Paris: the final haul
Funny how life is circular. But we managed to make it here with less trauma. Unfortnuately Maria and I are SO tired of being tourists and living out of suitcases it does feel a little like we're biding our time. Which is a shame because it doesn't really give Paris it's due.
We walked around Paris the first day just shopping and exploring. We had lunch on the Ille de St. Louis... because I can't be in France and not have CREPE! and plenty of it. It was very good. We found a cute little creperie and had a leisurly lunch. We found a salon and tried our best to look human before we came home, not to mention getting some pampering before coming home. I managed to communicate what we actually WANTED, IN FRENCH! Well... it was exciting for me :). And then we headed back to the hotel.
Sunday, we had lunch with Jean, which was very nice. We did a little more walking around afterward but the French are not as horribly capitalistic as the Americans so things are actually CLOSED on sundays... PFF.. how ridiculous. So we found The Marie Curie Institute which, being IN france... was closed... due to sunday, and then headed back to the hotel... which brings us to this very moment. Where I'm about to take a bath, yes we have a bath, pack my bags, and go to bed. We have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow to catch our plane back to NEW YORK!!!!! And what a long trip it's been, check back after I come out of hiding for some updates about my overall perspective and thoughts about the trip.
posted at: 13:04 | path: | permanent link to this entry
I lost my best friend here once
Ireland, a lot sadder place than I had originally thought it would be. A lot of memories... some of which I really don't want to remember were stirred up. But other than that we had a rather hellish day of travleing that ended in a very nice bed. So, it made it bareable. The next day we headed to the tourist office. We got a great response to our science question. "do you have any science related museums or attractions... and the lady responded "yes... we have... well... no... we don't. We then headed over to Saint Patricks. I remember singing there three years ago. Interesting to remember things and what I remember. St. Patricks is beautiful and the acoustics are fabulous. Though I couldn't make much noise this time I remember the reverb just singing.
Next we walked over to the Guiness factory. though you may not THINK there is much to learn about beer... there is a hell of a lot more to know than about making pasta. It was very well set up and we got a free pint. Which actually got me quite drunk because we hadn't eaten anything. So, we got some traditional Irish pub food of lamb stew and shepards pie :)... I love living meal to meal sometimes. Then we turned in for an early night. Just a brief aside here. The Irish, way more technicologally advanced than you might think. They offer free Wi-Fi in random places like a 1 km radius of an internet cafe or in the Shannon airport.
And so began our second day in Irland which we decided to fill with shopping. Unfortunately there isn't much shopping to be done in Dublin, nothing spectacular at least. But we did some shopping and got some traditionally Irish paraphenalia. Then we headed over to catch our train. Here is where our adventure begins. We found directions to Ashgrove house. Just in case you were wondering, there are TWO ashgrove houses in the Shannon Airport vicinity, we went to the wrong one... or should I say... we TRIED to go to the wrong one. When directions say "little country road" they mean. "rocky road with no light" So we walked from the bus stop which we took from Limerick into the middle of nowhere. and then walked even more into the middle of nowhere at which point we stopped being able to see and called the hotel. They kindly told us that we were actually in the wrong town, and then they sent "good old Frank" to come pick us up. I need to say that these people... were the NICEST people on the planet. They treated us like family, it was great. But we were very tired and glad to finally be back at our hotel, a few meters from where we started BEFORE the bus, I just thought I'd point out so we headed to bed to catch our plane.
When I said plane in the singular before, I was lying. We actually had to take a plane from Shannon to London-Gatwick... SOMEHOW get from Gatwich to Luton and then take a plane from there to Paris Charles De Gaulle and then get to our hotel in Paris. Luckily the weather was horrid and our plane was delayed. But we are so used to it by now it didn't really phase us, we made all our connections AND had some chocolate cake. We got ripped off by a taxi getting to our hotel but once you hit the 12 hour mark of traveling even we lose some perspective. But here we were in our FINAL leg of our trip... Paris
posted at: 13:03 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Didn't your mother ever tell you to keep the left.
London, the land of English and not just THE english but english like the language. The glory of this, is that I actually SPEAK english. I can read advertisments, understand tv, listen to idle gossip, understand subway announcements so many things that you take for granted. So our first day here was a bit of a treck and took most of the day. Especially because we're staying in Essex. Which is a 30 minute tube ride from the center of London, in rush hour, with bags. Needless to say it wasn't a particularly comfortable ride. But we got here... and boy was it a shithole. Actually, it only LOOKED Like a shithole when we first got here but it has increased with quality as we've stayed for a few days. And it has a BATHTUB... no shower really but a BATHTUB... which is so nice.
So after a good night's sleep we went out for a VERY busy day. We started off with St. Paul's cathedral which is very pretty and they are ALMOST doen with a 18 million pound restoration effort. So most of the cathedral was very clean and we went upstairs to the whispering gallery. I have been looking forward to the whispering gallery since the very beginning of this trip since I was very young even. I remember being amazed even as a kid at the acoustics of the whispering gallery. But this time there was scaffolding around and I think it messed up the acoustics because I couldn't hear anything Maria said from across the way. I was heartbroken. I know it sounds dumb but I almost cried. But I proceeded to the stone gallery and took some panaramic pictures of London. And then I was determined to actually make my way up to the top floor because as a small kid I couldn't bring myself to climb the stairs. Since I've never really been afraid of heights I figured I could handle it boy was I wrong. I remmeber now why I neer climbed the stairs. I didn't make it up two flights before I couldn't will my legs to go any further. I mean, I was paralyzed and it took quite a bit of will power just to get down again. So, with my fathers words from years ago ringing in my ears, I still was a coward. But I was also still sane so you win some you lose some. All in all St. Pauls had been a bit of a let down. The crypt was pretty cool seeing such people as Florence Nightengale, the Duke of Wellington and William Blake.
The British museum was next on our list. We probably could have spent all day there but we hit up the important things. In particular, Willie, my favorite blue Egyption hippo, the Rosetta Stone, and some random Celtic Art. We passed quite a few boxes for dead human, as JB would call them and I paused to miss him for a minute. (everybody pause for a JB moment).
Next we headed over to Westminster Abbey, I love westminster abbey because at any given point you're standing on more famous dead people than any other place. We saw, among others that we really didn't care as much about, Chaucer, Lord Byron, Lawrence Olivier, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Benjamin Britten, Joule, Hooker, Darwin, Stokes, Herschel, Purcell, Lewis Carrol, Dirac, Newton, Farraday, Maxwell, The Bronte Sisters, Shelly, Keats, Dickens, Roosevelt, and Churchill. Some of which were memorials but still that's a lot of famous dead people. We paid successful homage to our scientific predecessors. And then we headed over to th Aquarium. It was scores bigger than the Aquarium in Malmo, And set up quite nicely. We got to see a talk on sharks, where we learned about there 7 senses. I never knew that sharks had seven senses but I think it just really reiterated the fact that I don't want to really be caught very close to a shark at any given time.
And then there was the london Eye. Remeber how I'm NOT affraid of heights. My fear of choice is Vomit remember. Well the London Eye... freaky, it took me a good ten minutes to convince myself out of being scared. But I finally did and it was very enjoyable. Plus we got to sit down for a bit which we defiantly needed. We grabbed some dinner, bad Chinese food actually, and went back to the hotel for some MUCH needed sleep.
The next day we woke up pretty early, and headed over, by many different modes of transportation, to Greenwich. The Longitude museum was amazing. I have a renewed desire to read longitude. But I got to cross over from east to West and from West to East and back again a few times. We also got to see som really awesome clocks and a great dramatization. We learned about how the Prime Meridian, why it kept moving, and why the Royal Observatory was actually completely useless. We spent quite a bit of time over there and then we grabbed some traditional fishand chips.
Then we headed over to the London Science museum which was actually quite interesting. Had some great exhibits on Optics and Science in the 18th Century. Where we saw a bunch of instruments from the royal instrument maker for Charles II. there was also a bunch of Material science stuff and Material Testing. All in all a rather impressive science/technical museum to add to our array. Infact, we shut it down staying right til closing time. As a side note, we discovered that in England they don't actually tell you the museum is closing they just shut off the lights.
The next day we woke up early, again, with a full list of things to do. We headed over the Tower of London. It was of course RIDICULOUSLY expensive, like everything in London but well worth it. We got a guided tour of the tower from a Yoeman and luckily we got a good one. I enjoy how much the English revel in the grewsome history that lies in that tower. We were herded through the jewel museum on the handy conveyor belts... you know sometimes I wish that all museums were like that... just slowly moving you past all the interesting things. It would be a lot less tiring. We walked around the bloody tower a bit... more gruesome stories. Then we took a walk across the tower bridge, and then walked over so that we could walk back over the London Bridge, which is actually the most boring bridge in the world it just has a famous name. Then we took the underground up to my all time favorite place in London, that's right... BAKER STREET :)... I know I'm a nerd. After some lunch... that's right... STEAK PIE!, we went to 221B Baker Street. I had been there once before but not for many years... in fact... RIGHT after it had opened so needless to say it was different but in a good way.. they still had Watson sitting in Holmes' living room and Holmes bedroom with all the appropriate paraphinalia lieing around but there were also several floors above with wax figures from the stories. I was sad that Mrs. Hudson's resteraunt isn't still next door but I LOVED being back there. Plus I'm a huge nerd so I know all the stories... and moving on...
Millenium bridge. a rather unremarkable bridge... NOW... it used to have the same natural frequency as the average human stride. So it used to have this very disconcerting swaying motion when you walked on it. For pure curiosity we walked across. They reinforced the bridge so it no longer shakes. It does however end at the globe theatre. We didn't go in but we did walk around the outside just for fun. We couldn't go in because it was way too expensive and it was getting late. So we ran a few errands and went back to the hotel for bed.
The next day was reserved for shopping. It was london afterall. we wante dto go and do a sweep of Oxford Street, hit up Picadilly circus and over to Harrods. All of which we did, making a quick stop for Farraday's labs in the Royal Institute. They had a cute little museum and a reconstruction of his original lab. It actually gave a really great account of his biography and discoveries. But this was our last night in England. It was action packed but it was nice ot move on.
posted at: 13:03 | path: | permanent link to this entry
This has been Pancake education for the American Jackass
So, all day... ALL day on the train. Meaning about 11 hours of travel changing twice. But there we were in Amsterdam where weed runs freely in the streets and sex runs freely... well in the streets too I guess. I think I may be the ONLY twenty something that has gone to amsterdam in the last 50 years and NOT gotten high or had sex... and I'm damn proud of it. Mostly because I'm a contrarian and secondarily cause I really had no desire.
