London Regains The Lead: Fave Capital Again

 I have spent the last week in London, the first time in 14 years and only the second time since my seven week experience after my junior year in college.  I was here for the very first Civil-Military Relations Network workshop (or any other endeavor of our new network/grant), as Phil Lagassé is leading our Command research agenda.  The workshop featured historians and political scientists, so we can check our inter-disciplinary convo item on our goals/aspirations immediately.  The first day featured the historians, and so I learned much about the Romans and medieval military stuff. The second day mostly featured the political scientists. It was a great start for our seven year tour exploring strange old worlds and boldly going where we have sometimes gone before.

And, yes, it was also an excuse for me to enjoy London.  Much has changed since I last was here and much has not.  I had previously ranked London behind DC for my fave capital since everything on and near the Mall is quite spectacular, including the Smithsonian, the various war memorials, and such. But London's Whitehall area is pretty spectacular and hasn't been ruined by the awful pols who have led this place since Brexit.  

One key element was the timing--not so much the fourth of July of it--always interesting to be outside of the US on that date, including #250--but that the big huge Pride day was Saturday.  So, the city had pride flags all over the place, and, yes, many of them included stripes and such for Trans People despite the increased (since 2012) of Harry Potter merch and such.  JK Rowling may have greatly influenced the horrific transphobia of the UK, but she didn't make a dent on Saturday or in the week leading up to it.  I was staying near Trafalgar Square, which was the focal point of the celebration although there were parks all over the place with events.  It was maybe harder to find a shop or pub without a pride decoration than with one... but maybe that is my confirmation bias speaking.

The city was packed before the event and then more so on the day.  Luckily, I was here in between heat waves. I visited some places I had been before and some that were new to me.  I mostly walked since I was so close to many things, and I had an old Oyster card that I could use for a few tube rides.  I also took a boat ride for my very first time (I had a very strict budget way back in 1987).  

So, some highlights and then some observations:

• I spent a lot of time near Covent Garden.  I had some excellent tapas in the garden itself and shopped some of the markets. I didn't stay long to watch the buskers, but they were busy and entertaining.
• I walked through Westminster Abbey, which I hadn't done since 1987 (long lines, I think in my two previous 2000s visits).  Always impressive, so much history there, including some recent--markers if not graves?  for Sir Laurence Olivier and  John Gielguld, for example.
• On Saturday, I escaped the crowds by going to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, my first time that far east of London.  Some amazing history and science of which I knew not previously.  The National Maritime Museum is next door, and that, too, was fascinating.  
• I then took a boat to go back, stopping off at the Globe Theatre stop.  I walked from there to the Borough Yards/Market to check that out.  The going was challenging as the walk to and the area itself were crowded.  I passed by at least four groups of folks wearing silly stuff and dancing and singing (see below).  I then checked out the Tate Modern, as I prefer modern art. Some installations were simply breathtaking.
• On Sunday, I went to the Imperial War Museum, which I must have done before but don't remember so clearly.  The WWI stuff was fantastic--very informative and very engaging.  There was an entire floor dedicated to the Holocaust, with an emphasis on the micro and the macro.  They did an excellent job of connecting individuals to the horror but also depicting the scale of the horror.  Going through that at a time of rising anti-semitism around the world (thanks, Bibi) and Nazis marching on the fourth of July, everything here resonated even more than usual.   
• I then grabbed lunch and went to The Truth, a comedy about ... infidelity.  It was hilarious as the writing was terrific and so were the performances.  In my first trip to London, long ago, I went to farces as the Brits do them so well.  Last time, I saw Avenue Q, which was wonderfully profane and uproarious.  They didn't have the usual farces, and there were no Hamilton tickets available around the 4th, but I am more than happy with what I chose.  Simply an incredibly funny show, with four actors doing amazing work.  I highly recommend.

