How do you stop this contraption?

The first half of the semester was all a ruse I tell you. The first couple months, we read, went to class, took notes, saw sunset glow and just generaly thought we had a handle on the course load here in Rome. I wondered what eveyone was talking about when they said that this was the tough semester. Then midterms came and where followed immediatly by the Greece Trip, with 10-Day close on its heels. There was a little time to recoup, and we were all off again for the North Italy Trip, and then Easter came. It's the end of the second week since we came back from Easter Break, and we're all worring about finals next week. In the mean time there were five page papers in Theology, Philosophy, Lit Trad, and History to contend with, 6 1-page journals to write for Lit Trad, and one 2 page Philosophy paper. Tommorow, I have another 5 pager due for Lit Trad, and on Saturday another short one for Philosophy. Once all that is finished, I can try to catch up on my reading and write the take-home (which doesn't mean much since our classroom is in the basement of the dorm) esay for Philosophy.

What I'm getting at here is that if I havn't been the best story teller lately, there's a good reason for it. Now would someone please tell the powers that be to return all the time they stole? It was January yesterday, I sware. To tide you over, here's one of my Journals for Lit Trad. Note the complete and utter lack of photographic evidence.

The Godfather rides my bus.* When one is packed on a vehicle as small and as crowded as one of the COTRAL buses, one can’t help but get a good look and smell at your neighbors, in most cases a far better observation than any right-minded person would ever desire. I usually watch the people around me without taking too much notice of them. I can’t differentiate between any of the newspaper wielding grandmothers, between any of the middle school rats, the high school punks, the luggage toters bound for Ciampino, or the creepy middle-aged bums. I might see the same people every time I get on the bus, or I might never see the same person twice; I have just never bothered to pay that much attention.

Every now and then, someone will stick out in my mind, for instance, the gay couple singing, yes singing, in the aisle and hassling the driver. There’s one particular gentleman that sticks out in my mind. He is in that late middle-aged stage where it is difficult to judge a man’s age – he could be as young as forty or as old as sixty-five – his hair is black and hits his shoulders. He is going grey in his beard, and at his temples. He always wears a baseball cap, a scarf, and about five more layers than anyone else on the bus, wears beat-up sneakers, and carries a black duffle bag.

The Illuminati is run by a housewife in Montana**, which is why I am not surprised to find the Godfather ridding the bus from the black hole on the other side of Albano***. On fact, he does not seem to do much except ride the bus back and forth from Rome. I see him, coming from or going to the city, about once a week.

There is always an empty seat next to him, even during rush hour. He uses this, in some sort of modern version of the ancient Roman system of cliente, to talk to people. The Godfather knows everyone. People will sit down next to him and talk for a while, they sit down looking concerned or worried, and when they leave (you always get up when you finish speaking to the Godfather, someone else might want to talk to him) they look relaxed. A month or two ago, when the gay couple was making a scene, the Godfather called one of them over too him. The Godfather talked for a while, with the young man explaining things every now and then. After they finished talking, the guys stopped causing a scene, and got off the bus two stops later.

I don’t speak enough Italian to know what he does to solve their problems, but he does something. That doesn’t matter much to the Godfather: he speaks English. He knows about our campus and its residents as thoroughly as he knows about anyone else. More than one UDer has had a conversation with him about how the semester is going, along with playing the usual game of twenty questions (‘what’s your major?’ ‘when will you graduate?’ ‘how do you like Italy?’).

Seeing such an important person riding public transportation might be odd somewhere else in the world, but this is Italy after all, and organization stops on the north side of the Austrian border. The Godfather is a nice guy, and whatever he does after he makes the sign of the cross after disembarking from the bus, one can’t help but hope that he will be coming back to dispense wisdom on the bus another day.

-Yami







*he won't be riding it tomorow though, the bus and metr people will be on strike from 8:30 to 16:30
**This one does take some explination. When we were in London, there was a little mix-up with the hostel, we had to wait for a guy who had been staying in our room to leave and go to a different room (which required some searching before the hostel people found an employee who spoke Spanish well enough to convay that information to the guy) and then to change the sheets on the beds. While all this was going on, Nick and Mr. Boy and I sat in the lobby and watched 3 or 4 episodes of Jailbreak, which is a dumb show, but utterly addicting. We couldn't even collect enough energy to change the channel, or maybe that was because they had the heat going full blast and it was a tiny room. At any rate, on this show, there would be periodic segments in which we would see the Illuminati guys plotting, which neccessitated phone calls to the boss. It turns out that the boss is a house wife in Montana.
***it sucks up all the buses and never returns them, this is why when you’re waiting to go to Rome you always see three buses heading the other direction before yours shows up

Quizes

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

You know, I don't connect seeing things clearly with writing for the screen. If you can't see a story clearly in your head, what are you doing writing fiction at all? Let's try this again, and go with my second answer choices.

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you're from. And while you may have some problems being "normal," you'll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it's epic films, important novels, or vivid comics... Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

My own little universe, that's it exactly...

Updates

I'm slowly plugging away with the writing here, but my 1500 -2000 word history paper comes first. On the other hand, I have pictures of Greece up in the photobucket. Click here, or use the link on the right. Also, there's a new link to my Elfwood site, its been around for a while I just don't talk about it. Odd that I'm more comefortable showing complete strangers my artwork than people I know.

If nothing else, maybe I can get caught up with posting my pictures before the semester ends. That shouldn't be to bad, because I can load them while I work on papers, right?

After I finish this paper for history, I can start considering another 4-5 page paper for Lit Trad, 4 more journals for the same, and a two page philosophy paper over Nietzche. Once that gets done, I have final exams. There are less than 30 days left in the semester for me. Where did the time go?

Well this is fun

The latest post is actually under the April Fools post (just scroll down a bit, you'll see it, it's long). I've been working on it and saving the thing as a draft without publishing it since March 31st, so that is the date it's been published under. There's probably a way around it, but I'm tired, so you guys can just scroll down if you really want to know what I've been up to.

You know what?

I quit. I'm tired of writing this, I'll tell people stories and show pictures when I get back to the states, in the meantime, not another word out me.

See you all in July,
Yami


























P.S. Check the date :P

10 Day Stories

What's been going on in Due Santi you ask? (And furthermore, where is your intrepid Rome corespondent and what has she been doing?)
Well, after our return from Greece, we had a week of class, in which time we had a five page paper due for Lit Trad. At the end of the week, the student body literally scattered to the four winds and we went on our 10-day break. We came back from 10-day, turned in two journals for Lit Trad (1 page each, they've both been incorperated into the body of this post) and a five page paper on Aquinas for Theology. At the end of a week and a half, we boarded the buses agian for the North Italy trip (2 nights in Florence, 1 night in Vinice, and 2 nights in Assisi). We got back from that on Monday afternoon, and I'm currently taking a break from writing a 4-5 page paper for Philosophy answering the question "What does it mean to be human?" It doesn't help that tomorow the Doppleganger and I are taking off for Salzburg, to return sometime on Monday.

So yeah, the last post was just an April Fool's joke (I'm told I got a good reaction out of Mom at least) I did mean to post this before leaving for North Italy, but that just wasn't in the cards.

For now, I'm going to post my 10-day stories since I've been working on this draft for a while now and I want to be able to show something for it. I probably won't finish writing about Greece (there's just no time left in the semester), but I promise I'll put the pictures up sometime next week, along with more pictures of 10-Day. Easter's got priority for the next story slot, and after that North Italy, plus anything else that comes up. I promise more and better stories when I get back to the States and have a little time to decompress.

Anyway, on with the show...

So my 10-Day travel companions were Anna (there's only one Anna present for the trip, so the Doppleganger gets her name back) and Andrew. 10-day technically began at the end of classes on Thursday, but our flight to Budapest didn't leave until 6:40 on Friday evening, so we stayed on campus one more night. All students had to be off campus by 10 am Friday, so at 9:59 the three of us, hit the road, massive bagage in hand, or more acurately, on back.

Since we had several hours to kill, we first went to Termini, and stood in line for 20 minutes so we could put our stuff in the baggage deposit before going on our merry way. A breakfast so late that it had morphed into lunch was aquired at a bar/cafeteria near the Spanish Steps, and was consumed on said tourist trap. We avoided eye contact with the people hawking cheap toys, and avoided being accosted by them. Then on to the American Express office to transmute travlers checks into gold cash, our original purpose for approaching the Steps in the first place.

Then we went back to Termini, collected our luggage, and took the bus to Chiampino. We sat around the departures area for a while, then as soon as it was posible to do so, got our boarding passes and checked our monstrus bags. We went through security, played hury up an wait for a while longer, then flew to Budapest.