But we had a VERY cute little hotel room which wasn't actually a hotel room it was just the bottom floor of some guys apartment. In fact there was no sign, in fact there were no directions OR sign. so we just kinda guessed and when we got there we didn't think we had ACTUALLY gotten there so we just kinda stumbled around for awhile until one of us had the bright idea to call him. But very tired, we managed to find the place and settle in.
At this point in the story thanks to my amazing roomate Jess, I found out that...
I GOT INTO PENN STATE!!!!
Which is awesome because it's my number one choice and the first school I'd heard from. So we decided to go out and celebrate, that's right... party it up. SO we went to a nice quiet bar and had chocolate cake. Yup, chocolate cake... in amsterdam, to celebrate... who ever said I was normal anyway. We also did some walking around the city which is very pretty. I don't understand why Venice is so famous for Canals really, Amsterdam had quite a few and the water wasn't that sick putrid color. But that might just be my Venice predjudice coming out. We went back to our room and went to bed. Besides we had a busy day ahead.
That's right... PHYSICS. there is a lot of great physics in Holland. Lieden is one of the oldest university towns in the world and they had 5 Nobel Prize winners between the years 1900 and 1950, which is really quite amazing considering that a few years the award was skipped. We went to the museum in Lieden, a half hour train ride from Amsterdam. It housed such things as Einstein's pen that he used while he was there. Lorentz's equitment, a preserved childs arm, you know the usual stuff. actually that last one was really, really gross. Have I ever mentioned that I really could never be a doctor? The Uterous with Fetus preserved in formaldahide actually might have taken the cake when it came to NASTY. But the entire exhibit dedicated to infectious diseases... I never knew syphellus could be so GRAPHIC. Remind me not to get syphillus. But ANYWAY. We then headed over to the famous "guestbook room" it was Paul Ehrenfest's living room and instead of having his guests sign a guestbook they just signed the wall. Which was actually extremely cool. Unfortunately there was some kind of graduation ceremony going on right next door so we couldn't go IN but we got to look in anyway. We then headed back to Amsterdam having accomplished our mission to find physics in Holland. And we were STARVING. So we got the munchies. Imagine having the munchies without the pot. It was great. First we got french fries with green peppercorn sauce. For those of you who don't know, Amsterdam is famous for french fries. And then on our way through the city we saw a cotton candy stand and the overwhelming urge to eat an entire stick of sugar overcame both Maria and I at the same time. So we bought... a lot of sugar. Like a really lot of sugar. We got some funny looks but it was good. And so we headed over to the Erotica museum, very famous in Amsterdam, frankly I was disappointed and if you care... I'll tell you why.
Unfortnuately due to my sickness that was the only day we spent in Amsterdam. and as of now I'm IN the chunnel which is actually really cool... I'm UNDER the english Channel. and I'm going to a land where the speak ENGLISH.. I'm so excited to understand what's going on again.
posted at: 13:00 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Dane-land Dane-land it's big it's heavy it's wood
So, we spend ALL day on a train. Like really ALL DAY. But eventually we got to Copenhagen. WE checked into our hotel, a little more expensive than we were used to but it had ISDN, and they didn't LIE this time. A really cute place the only problem of course being that the shower WAS The bathroom. And when I say it was the bathroom I mean The faucet for the sink was the SAME as for the shower. the drain was right next to the toilet, and the only thing seperating you from the rest of the bathroom was a curtain you pulled shut when you wanted to shower. But it was warm... it worked and who are we to be picky about showers... I mean really. So, we had quite a glorious stay there.
After getting there, we went out for a traditional danish dinner which consisted mostly of large chunks of meat and sauce. lots of sauce. Like I said it was my kinda place. Afterwards we went to bed to get a start bright and early in the morning.
And then the morning came. Well we didn't really succeed in the bright and early part but we evenutally got out to a coffee shop where I had the Danish equivelent of a Danish. Which is actually completely different then what americans call a Danish but really good none the less. And we planned our week. Honestly we could have done a lot more than we did, but the problem with going to places at the end of a two month quest is that you're tired of seeing interesting things. Or at least you're tired of seeing interesting things you have to get up and actually GO to see. But we found a great walking tour of Copenhagen that focused on the science aspect of it with such names as Romer, Steenson, Olested, and of course Bohr. So the first day we walked pretty much all over the center of Copenhagen and finished about half of the walking tour. We saw the birthplace of Bohr, and where Romer first measured a finite speed of light. There was more to see but it would have to wait for another day because the night was reserved for the Erotica museum. Again, I'll spare those of you who aren't interested but if you ARE please click --->HERE<--- for more details (you must be 18 or older to view). We headed home a little early so I could put some work hours in and go to bed.
The next day, we went to sweden... that's right... all of sweden. Ok I lied, just Malmo, but we mostly went just to say that we went to sweden. There was the worlds SMALLEST aquarium there which boasted FLESH EATING PYRANAHS but... they didn't really have any, I htink they just said that so you'd come to visit. HTough they did have an electric eel hooked up to Voltmeter that was actually really cool, but don't worry it wasn't in the actual aquarium it was sort of down this hallway that I don't even know if we were supposed to be in. but regardless, It was attatched to the smallest natural history museum with lots of stuffed things and a lot of sweedish. But we continued, to the exactly mediocre technical museum that had a lot of cute models of how sugar was made from sugar beets, another completely useless fact that I can now add to my fastly growing array of useless knowledge. I'm being a little hard on Sweden, but it was actually very cute everything was nice and small, Corey would have liked it. But we headed back to Daneland for a planitarium show. There was a lovely english translation for me which was very nice, as not all places are so kind. It had a little bit of everything, much less traditional planetarium than Austria, but then again I could actually understand this one so they each had their ups and downs. It was basically intro Physics rolled into a 50 minute audio visual masterpiece. entertaining but nothing I hadn't seen before, since I did take intro physics like... 3 times. But after the show we walked over to Maria's aunt's house which was very nice because it was a house, with home cooking. Most of the conversation was in Danish, though I managed to follow a suprising amount of it. Food was good and dessert was even better. To work it off we walked through a very deserted Copenhagen, back to our hotel.
Which brings us to day 3 in Dane-landia. We decided to do the rest of the walking tour. It actually took us a lot longer than we had anticipated so we skipped the "experimentarium" which seemed a lot like the Liberty Science Center in that you could put yourself in a bubble and discover how men and women are physiologically different by doing "challenges" that kind of thing. Probably a little childish for two physics grads so we didn't mind skipping it. But we did get to see where Olested discovered electromagnetism, and Niels Bohrs grave. The cemetary was very nice, not as painfully poignent as Mozart but I think that might be in large part by the fact that it WAS pretty, and the Danes sure do know how to treat their dead. We then went out by subway to Maria's Uncle's house, which was VERY cute, and we had a spectacular dinner. Unfortunately I had had a spectacular lunch very recently before eating dinner so I ate to the point of uncomfortable... and then kept eating. If you're ever with me in that situation please remind me it's a BAD idea. Needless to say I had a very uncomfortably full ride back and night's sleep.
The next day we were heading over to Aarhus to spend the night with Maria's OTHER uncle. First laundry. it took a bit longer than expected like most things we do. First there wasn't actually a laundry where the hotel said their was a laundry, so we had to walk much further than expected with all our luggage. We did miss the music museum which was a little disappointing but it gives me a reason to come back to Copenhagen which is always nice. And so we headed to Aarhus.
We spent the night with Thomas and Tina who I liked very much. They had lots of books, lots of music instruments (including a VIOL) which she actually played and they were very hospitable, and had great food, which is always a leg up in my book. It was so nice to be in a real house again and it was so comfortable. Plus I TOTALLY met her cousin Morton, who worked for Bang & Olfson and offered to pass my name along which is of course... totally AWESOME. So we went to bed pretty early in anticipation of an early train ride the next day. Unfortunately the inevitable happened, I got sick. Some kind of stomach thing and if you're reading this you most likely know for me... stomach problem=VERY BAD. Luckily we were in an actual house and Tina is an emergancy room nurse which is always at least a small comfort. Needless to say, we didn't spend all day on a train as was originally planned. We pushed our trip off an extra day and spent a glorious day sitting on the couch doing nothing but watching TV, quite a bit of which was in English including catching some CSI and the tail end of THAT'S RIGHT!!! LAW AND ORDER. It was the tail end so I missed my dearest Lenny but you take what you can get right. We needless to say went to bed early AGAIN, in order to get up early AGAIN... for the actual day on the train.
posted at: 12:59 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Germany... Yeah it's a boring title... it was a boring country.
And so we arrived in Munich, in the evening, after dark. We walked through the red-light district and a few blocks to our hotel. It was so cute. Wireless LAN in the lobby and a very nice man at the front desk that kindly offered us fruit as he informed us that we wouldn't actually be staying in that hotel. There was a computer glitch and they overbooked. But don't worry they were sending us to a very nice hotel down the street, actually right next to the train station which is exactly where we just walked from. But they were going to pay for the taxi which would get us back there and we figured... at least they couldn't put us in a WORSE hotel right? that would be WRONG. besdies it was made abundently clear that the hotel we were going to be more expensive but we would pay the "SAME PRICE".
So we had a very exciting cab ride over that they paid for and we got there. It seemed nice enough, going through some renovations but it was very possibly very nice. So we had a charming conversation with the consierge and then we went up to our room. And so I opened the door, and walked into the room. I only got about a foot in before I hit my shin on the bed... so... I moved over a few inches at which point I hit my shin on the small cot that they had put next to the original bed so I moved back a few inches and ran into the wardrobe. Actually my baggage couldn't fit into the room with me let alone Maria and her luggage. The room was a small single with a cot shoved in the only 3 feet of empty space. So we sat, and stared for a bit and then Maria saved the day. She marched down the stairs and demanded an equivelent room that we had reserved at the other hotel. The guys face was CLASSIC. It started with confussion, quickly turned to fear, and then immediately turned to guilt. He managed to stammer "I uhh... paid for the taxi!!" and "He told me to do it!"
Well, they gave us a new room for the small charge of a few extra Euro. When we walked in it was nice... two beds... room to MOVE. Which is always good. So, we settled in and Maria went to take a shower. it wasn't even fifteen minutes later when Maria came out of the shower, in a towel, with one hand behind her back. Pulling that hand out from behind her back revealed a showerhead. Funny that she would be holding a shower head since shower heads are usually attatched to some kind of water source. I quickly learned that this showerhead had indeed BEEN attatched to plumbing but was no longer attatched to said plumming. So, Maria, after much cursing and some laughing at the ridiculousness of our situation marched down to the front desk to report it. They handed her keys to ANOTHER room so that we could shower. And she went to go check it out. Unfortunately, that room was currently OCCUPIED. So, we quickly replaced this room with another room. This one was NOT occupied. And so, we went to bed.
