Retail!

What do Skoda, Seat, Bentley, Bugatti, Audi, Lamborghini, and Porsche have in common? They are all designed, assembled and owned by Volkswagen, a major car brand in its own right. What do Ben and Jerry's, Bertolli, Country Crock, Knorr, Lipton, Popsicle, Ragu, Slim Fast, and Wish Bone all have in common? They all reside in Unilever's enormous stable of consumer goods. What do Guiness, Tanqueray, Johnny Walker, Bailey's, Jose Cuervo, Ciroc, Captain Morgan, Seagram's and Goldschalger have in common? Diageo or its subsidiaries distills and brews them all. Filene's (the non-basement portion, Shillito's, Burdine's, Rich's, Foley's, Sanger Brothers, Boston Store, MainStreet, Marshall Field's, I Magnin, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Famous-Barr, Strawbridge's, Hecht's, The Jones Store, Robinsons-May, Meier and Frank, and Kaufmann's? Since 2005, these stores have all been owned and operated by Federated Department Stores, better known since 2007 as Macy's, Inc.

I became interested in brands and the companies behind them when I noticed that the head of one of the minor global car companies (isn't that a crazy thing to say? But still Fiat is both global and minor compared to other global car giants) said that he expected only six car companies to be able to survive in a fully globalized car world. I was immediately interested in finding out how many car companies there actually were and discovered that there were really about sixteen major global car companies that make more than a million vehicles a year underneath all of the brand names we know (Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, PSA Citroen, Nissan/Renault, Fita, Suzuki, Daimler, Chana, BMW with Mazda, Chrysler, Mitsubishi nudging that number, but distinctly under it, if you are interested, I know I was). Since then, I have constantly been on the lookout for the information underneath the brand.

There are many reasons for the consolidation of the companies behind the brands and it's a process that has been in full swing since the 1990s at least. I wish I had the time and resources to explore the process that has led to the current landscape. I say that because the current state of the department store has a very interesting history. The most interesting to me is that the company you know as Macy's, the one that's been turning iconic department stores the country over into Macy's at a breakneck pace since 2005, isn't precisely Macy's. Sure, the stock ticker symbol is a nice big M and all of those stores call themselves Macy's (even if it's really, say, Marshall Field's). But it used to be called Federated Department Stores, a department store holding company founded in the glamorous city of Cincinnati, OH. They owned a number of famous stores, including Filene's (the upstairs part, the basement part has long since been spun off), Lazarus, and Foley's. FDS had some problems with takeovers in 1990, emerged from bankruptcy in 1992 and bought Macy's in 1994, just after Macy's finished it's brush with death. So, Federated has owned Macy's since 1994. In a huge buyout in 2005, they bought the May Department Stores, which included Kaufmann's, Hecht's, as well as Foley's and Filene's, stores they had bought off of Federated in the 1980's, and Marshall Field's (though May only owned Field's for a year). Following that merger, FDS bgean transforming every store in their stable to either Macy's or Bloomingdale's, the flashier half of Macy's and completed the transformation by turning itself into Macy's Inc, in 2007. 

Got it? Of course not. I still don't get it (I might draw a chart next week, if I figure out how to make Google's chart thing work - don't hold me to that). The more closely you look at the department store landscape, the more confusing it's history gets. Fortunately, thanks to all these buyouts and mergers, things are a little clearer today. Basically you have Macy's, Saks, J.C. Penney, Dillard's, Nordstrom's, the Bon-Ton and Sears for department stores, with Kohl's, Target, TJX (TJ Maxx and Marshall's), and the grand daddy of all retail Wal-Mart competing on the discount end of things (check out Google Finance for a snapshot of the industry financials). That's the state of affairs that I want to take a look at in the coming weeks. But I'm not just interested in business data, I am also interested in department store culture. I worked at a Bon Ton in York, PA and the parallels between that Bon-Ton and this Macy's are eerie, yet another reason that I started digging into Macy's financials (which are mostly a matter of public record thanks to being a publicly traded company and all).

Over the next couple of weeks, I am planning on thinking aloud, sharing the things I discover about Macy's, and writing about how Macy's Herald Square works (or, uh, doesn't work, as the case may be), from the perspective of a cashier (ok, sales associate). Next week? I think we will talk about getting hired.