We found the bus we needed to take into the city, but couldn't find a place to buy tickets, so we hopped on the back and hoped no one would check tickets. We won our little game of roulett with the Budapest Trasnportation Authority, and arrived at the southern end of one of their subway lines (it's such a cute litle system, there are only 3 lines) and began a search for tickets. naturally, the ticket office was closed, so rather than playing charades with a real human being, we got to play 20 questions with a machine. We were joined in our games by a pair of Canadian backpackers who were just as confuesd as we were. The machines did speak English, which helped a bit in what came next. naturally, the ticket machines didn't accept bills at all, and the exchange at the airport left us all 10 Florents short of enough change to buy a ticket. We appealed to the mercy of the lady behind the counter selling train tickets, who, while unable to just sell us metro tickets, did give us all change for our smallest bills, if reluctantly. so, we went back to the machine and descovered that it did not want to accept coins. There's a little blocker thing that only moves aside when its actually time to pay for tickets (to prevent people from sticking things other than money in hte slot) that decided it wasn't going to move aside. So all five of us -- the two Canadian guys, Anna, Andrew, and myself, all wearing big backpacks -- trooped back outside the station to the only other machine we've seen. The 1st Canadian is avle to secure a ticket, and then that machine stops working as well, joining the station wide consperacy against people who speak English as their native language. After poking the touch screen repeatedly, in both the English and Hungarian versions of the instructions, we concede defeat and go back inside, where the 1st machine decides that it's working now. Once we finally all have tickets, we go down to the platform to wait for the metro. There's only half a dozen or so other people who get on when we do, on account of the time and being at the end of the line. Sonce none of us can really read the subway map, our stops are located by counting the stations as we go through them. The Canadians get off two stops before we so, and we wish them well, thinkign that's the last we would see of them. We exit the metro and encounter the first of many ticket checks. We passed, and all said silent prayers that we had fooled with the machines instead of just walking on. Our hostel was easy enough to locate, although true to form, we didn't exit through the door the directions told us to use, even so, we were able to find the hostel with a minimum of fuss.

We checked in, left out stuff and went out to eat. Andrew began his quest for goulash, of which we found plenty throughout our trip, but none spicy enough to satisfy him. We returned to the hostel, plotted the next day's activities, and crashed.

Saturday, we got on the road an hour later than we'ed planned (we realized belatedly that we had forgoten to pack a morning person to wake us up) and crossed the Danube to the Buda side of town. We exited the metro at what the map advertized as a major stop and started looking for a tram to take us further south. Finding nothing identifiable as a tram schedaul or a ticket booth for trams, we asked the people behind the counter at the trainstation portion of the building. Through a combination of broken English, pointing at the map, and interpritive dance, we were led to understand that we wanted tram 18 and we could get tickets in the metro. So we wnet back down two flights of stairs to the metro ticket office, got the tickets we needed and went back abouve ground to the tram. We managed to get on the correct tran, heading in the correct direction, and even got off at the correct stop. We walked down one street, and then up another, which brought us to St. Imre. The original crop of monks who founded UD came fromBudapest, now the monestary itself i s way outside of town, so we couldn't go there, but this http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e104/umbrakatze/Rome%20Pictures/10%20Day/Budapest-CistercianChurch3.jpg was within easy reach. Unfortunatly, in what became a theam fot the trop the church was closed for no apparent reason (top three theories: it was raining; it was Saturday; they knew we were coming and shut the doors to spite us). So we went back the way we had come, and decided that since we were on that end of town, we would go see the cave church. In the '20s, a group of monks (not Cistercians) went to Lourdes, then came back to Budapest and built a mock-up of it. Unfortunatly for us, it was closed for Reconstruction, to the point that it wasn't even worth taking pictures of the outside. We did however sanp up this statue of St. Stephen, and take advantage of the great view of the Elizabeth Bridge. We got back on the tram and took it up towards the castle. We got off thinking 'OK, it's lunch time, we're near the biggest tourist attraction in town, there must be food here.' We were mistaken, a search of the neighborhood reveled one vegitarian place, and two up-scale places. We gave in and went to the one the guidebook recomended. Then we went to the castle, sort of. See we were coming from the south, and there's all sorts of deciptive pathways leading up-hill towards the castle, but absolutly no sinage. It turns out that the only way to get into the castle and palace (and thus to the museums inside them) is to approach from the north, so we lost a goof hour or more going all the way around, but we got a couple of nice shots along the way. We finally made it in, and chose to go to the history museum first, which is located in and on the oldest part of the castle. The sinage was all in Hungarian, so unable to really apreciate anyting on the ground floor, we went down a level to see what remained of the castle Going down the stairs was sort of like walking into the Twilight Zone.

When we got our tickets, we were handed a map , which had the places of intrerest marked, but what the map failed to tell us, was that this "basement" consisted of more then one level, so as we went around the floor, we had to go up and down numerous stairways which had been placed over the centuries with no apparent rhyme or reason. Areas that this map (and the map of the whole museum, which was three stories plus the basement, was squeezed onto one side of an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, with the quality that you would expect from something a 6th grader made all by himself) said were just hallways were full of pictures and wax models of things acompanied by (presumably) explanitory Hungarian text, and areas identified as important places to see (such as the promisingly named Gothic Hall) were just being used as storage for extra chairs. The Gothic hall contained two doors, one through which we entered, and another which was shut and had a really obvious alarm wired to it. We left the way we came, searching for a room on the map which was shaped like a star. We never found it, but we did find the other side of the locked door in the Gothic Hall. An increasingly small series of rooms with household artifacts (such as a large stove) on display ended in a room with a locked wooden door with a really obvious trap alarm on it, which unless we were wildly mistaken was the otherside of the locked door we'ed seen earlier. There was a display of helmets on the wall to our right as we entered, and to our left was a set of stairs leading up about half a floor. At the top of the stairs, where a door leading to the star-shaped room should have been was a large sheat of styrofoam bolted to the wall. It was at this point that the crazyness of the place finaly got to us, and Andrew and I fell to giggling so hard that we had to sit down on the steps.

After that, we found our way out of the Museum, vowed to return one day and slay the minotaur, and moved next door to the Art Museum. The Museum was going to close at six, which gave us a little less than two hours in there, but when we left our stuff at the (manditory) coat-check, we were told that the check closed 15 minutes before the museum did, so if we wanted our stuff back, we would have to be there by 5:45. We agreed to their terms, three months in Italy having innoculated us to anger at such arbitary changes. We wander through the 18th and 19th century art galleries, and are starting to feel pretty tired when we realize that there are still three more floors to this building that we haven't even though about yet. Constrained by time and our hurting feet, we decided to swing through one more arm of the museum, so we look at a display of late-medieval winged alters which was well worth the trouble. After spending the past several hours completly insensable to what we were being shown, it was nice to see something we could understand. This was actually a pretty nice museum, and the signs were all repeated in English, so we knew what we were looking at. Sort of. Maybe. It didn't help that we could read a sign saying that the six foot long by five foot tall oil on canvas we were looking at was "The Reinternment of Louis IV" when we didn't know why he was being dug up in the first place, or why the people doing the digging were all well armed members of the noble class. We returned to the lobby at 5:30 thinking that we would buy a few postcards of works we had enjoyed, just in time to see the gift shop being closed up, so we collected our stuff and went back outside, souvanier-less.

We took a few picture of the Chain Bridge from our vantige up on the hill, and then continued north. We discovered that this part of town -- on the hill and near the castle, but not a part of it -- was where all the cheap resturaunts and touristy shops had gone to hide. We snaped (blury) pictures of the Mathaias Church, or more acurately, of its roof, in the fading light, and descovered that the church was closed, and had been since 4:30. We took a few pictures of Fisherman's Bastion, because it was pretty, than admitted that we would never get a good picture of any of it at night, and walked back to the metro. We took the subway back to the area of our hostel, had a nice dinner and then called it a night.

The next morning, we got ourselves up in time to go around the corner to the 10:30 mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral. We took seats in the very last pew on the epistle side about ten minutes before mass began, giving us plenty of time to examine our surroundings and to decide that we would just leave our coats on because a practical way to heat an open interior space of this size. The Cathedral is newer than most things in Rome (the guide book tells me that it was built from 1851 to 1905), but no less grand. Words are unfortunately failing me at this moment, and I’m afraid that the only way to really understand what the building is like would be to go there, looking at pictures is a distant second.

The choir there – some sort of fancy-shmancy ‘ooh we’re the cathedral’s choir, we’re better than you group’ – turned out to be well worth their pay. Halfway through the opening line of the processional hymn Anna and I turned to each other wide eyed and told one another that we would get a CD of their music if we could find one (we did, it’s amazing stuff). Now remember, that we don’t actually speak Hungarian, so following the order of the service, which we did not have memorized as it turns out, was a bit of an adventure. Some things were obvious: everyone is standing and just made the itchy sign of the cross, so this must be the Gospel; the priest in the funniest looking hat has been droning on for a while now and no body is stopping him, this must be the sermon; everyone is standing and reciting something long at once, so this must be the Nicene Creed; a bell just rung and everyone just charged forward, so this must be Communion, everyone who wants the sacrament, get in line. Other things the Choir helped on, because they were singing in Latin so we were able to recognize this is the Sanctus, this is the Angus Dei, etc and follow the service in that way. But there was one point, where there were two priests chanting back and forth at each other (sort of like they were playing dueling cantors), and part of the congregation stood while the rest knelt, that all three of us completely lost the order of service. By process of elimination we were later able to figure out that it must have been during the prayers of the people (although not being able to understand what was said, and the congregation not taking an active part in them sort of misses the point I feel) but at the time we were quite confused.

