Europe's Strangest Places

by Rick Steves

Everyone knows that you can play hide-and-seek with Scotland’s Loch Ness monster. But did you know that you can pose with apes at Gibraltar? Have lunch in a crypt in London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields church? Sniff out marijuana shops in the Netherlands? Or doodle through Keswick’s Pencil Museum in Britain’s Lake District? Here’s a roundup of some of Europe’s stranger sights and experiences.

From a Pyramid to a Pot of Tea

Rome’s St. Ignazio church is a riot of Baroque illusions. As you walk into the church, admire the dome. Keeping your eyes on the dome, walk under and past it. It’s false. Building project runs out of money? Hire a painter to paint a fake, flat dome (free, daily 7-12:30, 3:30-7)

Rome has another unusual sight: a pyramid. Built in 12 B.C. as a tomb for a Roman magistrate, the pyramid is about 90 feet tall and was built in 330 days (according to its Latin inscription). It was later incorporated into Rome’s city wall (free, viewable any time, Metro: Piramide).

In northern Italy’s Bolzano get a close-up look at the original Ice Man at the South Tirol Museum of Archaeology. Oetzi the Ice Man (aka Frozen Fritz) is a 5,000-year-old body found frozen with his gear in a glacier by some German tourists a few years ago. With the help of informative displays and an audioguide, you’ll learn about life way before tourists. And yes you actually get to see the man himself lying peacefully inside a specially built freezer ($7, Tuesday-Sunday 10-6; [www.iceman.it]).

If you’re driving through Switzerland, look for the clues to this tiny country’s military readiness. You’ll see ranks of tank barriers lined up like giant Tic-Tacs along strategic roads. At tunnel entrances and mountain passes the patches on the roads can be loaded with explosives in the event of an attack.

The Swiss have dug 20,000 shelters into the sides of the Alps. The Bunker Furigen Museum of War History, the only shelter open to the public, offers a rare glimpse into the country’s bunker mentality. Tour the kitchen, hospital, dorms, and machine-gun nests (April-October, Saturday-Sunday, 11-5, in Stansstad on Lake Luzern).

London’s Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum is a hit with aficionadoes. This small museum passionately tells the story of each drink. The owner, Mr. Bramah, who comes from a big tea family, wants the world to know how the advent of commercial television, with breaks too short to brew a proper pot of tea, required a faster hot drink. In came the horrible English instant coffee. Tea countered with finely chopped leaves in tea bags, and it’s gone downhill ever since ($6, daily 10-6).

In Bath, England, the new Impossible Microworld contains the smallest sculptures you’ve ever seen. Through magnifying glasses, you’ll peer at miniature artworks encased in glowing glass bubbles. The Statue of Liberty–carved from a bit of boxwood–is so small it fits within the eye of a needle ($5, daily 10-6).

Brussels’ Manneken-Pis, a statue of a little boy urinating, is the mascot of this great Belgian city (apparently symbolizing the city’s irreverence). You’ll find this little squirt three blocks off the main square, La Grand Place. He’ll probably be taking aim through some clever outfit. By tradition, his costumes are sent to Brussels from around the world.

Another corny sight in Brussels is the gigantic Atomium. This huge reproduction of an atom, with escalators connecting various spheres and a view restaurant at the top, was the symbol of the 1958 Universal Exhibition held in Belgium ($4, daily 9-7:30).

On Denmark’s Aero Island the Bottle Peter Museum has 750 different bottled ships. Old Peter Jacobsen, who made his first bottle at 16 and his last at 85, bragged that he drank the contents of each bottle, except those containing milk. He died in 1960 (and is most likely buried in a glass bottle), leaving a lifetime of tedious little creations for visitors to squint and marvel at ($3, daily May-September 10-5, October-April, Tuesday-Thursday 1-3).