Only to be awoken in the morning by a loud knocking of a plummer. Who kindly fixed our shower before either of us had to shower. But he fixed the shower with a showerhead that didn't fit so it didn't actually attatche to the wall. Needless to say I had a VERY interesting experience trying to shower, and the small lake that some had previously refered to as a bathroom must have taken days to clean. Now, at this point in teh story you might think I'm making it up... but i couldn't make something this ridiculous up if I TRIED. So, we headed out, dropping our bags at the train station for the Deutches Museum. It was a very large technology museum. Remarkeably like the museum in Vienna but worth the trip. There was some much more physics oriented demonstrations. Unfortunately alot of the things we found the most interesting were only in German. We did however get to do some of the very interesting experiements including the feather and lead experiment in a vacuum, the changing of center of gravity, and the a lot of electrostatics. Afterwards we headed back to the station to wait for our train.
So, we had quite a bit of time to kill because we were catching another night train. We waited in the waiting room for a good majority of the time and we met another traveler. He was, initially... very... creepy. Actually he was creepy throught the 4 HOURS we spent talking to him. Needless to say neither of us wanted to be left alone with him. But soon enough we managed to escape, and catch our train.
This night train was by far the nicest.... and the loudest. We had a two person couchette which ment we didn't have to share anything, we could sit up untilwe went to bed. Seemingly everythign we could want. Unfortunately the wheels hadn't been oiled in awhile so everytime we made a turn it screeched horribly and Maria more than I heard every single part of our compartment rattling. And they didn't give us breakfast, but we've had a lot worse... A LOT worse. So, we got to berlin, made our way to east berline, and managed to find and check into our hotel. It was so cute. The management was very nice, the rooms were clean, overall everything we could want. they lied about the ISDN of course, but a small price to pay for a working bathroom, a nice room and breakfast. So we passed out for a considerable time to catch up on some sleep, and then we headed over to the tourist office.
In Berlin's defense, we were expecting soemthing fabulous. The World Year of Physics was supposed to be huge in Berlin but apparently in Germany the year starts in March instead of January... like the rest of the world. So there was a whole lot of NOTHING going on, we couldn't even see his house. So, we were grossly dissappointed and we spent the rest of the day being depressed about being in Berlin. The next day however, we managed to get out and start being douristy again. We went over the music museum. In a very interesting building, a plethera of new and interesting instruments. Well, old nad interesting actually but there was some neat documentary on Bennie Goodman, and some more information (some of which was in english) about the clarinet. Did you know that the REASON the attractive range on the clarinet was called chalumeau because it was actually a dirivitive of another instrument called the Chalumeau? Well, it is. Fancy that. It's also made out of this weird African Grendilla Wood, which gives it the black color. Yeah so I learned quite a bit. We headed back to the center of the city for lunch. After quite a few hours of searching we found a really nice resteraunt and we had a lunch. We had Berlin Beer, we had fabuluos food and lots of it. We sat for a good four hours before we finally moved on but we did, to an internet cafe and then back to our hotel for home.
The next day we went over to the technical museum. It was probably very nice but having seen two of the best it seemed to fall short. It was also geared toward much younger students. Though they did have an entire floor on sound with some interesting experiments. It didn't take us long to get through it however and we headed back to the city center for another big lunch. Then we headed over to see the museum at checkpoint charlie. As we walked over we sort of stumbled on a memorial that really hit hard. a field of white crosses with names on them were placed next to the largest remaining chunck of the Berlin wall, at the gate of checkpoint charlie. It is now painted painfully white to match the crosses. Also, as we walked into Western Berlin, there was the original gate set up with two guards, a soviet and an american, obviously actors. I couldn't, and still can't decide how I feel about making that "photo opportunity" so touristy. But the wall museum, set up by a prominent historian, during the time of German occupation, recounts every aspect of the wall, including art, escape plans, pictures, bizarre collections of stuff. Put together in such a way that it told the stories of thousands of people attempting to escape from Soviet Occupied East Germany. Sad but inspirational.
Unfortunately a good fraction of Berlin's history is sad. So we didn't get much of a break from sadness before we took the train out to Oranienburg to the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp. There are no words to discribe this experience. Sad, Depressing, Wrong. Nothing even comes close. Trying to describe it here would be futile. I cried myself to sleep afterwards. Needless to say, we didn't do anything else that day.
Our final day in Berlin we SHOPPED. Let me tell you Berlin... not so much with the shopping. I mean, when they say, not a fashion capital of the world... they really ment it. And when they say there isn't anything worth buying there.. oh wait... that was me that said that. So, we had some errands to run so we ran them, and then we went to the erotica museum. I will describe this but I will spare those who really don't care by adding a link... an explicit link that you must be 18 years to view.
And so our stay is Berlin was over. Thank God. Berlin is cold and depressing, but we expected better things from our next destination... Copenhagen.
posted at: 12:54 | path: | permanent link to this entry
The Austrians sure do know how to pee... in Public
And now for our second night train. After Zurich we figured that pretty much ANYTHING was going to be better than that. Plus, we had great faith in the famed Swiss Rail System. Our second night train would have been relatively comfortable if they hadn't tried to cram 5 fully grown females into an 8x8x10ft box. Not to mention significant amounts of luggage from all of them and room to sleep. But somehow we managed to make up our beds and I SORTA slept on this train and before we knew it there we were in Vienna bright and early in the morning.
And now I shall recount our tales in Vienna. I think that Vienna is the reason I'm still here in Europe because if anything had gone wrong I would have broken the camels back myself after riding him to the airport and catching the next plane home. Vienna was gorgeous. Not only was it gorgeous but it was homey and friendly and fabulous. Not only that but it had things to do... TOO MANY things to do. So many things to do that I want to go back. And there aren't many cities I could say that about on this trip. Our hotel was very cute. Obviously a one star, but comfortably so. Breakfast included, a shower in our room, which got a little cold but we had had SO much worse. Not only that but this was my territory. The music nerd really came out in me, but was too tired to ACTUALLY come out so it just told me to go to bed and it would think of something good when I woke up.
Rather than pushing through we took a nap and woke up two hours later remarkably refreshed. And so we began to look at the map and list of museums and memorials. We spent the rest of the day eating, and planning. That night, we went down to the planetarium, which was in a rather seedy part of town. I think this was the only seedy part of town actually but everyone has to have one. But I'd like to take a moment to comment on the ability of Austrians to Urinate in public. When I say in public I don't mean men standing discretely in the corner relieving themselves. I mean, right in the middle of the street just peeing like it was their own personal bathroom. To their credit I believe all of them were drunk. But never the less we saw a real planetarium show. One about stars! That doesn't happen very often any more unfortunately it was only in German so we couldn't actually understand a word that was being said but there were spinny stars and arrows (random quote: "twenty-seven 8 by 10 colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.") It was nice but the circles and paragraphs didn't really help much. And so we headed home for an early night and getting ready for the big day tomorrow.
We unfortunately needed to do our laundry so we lost some time in the morning but we headed over to the butterfly house afterwards. It was a lovely burst of summer in the middle of a very cold week. Vienna was definitely the coldest part of our trip so far. The butterfly house was a tropical oasis, which was nice but only lasted a very brief time and then it was back out into the cold. This time, for a very long walk to the technology museum. Neither of us knew what to expect and we allotted 2 hours to walk around. We could have spent the whole day. The technology museum, though far away, was quite large. A lot of very nice demonstrations and explanations though a good majority of them were in German we managed to piece together quite a bit.
Which brings us to our third day in Austria. The Music day. And it was defiantly filled with music. We went ALL over the city going to different music museums and memorials. We saw stuff on Brahms, Strauss, Schubert, and Mozart. Ending with Mozart's originally unmarked grave. A very poignant place to end. It was very sad. Standing next to the grave of one of the most brilliant men of all time in a barren graveyard outside of town.
From there we went to the house of Music a much more modern approach to music though it did include some information on the Viennese orchestra, composers and some history. But a good majority demonstrated acoustics and did some interesting hands on modern composing designed by Bernstein. Overall a very interesting approach and exhibit.
The next morning we left for Saltsburg. We were only stopping there for the day to see Mozart's birthplace. Which we did. It was a very cute town, very obviously proud of the fact that they were the birthplace of Mozart. We walked around for a while seeing both the birthplace and childhood home of Mozart. As an added bonus we found the home of Christian Doppler. Yes that is THE Doppler. The one with the effect named after him and in case you were wondering his first name was indeed Christian and he lived in Saltsburg of all places. And so we proceeded to Munich. We planned to stop there for the day to see the very highly recommended Deutsches Museum.
posted at: 17:57 | path: | permanent link to this entry
The Swiss really do know how to Pee
Ahh, the night train, we were looking forward to the night train. I remember the train from NY to California when I was 14 and it was glorious, and I was even a mess back then. But, this Italian train, as many of the Italian trains we took, sucked. The conductor however was a very nice old man and we were luckily the only two in our couchette. That didn't however improve the comfort level. Obviously Amtrak really needs to communicate with the Italian railway and step them up on the comfort of their passengers. But regardless I slept... Ok I didn't sleep but we got to Geneva just the same. It didn't help any that I was relatively drunk and woke up hung-over either. So, we checked into our hotel. Which was close to the train station easy to find... and our room smelled like urine. Not just a faint odor either, someone in the recent past must have used some corner of our room as a urinal rather than going down the hall. But aside from that, the room was miniscule and we had to share a bed.
At this point I'd like to preface the section on Switzerland by saying the Swiss do in fact know how to Pee. Being on vacation in several countries in budget hotels one really learns to be a connoisseur of bathrooms. And the Swiss, do it VERY well. This was our first encounter with McClean, the cleanest public toilet in the WORLD. They even give you little wet-naps. Not really sure why... don't really WANT an answer to that question... but I stole them for future use. And the hotels in both Geneva and Zurich had fabulous bathrooms, working showers, working toilets. And now back to the regularly scheduled program.
We decided to try and push through regardless of the exhaustion and proceeded to the tourist office. For the first time we got an ANSWER. Have you been to CERN???? Why No, we haven't been to CERN YET... we also got some brochures and looked into other interesting science museums. We found a history of science museum and we decided to fill up the rest of the day with that. It had a really interesting exhibit on Galileo and some interesting instruments and history of some rather obscure Swiss astronomers. Toward the end however I was so exhausted it was getting hard to focus. So, we headed back to the hotel for some rest and boy did we get some rest. Maria and I both passed out for hours. Waking up only in time to have dinner. So, we went out for some traditional Swiss food. For those of you who don't know, traditional Swiss food is cheese cheese small pieces of bread... cheese cheese and more cheese. Actually it's just cheese. Smelly cheese. So we got very... very full... on... cheese. I like to people watch and often there are some very strange people. But I encountered in Switzerland very many strange people... I came to the conclusion that they ALL try to be subtly strange so much so that they weird you out but not enough to actually draw attention. Really, it's an art form. So, I bring this up because I'd like to describe a particularly bizarre individual sitting across the restaurant. Please imagine for me that you're eating French fries... with a fork. This for many Americans in itself is bizarre but I'm lenient about this fact. Now... during this imagining what is your hand doing. The one, not holding the fork... if the answer was nothing... you're good. However if the answer was wiping all the salt not on my hand off... you're weird. Also, add to this picture, a tweed vest, a cane, long hair and a demeanor so deeply engrossed in his book that he cannot see or hear anything going on around him. And so... slightly weirded out but so full of cheese it lost its novelty, we went to bed.
