading and some light work and checked out the small monastery gift shop before going to Mass. After Mass I said goodbye to Brother Anthony, the guest master. I still ate lunch with the monks but they eat in silence so I could not say goodbye because I had to leave during lunch. I caught my train and headed back to Riva one last time.

Amsterdam

I arrived in Amsterdam well after dark. In fact it was so dark I couldn’t figure which way out of the station led me to the city. After a strangely confusing few minutes I found my way out in to what was actually a street packed with people. I made my way through the boisterous crowd down the street with tourist shops still open and French fry shacks serving long lines of cold customers. After a few turns and equally few minutes I arrived at my hostel.

I again not planned much to see in the city so I spent some time on the computer mapping out what I was going to see. They also had little cards, the size of a credit card that hung in the halls. There were about fifty different cards and each featured a certain attraction in the city, it’s location, hours and often an incentive to visit, a few euros off, a free gift, free drink, or something like that. From this selection I picked eight or so cards featuring places that struck my fancy. For a late dinner I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi place that I had seen on my way in. Afterward went for a late night walk hoping to avoid being invited to go out and party by any of my eleven temporary roommates.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city; it was spared the devastating bombings that so many European cities were subjected to. Thus thankfully many of the older buildings remain intact and quite beautiful. So in the morning I began my journey through the city first just walking along the main street of the inner city which was lined mostly with shops and filled with tourists enjoying the crisp morning hum. Amsterdam has a rich used book culture. That is they have many shops all over the city that sell used books and also many makeshift street side vendors who set their literature out for the day. I found a particularly large used book market that had set up for the morning so I spent some time wandering though searching for books in English which there were plenty of.

After this I made my way to the house of Rembrandt which was about a fifteen minute walk. Once I got there I found it was rather pricey to see his house, and I had been a bit disappointed by the Goethe house museum in Frankfurt so I chose to save my euros for another adventure. Though it was still very worth the walk just to see the house and a bit of the exhibit. I made my way back through the city and got on a tram to go to the Resistance Museum, which is a small museum dedicated to the occupation of the Netherlands, Holland and even Amsterdam in particular. I was a very interesting museum. It was small compared to others but I took my time seeing it and absorbing the history.

Next I was off to the Heineken Experience. The old factory now sits just a few minutes outside of the city center, being originally built on the outskirts of town it has long been enveloped by the expanding city. The Heineken Experience is a tour of the first Heineken factory and of course comes with insight into the companies history, the brewing of beer and even comes with a glass of Heineken at the end of the tour. It was interesting to learn out the companies history and to learn about the brewing process but it was really quite tourist-y ,  there was not enough information and too much self-promotion.  But I had a wonderful glass of Heineken at the end of the tour.

It was getting dark and even chillier than it had been earlier in the day so I chose to take a tram back to the main station via a different route than I had taken earlier in the day to get my last bit of sight seeing for the day. The inner city was still hopping and it really was still quite early, so I moved to check off another box on my list of things to see.  Cheese. Cheese is also a culture especially potent(cheese joke) in Amsterdam.  There are many old cheese shops filled with countless wheels of cheese. I had one of my little cards that could get me a discount at one that was conveniently located to where I was, so I chose to stop in and check out the Amsterdam cheese seen. It did not let me down. There was a very friendly employee who was already helping some ladies in the back of the store. He invited me back and pulled about nearly a dozen types of cheese for me to try. For about fifteen minutes I tasted and retasted some wonderful cheeses. I felt bad for just standing and trying the cheeses and so I eventually came to a conclusion on my few favorite.

After enjoying the cheese seen I was on to the fry seen. French fries, or pom fritts, they don’t much care for the former title in Brussels or the Netherlands. A few shops down from the cheese place was the top rated fry shack in Amsterdam. So I waited in line for a few minutes, got a big funnel of fries and some mayonnaise, because that is how it is done over there, and don’t trash it til you’ve tried it. With my fries keeping me warmed I hopped back on the tram and rode out to another square a few minutes ride away and enjoyed walking around. An ice-skating ring was the main attraction, which was surrounded on three sides by outside seating with heat lamps where couples and parties sat enjoying a late dinner or some coffee. On the fourth side were Christmas huts selling all assortments of sweets and on the go edibles. After enjoying the seen I was off to bed.