Now onto some observations:

• I don't think I have seen more student groups on weekends going to museums.  And these students came from near and far.  
• The food scene is amazing. I ate Indonesian, Malaysian, India, Burmese, and pub.  One of my iron rules of travel is if there is decently rated Indonesian food, I get it since I can't get it at home.  Indeed, the "can't get it at home" explains my restaurant choices and my choices of which dishes most of the time.  The pub food was pretty terrific, so even English food was quite good.  I specialized in meat pies, and that worked out well for me.
• The ice cream scene is even more amazing.  I simply don't remember there being so much excellent ice cream here.  Maybe it was the heat or maybe an invasion of gelato stores?
• I really don't remember the pub scene being this well attended in previous visits. Each evening, the streets were packed with people outside of pubs. My previous visits were roughly the same time of year, so I can't explain it via weather.
•  Speaking of booze, the garden pub/bar scene rivaled Berlin's.  The walk along the southern side of the Thames had heaps of both permanent and temporary booze gardens, with numerous screens set up so folks could watch Wilmbedon and the World Cup.  
• I had a chance to have a cup of coffee with a friend from summer camp.  My camp imported British and Israeli folks to be counselors, so I have a few folks I know in the UK.  It was great to Joe and learn what he was upto over the past, gulp, 40 years.  This reminds me that this summer is the 40th anniversary of my last summer at camp and, yes, the 50th anniversary of my first as I went from 1976 (shortly after the bicentennial celebrations) to 1986.  As longtime readings of this blog may remember, that place left a huge dent on me.  I tried to go back this summer, but that didn't work out. Anyhow, great to see Joe and hear about the other British folks and how they experienced that place.

I kept marveling at how lucky I am.  My career has given me so many opportunities to travel, to learn so much about the history and food of all these places, to meet great people, and just see stuff.  As I head into the final stretch of my career--six years left--I will make sure I appreciate it all.  There were plenty of bumps along the way, and except for the first post-grad school stop, none of the places I worked were in my imagination long ago.  Each step did lead to the next, but not in any way I could have predicted.  I started out with an interest in international conflict, which led me away and then to civil-military relations.  And that move has been so very fruitful for me--leading to yet more travel.  The current project may produce one or two more bursts of fieldwork, but is nearly complete.  So, I am spending the summer writing a grant for the next project while trying to complete the current one. Yes, the next one involves much travel again.  As I always say, better to be lucky than good :)   That the divvying up of the fieldwork with an expert on Westminster countries has meant fewer trips to London than I would like is, well, the right thing to do. Glad I could sneak in this trip as part of a different project---again, I am very lucky.

Aforementioned dancer

=2=

I got the hat as United 
didn't get my my bag until
middle of my second day
and I needed to protect my head

Battle of Britain monument

Covent Garden

Standing astride the Prime Meridian

The Royal Astronomer used to live in 
the Observatory, including the guy 
whose name got attached to Halley's comet.
Apparently, he was not as precise as the
others so much of his work was tossed out. 

    

Chile 2: Deja Dos

The llamas were greedy
but sweet.

 On my way home from a week plus of research and tourism in Chile.  One of the things I forgot from last time is how far away Santiago is: six hours from Panama City, which is about the same from Newark.  So, a long last flight here and a long first flight home on an airline that is only loosely associated with the one with which I have status.  So, some minor hiccups but no real challenges.  The research was confusing and the food was awesome.  

First, the work stuff: I was in Santiago and Valparisio to interview former military and ministry of defense folks to assess the dynamics of the relationship between MoD and military.  This is part of a larger project that took me to South Korea, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and Brazil and Phil to lots of places.  My plan to study autocratic cases in the Mideast met with the reality of the region--one's research plans are often derailed by the occasional war.  I was in Chile eight years ago for the book on legislatures and armed forces, so I knew a bit about what I was getting into--a country with a mostly autonomous military, a constitution written in the waning days of autocracy, and weak legislative oversight.  

My fixer was better connected this time so I had plenty of interviews with people who had retired from the highest positions in the military and MOD.   I got about sixteen interviews in six days--which is not too shabby.  As in my other cases, there was not a single clear outcome that will be easy to write about, but a complex mix of views and realities that will make case study writing challenging. Since my last visit in 2018, there were a couple of failed attempts to revise the constitution, deployments of the army to deal with the border in the north and a conflict with a first nation group in the south, and massive unrest in 2019.  So, heaps of interesting context.  Chile will be on the weaker end of the spectrum when it comes to MoD oversight, but will have heaps of company (cough, cough, Canada). 

really sweet boutique vineyard 

Second, on the tourism side, I stayed near where I did last time, but was more squarely in the middle of the Lastarria district--heaps of restaurants, gelato shops, booths of folks selling various crafts.  I don't remember it being this lively last time, and I certainly don't remember this much security.  The empanadas seem to have gotten bigger as well.  The weather, except for one day, was spectacular.

