Travelogue, part 4 Rome, the Eternal City. Absolute chaos. More tourists than I've seen outside of the Louvre, in Paris. Our hotel wasn't great, but it was less than 2 kilometers from the Colosseum, another 2 to the Vatican, so we had no trouble getting around and seeing as much as we could in two days, which was a lot. Romulus' & Remus' mom doesn't look too impressed, but she's everywhere. The Swiss Guard really do dress like 1970's McDonald's employees, but with spears and metal hairnets. You cannot escape the crowds at any time of day.

Travelogue, part 2 Christo. I've missed all the installations he's done since I first learned of him, including the Central Park "Gates", so I didn't, even after reviewing the web site, have much sense of what the "Big Air Package" was going to be like. We trained out from Berlin to Oberhausen, where a disused "gasometer" stands, and where Christo has previously had an installation. It was built in 1929 and was the largest in Europe. It is indeed enormous, a tourist destination in its own right, apparently. Christo's installation on this occasion was an "air package", which is the format he started out with, back in the sixties, and has come back to now and then since. This is the biggest. There is no clear way to describe the experience other than "awesome".

Travelogue, part 3 So, after Berlin, we flew to Pisa, where we didn't stop, but caught a train up to La Spezia and then on to Riomaggiore, the southernmost town in the Cinque Terre region. This was a true highlight of the trip. The landscape was incredible, mountains straight up out of the sea, terraced for olives and grapes, but much of it still wild, too, with each of the five towns along the coast being perched and clustered right on the edges. Italians seem to like their cats, too.

Travelogue, part 1 So, first up, Berlin: Special notice in Berlin: Holocaust Memorial, designed by the same guy who did the WTC in NYC. Very evocative. Also, the Jewish Museum was very extensive and effective. And then there's the Walk/Don't Walk signs. West Berlin has the usual format. East Berlin, however, had it's own, which has been preserved. It helps orient you to where you are in the city, too, I think. It's all very different from when I was there in 1988, not to mention October being a bit cooler than August, and having locals to guide us through. Checkpoint Charlie has an enormous McDonald's on what was the eastern side, and many of the old East Berlin sites now host staged photo ops, like guys dressed as soldiers or in bear suits or Mickey Mouse, even. Segways everywhere, for the tourists, and otherwise the city is bicycle-mad. They keep a sense of their history well, without overindulging guilt. The role of Germany in the modern world is acknowledged with appropriate humility, as well as the divisions of the Cold War. I'm glad they're keeping what's left of the Wall. Some of that deserves to be pointed up, too, including the East Berlin Gallery section, which had a section of the Wall painted with pictures of other, current walls around the world. We still do these things to each other, and are insufficiently shamed by it.

Inscriptions Did I actually buy an inscribed (2nd edition) copy of "Sincerely, Willis Wayde"? Or is that someone else's signature? US$8.14 seems a little low for such a thing. Thanks, Strand Books!

Home Again Something longer later, maybe a series, certainly some pictures, but for now: that was an epic trip. Berlin was amazing, 25 years on from my last trip there, just ahead of when the Wall came down. Now, Checkpoint Charlie, where I stood and watched the East German and US armies monitoring the crossing, there's a big ol' McDonalds. On what was the eastern side. Cinque Terre was the best part, and Rome was anarchy. NYC was a nostalgic trip, including a visit to the Frick (no "Girl with Pearl Earring" this time, as we were just a couple of days ahead of a new show), but with enough new stuff all over town to keep it as interesting for me as it was for first-time visitors. Enough local knowledge remains to get around, but not much more, so advance research would have been a good idea, as data roaming was insufficient and WiFi only sporadic to know what we needed when we needed it. The trip to Mom & Dad's in NC was brief, but we got enough of the South, or that part of it, to satisfy some parts of interests for all involved, cat-head biscuits being a good starting point, if authentic pulled pork didn't get done in the time allotted. Well, there's enough barbeque around Sydney we can say we know what we'd missed. Nobody does biscuits, though, like Big Nell. I'm not looking forward to reviewing 3000 photos and picking through them for posting here, but I'll get it done eventually.