Every Kind of Craft

FRA is probably the European airport I’ve flown into the largest number of times and it remains a particularly annoying one. On this trip, we had approximately an hour wait after arrival before our bags came out. I’d booked a night at the Hilton Garden Inn, which is in Squaire, a development that includes a few other hotels, various places to eat, and some other stuff and, most significantly, is immediately on top of the station for long-distance trains. What it does not have is decent signage. In fact, the signs for the hotel (and all the other airport hotels) actually lead you quite a distance out of the way. When I did, eventually, find the hotel, it was very nice. So all was well.

I had booked a train to Hamburg for the next morning. I had no problem finding the right track, but the train was delayed about half an hour. I was a bit surprised at how many trains were running late. My train got into Hamburg about an hour late. I took a taxi to my hotel and was pleasantly surprised that they decided to give me Platinum benefits even though I only have Marriott Gold status. Mostly, that meant including breakfast. Overall, the Renaissance was a very nice place to stay and quite conveniently located. It was a short walk to several restaurants and shops and, more importantly, to an S-bahn / U-bahn station. I got supper the first evening at a nearby currywurst restaurant that even had a vegetarian option (and bison of all things). As proof that I had not really adjusted to the time zone, I failed to order beer with my meal, opting for soda.

Anyway, one of the major places I intended to see in Hamburg was the Auswanderemuseum BallinStadt (German Emigration Museum), which was a short S-bahn ride away. While many of the exhibits were only in German, I did remember enough of my high school German to get the gist of them. And there was enough English to make a useful supplement. I was particularly interested in the exhibits about Albert Ballin, who founded the Hamburg-America Line (HAPAG, which later merged with Lloyd and is still a major shipping company). The museum is located in what had originally been the Emigration Halls that his ocean liners left from. The museum also includes recordings (available in both German and English) that depict the experiences of emigrants. Unfortunately, one of them repeats the myth of people’s names being changed at Ellis Island, including the notorious “Sean Ferguson” story. (The story is that a Jewish man had his name changed but couldn’t remember what it had been changed to. So, when asked, he said “shayn fergessen” which is Yiddish for “I’ve already forgotten,” and his name became Sean Ferguson. The truth is that the immigration officials at Ellis Island never changed anybody’s names, because they just copied names from the passenger manifests and never took names themselves.) By the way, they also have a few computers set up to access the Hamburg passenger lists, but those just take you to Ancestry, which I can just as easily do at home.

Here’s a mock-up of a ship.



I can’t explain why they made the Statue of Liberty pink.



I went back to the center of Hamburg and went to a store called idee. This is, essentially, the German equivalent of Michael’s. I bought a cake of yarn, figuring it would give me something else to occupy myself on the cruise leg of my ship. And, of course, yarn bought in other countries is souvenir, not stash, so doesn’t count.

Then I walked back to my hotel, passing by the city hall. It still amuses me that the German for that is “rathaus.”



I’d picked up various brochures of things to do and, since I love modern art glass, opted for a trip on the U-bahn to the northern part of the city to go to the Achilles-Stiftung Glass Museum. It was a little confusing to find the entrance to it, largely because one of the signs had an arrow pointing the wrong way, but I found it and it proved to be quite spectacular. Here is a very small sampling of some of the best art glass I’ve seen anywhere.







After that, I attempted to go to the House of Photography (sort of near the central train station) but they were closed to set up for their next exhibit. Instead, I went to one of the modern art museums which had an exhibit called On the Origins of the 21st Century of the Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography. The most interesting thing there was a video called 33 Situations that had to do with sexual abuse of lesbians in the notorious Lubyanka prison (former KGB headquarters) in Moscow.

I only had one more day for sightseeing in Hamburg. I could have gone to the Kunsthalle, which is supposed to be an excellent art museum. Or I could have gone to Miniatur Wunderland, which includes the largest model railway system in the world and is, allegedly, the most popular tourist attraction in Germany. Instead, I chose to go to the Composers Quarter. This consists of a series of connected museums having to do with seven composers who lived or worked in Hamburg. The exhibits are largely in German, but they have booklets with English translation available to borrow. And their headphone system gives you a choice of German or English, as well as a lot of musical samples. Since I like baroque music, I spent a lot of time with Georg Philipp Telemann and almost as much with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose clavier they have (along with videos of it being played).



That didn’t leave me enough time for more than a glimpse at the material on Johann Adolf Hasse, Gustav Mahler, or the Mendelssohns (Fanny and Felix). There was a concert in the Brahms Museum and I listened to part of that, but there was a lot more lecture than actual performance. Overall, I spent roughly 4 1/2 hours there and, frankly, I could have spent twice as long. I recommend it highly to any music lovers who happen to find themselves in Hamburg.

One other thing I should note about Hamburg is that, even though I know better, I kept seeing signs saying “Hamburger” and thinking of the food, rather than the city I was in. I did actually get a burger for dinner my last night anyway.

I’ll write about the final leg of the trip in the next post.

The one flight I paid for with actual money (vs. frequent flyer miles) was from Washington Dulles to San Francisco. Because I had gotten compensation for a couple of flight delays over the summer, this cost me next to nothing. The catch was that the flight was at 6:30 in the morning, which meant taking a Lyft to IAD at oh-dark-thirty. As is all too typical when I have early flights like that, going to bed early didn’t really work and I got much too little sleep.

I first flew into SFO in August 1980, when I moved to the Bay Area to go to grad school at Berkeley. The airport was under construction. It has been under construction for the 45 years since. This time it was a particularly long walk to baggage claim and, from there, to the air train. I had decided that staying at the Grand Hyatt was a good use of Hyatt points and this proved to have been a good decision. They charged me $30 for early check-in, but that was a good deal since I’d gotten a $600 room for free. So, instead of going into the city and going to a museum or the like, I took a nap and spent some time reading and doing puzzles. You can avoid the high prices at the hotel restaurant if you realize that there’s a food court outside of security in the international terminal. I did splurge on breakfast in the morning, however.