Actually, Latin did turn out to be quite useful for us, as our 10 day rapidly turned into a church-hopping tour of Eastern Europe, because the churches are nearly always open (except aparently, in Budapest) and everything else we saw was either being restored, or closed early, or both. Now Andrew knows a little Polish, but it’s conversational Polish, so his vocabulary is pretty well limited to food, the weather, and everyone’s health, and none of us know Hungarian or Czech, which is where the Latin came in handy. All the churches we went to were built well before Vatican II, so all the signs on the important things were in Latin (with hasty little paper signs in the local language hanging nearby), which enabled us to piece together what we were looking at. So in a twisted little backwards way, we arrived at the reason that the Roman church used Latin in the first place – so that everyone, no matter where they were from could understand what was going on in the Church.

After Mass, we went to the street which was advertised as being the main shopping area of Budapest. We cought lunch at the Spring Craft Festival, which was being held in the square just off the metro station, and spent the afternoon moseying down the street. Budapest, as it turns out, is home to more bookstores per square mile than any other city in the known world, and this street had more than one hawking wares printed in all languages known to man. Our wallets did not come through unscathed. We grabbed dinner at a gyros stand (which were all over Budapest, a relic of Hungry's Turkish occupation) and were stopped at an ATM, about to go down into the Metro, when who should we see but our Canadian friends. We stopped to chat for a while, and then continued on our seperate ways.

Our way took us to the State Opera House, where for the cost of $1.63 (or 400 Florents) we saw the opera Jenufa. Jenufa is a Czech opera, and the translation projected above the stage was naturally in Hungarian, so we really arn't sure what the plot was. Anna and I thought we had a pretty good grasp of it at intermission, but then the second act happened and it turned out that the guy we thought was Jenufa's father was really the love interest and her father was the guy we thought was the rival's father. We still don't know who the old lady was or what happened to the child at the end. I suspect that Google could tell me what it is I saw, but the curiosity isn't killing me. Besides, I didn't understand anything else I saw in Budapest, why should that be any different?

We cought a taxi to the airport for 3,000 Florents total, which comes out to about $10 US each, for a ride all the way across town, which was a deal. We ended up spending the night in the aiport for the following reason. Our flight to Warsaw left at 6:40 on Monday morning. We could have spent one more night in the hostel, but in the end it just wasn't worth it, since we needed to be at the airport no later than 5:40 to check-in, which meant that to allow ourselves enough time to get there using public transportation, we would have had to be going out the door by 4 am. In the end we decided that four, maybe five, hours of sleep was not worth paying for an extra night when we could get just as much sleep for free at the airport.

We set a watch, a one person stayed up with the luggage while the other two slept, and we were some of the first people in line when it came time to get our bording passes on Monday morning. We cought a quick nap on the hour-long flight to Warsaw, and that lasted us most of the day.

Richard and Yolna (I'm not even going to try the Polish spellings of their names), friends of Andrew's grandmother, met us at the airport and took us back to their house. We were scarcely in the front door before Yolna said “Maybe you are hungry?” I suspect that in the Slavic languages, the sentence construction ‘maybe you [fill in the blank]’ is used more or less the way English speakers use ‘would you like to [fill in the blank]’, because we encountered the same phenomenon in Prague as well. Knowing what they were trying to say wasn’t much help though, because when a petit Polish grandmother tells you ‘maybe you are hungry’ what she is really saying is ‘we have ways of making you eat, now are you going to do this the easy way or the hard way?’

We decided to do things the easy way and conceded that we were hungry, so we were ushered to the dining room and breakfast was placed before us. It consisted of three kinds of meat, one cheese, two kinds of bread, and a relish tray. We were pretty content, and then Richard opened the liqueur cabinet and offered us our choice of three kinds of vodka, two kinds of beer, gin, or whiskey: all this before ten in the morning. We declined, and after a little negotiation with Andrew’s broken Polish and the broken English of Marta (Richard and Yolna’s daughter in law) we were able to get orange juice instead.

Then we launched upon a whirl-wind tour of Old Town Warsaw, and it's churches. See, Marta appoligized to us, because all the museums in Warsaw are closed on Mondays, but, she suggested "maybe we could see a church". We assured her that we liked visiting churches, so we saw churches. Good Lord, we saw churches. Poland is 98% Roman Catholic, and they are especially fond of John Paul II, because he's a local boy. Warsaw has Catholic churches next door to Catholic churches. It has the church where people came to pray when JP II died last year. It has the Chruch where Richard and Yolna were married. And if that weren't enough, there is random religous art all over the sides of buildings.

To be fair, Warsaw also has a beutiful Old Town square, Medival fortifications, and the presidential palace, but mostly we looked at churches. We got back to the house in time for a late lunch. Once again, we were shepherded into the dining room where we were offered five meats, two cheeses, two breads, a relish tray, some things filled with ground meat which Marta called croquets which were meant to be eaten along with a red borsch soup, mash potatoes, dumplings, and two cakes. The bottles of alcohol had not been moved from where they had been placed on the table at breakfast, but we were also offered a choice of orange juice, cherry juice, and mineral water. Who would have thought that Poland would have really good cherry juice? I sure wouldn’t have, before this trip.

It was then about 4 o'clock and Richard loaded the three of us back into the car and drove for three hours to a little town about 20 kilometers from the Russian border in order to visit two of Andrew’s great aunts. We arrived at the first great aunt’s house at about seven, and we were promptly led to the dining room and told to eat. Now none of Andrew’s relatives knew much English, but the one word they all knew was ‘eat’ (which sounds like ‘it’ when the speaker has a Polish accent) so we ate: three types of meat, one type of bread, one type of cheese, and a choice of sweets for dessert. After a couple of hours in which Anna and I didn’t do much other than smile politely, because neither of us spoke Polish, we left and went to the second great aunt’s house. Great aunt number two lives two doors down from her sister, and when we walked in the door we were told ‘eat’ and shown the dining room, where we were fed three types of meat, one type of bread, one type of cheese, and a choice of sweets for desserts. By the time we left, even Richard was making jokes about how much we had been fed.

We got back to Warsaw at about 1, and were able to deflect Yolna's offers of more food by going straight to bed. We dragged ourselfs up early Tuesday morning for a quick bit to eat, and then the three of us Americans, Richard, and Marta all loaded back into the car and we headed south for Cracow and Czestochowa. We were still sitting in the drive way, working on making the turn out on the main road when Marta pulled out a plastic bag -- aparently from sub-space, since the car was a Toyota Camrey and we were filling all five seats -- full of sandwitches, handed it to Andrew, and told us all to eat.

In the two hours it took us to go from Warsaw to Czestochowa I ate four sandwitches. Czestochowa is the Polish Mecca, and the chief thing people go there to see is the Black Madonna, an icon supposidly written by St. Luke the Evangalist. (Google any three-word combination of the words 'Black', 'Madonna', 'Poland' and 'Czestochowa' and you'll turn up more information than you ever wanted to know.) So we saw the church, it's in a small chapel, made up off four gothic-vaults put together to form a little basilica, the back doors are always open, connecting it to another basilica of equal size which holds the overflow crowd from the first room, all of this in turn is only a side chapel for a much larger cathedral. The Madonna hangs above the alter in her shrine, and the walls of the room are compleatly covered in crutches left be pilgrams who have come to the site and been healed. If you look closely in the picture, you can see little silver medals which show parts of the body (mostly hearts, but also a fair numver of arms and legs), also tokens of thanksgiving from people who have been healed here. Next to the icon hangs the belt that JP II was wearing in 1981 when he survived the assassination attempt, you can see the blood-stains on it. Like all good religous sites, there is so much gold and silver in the room that it is impossible to take a decent picture, with or without the flash.

Outside, there is, amongst other things, a large ultra-modern viewing stand set up for the purposes of holding papal masses. When JP II came here last, he filled the square in front of the church, and on into the street beyond.

From here on out you get the cliff notes version:
After Czestochowa we went to Cracow. The next day Anna, Andrew and I trained down to Prauge, during which ride we had adventures in a station apperantly connected to the Twilight Zone, and also with the Czech Boarder Patrol (why does it take nine guys to check the passports in each compartment?). Prauge was also nice, Anna and Andrew were there two nights, the next morning they hopped a plane back to Rome. The purpose of this little trip was so that he might propose to her at the Trevi Fountin (I've got pictures of the ring, although a quick servay of my photos does not reveal any of them together, odd).
Nick and Treco joined me in Prauge the afternoon A&A left, and we spent one more evening in the city, coming to terms with our camera's inability to take good night pictures and buying swag. The next morning, we hopped the 9:15 train to Nurnberg, because we had rail passes, so why not? We discovered that German is nearly incomprehinsable to Americans when the speaker has a strong Czech acent (although the conducter had no difficulty understanding Nick and I). Upon arrival in Nurnberg, we procured tickets back to Rome, stashed our luggage in a station locker (cheap and secure), then spent the afternoon buming around the Alt Stadt. If you know the right stand to go to, you can find a Drei in Weckle (three of the local sausages in a bun) for a Euro. Turn right at the Human Rights Monument (it you're coming from the Bahnhoff) and follow your nose, and the crowd.
A train that evening brought us to Muenchen, where we waited for about half an hour in the train station before boarding a night train leading back to Rome.
On Sunday, we ate in Termini when we arrived, bumed arround the station until it was time to go back to campus (they wouldn't let anyone in before noon), and then went home. We wern't the first ones in the gate, but it was a near thing.