 

 

 

Inca lake at Portillo ski resort
had an amazing reflection
of the mountains

 A big difference that last time I was alone and was here during their ski season.  This time was different as  I traveled with my girlfriend, so we signed up for some weekend tours. The first was to the coast--Vina Del Mar and Valparisio and a vineyard--and the second was to the Andes.  The former featured many, many, many murals and a terrific tour guide (a history prof!).  The latter featured llamas, switchbacks, and the most beautiful mountain lake.  

Nearly home.  I will just add a few notes for the pics below.  No more transcontinental travel until the end of June.  It has been a wild few months.

Valparisio had many, many amazing murals

Much easier to get closer to one of
these in Valparisio than go to Easter Island

Great sunset from top of tallest building in S. America

No skiing but still did a gondola over the big park

The Independent Republic of Pisco lives
on. Viva la Revolucion!!!
We enjoyed their pisco sour variants.

Milano and Como: Nice Ways to Finish A Eurotrip

To be clear, my time in Europe is not over, and Mrs. Spew has a few more days, but Berlin is, well, home enough for me that tomorrow I will be returning to my apartment and my normal.  I will still be doing a heap of tourism but now as tour guide for my wife and my sister and her boyfriend.  

So, I will just highlight some stuff we saw the past few days here in Lombardy (which reminds me that Italy is the country that gave us irredenta as a word!) and then some thoughts about intra-Italy contrasts before moving onto some thoughts about the trip as a whole.

I made a fun mistake--we ended staying in a very nice hostel rather than a hotel.  Not a huge mistake as it worked out fine, but the Hilton (and its points) nearby was actually not that much more expensive.  It would have meant a larger elevator, perhaps slightly older neighbors, and, perhaps we wouldn't have roomed with Molly Mosquito.  

We bought a package of transportation/museum tickets/etc, but couldn't really get the metro part of that to work for us.  But Milan has some turnstiles where you can just tap your credit cards.  Once we figured that out, the metro was a breeze.  We were deterred from the trams (bigger, uglier, slower than those in Erfurt) as I was not sure how to pay.  The package did pay off for getting us into the Duomo (but only the stairs to the terrace, which meant not for us), the fortress, and the Ambrosian Library.

The Duomo lift situation reminded of how the Church did and does perpetuate inequality.  Three ways to

get to the top--stairs for those who pay a bit extra, elevator for those who pay more than that, and then an express elevator for those who yet more.  No line for the last one, of course.  Whenever I see cathedrals, I always think about how they exploited the peasants to make them.  But to be fair, these projects involved a lot of jobs for a long time (several hundred years in this case).  On the other other hand, sculptors made lots of Saint Lucy statues since she is the patron saint of the bline, and carving marble .... was not good for one's eyes.  

I have a question: are sculptures in cathredals normally this violent?  I can't recall anything like this.  What is this scene depicting?  In the museum next to the Duomo, they had a bunch of statues that are no longer in the cathedral, mostly for preservation/safety reasons.  Lots and lots of Abraham nearly smiting his son--which is one of the key points in my religious education which led me to being pretty hostile to religion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fortress, designed by Leo Da V, was pretty amazing.  Just a beautiful structure that seemed impossible to attack.  Not sure it was ever successfully attacked.  Too much art inside to get into the history.  Museum for musical instruments, museum for furniture, plenty displays of glass and ceramics, etc.  Most impressive.

 

 

But our fave museum in Milan was the Ambrosian Museum--it had a lot of incredible displays.  My faves were an exhibition where they gave artists moleskin notebooks and they went to town on them in many different ways;  the Raphael drawing that serves as guide to the Philosopher's football meeting; and Da Vinci's own notebooks.  It was very cool to see his own handwriting.  

 

 

Because we couldn't make reservations for the big museums for our first day in Milan, we headed off to Como to see lake and mountains and George or the Smiths.  And, yes, Como is beautiful--lake and mountains and the buildings all make it a special place.  We didn't have time to either use the funicular (can't spell it without fun) or rent a boat or take a ferry.  But we did have time to walk around, people watch, and check out the area.   