The flight from SFO to TPE is nearly 14 hours, so it was a good thing that I’d had enough miles to do it in business class. I decided to splurge on a taxi when I arrived instead of trying to figure out the public transportation. That was a smart decision because, as I learned in the morning, Taipei Main Station is a bit of a maze and, while my hotel was a very short walk from the station, finding the entrance would have been challenging on my own. I stayed for three nights at White Space Design Hotel which was okay, but the room was very small and the bathroom was the sort that floods completely when you take a shower.

As for what to see, I had read the relevant sections of both the Fodor’s and Frommer’s guidebooks. I also found Nick Kembel’s Taiwan Obsessed website to be very helpful.

My first sightseeing excursion was to the National Palace Museum. I’d bought a three day pass for the transit system, which was convenient, but not really a great deal. Getting to the museum was easy enough (via metro and bus). The museum itself was completely overwhelming. I’m a big fan of calligraphy and manuscripts, so spent a lot of time looking at their book and scroll collection. Most of the displays had to do with books from the Song dynasty (roughly 1100’s through 1200’s) so I kept making mental jokes about there being a lot of songbooks.



I also looked at other things, e.g. clay and jade and bronze. I particularly liked several of the jade pieces.





I spent several hours at the museum (with a break to have lunch in their cafe) and found it completely overwhelming. I’d have liked to see their textile collection (which is in another building) but, at that point, I didn’t think I could absorb anything else.

I started Sunday morning with the Flower and Jade Markets, which are near Daan Park, which was a pleasant place to walk around. The jade market didn’t really engage me, alas. But the flower market was overwhelming and was one of the highlights of my time in Taipei.



There were several things I was interested in doing, but I decided it was important to take advantage of the weather being clear, as rain was predicted for the rest of my time there. That made it a good afternoon to go to Taipei 101, which had once been the tallest building in the world. There’s a huge food court there, which is a good (albeit crowded) place to get lunch. There’s also an upscale shopping mall. But the real reason to go there is to go up to the observation deck. I chose to go to the 89th floor enclosed area, instead of paying a lot more to go to the outdoor skydeck on the 101st floor. You get views over the whole area, including both the city, with a lot of tall modern building, and the surrounding mountains. By the way, you can also go down to the 88th floor and see the large damper that protects the building from earthquakes.



Overall, the experience is quite similar to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is what is currently the tallest building in the world.

The other site in Taipei that I considered essential was the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Fortunately, that is one of the few things in Taipei that is open on Mondays. It is also free to visit. It was a rainy day, which was annoying, particularly because it meant they weren’t doing the famous changing of the guard. But there was still plenty to see.



Note that you can enter at one of the sides and take the elevator up, instead of climbing all of those stairs. The main thing to see inside is the bronze statue of Chiang Kai-Shek on the 4th floor.



There are also several exhibit halls with various art exhibitions. The parks surrounding the monument are lovely and, had it not been windy and rainy, I could have spent much of the day walking around them. Instead, I took the metro to some outlying areas, where I walked around a couple of malls without finding anything (other than a late lunch) that I wanted to buy.

Eventually, I went back to Taipei Main, walked back to the hotel, and retrieved my bag, before taking the commuter train to the Airport MRT Station in Taiyuan, which was a short walk through the Gloria Outlets to Hotel Cozzi Blu, where I’d spend that night and the next. This was a much fancier (and, hence, pricier) hotel, but the price was still fairly reasonable. The room I got was huge and the bathroom was equipped with a Japanese washlet toilet (as well as a shower that drained in the actual shower enclosure, rather than the middle of the floor.) They also provide free snacks, e.g. a packet of potato chips and a small can of coke.

The main reason for staying there is that it’s right next to XPark, which is the aquarium that had triggered this part of the trip. It was also conveniently close to the airport for my early flight on Wednesday.

Xpark did prove to be worth going to, especially if you like jellyfish. (And, yes, I know you are supposed to call them jellies, but old habits die hard.)



They do have a fairly wide assortment of other things, e.g. fish of all sizes (including sharks and rays, but none of my beloved sea dragons). They put the penguins near their cafe, with a tunnel for them to walk over the cafe, which is pretty cute. They also have an outdoor area (with umbrellas to borrow, if you didn’t have your own), but the weather was pretty unpleasant.

My intention had been to use a couple of hours that afternoon to shop. There was, however, a catch. The typhoon that had done some serious damage to the Phillippines was heading towards Taiwan which was why there was so much heavy rain. The city of Taoyuan had pretty much shut down, so both the Gloria Outlets and the nearby Landmark Plaza Mall were closed. There was allegedly a yarn store a short walk away, but it was closed. I retreated to my hotel room to do puzzles and read instead. I was also concerned about my flight the next day. So it was not exactly the best travel day ever. However, the nearby convenience store was open and provided food for supper. (Convenience stores in most Asian countries are, in general, far superior to any American 7-11 or, even, Wawa.)

In the end, my flight did go out in the morning. It was, however, a little over an hour late. Since I had only a two hour layover at BKK, I was concerned about my connection. You can only imagine my relief when I got off the plane and there was a woman standing there with a sign with my connecting flight info and my name. Yes, Thai Air had sent an escort to get me to the flight to Frankfurt. It was a long walk - and a bit confusing since it was going out from the satellite terminal. I got to the gate about 15 minutes before boarding started and collapsed for the next 11 1/2 hours. I’ll pick up the story in the next post.