Pünk'd

Hellbrunn, Austria.  Summer 2004.

The trick is finding the place to stand. 

Hellbrunn Palace is definitive proof that people have always had a wicked sense of humor, that laughing at the harmless misfortune of others was not invented by Ashton Kutcher, that it isn't jaded modern cynicism that perfected the prank.  

The water games at Hellbrunn Palace are not the oldest jokes in the book, but they might be my favorite.  

It's an uncharacteristically hot Austrian day.  There are few trees casting shadows over the gravel pathways winding around the palace, and we are sweating.  Profusely.  Some of us gather around a fountain, dipping our fingers into the water and dripping it across our foreheads and the backs of our necks.  It's too sun-warmed to do much in the way of cooling, but that doesn't stop us.

The guide sneaks up behind us, sunglasses on her head and smiling like she knows something.  "Welcome to Hellbrunn!" she says brightly.  We groan at her enthusiasm and fan ourselves with our fingers.   

 

Our first stop is a long stone table sat in front of a reflecting pool.  The guide invites the group to come sit at the carved stone stools surrounding the table, and there's a small rush to be the first to sit down (I hang back - it's too hot to run fast).  One girl squeals when her bare thighs hit the stone.  "It's so hot!" she says, tugging the fabric of her shorts as far down as it will decently go.  Our guide describes the former Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg Markus Stittkus von Hohenems, the man who built the palace and designed its water garden.  "Visitors are only ever meant to be here during the day," she says.  "So there are no bedrooms in the palace."  Not that it matters much, she goes on to say, because Mr. Markus liked to entertain his guests outside as much as possible.  "And who could blame them?" she asks.  "Look at the beautiful view."  

And as our heads turn to look at the reflection of the palace in the in the pool, the guide drops her hand behind the column she's been resting on.  The guests at the table shriek when the water rockets up their backs, shooting up from the holes in their seats.  The rest of us throw our arms over our heads to shield ourselves from the jets of water arcing over our heads.  "Let the Water Games begin!" our guide cackles.  I bet this never gets old.   

(Allegedly, there's one spot at all of these water features that never gets wet.  Mr. Markus himself would stand in that spot, celebrating his dryness while his guests got soaked.  The tour guides stand there now - I suppose it's only fair.)

I was quick - I managed to escape the water mostly unscathed, and I've already dried in the sun. The girl from before has a dark wet line up her back, and she squeezes water from the bottom of her t-shirt.

When the guide parks us in front of the tall tower, those at the front of the pack move to stand as far away from it as possible.  I'm at the back of the herd, which leaves me among those closest to the tower.  I can't avoid getting wet this time.   The guide presses a button, and we all flinch instinctively.  To our surprise, there's no water.  Music plays as the little men and women positioned in and around the tower twist and turn.  It would be beautiful, charming even, if it weren't for the fact that one of those cute little figures is ten seconds away from squirting me in the eye.

When the tiny figure at the top of the tower begins to spin, we grit our teeth and grasp hands, bracing ourselves.  It's coming, and we know it's coming, and our eyes are fixed on that tiny statue, just waiting for it to squirt water out of it's mouth.  

There's a shriek from the back of the group, and a quiet panicked stampede to get away from the water coming up from the ground behind them.  There's a lot of Wet Butt at the back of the group, which serves them right for being such smarty-pants at the beginning.  I'm a little damp around the ankles, but I'm much better off than the rest.  I've won out this time, but now I have no idea where to stand as we follow the guide to the next attraction, shoes squelching all the way.  

Those aren't all the tricks Mr. Markus and Hellbrunn have up their sleeves, but I'm not going to tell you about them.  You're going to visit the palace some day, and I doing want to ruin the punch line.

Rome, Italy.  Summer 2004.

Little pomp and almost no circumstance.  It just appears there, along side the road.  Not that it needs a formal introduction - it's the colosseum.  It's one of the most recognizable structures in the world, and on our first day in Rome, we're going to step inside it.  