That's my 10 day story, more pictures to come soon, I promise.

Greece, Part I

I had a five page paper due for Lit Trad this week, so alas I wasn't able to finish writting about the Greece trip, or upload any of the photos that go with it. :( Anyways, here's the first third or so of the trip, I'll be back with the rest of it, pictures, and 10-day stories a week from Sunday at the absolute earliest.

UD is nothing without its traditions, and one of the events that always takes place right before the Greece trip is the G(r)eek Olympics. The class was randomly divided into eight teams of eleven, we donned our best bed-sheet togas, marched out on the soccer field, and the games began. I was on team six, and we failed to win the name and chant making contest, the broom-stick relay, the 3-legged race, the egg toss, the tug of war, or the gum chewing contest. Then Greener* shoved a plate full of whipped cream into Shane’s face and we earned one point for amusing the gods, so we didn’t come in last. After the Olympics we all trooped down into the Capp Bar for the traditional toga party. Technus – the God of Computers – and Caesar both graced us with their presence and shirts with rebellious slogans writ large upon them might have been worn. A good time was had by all.

One of the other events that takes place before the Greece trip is CLEANING. No one can go on the trip unless: 1.) the bathrooms are all clean and 2.) the bedrooms are at the very least not filthy. My Suite won the prize for the cleanest bathroom. ^_^v

Thursday began bright and early, with breakfast starting an hour later than normal and going 15 minutes longer. In a clear sign of God’s approval of our trip, the rain-bearing clouds which had been hovering over Rome for the past several weeks finally cleared up. The buses were loaded with a minimum of chaos and we left only a quarter of an hour late. There were 88 of us Students, all of the professors except Dr. F, and most of the Student Life staff on the trip with us, so we took up two buses. I was on bus number one, Jupiter Optibus Maxibus.** From Rome, we headed south and east across the Italic Penensula where the port of Bari was waiting for us. We stopped three times: twice to use the bathroom and once, at a cold windy auto grill which was pearched on the side of a mountain, to eat the sack lunches that the Mensa ladies had packed for us.

If Italy is shaped like a boot, then imagine where the heel of the foot would be, and that is about where Bari is located. We got off of the bus there, followed Dr. Ht. through a maze of medieval backstreets and arrived in a large Piazza which was empty except for us and a larger than life statue of St. Nicholas. Dr. M spoke a piece about the history of the area (the Normans conquered most of Greece and Southern uitaly at about the same time that they invaded England) then Dr. Ht spoke about the life of St. Nick, and why, as Bobby put it, the statue shows him holding 3 flaming peaches.*** You’ve heard of St. Nicholas. His feast day is the 6^th of December, he performed a numver of miracles including calming a storm at sea, rescuing the children from the brine, and giving the three gold balls. His relics emit a fragrent smell, and exude a water-like substance that has miraculous helaing properties.

For a short time we got to go explore the Basilica San Nicola – a pretty little thing with nothing on some of the other churches I’ve seen in Rome and Greece – including a delve into the crypt to see the relics of the Saint. I bought a postcard, since there was some sort of vigil going on and it felt wrong to be taking pictures while that happening. The church has a small room full of bottles of the oil from the relics, apperantly they get about a liter of water every year.

We gathered in the Piazza again and Fr. Andrew led a prayer. Monsignor F is our normal campus chaplain, but he has a day job working at the Vatican, so he couldn’t come with us. Instead, we had the loan of Fr. Andrew a surfer from San Diego turned Benedictine Monk as our chaplain for the trip. Then we hopped back on the bus and drove around the block to the port, where we played hurry up and wait while our tickets for the ferry were fetched. We boarded the boat at last and settled in for a night on the Mediterranean Sea. It was right at dusk when we finnaly got on the ferry, so there wasn’t really anything to see until the next morning, although I know I was far from the only one who went out on deck to stare at a whole lot of nothing. We were three to a cabin, where smoking was not permited, in marked contrast to the intire rest of the ship. I spent the bulk of the morning alternately out on deck and staring out the windows.

We arrived in Patras, on the Peloponesian Penensula at about 12 local time (Greece is an hour ahead of Italy) hopped back on the bus and continued on our merry way, with much turning to each other and saying in shell-shocked voices “We’re in Greece.” We drove over the bridge spanning the Gulf of Corinth, which was built**** for the Olympics in 2004 using EU money and might be the longest suspension bridge in the world, but Dr. Ht wasn’t exactly sure. He also said “You really shouldn’t miss it, and since you’re on the bus, you don’t have a choice.” We continued along the cost for an hour and then stopped for lunch in a beach side restaurant. I had some good squid. ^_^

Then it was back on the bus for a few more hours to the town of ITea where we stayed for the night. The school provided dinner for us in the hotel, and the food was OK. I wandered around town with the Doppelganger, Mr. Boy, Nick, Bridget, and Shannon, saw the coast, played on a nifty jungle gym and a chess board large enough for us to pretend to be the pieces. Unfortunatly, other people took the pictures, so I’ll have to wait a while before I can get my hands on them. That evening, Mr. Boy, as part of his campaign to get into the local culture, tried Ouzo.***** The Doppleganger has a priceless photo of his expression that I mean to get from her soon. Nick also has a video that I’m planning on grabbing – it’s dark, but you can see Mr. Boy shudder and hear the rest of us laughing at him.

Itea is a quaint little town, and today it has the same attraction that it did in ancient times: it’s a good stopping point on the way to Delphi. So Saturday morning the group checked out of the hotel, we loaded into the buses and started driving. I tell you now, you have not known fear until you have gone around hairpin mountain turns in a bus, on a road with no guardrails and a two thousand foot drop on one side*.

The first stop in Delphi was at the lowest point in the site: the Temple of Athena. Dr. Ht talked for a little bit about where the ancients would go on their way to visit the oracle (they’d begin at this temple for one) and the history of the shrine. We had ten or fifteen minutes to explore the site, and then we moved on. We climbed up the hill, or should a say, part of Mt. Parnassus. The paths are well maintained and well marked, but as I have said before, Dr. Ht walks at about warp factor 6, and if you want to keep up with him** you’ll get quite a workout. Next we went to the Castalian Fountain, which is where pilgrims would wash themselves before continuing into the site. It’s fenced off – one of the few things we encountered in the whole trip that was – and Dr. Ht. talked a little more before moving on. Also located near the shrine was a small statue of Our Lady of the Soda, or some such.

Next we entered Delphi proper, hiked through the site and up to the Temple of Apollo. Dr. Hd spoke a little about how the oracle changed the life of Socrates, and of other Greek notables who consulted her. I got to see where the crack in the earth that the oracle supposedly sat above supposedly was: the area is earthquake prone so archaeologists debate where in the temple Pythia would actually have sat. After that, we were given an hour before we had to be back down the hill to see the museum, so most of the group, my self included, continued uphill to the stadium at Delphi. The Delphic games were part of a cycle of sporting events along with the Pan-Athaneic games, the Olympic games, and others that were a major part of ‘the world of Sport’*** for the ancient Greeks. I concluded that the stadium’s location was actually part of an ancient crowd control mechanism: you have to be in pretty good shape just to get to the stadium. It is a long way up.

We were given about 45 minutes in the little museum in Delphi, which was really all we needed because it’s a tiny little museum. If you have ever heard of anything in the museum it is probably either the omphalios, which the ancients believed marked the center of the world (or maybe it was the center of the world, as with most myths, the details are fuzzy around the edges) or the charioteer. The story with the statue is that when the French were beginning the first excivations here in the mid-19^th century, there was a small town on the site. They took the obvious solution of relocating the whole town to a spot a few miles down the road, but naturally there was one little old lady who did not want to move. Repeated attempts to plead with the lady were rejected and it looked like the French were just going to have to dig around her house when she came to them an offered to move. Apperantly she had a dream the night before, which she took to be a sign, of a young boy, trapped below water asking her to free him. She sold the house and moved to the new town with everyone else, and this statue was found buried underneath the house.

-Till later, wish me luck on 10-day. I'm going to Budapest, Warsaw, and Prague.

*Or at least I think that’s who did it, I was on the other side of the crowd taking pictures when it happened.

** The other bus created a name for themselves that was some sort of sad attempt to rhyme the words ‘ouzo’ and ‘bus’.

***They’re three balls of gold, which are on fire for some reason. You won’t be able to look at a picture of him again with out thinking about peaches.

****The bridge, not the gulf.

*****It’s a Greek liquor made from Aniseed. In other words, it taste like black liquorish with alchol added. If you are ever offered this stuff, pass.

*Although there is a great view of the sea in the distance as you ponder your impending falling-bus related death.

**and you do want to keep up with him

***if I may be so bold as to steal the BBC’s phrase there

I'm back...

I've been in Greece for the past 10 days, it was loads of fun and I'm still toying with the idea of dropping out and moving to Athens. To tide you over until I can get this all typed up, here's a round of funny proffessor quotes, all of which I culled from the margins of my notes. Someone tell me if they are nearly as funny as I think they are.