And so we came to our day at CERN. CERN. Is. Awesome. We didn't get to see any of the actual inner workings but we DID get to visit the museum, which was actually informative for someone of our level. PLUS we got to learn about GARGAMELLE... yes... Gargamelle the bubble chamber not the large bad guy from the smurfs. But it was pretty amazing to take some public transportation out to the largest particle physics collaborations in the world. Not to mention they just let us wander around the grounds. And then we headed to Zurich. Geneva, being the one of the few places I could stand to go BACK to for a considerable chunk of time... minus the pee smell.
Zurich... yes, Zurich one of the most prolific scientific cities for much of this century. We only planned to spend the day there but we were so ready for a big exciting packed day of EINSTEIN. So we checked into the hotel which was SO COMFORTABLE. For the first time I forgot where I was when I woke up. Almost as comfortable as my ridiculous bed at home with some very glaring things missing that shall remain nameless. Needless to say we woke up in the morning refreshed and ready for SCIENCE. So we headed to the tourist office.... but wait... what is that... could it be a giant PARTY... a giant CHEEEESE PARTY?!?!?! WHY YES!!! A CHEEEESE party... now I add extra e's because it was indeed entitled... cheeeese, not to be confused with cheese, which I do believe is something completely different.... but back to the tourist office... we asked about their science offerings. They gave the usual response that there weren't any. And we asked for a list of museums and they were right... there weren't any. Or anything else either for that matter. There was nothing... NOTHING. So... we wandered around depressed for a while. Then we had the brilliant idea to find Einstein or Milevas address and create our own neat-o things to see. But... it wasn't listed anywhere. Nope nothing... we couldn't find it. So we walked around depressed for a little longer. Then we decided to just cut our losses buy the things we needed to buy and head back to the train station.
At which point, I checked the balance on my phone... which was supposed to be about 20 Euro. But surprise surprise it was... 0 that's right... NOTHING. Somehow... Someone called my phone and someone answered that apparently wasn't Maria OR I and had an hour-long conversation. Luckily this happened after I dropped a few hundred dollars on a new camera because my other one broke which is a story I shall leave out for now due to it's painful nature. So, this was the LAST straw. For anyone who talked to me during this time... sorry. It wasn't really a very good day. Telestial also is a slacker it took them THREE DAYS to actually charge up the phone again, regardless of said anonymous call, and... I hate them. That's about it. So we waited for our second night train... in silence and tears... hoping for better luck with the Swiss trains.
posted at: 17:55 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Back to Italy
Rome... again... That's not exactly what either of us wanted and yet we find ourselves here yet again. Only for a night and mostly to do errands and stuff... Though since we missed it the first time around we thought we'd check out the Sistine Chapel. So we headed over there in the morning to have one last "best cup of coffee in the world" and see the god-ish things again. The last Sunday of the month the Vatican museums are free... and BUSY. So one look at the line and Maria and I independently decided that this was actually a BAD idea. So we started walking over to the good coffee and low and behold... the piazza was FILLED with people. We went in a little to listen to what was going on and indeed the POPE... of all people was speaking over a mega-phone. We thought it was mass so we stayed a bit just to actually say we had heard the Pope give mass even though we couldn't understand a word of it. Half because we couldn't speak Latin, and half because the pope speaks a lot like "grmmgrrmmmrrrmmgrmmm aghrma mumble mumble mumble" Anyway, even though I couldn't understand I really didn't recognize ANYTHING... and being the good little non-catholic that I was a the family I should have. Looking at the 100,000 or so people gathered and the big "PACE" rainbow flags and the equally as prevalent banners with multiple flags emblazoned on them... that and asking the women in one of those little souvenir shops, told us that it was indeed a peace rally on the very day that the Iraqi Elections were held and the Pope's little speech was a blessing on the peace rally. Of course it was the ONE DAY that I forgot my camera, so we grabbed a quick onetime use camera and took pictures of the hundreds of Sunday school groups, all kids of ages 5-15 clear out. It was amazing. The first actually sincere thing I've seen happen in the Vatican. And this concluded our brief stay in Rome off...
To Bologna, where we did a lot of nothing... which was exactly the plan... we stayed in a FABULOUS three star hotel... where they were nice to us... gave us soft towels... bad pop on TV... what more could we ask for. We unloaded quite a bit of CRAP that we had accumulated or decided that we didn't need anymore and our bags got INFINATELY lighter... THANK GOD!!! We managed however to book it across bologna twice in our brief stay there and the rest on the train was much needed as we headed to VENICE!!!!
Yes that's right people Venice. Does anyone know what happens in Venice at the beginning of February? The very DAYS we were there? That's right... NOTHING... I mean... CARNIVALE!!! As if the Posters everywhere saying... Hey you guys!!! It's CARNIVALE!!! Wasn't enough, we asked the tourist office lady if it was indeed carnivale... and she gave us the WEIRDEST look we've gotten yet and said... uhh... yeah! everyday... and not only was it carnivale!!! There was also a physics museum, AND a Music Museum. Venice was really shaping up to be awesome. It got better too... we checked into a PRIME LOCATION hotel, right on the grand canal with not one but TWO windows with a full view of the grand canal. We headed out for dinner and we met Valoen, the vice-president of post-production for Lion's Gate, the company who released Fahrenheit 911. It was very nice to discuss things like Iraq and American politics with an American for a bit... well an American who wasn't an idiot. But we discussed other things like funny travel stories and all in all had a very nice dinner. It turned out she was staying in our hotel as well so we walked back and she showed us the carnival costumes she had made which really were fantastic. We also saw the decorations she had put up in her room to make it more welcoming. She was really quite a cute woman. She gave us fans and flowers to help us feel festive which we were just about beginning to feel. The next morning... bright and early.... we had a very nice hand delivered breakfast in our room and then we headed out, ready for action. We took a vaperetto over to the islands of Morano and Burano, famous for the Glass and Lacework respectively. We saw a lovely glass museum where we saw many different stages of popular glasswork and did some shopping at which point we had some lunch. It was quite frigid especially on the water and Maria and I were exhausted so we headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit. We had gotten tickets to a concert featuring several arias for soprano and Baritone from a few different opera's unfortunately there was also some Offenbach but it was quick enough that it didn't ruin the whole concert. It was one of the ""Carnivale" things so all the performers were in traditional 18th century dress which was very quaint. We were too tired to buy masks earlier in the afternoon so the drunken debauchery would wait until our last day in Venice... trust me... we had scheduled time for masked drunken debauchery. So we headed to bed in preparation for said event. At this point we were starting to be a little surprised that there was indeed no one dressed... as anything... A person here and there but really not much... We looked at some of the brochures and the cheapest specifically "carnivale" event (costume required which is the equivalent of about 100 euro) was 80 euro. Not something we were willing to pay but we figured... HEY.. It's a STREET PARTY right... we'll just.... Be drunk and debaucherize on the street... for FREE.
Which brings us to... our last day in Venice. After a very nice Breakfast... we did a bit of shopping trying to take care of finding a few gifts and of course our Carnival masks... how could you be in Venice... during CARNIVAL... and NOT get a carnival mask... eventually finding just the right one for everyone... we headed to the Physics museum. We found the street it was on... looked for it... couldn't find it. Luckily I have our handy CELL PHONE... so we call and figure out, through a lot of broken Italian the number of the museum. So we went in... to find... a HIGH SCHOOL. We wandered around the high school for a bit finding no trace that a museum was there... would be there or had ever been there. So, feeling remarkably like we were trespassing we left the high school... looked around in the other doors, opening into very foreboding empty and dusty rooms and eventually gave up. No physics museum :( but the worst part is that it was so close to within our grasp we were standing RIGHT THERE... and no physics museum. Both Maria and I were pissed but... we decided Ice cream could fix everything. But we couldn't FIND any ice cream and by the time we could I wasn't hungry for any freaking ice cream THANK YOU. But, we decided to lift our spirits with the music museum. Does anyone remember the prolific amount of music that came out of Venice?? Yeah like... Vivaldi for instance, Albinoni, Monteverdi... yeah them... well... there was an exhibit on Vivaldi... but the entire size of the museum was one room... and not a very large room either... a rather... small room... I did learn some interesting facts about Vivaldi... he had asthma, and was a priest... but he couldn't serve mass because it wasn't good for his asthma... so... he wrote bucket loads of music instead, much to the churches chagrin it seems. OK well that was disappointing but... we had some drunken debauchery to do... and so we headed over to where the pamphlet said the STREET PART-AY was. And there was... no.... party... nothing... not even people... in fact... there were LESS people in the "party place" then there was in the rest of Venice... So, this was the last straw... I ranted and we've all heard me rant before... this was quite a rant. Mixed with some nastiness, and quite a bit of dumb humor about the crappiness of our situation and even more bitterness about the lack of... fun in Venice... especially during Carnivale. We found the restaurant we wanted to go to during said rant... and as we were about to go inside. The building tension with Maria and the overall disappointment came to a head and BOY did it explode. Maria and I had quite a blowout. Well... for us... I walked away and realizing I was hopelessly lost after about 3 steps I wanted a map... but SHE... THAT SHEEEE had the map... (Being very angry I didn't remember that I indeed had a map in my bag at that very moment but this fact is irrelevant) And so... since... that WOMEN... didn't want to give me the GOD DAMN MAP... I sat with her at dinner... staring at a very particular point a bout 4 inches above the top of her head. That lasted about halfway through dinner at which point... we did what we usually did, talked over all the crap, realized we weren't ACTUALLY mad at each other we were actually mad at ourselves for not making the other one happier, and mad at Venice... for SUCKING... when it's supposed to be awesome. But dinner was good... and we both drank a significant amount of alcohol... for me this is not a very significant amount... but we were relatively drunk... and proceeded to debaucherize. Which... we did very well... wearing our newly bought masks... and taking interesting detours to try and find where Venice had hid carnivale... unfortunately we had no success but we took some funny pictures and went to catch our very first night train....
posted at: 17:53 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Don't leave Plaka
First off, let me apologize for the horrendous formatting of my last post. Secondly, I know it's horribly misspelled, If I had the time I'd write it where there was a spell check and then transfer it but I don't. But I promise this time I won't forget the cute little html tages that actually put the little breaks between paragraphs... like this:
Well if could offer you a little bit of advice. If you're ever going to visit Greece, stay in plaka, walk in plaka... and DON'T LEAVE PLAKA!!!! It's the center of the city where all the interesting ruins are. Note: if you want to go to the planetarium or the cultural center... DON'T. Ok now that I've been overly harsh. The planetarium, which we went to yesterday, and the cultural center, today's brilliant adventure were really awesome. Once you got there. Let me start from the beginning ( random quote: "let me explain... no there is too much... let me sum up...")