As our group waits at the gate for our guide, Ashley sits on a large boulder near the entrance.  Only it's not a boulder.  It's too smooth on one side, and too intricately carved on the other.

"Ashley, do you realize what you're doing?"  

"What?"

"You're sitting on history.  The colosseum is under your butt."  She rockets up onto her feet, and we both burst into giggles, because it's just a piece of stone.  It's old and broken and just lying there beside the walkway.  It's not on a pedestal in a museum behind a line of velvet rope.  It's not like we were doing anything naughty.  But the weight of its history makes is something sort of sacred; this is one of the icons of the most powerful empire ever to exist.  Surely we can do more than sit on it.

Ashley surreptitiously presses her palm against an upright column.  "Quick," she whispers.  "Take a picture!"  I do, and we quickly step away from the wall, trying to look nonchalant and failing as we laugh at our own stupid joke.   

The building isn't quite a shadow of what it once was.  It's still standing, it's still mostly intact, but there's something intimidating about the way the light moves through its open spaces.  The flowers growing in the cracks and crevasses of the stone do nothing to soften its look.  It makes me think of that Bodies exhibit that everyone's been talking about but that I've never had the guts to seek out for myself.  Innards carefully reconstructed and posed and displayed, nothing that isn't human, but deeply unsettling without the skin.  That's how the colosseum looks.  Flayed.  

Or maybe it feels like stepping onto a stage when the lights are off and the set's been taken down.  Maybe this is empty theatre. 

The guide rattles off dimensions and dates and names - the building is so ubiquitous though, that there's little she's saying that we haven't already heard before.  Yes, we know the entertainment held here was as much theatre and art as it was brutality.  Yes, we know they could and would flood the arena floor and sail ships here.  Yes, we know the Ridley Scott movie is largely based on fiction.  Our guide is funny and personable, but she must be tired of climbing into this behemoth every day to tell stories to half-interested American school-children.

Our guide points to the hypoeum down below, and doesn't even blink when she describes the sophisticated mechanisms that would release wild beasts into the arena with trained gladiators or defenseless Christians.  The devices used to flood the colosseum are long gone, but we squint at the maze below our feet and try to imagine full sized ships battling for the amusement of the masses. 

Our guide points to the tall cross throwing shadows across the ground.  In 1749, Pope Benedict XIV decreed the colosseum a sacred site, in honor of the innocent Christian blood spilt here.  The Christian church has had a hand in the preservation and legacy of the building since the 16th century, when Pope Sixtus V planned to turn it into a wool factory, hoping to provide honorable work for the city's prostitutes.  (This plan never made it past the planning stage, as Sixtus died before he could put in into effect.  But what a thing it would have been.)  

Perhaps most ironically, this place where so many were put to their deaths has become the symbol for the international campaign against capital punishment.  Now, our guide tells us, when a death-row inmate earns a stay of execution, or a government abolishes the death penalty, the lights used to illuminate the building at night shine gold instead of the usual white.

The sun shines above us, but the stone is cold under my hands.  It's full of early morning tourists, but still feels cavernous and empty.  For a handful of bills you can get your picture taken out front with a man in a plastic centurion costume.  It feels both wildly inappropriate and totally appropriate at the same time.  This is theatre, after all.   

View from the Top (of St. Paul's)

London, England.  Spring 2007.

530 steps to the Golden Gallery at the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, the highest accessible point of the building sat on the highest hill in London.  530 stone steps, wooden stairs, flat rises and winding staircases, all leading to this one place. 

At the bottom of the stairs is a sign with a warning.  "Five hundred and thirty steps," it says.  "Possibly dangerous," it says.  "Be aware," it says.  I don't see how we could possibly resist.

Mom follows us up to the Whispering Gallery, which is considerably less than 530 steps, but that's as far as her knees will take her.  We stand at the railing and strain our ears, trying to pick up the hushed conversations of the other sightseers.  We hear plenty of breathy murmurs, but I can't make out any words.

