An entry on pork, public bathrooms and architecture.

So, a couple of people have asked me for impressions from my trip. Seriously, some people actually read this and want more; I mean, it's not that hard to imagine - there are popular TV shows about truckers who drive on ice.

Despite eating things like jambonneau gratinou munster, which is a cheese-smothered pork knuckle, during my trip, I lost probably five pounds, which is a testament to the amount of walking and general exertion that I was involved in over the course of my trip to Central Europe. This is a wonderful thing about traveling to a good city or cities - you will have a vacation that is full of exercise. I love walkable cities and Europe is replete with glowing examples of same. After returning home, suddenly the four-lane (and at places, more) First Avenue seems unnaturally wide and unnecessarily car-oriented.

On the other hand, the level of convenience I enjoy at home in America is not available in any part of Europe to which I've traveled. For instance, in Seattle and everywhere else I have lived in these fifty united states, I can count on the following: the ability to use a bathroom free of charge, the ability to use a credit card to purchase anything over $20 and the ability to buy groceries on a Sunday. Can I expect the same while traveling in our popularly-perceived-as-more-refined ancestor nations? Nein, nein, nein, nein, nein!

You may say that these "inconveniences" are really quite charming and somehow enrich the experience of travel. If you said that, bang your head against the screen a couple of times for me. Describe for me the charm of handing some old broad 75 cents (the amount alone is almost insulting) before relieving your bladder and I will describe for you the most-recent idiotic thing I have heard.

I could go on discussing inconveniences, but instead I will move to architecture, my favorite subject of subjects among those I am almost entirely unqualified to discuss. I love... no, I luurve tramping around cities like Prague and Lucerne marveling at the Medieval and Renaissance architecture, feeling awe at the unfathomable depths of the lives that have been lived out on the very same stone floors I'm standing on as I gather light into a one-pound machine that will store an impression of everything around me as a series of 1s and 0s for my later review.

So I dig all the old things. However, after seeing a number of cities generously appointed with such sights, I have a new appreciation for the movement of Modernism, which is saying something given that I have long been an avowed aficionado of it. The faith in historic ways of doing things that is still very much alive in the Old World needed, and still needs, an antidote. There is a point at which reverence for the old begins to defy reason. In addition, as parts of a city see a decline in actual use by its citizens and become subject to things like exorbitant admission fees and gift shops, your city becomes less of a real place and more of a theme park. Of course, no beautiful and historic building should be torn down, but there should be means and incentives for contemporary life and culture to develop and improve alongside the primarily historic organs of city life. Contemporary things should be built based on what we know of materials, design and human life as those things exist now, rather than mere reverence for the past.

These are my thoughts for today. I expect this entry to get big hits on Google from all those people who want to read about pork and architecture all in one fell swoop.

P.S. Pork and Architecture = great band name.