The food, including the gelato, was terrific.  I had a great calzone in Como, had some wonderful pasta in Milan, and had an amazing sandwich with the freshest foccacia bread just off a canal in the Navigli area--the Venice of Milan.  Hmm, how many Venices of have I been to?  Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stockholm, ... am I missing any?  I only repeated gelato flavors once--coffee!  

Milan vs Venice: Milan has some amazing museums, and we didn't really get a taste of that in Venice.  Venice has a heap more beautiful sights, but damn it is crowded outside of peak season.  Milan was far easier to walk with only bridges/canals in Navigli.  The food was amazing in both.  Milan was not quite the tourist trap that Venice is.  Venice had Murano and Burano, and I guess we could have tried to see some other parts.  I am glad we did both.

Northern Italy vs my memories of southern Italy: I spent one overnight in Naples in 2001 on my way to Bosnia, and my other Italian experience was Rome/Florence in 1987.  I remember the roads/the walking to be far more chaotic and, um, thrilling in the south than in the north. While we saw some old stuff here in Milan and in Venice, well, it doesn't get much older than Rome (except my trip to Jerusalem 5 years ago).  The food?  My palate has changed a lot and I am willing to pay much more now (not traveling on $25/day max anymore) so I can't make any comparisons.  I didn't get food poisoned this time, so there's that!  Much more English this time, which is no surprise.  Navigating via google maps made things far easier this time--to use the metro system, to get to the sights, to navigate the alleys of Venice, to find excellent restaurants, and only get gelato at places rated 4.5 or higher.

Overall, how would I rank the places we visited over the past ten days?  

1. Venice.  Just too pretty, too much fun.  Points off for not letting us into their castle.
   
2. Erfurt. Small and sweet and I knew it complete. Kept up our castle streak nicely with its citadel.
3. Dresden.  Its old town is spectacular--huge buildings of all different kinds of shapes and histories, nicely positioned on the Elbe (fun to be on the river that divided Soviet and western forces at the end of the war).  Bumps up with the Schloss nearby that we enjoyed so much.  We had our best German food here--a German tapas place if I remember correctly.
   
4. Nuremberg.  The rise and fall of Nazis in one place with site of rallies and the trials plus a really cool castle.  Some great food.
5. Milan.  Only this far down the list because the other places were that special.  Definitely gets points for a fantastic Da Vinci designed castle, terrific food (the last dinner's service had much to be desired).  Points off for Mosquito Molly.  
6. Leipzig.  It was ok, didn't knock our socks off.

And yes, between the German heavy food of Franconia and the gelato of Italy, I blew my diet bigtime.  Hopefully my lack of treadmilling was offset by all the walking.

I will be spending another three months in Berlin next winter/spring for the second half of the Humboldt Award, again at the Hertie School.  Where will I wander next time?  The Italian Alps are calling--good snow and better food than the Austrian Alps.  Maybe Greece, maybe some part of the Balkans, depends on a variety of things including the possibility of traveling with my daughter.  Anyhow, as always, I am so lucky.  I was very frustrated with my career at the start and for some time, but I have been in a good place in spirit and physically for quite some time.  I do have a plan for the next sabbatical in seven years.  Hopefully, it can come into fruition as well as this one.

 

Venice Is Simply Stunning

 Ah, Venice!  It was amazing.  I had never been, and Mrs. Spew hadn't been there since her college year abroad.  I had an epiphany: water = scenic and old = scenic.  So, yes, Venice is scenic squared.  Just beautiful in pretty much every direction.  Even or especially the worn down buildings look great.  Our timing was pretty great, as the weather was comfy (a bit too comfortable for the one mosquito in our pensione room). 

Because we are already onto Venice, I am going to listicle may way through my realizations/observations we had along the way:

• Wow, there are a lot of bridges.  As Mrs. Spew has some knee issues, we noticed each and every bridge.
• So glad we were not in high season, as there were a ton of people already, and those bridges are chockfull of people taking pictures. Plus most of the pathways are pretty narrow so things get congested quickly.
• So many restaurants!!  It was easy to find amazing food--the hard part was deciding which place to eat.  The pasta was simply terrific as was everything else.
• When I did my Italian trip as a college Eurailpass person, I had to limit my gelato intake due to budget constraints (the US had coordinated with Europe to push down the dollar just before my trip!).  This time, I was only restrained by the threat of reflux as I am going to gain weight on this trip, so be it.  I tried a different flavor each time, and enjoyed them all.
• Dogs?  Heaps of dogs but so little grass.  The green spaces in Venice are far and few between.  Sure, some beautiful parks and gardens on various edges, but you can go on a long dog walk and not see any grass.  
• I don't know if this is a regional thing or a fashion of the moment, but there were a fair amount of young women with the fiercest eyebrow game I have seen.
  