So, yesterday, we woke up, in no hurry, for breakfast, and then off to see the musical instrument museum. This housed Greek popular musical instruments, and some of them were really bizarre like the "lyra" with three strings tuned in perfect fourths. And then there were the little mandolines... which I SERIOUSLY almost bought. This was really neat, each station had an audio sample of each instrument.
Then we went over to the Roman Forum. This was old, ancient even. But the Greeks seemed to care a lot less about the Roman stuff. There was no significant reconstruction effort, and you could walk all over the ruins. Which was neat and we did so, since we do love to walk. And then, we grabbed some Gyros for a quick lunch. (mmm... Gyros). Then we wondered around for a good... ohhh... 5 HOURS. Through the flea markets and side streets just looking at all the cool stuff for sale, and buying some of it. Including some really neat wrap around pants, that are very me in the fact they are loose, as loose as I tie them... so they be EATIN pants. We bought into the whole idea of the Greek national fidget which is great. it's a string of beads, not religious, that you play with constantly called "worry beads" I wanted to buy some for everyone I know, but I resisted the temptation since for the most part it's just me that worries constantly. Though if I thought grandma would use them I would have bought some for her for sure.
We then headed over to the science museum. We had gotten the address from the tourist office guy. Now in our experience when they say it is a "long walk" they are catering to normal americans not Maria and I. Well this guy... it's a freaking LONG WALK. And not only is it a long walk... its a long walk, on a highway, where they tend to RUN OVER pedestrians. But we walked none the less. Beginning to hate greece by kilometer number 4 we finally got there. There was an actual show about stars! This is a rarity now-a-days for planetariums. It was as about stars as we would have liked, more about the planets and how they are all filled with water and MEEthane. (which, for those of you don't know ISN'T TRUE or at least we dont' KNOW) So Maria and I over-analyzed it on our nice... comfortable taxi ride home.
We ate a small dinner and then CRASHED. Funny how walking 10 kilos will do that to you.
And so on to today, We woke up, still a little sore from yesterdays adventure but refreshed and ready for action. We headed to the cultural center, another, slightly shorter only 2 kilos, walk along a busy, and very DANGEROUS highway. But we got there in one piece. Their exhibit, lucky us, was one about the history of mathematics. Obviously geared toward younger children, it was a little juvanile but we did learn a bit and it was very interesting. We also feel like we can now leave Greece, having successfully paid homage to the foundations of modern mathematics.
The long and slightly less treacherous walk back tired us out, especially after yesterday. So we actually sat down for lunch today which doubled... OK tripled the cost, but the nice seat was worth it. We saw, through a lovely gate the temple of the Olympian Zeus since it apparently closed an hour and a half earlier than every other day. But we made up for it by doing some more shopping, making sure we got everything we needed.
and so here we are.... back in our smokey internet cafe. We leave, flying this time, for Rome tomorrow and then a real WHIRLWIND of travel starts, as if it really hasn't been bad enough already. I don't know, again, when I'll be able to update again. But I will when I can.
posted at: 11:22 | path: | permanent link to this entry
But the sea was a lovely shade of blue
Well, here we are again, in another cozy, smokey internet cafe where I'm spending a third of what I'm making in order to get this stuff out. But, I thought I'd catch you up about the last few days while I'm waiting for my Fortran compiler to download. And so we begin.
After the "Ruined" day in Rome, we prepared for our trip to Greece. Which I was rather excited about since I love boats and I got to spend the night on one without much fear of dysenntary. So, in order to actually CATCH this ferry we had to leave Rome at 730. So 6:15 we were awake and ready for another exciting day of travel.
We got on the train to Bari, a rather dull port city, by 7:30 after a quick breakfast and we were sitting in the Bari train station by 12:30. At which point we went outside, in the rain, because this is me, and of course it was raining. And waited for the bus, where luckily we were only witness to ONE fight, that lasted the whole 40 minutes we were standing, in the rain don't forget at the bus stop. So, hopping the bus to the ferry port, we got there, got off the bus too early, since no one actually knew where we were SUPPOSED to be going, or at least they didn't feel the need to tell us when we asked, and proceeded to walk, in the rain mind you, the 500 meters to the port, where we checked in. we were the lucky ones, claiming dorm beds since we had a first class ticket for only 6 Euros. I was psyched.
.... and then we waited.. for 1, 2, 4, 5.5 hours... in the ferry port... in the barren, sterile ferry port. But I wrote some letters, and sent them. Oh that was fun. If you had a choice between stray... possibly rabid dog... and LAKE... which would you choose. On my way to the post office to send said letter, I was confronted with such a choice and I chose lake. Unfortunately my sneakers would have much prefered that I had chosen dog. So, I dried them as much as possible with a hand dryer and changed into my other shoes... stilletto boots. OH, yeah. So, finally ready to board the boat, in the rain. We picked up our luggage, in my boots, and headed over to check in. Oh the boat was nice and MAN were the people mean. I've never witnessed such contempt for young people before. I mean, we were staying in (what appeared at first glance) to be a 3 star hotel. But was merely a 1 star hotel, with a bright and shiney painted exterior. We weren't allowed to sit on some of the couches... because... well they didn't actually give us a reason other than we were landing somewhere in 3.5 hours. But, nevermind. That was fine. Seeing as I love boats, seasickness is never really a problem for if it were, we all know I would not love boats. But at about 2 in the morning. I was getting to feel the sloshing of the boat transferred to a very sickening sloshing in my stomach. And Maria, who is irrationally afraid of water the way I'm irrationally afraid of Vomit, was not particularly comfortable either. So we spent some time in the lounge which actually seemed to be falling apart at the very seams. Luckily we had bought a season of Alias to keep our minds occupied by something other than our impending doom.
About 15 and a half hours after getting on the ferry, we disembarked, very tired and even more aggrivated. This would make it somewhere around 27 hours from when we first left and we weren't close to being done. We found that the next train to Athens was not for another two and a half hours and so we settled into the train station, the sterile BARREN train station for another few hours of waiting.
At this point I must interject with the happiest thing that had happened to m in 27 hours. A little old greek women, saw me doing some cross stitch and promptly decided to help me. Which she did greatly by showing me a new technique to make it go faster. She didn't speak any english though, and the entire lesson was done through pantomime with her mouthing the words in Greek. Of all of the countries I've been in (Yes I know that is only two this trip, but counting the 4 or 5 others) the Greeks really do seem the friendliest. The men, perhaps a little TOO friendly especially where their eyes are looking. But, they are the friendliest none the less.
And so, after said little ray of happiness, we got on another smoke-filled train and headed to Athens, for another 3 and a half hours. We finally arriveded and we were greeted by a rather scarey looking guy... and nobody else. Since we REALLY had no idea where we were going we figured we'd hop a cab but he promptly refused to take us where we asked and told us to take the metro pointing in some general direction that... there didn't seem to be any metro. When reduced to almost clawing eachothers eyes out, we decided to ask the scarey man where we were going. Scarey man actually turned out to be very nice and lead us to the metro, and pointed us to the right station. After about an hour of wandering around the station, taking the metro and wandering around the streets of Athens, where, in case you had forgotten we can't actually READ anything, since it's all greek, we got to our hotel. Which is very nice, with ridiculously expensive internet, a cute little courtyard, we have a little balcony and our own seperate beds. A little sun burst through the clouds of our trip... we even had a REAL SHOWER... that I could bend over in as opposed to awkwardly sqwatting to pick up my shampoo.
Today has been filled with more ruins and some Excellent Gyros. We got to see the Parthenon which, having seen both I hope to no longer confuse with the Pantheon. We saw the Theatre of Dyonisus, and some other ruined things on the acropolis which, were really quite stunning. There is also an observatory on the acropolis which we headed to in hopes of some scientific discovery, by which I mean discovering something to do relating to science. Walking through the beautiful hillside of the acropolis, with a fabulous view of the sprawling urban countryside of what they call Athens. We happend accross some very LARGE very ANGRY dogs which no one seemed to own, they however seemed to own the 500 meter radius around the observatory and they were NOT happy that we were tresspassing. Grabbing onto eachother for dear life, and for hopefully some sanity, neither one which we really got. Maria and I walked quickly, quietly and calmly away from the dogs, chanting silently to ourselves "don't show fear don't show fear don't show fear" After reaching the gate, which was VERY luckily ajar, (the dogs must have forgotten to close it since they seemed to be the only ones upset that we were inside the fence.) we hooted and hollared and held back the bile of fear that had rissen in our throats. Hoping that the adreniline would go away without leaving so exhausted we couldn't climb down the giant mountain we had climbed.
We then headed to the tourist office, with not much hope in our hearts, to ask our usual science question where we usually get no answer at all. Walking in, we were greeted with the same blank look we always got when asking the question but was quickly changed into a flurry of activity. Wait.. you mean he's going to FIND OUT for us. And, he did. He gave use lots of information, lots being a relative term cause there isn't actually lots to do related to science in Athens. And so we have information of the physics foundation in Athens, that has attatched to it a planitarium. Some musical museums and possible shows to go to. And pretty much anything we could want.
Now, we are waiting for dinnertime, living meal to meal as it should be when surrounded by good food, and then perparing for another exciting day in this magical land called Greece.
posted at: 11:07 | path: | permanent link to this entry
The extra day in Roma
1/23 So we had an extra day in Rome because of the little sickness detour we took and the crazy idea that they shouldn't run the ferries on Sundays. But tomorrow we depart for Greece. Today however was the day of ruins. And unlike the other days that have been ruined, this one was not. It was just full of lots of HUGE ancient things. Which was very nice since ever since I was little I was in love with the ancient Roman civilization. It was truly awe inspiring to look at these huge structures and just imagine that they had been standing for thousands of years. And on top of that they were massive. I mean, these people had some serious structural mechanics intuition because a lot of these structures couldn't have been made today without A LOT of thought. We visited the Coliseum, the Baths of Caracalla, the Roman Forum and the Palitine hill. I really respect the Romans that they made such prominent buildings just to sit around and think and talk about stuff. I wish that we still did that. It would be great that people would actually set aside time to just... think and discuss.
