Mr. National’s Travel Blog

So since it’s been two and a half weeks since I got back, I’m just going to post some pics of the things that happened and a little info about them…

The Basiclica Cistern
Built by Justinian I in the 6th Century, it’s the largest of hundreds of cisterns in Istanbul. In one of the corners of the cisterns, there are two medusa heads at the base of two of the columns. One is tilted upside down and one on the side. Not exactly sure why, but read that most people think it was deliberate.

Hagia Sofia
Hagia Sofia was a former basilica (the biggest in the world for over 1000 years), was later turned into a Mosque, and is now a museum. It is known for it’s huge dome, which is the first thing I ran to see, but it was covered because of restoration. It was also built by Justinian between 532-537 AD. When Contanstinople was conquored by Sultan Mehmed II and the Ottoman Turks, he turned it into a mosque, and plastered over all the mosaics. Thankfully they were able to save a lot of them.

The Blue Mosque
The Blue Mosque, also called Sultan Ahmet Mosque, is directly across Sultan Ahmed Square from Hagia Sofia. It is known as The Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles inside. It was built in the early 1600’s, in interior of which was built with over 20,000 handmade tiles. Pope Benedict visited here in November 2006, which was only the second time a pope has visited a Muslim place of worship.

The Hippdrome
The Hippodrome of Constantine was once a horse-racing track. It was also the social center in the mid-300’s after Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople. It was able to accomodate over 100,000 viewers. Today the Hippodrome contains 3 monuments which were brought from all over the Roman empire. The first is the Obelisk of Thutmosis III. This Oselisk was brought from the Temple of Karnak in Luxor about 390 AD. The only part that still survives is the top part. It was cut into 3 parts when brought to Constantinople and the other two did not survive. The top part is over 3,500 years old.

The Serpentine Column is the next column in the Hippodrome. This column was brought from Greece. It was originally made to celebrate a Greek victory over the Persians in the 5th century BC. It was originally located at the Temple to Apollo in Delphi before being brought by Emporer Theodocius. The top was broken during the 4th Crusade.

The last monument is the Walled Obelisk. It was built in the 10 century and was also sacked during the 4th Crusade. It was originally covered in broze plaques.

Valen’s Aqueduct
Valen’s Aqueduct was one of the main aqueducts providing water to the city in medieval Constantinople. It was later restored by the Ottomans.

Ruins of the Triumphal Arch and Forum of Theodosius
The marble pieces were the remaining parts of the forum and arch that was destroyed by invasions and natural disasters. The pieces were found from 1948-61.

The Grand Bazaar
The Grand Bazaar is one of the largest covered markets in the world. It has more than 58 streets and 6,000 shops. Some of the most popular goods sold here are spices, jewelry, pottery, carpets, etc. Many of the stalls in the bazaar are grouped by type of goods.

The “Million” Stone Pillar
The stone pillar is the remnants of a Byzantine triumphal arch, in the 4th century AD, from which all road distances to all the corners of the empire were once measured.

Galata Tower
The Galata Tower is located on the north of the Golden Horn and was built in 1348. It was originally used to as an early detector of fires throughout the city, but it ended up catching on fire 🙂 It was renovated in 1960 and is now used to get views over the city.

Ok, so I’ve gotten a couple e-mails from people about me not posting an update for like two weeks.  Part of it is it was a pain in the ass to upload pics, and the other is my laziness.  Oh, and a little studying for finals.  I’m done with school now (tomorrow is my graduation ceremony which I will be missing), so I figured I’d post a couple updated on the stuff from the last couple weeks…

I was just amused at how far a tip goes in Istanbul.  I visited Metropolis Cafe and Restaurant, which is the restaurant associated with my hostel that is just around the corner, for the second night in a row.  Last night when I had left, I left a 4 Lira tip on a 13 Lira bill (tip was less than 3 dollars).  Tonight when I went in, they remembered my name, what I ordered, etc.  I even got larger beers for regular price, more flat bread (which is amazing) to go with my soup (also amazing), and a 30% discount, all for what I believe is the fact that I tipped.  Perfect night out.

So I finally made it to Istanbul!  I made it in last night after some terrible turbulence.  Everyone thought we were going to die.  When we finally landed everyone started applauding.  Apparently this is the really rainy season.  What a great time to visit (I’m being very sarcastic).  Apparently it snows here too, which I never thought would happen.  Hopefully it doesn’t.

