London & Munich in July!

Things to do today:
- Add to Remix (current word count: 400)
- See Only Lovers Left Alive
- Do rainy day chores
- Tell you about SUMMER VACATION

a.k.a. There is going to be one. At laaaast. I haven't taken a vacation beyond long weekends visiting friends/family since 2008: the summer I quit my job and went to grad school; the week I met roga and kassrachel abroad and deelaundry when I got back.

Fittingly, Dee and I are taking this trip together. Well, the first half, anyway. We are going to London for about six days in mid-July, and then I am going on to Munich for another six days to visit my friend A., who moved there from D.C. with her husband and new baby the same week I moved to Boston.

First question: Do any of you live in or near these places, for possible meeting-up purposes? Other than the usual suspects (*cough* catilinarian & M.).

LONDON

I've lived a bit in London and have gone back several times, although that was a while ago now. Dee has never visited. So our itinerary is going to be interesting. :) So far our loose list includes things like the London Eye and tickets to Richard III (set to star Martin Freeman), for Dee's Sherlock BBC fan purposes; a couple of markets and museums; and a sprinkling of off-the-beaten-path stuff I haven't seen before, like perhaps the UCL zoology collection (Jar of Moles!). Plus, of course, a lot of walking through various neighborhoods and passing-by of landmarks. And keeping an eye out for what festivals and performances might be going on that week. Further suggestions welcome.

Second question: Do any of you have favorite places to eat in the city?

MUNICH

I've never been to Germany. Researching Munich seemed intimidating, but the Wikipedia article actually helped a lot to start; now I've got a Google Map plotting lots of museums and famous buildings to check out. Third question: Opinions on what's over- or under-hyped there? Priorities for me are Dachau memorial, Viktualienmarkt, Deutsches Museum, Egyptian Museum, Pinakothek der Moderne, and the loop of sights around Marienplatz. Probably Olympiapark. My friend A. thinks we might be able to take a day trip to the Alps or Salzburg, too, but I'm not sure how much to bank on with the one-year-old and everything.

Fourth question: Any tips for picking up some traveler's German? Albeit with the understanding that (a) Bavaria is its own entity and (b) it sounds like most people there have good English. I can puzzle out written German about as well as any native English speaker with an affinity for languages, but listening comprehension and speaking are another matter.

IN CONCLUSION

Taking more than two days off work, having the opportunity to go to Europe for the first time in six years (when after college by living with my dad I used to be able to save up enough to go almost every summer for cons and whatnot), the combination of nostalgia for London and excitement about visiting somewhere new, and sharing the time with friends are all lighting up my life right now. As time passes since booking the flights and hotel, those things are more successfully outweighing the cost of traveling in peak tourist season, eek. I am also watching out for the usual "we must pack all our days as fully as possible!" instinct and working instead to just be chill about the whole endeavor.

\vacation/

Only Lovers Left Alive

Was so good. So good. Worth the wait since no_detective first posted about it six months ago. (Her February review.)

I'd been wondering if this might be the Anne Rice movie of my dreams that the actual Anne Rice movies didn't achieve, and in a way it was: these beautiful creatures in beautiful clothes drifting through centuries, drinking in art and literature and music and science and technology with blood as more of an afterthought, some of them angsty and others full of endless wonder, traveling to the corners of the globe, living away from and reuniting with their beloveds with a depth and permanence of feeling most of us can only envy. It appeals to all the same desires to become a vampire for the sake of becoming the ultimate aesthete.

In another way, it was like Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire: a love song and a dirge for a city (in this case, Detroit) at its nadir, complete with long shots of damaged architecture and indie music performances that capture something about the current era, while a pair of benevolent supernatural creatures watches humanity from a remove. Not that it achieved the level of quality of Wings of Desire, but the resemblance was remarkable.

Which is not to imply that Only Lovers wasn't also very much its own movie. The plot summaries don't do it justice. This is the kind of movie I want when I complain that today's mainstream movies don't leave time to think about anything, including all their plot holes or nonsensical...ness. This movie takes its time, because the characters have all the time in the world. (When they talk about a white dwarf that's only 30 light-years away, you realize they could actually visit it on some spacecraft one day without having to worry about intergenerational planning or cryo.) The movie talks about appreciating culture(s) and nature to the fullest. Tilda Swinton's Eve literally stops to smell the Amanita muscaria. It's about different approaches to life and immortality. It's about maintaining a relationship. It's sort of about the recent history of American music. It touches on elitism/privilege and the contamination of our bodies and our planet.

And it's funny, and beautiful, and tense in the last third when the fragility of their survival becomes clear, and full of references to artists throughout the centuries. Although, if I can nitpick for a sec, you'd think that a pair of vampires as old and educated as these two would have more diverse and obscure references and favorites to toss back and forth. Byron I'll take because Tom Hiddleston's Adam follows so much in his image, and Tesla, too, because he's among the favorites of today's hipsters, whom Adam also embodies-slash-laments, and Darwin worked because it made a good joke/point. I just would have liked less well known names in the mix, and more subtlety. Adam putting on a name tag that said "Dr. Faust" was great, but it lost a little something special when another character called it out. The photo/illustration wall in Adam's apartment did a better job. (Oh, ha, and in one corner was the same pic of Neil Young I posted about the other day.) Unless the point was for us to get all the references and therefore empathize even more with the characters for what they love. Or maybe the lesser references are meant to be uncovered on repeat viewing, among the records strewn across Adam's apartment and the books Eve browses while packing her suitcases.

Okay, but also, since Adam is supposed to deeply appreciate science and electrical engineering, it made me cringe when he said to Eve that Einstein's spooky action at a distance isn't a theory because it's proven. Ugh, writers, you should know that in science, a theory is a pretty damn strong case, and you can't prove something, only disprove it.

Also also, apparently in this universe, vampirism bestows not only fangs (great makeup job there), pale skin and luminous eyes but also very dry hair.

In sum, highly recommended even when it's a bit ridiculous, & want to see again.

ETA: And here is a perfectly valid dissenting opinion from daasgrrl!