FromWestern Civilization I with Dr. Ht:

Course intro: “There’s very little to loose except for a little bit of your self esteem.”

Neolithic civilizations and the begings of agriculture: “instead of gathering the famous nuts and berries, now known as granola…”

Ötzi the Iceman: “He’s one of those living… OK, he’s not living.”

The existance of pottery fragments indicates an economic surplus, because pots are used to hold stuff, and then a run down of different types of pottery, including funerary urns. Dr. Ht imediatly realized what was wrong with that statement... “Well, not funerary urns, that means you have a surplus of dead people.”

On Sparta: “And if things don’t go right, they just slaughter the local population and it works out really well for them.”

Cylon: “On the strength of his Olympic victories he became archon, and we could make comparisons to a certain governor of California, but we won’t.”

Pericles’ Funeral Oration, and applying what he says to your own hometown: “Fix your eyes on the greatness of Fargo North Dakota.”

Athens in war: “Do I feel well today? Maybe I can go kill 100 men.”

On Tririemes(sp?): “What Themistocles tried to do was build a kind of SCUD missile or Nuclear Bomb of the ancient world.”

Alcibiades: “He was certainly homosexual in a way that was uncomfortable even for the Greeks.”

Phillip and Alexander: “They have a very strong cavalry, and I just spelled it wrong.”

Carthage: “If any of you want to have an adventure in a Moslem country – and I’m not recommending this – then Tunisia is a nice place to go.”

The founding of Rome, an attempt at class participation: “Then what happens to Romey and Remy?”

Literary Tradition III, with Dr. M:

Intro: “I’m not trying to brow-beat you to stop watching movies and read more great books.. well I guess I am, I’m a professor of literature.”

“Why do people cry when the semi-androgynous Leonardo di Caprio goes down with the ship?”

“Tom Cruise isn’t a heroic fighter pilot, he’s a creepy scientologist.”

“I have a sheet where I say what makes an A Paper, essentially I say make it really good.”

Immigration Office: “The hope is that Dr. Hadley and I don’t get deported, ‘cause that would really mess up the schedule.”

Symbolism in the Oresteia: “If any of you love playing with snakes, I don’t care.”

Aristotle’s Poetics, Rhythm is one of the 6 parts of tragedy: “We’ve all got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?”

Delphi: “It’s irrational to trust in this woman who is high on Ethylene vapors.”

The Birth of Tragedy: “Nietzsche’s really gloomy.”

“It’s UD, you always have to talk about Philosophy.”

Art and Archetecture of Rome, with Dr. F:

“We don’t have emperors like this now, after all we wear pants.”

“Café Grecco: it was the Irish Pub of the 18^th Century.”

The Sistine Chapel: “Adam doesn’t really have life yet, though he’s been to they gym.”

A statue of Saturn eating his children: “It’s completely gory and disgusting and you guys shouldn’t miss it.”

Hercules: “One of the laws of mythology is that whenever a god makes love to a mortal there will be a baby, so Jupiter has like his own posse.”

“Hercules is one of these guys who is never Zen at all.”

“He wears the lion skin sort of preppy style over his shoulders.”

“Hercules had 40 watts of a 100 watt bulb going.”

The Rape of the Sabine woman: “This makes Rome like the 1^st Australia.”

“It’s like the 1^st fraternity prank ever.”

The Via Appia Antica “This was before they invented SUV chariots.”

“It’s hard to sneeze online.”

“I don’t know the answer. We’ll have to Google that.”

Building a concrete dome: “you let your wooden courses sit there until the concrete is cured, then you cross your fingers and take them away.”

Guest speaker over Augustus:

Greece v. Rome is like UK v. US “You have Shakespeare. What do we have? We have the Atom Bomb. OK, that’s cool.”

“You bring obelisks from Egypt to Rome and set them up. It’s sort of like having a space program.”

“Not only does he become the richest person in the world overnight, but he’s also the only person in the world who can put on his resume ‘I am the son of a god.’”

“You can tell he is an effeminate Eastern Persian because he’s wearing pants.”

“Everything was leading up to … ME!”

Western Theological Tradition with Dr. S. He's not very funny in class, but I have a list of goofy things he said in Greece that is as long as my arm :

The letter of St. Clement: “This is not just papal plagiarism going on.”

On Neo-Platonism in Augustine’s work: “If Augustine ate a sandwich, your editor included a footnote saying Plotinus ate a sandwich too.”

“Let me see that I’m not making this up to much.”

Philosophy of Man with Dr. Hd:

“I hate Nietzsche. That’s a good start for philosophy, in more ways than one.”

There are some lessons that you have to learn yourself, and there are some things that you just accept when you are told, such as don’t get in cars with strangers: “Thank God, most of us believe that without trying it, but some people come back 6 months later as the captain of a pirate ship ‘hey mom and dad, that was a crazy adventure’.”

“Unicorns, to be sure, if they exist, they probably ask questions like this.”

“It’s hard for me to be the serious scholarly professor of Philosophy when the cheerfulness keeps breaking though.”

On the immigration office: “I’ll be treated like an animal at the immigration office, when I come back I’ll have a brand to show you.”

Crito: “If you’re auditioning for this, go for the Socrates part, not Crito.”

on different human desires: “Desire for a bigger breakfast than what Italy offered.”

Starting sentences with 'however' is one of Dr. Hd's pet peeves, and yet there in the Crito what do we find but: “He stated a sentence with ‘however’… ooh.”

“You haven’t met them yet, but we have a small group of philosopher-kings that we keep in a locked room.”

“In a city of pigs, maybe there’s some roasting that has to be done.”

“We’ll leave wisdom until graduate school.”

“The truth is basically wacky.”

There’s an intermission in the Phaedo “It’s nice to know that Plato is responsible for our modern television programming.”

“The jedi formerly known as Darth Vader.”

This is an exchange with a student:
S: “Is the defining trait what makes you you, or is it what separates humans from animals?”
Dr. Hd: “The later.”
S: “Is that the 2^nd one?”

St. Augustine: “You see how I work. I’m just a selfish child.”

St. Augustine: “Hey drive in Italy sometime! Not all roads lead to Rome, but all roads lead to God.”

That's all for now, I'll have Greece stories and photos up soon, I promise.

The 10 EUR Nap

The Olympics, right, I was there last weekend sort of at the womans ice hockey game of Germany v. Italy and I have pictures to proove it.

Notes before the story:

The original plan was to take a night train from Rome to Milan, where we would check into our hostle and maybe see one sight before hopping on a train to Turino. In Turino we were to take a bus to the ticket office to collect the tickets, then to the Official Enormous Souvanier Store of Doom, then to the game which began at 6:30. After the game we would take a train back to Milan. We would spend Saturday sight-seeing in Milan, and then take an Express train back to Rome on Saturday night, arriving before the busses would stop running because none of us had been able to make heads or tails of the night bus schedual.

In honor of the lady in the pizzaria behind the Pantheon, from now on Treco's name is Mr. Boy.

I forgot that Nick was going to be in Nurnburg when I ordered the tickets, and Lauren decided to go to the woman's retreat, a fact which I also forgot. The Doppleganger, Mr. Boy, and I ended up splitting the cost of five tickets three ways.

I decided to take my large backpack, the one with the waist strap and the internal frame. I did this 1.) so I could bring an extra blanket and sweater and 2.) so I could make absolutly sure that I had all the straps adjusted correctly before Greece and 10 Day. I'm glad I did that, because I did have to make several adjustments, but remember that for most of this adventure I was carrying a 30 pound backpack. The Doppleganger and Mr. Boy also had bags, but nothing on the order of mine.

On with the story:

As we were entering the Metro station at Anagnina Mr. Boy said that he had a bad feeling about the out come of the trip, which I seconded. The Doppleganger's Bad Vibe Detector (TM) is apparently broken, because she said she was feeling pretty good. Our conncerns were written off as hunger, nervousness about our first attempt to use the Italian train system, and the relization that Mr. Boy had forgotten his camera.

We got our tickets in Termini, ate in the station, and made our train with no problems. The conductor was nice, we did not over sleep, we were not tobbed by gypsies during the night, and when we woke up in the morning, we were in Milan.

After the grief we gave her for not printing the confirmation for our hostle in London, the Doppleganger was careful to have confirmation and directions in hand once we arrived in Milan. We were able to navigate the Milanese subway with little difficulty (they have three different lines, 0_o) and were able to find the hotel with little trouble. The hotel bore all the signs of being a private residence recently repurposed (one bathroom on the 2nd floor, a non-sensecal floor plan, a front yard) and was owned and run by a Chinese family (the only sizable ethnic minority in Italy). The owner didn't know much English, but he knew enough to tell us that we were too early, and that we should come back afte 10 a.m. He was nice enough to let us leave our luggage behind the front desk (which looked like it was orriginally a breakfast bar). Thus libberated from our bags, we set off down the street in search of breakfast.