First Impressions

New York City doesn't exist. If you ask the Post Office about it, they will correct you. Actually, they will make you feel like an idiot, if you are looking for a zip code and you use "New York City" in the form. You can try it on your own (use 83 East 4th Street for the rest of the address - I've been there). New York is not one unified place, it is many, much smaller places jammed into one geographical area. It's impossible then to discuss my first impression of the city as if there were only one. There's too much to experience, too much going on, for that to be even remotely true. This is the case with every major city the world over and "first impression" syndrome where someone offers a sweeping generalization of the city because they spent a couple days exploring the ultra-famous parts of the city is one of the most grievous sins of tourism (and I am just as guilty of it - I'm sure Amsterdam and Brussels had much left for me to truly explore). Most cities defy easy generalization and categorization, but some are more eclectic than others. Berlin, for example, offers a more varied experience of German life than Munich. Berlin isn't even properly one city yet, it is literally a collection of areas (though I understand they are working on that). But New York is easily the most diverse city that I have ever been to.

Truthfully, I have only experienced one borough of New York, a tiny sliver of it's metropolitan area. Jersey City, where I live, has several facets of it's own. I live in the part that is surrounded by the crappy and the run down. It sounds worse than it is because the rules of economics are slowly dictating a move into the area. It's fine. It's a bit of a dump, but it's fine. Then there is Hoboken and apparently a tiny bit of Weehauken (things run together here), which are trendy and solidly middle class (and just as predictably the food and bars are mostly overpriced). Pavonia/Newport is for people who want to feel like they are living in New York proper, but with a view of the city, and the prices and taxes of New Jersey. It sounds like it's a cheap imitation, but Goldman Sachs has an entire office tower not too far away. It's only cheap when compared to Manhattan.

Ah, Manhattan. That's the only borough of the five that I've spent any time in. I'm sure that I will end up in Brooklyn at some point, but the PATH trains only run to the World Trade Center or 33rd St. So no Brooklyn and no Queens just yet. It took me a couple of days to work up the nerve to cross the river and check out the city. I'm not sure why, to tell you the truth. Maybe because going over the river (or under it rather since the ferries are stupid expensive) meant that I was really here. I couldn't chicken out and bolt the city if I set foot in Manhattan. But the truth is, as soon as I saw the New York skyline in person, I knew I was hooked. I am sure that I will take pictures of it at some point. It's stunning and if it captivates you at all, then you know, you are in New York to stay, come hell or high water. Or that's how you feel if you are a little bit of a romantic. The whole reality of unemployment may indeed have something to say about staying in New York or not, but I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

Looking at the skyline though already demonstrates a truth you will encounter on that ground: New York isn't really one place. You can see the difference between the skyscrapers downtown, the vast and obviously residential area, and the skyscrapers in mid-town. The Empire State building dominates its part of the island, practically unchallenged. Downtown, the skyscrapers are thickly forested, competing with each other like jungle trees for the light of the sun. There will be a big boy on the block in the near future when they finish the new World Trade Center tower, but for now, there are no winners, just competitors.  It was unintentional, but my exploration of that gorgeous skyline followed the same path as my eyes from one end of the island to the middle (it's not the other end - I've made it to 50th St. and the island goes all the way to 216th St.).

If you get on a different PATH train, you will end up on Christopher St. instead of the WTC and it's a completely different world, the world of Greenwich Village. I was disturbed to find how easy it was to lose entire skyscrapers when you are actually among the brownstones and walkups (if those are the terms - Law and Order gave me the vocabulary, but I still use it like a tourist). In parts of the Village, you could easily go the entire day without ever knowing that downtown was even there. The parts that I walked through were gorgeous and I've seen quite a bit of it, though not enough to make unqualified judgments about the Village. It is always a surprise to discover major theatres just tucked into the buildings. Cherry Lane is literally tucked around a corner, the buildings so tight that even the sounds of traffic are significantly diminished. The Lortel is in an unassuming building on Christopher St. It's incongruous. In my world, these theatres are more important than the commercial giants on Broadway and around Times Square.

Yesterday, I got my first real taste of walking into that other, fabled, part of mid-town: Times Square. I had a few hours to kill before the concert I was to observe (the very same French Horn Rebellion I mentioned earlier), so I figured I would check out the Empire State Building. I was on 11th, it is on 33rd. That's not so bad. But then when I got to 33rd I thought, what's nine more blocks? So I ended up in Times Square, where I heard quite a few languages that were not English. New York reminds me of Europe in a lot of ways - you can walk large parts of it, it's packed with history, you hear all kinds of languages and accents all the time. But then I figured I would check out some of the theatres where I was trying to intern. I felt much worse about my application to Roundabout Theatre Company when I saw American Airlines Theatre. Roundabout is a LORT theatre company, much like the Alley, but on steroids. I am much more confident about New York Theatre Workshop where I was allowed to hand my application to an actual person. One who works for the theatre. Not one who works for the post office.