Afterward, we looked around for some last minute shopping things, like reading books for the 21 hour trip we've got tomorrow. I've gotten quite a bit more reading done this trip than I expected. I'm already mostly done with both books I originally brought with me. Anyway, we just finished packing, getting a little of tired of travelling which could be bad since I've got 6 more weeks to go. But as Maria put it today, I'm really excited for everything before I go home but I'm really excited to go home. These past two days have been very homesick days. But our trip starts to pick up some speed the next few days so, I'm hoping that will wipe out some of the actual THINKING my brain does. But regardless of my desire to go home, at the moment my desire to move on from Rome is even stronger, I'm beginning to feel we've worn out our welcome and I'm glad we're moving on tomorrow. Especially because the real science part of our trip picks up a bit after Greece. Seeing as I have to catch a 7:30 train. I will bid you adieu... for NOW!
posted at: 14:29 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Update No.1 from the wonderful world of Europe
OK well, I've been a horrible person when it comes to actually updating everyone. My apologies. It's been a little hectic and weird trying to get in the groove of things, and this is mostly because there is no groove. (Quick Disney quote for those you who know it. "Beware the groove... the GROOOOVEE...") Anyway, here is an itemized list of the days of my journey so far, but I promise to be more diligent in my updates from now on So:
1/10 - leaving NY Kennedy Airport at 9:05 on an Air France flight 11 which felt strangely familiar except I was less flustered and actually had a brain in my head this time. The flight was quiet and rather uneventful but this sick sense of uneasiness pretty much grew until we landed which was actually on...
... 1/11 When the full realization, which I had not allowed to dawn on me until now, that I was indeed gone, for two months, by myself pretty much and there was no turning back. The no turning back part was the reason for the unwillingness for realization until now. However we got off the flight and proceeded to Paris with my powerful French conversational abilities, which are, unbeknownst to me growing somewhere deep inside me and just waiting to get out. I successfully got us to the right general direction and we found what will later be known as Communist Block Hostel, being in a very nice part of town, very near Karin, easy access to the metro and the like, with breakfast included and simply RETCHED. We got there during lockdown, I mean lockout where they take all of the unsuspecting guests role them around in dirt and grime and make them wander the streets of Paris for hours with no way of cleaning themselves, I mean, don't let you into the rooms from 10 - 3. So, we stored our luggage and dragged our, tired, jet-lagged, dirty, and sad bodies to the nearest phone booth. Where we attempted to call SOMETHING familiar and let them know we were actually alive and... mostly well. So, As much as I've actually used the phone card BEFORE, my ability to remain fully functional was nil and I sat in a phone booth for 30 minutes yelling at the automated lady to SPEAK ENGLISH DAMNIT. Reduced to horribly embarrassing tears I finally just pushed the *4 that was needed, and the automated lady kindly connected me, first to Adam's answer machine and then to Karin's, so much for a friendly voice. At which point, Maria in a failed attempt at helping me remain sane, brought me to a coffee shop where we could get some food and compose ourselves. That pretty much ended up being her drinking an espresso and me crying my eyes out while French people stared at us. Eventually, however, I composed myself enough that II stopped mumbling things like... I just want to go home, and who really cares about physics anyway. Realizing that this was indeed dumb and who was I kidding EVERYONE cares about physics (even though I still wanted to go home). Figuring that a little electronic fun was in order we decided to get my really cool new blackberry unlocked so that I could access my email and actually be reachable while I was here. So, as the American cell phone salesman instructed we headed to the first available cell phone store where we showed them the phone and said, in quite a bit of pantomime... " Can you unlock this please?" to which she very politely said... No. But pointed us to someone who could. And after going through the elaborate pantomime yet again. They said... oh yes sure we can... ooohh WAIT. This is a blackberry... no we can't do that. So we went to another store where, we pantomimed and were again... shot down. So, we now had a very useless but really NEAT phone-like contraption. Anybody want to buy a blackberry? At this point lockout was almost over so we headed back to the horror... ahem... HOSTEL... pardon. And we moved our luggage up to our rooms and as much as I wanted that shower to begin with, I lay down and CRASHED. Waking up at about 6 we headed out for a quick dinner, which turned into a long dinner, which turned into a REALLY long dinner where we managed to plan our ENTIRE trip. Funny we couldn't make ourselves sit down and do it BEFORE we left the country. Now, we went back, to the place that shall from now on remain nameless to read and wind down. But little did we know our friendly roommate was home, and goes to bed at 9 so, we quietly climbed in beds, which any sailor, having been at sea, for a considerable amount of time, would have found to put it lightly very uncomfortable. The towel wrapped in rag placed gently under my head and small piece of... well I don't really know what It was but I heard someone refer to as a blanket, which is really the only reason I knew what to do with it, pulled to my chin the first comforting thought came to me, if I wet the bed, it would be well protected and the hard plastic mattress could be easily wiped clean. With this small bit of solace, I stared into the darkness contemplating how to arrange the number of days mathematically so it seemed shorter until I drifted off to sleep.
1/12 - Don't get me wrong we were having a GREAT time. And we woke up at 3am bright eyed and bushy tailed, and sat around, uncomfortably still as to not wake Josephine, by the loud plastic-y crinkle of our beds. And then we woke up at 6am, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and sat around, uncomfortably still as to not wake Josephine, by the loud plastic-y crinkle of our beds. And then we woke up at 8:30am... really tired. To the sound of Josephine bright eyed and busy tailed not bothering to be still and hence waking us with the loud plastic-y crinkle of her bed. Up and out of the hostel by 10, sneaking past the guards, I mean, desk attendant, and into the sunny streets of Paris. Where, I realized that, though it might have seemed like this trip was going to be a breeze, I hadn't finished my grad school applications. And doing this in a country, where keyboards aren't the same as at home, and I don't really have everything I need, is pretty nerve-wracking, as if it wasn't bad enough. But, somehow I managed to actually finish it and pressing all those "submit" buttons was a good feeling. Now, we had to once again try and tackle the cell phone problem. Which we did, Rather effectively, by spending another $500 on ANOTHER really cool cell phone-like contraption, this one by Sony Ericsson with neat features and the ability for me to use it when I go back if I so desire. All this did take me a few hours however, and we were STARVING. But no rest for the weary. We trekked across town grabbed something on the way, and headed to the Rodin Museum managing to fit in a few more errands, including the train station and the post office. We LUCKILY got there five minutes AFTER it closed. Though we did get to walk around the gardens and pose with all the statues. (Another mindless quote: they showed us "how to dress cool and wear their hair in interesting ways") At which point we trekked back across town, met Karin for drinks and to get my cell phone SIM card. Which was very nice. Good to see a friendly face and nice, as always to see that particular friendly face. We then had a very interesting version of an "American dinner" a cheeseburger but, the cheese wasn't melted it was POURED onto the burger. Which made things a little interesting as far as eating was concerned, but good none -the less and we headed home for another quiet night of staring into darkness. We got there at 8:30 just as Josephine the Big Friendly German (BFG) was getting into bed and managed to actually brush our teeth and wash our faces before we climbed into bed and tried to be tired.
1/13 And today was our last day in Paris, we packed our belongings, slowly as if to prolong our stay, patted our plastic-y beds one last time, looked around at this place that we would never refer to as home, and sadly turned our heads to a new day. (Bursts into random song "sad to say I'm on my way... won't be back for many a day, my heart is down my head is turning around I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town") well the little girl we left at the hostel was none to happy but she'll get over it. They'll find her a nice home. And so our departure for Cannes was. The TGV is VERY nice and I say that only after some experiences that shall be described in later dates. Which we took down to Avignon, and I relived a little bit of my childhood as I stood looking at the Pont d'Avignon (quick flashback to grandma singing me to sleep, French nursery rhymes ringing in my ears.) And then we headed back, having a VERY successful bout of restaurant conversation with a French women who we ALMOST fooled into thinking we spoke her language. And proceeded down to Cannes where, after the place that shall continue to remain nameless, we stayed in the most LUXURIOUS one star hotel I've ever seen, with a 3 floor walk up, a shower that WORKED... and well does it really matter it had a shower... that WORKED... Getting in a little late, we took a bit of a walk down to the beach and then called it a night.
1/14 Today's the DAY... the sun is shining... the tank is clean... WHAT?!?!? The TANK IS CLEAN!!!... Well that was pretty much the start of our day except replace... "The Tank is clean" with... "Maria is sick". But GOD DAMNIT MARIA GET UP!!!!!... WE'RE GOING TO THE BEACH... and, so she did. AND OOH THE BEACH!!! Glorious, we had beautiful weather, a little cold to actually romp around in a bathing suit but I put my feet in the Mediterranean. And frolicked in the sand and contemplated the concept of the Atom and did all the things you should do on a beach. I made Maria stay much longer and much closer to the water than she would have liked but what are friends for. We decided to explore a bit of the city and so we hiked up, and I say hiked rather than walked because Cannes is not very... how do you say... flat. We found a museum that had the WEIRDEST stuff in it. Like, Middle American ancient artifacts. It was about 10 rooms, but it did have a tower with a panoramic view so, we took some pictures and the museum was surprisingly interesting, regardless of it's randomness. At which point we marched right back down to have some Crepe... mmm chocolate.... And watch the sunset on the beach. All in all a relaxing day, much needed and it actually got me excited about the trip, Which I greatly needed. It also was the beginning of the second official name of this trip, the first being, "Tour de Physics 2005" and the second being... "Fat Camp 2005" because averaging the amount of walking we did, Maria and I should both be about 10 pounds lighter, and in EXCELLENT cardio-vascular health by the time we get back.
1/15 And so the adventure continues. We marched RIGHT on like good Christian soldiers but with much less God, and a little less bloody warfare. At 6:00am we were awake, and by seven we were standing on a platform, breakfast eaten, bags dragged, and lunch bought, waiting for the next train to Nice where we planned to head off to Italy, Florence in particular by way of Pisa for the day. We had carefully planned our trip taking into account layover s in Nice, and some time to explore Pisa. (Another random quote... are you people getting these?? "And he'll be DEAD before DESSERT") except the plan was to be in Florence before dessert, hopefully in time for dinner. In Nice we went to buy our direct ticket to Pisa via the 9:00 train. Marching, still like Christian soldiers which involves a slight crick of the neck and a favoring of the left leg, up to the ticket counter we proudly proclaimed purpose, again like good Christian Soldiers, only to be stared at blankly, and it wasn't even the language barrier this time. We had to take the 8:30 train to Ventimigli and figure out the Italian trains once we were already over the boarder. We quickly dropped the Christian act at this point and returned slightly war torn but still hopeful at our trip yet to come. And so, after a short train ride, of about an hour and a half we arrived in Italy.... HOORAY... or so we THOUGHT. We asked for the next train to Pisa, Maria taking over of course because I have been rendered completely incapable seeing as everyone now spoke Italian. OH, there isn't actually a TRAIN to Pisa we have to go to Pisa via, Genoa that didn't leave for over an hour. And then we had to sit around in Genoa for an hour, to hop a train to Pisa that would get us in just before dinner. Which left us NO time to get to Firenze for dinner and to check into our hotel now did it. OK OK we'll skip Pisa, give us your next train to Firenze then... Yeah ok... They kindly explained that they HAD given us the next train to Firenze... via Genoa and Pisa. Well, at least it'll be in a nice train right? Oh well yeah it's a nice train if you don't mind the faint smell of Pee and the broken blinds, broken air conditioning, no electricity, and lugging your bags from platform to platform just to wait... and wait and wait some more. But 5 trains and 11 hours later... there we were in Firenze, battle worn and broken men. Where we stayed in an even more luxurious one star hotel, which was actually more of a small house with a cute old couple that said "ohh bene", and "ladies ladies" a lot when he wasn't calling us "sir". And so our first Italian meal was had... and boy was that worth the trains. Ravioli with butter and sage, stewed wild boar and Tartuffo for dessert.