Mom waves us off with a promise to meet us at the bottom, and my sister Sarah and I follow the handful of tourists brave enough to climb to the top.  We duck under low-hanging wooden beams, squeeze through narrow stone corridors, blink when the air rushing through open windows stings our eyes, and squint through the gloomy near-hidden pathways.  There's a small door at the end of one last steep staircase.  Light streams in around the edges.

The wind blows fiercely this high up.  Sarah's hair whips around her face, and she tucks as much of it as she can under her hat to keep it out of her eyes.  I shaved my head a few weeks before, so I just pull the lapels of my coat close against my neck, fighting to keep out the chill.

There's a high wall to keep us all from plunging to our deaths, so we press our faces against the cut out openings, looking down on the street below.  Little blips of humanity stroll the sidewalks, making way for the technicolor stream of oncoming traffic.

530 is more tiring than I anticipated.  I lean against the wall, and feel the heat of the sun-warmed stone through my jacket.

 

And like all things, because it exists, it's covered in graffiti.  I have no pen.  If I had, Sarah and I might has snuck our initials onto a small corner, for posterity's sake.  In twenty years time we could come back with our own children, discretely point at the little smudge on the side and say, "Look what your mothers did."  If we've raised them right, they'll be publicly embarrassed, but secretly impressed.   

530 is a smaller number going down than it was coming up.  It feels a bit subversive, walking through the not-exactly-underbelly of the iconic church, that hidden place between the outer skin and the inner sanctum.  You could win every game of hide and seek in here, if it weren't for the parade of tourists.

Mom's waiting for us with a smile after 1060 steps.  "How are your knees?" she asks.  Sarah and I chuckle lightly and make half-jokes about being old ladies.  Mom just shakes her head, making small noises about kids these days.

Torre pedente di Pisa

Pisa, Italy.  Summer 2004.

It's not the only leaning tower in the world, but the campanile in the Piazza del Duomo is clearly the most famous.  Constructed in stages over a period of 177 years, the tower's poor foundation and unstable ground caused the tower to sink dramatically under its own weight during construction.  Thank goodness Pisa's near constant battles with the surrounding provinces stalled the project after the third floor - had the soil underneath not been allowed to settle during that time, the tower would have collapsed long before it reached completion.

(While we're here, can you imagine building that thing on an angle?  The southwest side of the tower started sinking after the third floor.  There are seven.  Before the restoration in the late 90's, the top of the tower was 18 feet from where it would have been had the building been completely vertical.  I'd have been afraid to go to work every day.) 

The entire cathedral piazza is aesthetically striking, a "modern" love letter to the architecture of passed generations.  The grass is a healthy green, on a clear day the sky is softly blue, and the buildings are a stark, pure white.  The ancient Roman's believed that this was the most beautiful picture you could create, and every building in the area - the cathedral, the tower, the baptistry, even the line of shops that surrounds the square - it all goes towards creating this incredibly picturesque landscape. 

 

The tower was closed to the public while we were there; the city was in the final stages of stabilizing the building, resetting the foundation to hold the tower at a less dramatic angle, and it wasn't quite safe to let Jane and Joe Tourist into the building.  It's reopened since then, I just haven't been back to look over the edge.  I bet it's a trip though, not being able to see the bottom of the tower because it's underneath and behind you.  Probably causes all sorts of vertigo.

On a side note, at any one time, at least twenty percent of the people at the base of the tower are standing with their hands out in front of them, posing for one of those "I'm holding it up!" pictures.  I had no one to hold my camera, and so there is no picture of me holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Just another excuse to go back, I suppose.

Chateau de Versailles

Versailles, France.  Summer 2004.