Finally, I thought I'm so close to Rockefeller Center that I will just pop over and then walk back. I was already at 47th and 9th, it's nothing to get to 50th and 6th (it's so easy to say those numbers like they mean something, but if you don't know New York, how much sense does it make?). After which I walked back to 11th and 4th. The walk back felt endless because I had somewhere to be at a particular time, so it was much more frustrating that you can only walk a block or two before you get stopped by a red light, even with jaywalking, even when you are traveling with traffic. I arrived at the concert venue and discovered that my feet hurt quite badly. I knew I had walked a fair bit, so I looked it up. If I had gone straight to Rockefeller Center from Webster Hall (which I most emphatically did not - Broadway is a kooky street that does weird things around Union Square and again around the Flatiron building), it would have been 2.2 miles. At first that number didn't impress me because I was so used to looking at kilometers. 2.2 km isn't that bad at all (it's barely a mile and a half). Then I doubled it because I had walked back and than I had to add another mile and a half to cover the walk to and from the subway stops (I say subway, but I have yet to be on the New York subway proper - just the PATH trains to and from Jersey). All told I walked about 8 miles yesterday. I can safely say after a stretch like that on the streets of New York that I still don't really know anything about the city at all.

What To Make of Brussels

I thought that I disliked Amsterdam. After my first day in Brussels, I realized that I didn't dislike Amsterdam; it was merely disappointing. It was not as charming as I expected; it was a little too cynically attached to tourism; it was just too rushed. But overall it wasn't so bad. Brussels on the other hand, is a nightmare, from top to bottom. The transportation system goes everywhere, but it requires two or three different connections to get anywhere (You Can't Get There From Here syndrome). There are three train stations of staggeringly different significance and levels of sophistication. Noord is a dung heap, there is no other other description for it, complete with the seedy street where the prostitutes appear in their windows (at 11 in the AM) running along the tracks. Apparently, they do exist in the wild and not just in the tame confines of Amtersrdam's red light district. Central Station is central only in terms of geography, though not in terms of significance. For most practical purposes, Central is basically irrelevant and out of the way. Zuid is where the action is, but it was also the farthest away from where we ended up staying.

The real problem with the transportation system is not the bizarre set of connections between places but the staggering incompetence with which the system is run. If you are lucky, on the major trains (like the subway or some of the trains between cities), they might announce the stations. If you are really lucky, the trains will actually stop where the schedule says they will stop. I discovered to my cost that this is not always the case. I wanted the Schaerbeek Station. The schedule said it was one stop away, a paltry four minutes. I boarded the train thinking that my travel day was almost over, a day that had begun at 1:00 AM (because I refused to be 24 euro for a reservation on the Belgian night train because the train would only have been in Belgium for an hour and a half - it costs 10 euro for all of Germany). The train passed through said station, but didn't stop for another 20 minutes in a place called Mechelen. I later discovered that this stop is halfway between Brussels and Antwerp. I took the train back to Brussel Noord and made no further attempt to get to that train station. Local transportation is much better at sticking to the posted script, but you will never see or hear what the next stop will be once you are in the tram or bus. No announcement, no monitor flashing the upcoming station, nothing (a stark contrast to Germany where every tourist who spends any time on public transport will have learned at least two German words "Nächste Halt . . .").

I can generally put up with a lack of information about stops and the like and I am always willing to walk if I make a mistake. If public transport runs regularly and is vaguely on time, I can make do. This is also not the case in Brussels. The very first tram my mom and I were on stopped dead in a tunnel a couple hundred yards from the station. After ten minutes, the conductor opened the doors and had the passengers hop down onto the tracks and over to the service path where we completed our journey  to the station on foot. We were on our way to the train station to catch a train to Brugges, which we naturally missed. We were already planning to go to Brugges so I could make the most of the last trip on my railway pass. What began as a normal day trip became a necessity after the first two hours I spent in Brussels were so stupidly obstructive and cack handed. If it hadn't have been Brugges, it would have been anywhere else: Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven (hmm, Stella), Liege, Waterloo . . . Anywhere other than Brussels.

