Berlin

The ultimate stop in this saga of sojourns European was Berlin. Berlin is a city that, upon arrival, makes you very immediately aware of how harshly the Allies stomped on it at the end of that film Downfall based upon that brief skirmish sometime during the mid-20th century. There are still bulletholes in the Brandenberg Gate, but that was apparently more of a 1920's thing (Freikorps, Communists, people who liked taking potshots at historical monuments).

It has a well-deserved reputation for never-ending events which makes the public transport even more impressive. This is by comparison to the six night services that used to take me home in Liverpool which no longer exist. More Liverpool comparisons abound: Berlin has a club/bar called Magnet which was once a "Jazz-Hole". Liverpool has a club/bar called THE Magnet. It used to be a jazz-hole, too. Due to the vicious stomping, both cities have an architectural mash-up that make a mockery of the human retina. Both are on the verge of media developments that will eventually destroy any hint of a soul that either city has. And both cities have a population who pronounce book "bu-CKH".

The Templehof airport once fired Nazi planes like winged sperm into a fertile sky, but now is owned by fashion designers who rent it out for festivals. I am now convinced that the best way to rescue and re-imprint such a place is festivals. Festivals and orgies. And bitching tattoos, which every resident of Berlin seems to be born with.

The gulf of difference between East and West Berlin is quite noticeable and can be summarised thus: the East has all the interesting stuff (squatters, art, culture, a massive TV tower, museums, Hitler's car park/bunker) and Charlottenberg is basically a giant shopping centre. While the East was messing people around and squashing human rights, the forces of capitalism conspired to appear more appealing by making marble monstrosities with no cohesive architectural theme or discernible character.

Gigantic edifices designed to emphasise political superiority aside, Berlin is a creative hub. You know this because the place is filthy with graffiti. In a good way. Probably. Also, people emerge from behind corners/out of windows/the sewers to remind you. And really, they can't be faulted for their desperation. Clinging onto a collective identity that hasn't yet been co-opted will no doubt become more and more difficult as the strange ride that is Berlin rolls on through more and more world crises.

Also, hyper-active metal detectors and hyper-tight airport security for a city with a relatively relaxed police force. True.

Bruges/Brussels/Belgium

Dear Lord. Where to start with Belgium? Belgium is the death of the soul. The dulling of the senses and the sapping of the spirit. In 2001, Belgians consumed more paper per person than anywhere else on the planet. How? I'm guessing in the form of subscriptions to junk mail and the King James Bible (which is, in itself, just another form of junk mail I suppose). Belgium has no official language and, for a short period of time and up until recently, no official government.

Bear all of this in mind. These are FACTS. They form the basis of an opinion, sure, but we are being objective here in the observation that Belgium is beyond redemption. Where in the northern Dutch states (the Netherlands) they embraced humanism and capitalism and independence from Spain, in Belgium they willingly threw themselves under the wheels and heels of Catholic Spain embracing bureaucracy and paperwork.

Also, Bruges is the worst city in the world to have a hangover. A series of churches peel with bells every five minutes in a variety of four-minute long folk songs. ALL. THE. TIME.

And it is oh-so possible to get a hangover in Bruges, a city the sights of which can be seen in twenty-five minutes. There's a type of beer with "gold" standard which indicates a 10% super-strength. Then, somehow, they invented ULTRA-strength 12% beer and were stuck with precious metals so it ended up being "platinum". The IRONy of this being that precious-metal beer is only drunk by the four tramps of Bruges who are daily run out of town. Also, there are two bars that serve the rather repressed youth population of Bruges and never seem to close.

That's everything there is about Bruges. Oh, there's a bell tower. Obviously.


As for Brussels? Brussels develops as a headache that comes on with the slow grace of an unfolding piece of crumpled paper. As the train pulls in to the more urban areas, one feels nothing but the bleak depression that one is in Brussels. Some ultra-Catholic hangover means that everywhere is shut on a Saturday, a Sunday and even a Monday. Upon leaving on the Tuesday, I noted a few galleries had opened, swamped beyond capacity with tourists looking for something to look at. The centre of Europe scarcely unified in wealth, military paranoia and petty squabbling. As a result, there aren't so many beggars in Brussels but a higher than average number of street drunks (judging by the evidence beneath every bench).

Two transport issues. Firstly, for the location of the headquarters for the EU and NATO, airport security is incredibly lackadaisical. The passport booths weren't even manned and a security official looked genuinely surprised as I proffered my passport upon ingress to my flight.

Secondly, the underground rail system in Brussels has been recently renovated. This seems to have gone underway and been entirely conducted from planning, development and final implementation without any regard whatsoever to the aesthetic. Or, Brussels breeds rapid, efficient, clean, sparsely populated and exceedingly ugly trains. Brown and grey are the twin colours that saturate every item attached to the underground, except for one station where there is something scrawled in black marker on the white tiles. At first glance, you'd think it a rather hurried and unfinished piece of nondescript graffiti but closer inspection reveals that this is, in fact, the name and motif of the station.

Apart from this tedious exception, they are all identical. This fact sums up the whole of Brussels twisted mess of concrete and disdain for those mortals cursed with functioning vision.

Two positives? I found a vinyl shop. There was some hardcore. But not a lot. And there was a Japanese restaurant that served excellent sushi in fascinating surroundings. It announced itself as all things J-wards, from tip to top. I suspect, however, that the owners and staff were Korean, judging by the T.V.

The airport is adorned with Tintin. They WORSHIP him in Belgium. And, if you've ever read the adventures of Tintin, you'll know that he spent most of his time trying to get the hell out. His first adventure saw him traverse and infiltrate the iron curtain on a severely under-equipped whim rather than stay in Brussels. Certain death held no fear for him or Snowy when he considered the world he'd left behind.

