Cologne:
Now here's something you don't see every day: Inside this golden sarcophagus lie the bones of the Three Kings, who followed the star to Bethlehem and brought gifts to the infant Jesus. The relic was taken from Milan by some 10th-century conquerors and carried back to Germany, where it now resides.
If they ever open this thing, I'm shutting my eyes just to be safe.
Posted on November 20th.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 8:00 am. comments.
Bergen-Belsen
is perhaps best known as the final resting place of Anne Frank, though she was but one among 100,000 who were murdered here. Unlike many of the other camps (there were over 1100 of them), Bergen-Belsen used neither guns nor gas to kill its victims: It relied on typhoid and starvation to do its unholy work.
Bergen-Belsen was still in operation as late as April 1945; other camps, closer to the front, shipped or death-marched their victims here as the Allied troops closed in. The British liberated the camp a bare three weeks before the end of the war in Europe; the museum shows part of a film from the British archives that utterly defies description.
Part of the horror of the Holocaust is that we made war on Hitler because he invaded Poland—not because he was rounding up human beings as a prelude to slaughtering them like cattle, but because he failed to respect the sovereignty of neighboring states. If Hitler had merely murdered all the German Jews, instead of trying to redraw the European map, who would have stopped him?
No one stopped Stalin from killing thirty million peasants, or the Cambodians or Rwandans from butchering each other, or Kim Jong Il from reducing his people to cannibalism. If nations were houses we'd live in a world where it was legal to beat your wife and murder your children, so long as you kept the noise down and didn't get any blood in my yard.
Posted on November 12th.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 8:00 am. comments.
Central Germany: It turns out that, with a strong tailwind and a gentle downhill slope, our rental car can do 135 mph. Any faster than this will probably require driving the car over a cliff (and fall into Daffy Duck's "but I can only do it once!" category), and yet even at this speed I'm still having to watch my rear-view mirror in case a Volvo comes up behind me and wants to pass.
Posted on November 12th.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 3:00 pm. comments.
Berlin:
Today the only way you can tell where the Berlin Wall once stood is to look for differences in architecture: The Wall, and the "death zone" behind it, were on a stripe of Grade A Prime real estate through the middle of downtown Berlin, and the construction cranes swooped in almost moments after reunification. This strip of pavement marks where the Wall bisected and ruined a public plaza (Potsdamer Platz), which now contains an IMAX theatre, Sony building, luxury hotel, and so forth.
Climbing a TV tower in the former East Berlin, we can see the horrors of Soviet high-rise construction: It looks like someone took a giant cookie cutter and stamped out several dozen copies of the same ugly building. The Soviets never executed a Marshall Plan for the countries that fell into their grip, and Communist economic theories didn't exactly lift all boats, so the post-war ruins were still standing in some places when Germany was glued back together. A lot of Germany's present-day economic problems are lingering indigestion from having swallowed an entire Eastern Bloc country; unemployment in the former East runs as high as 25% in some places, and efforts to modernize, rebuild, and educate are still underway.
Posted on November 11th.
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 7:00 am. comments.
Prague, Czech Republic: Ironically, on the same day that the National Review's Rich Lowry was trashing Madeline Albright (link via Instapundit), I was meeting Secretary Albright in a bookstore here in Prague.
Albright is a national heroine in her native country: She was born in Prague in 1937, her family fled the Nazis in 1939 (when Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" appeased Hitler by offering up Czechoslovakia on a plate), and then she rose to prominence in her adopted American homeland. Albright is currently in Europe on a book-signing tour, promoting her newly published memoirs, and by sheer coincidence her stop in Prague overlapped ours—and the bookstore was down the block from our hotel.
Naturally we couldn't pass up a souvenir opportunity like this, so we snapped up the last English-language copy of her book (the rest were in Czech), waited in line for about half an hour, and got Albright's signature. I haven't read the book yet, but her life story certainly looks interesting at first glance.
Meanwhile, over at NRO… do you ever wonder if the Right gets tired of pummeling the same old straw men again and again? Albright wrote an article in Foreign Affairs whose fundamental premise is almost beyond debate—that the Bush Administration pays no heed to what other nations think, lacks the patience or skill for effective diplomacy, and has alienated many countries, from Germany to Canada, that would usually be American allies. Rich Lowry, instead of actually responding to Albright's article, dusted off the hackneyed old straw man: Albright "is part of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment that reflexively wants to give France a veto over U.S. foreign policy," he says.