Brugges turned out to be as picturesque and as medieval as promised, but it is also a tourist trap, not the thing most calculated to soothe anyone's mood, especially as quite a few of the cafes and bistros closed up shop between 5 and 6 PM, right about when Mom and I were looking for a nice place to grab a bite. Brugges must have a Rothenburg/Martha's Vineyard thing about preserving it's medieval character, including shunning tourists after a certain point in the evening. We eventually found a place to eat: Quick Burger, the equivalent of McDonald's and just as tasteless. It was at least inexpensive.

To the credit of Brussels, the rest of our stay was not as bad as that first day. Public transport proved more reliable, though no more informative. The major exception was rush hour, when using the system became positively oppressive. None of their trains were designed with accommodating very many people, a strange decision in a city of nearly 2 million people.

If it seems like I am fixating on public transportation at the expense of the rest of the city, consider it evidence of my ambivalence about the place. Despite the fact that Brussels has a long and distinguished history in the region and that many of the older (though not the oldest) buildings have been preserved, it does not present itself particularly well. Brussels is first and foremost a city about business and getting things done. It has provided ways for visitors to explore some of the past, but the past that is most open to visitors relates to the near past and usually to the Belgian monarchy which only dates back to 1830. The most massive and monumental buildings all originate after that time. Many of them date from the reign of Leopold II, the infamously megalomaniacal king who considered the Belgian Congo his personal colony, though the city has much older roots, on display in the stunning Grand Place (where you can find Victor Hugo's old place), and in some of them gorgeous cathedrals in the area. I just can't make any sense of the city. There are things to visit, there is some beautiful architecture, and even quality museums, like the Magritte Museum and the Museum of Musical Instruments (the museum dedicated to the french fry is in Brugges though - french fries originated in Belgium, there's your fun fact for the day).

The best way for me to explain the city might be to compare it with Berlin ten years ago. Not all of the benefits of re-unification had made it to the eastern parts of the city yet. Much of the city was dingy or covered with graffiti. It was in the throes of integrating an enormous new population. Germany's modern economic success had not completely taken hold (indeed many of Schroeder's most important reforms were yet to come). Brussels, despite it's importance as a commercial and legislative center, has not yet experienced the economic success that will help bring it the kind of vision that could transform the city or give it a cohesive sense of direction. This is a malaise that afflicts Belgium as a whole, actually. As of the writing of this post, Belgium does not have a national government. Negotiations for coalition forming have stalled since the election in June.

I can say without reservation that the hostel I stayed in was the best of the entire trip. Calling Sleephere a hostel doesn't do it justice. The owner, Karel Mondt,, a gregarious and generous host, prefers to call it a guest house. It reminded me of the boarding houses of the 19th century that I read about in Balzac and Dickens, though with significantly less drama. Or closer to home, the hostel my friends and I found ourselves in ten years ago in Budapest. Sleephere is the owner's 4 story house, with every room not dedicated to eating or cooking transformed into sleeping quarters. It is a quaint old house with creaky wooden stairs and the idiosyncratic decorations that can only come from someone's personal accumulation and not from any conscious attempts at interior decorating. It was authentic and unforced. My mom hated it, but she is used to factory sleeping, which is what so many hostels have become (that's Karel's phrase, not my own). StayOkay in Amsterdam, the Y in Basel, even Metropole in Berlin, they are all like the Southwest Airlines of hotels. They offer great service while cutting facilities and extras to the bone. They are hotels in spirit now, rather than hostels as I remember them - the kind of place that you look for when you arrive in a town without a thought for reservations. The internet has almost completely done away with the cute personal pension that you discover tucked into the Place St. Michel, steps away from Notre Dame de Paris. It was a positive pleasure that my mom had discovered this place, even if she didn't particularly like it. We spent the last night in Brussels in a hotel by the airport and while I enjoyed the privacy and amenities on offer, the soullessness of the place just reinforced what I had already knew - hosteling is about character not convenience. We certainly found it on 155 Landbouwstraat, Schaerbeek. The only part of Brussels that I enjoyed unequivocally.

Amsterdon't

I am Not Amsterdam

I knew Amsterdam was going to be problem as soon as I started taking a look at their tourist board website. My mom had suggested a series of museums, most of which I couldn't afford and then she mentioned the I AMsterdam card. It promised access to almost all of the major museums and a full ride on public transport. For 38 euro. For one day. If I spend 7 euro, I get the benefit of the public transportation (and that goes down on a per day basis the more days I buy - 4 days is only 20 euro). After my exhaustive efforts in the various museums that I have visited that to do museums justice you have to be willing to spend 2 to 4 hours in one, significantly more in the case of a good history museum. I spent 10 hours in the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and managed slightly less than half the museum (which only cost 5 euro). Anyone who encourages you to spend that much money on a lot of different museums for one day is not encouraging you to spend considerable amounts of time in any of the museums. They want you to go there, follow the arrows around the exhibits, spend some time in the shop, and then leave. This is completely antithetical to nearly every habit I have been attempting to create. This did not bode well.

