mediocre-blog/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md

---
title: >-
    Mr. Worldwide, Pt. 1: Europe
description: >-
    Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love tomatoes.
---

## TODO

## Outline

- Denver
    - What I had
    - Why I left
- Loadout
- Road Trip
    - Ibrahim notebook
    - Choosing destinations
- The First Leg
    - Munich
        - Silence
        - Relative
    - Italy
        - Milan
            - Ostello Bello, friends
            - Duomo
            - Walking/Getting around (Google maps)
        - Ravenna
            - Currency
            - Old monastaries, mosaics
        - Florence
            - Museums
            - Celia
        - Rome
            - Tourism's effect on a city
        - Too much to see in Italy, too little time
    - Spain
        - Barcelona
            - La Sagrada Familia, churches
        - Madrid
            - Royalty, revolution
        - Cordoba
            - Playing things close
        - Granada
            - Flamenco
            - Peace
    - Lisbon
        - Hostels
        - A city where people still live
        - Escher (Granada/Cordoba)
- The Second Leg
    - Munich
        - No more pictures, no more tourism
        - Diet
    - Belgium
        - Brussels
            - Communism and french fries
            - Comic book museum
            - Drawing
        - Bruges
            - Beer
            - A fucking expensive fairytale
            - So cold, so scarfed
            - Camina Del Santiago
    - UK
        - London
            - Cost of museums, theft of culture
        - Dublin
            - Housing problems
            - Glendalough
        - Edinburgh
            - Reading/Writing
            - Harry Fucking Potter
    - Amsterdam
        - Pub crawl (partying vs ...)
        - Van Gogh
        - Weed
        - Sex (museum)
    - Copenhagen
        - Freedom (Christiania)
        - So many chairs
    - Stockholm
        - Tradition
    - Berlin
        - History
        - Movie
    - Prague
        - Wandering
        - Planning
- The Third Leg
    - Munich
        - Alps, Olympics
        - Passport
    - Venice
        - Beauty in spite of tourism
    - Rijeka
        - Hitchikers
        - A strange beauty
    - Vienna
        - Riches and empire
        - A day at the palace
        - The Couchsurfing Cult
    - Athens
        - Culture
        - History

# Munich, Germany

I arrived in Munich late at night on January 14th. My friend Caitlin met me at
the train station near her house and we walked over to it to drop my stuff off.
Jetlag hit me real good at this point, so I only barely remember her taking me
to a nearby biergarten to get some food and catch up. The next day we headed
down to the center of the city, and she showed me around the sights, like
Marienplatz and the Frauenkirche (one of many famous churches in Munich).

{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/munich-victory-gate-2018.jpg"
    descr="Siegestor (Victory Gate), Munich, 2018"
    %}

As we walked and ate our way through the day Caitlin told me all of the things
that are different in Europe, like how water is never free anywhere, nor are
public restrooms; like how many buildings which are still used and lived in are
older than our entire country; like how people use cash instead of card, and get
irritated if you make them break a large bill, or they just might not do it at
all; like how even in a large city like Munich everything can still be closed on
a Sunday.

{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/munich-moosach-2018.jpg"
    descr="Moosach neighborhood, Munich, 2018"
    float="right"
    %}

The thing which struck me most about Munich was how quiet it was. The din of
traffic is so ingrained into me that I don't even hear it until it's not there.
And to not hear it inside of a city was very strange. More than sound, there was
a quietness of life. It didn't feel like people were rushed, with too much to do
and too little time. People crowded onto the subway, but not with impatience,
and people walked home from the train station after work without hurry. It was
like the priorities of the whole culture were different in some fundamental way
that I could never quite put a finger on.

Caitlin worked during the week and so I was set free into the City for a few
days. I visited more churches, ate more food, hung out at the library figuring
out the next steps of my travels, and just generally wandered around the city.

