The Ae-NEIL-id

As I am in Europe getting a Master's Degree in a Philosophy-related discipline, a visit to ancient Greece seemed to me a required experience ...

Walking in the footsteps of Socrates and Aristotle in the big museum known as Athens ... trying to convince everybody (with great success) that I'm a student from Holland so that I could see all of antiquity for free -- debate the ethics of that !

I believe that God created the color blue for Greece ... this works on several levels as the Greeks are also notoriously pessimistic (documented to have a worse outlook on the coming year than even Iraqis), but I can't really understand why ...


After a few days in Thessaloniki developing a 10-euro-a-day cheap coffee habit with local student friends, I made the voyage out to Santorini (the most visually stunning place I have ever been) .... where I rented a quad to explore the island's red/black sand beaches and wineries, and to hunt for colors, shapes and shadows (in true Platonic fashion) of all forms ...

For more spectacles from my odyssey, wander over to the "Greece" photo link on the right ...

Padova ...

The last chapter in my formal European education ...
Benvenuto a Padova !

Settling down to classes at Universita Padova - the third oldest in the world (1222) and the host to some of the most important discoveries/work of Copernicus, Galileo, Dante, Veselius, Donatello (unfortunately, not the ninja turtle) ... and hopefully, me

A few days of orientation, including a reception at city hall in the Prato Della Valle (largest square in Europe, second only to Red Square in Moscow) ...

English is a luxury, and I've been told that my Italian is like a Spanish girl's English ... although nobody seems to know what that means either ...

And of course, getting used to the Italian lifestyle ... nothing working quite right the first few times (cell phone, PAINFULLY slow internet, Italian beauracracy) ... 3.5 Euro three-course meals (with unlimited vino rosso in the soda dispensers) at the University mense/canteens ... and the fact that it is perpetually 75 degrees and sunny.

Oh, how we suffer for our art ...

Loose Ends All Tied Up ...

My final few days in the Netherlands have been rather intense ... finishing exams, struggling to complete my thesis, working on a few manuscripts ... we will see whether this addiction follows me to Italy, or if pasta will be enough to occupy my attention ...



Competing with this alleged productivity ... an indulgence in the sights and smells of a welcomed Dutch Spring ... A visit to Keukenhof Gardens, the largest flower garden in Europe open only two months a year, with more colors than an enormous Crayola box !


I've posted more pictures of this and my journeys to Budapest and Vienna on my secondary Flickr site (I maxed out the free limits of the first one) ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/7761422@N08/ ...



Tonight I got to witness a lopsided 2-1 slogging of Eredivisie powerhouse PSV Eindhoven by the home side of NEC - Nijmegen ... a beautiful fairwell to my days as a temporary Nederlander (an eendagvliegen, of sorts)

Wien ...

On to Vienna, for more culture, cafes and caffeine ...

Spent the majority of my time searching out the elegant cafes that were the storied favorites of Klimt, Hitler, Beethoven, Freud, Trotsky, and my grandparents ...

After an afternoon waiting in line, standing room tickets for Beethoven's Fidelio at the Staatsoper ... better than the otherwise-120 + euro price of admission ... the simple pleasures of feeling cheap and out of place ...

A tram trip out to the Zentralfriedhof to see the grave of Falco (the man with the genius to ask WHAT IF Mozart had been a member of an 80's biker gang) as well as the graves of Brahms, Beethoven, the Strauss clan and 2.5 million other non-musicians ...

And no Vienna trip / reinactment would have been complete without a late night screening of an original print of the Carol Reed/Graham Greene/Orson Wells classic The Third Man in a small theatre off the Ringstrasse ... definitely a highlight, and certainly worth the trademark Anton Karas tune stuck in my head all the way to Bratislava !

Separating the Buda from the Pest ...

(subtitle: The Fourth Noble Truth)

With a week before my exams and a weath of reading and theory to still digest, I grabbed my books and headed towards the appropriately-timed Spring Festival in Budapest, Hungary.

By night, studying in opulent fin-de-siecle Hapsburgian coffeeshops ...


During the day, wandering in search of sun, scenes and sensations ... (such as this rhino with cherry blossoms, an all-too-unlikely combination)


And no Budapest experience would be complete without indulging in their numerous spas and baths (photo below of the idyllic Gellert Baths was pilfered from the internet ... understandably, cameras are not permitted in such environments ... fortunately, I was)


Most importantly, I was able to complete the virtuous cycle ... after being hungary in turkey (passing through Istanbul on my way to Amman in December), I was finally able to eat turkey in hungary this week ! Poetic closure ....

De Hoge Veluwe ...

On little more than a rumor and a hunch, I followed the springtime weather (and, technically, also a train and a bus) out to De Hoge Vueluwe National Park (about 6 km outside of Arnhem) ... the largest of its kind in Holland, it is home to a 26 km bicycle circuit through a wealth of the most wonderful and peaceful landscapes ...

After meandering through hours of vast and vacant landscapes (not encountering another soul), I stumbled upon the Kroller-Muller Museum ... the personal collection of the the park's benefactors houses a very familiar collection of Van Gogh's and Picasso's as well as a fine collection of pointalist works ...

The Museum also is home to Europe's largest sculpture garden ... spread out amongst the surrounding forrest ...

The day was so magical and the scene so magnificent that this short entry cannot begin to do it justice ... The source of some of my most pleasant memories of Europe ... I felt like I might be starting to understand what Aristotle meant by Eudaimonia ... (feel free insert your favorite "it's all greek to me" joke here____________ )

More of the day's beauty can be found on my Flickr site ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/nixdorff/

Nixdorff in Dusseldorf ...

Or was it the other way around ? It all depends on your perspective ... my first return to Germany in almost 12 years for a slight change in my own.

A quick daytrip for a Picasso exhibit focusing on his prolific years as an octogenarian ... I wonder if this is how the world is going to look to me in 50+ years

Escaped from the rain and the cold (you would think I would be used to it by now) to get overly-caffeinated and read some Heidegger and Husserl in a Starbucks on the Koningsallee ... seemed the most (ironically) apporpriate thing to do on several levels ... a wonerfully self-indulgent phenomenology !