My arrival in Amsterdam did not make things better. The night train from Basel was inexplicably delayed for an hour in Mannheim (the worst of German service coming out in Deutsche Bahn there; they didn't even acknowledge that we were late), so we were practically shoved off the train into Centraal. My first task was to get to the airport to pick up my mother, who would be landing in an hour. It was going to take at least a half an hour to get to the aiport, assuming nothing went wrong with getting a train. Fortunately (and not at all thanks to DB), that went off without a hitch. There was a minor hiccup when I realized that I had promised my mother that I would meet her at baggage claim when of course that is off limits to the unwashed masses since international arrivals have to go through customs, but the architects of Schipol airport were at least aware of what usually happens at baggage carousels and helpfully set up a waiting area with a great view of passport control. The most time sensitive parts of our time in Amsterdam revolved around the airport whose thoughtful design made those tasks much easier.

Maybe Centraal will eventually be as well designed a transport hub as Schipol once the paroxysm of construction has passed over and through Amsterdam. Thanks to that very same construction, Centraal is a mess (and a centruy of design decisions since it was originally built). Beyond the construction, Centraal is a frustrating place because there are few and not particularly accurate and useful signs. While there were plenty of arrows indicating the direction of buses and trams, few of them bothered to point out that the office where you have to buy tickets for those buses and trams is across the street from the main train station, as though the local transit authority's remit stopped at the gates of the train station. Beyond this line, you shall not pass. The outlook did not improve when we went inside that ticket office and it was packed, an ominous sign of things to come.

Eventually, all our transportation needs were taken care and we had safely settled in at the hostel. I figured that we should avoid the tourist traps and museums and just take in the city on foot during our first day. That's when I discovered the horrible truth, or several horrible truths about Amsterdam in its current "under construction" state, the first being that Amsterdam is not a particularly pedestrian friendly city. Between the canals, the trams, the roads, and the bike paths, there is very little real estate for the lowly Fussgänger, often not enough for two people to walk side by side. Stray too far outside of your zone you risk getting run down by the scooters and mopeds traveling in the bike lane, never mind the wolfpacks of cyclists. When we finally arrived near the center of the old town at Waterlooplein, we discovered that even in those areas were tourists are expected to congregate, there is no such thing as a pedestrian zone. This was true even for the Dam square, the Red Light district, and the Centraal. If you can get there on foot, so can the crazy guys on scooters. You are never safe from them.

One of the purposes of walking on foot is to experience a city in a more relaxed way. It gives you time to process your surroundings. There is no better way to learn a city than with your feet, assuming the city is safe for such an approach (though that is also something you can learn by walking). I never felt that this was possible in Amsterdam. Even in late September, the middle of the city was crowded and pulsing with speed and movement. Everyone and everything was in a hurry or on edge or behind and trying to make up time. This edginess is exactly what you deserve if you are driving a car in downtown Amsterdam, but isn't something I generally want inflicted on me as a pedestrian (or as a flaneur really, since I had no particular purpose other than being there, which is not true of every pedestrian).

I think Amsterdam hates cars as well as pedestrians. It's not just the narrow streets and the ever present canals and roaming packs of cyclists. You can tell a lot about a city from its cars, not just things like median income level, but personality. Porsches are common on the streets of Munich (so are BMWs but you have to discount that since they are made in the city) because the city is full of trendy rich people who want to be seen and who enjoy the kind of ride the car provides, especially the stares and the envy, but also the speed and the cornering. Berlin is full of government types and Mercedes, sedans that are sober and luxurious, with just a splash of Ferrari red and British racing green to go along with the money and influence. Houston, with its oceans of oil money, features Bentleys, as well as plenty of Lexi or Lexuses or Lexus (like moose) to go along with that money. Amsterdam is full of Opels and ugly Renaults and older VWs. Most of the cars were dirty and unwashed. There are very few Alfas or Fiats or any of the other small cars that have the sense of swagger and cool that let people who can't afford swanky sports cars enjoy their ability to accomplish their weekly shop. Based on the cars I saw in Amsterdam, there is a decided lack of joy or interest in driving, certainly most of the cars aren't shown a lot of care. For some people, this will be a selling point of course, but for me, it was just more proof that the city and I would not get along.