One snowy day I had lunch with a distant relative on my mom's side, who is an
artist in Munich. I met her at her studio, and from there we wandered around
various museums where she gave me essentially a private guided tour of the
exhibits. We talked about politics, with Trump being the main topic of course.
We talked about art, and school, and our different cultures. She told me that
Europe had always looked to the US as a kind of older brother, but now that
image was starting to fall apart, and I told her about the tiny house and
minimalism movement that is hopefully picking up steam in the US. (TODO finish
this paragraph).

A week after arriving it was time for me to continue on. One cold morning I
hopped onto a bus, rode through a snowy Switzerland, and hopped off into a
bright and sunny Milan.

## Milan, Italy

My first impression of Milan was: "Wow, this place is sketchy". The streets were
dirty, old, and covered in graffiti. There were homeless everywhere, people
selling bootleg clothes in the street, scammers targeting tourists, and a
general disheveldness which Munich didn't have. But on the other side of that
coin, Milan is one of the fashion capitals of the world, and everywhere I looked
there were also beautiful people in expensive looking clothes, driving fancy
cars, and eating at fancy cafes. Where Munich was simple and wealthy, Milan was
lavish and disparate.

My hostel in Milan was called the Ostello Bello, and was probably the best one I
could have gotten as my first hostel in Europe. The hostel's downstairs area was
a restaurant/bar, with tables reserved for hostel guests. Upon arriving they
immediately sat me down at one of those tables, where others were sitting, and
said "this is Brian, talk to him". They did this with every person who arrived,
as well as giving us free food and drinks, so that every night turned into a
small party.

It took a while for me to fully break out of my shell and get used to meeting
people in hostels, but if it weren't for Ostello Bello it might not have
happened at all. Every night I got to hand out and make friends with people from
South Korea, Scotland, Argentina, France, Switzerland, and locals from Milan
too. So despite all the negative things I'm going to have to say about party
hostels later, I'm grateful for Ostello Bello.

As far as Milan itself, the only thing which really impacted me was the Duomo.
And boy did it impact me, so much so that I visited it twice. It's the third
largest church in the world, but my experience of it was even better than when I
went to St. Peter's, the first largest. The interior is so cavernous that all
sounds echo virtually forever, creating a low hum which reminded me of the Hindu
Om. To think that the words of a book carried such force that, 2000 years later,
people were erecting and maintaining incredible structures like the Milan's
Duomo in their honor floored me. There's a lot of criticism which could and
should be leveled towards the Catholic Church, but damnit they know how to build
a building.

Besides the Duomo I also visited some museums and other sights, like the Sforza
Castle, walking from one to the other as the days went on. Walking became a
frequent past-time for me during my traveling. Between Google Maps and an
external batter pack I always had with me there was never a worry about getting
lost, and with hostels generally being clustered near the sights it was rarely
more than a half-hour walk to any given thing I wanted to see. So I got used to
walking a lot, and taking public transit infrequently, and never once used a
taxi or rental car while in Europe.

Five days after arriving in Milan I left it, having made many friends and
having learned a lot about Italy and Italians. I also learned I was spending too
long at each city: It was almost 2 weeks into my 3 month-max trip (for visa
reasons), and I'd only been to two! From then on I kept to two or three days per
city, depending on how much I cared about it, with a couple of five day-ers when
I really needed a rest.

## Ravenna, Italy

After the hecticness of Milan I needed something more quiet. Before leaving the
US a friend had told me about Ravenna, the once capital of the Western Roman
Empire and now small Italian city, where some of the world's oldest Christian
structures still reside. Mosaics retain their original quality over time far
better than many other mediums, and Ravenna was full of ones from as early as
the 6th century. While not as glamorous and fast-paced as Milan, Ravenna really
hit me with the depth of its history. As someone from the US I'm not accustomed
to seeing anything built before 1500, and yet here were buildings in excellent
condition which were built a thousand years prior.

Another thing which took some time to get accustomed to was using cash. By this
point in the trip it had become somewhat second-nature, but only by way of many
mishaps previously. In the US using cash is usually a backup option, with
credit/debit cards ruling supreme. ATMs never give out bills bigger than $20,
and no establishment would ever complain about having to break a $20 except for
maybe the smallest purchases. In Europe the ATMs (or cash machines, whatever)
almost always give out €50 bills, which absolutely no one wants to break except
big chain stores. I still remember the exact location of an ATM in Munich which
gave me €10 bills, it was that exciting of a find, and I went out of my way to
go back to it more than once.