Anyways… I landed last night about 10pm and headed into the airport.  I was kind of holding my breath the entire time because I didn’t have a visa, which I found out a couple days ago was very necessary, but the State Dept. website said I could buy one here.  With my luck though it would have been outdated and I’d spend my weekend being detained or something.  Thankfully a short line and 15 Euros later, I was officially in Turkey.  And not 5 minutes later I was being asked by every “information specialist” to let them take me to my hostel.   One guy told me that it was going to take me 2 hours to get there by subway, so I should let him take me because he could get me there in half an hour.  Couldn’t help but laugh and called him out on it, and then he finally left me alone.  I screwed up on counting how many people offered me drugs on the street in Amsterdam, but I’m keeping count on people trying to “help me” in Istanbul.  I haven’t even been out on the streets for more than 11 combined hours and I’m up to 28.  Another guy at the airport tried helping me out by taking me to the Metro.  The only problem was that there was a sign pointing right to the Metro (I could actually see the entrance), but he tried taking me the other way, even when I pointed it out to him.

After the metro and tram ride, I found myself in the SultanAhmet neighborhood.  It was beautiful.  I got off the tram and found myself right by Aya Sofia and the Blue mosque, both lit up in the night.  I then proceeded to look for my hostel, for an hour.  Couldn’t find the fucking thing.  On the website I booked it on, it got over 95% on everything, so I expected it to be very popular and to stand out, instead it’s on a little back street and almost completely hidden.  Plus on the way through the streets, I noticed a lot of stray dogs, most of which were destroying trash cans and eating trash.  One of them almost attacked a woman walking by.

While the building is nothing to brag about, the location is great!  It’s located in the Sultanahmet district, which is essentially the Constantinople of Roman and Byzantine history.  It contains the Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, the Hippodrome, and is right on the Bosphorus.

I had hoped to be woken up by the call to prayer in the morning, but slept right through it.  When I finally did get up and going, it was pouring out.  Fortunately it eased up a bit rather quickly.  Since it was raining, I deceided to head to the Grand Bazaar, which is covered.  I spent a couple hours wandering the seemingly endless maze of shops and headed back to the Aya Sofia and checked out the museum.  It seems like everytime I go somewhere big, the major sights are always under renovation.  I got into Aya Sofia and went directly to see the dome, which is now covered for renovations.  Couldn’t see any of it.  Plus you have this huge, ugly, scaffolding in the way…

I also decided to check out the Bosphurus, so I headed down to the shore.  After being stopped and pretty much intimidated (by 4 very large Turkish guys) into a rug shop, I made my way down there.  I walked along the shore for about half a mile, then tried to make my way back up.  Unfortunately there was a huge wall, which I later found out belonged to Topapki Palace, and couldn’t get by.  The gambler side of me said keep walking, there was about to be a street eventually.  I should have listened to my careful side.  Instead of eating the 1/2 mile, I ended up walking 2 more.  At one point I thought I had conquered the wall (I found a place to scale it), but was greeted by train tracks and another, bigger, barb-wired fence.

Finally having found a street, I decided to try some Turkish food which included a Kebap Durum and Turkish Delights.  At that point it started raining again, so I sought shelter in my hostel, watching The Office and House with Turkish subtitles waiting for the rain to disappear. It didnt.

I knew it!  We had no idea, with how uncomfortable sleeping in the car was, that we would sleep until 9:30.  In a hurry, since we were already 2 hours late, we tried getting back to Omaha Beach to see it during the day.  And of course we couldn’t find our way back.  We drove around the French countryside for half an hour before finally giving up and heading to Mont St. Michele when we saw a sign pointing that way.  No point in skipping that sign and wandering around for hours trying to make our way back there.  On our way there, Keith told us about a little thing that happened earlier that day.  I bought a couple 12 packs the previous night to drink at the beach, but there was no room in the back with everyone sleeping back there, we tried hiding the beer outside (where it was cold), but by the front of the car.  Apparently Keith woke up in the middle of the night and saw a guy walking to the front of the car and reaching down.  Thankfully Keith thought enough to lay on the horn and scared the hell out of the guy.  I guess he jumped straight up and ran back to his car.  I wish I had been awake to see that.