• We didn't go into any of the major museums/cathedrals due to timing and very long lines.  But we did bump into various smaller, amazing, quite funky exhibits along the way.  My fave was this one
• Did I mention the food was amazing?   Best pasta I have ever had.  The pizza?  I am still a homer--American pizza >> Italian pizza.
  
  
• We didn't gondola as we had blown the budget for that on a water taxi upon our arrival that... dropped us off not so close to our pensione.
• Oh, and that pensione--tight stairway for our large bags.  It was partly run remotely so we could use use the codes given to us to get in.  It worked once I figured it out.  The place was in a super convenient spot, but our bathroom was not on the same floor as our room, which did not work so well in the middle of the night, especially for Mrs. Spew's knees.  
• Bread always costs money (plus a service charge is always added), but we kept getting free shots of lemoncello.  Since Mrs.
  Spew doesn't drink such stuff, I had to step up and take a second shot for the team.  Yum.
  
  

  

  So more than a few
  examples of anarchist grafitti
  

• Saw plenty of signs, graffiti, offices for far left parties and movements including, yes, communists! Gasp!

  

  Glass blowing demo at the Glass Cathedral
  

• Venice is part of an archipelago with other islands in the lagoon.  So, we took a water bus to Murano to check out the glass blowing industry and shop for souvenirs and gifts and then onto Burano for the brightest colored buildings.  It was worth the trip although the water bus from the first to the second was very, very crowded.  Again, glad it isn't peak season.  The new tax to limit visitors is probably not going to work--unless it is sky high--as the place is worth it.

 

 

Burano is pretty

Holy packed boat, Batman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are now in Milan for the last part of our trip beyond Berlin.  Mrs. Spew gets a few days in my apartment there before heading home, and then I have about 10 days before I head back as well.  It has been a great Beatles week (8 days) and a great three months.  I am very lucky--this whole thing has been a terrific experience.  Which reminds me:

Don't use the word terrific in Italy, as I did in a text to our Venice pensione manager, and she interpreted it as terrible or terrifying.  She was much relieved when we figured out the confusion.  I was really happy, not really upset.

 

 

Driving into the Past: Dresden, Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Erfut

Mrs. Spew is spending a couple of weeks with me in Europe, so I thought we would wander through the middle of Germany before going to northern Italy.  We wanted to see some castles and some history, and we have gotten a heap of both.

Our first stop was Dresden, which, of course, resonated with me since I read Slaughterhouse Five in high school, which was in the context of the firebombing that utterly destroyed the city and is now seen as something far worse than gratuitous.

 We saw occasional memorials and unrepaired walls here and there, but it was mostly out of sight.  Definitely not out of our minds.  We stayed in the old town area, which is how we maximize the walking and the sightseeing.  We were close to the massive central cathedral, heaps of palaces (now museums), city halls, and the river.  We had some excellent food here including both Spanish and German tapas (best German food I have had, I think, in my three months here).  There was a wonderfully silly, cheesy "experience" where one gets some headphones to listen to the narration of a character from long ago trying to figure out how he died as we get a tour of the remnants of the fortress.  We also went into a pretty amazing art museum that had a great collection of statues including a replica of David and a display of East Germany/communist era art, which tended to focus on American imperialism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent our next morning at Schloss Weesenstein, which is between Dresden and the border with Czechia.  It looked v ery small and uncastle-like from the road, but very big and very castle-ish from the inside.  It had some very funky display tendencies including paintings that would then have a figure/mannequin sticking out of it to give the face in the picture a 3-D body.  It was one of the places where the Nazis put (stolen) art to protect it from the bombing with the castle at Nuremberg being another.

 Leipzig was the least spectacular place.  Still some pretty sights, big cathedrals including one where J.S. Bach is buried (but we couldn't find the actual site within the place).