So in addition to needing to keep an eye on your cash and get more out
periodically, you also need to keep an eye out for places which will break your
bills and plan accordingly. Before leaving the US I had gotten a debit card with
free international ATM withdrawls at any ATM, so finding places to get cash out
wasn't a problem, but breaking it always was.

By the time I got back to the US, I missed doing everything in cash, and even
kept doing it for a while in spite of my culture. While having to find places to
break fifties was a pain, a little friction to making random purchases wasn't
necessarily a bad thing. Instead of impulsively buying whatever was in front of
me, I was incentivized to wait until a better opportunity arrose, generally by
waiting until I could buy multiple things at the same time, which generally
meant buying more efficiently because I was actually putting thought into it.
Also, by always paying in cash, I had a better sense of how much I was actually
spending day-to-day. In the US we abhor inconvenience, but in my opinion our
reluctance to use cash is a good example of how that abhorance can be to our own
detriment.

## Florence, Italy

The train from Ravenna to Florence (or, as Italians spell it, _Firenze_) was
uneventful. Finding the best route between cities turned out to be pretty
straightforward. There's an app called GoEuro which helps compare different
methods like bus, train, plane, and taxi/ride-sharing. There's another app
called Rome2Trio which does roughly the same thing. There's a bus company called
FlexBus which I used quite a bit; their prices are good, their buses are new,
and the UI of their site was made in the last decade.

Florence was by far my favorite city in Italy. On the one hand it was very
trourist-friendly, and on the other it still retained the feeling of being a
historic city. I split my time there between visiting museums and churches and
finding the best cheapest spots to eat. Before leaving the US a friend had told
me to avoid any restaurant in Europe that has pictures on its menu; they're
targeted at tourists and priced accordingly. My strategy for finding food
involved marking off hole-in-the-wall spots in my maps app whenever I came
across them during the day.

On my second day in Florence I was sitting by the Uffizi, eating a panini, and I
randomly met an art history student from Madrid who was also visiting Florence.
Together we went to a bunch of museums, saw the David, and just generally hung
out. I asked her a lot of questions at the museums, because, to be honest, I'd
never understood what to make of art in museums.

I'd already learned that, even if I could see a picture of something online,
seeing it in person is way different. In person the colors in a painting pop out
more (many even have gold leef paint which doesn't really show up in pictures at
all, but makes a world of difference), there's a lot more detail to be seen, and
the size of some is absolutely baffling. I also enjoy learning about history,
and the history of art is effectively the history of the world. So museums had
become a meditative place for me; I could go to one and just wander, taking in
art pieces at whatever rate I liked, learning and thinking about history as I
went.

What had always confused me, though, was how to _judge_ art. As in, what makes
one piece better than another, or what makes one artist better than another? Why
do some paintings become famous and others remain obscure? What my friend from
Madrid told me is that there's not really a metric. Some paintings become famous
for historical reasons, either due to where they were originally displayed or
some story associated with them. Same for some artists. Ultimately it's up to
the individual to judge them. There was a painting in the same room as the
famous Birth of Venus painting which I liked far more, and was happy to admire
it alone as throngs of other tourists vied for good selfies with the more famous
piece.

I left Florence with a greater appreciation and understanding of museums, as
well as a good friend who I would be able to visit later while making my way
through Spain.

## Rome, Italy

Rome surprised me when I got there, though to be honest it's not clear what my
expectations actually were. The city center, aka the tourist center, is
absolutely _massive_, and all of it is completely tourist-centric. Living in
Rome must feel like living inside of Disney World. The city no longer exists for
its residents, but instead has been completely swallowed by the tourism
industry. Every street corner and storefront is filled with souvenir shops,
overpriced food, clothing stores with "I <3 Rome" shirts, gelato shops, walking
tour agencies, bike rentals, "experience" vendors (helicopter rides over the
Colosseum! Oh my!), shitty jewelry stores, and so much more, all aimed at
someone who has too much money and not enough time to spend it all.