I haven't spent much time in palaces - there aren't a whole lot of them in the Midwest.  There was a girl in my second and third-grade classes whose father was a doctor, and every year she'd invite all of us to her family's estate for her birthday, or halloween, or some other occasion that called for a lot of people to be around to fill up all that space.  It was the largest house I had ever been in at age eight, and the only real reference I have when they tell us we're going to the Palace at Versailles.  

(Not a good reference, I know, but when you need a step up to reach the bathroom sink, any house with a wing is practically Cinderella's Castle.)   

I don't know much about Versailles before I get there - I know it's tied to one of the Louis', and I know that the Hall of Mirrors is supposed to be really impressive.  They set us loose with the promise to be back at the bus in three hours, and that's the place I want to get to first.  I walk in circles for ten minutes looking for the Hall of Mirrors before realizing that I'm standing in the middle of it.  They're restoring it - all the glass has been covered.

It's just massive.  I try to imagine someone living here, but it's so full of tourists and so presentational and so devoid of personality that it's hard to believe this sprawling, opulent building was ever someone's home.  Did Marie-Therese sigh with relief at the sight of it on the horizon when returning from a long stay away?  Did Louis XVI find comfort in the smell of his bed sheets after a long day of being the most important man in France?  How many members of the royal family (and the servants who tended to them) knew every inch of this building, and found every inch of it refreshingly familiar? 

 

Walking through the gardens, I can't imagine living in a place this large.  I know it's supposed to be self-contained for the royals, and I know that size is imperative when it comes to impressing foreign dignitaries.  But how easy it must be to loose yourself in all that space, how lonely to live in a place that wasn't ever really designed for you to live in, but to display the pride and riches of your country.  It's beautiful, to be sure.  But I wouldn't want to live here.

From the Inside

Yesterday's church, from the other side of the wall.

From the Outside

I no longer remember the name of this cathedral, nor the region of France that it can be found.   I only know that it's near the Swiss boarder.  If you recognize it, please inform me. 

The Tower

We can see it from the airport window, and our chaperones tell us, "We're going there first."  I'm sure they did that on purpose - take us to this thing that is so quintessentially, so iconically French right away to get it out of our system.  Wouldn't want us wandering the Louvre, or strolling through the streets of Montmarte thinking, "This is nice, but when are we going to the Eiffel Tower?"

We haven't even checked in to our hotel when we pull up next to it; our bags are still sitting in the belly of the bus.  Our guide hands us our tickets as we file off the bus, with a warning not to lose them, or we won't be able to get on the elevator that takes us to the observation deck at the top of the tower.  We all clutch our tickets tightly - we don't want to miss this.

  

It's so tall.  I've seen taller buildings, but the openness of the tower and the air around it makes it loom in the way American skyscrapers can't when they're surrounded by tall buildings.

Surrounding the base of the tower are men who Sell.  Cheap trinkets, stolen goods, and designer knock-offs, all spread out on blankets that can be gathered quickly if the police come around.  We call them Blanket Men, and we will see them everywhere.  There's equipment set up for some kind of photo shoot just beyond the line we're standing in, licensed sellers and their carts piled high with little statuettes and coffee mugs with Gustave Eiffel's face on them.  And of course, armed militia.   

  

There's a cry from the far leg of the tower, and a Blanket Man takes off running with a uniformed guard hot on his heels.  He nearly catches him - as he reaches out to grab the back of the Blanket Man's shirt, his foot slides out from under him, and he hits the gravel.  The Blanket Man jumps the fence, and the crowd goes wild. 

From the top of the tower, the city sprawls.  Rues and avenues spiderweb as far as the eye can see, and even from up here we can see that traffic is a mess (until I get to Uganda, Paris will be the most terrifying traffic experience I have ever had, even if our bus could easily crush anything in our way).

There are grey clouds on the horizon, and the wind up here cuts right through our lightweight jackets, and while we're all so excited to be here in this place seeing this city, we kind of want to get back down where it's a little warmer.  We have another three days in Paris, and the Eiffel Tower will stand strong wherever we go.