And as for my escape? Berlin.

Interdlewd

New and USED? Shudderful.

(H)Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a cliché. Normally, this would be a problem for me but in this specific instance it is pretty wonderful. Which is not to say that it is entirely a splendid, wide-eyed wonderland. This is, after all, the birthplace of modern capitalism and as such it is very much enshrined. The best part of the Damisn't the wide variety of legalised products available at a fairly reasonable rate. It isn't the predominance of cultural icons in a densely packed urban environment (verging on a few hundred museums in a city space the size and shape of a Brobdingnagian thimble). It isn't that the liberal and rawk reputation has somehow kept the city on the maps of artists and bands, punching above its population weight.


No, it is the sincere politeness of every citizen. It occurs to one at a certain point this could well be a desperate ploy to keep the tourists flooding in. However, when the security guard of the Jewish Historical Museum starts complimenting you on the music on your mp3 player (that you forgot to hand over before going through a metal detector) you get the impression that they much teach this sort of stuff in school.

Turning down charity muggers produced enquiries as to origins and pleasant wishes for a happy holiday. Smiling at people in the street either gets you a stoned goggling or a fervent "Good morning!". Turning down a prostitute earns a saucy wink and a non-committal shrug.



Sure, there's a predilection in the visiting population for white-guy dreadlocks and Bob Marley t-shirts. Certainly, the number of stag parties shame-facedly stumbling and mumbling obscenities to each other and then blushing may offend you in ways you didn't know existed (it'd almost be better if they were brash, uglier and more confident). Of course, your concept of exploitation skews selfishly and takes the viewer into more account than the fleshly market. And there's definitely a lack of public toilets that you'll be willing to go in. And American tourists sparking up in inappropriate places will become the bane of your existence (IT'S A ZOO, F'R CHRIST'S SAKE! THERE ARE KIDS. THE PLANETARIUM IS RIGHT OVER THERE: THAT'S WHAT PLANETARIUMS ARE FOR).


But this all fades into insignificance when you are doing free shots against the barman. Or in a club where the DJ is too polite not to play ALL your requests. Or when the tourists take pictures of you as a memento of those people who nearly crashed into a tour-boat when they refused to sit down on a pedalo.

This came from a shop with S&M mannequins

Such a pity that this was followed by Bruges, then...

Also, there was a ship that burnt down the day we left. Total coincidence that we were some of the last to see it.

Paris

The English are welcome in Paris, but at a price. What the French are much more covetous of is our language, with its hard consonants and oh-so sweet indiscretion as to whether the moon might be female, the sun a man and all that. It will allow them to entice and upstage Americans And, as this advert attests, every time you don't speak English well, a policeman dies.

Paris is a singularly narcissistic city, utterly obsessed with itself. Everything you do in Paris is designed to get you to stare AT Paris. The most fascinating feature is that you have a series of monuments to climb in order to look at other monuments that exist solely for you to climb and look at the monument you've just climbed. Why is the Sacre Couer on top of a hill? So you can look at the whole of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower and La Grande Defense. From the Eiffel Tower, you can see the Sacre Couer and La Grande Defense. And from the Defense? Yeah, those other two.



For this privilege, you pay money. Lots of money. Unless you're willing to pleb it and walk the stairs. Typing of which, at the Eiffel I watched an American man push to the front of a queue to ask what "escalier" meant, even though the sign he was reading also said "Stairs". In larger letters. With an equal sign pointing at "escalier". Another American fellow had been up and was asking security for some confiscated items back. These items? Three tins of corn.

(This sort of event would become a recurring feature of the holiday.)

Also, there's a thumb.

Once you've invested all that money into helping a city shaped like a misshapen navel gaze at itself, you can visit local eateries and fail to afford food designed exclusively to trap and entice tourists. The "special" local delicacy of any country, after all, is that in which the locals do not indulge. So you wait in line in the French equivalent of Lidl and watch the till assistants deliver the daily dose of booze prescribed for the tramps of each arrondisement. This is no exaggeration: to appease these street-kings, they kept a few cans of extra-strength behind the counter. Tramps of Montmatre truly rule their roost.



The Metro is a special, though hellish, invention designed purely to allow peddlers to offer burning corn and imitation cigarettes and fake Metro tickets to rubes, tourists and people whose tastebuds have been destroyed by burning corn and imitation cigarettes. As for more metaphorial taste, one can quite easily puchase drastic plastic sunglasses rendered utterly useless because you are, in fact, underground. In order to keep the money circulating, a side-effect of the Metro system is that it rapidly and efficiently ferries you from place to place in two minute intervals.

In short then? Paris, is a dusty city. It eats up food produce, euros and Americans and shits out fashion, self-obsession, dead-whale fragrances and tiny, pewter replicas of the Eiffel.

This process is called "culture".

Also, there's some paintings. They're probably pornographic or something. Graves? Ditto.

Next, Amsterdam.

I'm back in the Kingdom that claims to be United, and I'm watching that first post-doctored Doctor Who with the Cybermen. The one with the alternate world that is meant to be 15 years ahead of ours? The cute parts are counting down the things that should make people gasp and notching them up as compared with my travels. Moving adverts on street corners? Telephones with access to the internet and news reports? Cybernetic overlords who wish to convert all humans into electriconica replicas of real people? Zeppelins?

Only the latter is lacking.

But what's the reason for all this dullness? Signing on looms, that's what. But before they put me in a big metal body with a half-life heart and a brittle bauxite brain there are tales to tell about Europe. A EU-nique insight from from a certified stellar cynic who is yet without any need to exert his energies elsewhere. A brief guide to the psychogeography of cities, or some other old bunk those Situationists might sell.

First, Paris...