With Mont St. Michele being as big of a tourist attraction as what it is, we had no problem finding our way there.  Signs were everywhere.  When we got there, we had a pleasant surprise.  Apparently it floods after 6:30pm where the make people park.  And there were sheep just wandering around.  I desperately wanted to chase them, but we had to get up to the abbey before noon.  It closes from noon to 2.  We spent the next hour and a half checking out the abbey and the area around it and bought a couple souvenirs.  We left around 2 and headed towards Amsterdam.  We had no problem getting through Belgium this time.  We think it’s because we were in the Flemish part.  Apparently they’re not a part of the evil entity designed to keep people there.  The only issue was that we spent waaay to much time driving the back roads to avoid the tolls, so we didn’t get to Amsterdam until about midnight.

I’ve been to Amsterdam a couple times before, so I knew that the city center and Red Light District was close to the train station, so we tried desperately to make it there.  Eventually we found the signs to the parking at the train station.  Much to our disappointment, the parking for the train station was 4 levels of parking for bicycles, no cars.  All that searching for nothing.  We ended up parking about a mile and a half away from the center, over by Waterloopein.

We got to the RLD and walked around for a while.  Found out what exactly was legal.  Checked out some prostitutes and watched people negotiating.  It was hilarious that Keith wouldn’t even look towards them at all.  Walked around most of the time looking at the ground.  What a prude.  Julian and I were thinking about giving a hooker 50 Euros and tell her to pull him in.  Explain that he’s going to fight, but he really wants her to get him in there and take advantage of him, but we decided against it.   He could have ended up throwing a punch or something.  Then after an unsuccessful attempt at finding the Absinthe Bar that was no longer in business, we headed back to our 1 star auto motel in the parking garage til the morning.

We ended up getting up relatively early (8am).  Didn’t realize that nothing opens until 10-10:30, so we just walked around for a while.  Julian found a sign for the Homo Monument, but we couldn’t find it.  We eventually found a Coffee Shop so certain people could get what they wanted before heading back to the car to get back to Hamburg (after an hour of driving through Amsterdam in search of the highway).

Time to plan our next road trip.  Auschwitz and Prague!!!

“Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.”  – Samuel Butler, Erewhon

On our way out of Luxembourg and to Belgium, Keith ended up running over a curb, leading me to say “Oh Geez!” every time he came close to hitting something, which was pretty often. Apparently Belgium has a little bit of the gravitational pull that Luxembourg City has. I also think it has little trolls or something changing the signs around after you pass them. We came to Vintor sometime in the night and spend the next 2 hours chasing 12 different towns that weren’t on the map and ended up bringing us back to Vintor. I even tried calling for logistical support from the states and we lost signal. Everything went wrong!!! Theresa ended up waking up at the end and was able to somehow get us out of there relatively quickly. Thank God!We made it through the rest of Belgium fine and ended up in Reims around 10am, only 3 hours late. Thank God we left early. It was funny hearing Keith say, “Thank God we’re in France.” Never thought I’d hear him say that.

After wandering around for a while, we found a parking spot down the street from the Cathedral. Two interesting things about the Cathedral is that Clovis was baptized there in the 5th century, and was were Joan of Arc stood beside Charles the V as he was crowned. After that, not wanting to try to find another parking spot, we made the long trek to Tattinger Champagne house for a tour. It ended up being more than we thought, so Julian and I were the only ones to take it. It was pretty informative, but not really worth the 10 Euros. Very little champagne at the end for the tasting portion. I wanted to buy a bottle, but ended up buying a bottle of Henriot 1996 Brut elsewhere because of the price. I figure I can always drink it at the end of the semester in celebration of graduation.

After the tour, we met up with Keri, Theresa, and Keith at a bakery around the corner. I’m almost happy they didn’t come with us, because we would have missed the wonderful baguettes. We all ended up buying a couple baguettes for the road. I think Julian had a couple orgasims eating them. Yes, they were THAT good. I came close.Our next stop was the D-Day beaches of Normandy; however, there were two issues. One was the toll roads (50 Euros from Reims to Normandy) and the other was that we needed to go through Paris to get there. Paris wouldn’t have been THAT bad (we stayed on the highways, no side streets), except the time we hit it, it was rush hour. We spent the next hour in stop and go traffic, just hoping some of the motorcyclists would get hit by cars. That annoyed us almost as much as the toll roads. They had no fear speeding between cars. I was almost tempted to open my car door to get one of them, except the car was in my name, which would have been a lot of hassle I didn’t want to deal with. I was just hoping other people would hit them. Apparently you need to be a “special” kind of driver to tolerate Parisian traffic.