Let's be clear on this: No one has ever proclaimed that France should be given veto power over U.S. foreign policy. Ever. I challenge you to cite a single instance of anyone—Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, whoever—who has ever publicly (or, heck, privately) asserted that France should dictate American foreign policy. No one ever took this position—so why is Rich Lowry wasting all his energy opposing it, while leaving Albright's actual arguments unaddressed?
Many Democrats and Republicans thought it might have been useful to get United Nations support for the war in Iraq. Heck, President Bush was one of these people, unless you believe he was lying in his U.N. speeches, and sent Powell on a fool's errand last February. Even if the Congressional resolution that empowered Bush to invade Iraq had been contingent on getting U.N. support, it still wouldn't have granted France a veto: It just would have required that Bush go back to Congress—or, Rumsfeld forbid, that he actually show some diplomatic skills. Neither of these would have been tantamount to giving France the power to veto America's foreign policy; if anything, it would have given Bush more of an incentive to keep us from ending up in the situation we're currently in, where we can't even buy an ally to come relieve our troops in Iraq.
It's easy to win an argument against a straw man. (And you can just guess how much sympathy I have for the idea that Americans abroad are somehow less entitled to express their opinions.) If Lowry had actually responded to Albright, instead of wasting his effort on the straw man, I'm sure the results would be more interesting: A bit riskier for Lowry, perhaps—defending Bush from Albright's "weak on diplomacy" charge would be a real challenge—but nonetheless.
Composed offline and posted on November 11th.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 2:00 pm. comments.
Southern Germany: Every red-blooded American male can tell you the fastest he's ever driven, down to the very last mile per hour. He can tell you where he was driving at the time, the make and model of car, what the road conditions were like, and how the car handled. If pressed, he'll tell you that he would have gone even faster, but (a) the spedometer didn't go any higher, (b) there was traffic, a curve, or a cop (some of the best stories involve a cop) or (c) he didn't think the car could take any more.
Every American male also dreams about the Autobahn, Germany's premium highway system. Miles and miles of German-engineered roadwork, with three lanes going all the way to the horizon, and not a speed limit sign in sight. (In reality the Autobahn has road construction just like any other highway, drops down to two lanes occasionally, and is even known to have speed limits in some areas—but let's not spoil the fantasy, shall we?) We dream about high-octane Mercedes and BMWs roaring down the highway at Warp Ten, flashing their lights as they pass each other at speeds that only NASCAR drivers achieve in the United States.
My Autobahn experience was only slightly marred by the fact that I was driving some sort of Ford Craptiva clown car instead of the Porsche that the rental car company was obviously meant to provide. (What sadist delivers roads like these and then supplies me with a four-door hatchback?) Nevertheless, my "personal best" driving speed is now up to 128 mph (or 205 kph, as they say over here); I'd have gone even faster, of course, but that was the maximum speed of the vehicle.
Time Warp! Written on October 17th, posted on November 10th.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 2:00 pm. comments.
I know notink! NOTINK! If you had to guess which American sitcom was least likely to be dubbed into German and rerun every weekday on German television, what show would you have picked?
Yeah, that's what I would have guessed too… but I'm flipping around the dial in a Frankfurt hotel room, and there it is: "Hogan's Heroes." Now here's a show that could only have been made in America in the Sixties: Bob Crane and his hip, wacky POWs running rings around those square, uptight Nazis. Prison camps have so many rules, maan. Turn on, tune in, drop out.
It's not that I put "Hogan's Heroes" in the that's-not-funny-young-man category (as George Carlin once said, anything can be funny), but somehow I didn't expect this particular show to appeal to a German audience. Shows what I know.
Time Warp! This entry was written (offline) on October 15th, but didn't appear online until November 10th.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 2:00 pm. comments.
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and…
Six days later we reconnect in Hiroshima, having journeyed via Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, Nara, and other exotic points. The photo at right is either our hotel in Kyoto or the Golden Temple; I forget which.
A few travel tips for Japan visitors:
We arrived in Hiroshima late this afternoon; tomorrow we take in the museum, and then it's a fast train to Tokyo and a long flight to Frankfurt.
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 7:00 am. comments.