The neighborhood was a little more graffitti-ed then I would have liked, but the pedestrians were all well dressed, and we saw more than one mother walking with young school-aged children so that was reashuring. Besides, the backyards of most of the buildings here look like the less plesent parts of some 3rd World countries, so who am I to complain. To tell the truth, the most unnerving thing was seeing billboards all over the place advertising Quintin Tarintino's new movie Hostel. Any way, we found a bar and grabbed pastries and coffee. We were able to stay for the next hour and a half, as we plotted our plan for the next day, by continually purchising more food, and then consuming it slowly. For instance, the Doppleganger got a cup of hot chocolate so thick that the spoon did not sink when placed upon the surface. Swiss Miss eat your heart out.

We went back to the Hotel and checked in. Then we decided that instead of going to see St. Ambrose's relics, that what we really wanted to do with the rest of the morning was take a nap. So I set the alarm on the phone for noon, and we were all out like lights within ten minutes. About 11:45 we were woken by knocking at the door. It was the owner's son, who spoke much better English than his father did, arrived on the scean to tell us that there was a mistake with our booking.

It turns out that the Doppleganger made this reservation late at night, while simultaniously plotting for 10 day, and trying to write a paper, and that our reservation at the hotel was for the 17th of March, not the 17th of Febuary. They did not have any extra room in the hotel, so they were very sorry, but we had to leave. They refunded some of our money, but seeing as how they would have to change all the sheets (which we slept on top off because we were to lazy to do anything other than just crash >| )... they would only give us half the money back, which means that we each paid 10 EUR for a two hour nap.

Armed with directions to a main street where we were assured that we would be able to find a hotel, we gathered up all our luggage and set out. We spent the next hour and a half walking around searching for a hostel, or a hotel, or something. We found zip, nadda, and nothing. After an hour and a half, we decided to cut our losses and go to the train station so we could catch the two o'clock train to Turino. At the station, there were several palces that advertized hotel reservations, but as we found out, in addition to handeling the overflow from the Olympics, there was also some sort of exhibition in Milan last weekend and the cheapest room to be had would have cost over 200 EUR a night.

Wandering around for so long for no purpose would not have been so bad, except we were no where near the city center and our map did not extend out as far as we were wandering (we had to ask directions to find the Metro again, thankfully we do know the Italian words for that). Just a note if any of you decide to go to Milan, the northern part of town is the grungy industrial part of town where the buildings are all windowless boxes with fences around them.

We grabbed a bit to eat at the station and got on the train to Turino. It wasn't Express, which meant that we had to stop in every thorp along the way. On the other hand Fila, which apparently makes the ski gear for the Italian Olympic team handed out free lip balm on the train. It was attached to an advertising booklet, which would probably have been more interesting if any of us skiied.

In Turino, we left our bags in the Luggage Depository, and changed our train tickets. One of the many advantages of train travel over air is that (at least in Italy) once you have a reservation on any train, going anywhere, at anytime you can easily change it to a different reservation on another train, going somewhere else, at a completly different time and the only thing you have to pay is the difference in price between (if any) between the tickets. So, we traded our express train home on Saturday night for a night train leaving Milan on Friday, figguring that we had come to see the game and Milan had just been an after-thought anyway.

A phone call to the ticket office, and a short conversation with an American employee revealed that all we had to do to get to the office to pick up our tickets so we could acrually get into the game would be to take bus 67 to the end of the line (about 10 minutes) and the office was just off of the piazza. We found bus 67 at the bus stop right outside the station, and hopped on. A few moments later, Mr. Boy and I felt our danger senses tingling, but as we had no knowledge of the Turino bus system, we let it go after all, it was bearly after 4 and the game started at 6:30, we had plenty of time, right?

Turino has really cleaned everything up for the Olympics, it's quite a pretty little town, as is at least on of its suburbs. We should know, because we were on the right bus, heading in the wrong direction. We spent the better part of 4 hours ridding buses around Turino. We finally make it to the appropriate end of the line and see nothing that looks like the right office. I call again, and one of the locals working there is able to guide us in. We collect our tickets and hop the bus to the stadium.

It is now about 8. The game started at 6:30. There is no line at the security check point.

We come running up, and the first minion to encounter us looks at our tickets, and tells us that ice hockey is being played in one of the other stadiums. We say "grazie" and walk away a bit. The Doppleganger cries for a bit, and Mr. Boy and I say things in the "I'm mad at the universe line." Then Doppleganger decides to take pictures of the outside, in order to show that we at least made it that far. I, not to be defeated by a mere minion, look at the ticket again. On it, the name of the stadium in which the game is played is printed clearly. On the side of the stadium I can see the same name printed in very large letters. Mr. Boy confirms that my eyes have not decived me. We grab the Doppleganger and run around to a different security check point, where we are let in.

We arrived during the break between the 2nd and 3rd periods. After securing our seats (and they were good seats - the second row on the Italian end) the Doppleganger and I went back into the concorse and purchased souvaniers. We went back into the arena just after play resumed, and were back in time to see Germany's fourth goal.

The crowd was overwhelmingly Italian. By overwhelmingly Italinan, I mean there were small groups of well-organized German fans scattered around the stadium, but most of the spectators either were Italian, or if forigners, had bought their tickets blindly like we did and were just cheering for the home team. As it turns out, Italians are really good at cheering for sports, but unfortunatly they arn't any good at playing sports.

We don't think we were in the news, because the camera crews were standing in front of us, facing the ice. Not only that, the other side had cheerleaders. I kid you not, sitting on the stairs and periodically standing up to (supprise) lead cheers were girls with pom-poms wearing the most attrocious neon orange and yellow uniforms that I have ever seen. They even had gold trim, if you looked for more then a few seconds then your eyes would start to water.

It turns out that "Forza, Ragazzi!" (Go Guys!) is the appropriate cheer to use for any Italian team, regardless of gender (ragazzi is male plural, ragazze is female), except the national soccor team. If you see them you should yell "Forza Azuri!" (Go medium-blues!*). Because blue is randomly the color for their national sports teams. It's not in their flag anywhere, but there you have it.

Germany ended up winning 5-2, but we didn't get to see the end of the game because we had to go so that we could get on the train back to Milan, so we could get the train back to Rome.** We crunched the numbers and realized that we had each spent 10 EUR for each of the seven minutes of game play that we actually saw.

On our way out the door, Mr. Boy stoped to buy a pin for his collection at the souvanier stand, and the Doppleganger went back to picture taking. There were a number of cops clustered near the door, waiting for the game to let out. One of them took a picture of all three of us. As soon as I get a copy of that one the Doppleganger I'll put it up.

We got back to the station and then on to Milan and Rome without a further problem. We talked on the train and agreed that the problem was the bus, because if we hadn't spent four hours riding around lost we would have seen most of the game, and then we could have lived with not seeing the very end. As it was the whole weekend was just sort of a bust.

Lauren didn't have a very good time on the retreat either, as it turned out. Then Nick arrived and poured salt into everyone's wounds by reporting having a great time in Germany -- the land of punctual buses and food that actually includes sugnificant quantities of meat***.

Tune in next time as I return to Rome and go exploring in the Pantheon (hear the origin of Mr. Boy), Piazaa Nuvona, and the Trevi Fountain and then into the Colusseum and the Palitine Hill with the Art and Arch class. Also, it's mid-term time, so that means a round of Funny Professor Quotes.

-Yami

*Light blue is celestia and dark blue is... get ready for it... blu.
**Train stations are far less secure then airports, for starters, there are no doors to the outside, everything is just sort of open, and no security like at airports. We wern't about to spend the night in a station.
***Dad, we may have a lead on the world's perfect Saurbrauten, as prepaired by a little old lady operating a hole in the wall resturaunt in Nurnburg.

Guerilla Tourism

On Wednesday I went to the Palasso Massimo museum with Art and Arch. None of the problems of the last trip occurred, in fact we got to the Metro station where we were to meet Marry Anne, the Student Life Secretary two hours early. Our unfailing nerd senses led the Doppelganger, Treco, Nick, and I straight to a bar for coffee, and then to Mel Bookstore, which is evidently the Italian equivalent of Barnes and Noble. We went in just seeing the store front, and surmising that it was long and then, but no bigger than any of the other stores on the street. Then I turned a corner around a bookshelf and discovered that it went much deeper into the building and there were exits on the street running parallel to the one from which we had entered, and that there were two other floors in the building. ^_^

The museum itself, one of the three National Archeology Museums, was smaller then the Capitoline Museums and it’s collection consists of Roman sculpture and portraiture. I liked it better than the Capitoline as well – its size made it easier to take in, and there were a lot of cool things there. If you have seen anything from its collection than it is probably either this, or possibly this, which is a Roman copy of a Greek original. My personal favorite, and that of everyone I talked to, was this room. When I get home I’ll show people the video I made of it, but even that does not do the room justice. There are frescoes like this along all four walls. It was originally an underground barrel vault from the garden at the private villa of one of the emperors. I also overheard more than one person express a desire to do this in their own home, an idea which I too plan to carry out. It was nice at the end of the tour to just sit down and look at this room.

So, I went to London this weekend, just, you know, because. Let me begin this with a definition and another note.

Guerilla Tourism: lurk underground then jump out and take pictures of the monuments while their guard is down, than disappear onto the Underground.

My partners in crime were Lauren, the Doppelganger, Nick, and Treco.