We made it to Normandy, but unfortunately it was around 9pm and it was completely dark. We checked out Juno beach and saw an anti-tank gun, tank, and checked out the memorial. We then spent the next hour trying to find Omaha Beach. The signs just point towards a road that leads to all the beaches. None of them actually had the individual beaches on them. On our way, we passed a really creepy church and cemetery with no lights on. We finally talked Keith, who was being a pansy, into turning around and checking it out. The church was locked, but we walked around the cemetery. I think there was actually someone else in there, but no one could see anything. Kind of creepy, but fun. Keith and Keri refused to enter the cemetery.

We finally hit Omaha Beach around midnight. Despite the darkness, we found some bunkers and a memorial. We talked about all the family we had who were in WWII. My grandfather had to go in after the German defeat and clean up concentration camps, Theresa and Keith’s grandfathers were in the Pacific, Julian’s was one that invaded Hitler’s bunker (and actually got a bunker flag), and two of Keri’s great-uncles fought on D-Day, one of which died. It was a pretty intense experience hearing about our family who served, walking around, and envisioning everything. We were going to sleep in the car on the beach, but Keri and Keith felt really weird about it, so we drove til the next public parking area and decided to crash there and visit first thing in the morning.

So a couple of the fellow USACers and I decided to take a road trip this past weekend.  The plan was to take our test on Thursday, instead of Friday, then…..1.)  Hit Belgium for beers around 10-11pm, 2.) Drive through to Reims and get there early in the morning, check out the cathedral and a champagne tour, 3.) Head to the D-Day beaches Friday night, 4.)  Check out Mont St. Michele early Saturday, 5.) Then head to Amsterdam for Saturday night and Sunday morning/afternoon before returning to Hamburg to drop off our car by 6pm.

As with most things in my life, I had it planned out rather well.  Unfortunately, as with most things in my life, the plans never turn out right, and this was no exception.  It all started with missing our train after our test.  It wouldn’t have been so bad, except we just BARELY missed it.  By like 5 seconds.  Julian and Keith made it on the train, but Keri, Theresa, and I didn’t.  Not wanting to wait for the next train (leaving in a half hour), we checked out our options and saw that there was another train leaving for the station across the street in 2 minutes, so we raced over there.  Theresa and I made it on with some time to spare, but Keri was a little farther behind.  Thank God for the nice train lady, she held the train up until Keri could get on.  I don’t know if Keri could have handled missing two trains, especially since she ran all the way to both of them.

Anyways, we ended up in Hamburg several minutes after Julian and Keith, so we met them at the Avis office.  We ended up with an Audi A3 Sportback, which had more room than we thought.  Thank God, because the rest of the trip wouldn’t have gone very well.  After loading up the car, Julian tried getting out of the parking lot, but was unable to get the car into reverse.  So after having Keith change gears from the backseat, we were off.  We had surprisingly little trouble getting out of Hamburg, but as soon as we got out, we found ourselves stuck in traffic.  We ended up taking stupid pics because we stopped in the same spot for about 10 minutes.  Keith, being as impatient as he is, wanted desperately to get off at the exit that we had been sitting about 100 feet away from for the last 15 minutes.  Everyone agreed, not knowing how badly my plans tend to get fucked up.  All types of weird scenarios were going through my head of what was going to happen, but that’s the fun of road trips, right?  We ended up driving around the back roads for a while, but thankfully, due to my awesome navigating skills, we ended up back on the highways, going the right direction, on the other side of the traffic jam.  That would be the only good news for the rest of the night….