The next day I took a walking tour throughout the city, I saw the Royal Palace, the thinnest building in Amsterdam, the many canals, the old entrances to the city and other sites. The most interesting part of the tour was enclosed garden surrounded by small homes. This cloister-like community was a place where catholic women lived in relative peace for two hundred years while Catholicism was outlawed by protestant Amsterdam. There was a tiny chapel that was built into one of these buildings where Catholics worshiped in secret for these two centuries. The most peculiar and maybe divisive point of this place, one of the leaders of these Catholic women, Cornelia Arents, when she was to die demanded that she not be buried in the protestant graveyard, as was common. She said she would rather be buried in the sewer than in the graveyard of heretics. And so it was. She was buried in the gutters, and now there is a tiny square plate in the ground in one of the walk ways where she was buried.

After the tour had completed I ran over to one of the used bookstores that we had been through on the tour. During the tour I had spotted a copy of G.K. Chesterton’s “Father Brown Mysteries”. So when I had returned and found the book I purchased for the bargain price of four Euros. After a bit more wandering I headed to a Church for Saturday evening Mass. I was flying back home Sunday morning so I had to go in the evening. It was the only Church that I had found that had Mass in the evening, and as I always am, I was a bit afraid of what I may find. But instead I was greeted by a priest in full cassock and a gorgeous Church, so magnificent and unexpected I only wondered how it could have survived both the protestant revolution and the iconoclasm of the 70s, a real miracle. And the Mass, kept character of this magnificent place. It was the novus ordo of dreams for Catholics nostalgic of earlier liturgical times. The canon said quietly and in Latin, ad orientem, the music of the liturgy, Gregorian Chant, and quiet and prayerful laity all in a beautiful Church. A wonderful and surprising gift to welcome the liturgical New Year, and a sublime way to end a week of travel. I  even got to go to confession, how lovely.

After Mass I went back to the hostel to pack my things for an early flight back to Riva.

Brussels

I had a long day trying to get to Brussels. It was filled with late trains, absent trains, missed trains, wrong stops; it was a long day. I got to Brussels about four hours later than planned, it was already dark so I checked into my hostel and got some dinner from a food stand right outside of the hostel but didn’t do anything more than that. There was a local Belgian man in my room and we talked for a while and he decided he would like to tag along with me to see some of the main sites the next morning.

Really he was more of a tour guide. He knew so much about the city, the history of Belgium, architecture, art, he was pretty amazing. He had lived through the World War Two and remembered when the Nazis came and occupied the country and when Belgium was liberated by the Americans.

He took me first to the town hall, built in gorgeous high-gothic style. The whole square was edged by beautiful buildings that had all at one time belonged to the cities guilds, when craftsmen banded together to control their practices. Then we went to the Cathedral and the attached museum, which occupied an old side chapel.

We walked through Brussels park, a large park on one side of which sits the Belgium Parliament and on the opposing side sits the Royal Palace, took some pictures, learned some history. There is a monument in the park commemorating the place where a Russian tsar threw up from drinking too much when on a visit to Belgium. How noble.  

Anyway we walked around much of downtown Brussels, saw a statue of the first king of Jerusalem Godfroid of Belgium.  We walked through the free exhibitions of a few museums and ended in the Royal Library where we had lunch in a little restaurant there. After we had finished lunch my tour guide had to leave to go attend to some business he had in the city so we said goodbye and parted ways. I was still a bit hungry and Belgium is famous for their French fries, though they abhor that name because they take credit for the invention of the sliced and fried potato, so I set about finding some. It is not hard, they have the most sublime cultural tradition of French fry stands and stores dedicated solely to this glorious cuisine which dot the city. So I got some fries to go on my way back to the hostel to regroup and relax for a bit. I spent some time in the next-door church in prayer and when I was just about to leave I learned Mass was about to start so I stayed for an evening Mass.