This fact was confirmed over the next few days as my mom and I took in Amsterdam's museums, which I suspect are all designed for maximum tourist processing. They are always crowded even as late in September as we were there. They have precious few places to rest. And they never ever have any place where you can just contemplate the work of art or the piece of history on display. The Jewish museum is a bit of a breather, but it's also not particularly good at explaining or illuminating history. There will be plenty more on museum culture later, when I deal with museums from all of my travels. The verdict on Amsterdam is almostly completely negative. If I were handing out grades, it would get a D only because, to be fair, they do have some amazing works of art. You may or may not know this, but Van Gogh and Rembrandt were pretty good painters. The exception to this was the Hermitage branch campus. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg opened an exhibition hall in for rotation exhibitions in Amsterdam not too long ago (like the Louvre, but instead of dropping it in the middle of the Arabian peninsula, the Hermitage put it somewhere useful). The Alexander the Great exhibit was everything that the other museums were not. It was especially well lit, compared to the other museums. Bad lighting is a surprising problem for a museum to have when Philips, one of the largest lighting companies in the world, is a major sponsor.

An important caveat here is that Amsterdam is a city beset, plagued even, by a rash of renovations and construction projects. If you visit the city in the next two years you will run into a whole mess of renovations including (and certainly not limited to) the Royal Palace, the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk, the Central Station, the Maritime museum, the Rokin, and the road in front of the Jewish museum. If any of those places interest you, then you should put off your visit to the city until 2011 at the very earliest. I'd say you should leave it to 2012, if the world hasn't ended. I don't think I will like it anymore, but I leave that possibility open to others.

Where did that leave us? That left us very happy people when Mom and I parted ways. She was headed to a bus tour through Ireland (undeniably cool, especially since I have never been) and I was headed to Munich, the city that was really at the heart of my trip to Europe in the first place. I'm glad I went to Amsterdam. But I was much happier leaving it.

Pop Quiz!

Which of the following buildings is NOT a modern art museum? No cheating with Google images either.

Jeremy Clarkson would say, "No. You're wrong." The first one is the Museum Tinguely devoted to a guy who made awesome mechanical sculptures. The second is a building, designed by the same architect actually, originally for the Swiss bank UBS and now used by the Bank of International Settlements. The third is the Contemporary Art Museum in Basel. The fourth belongs to the Fondation Beyeler (designed by Renzo Piano, the man responsible for the Menil in Houston).

Basel is a town that is serious about it's architecture, which makes it even more of a shame that I couldn't afford any of their freaking museums (including the, well the architecture museum). Museums like this one:  

That's the Schaulager. It was designed by Basel superstar architects Herzog and de Meuron, who are most famous internationally for the Bird's Nest, the Olympic stadium used in Beijing. Fans of the beautiful game may also recognize some of their other work.

The Schaulager is located in a place called Dreispitz. All of the local tourist information says so. What they do not say is that Dreispitz is a 150 acre industrial park that you can't walk through and the tram stop called Dreispitz is on one end, while the Schaulager is on the other. It's a good thing that I enjoy walking or I might be bitter about the experience.

As I tricked you into noticing, everyone gets in on the modern architecture act in Basel or will be, not just the cool museums. Even Novartis, the pharmaceutical giant will be getting a new ultra-modern look after they are done tearing down their old industrial park.

I could have watched that crane tear down that building all day. It was the only thing a member of the public could do around the Novartis campus anyway, which is why there are no pictures of the rest of it.

I would have taken pictures of Frank Gehry's Vitra Design building, but I had already walked 6 or so km that day and needed to walk 6 more to get back to Basel since I was fairly deep into Germany at that point for a pedestrian. By the time I would have reached the Vitra, it would have been closed anyway.

The shame of all this ultra-modern architecture for me was that, unlike Berlin, I didn't know how to read the buildings, to understand their purpose and their place. The Fondation Beyeler is in Riehen, far away from Basel's city center. Vitra is in Germany as I mentioned. The bank buildings locations make sense - the one from Botta is located on one of the main squares in Basel, called Aeschenplatz and the other building, which actually the main building is across the trams from the main train station. It's also across the street from a five star Hilton. And it looks much cooler:

I guess my quest to experience the architecture of Basel without a proper guide was about the same as taking pictures of their beautiful mountain landscapes: I don't have any idea what it meant, I just liked the view. I like to understand the world around me a little more than that, but finding beautiful views was a great way to spend a week in Basel anyway.