Around midnight, we found ourselves in Luxembourg City, with everything closed, and no one around.  It kind of looked like what I’d think the city post-apocalypse would look like.  Foggy, empty, run down…  We ended up seeing 5 people in the 2 hours we were lost in the city.  We had fun pretending they were zombies in our post-apocalypse scenarios.  We stopped for gas, since it was only 99 cents/L for diesel, and got off the main highway.  I don’t know how, but I think Luxembourg City has it’s own gravitational pull.  No matter how much we tried getting away, we found ourselves right back in the city center.  I think the population of Luxembourg City is just people who driving through and weren’t as lucky as us in finding a way out.  They probably gave up and just decided to stay.  After hours of trying, we somehow made our way out of the city center, but still found ourselves unable to find a main highway and leave the country.  Every time we got away, we came upon a fork in the road, both ways leading to Luxembourg City (were we just came from) and both ways had different km distances.  We finally made it out, without driving straight through fields like I had wanted to.  I didn’t trust the highways.  It reminded me of the movie Labyrinth.  And Belgium wouldn’t be any better.

There is a lot more, so I’m going to break it up into 2 or 3 posts….

Since I spent soo much freaking money in Copenhagen, I thought I’d take it easy during the week.  It was pretty uneventful until Friday (just school and sleep).  Friday after the test (got an A), Keri and I decided to go to Brasil for some coffee.  We talked for a while before Alex joined us and we headed to Hemingway’s Bar/Café for an all you can eat buffet.  It was pretty good for less than 6 Euros.  I tried going in there before with Theresa, and we both came to the conclusion that we were underdressed and left.  Keri had been there before and told me that we were crazy.  Then I got even better news…. They do Mexican food.  Definitely have to go back for that.  Maybe bring the laptop with an old Cowboys game to watch and get some beef nachos.  Yum.

Later on I headed back to Keri’s place for a little movie marathon; however, it ended up being us talking about movies and being unable to decide on one to watch.  Then we decided that we needed snacks, so we headed for a gas station, since everything else is closed.  Unfortunately, the gas station I thought of was closed for some special reason, and the one she choose, wasn’t really a gas station.  After like 3 hours of talking and wandering around Luneburg in the middle of the night, we ended up ordering Joey’s pizza and watching Shaun of the Dead. 

I decided Saturday to go to Berlin instead of Weimar.  Wasn’t up for a 7 hour roundtrip train ride, plus I can’t come to Europe without getting to Berlin.  I love it.  This was my 4^th trip to Berlin.  I ended up walking down Unter Den Linden and came upon a demonstration at the Brandenburg Tor.  Apparently it was a demonstration against some measures that Schroeder made when he was Chancellor.  It seemed pro-communist or something.  After checking that out, I headed towards Museum Island and checked out some market that was setup outside of Humbolt University and bought come East German pins and medals.  After that I headed to Rosenthaler Platz to get a doner from my favorite doner place.  Awesome as always.  I headed back to Luneburg and back to Keri’s place again for another movie.  This time was Cecil B. Demented.  I’m not usually a fan of John Waters, or any of the stars (Stephen Dorff, Alicia Witt, Melanie Griffin, and Maggie Gyllenhaal), but this one was pretty good.  You should watch it.

Sunday was another relaxing day.  Slept in until almost noon, then hung out at the coffee shop with Keri again until 5pm.  We ended up seeing the same English guy that we saw last weekend.  We ended up talking about all types of stuff.  I got more info about his TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) program.  I’m thinking I might do it.  I always thought you didn’t make much money, but apparently you do.  One more thing to work on….

Um, that is all.  I’ll post more pics later.  I’m almost out of internet usage, and the computers at the internet café that I use are being a pain in the ass.  I’ll try uploading pics tomorrow on the school computers and linking them here.

So, I just logged in to write about this past weekend, and saw that I saved this post, but forgot to publish it.  So here… (I’ll add more pics later).

Just got back from Copenhagen.  I’m not exactly sure about how I felt about it.  Copenhagen was a city that I kind of built up in my head, and didn’t live up to the expectations.  It didn’t help that I kept comparing it to Germany either.  Fell short in every category.

Because I chose to go out drinking after the final on Friday, I didn’t wake up until 8am on Saturday (5 hours after when I wanted to leave).   After an awesome ferry ride, and 6 hours on a train, I got to Copenhagen after is was already dark, and I didn’t have a map.  Thankfully, with the help of a nice bus driver, was able to find my ghetto ass hostel with no real problems.  I was actually quite scared walking through the neighborhood.  Anyways, after checking in, I decided to go out walking.  I ended up in The Old English Pub and ended up pounding back waay to many pints with a couple British businessmen that stopped in to watch the Liverpool soccer game.  They kept trying to explain things too me.  I guess it was hard for them to comprehend an American that knew how to play soccer.  86 Euros later (yeah, got screwed over big time on the exchange rate), I stumbled back to my hostel and fell asleep.

