Roma Roma: May 2009

Here are some explanations of the photos! Unfortunately they are not in the order of my trip--they got all mixed up. But in descending order,

1. View of Prague from a steep park I climbed that overlooks the city. On the very top they have a mini-Eiffel tower that you can pay to climb up.
2. Also overlooking the city of Prague is a castle complex with this huge cathedral.
3. More Prague. This view is from the park mentioned in photo 1. The cathedral in Photo 2 is on the far right.
4. Prague heading into night. It drizzled a little but no heavy rainfall adding to the romanticism of the city.
5. Munich-monument. Adriana a friend from risd who graduated last year lives in Munich with her husband and showed me around. They let me stay with them for a few days.
6. Prague from the main old bridge, again right before nightfall.
7. Surfers in munich. This canal was right in the city on the edge of a park. It was damned which created a perfect, constant wave that a group of people are always surfing on.
8. Como Lago-Lake Como We stayed here when we were in Milan because the city was completely booked due to the international furniture fair which we went to. On the last day we decided to walk around the lake. It was pretty foggy and picturesque with mountains rising right from the shore.
9. Chair from the furniture fair. There was lots of amazing stuff. This was pretty neat and comfortable. I forget who made this chair but it was in a line of furniture that seemed to be hospital inspired. One leg of the matching dining table was a crutch.
10. Train station in Munich (?) All the European train stations were impressive. I think my favorite was the station in Milan (see below). Even though I spent about a total of 30 hours on trains by the end of the trip I was very glad. All the stations I ended up in were right in the city center and riding through Europe, especially the swiss alps, never got boring.
11. Duomo in Milan. I was supposed to meet friends in front of the duomo and when I got there this entire piazza was shoulder to shoulder because it was some kind of national italian holiday. We evetually found each other right in front of the main doors of the duomo. It made it more exciting not to have a cell phone.
12. View of Cathedral and baptistry from the leaning tower (pisa).
13. The top of the leaning tower. Somehow--both knowingly and unknowingly--I managed to remain at the top of the tower in between tours by hiding a little. They usully just let up small groups for half hour periods. Thus I was able to stay up there for a whole hour and had about 10 minutes while the groups switched where I was up there all by myself.
14. More of the top of the tower.
15. View over part of pisa from the top of the tower.
16. Doorway in Pisa. Like Venezia, Pisa has some little eastern and other mixed influences here and there. I love the moorish arches which you really don't see in Rome. The colors when I walked by this late in the day were also simply beautiful.
17. Leaning tower at night. I sat down in front of it and put my camera next to me to stabilize it. The piazza that the baptistry, cathedral and tower are in, the Piazza of the Miracle (s?) is open until 23:00.
18. More of the same Piazza looking toward the center of Pisa. The tower is actually on the edge of the city walls not in the heart of it.
19. Pisa in the afternoon. The cramped, dark little streets in Pisa open up to the huge expanse of the river that runs through the city. It is a nice contrast.
20. Pisa, near the tower.
21. Pisa, near the tower.
22. The cathedral. (see tower in the background)
23. The new synagoge in Berlin.
24. I visited my friend Adam, Becky's friend from school, in Kassel which is about 4 hours outside Berlin. It was a quiet small town which was a nice contrast from the hectic cities I had been traveling through.
25. Outside a subway station in Berlin. Berlin felt very fresh and in a lot of ways like NYC. Lots of languages, touristy but not overwhelmingly so and people looked good but really had their own styles. Lots of posters for shows and exhibits, nice graphic design everywhere and the history of the city was displayed very well all over. In the middle where a lot had been bombed, there was much new construction and lots of potential for new construction.
26. What is left of checkpoint charlie.
27. Out of the train window from Munich to Prague.
28. Brandenburg gate in Berlin.
29. Glytotek Museum in Berlin--lots of ancient sculpture including the original barberini faun. The museum space was really interesting. It was bombed in the war and rebuilt but without all the original decoration and frescoes so the spaces were monumental and interesting but simple and just exposed brick. It reminded me of the ancient ruins in Rome.
30. Another view of prague, this time from a tower I climbed right inside the city not from the park.

It was interesting to see the colors of the cities I went to based on the stone and materials from the surrounding areas. Rome is white from the Travertine and marble and tan from the stucco where Prague was dark brown from the local stone and dark orange from the clay of the roofing tiles. Munich was very slate and reddish colored from the slate and clay of the roofing tiles.
Milan was somewhat inbetween Rome and Munich in terms of color and Berlin, at least most of what I saw of it, had a huge mix from the dark brown older stone, to tan where it had been recently cleaned and then to the metals and galss and white of the newer buildings.