A Return to the Scene of Several Crimes

I am not generally a fan of nostalgia. Fond memories tend to color and eventually alter reality completely if too much sentiment is attached to them. As such, I knew that a return to Munich, especially after ten years, would make a bit of a hypocrite out of me, because I would not be able to resist, at least for a day or two, indulging in a few misty walks down memory lane. I know that many of you are eager to hear about what happened in Basel over a week ago now and many of you may not have known that I spent a week in Amsterdam and I will get to all of that. Eventually.

Carrie was kind enough to lend me her U-Bahn pass and so I did what any JYMer who lived in the Studenstadt would do with access to the U-Bahn: I took a trip down the U6 (Carrie happens to live on that line already - just on the opposite side of town). Munich is in the process of upgrading it's subway cars, but  many of them are still the dingy blue and white ones we all know and love. It was just the cars that looked the same; somehow the U-Bahn has managed to smell the same as well. Truly, uncanny.

Even more uncanny was my arrival in StuSta. My legs were on automatic pilot. They took me right, down the hall, past the posters, up the stairs to the right and then a left, past all the recycling containers, followed by the sign and the crazy three dimensional bronze rendering of the map of StuSta which couldn't be more useless if it tried. I bore a little bit left aiming for the green, crossing Christoph-Probst and ducking into the little bit of greenery amongst all the cement of the StuSta. It was as though nothing had changed. The tall green house looked cleaner. The orange house was a bit dingier and Pot was advertising it's presence im Orangenhaus. TriBühne had just open for business, but with the hint of winter in the air, they hadn't bothered to set up the tables outside. I would have eaten there, but it was a bit early in the day for it. I contemplated taking pictures of the place, trying to fix it forever, as forever as digital bits can be, but I decide that there will be no pictures. The faceless buildings belong to us and our memories. It's nice that it hasn't changed (at least on the outside) since we were there, it validated my trip down memory lane in a way. I was not wrong to come here: the orange building practically begged to see if the elevator had changed at all. But I contented myself with the outward view of the buildings, ducked by the blue house, with a nod to our old haunt in Eric's room, took a left past the bicycle rack (which been placed in a front of a sign that says you are not allowed to lean bikes against the door) and straight out onto Ungererstrasse, with just one look back, and a good laugh at the giant Franziskaner monk smiling, toasting the road with his beer from the orange house.

The walk from Ungererstrasse to Münchner Freiheit and Schwabing is a long one and most of the time we took that walk it was late at night and we were not paying attention to the view, which really doesn't exist; it's not a street with a view, just great wide swaths of concrete to help you get where you are going. I was going to Leopoldstrasse to see which of our favorite restaurants were still there. Along the way, some strangers were accosted by a crazy person, which was also reassuringly familiar. I was momentarily lost looking for Parea, the great like Greek restaurant that served a grill platter fit to split the incautious diner in two. But I got my bearings back, went one street further down and found, much to my delight and surprise that Parea is, in fact, still in business. And still serving the grill platter. I am no longer in my prime as far as putting back the found goes, so there is no way I will test myself against that mighty platter during this trip, not without reinforcements anyway (it was all I could manage to get through an entire McDonald's value meal - an unfortunate necessity when Travelex traps your money on a credit card, which is a terrible terrible idea when you are going to Germany). Not only is Parea still in business, but Cafe Adria is still serving up Calzone, though considering the current exchange rate, it is no longer as günstig as it used to be (for you non-German speakers, that means good value for money, the exact english word is escaping me at the moment). Still, both places are now on my list of places to go while I am still here. We spent more time at the Adria, but we enjoyed Parea's food more, so I'm aiming for that one.

As I was walking back down Leopoldstrasse, I realized that with my camera now firmly digital, it would be time to visit that cemetery whose name I can never remember (der Altnördlicher Friedhof, which I always confuse with Westfriedhof for some reason). I've been wanting to film something here every since I stumbled on to it. I managed to take a few pictures before the raindrops forced me to put the camera away. Sadly, I didn't the ravens until it was too late. Now I have to go back. Can you imagine how awesome that picture would be? A shaft of light through the trees, illuminating a raven standing on someone's tombstone? In yet another validation of my first full walking day in Munich, this cemetery was exactly as I remember it, a beautiful solemn place in the fall just before all the leaves are stripped off the trees.