The next day I took the tram across the city to see the Atomium. It is the building Brussels is known for. It was constructed in the 50’s for the World Fair and was meant to be symbolic of the “Atomic Age” and the movement pushing the peaceful use of atomic energy. It is a wild building, very cool but very strange. The tour starts with a elevator ride to the very top of the building for a 360 panorama of the city and surrounding countryside. Once I soaked in the view the tour continued with the history and construction of the building followed by some strange exhibit full of orange furniture which I paid little attention to. Afterwards I grabbed a Belgium waffle from a little food truck sitting outside and then got on the tram back to the city. I returned to my hostel to grab my bag and I was on my way to Amsterdam.

Heidelberg and Frankfurt

I was on my way to Frankfurt after a very long week of classes, but I had to make a stop in the town of Heidelberg, renowned for it’s quaintness… Anyway after a while on the train I threw my bag in the station lockers went to the tourist booth, got some directions and a list of places to see. In five minutes I was on a bus to old town Heidelburg, or so I thought until I was riding through every suburb in Heidelberg. So I spent forty-five minutes seeing parts of the town the no tourist has ever seen, and has never wanted to see until I caught a connection that put me relatively close to the old town. It was a lively place, people bustling everywhere and as in a lot of cities wooden booths lined the streets, vendors preparing their stalls for soon to open Christmas markets. I walked along the main street and stopped in a Jesuit Church, which was simple but nice. I didn’t have time to go up to the castle but I saw it from below. I walked along the famous bridge and took a long look out over the river and the quaint old town. Soon enough it was time to get back to the station to catch my train to Frankfurt.

Once I got to Frankfurt it was well after dark so I just got settled in my hostel and enjoyed a beer in the lobby while doing some things on my computer. Later that  evening I went to a sushi bar like the one I went to in Stuttgart, with the little conveyor belt of endless sushi. I met some locals there who were a bit older than I was but one of them was going to study in Minnesota the coming semester so we got to talking about traveling and culture and what not. After dinner I retired early to bed.

Sunday morning, there was another Jesuit Church just a few blocks away and I had looked up the Mass time, which was 10:30. So I arrived at 9:30 hoping to say my prayers but, firstly the church was not even open yet and second, Mass was not til 11:30. So I sat outside the Church waiting for it to open thinking I would just get some extra time for prayer. After about 15 minutes the doors were opened and I was allowed in. I was an old church but they had succeeded in removing whatever previous beauty the church once contained and replacing it with nasty 70s junk. Anyway I was praying all alone in the church for another 15 minutes until I got kicked out. The custodian had to go somewhere so I got kicked out. So then I wandered around Frankfurt on a quiet and cold Sunday morning for half an hour to return to the church. Finally there was Mass and I was happy to put that whole mess of an escapade behind me.

For sight seeing I was off to the Main Tower, a 54 story building in the middle of the city that has an observation deck on top of it. The sun was coming out as I stepped out onto the deck. The weather was actually very nice and the view was wonderful. I spent a quarter hour up there and then I was off to the house of Goethe, the famous German writer. There was a tiny museum attached to his house but it was not that impressive. But lunch made up for a less than stellar day so far. I chose a little rustic place in the middle of the city named Leib & Steele. They had great ratings online for their classic German fare, and I was not disappointed. The waiter recommended a Schnitzel paired with a local beer, which I readily ordered. I have never thought much of Schnitzel, it is good but on a typical German menu there is usually so much other good stuff that I don’t go for it, but this Schnitzel was delicious. 

After lunch I checked out the old town part of the city. I was the building where Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were once elected(I think). And I saw the Cathedral in which they were coroneted. This cathedral had a really good museum attached, probably my favorite church museum so far, they had an epic collection of chasubles, so rock on.

At this point I think I was pretty tired so I slowly made my way back to the hostel walking through the main shopping row of the city which was filling with even more rows of Christmas Market stalls. I spent the evening in the hostel doing some work, and they played Avatar in the lobby so I watched that while doing my work.

Monday I got up at a reasonable time, got some breakfast in the lobby and then headed back into the city. I got on one of the typical tourist buses for an hour tour throughout the city. I learned a lot about Frankfurt, saw the headquarters of the European Central Bank and the building that was once the Refectory of the Tectonic Order, not turned into a museum.