1/16 You know that song... the one... DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO... the one they always play when the little birdies wake up in the mornings. Yeah that one... well, that's how today was. It was a good morning, mostly cause we didn't have to carry our luggage. We did however have to take another train, back to Pisa to recreate one of the great failed experiments in Physics. To Pisa and Back, in a Roman Catholic Country, on a Sunday. Well OK, we admit it wasn't the brightest Idea but it was the only one we had at the time. So we hopped that train that we were OH so familiar with, armed with a feather. Getting to Pisa, we walked pretty much straight on through the town and found the Tower, and yup, it was leaning. (Random quote: " The first castle I built, well that one fell over and sank into the swamp, the second, that one burned down fell over THEN sank into the swamp, but the THIRD one... that STOOD UP") We climbed the stairs, which were very dizzying and more difficult than originally anticipated. But we got to the top. Or, so we thought... where there was a nice view... but then we found another staircase... which we climbed and came to a bunch of BELLS... which was a little more lean-y and then we found yet a THIRD staircase which lead to the toppy tip top. Which was VERY lean-y to the point of nausea. But, we dropped the feather nonetheless and, just as Galileo discovered. Were unable to accurately time it. Or to time it at all since... PLEASE... you try looking over that ledge when you're ALREADY leaning. So, we proved that we THINK gravity works but we couldn't really tell you. But Maria did note the fact that it had seven bells one for each of the children in my family of decreasing size to match. So, we thought of you guys... and I miss you. But don't get any funny ideas about me being nice all of a sudden.
We then we walked back to the train desperately looking for something to eat but did I mention that it was Sunday in a Roman Catholic country. So we ate at a sandwich shop that pretty much had the taste equivalent of cafeteria food but it was food, so I couldn't complain. And back to Firenze, where we BOOKED it to the galleria dell' academia which houses the famous sculpture of David and some other paintings that no one ever talks about but were quite interesting. Unfortunately someone got this sick idea that it would be good to mix in some modern art and they very nearly ruined the exhibit. Luckily the "old man with varicose veins leg" or " the phantom shoe" was not horrible enough to overshadow the truly awe inspiring presence of David. Also housed in the same museum was a really interesting collection of musical instruments collected by the Medici family. They had a lot of audio and visual stuff that described it, in English and I actually learned quite a bit about the instruments. Yeah, that was some of my music dork coming out. But Maria was patient while I painstakingly read and listened to everything. We then walked around a bit more, found a hole in the wall restaurant down some side street that was very good. And then headed back for some much needed rest.
1/17 - Today, was a science day. It was planned that we would ask the tourist office if they had anything in particular that physics students, namely us, would find particularly interesting and could you please point the way. Well, the man at the tourist office spoke very good, very FAST English and promptly gave us a 15-minute dissertation about many things none of which actually had anything to do with our question. At the end of which we were no closer to being helped but he put a little satisfied check in his "USA" box, and turned to the next bewildered tourist. So, we headed for the one thing that actually said scienza, the historical museum of science. We were actually looking for Gauss' notebooks, which were rumored to be in Florence and if they were going to be there why not look in the history of science museum. After walking over there, we painstakingly looked at every astrolabe and compass they laid out for us. Passed by a good 6 people we took likely twice as long as the average tourist. There was, a fabulous recreation of Galileo's famous ramps and other mechanics experiments, which we got to see demonstrated. We got to see the very magical middle finger of Galileo himself. Flipping us all the bird even after his death... take THAT Catholic Church. And other interesting, and very old electro-magnetic experiments and some wax sculptures of mangled babies. Honestly I prefer electrostatics. We also had the brilliant idea to become science reenactors; if they can do it with war we can do it with science. I'd like to build recreations of old telescopes and experiments, dress up in funny old clothes and reenact famous experiments. I know we totally topped the chart in dorkdom. We met some interesting people, including a women, a science teacher of middle schoolers in New Hampshire who was obviously not used to not being the smartest person in the room and quickly walked away from us when we could explain, and give a brief historical background of pretty much everything she mentioned. We posed the same question we had to the tourist office to the only women in the museum who seemed to speak English and she nearly lost her job trying to help us... but help us she did. She knew where Gauss's notebooks were, and all about how due to bureaucratic nonsense we would never see them (they happened to be about 100 feet from us in an upper floor of the museum). But she did give us a directory of museums and the number of a few places. None of which really seemed that interesting or accessible so we decided to waste some time in an Internet cafˇ until dinner and bed.
1/18 - Today, our last day in Firenze, was spent walking around, the Boboli gardens. They were indeed fantastic but we spent most of our time looking for a fat man. We saw MANY fat men actually but the particular one was made of stone and riding on a turtle. We just HAD to see him but mostly so that I could say I really HAD seen him as opposed to just SAYING I had seen him for pure comedic value. Well, after quite of bit of wandering, and a good bit of hiking, since if you've ever been to the Boboli gardens you find out very quickly that they are not indeed flat as some might have you believe. We got there just in time for things to start getting ugly and we actually found some gardeners cutting off all of the leaves from the bushes to leave very attractive sticks. I did find one flower and I strategically placed it and took a very attractive picture. We saw some birds that looked strangely mangled. And we spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out in what gruesome way had these ducks been attacked in order to leave them in such a state. We thought that had been maliciously caught by a porcupine, and we laughed at them and took pictures but then we realized that they had had their wings clipped, very poorly I might add, and we felt bad and then laughed at them and took pictures. We walked around a little more, and having found the fat man, and directly NEXT to the fat man a ginormous grotto the likes of which I have never seen. A truly fantastic structure with the most interesting display of natural sculpture. Then it was time to proceed on to Rome, which was very interesting. The train ride was nice, not fabulous but not nearly as horrific as train rides passed. We got into Rome at around 5, and took the bus minding very carefully to follow the directions to the hotel. Since two physicists are incapable of counting to THREE (random quote: "one, two, FIVE.... Three sir") we got off at the wrong stop but have no fear WE'LL WALK. After all this WAS fat camp 2005 and we didn't mind this heavy luggage it was a breeze. Well, about a mile and 15 minutes of lost later. We flagged down a taxi in the middle of the road threw our bags in, and jumped in right as the light changed to green. Luckily when we got to the hotel, we didn't actually have a room. Remind me not to make Internet reservations, especially short notice. So the owners, rather apologetically, carried our luggage another block or so to a TWO STAR hotel, where we were to spend the night and return for the other four nights in the morning. Oh glorious, a hotel that gives you SOAP... and a TV with 20 channels, none of which in English, but that's OK, it's TV isn't it and matching decor. You never really realize how important matching decor is until you go without. Tired, achy and ready for bed we decided to head out for dinner and make a night of it. So we sat for a long dinner, and then headed back to our lovely TWO STAR hotel for the night. Gorging ourselves on bad Italian Pop we fell easily into dreamland.
1/19 Glumly packing our stuff after our lovely included breakfast at our TWO STAR hotel we said goodbye and set off back to our little one star hotel only to find out we got a free bathroom attached to our room. Which was really awesome until we realized that said bathroom had a few problems, one is that it was not actually part of the original pluming it was a sort of port-o-potty afterthought that they plastered into the room to make a profit. Which suited me just fine since it was still a free bathroom, until we discovered that the toilet didn't actually work, but we only realized this AFTER it had been used so the two of us staring deep into the bowl trying to determine the least disgusting way to make the toilet paper go down must have been quite a sight. Well, I am getting a little ahead of myself. Oh just HAVING room when we came back in the morning would have been too easy. So we dropped our luggage at the owner's apartment and went to see Rome while our room was actually prepared. The tourist office in Rome was MUCH more helpful than in Florence and we actually sat there for quite some time pouring over brochures and pamphlets and in a short time we had our trip planned. We headed toward the university to make arrangements to see the museum of physics and the museum of mathematics both which were housed in the respective departments at the university. We finally found the physics museum and made arrangements to come see it the next day in very slow but comprehensible Italian. The Math department however seemed to not be very interested in sharing their math museum as it was behind a closed door so we decided to come back the next day anyway and give it another shot. We then headed over to the Pantheon, which I frequently confuse with the Parthenon, but that's next week. It was much more impressive than I had originally expected and my structural Mechanics mind started doing stress diagrams and DAMN. That's some cool stuff. So I was significantly reverent, we saw the last of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Raphael, who is buried there and then we headed over to a little coffee shop on the via Giulia. Maria swore up and down that it was the best coffee in Rome and actually she was right, perhaps in Italy or even all the world. We've been back every day since. We headed to the Fontana de Trevi, which, everybody goes to when they are in Rome so we went. And well you should go to that is SERIOUSLY impressive. As ho-hum as I was about seeing it I'm glad I went. We threw the traditional two coins in over our shoulders and to ensure that I wouldn't look back I booked it RIGHT out of that piazza. Hey, I really wanted my wish to come true. We had some time to kill before dinner so we went to where EVERYBODY goes when they have time to kill...
The NATIONAL PASTA MUSEUM
That's right folks there is an ENTIRE museum about pasta. Didn't know there was so much to learn did you. Well, there isn't actually but we had an hour-long tour of the pasta museum filled with little catch phrases and the same facts, sometimes even the same exhibits quite a few times. But it was worth it just to say we went to the national pasta museum. Then another boring, wow I walked 10 miles and I'm hungry and TIRED kind of night. Dinner and Bed.