After my picture taking session, I headed to the JYM office and discovered much to my disgust that McDonald's still occupies it's accustomed place across the street. I didn't go near it, but a placard on a wall announced Subway's continued presence as well. The JYM door was closed (as I recall, we had not yet begun our classes at this point, so I was not surprised), so that will have to wait for another day. I ducked around the corner and down the side street to our favorite chinese place and I was finally greeted with disappointment: Der kleine Chinese had closed, though I suspect this is a recent development. The name was still on the restaurant and all of the tables and chairs were still inside. The little white paper attached to the window announced that it was for rent. I was mildly disappointed, but that did not last because my next trip was to Cinema where the Friday night sneak lives on (and hopefully I will be able to go - being at 11:15 at night always makes it an adventure to catch the U-Bahn home).

At that point, I was quite tired and I went, as I mentioned to McDonald's to get rid of the last money on Travelex's stupid card (I have never waited more anxiously for a card to say that the charge has been approved) and then I explored Marienplatz, another area of the city that has remained more or less unchanged. At this time of year, the whole pedestrian area smells like chestnuts and roasted candied almonds (the almonds are definitely on the list, but they didn't make any sense after McD's). The major change was the addition of an Apple store (a real one, from Apple and everything - have you seen the new iPod nano? Holy cow, it's cool), and a few churches are undergoing renovation, etc. One thing had changed - instead of a Planet Hollywood across the street from the Hofbräuhaus, they have an actual Hard Rock Cafe (which tells you all you need to know about the Hofbräuhaus, doesn't it?). I don't suppose that is much different.

My next task is to explore the parts of Munich that I never managed to discover before (and getting everyone up to date on the rest of my travels, I know, I know). I can only hope that will be as successful as today was.

Hmm, Basel

My stay in Basel began with my first experience as a Couch Surfer. For those of you who don't know, CouchSurfing.org is the Internet 2.0 version of traveling couches. In other words, it is no longer necessary to have met someone in person before agreeing to let them spend one or more nights in their place. I desperately needed to save some money on the Basel section of my travels, so I decided to give it a try for that reason, but I'm also not particularly suited to striking up conversations with the random strangers in my hostels (I will leave that to Mom). CouchSurfing promised a stronger personal connection with someone and a chance for some real conversation, something I missed.

I did not stumble on to this idea myself, Renee and Sarah introduced me to it when they served as hosts themselves. I know what some of you are thinking: how can it be safe for perfect strangers to agree to spend the night in a house over the internet? CouchSurfing is aware of the safety issues and allows people a chance to fill out quite a lot of information about themselves allowing hosts and guests to match each other relatively well and as a way of getting through places like Berlin and New York where there are tens of thousands of couches to be had. CouchSurfing also offers a couple of other safety features including references from past hosts and guests, as well as friends and address and rudimentary identity verification. It's not foolproof, but then neither is booking a hotel over the Internet.

I started out looking for couches in Berlin, but it turns out in CouchSurfing and in hostels, you still have to plan ahead; all of my prospective hosts were booked. I figured that was going to be true in any big that I tried, so I tried a smaller one in Basel and immediately got two hits. One of them fell through (he didn't have anything on his profile anyway), but the other was Anders Nättorp, a Swedish transplant who has spent 18 years in Switzerland (many of them in Lausanne). He was so generous, taking me out to eat in this ridiculously expensive city (McD's "value" meals start at 11 Swiss Francs, which is more or less at parity with the dollar. That's right, a Big Mac meal costs more than 11 dollars) as well as giving some great trips on what to do in and around the city. It was an incredible experience. Anders is a chemical engineer and he was able to fill me in on some of things I am missing out on thanks to that year in Germany. Very cool, for him as well, as I suspect most people don't geek out over his work at Nescafe or phosphorus cycles in Egypt, but I sure did.

The last few days in Basel, I have spent at the Y, which has made up for charging me that outrageous cancellation fee (excuse me, YMCA, but you did not lose the room - I cancelled before check in time, that is the worst excuse ever) by having proper showers, a less flaky than Starbucks internet connection, and a mobility card that makes public transport free. It almost makes up for the fact that breakfast isn't included. Almost.

There's lots more to say about Basel, but I figured a short introduction to my stay here would be a good idea. I came to Basel because of my great uncle Gerry, who went to school here. The city offers the deadly combination of being on the German border (and thus accessible by my Eurail pass), in Switzerland, and a reputation for art and architecture that it has certainly lived up to. It's also not that big a city, so a quick trip outside of the city leads to landscapes like the one you see below. In case you were wondering.