Treco is a lighting rod of hate. If anything bad can happen, it will happen to him. The trick is to stand near him, so that anything bad which would have happened to you will happen to him instead, but don’t stand to close otherwise you get all of his bad karma, plus whatever was already going to happen to you.

Our flight on Friday was to leave at 11:00. So, leaving an hour for check in, security, and passport control, we needed to be at the airport by 10:00. Presupposing the existence of a bus, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to get to the airport, which means that for comfort’s sake we deeded to be on a bus by 9:30 at the absolute latest. Now the existence of a bus is a big assumption to make, if you want a 9:30 bus, you need to be at the stop at 8:30 otherwise you won’t make it. So, we made our first mistake and stayed up late the night before, and each of us got roughly six hours of sleep. Treco is nearly impossible to wake up, and may even beat me in the World Sleeping In Championship. So, at 9:30, when despite numerous attempts to get him moving, Treco was still not fully packed, the rest of us went out to the bus stop fully prepared to leave him.

We caught a bus which was more or less on time, and made it to Chiampano without much trouble. A consultation with the departures board told us that the flight has been delayed, so my cell phone was abused to call back to campus, to Angie, one of the Student Life Coordinators, whom we had spoken to at breakfast and who knew what was going on with our trip, and asked her to try and find Treco and tell him that he might still make it. She never did talk to him, because in the intervening time since our departure, he had finished packing and caught the next bus.

The rest of us got our boarding passes and changed our money (one of my 50 dollar traveler’s checks was magically turned into 19 Pounds by a particularly obtuse clerk who insisted on changing it into Euros before giving me pounds) and were just about to go through security when Treco came dashing in. We debated killing each other and decided to go to London instead.

He got his boarding pass and we all passed through security and passport control. The maniac their decided to stamp mine on the page across from my visa, underneath the little information notice from the Italian Embassy that is stapled in there. We did this just in time for the beginning of the line to board our flight.

Let me take this moment to say that Americans pay far too much for airfare. For the flight to London together with the flight back, we paid $87.55 per person, and we were grumbling about the price, because there are a lot of British airport taxes and the flight home was roughly three times as much as the flight back. As another example, in the Metro in Rome there are Lufthansa billboards advertising round-trip flights to Miami for 324 EUR. Why do Americans pay so much more to fly?

Now Ryan Air is a “low fares” airline, and part of the way they achieve this is at the terminal. They have itty bitty little airplanes that are accessed by stairs on the tarmac, not a gangway attached to the building. Our flight is parked on the opposite side of the air port from where the terminal is, and we have to take a shuttle bus to the plane. They save even more money by trying to sell things to you all throughout the flight: hot and cold drinks, food (although there is nothing stopping you from bringing your own), souvenirs, fragrances, children’s toys, and bus passes from the airport into the city (we did get that last one, because we had been warned by friends who went last week that they were far cheaper onboard then at the station and there was no other way into the city).

The flight itself was without incident, and Lauren got some great shots of the some mountains (the Alps?) and the costs of Corsica and France. We landed in London and were filling out the landing cards for customs when we realize that the Doppelganger had not printed the confirmation email for our hostel and we consequently did not have anything to put in the blank labeled “Address in the United Kingdom”. This wasn’t a problem for me because the guy had trouble finding where the Italian passport control officer had stamped my passport (I finally had to tell him) and that distracted him. My other four accomplices were read the riot act by an increasingly irate passport minion.

Finding the correct bus wasn’t any trouble, and not having any other instruction we rode it all the way into Victoria Station, which is one of the bigger Tube Stations in the city, in addition to being combined with National Rail, and a coach station. Just before we got there, we spotted an STA Travel outlet, and since that is where we had all gotten our Student ID cards we went there first. Treco inquired about replacing his stolen ID, and I called directory assistance in an effort to locate our hostel. I was less than successful, as London is divided into many small towns all of which are mashed together into one metropolis, rather like New York City. This means that if you call directory assistance and say “London” they will not be able to locate a hostel in Kensington or Chelsea (we never did figure out where it actually was) and they will treat you like an idiot for not knowing. Thus defeated, we went back to Victoria Station and at the ridiculous rate of 1 Pound ($1.80) a minute, the Doppelganger used a public access terminal to find the address of the Hostel. After that, we bought tickets and took the Tube across town to our hostel.

I will never say another word against the organization of the Roman Metro again. The Metro looks like this. The Tube looks like this.

We weren’t entirely sure where on the street our hostel was, so we took the Tube to one end of it, and started walking. The street number of the hostel was 149. We emerged from the tube at Number 8. Only the residential buildings were numbered, so the walk lasted a lot longer than it would have otherwise. It was a long walk, past another Tube station and several bus stops that we could have taken if we had bothered to try to understand the London bus system. One of the few amenities offered by the hostel was its location, it was 20 minutes by Tube from Victoria station, sure, but it was in a nice area, on our way there we walked by the Natural History Museum, the French Embassy, the Yemeni Embassy, and the Baden-Powell House [sorry boys, but I didn’t have a chance to stop :(]. We were next door to a large modern glass-and steel Marriot with waterfalls and torches out front. We checked in at the hostel, got directions to the Earl’s Court High Street, dropped our luggage and went in search of food. I’ll come back to the hostel later, but let me just say now that our plan was to check in and hit one museum that afternoon. Between the hour and a half on the bus and the confusion in reaching the hostel it was dinner time before we were ready to go anywhere.

We ate in the Earl’s Court Tavern, which had good food. We tried the appetizer nachos in homage to a favorite comedian who laments the lack of good Mexican food in England. He was right, they used Doritos for tortilla chips, and the chili included beans. On the other hand, the hamburgers we had were wonderful, and the chips were a welcome break from the pasta we’ve been eating. Our waitress was new, something we forgave her and left an over generous tip for after confirming that service had not been included in the bill. She was also not a native speaker of English: her understanding and usage were both good, but she was used to hearing British accents, and ours threw her for a loop. We found that everywhere we went our accents and idioms caused problems. Lauren found out the hard way that you do not ask “Do you carry Nutella?” at a grocery store. Apparently that means does the clerk personally carry Nutella. The correct form is “Do you have any Nutella?”

After dinner we went on a lightning tour of the monuments by night, using what I called Guerilla Tourism, see the definition above. We started at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, then went to Westminster Abby. We walked up the street past Horse Guards Palace, the Admiralty Arch, and the turn off for Scotland Yard, ending in Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column. We hit a souvenir shop and a pub before heading back to the hostel for the night.

The hostel was the cheapest available, and we got what we paid for. It was sweltering hot, even with the window open. And the beds were tiny, although the linens were clean. Our rooms were divided: 2 in a 6 bedroom female dorm, and 3 in a 6 bed room mixed dorm. I drew the short straw and was in the mixed dorm, there was another girl my room, so it was sort of OK, we didn’t spend much time there. Anna and Lauren were in a room on, what the British called the 2^nd Floor, which means the 3^rd Floor to us. Nick, Treco and I were a floor above that. The stares were a continuous, orange painted, wrought iron monstrosity that started out with large good-sized steps, but got steadily narrower and steeper as it ascended, to the point that we regretted not packing climbing gear before we reached our room. The included breakfast turned out to be toast (your choice of butter and/or Apple-Plum-Rhubarb Jam) and juice. There were no smoking signs plastered all over the place, but the whole building reeked of cigarette smoke. We got what we paid for. My three other roommates were from Spain, and spoke very little English. The three of us colectivally knew German quite well, a little Italian, a little French, and a little Latin, but very little Spanish that wasn’t directly related to food or money. What Spanish we did know was Mexican Spanish, which is as different from Spanish in Spain as American is from British. We did not talk much, and I’m sure they 1.)thought we were crazy and 2.) wanted to murder me and throw my cell phone out the window after I hit the snooze alarm four times.

As we trekked down to breakfast, Lauren met Nick and me on the steps (Treco as up and
moving and swore that he was on his way down) to the basement where the kitchen was located and told us that the Doppelganger was sick. She was sick as in throwing up, but she had no temperature and was not coughing, nor was her nose stopped up. After we asked her several times if she didn’t want to stay there and I even offered to stay behind with her, the five of us got on our way. Our first stop, at the end of that block, was to a grocery store, where we got bottles of water, 7UP, and Milk of Magnesia (the only thing in the “Medicines” section that said it was good for upset stomach) and set out for a day of Guerilla Tourism. [I also found Dr. Pepper there. British Dr. Pepper tastes like the stuff in the glass bottles with the Imperial Cane Sugar that comes from Dublin, Texas. Good stuff, but more than twice what one would pay for it in the States.]

One can buy a day pass for the underground for the inner two zones (we only needed the first one, but that is as small as they come) for 3 Pounds 90, which is an incredible deal considering that a single ticket costs 4 Pounds, so that is what we all got. Treco, the Doppelganger and I all had change so we were able to use the machines. Lauren and Nick stood in line and bought the tickets from a real live human being. As Nick was leaving the teller, he heard the guy turn to the other one and ask Metro, tickets “You come to a foreign country without a quid in your pocket?” Our answer is of course, yes, when the exchange rate is this bad, although he restrained the urge to answer the question. We got as far as the Monument Tube stop, before the Doppelganger threw up again, although she did move away from us, and she had a bag handy. We exited hurriedly and began a search for a public restroom and a trashcan.