My hostel was one of the cheapest I could find, but since I was only staying
two full days I figured it'd be fine. Seeing all the sights of Rome in only two
days is not recommended, but I did the best I could. The first day I went
straight to the Vatican, getting there as early as possible to try
(unsuccessfully) to beat the line. St. Peters is the largest church in the
world, but being rushed I wasn't able to enjoy it like Milan's Duomo, and a lot
of it was closed off unless you wanted to pay more. I wasn't able to spend
enough time in it to enjoy it.

The Vatican museum was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. For starters
it's huge, with tons and tons of things to see, including, obviously, the
Sistene Chapel. I took my time wandering around. After the museum I left the
Vatican and wandered over to some other sights, like the Castel Sant'Angelo and
the Pantheon. As the day wore on, and more and more tourists started pouring
out, everything became impossibly crowded. It was difficult to really enjoy
anything, what with everyone taking their phones out to capture anything and
everything the guidebook said to, without really taking the time to take in the
thing itself.

This was something I began to struggle with while I was in Rome. It wasn't
always clear to me _why_ these people cared about these sights, with myself
being included. My pessimistic self would say that people just want the social
media points gained by a nice selfie in front of Trevi Fountain, and that the
tourism explosion which has started in the last decade is driven by narcissism.
My charitable self might say that everyone understands that the journey matters
more than the destination, and that seeing the sights isn't really the point,
but rather prefer the adventure taken with friends and/or family, and so they
snap a quick picture and continue on with their good time.

The reason people travel and visit tourist spots is really only their business,
and I can't be one to judge. It just seems unfortunate to take an entire city,
arguably the most important city in written history, and turn it into a theme
park for the sake of people who don't actually care all too much about it. I
carried this realization with me for the rest of my trip, that tourism is a
deal-with-the-devil, taking the money of people who, ostensibly, find some place
interesting, in exchange for driving away the original inhabitants of that place
who made it interesting in the first place.

Later on I would learn that the creep of tourism and the dreaded plague of
"gentrification" were spoken of as the same thing in popular destinations. The
problem of wealthy people driving out the inhabitants of a city in order to take
part in the city culture the original inhabitants created is a global one, and
one I'm certainly a part of. I moved to Denver because I liked the culture of
that city, and was fortunate enough to be able to afford to do so, but then left
only three years later, and was now doing the same in even shorter time periods
in cities the world over.

I obviously didn't stop being a tourist after Rome, but I made a conscious
attempt to be a better one. I put down the guidebook (or, in my case, the guide
app) and tried to explore more naturally, taking in each sight as I found it,
and learning as much about it as I could. Rather than trying to see a little of
everything I find something which really called out to me and focus on that.
It's a tough predicament to be in; it's important to go out and see the world,
to meet people from all different cultures and see all the ways they live, but
doing so is, often, detrimental to those cultures. It was tough to find a
balance I was comfortable with, and I'm still not sure a "correct" balance
actually exists.

My second day in Rome I spent at the Colosseum and the Palatino, but I was so
utterly exhausted and brain-melted I barely remember them. I left Rome
with a ton of things left unseen, but without any regret about it. Italy itself
had far too much for me to do in this trip, and I knew I'd be back one day, both
to Italy and to Rome itself. On the third day I hopped on a plane, flew across
the sea, and landed in Spain.

## Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona definitely made my list of favorite places I visited. Having come from
a city which didn't feel like much more than a playground for tourists, it was
refreshing to be in one which felt more real. Spaniards seemed to be friendlier
than Italians as well, and my hostel was filled with characters from the UK to
Brazil to Russia.

There was an architect in Barcelona named Antoni Gaudí, who died in 1926, but
left an indelible impression on the city. If I hadn't known when he lived and
died I might have thought he founded the place, he's that ubiquitous. His style
is completely strange; his exteriors look like something out of Candy Land,
while the interiors seem to come from a utopian sci-fi.