Frankfurt is known for it’s apple wine, and I had heard the best place to try It was on the south side of town, so I headed south for lunch. Again I had looked up some reviews and found another classic German place for lunch. The waiter recommended house made sausage with mashed-potatoes and sauerkraut to go along with my apple wine. Apple wine is not that great, the only thing it really has going for it is the novelty factor. It is quite sour but very mild in flavor with just barely a tiny hint of apple taste, but otherwise I thought it tasted like sour sparkling water. So I was glad I tried it but I was not very impressed. But the sausage and sauerkraut on the other hand, they were exemplary!

After lunch, which was really quite late I headed back to the hostel to begin packing to leave for Brussels the next day.

Stuttgart

A few weekends ago I went to Stuttgart with Chris. He has some family there that he has never met and he was going to visit them for the first time and he wanted somebody to come along, I like Germany so I joined in. After the six hour train ride we arrived well after dark. His aunt and uncle were waiting for us at the station. After introductions they drove us about 15 minutes outside of the city to their apartment. We unloaded our stuff and then went into the living room to talk while dinner finished cooking. Chris’s uncle is a theoretical physicist that does research at a local institute in the city that was founded after the Second World War in order to begin once again developing Germany’s competence in many technical topics. His aunt works at the same institute teaching language. We talked a lot about Chris’s family, because he has never met them they enjoyed discussing family, especially family that still lives in Bolivia, where his they are from. We stayed up until about 11 talking, moving back to the living room after dinner.

The next morning we got up and Chris’s aunt, who is the one related to him, took us into the city to enjoy the Saturday morning hum. Stuttgart is a very nice city, though I have never been to a German city I didn’t like. We walked about the many open air markets that were busy selling cheeses, meats, fresh produce, flowers and even advent wreaths. We saw the city hall the opera house, and generally the bustling part of the city. After a few hours of walking Chris and I said goodbye to his aunt and we got on the metro to go to a few miles outside the city to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

The museum as amazing, maybe one of my favorites I have been to. It walked through the very beginning of the automobile and the influences of Benz and Daimler and then the whole history of the two companies, their merger and up to the present day. They showcased cars from throughout their history; There was even a Pope-Mobile made by the company. We had a great time, it was a wonderful museum so we spent a lot of time there and after we had finished it was getting late. When we got back to the city we grabbed a sushi snack of all things at a restaurant. The sushi came along on a conveyer belt and you picked off what you wanted to eat.

After the snack we took a tram back to the apartment for dinner. We began with drinks in the living room, and Chris’s aunt had invited her daughter and her boyfriend over for dinner. There were in their late 20s and they had just returned earlier that day from a week of sightseeing in New York City. It was fascinating to hear what they had to say about the American culture and NYC in particular, especially because I got to visit the city a few times this past summer. Once again after dinner we returned to the living room to enjoy drinks and after dinner conversation, we even broke out some scotch. We talked until almost 2am before finally calling it a night.

The next morning was Sunday, so we were up early to get to Church. The Catholic Church in Germany has seen better days, and better clergy so true to character I found a parish run by the Fraternity of St. Peter so we could stay away from all the crazy non-sense that often goes on in German churches. The Mass was glorious. The church used to be a parish church, and it is the ugliest building man could hope to create. And seeing that the novel non-sense of modern German “Catholicism” had failed, the Fraternity came to take over the church. They sacred had outlasted, overcome, and re-inhabited that which had been so profane. There were 13 altar servers, ranging from probably ten years old up to twenty. There were probably more male altar servers at this Mass than all the other churches in the Diocese of Stuttgart combined.  Anyway I was giddy for the next few hours over how clearly the modern attempt and Catholicism had failed and how the ancient remained and how clearly it showed at this parish, which was packed full.

Just a few minutes walk down the road from the Church was the Porsche museum. So of course we took our time there. It was also a great museum but I liked the layout of the Mercedes-Benz much more. It was very interesting to see the progression of this famous brand. After the museum we headed back to Riva for a crazy week of class.