Fish. It's what's for breakfast. If you love seafood—if your perfect day involves tuna for breakfast, noodles and fried fish for lunch, and a sushi platter for dinner—then Japan is your oyster. If, on the other hand, seafood is an occasional exception to your usual diet of beef, chicken, and potatoes… then you're in for a change of palate here. I walk away from most Japanese restaurants feeling like the main course never arrived, which is probably doing wonders for my health (to say nothing of all the walking around we're doing), but I'll look forward to a nice thick steak when we get home.
So far we've been to the Ginza shopping district, the kabuki theatre, the temples and waterfalls at Nikko, several other temples and shopping areas, and we've only scratched the surface; tomorrow we leave Tokyo for Mt. Fuji, and then on to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Blogging will be unlikely (I realize I said that last week, so consider the source), but I'll have lots of photos when I get home.
I've figured out what the problem with my e-mail was, but it's not something I can fix; my desktop computer back at home is downloading my e-mail off the server before my laptop can. So, I'll look forward to a six-week backlog of e-mail when I get home.
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 7:00 am. comments.
It's only a paper room: Our ryokan in Tokyo has all the comforts of a traditional 19th-century Japanese hotel: Sliding doors made of rice paper, wooden floors with tatami mats (no shoes, please), futons for sleeping, and—of course—complimentary high-speed internet access. I'd upload a photo of the room, but at the moment it looks like my luggage exploded in here, so you'll have to settle for the pictures in the brochure.
I'm also pleased to report that, after two years of eating airplane food with a metal fork, a metal spoon, and a flimsy plastic butter knife, Singapore Airlines is trusting the passengers with all-metal utensils again. I feel safer already just knowing that common sense has prevailed somewhere in the world.
Today's activities in Tokyo included the Adventure of the Japan Rail System, which involved almost a dozen rail stations that did not appear on the map; apparently an invisible rail line connects Narita Airport to Tokyo, stopping at several phantom suburbs that don't appear on the map either, all designed to convince the foreign passenger that he is on a train going the wrong direction. But perserverance (or blind luck) paid off in this case, and we eventually found our way to our stop.
What we didn't find was an ATM that dispenses cash to foreigners, in spite of several dozen attempts. My ATM card, which works in America, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, and pretty much every country I've been in to date except Cambodia (which didn't have any ATMs)… doesn't work in Japan. Apparently there are only two or three banks in Japan that accept overseas ATM cards; while my Japanese vocabulary remains at its pathetic six-word level, I now know what the phrase "your card doesn't work here, foreign barbarian!" sounds like, having heard it from every talking ATM within walking distance. Tomorrow's itinerary now includes a pilgrimage to the nearest Citibank.
P.S.: If you've e-mailed in the past day or two, your message remains unread—I'm still out of e-mail range, at least until I configure my laptop to download e-mail properly.- Posted by Scott Forbes at 4:10 pm. comments.
I could tell you where I'm going, but: Last March I took a six-week leave of absence from work, to cure a severe case of burnout and to explore the Australian Outback. By pure coincidence my leave began the day Bush gave Saddam a 48-hour ultimatum to leave Iraq, and it ended a few days before Bush declared that major combat operations had ended.
Needless to say my co-workers had fun speculating about where I'd really been for those six weeks, in spite of my photos of Alice Springs, Ayers Rock, and other touristy places. It was the running joke for a week or two after I got back to the office that I'd really been crawling through the Iraqi desert in Rambo-style face paint, calling in missile strikes on Saddam, and so forth; my "vacation" was just a cover story.
The reason I mention this is that I'm taking another six-week leave of absence, starting today. (Australian labor law is wonderful. If you work for one company for ten years, you get a two-month paid sabbatical—and I transferred in with ten years' experience.) This time I'm off to Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Sweden and other exotic ports of call; unlike the last time, though, I'll probably be out of blogging range for the entire six weeks.
It only stands to reason that I'd be taking a six-week hiatus just days after a swarm of new readers have discovered the blog (I haven't had this much traffic since February, when Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan both linked at once), but there you are. I've refreshed my blogroll with a few new links for your reading pleasure, and I might post an entry or two from Internet cafes along the route (I wouldn't count on this, though), but otherwise look for me to resurface, with lots of photos and travel stories, sometime around mid-November.
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:31 am. comments.
I'd like to thank the Academy.... A quick hello to all the One Hand Clapping readers who were forwarded here to read the winning entry (!) in Donald Sensing's essay contest. Feel free to wander around and explore the blog, while I try to figure out whether Australian Customs will allow me to import five pounds of Donald's home-roasted coffee (I'm guessing not, but we'll see).
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:33 am. comments.