What blows my mind is that, for whatever reason, they let him build a church.

La Sagrada Familia isn't actually completed yet. Gaudí took it over in 1883, a
year after it had been started, and worked on it until the day he died. He knew
he wouldn't live to see the completion of the project, and so laid out the plans
such that it could be completed without him. The church has been slowly
constructed using private funds and donations since then.

<div style="text-align: center;">
{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/sagrada-familia-outside-2018-0.jpg"
    inline=true
    %}

{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/sagrada-familia-outside-2018-1.jpg"
    inline=true
    %}
<p><em>Outside faces of La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, 2018</em></p>
</div>

The outside presents two faces, one a mishmash of sculpture which resembles
melting ice-cream and the other highly geometrical, both filled with biblical
scenes and small details. Neither really prepares you for what the inside will
be like.

<div style="text-align: center;">
{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/sagrada-familia-inside-2018-0.jpg"
    inline=true
    %}
{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/sagrada-familia-inside-2018-1.jpg"
    inline=true
    %}
{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/sagrada-familia-inside-2018-2.jpg"
    inline=true
    %}
{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/sagrada-familia-inside-2018-3.jpg"
    inline=true
    %}
<p><em>The incredible interior of La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, 2018</em></p>
</div>

I'd been in a lot of churches and cathedrals up till this point. Even when they
were as mind blowing as Milan's Duomo, they all followed a similar pattern:
gothic, brooding, ornate, almost dark in a way.

La Sagrada Familia is none of those things; it shirks the gothic style almost
completely, instead adopting one inspired by natural shapes and patterns. It
feels more like being under a canopy of trees than being in a building. There's
light, and color, and organic shapes, like the tree-trunk-like columns and the
flower ceiling. And yet there's also a geometric patterness to everything, which
hints at an order and intent for everything in sight, so your eye is drawn in
to investigate every detail without needing ornamentation to grab it.

It's lucky that I hadn't made any other plans for that day, because I spent
nearly two hours at that church, walking around, taking it all in, sitting
and contemplating, holding back tears a lot of the time, not being successful at
it the rest. This might have been the first building I'd ever felt gratitude
for. Where the traditional catholic building has as a foundation a call to
authority, this one had a call to nature and humanity. And rather than being the
crackpot dream of a single person, it had been carried on and supported and
built by many others long after he had died. It was a reflection of an ongoing
change in a society which I was grateful to see.

I left Barcelona with a new understanding of churches, and what they represent,
even for someone who's not catholic, and even for someone who's not christian.
They're a space that's been set aside with the fundamental purpose of sitting
quietly and thinking about things larger than oneself. Thinking about one's
place in society, or in nature, or in the universe, and thinking about how that
affects one's actions. Every society on earth has these spaces, though they go
by different names, and have lots of different decorations. Each one carries a
message about what that society has ascribed importance to.

## Madrid, Spain

Originally I hadn't planned on going to Madrid at all, but in Florence I met
someone who lived there and so decided to spend a couple nights hanging out.
Going on a tour of a city is one thing, but going with a local is something
completely different. We saw some of the things a tourist is supposed to see,
like the opera house, the palace, and whatever this building is:

{% include image.html
    src="mr-worldwide/madrid-2018.jpg"
    descr="This Schweppes building is called the Edificio Carrión, and is famous for reasons. Madrid, 2018"
    %}

But more than that, I got to see what it was like to actually live in a city
like Madrid, as a normal person. A fancy tapas restaurant is too expensive
there, so we went to a local bar that did it more simply and cheaply. We also
ate kebab, which is the European equivalent of the corner mexican or chinese
joint in the states; a place with cheap, good food, open late, run by
immigrants.

Mostly, we walked around and talked. We talked about colonialism, and oppression
and guilt, and about the Spanish Civil War and fascism, and about Catalan and
its desire for independence, about capitalism, and the pain it causes, and about
tourism and gentrification, and about royalty and aristocracy, and about
language and culture.

I only spent one full day in Madrid, and afterwards took a bus, continuing
south, down to Córdoba.