Making a Splash

In Switzerland’s Bern join the local merchants, students, and carp in the Berner Swim, a lunchtime float down the Aare River. The Bernese, proud of their health and clean river, on hot summer days hike upstream five to 30 minutes and float back down to the excellent (and free) riverside baths and pools just below the Parliament building. While the locals make it look easy, this can be dangerous–the current is swift. If you miss the last pole, you’re history. If the river is a bit much, you’re welcome to enjoy just the pools.

Salzburg’s 17th-century Hellbrunn Castle offers another way to get soaked. The attractions here are a garden full of clever trick fountains and the sadistic joy the tour guide gets from soaking tourists. At the touch of a button, paths (and pedestrians) get doused and benches turn into fountains. It’s silly fun, especially with kids or on a sunny day ($5, April-October, daily 9-5:30).

Hop aboard London’s Frog Tours on a bright yellow amphibious vehicle that whisks you streetside past famous sights and then splashes into the Thames for a cruise ($20, daily 10-6, [www.frogtours. com]). Dublin offers similar Viking Splash tours, complete with a Viking-costumed guide at the wheel, who is as liable to spout history as he is to growl ($13, mid-March-October, 10-5; [www.vikingsplashtours.com]).

In Stockholm you can sleep aboard the Af Chapman, a permanently moored cutter ship and Europe’s most famous youth hostel. Built in 1888, the ship initially made trading runs between England and Australia and later served as a floating barracks for the Swedish navy during World War II. It opened as a hostel in 1949 ($15 per bed, open April-mid-December; Tel. 08-463-2266; [www.stfchapman.com]).

Europe’s Seamier Side

In the Netherlands–Europe’s counterculture mecca–marijuana causes about as much excitement as a bottle of beer. Dutch coffee shops that sport red, green, and yellow Rastafarian flags actually sell marijuana. Their menus, dangling from strings above the counter, look like the inventory of a drug bust. Display cases show various joints and baggies (about $10) for sale. If you don’t have any political aspirations, inhale. But don’t smoke it outside the shop or take it across any borders.

Europe’s many sex museums have different angles on the love life of homo sapiens. In Copenhagen you peep into the world of 19th-century prostitutes. In Amsterdam, you learn about the history of pornography. Berlin’s museum has an exhibit on Germany’s counterpart to Hugh Hefner–a woman (the late Beate Ulse). With their many photos, films, and devices, each of these collections offers a chance to visit a porno shop and call it a museum.

Boning Up On Europe’s Relics

In one European vacation you can encounter more bones than you’ll see in a lifetime of Halloweens. Entire chapels are decorated with bones in Rome and Evora (in southeastern Portugal) offering cheery messages (such as “We bones in here wait for yours to join us”) and a chance to pick up some memorable postcards.

In Austria’s tiny town of Hallstatt space was so limited in the church graveyard that bones had only 12 peaceful buried years before making way for the newly dead. The result is a fascinating Chapel of Bones in the cemetery. Each of the 600 skulls displayed inside is lovingly named, dated, and decorated–men with ivy patterns and the women with roses.

Paris’ bony catacombs are open to the public. After the French Revolution, the government of Paris decided to make its congested city more spacious and sanitary by emptying the city’s cemeteries into an official ossuary. The graveyards around medieval churches were deboned and skeletons of countless Parisians were carefully stacked along old quarry tunnels beneath the city. After you enter the catacombs you descend a spiral staircase for a mile-long subterranean walk among six million permanent Parisians.

Palermo offers a great bone experience–skull and shoulders above anything else you’ll find in Europe. Its Cappuccin crypt is a subterranean gallery filled with 8,000 bodies without souls howling silently at their mortality. For centuries people would choose their niche before they died and even linger there, getting to know their spooky neighborhood. Then, after death, dressed in their Sunday best, they were hung up to dry.

Whether in a church, chapel, or underground tunnel in Europe, you might be surprised by who’s looking at you, kid.

RICK STEVES (www.ricksteves.com) is the host of the PBS series Rick Steves' Europe and the author of 30 European travel guidebooks, including Europe Through the Back Door, all published by Avalon Travel Publishing.