 

Speaking of which, Nuremberg is pretty spectacular.  On the way in, we stopped by the Zeppelin grounds where the Nazis had huge rallies.  The structures don't look the same, in part because the American troops blew up the giant swastika on the platform, and partly because other parts of the superstructure were falling apart, so they got demolished.  It was strange to be standing exactly where Hitler stood way back when. We then drove into Nuremberg, where google maps led us astray a bit.  We managed to get to our hotel and then walked around, yes, the older part of town.  

 

A very pretty river runs through the city.  We went up to the hill to the Imperial castle that overlooks the town.  We spent most of our time there, looking at the gardens and going through the museum.  It had lots of medieval armor/arms displays and much discussion of how imperial rule worked.  The emperor didn't stay put, but would visit castles around the empire to network, to show that his authority was everywhere, to rule on local disputes, etc.  The big tower had at the top pictures on each side, showing what that view looked like before the war, at the end of the war, and then after the rubble was picked up.  Nuremberg got hit very hard by allied bombing--because of its symbolic importance as well as being a transportation hub and industrial center.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then to put all this into context, on our way out, we stopped by the Nuremberg Trial Memorial/Museum.  there was a whole lot of history packed into  a relatively small space.  Surprisingly, nearly all of the text was in German despite the tribunal being an English/French/Russian affair, and a sharp contrast to the rally grounds displays.  So, we had to listen to the audio guide read the English translation of the displays.  It slowed us down a bit, and we had to skip some stuff.  But a fascinating experience and a nice bookend to the rally grounds.  

 

Then it was on to Erfurt, a smaller city that avoided being bombed.  I asked my wife which of the places we visited had the highest burgermeister/meisterburger quotient, and Erfurt edged out the others.  A really beautiful town with a funky covered bridge with shops, a very large citadel, and more ice cream stores per linear meter than pretty much anywhere else. 

Why they have a bread dude statue? 
I have no idea.

Random observations along the way

• I guess the whole thing of densely populated areas is that the areas in between are empty?  So much of the roads in between these places had nothing but farms, windmills, and solar panels. 
  
• Autobahn!  Superfast but lots of places with strict limits--keeps you awake.  The roads are so well constructed that it is easy to go uber-fast without feeling it--our rental car is also pretty smooth.  So, yeah, I have generally been driving at speeds that I would never approach in North America... while still getting passed by much, much faster cars.
• 
  Strange parking processes.  In a mall in Leipzig, the parking machine spit out a yellow token, not a ticket.  So, when I returned to the car, I had to put the token into a normal payment machine, which I had expected to spit out a ticket. Nope, it spit out another token.  But it worked.  In another
  parking structure, it takes a picture of your license plate, so on your way to your car, you enter your license plate number into the machine and it spits out a ticket to let you out of the lot?  
• Speaking of driving, I learned how to drive a manual in high school, shortly after passing my driving test.  My mother's Datsun 310 only had four gears plus reverse.  I did learn the funkiness of how to get some sticks into reverse when I was a parking attendant in high school--yes, they hired a 16 year old!  Anyhow, after leaving home, my manual car experiences have been far apart and few, like when I landed in Brussels to drive to the Arnhem bridge (it was not too far for me, but my next stop was as jet lag hit me hard) about fourteen years ago.  So, this rental SUV has got six gears, which means I sometimes put into third rather than fifth or fourth rather than sixth.  Oops.  Oh, and my first gear skilz (the hardest gear) are not so great.  So, a few clumsy starts at stop lights.  Unlike the hard time I had figuring out how to get into reverse at the forementioned Brussels airport, I quickly realized the trick with this car was pushing down on the stick to get it into reverse.
• Lunches on the road didn't always work out.  We kept finding restaurants near our routes to be closed--on the way out of Dresden/Schloss and in Bamberg in between Nurenberg and Erfurt.  We ultimately just waited to eat in Leipzig. In Bamberg, we settled for a Turkish doner cart in the parking lot of a grocery store, and, as all of my Turkish doner experiences have been in Germany this year, it was super tasty.
• I don't remember the trams being this fast in Berlin.  In Erfurt and in some of the other places, they are fast and jeez, they are close to the sidewalks.
  

 Tomorrow, we drive back to Berlin, drop off the rental car, and get on a plane to Venice.  We will have about five days in Italy split between Venice and Milan.  I have never been to either place, and Mrs. Spew last visited ... before Iran-Contra.  She has been keeping me from getting gelato since it supposed to be pretty good where we are going.  

Auf wiedersehn!