At 5am, the 5 girls that I was sharing the room with stumbled into the room.  Literally stumbling.  I think they tripped over every fucking thing in the room.  And apparently, when they’re drunk, they don’t realize that their “whispering”, isn’t really a whisper.  I felt a little better though when I rolled over to say something, and found they were all stripping down to go to sleep.  That was a nice consolation.  All they would have had to do was start kissing and having a little pillow fight and it would have been the best trip ever.  Didn’t have that good of luck.

Two hours later I set out to conquor as much as I could before it got dark.  I headed for the furthest thing I could find on the map, The Little Mermaid statue.  I remember my mom complaining about seeing it when she was 17 and not being able to find a  figurine of the mermaid facing the right way.  I guess it was something about paying royalties to the city, so they just reversed it, much like the key on the Beck’s bottle.  Anyways, I was determined to find one for her.  I get there and all the freaking figurines are the right way.  So I got one.  Not exactly worth the 1 and a half hour walk, but the citadel and another fountain I found made the walk more worthwhile.  After walking around the , I made my way back toward central station, taking in some sights, such as the Round Tower, a couple shopping districts, and others along the way.  After that I made it to the most important place on my itinerary, the Carlsburg Brewery.  It was nice. Self-guided, so I was able to work at my own pace.  A little disappointed in the amount of beer they give you at the end, but it was really good, so I can’t complain too much.

Ok, it’s been a while since I wrote a post, so I figured I’d do a couple.  This one is about the misc. stuff that has been happening in Lüneburg.  First, I got interviewed for the local paper yesterday about what American students studying in Germany thought about the elections in the US.  I thought that was cool.  I’ll have to buy it today.  They took my picture, which I wasn’t too happy with.  If I knew I was going to be doing it, I would have shaved or something.  I’m sure it wasn’t a flattering picture.  Now, with unemployment being pretty high, Germans are going to start complaining about Germany importing homeless looking people.  I think I might shave today in celebration.  Obama won, and now I’m in a VERY good mood.  It might actually outweigh my laziness and procrastination.  Plus I was kind of looking forward to growing a massive beard for my trip to Morocco.  Hmmm, guess I’ll see what I do later.  Maybe I could just trim it…

Oh speaking of homelessness, on Friday Theresa and I went to a bar in Am Sande, after wandering around trying to be spontaneous.  After a round, some old drunk German guy walked by us on the way to the restroom.  When walking by us he noticed that we were speaking in English, so I guess he thought he’d try to practice his English.  He started asking when I was from, and what I was doing in Germany.  I use “I” because the guy never looked at Theresa for more than 2 seconds, even when she answered a question of his that I failed to comprehend (he switched between English and German frequently).   Never even really acknowledged her.  It was really weird.  During his first stop, he ended up telling me all the places he visited in America.  Then he said he hated America.  I think he misspoke though, because he was talking about how the US doesn’t take care of it’s people (homelessness), Bush’s policies, etc.  Plus he was saying how much he hoped to visit Vegas soon, so I think he meant he hated the way that America does certain things.  He came by a couple times after that, each time a little more awkward than the last.  He did buy us a round though.  I thought it was nice that, despite him ignoring her, he decided to include Theresa in the round, even though she didn’t need another one.  Now that I think about it, he wasn’t that bad.  Anyone who buys me beer can’t be all that bad.

A while ago, Julian, Keith, Alex, and I went to visit the house that Himmler committed suicide in.  31A Ulzener St. in Lüneburg.  I’m not exactly sure how Julian found the address, but I knew it was on Ulzener St., so I accepted the address as correct.  We checked it out.  Nothing special.  From what I remember hearing about Himmler’s suicide, he committed suicide in a building used by Ally police forces, but this place was just a regular house.  So I don’t know if that was the place he committed suicide, or the place he was caught.  Either way, it’s a place one of the most evil men in history spent the last hours of his life.  Now it’s a social work office.  We saw signs for Alcoholics Anonymous in the window.  After numerous attempts to find a way into the building, Julian and I decided to try back later.  Maybe try to attend an AA meeting and wander off…