1/20 - So today we went back to the University in the morning to make good on the arrangements we made yesterday. The physics museum was pretty awesome. It had Fermi's original radiation experiments and lots of pictures of him and other famous scientists, all standing around together like they WEREN'T really famous awesome people. After walking around there for a bit and making the poor Italian student who was assigned to sit there, a bit uncomfortable we headed out. We really would have gone to the Mathematics museum but we both, almost simultaneously made the executive decision that it was SCAARREY. SO, we walked right on by with the added incentive that we probably wouldn't have understood ANYTHING since it was all in Italian. But, walking out of those hallowed halls was a breath of fresh air and the idea of grad school once again receded into the background. Walking down to a church, I know a novel idea in Rome, we found the museum of musical instruments, which housed some of the oldest instruments in the world, quite a few beautiful and rare instruments from the 19th and 20th century, and even one of the three original pianos constructed by Cristofi. It took us quite some time to get through all the rooms and they aren't even done putting the museum together. It was one of the largest collections of musical instruments I've ever seen, needless to say, I was impressed. We took the bus from there to the Piazza di Popolo, which... believe it or not... had a FOUNTAIN in it. Not a very big one but three not very big ones... and a big stolen stick from Egypt. It also had some rather lousy street performers. An organ grinder with no monkey and a statue guy who wore a sheet and a mask, and kept moving. So we headed down to the Spanish steps, famous for being the one place where is socially acceptable to START a conversation with "come have sex with me" But we managed to escape unscathed and do what any twenty something pair of girls would do while in Rome, that's right do like the Romans... SHOP. So we did... and BOY did we shop. And we found... well, we found NOTHING. For all the bragging about high fashion we were very disappointed in the state of shopping here in Italy. So we cut our losses, got some more of the worlds best coffee and after I managed to contract a SPLITTING headache we made our way back to the hotel. Walking from the bus to our hotel, in one of the LEAST exciting parts of Rome we found a great skirt for Maria, bought it and went home feeling satisfied. I basically stared at the ceiling for a bit wishing the Ibuprofen I had bought would work, but... Italians apparently know NOTHING of pain (quote: that is the sound of ultimate suffering). So, eventually I managed to fall asleep subjecting Maria to a night without dinner.
1/21 - we woke up... STARVING. Due to the lack of nutrition the night before we decided to get some lunch but we wanted to head over to the Vatican first since that was the stuff on the agenda today. We wandered around some and found this really cute, and soon to find out DISGUSTING little restaurant. We were serenaded by the tunes of Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and Beanie-Man, among others while we ate. (N.B. we were in the VATICAN). And so we proceeded to said "holy place" now I say holy place with quotations because the Vatican is by far the LEAST holy place I've ever seen. It is a big pillar rising above the rest symbolizing what is truly wrong with the Catholic Church today. We're standing in the CAVERNOUS, beautifully decorated Basilica with flowers and inlaid Marble and statues and paintings by famous artists with more side vestibules than I'd ever seen with more sculptures, mosaics, huge alters, candles, and pretty much anything you can think of. And then there are strategically placed collection boxes. Like, you could sell this place and feed the poor for generations. Screw the poor; you could feed half of the worlds population. You could feed the poor just by simply scraping off some of the gold leaf hear and there. The lack of reverence in the basilica was astounding. I feel compelled when I walk into a church to have a sort of decency for the worshippers and the particular deity being honored. But here there was nothing sacred. Oh sure it's one of the most holy sites in Christianity. But nobody cared. They were snapping pictures, talking, answering their cell phones, and pretty much anything else rude you can think of. So, in order to make a point, I promptly broke 9 of the Ten Commandments, the 10th to be continued on Saturday since I couldn't very well break the Sabbath, not on the Sabbath. Oh yeah, and sorry Mom and Dad, I had to say some horrible things but, it was all in the name of badgering religion. There were also more confessions than I've ever seen, even if we take into account the proportion and size of the building. And there were many languages to confess in, another fundamental flaw in the workings of Christianity. Go ahead... feel guilty for everything. Repent... REPENT. So, we walked among the dead for a bit, which, was interesting but not gory enough to be awe-inspiring. And then we climbed the dome. In case you were wondering... when walking up all the steps... and NO we didn't take the elevator. The dome seems A LOT bigger. But, we managed to loose a few pounds and avoid heart disease all in the same afternoon so I'd say today was affective. We really wanted to go see all the artifacts that the Catholic Church had plundered from various "heathens" over the years but the museum closed early than it said in our little guide so we missed it, and the Sistine chapel. Which is a shame but it gives me a reason to come back to Rome. So we did what any self-respecting person who has spent all day in the Vatican does... we went SHOPPING. Since I had lost a glove somewhere along the way, (quote: thank you for bringing up such painful memories while you're at it why don't you give me a paper cut and poor lemon juice in it.) I decided it was time to buy some nice Italian leather gloves. And since we weren't ACTUALLY looking for clothes we found really great outfits at this particularly Italian shop, I bought my gloves. We had a nice leisurely dinner and then went home to bed.
1/22 - Which brings us right up to today and the REASON that, I have so much time to write such eloquent thoughts out. My second to worst fear has come true and Maria has spent the night puking her guts out... mmm Yummy. So, we pushed our trip a day back and decided to spend the day in our hotel room, I'll work some and she'll work on not throwing up anymore. It seemed to work out for everyone. We made some calls and it seems as if our original schedule is going to be pushed back a day since Ferry's don't RUN on Sundays. And, so we will have time to see the ruins like the Palatine Hill and Coliseum tomorrow, instead of today.
posted at: 07:42 | path: | permanent link to this entry
On the difference between loss and death.
Having suffered several losses in the last few years I was compelled to discuss the difference between losing someone to circumstance and losing someone to death. The question of harder is one that is hard to answer because it creates a necessity to quantify loss. However, having given the subject much thought I would say that losing someone due to a falling out or circumstance is much harder. The biggest difference is the existence of hope.
In death there is no hope. When my mother died, as a small child, I waited for her to come back, but only because I did not understand the concept of death. Often to deal with death you can simply put it out of your mind. My father let go of my mother by ignoring her existence. He put away pictures, he threw out her ashes, her clothes and stored her valuables. She was never spoken about. She was never discussed. And for all intents and purposes she had never existed. To deal with death, it's easy to remember it never happened. I never worry about running into mom at the grocery store and worrying about what to say or what to do. You can remember them however you want because there is nothing to remind you otherwise. There is no reason to force yourself to get angry with them because they did the disappearing for you, you don't have to make them disappear. When you lose someone and they are still there. The hope still exists. You walk down the hallway looking over your shoulder thinking, maybe if I look like I'm having fun and they run into me something will change. If I could just change this and then see them, they will love me again. My mind races all the time because I know they are still around. I wonder how they are doing and what they are thinking. But I can't know, because I cannot ask them. I have lost a living breathing person as opposed to a silent memory.
Eventually, the memories fade even for the living person and the mind races less. There is no security of telling yourself, if I REALLY needed them, they would be there. Eventually you realize that they wouldn't and that let down every time lets you down again and again. I knew my mother would not be there for my graduation, or my marriage, or my first child, or my future. Easier to digest? No. Not when you are living these important events and when you're noticing something is missing. Their missing is not a lack of their caring. It is completely beyond their control that they are not there. I know my mother would be there if she could but the friends and the lovers I have lost along the way would not, and they have chosen that.
When death is involved you can't second guess your own actions. They didn't die because you didn't love them enough, or you didn't spend enough time with them. You can regret not seeing them but you, unless you're currently serving time for a violent crime, did not kill them.
Even my attempt to clarify it seems futile and poorly done. Every situation is different but for me, the biggest stumbling block in healing is that my love keeps hope alive. And to kill love, you must kill hope but to kill hope, you must kill love. So I am left, feeling trapped, reminding myself again and again; everyone is dead to me.
posted at: 22:13 | path: | permanent link to this entry
What I miss about being in love
Falling out of love has been a long and arduous process but I think I've finally done it. But there are still things I miss. Things I remember about being in love, that I notice are just missing from my life.
I miss being told what I can wear, whom I can sit next to where I can go and whom I can hang out with. There is nothing like being told by someone else that they don't like your friends that they don't trust you, your dress is too low, or your pants are too tight.
I miss being treated like a piece of meat. Having my pictures passed around and asking people "don't you want to fuck her?" I miss being so excited to be somewhere with the person I love only to have them discuss, graphically to the whole room, my body, having sex with me, and what I can do. Having the person I love tell me how hot it would be to watch someone else fuck me or to pass me around to different guys so they can get their jollies.
I miss thinking about them every minute of everyday, loving every minute that I spend with them only to be ignored. To wait for days for them to call me or to hear that they don't think about me except if I'm right next to them. Struggling to stay awake until they call only to constantly fail and miss their phone call cause it doesn't come until 4 in the morning. To buy them presents and make sure they have everything they ever wanted only to hope that maybe they'll make an hour to talk to me or remember that I like flowers, ice cream or chocolate sometimes.
I miss pumping money into them. Give them the world if they need it. Pay for things like computers, car repairs, spending money, anything they cannot afford at the moment with no questions. Only to barely get a thank you or even an acknowledgement.
I miss having nightmares, waking up in a cold sweat, dreaming they are going to beat me. Being scared and not knowing why, scared of saying the wrong thing cause you can't help but be scared of their reaction; that they might snap on you.
I miss hearing promises that no one is going to keep. I miss the talking the talk while sitting on the couch. I miss having your hopes soar only to be dashed on the rocks below as they break another promise. To hear they want the same things you do with your future, they would follow you anywhere, that you're the most important thing in their life, and that they want to be a better person for you. But that only lasts a few hours a few days at most before it fizzles and you get shoved into the background again wondering if it was ever even said.
I miss feeling guilty for everything I do. Sitting for hours while a person cries that you are their only hope and now you're a fuck up too. I miss being told you're no good, again, and again, and again. I miss that sinking feeling as they inform you that you're a disappointment.
I miss being lied to. Finding out that as much as you think happened it was so much more. That things you'd beat yourself up about thinking of the other person was doing since the beginning. Finding that they lied about where they were going so you didn't ask to come along.
I miss that trapped feeling as you spend another night at home holding them, telling them it's OK while you're dying inside but you can't bring yourself to tell them. Feeling like you're not worthy of their sympathy. Feeling like you're problems are taboo to talk about. Feeling dark and alone as you try and be the light in their world.
But most of all I'd have to say I miss feeling loved. I miss looking into their eyes, and knowing that they love you, unendingly, intensely and honestly. I miss knowing that I'm safe in their arms that they will love me and care for me everyday. I miss hearing I love you. I miss planning a future. I miss the flutter in your heart when they look at you. I miss feeling wanted for who I am, all of who I am, good, bad and indifferent. I miss that illusion.
posted at: 21:20 | path: | permanent link to this entry
First Post
This is a test of my new blogging software. We all hope that this will help in order to motivate me into actually posting on a regular basis.
posted at: 17:27 | path: | permanent link to this entry