We made the discovery that neither thing exists in the Underground, apparently for security reasons. We landed at a Starbucks just outside the station, where the Doppelganger was able to throw the bag away. We all sat down to wait to see how the Doppelganger felt, and Lauren and I bought coffee since we were taking up space and using their restroom. After a while, in which Treco and I wrote a few postcards, Lauren and I drank our coffee, Anna drank a little water and had a dose of the Milk of Magnesia, and we re-plotted the day to allow for our troubles getting started, we left again.

Our first stop was the Tower of London. The Doppelganger decided not to go in, so she went to one of the gift shops and took a nap while the rest of us went. We took the tour from one of the Yeomen Warders, which was free with admission, and well worth it. Between Nick, Treco, and myself, we got most of the tour on our cameras (we didn’t get the first section because we didn’t think about it and we weren’t allowed to record the part in the chapel because of copy write restrictions) which we have strung together for the Doppelganger to see. Then we went into the Jewel House, where no photography was allowed, so we bought postcards of it. If we could have, we would have spent far more time at the Tower, but there were other places we wanted to see and we didn’t want to leave the Doppelganger alone any longer, so we hit the gift shop, collected our ailing comrade (now feeling a little bit better) and moved on.

We then took the Tube to Blackfriars, and got turned around because we decided to try to reach our next location by following the posted signs instead of the map. Of course, part of the reason we got lost was because we only followed half of the directions on the map, but who am I to quibble? We doubled back and crossed the Thames via Blackfriars Bridge, which is a nifty piece of civic architecture put up by Queen Victoria. We walked down the Thames for a while, dutifully following signs that informed us that our target was only minutes away. We learned when we finally arrived that the Millennium Bridge would have been closer, but it was a moot point by then.

This is me at the Globe. ^_^

All the historic Any-things in London seem to close in the 4-5 o’clock hour, so we alas did not have time to take a tour or see the special exhibit that was there about Shakespeare’s connection with the Gunpowder Plot, both of which would have also cost money. We made up for not spending any money by blowing large portions of our remaining money at the gift shop. I spent 19 Pounds and some change, which translates to about $40.

We crossed the river on the way back to the Tube via the Millennium Bridge, which is a brand spanking new steel and glass footbridge – as wide as a two lane road, and not one of these narrow Italian roads either – that we could feel shaking beneath our feet with the weight of all the people walking on it. I didn’t like it because I’m afraid of heights. The others agreed that the shaking was disturbing and that Blackfriars was a much better bridge. On the flip side, the end of the bridge near the Globe and the Tate Modern was home to the best steel drum player I’ve ever heard. He was playing “Moonlight Sonata” and against all logic it actually sounded good. Nick recorded it, and I plan to get a copy from him. If any of us had had any change handy we would have left some.

Our next stop, just across the bridge and two streets directly north of the Globe, was Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Our stop there went something like this:

“Look it’s Saint Paul’s!” *click, click*

“So where’s the Tube Station?”

“Let me check the map.”

As for the map, we went through a song and dance every time we looked at it, which was often. It was a good map, but unfortunately it folded up into a continent pocket size and found a home in my purse. I had my camera, Augustine’s Confessions (which I was supposed to be reading for Theo Trad), and a growing collection of receipts in it. Every time we wanted the map we had to stop and spend a minute letting me search for it, declare I couldn’t find it, check the bag a was using for souvenirs, check my pockets, and then check the purse one last time, where I would find it tucked between two postcards. We did this EVERY TIME. In hindsight, we agree that I should have just given the map to Nick, who was my assistant navigator.

Our next stop was the British Museum. Finding it was a bit of a challenge, as there wasn’t a Tube stop that spit you our right at it, and Nick was allowed to navigate initially. The British Museum is cool. It’s big. It’s FREE (although they suggest a donation). They allow you to take pictures. We only had an hour before closing time, so we swung through the ancient Greek galleries and saw the Parthenon Room, we then went through the Egypt room. We saw the Rosetta Stone, some mummies, and a bunch of other nifty looking things, the names of which I can not for the life of me remember. We hit the gift shops(plural) and spent the last of our cash. On our way out the door we saw the main reading room, which is also very impressive. When I grow up, I want a library like that of my own. I’ll put it near the Roman frescos. Our last act was to take photos on the steps of the museum. While we were there everyone except Nick encountered some sort of trouble with their camera from Treco, who’s camera reported new batteries as being dead to Lauren, who’s camera randomly decided that it did not want to turn the flash on when we went outside. All in all, I could easily have spent a full day just in that museum and been perfectly happy.

About the time we left the museum it suddenly hit us all that we had eaten a very small breakfast and has skipped lunch completely (well except for the Doppelganger, who was feeling much better but still didn’t feel like trying to eat anything). We trooped back over to Blackfriars, were the pub had been recommended to Nick by a friend. It was worth the trip, I got sausage and mash because 1.) it was not pasta and 2.) it was as about as British as it is possible for food to get and still be edible. Those mashed potatoes were at least as good as the ones I make at home. Good stuff.

A word on schedules before I continue:

Our flight back to Rome left London at 7:10 AM. It was the only Ryan Air flight going from London to Rome on Sunday, so missing it was not an option. Now, since unlike the Italians the British actually have something resembling customs and security, it was necessary to be there at least an hour early, which would be at 6:10 AM. We timed the bus going in and knew to allow an hour and a half, luckily the bus service was continuous, with up to three running every hour. Which meant be on a bus leaving Victoria Station at 4:30 AM. Problem: our hostel was a 20 minute Tube ride from Victoria and the first Tube in the morning to leave Victoria doesn’t come until 6:40 AM. Having already paid for our return bus tickets and being unwilling to chunk out money for a taxi, and totally unable to make heads our tales of the London bus system, we decided to take the only remaining option for us: stay in London as late as we could and then spend the night in Luton airport.

We went back to the hostel, collected our stuff, and checked out roughly 12 hours early. Treco wanted to get online before we left, because at the hostel it only costs 50 pence per half-hour. Unfortunately, the person before us paid for a full hour moments before he walked into the office. So we sat there and watched part of the Olympics on BBC2, which was kind of fun. We got to see the pair of skaters who came in first in whatever even was on Saturday.

We killed time in Victoria Station until it closed at 11, mostly by going to the grocery store in order to procure breakfast for Sunday, and at McDonalds. None of us wanted to go to McDonalds at any time this semester. We swore up and down that we would not be the obnoxious Americans that everyone complains about. Then we saw a billboard advertising Cadbury Crunchy McFlurries for 99 Pence, so we gave in and sacrificed a little bit of our souls to our evil corporate overlords.

When the station closed we caught the bus to the airport, there were four other passengers with us, but they got off before the airport. Anna and Treco managed to sleep a bit on the bus, the rest of us were kept wide awake by the driving. I did not know it was possible to get a bus moving so quickly, or handle it so sharply.

We arrived at the airport at a little past midnight and settled in to wait and wait and wait. Then finally the Ryan Air counter opened and we grabbed our boarding passes and went through security and waited for another hour, we were awoken by the cold wet air coming in from outside when a 6:30 flight to Milan left. We were the first people with out special needs or small children onboard out plane, and we were all asleep before it was off of the ground.

We got back to campus just in time for brunch, which was grabbed before retiring to our rooms to sleep.

Places where America has England beat: food, signage, and TV. If we pay far too much for airfare, then the British pay too much for food. One example: McDonalds has a 99 Pence menu, which equates to a $2 menu. A two litter bottle of Coke costs 2 Pounds, or $4. I would never pay more than $1 for any soda in the States. As for signage, the Brits always go for the most formal and wordy way to say anything. American TV programs are just better, hands down.

Funny Britishisms:

Quid- this is either 1.) a Pound; 2.) 20 pence (five to a pound); or 3.) a 5 Pound note. No matter what, it is defiantly money, and defiantly has something to do with the number 5, we didn’t have a dictionary handy, and certainly weren’t going to ask, but we are leaning towards number 2. Update: a consultation with a German dictionary (turns out the German for Quid is “Quid”) confirms that at Quid is, indeed, a Pound.

Underground- the subway, or Metro, sometimes called the Tube

Subway- a pedestrian underpass, sometimes connected with the Underground.

Way Out- Exit

Queue- used indiscriminately for the words line, traffic, or delay. Lauren has a picture of a road sign well outside the city with a picture of cars stopped by traffic and the sign says “Queues Likely”

Coach- a bus, not a person who leads a sports team.

Chips- French Fries

Lessons learned:

Don’t stay up late the night before you travel.

Don’t oversleep.

Don’t get sick.

Cheaper is not always better.

More TIME is always better.

Never ever sleep in an airport.

Always bring as many batteries as you can carry.

Pay cash.

Always print the confirmation as soon as you make a reservation.

Know where your towel is.

Ciao,

Yami

P.S. repeat after me: Roman copy of a Greek original. This is in the Palasso Massimo. This is in the British Museum.

P.P.S. The Doppelganger is feeling much better now, although her stomach is not happy about throwing up five times in one day, neither is she for that matter. She swares that as hard as it was to keep moving she would not have missed it for the world.