STO: Final Days in Ireland

I have a lot to get to so I'm going to type fast and create a post of even lower quality than usual. After the trek to Central Europe, I had a few days off before I found myself sitting in a large room with a pencil and an exam in front of me. The UCD exams were rather crazy and unusual actually. They took place at this Industrial Complex about 2 miles down the road from campus that none of us had ever been to, and in two, massive rooms. So basically 200 students are taking exams at the same time, all with assigned seats, situated along with other people in the same course. I always asked why we didn't just take exams in the same classrooms in which we had the class, like we generally do at Georgetown, but I never got a satisfactory answer. The reason was probably cheating based, as "security" was extremely strict at this place although my roommate Matt managed to cheat anyways. The exams were two hours long and while they were the least stressful of my life, they were still exams which are universally stressful. It really can be unpleasant being in a room of 200 students taking exams, but I was always able to calm myself by remembering that all I had to do was pass, which was extreeemely easy. I didn't study too hard but I don't think it mattered.

In between my 2nd and 3rd exams, I had a solid 4 days off, and used it to take a weekend getaway. I decided I'd be kind of adventurous, not that I haven't been this year, and visit Belfast, Giant's Causeway, and then some "random Irish country town." The adventure really lay in my minimal amount of planning for this whole trip, which basically amounted to booking a night in a hostel in Belfast. I showed up to the Dublin bus station early Friday morning and realized I had forgotten my passport. Belfast is in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, but luckily Ireland and Northern Ireland share one of the more interesting borders in the world. It is not quite as open as the Vatican City border, but is a pretty close second with passport checks rarer than Detroit Lion wins. In addition, people of Northern Ireland (of British or Irish parentage) can automatically apply to become citizens of Ireland and obtain dual citizenship and play for its national teams. Scotland and Wales make you question what the word "country" means, but Northern Ireland really pushes that envelope. Basically the only difference between NI and Ireland is that one country uses pounds and the other euros. And I like the Northern Irish accent better. Also, did you know that major banks in the UK print their own currencies? The ones in Northern Ireland are particularly different from the ones in England.

So Belfast - you may have heard of it in the same sentence as "Troubles" or "IRA." And I went to the city looking for scars from these struggles, and while I'm told they still exist, you have to really know where to look. Certainly down the main streets, I felt like I was in any other festive European capital celebrating Christmas. The City Hall courtyard was decked out in another Christmas market, complete with a ferris wheel and an impressive 3 tented bars. I had a lunch of international food at the market and then soaked in the surrounding area. There is a rapid dropoff from the consumer-laden main streets and the poor residential areas only a few blocks away, but I was unable to find the graffiti-marked murals for which the city is well known, nor the blood of Catholics for that matter. I'm sure I just wasn't looking hard enough.

The weather was absolutely miserable that day in Belfast. Constant rain soaked the afternoon, and on my initial walk to my hostel, I experienced an event which I had only previously witnessed on Seinfeld - a zooming car sped through a puddle right next to the slab of sidewalk upon which I was walking and drenched my jeans and shoes. Lovely. I met up with my friend Sean from UCD ultimate and Texas, and his American friend studying abroad in Belfast. I had by chance seen that Sean's facebook status had something to do with going to Belfast, because I am a facebook creeper, and texted him on the bus and realized that I would have a friend in the city. So we go around looking to grab dinner except that Sean's friend Sarah didn't know any restaurants in the city. Really, if you are an American studying abroad in Europe and you do know the restaurants of a city, it means you've been burning through a lot of cash. We walk into a Chinese restaurant and turns out the main server speaks Cantonese and is impressed enough by my shabby Cantonese that he offers to throw in a free bottle of wine for the table. However, their Christmas meal plan was really too expensive and I'm ashamed to say I turned down free wine. We went to another Chinese restaurant, also operated by Cantonese-speakers, and I figured that Belfast was a haven for Guangdongren, which is interesting cause they're almost non-existent in Dublin.

Ok we later went drinking, surprise surprise. The crown jewel of Belfast pubs is called the Crown Liquor Saloon, which is a marvelously-designed Victorian-style pub with a tiled mosaic floor in the shape of crowns, and a really exquisitely decorated interior. Nonetheless, the place doesn't feel like a museum - it's still definitely a pub full of debauchery. Anyways, that was a good night. We went to this one bar in a sketchier area where I told stories of Long Island Iced Teas in Beijing, and upon leaving, we almost walked into a collision of drunks. There were two absolutely smashed Irishmen outside who, I mean I don't even know, they were messes and kinda belligerent. Well Sarah stopped and helped these two people, first away from each other, and then towards (presumably) home, including taking one into a taxi. There were some tense moments involved during all this, as well as some hilarious ones, but while at the time I felt that this was a very memorable event, I actually don't remember it too well. So there you go.

The next day was a packed day. I definitely wanted to see Giant's Causeway, and my hostel supplied a tour there. However, the tour also went to a few other places, including a lengthy stay at the town of Derry, which while I'm sure would have been enjoyable, would involve us getting back at 6pm, which I deemed to late to then trek to a "random country town." So I tried to find public transportation to the Causeway, and unexpectedly succeeded. I bought a 15 pound ticket that would give me unlimited access to trains and buses all day (turned out to be a great deal), took an 8:30 train from Belfast to this college town Coleraine (pictured, above) and from there took a bus to the Causeway. And wow was this place worth it. The Causeway was formed 60 million years ago by a volcanic eruption. The geology behind this is more complicated than I'm prepared to understand, but basically the lava from this eruption somehow cooled and cracked in geometric patterns - generally they were all hexagons, with the occasional pentagon sprinkled in. Each hexagon is flat, but they're all of different heights, and the end result is really a bizarre and incredible terrain. On top of it all, the Causeway is located on the northern coast, close to Scotland, and that whole area is absolutely gorgeous. I was also lucky to be there on a great day, and regret that I was in and out in just 1 hour, because I had a bus to catch. Definitely a place one could return to.

Eurotrip part 3

The train to Krakow left Prague at 2 and somehow took 7 hours, despite maps displaying the distance as shorter than Berlin to Prague. A combination of a slow train and all-too-frequent and lengthy stops at insignificant Czech cities (or Czech points, as you will) contributed to this snoozer of a train ride, particularly because we were engulfed in darkness for the majority of the trip. My left contact cracked during the ride, and I neglected to bring a spare, so I was a cyclops for the rest of the night and spectacled for the remainder of the trip. So we arrived at Krakow around 9 and experienced a brief moment of panic. Because there were likely multiple Krakow stations, we weren’t sure where to get off. We knew we wanted to be near city center and were scared to stay on the train for another stop and then find ourselves in another Polish town, but had a feeling that the first Krakow stop would be on the outskirts of the city, because so many passengers were remaining on the train. With no instructions in English to guide us, we got off anyways and asked the first person we saw whether we were close to city center, and were extremely relieved to hear an affirmative response. So we get off the platform and somehow find ourselves in a shopping mall buzzing with Christmas Cheer. It’s always odd when your first sight of a new city is a shopping mall, and I’m not sure what kind of train stations in the US are directly connected with major gallerias, but both Berlin and Krakow seem to enjoy intertwining transportation with consumerism. We debated on our train what the Polish conversion rate was, and somehow settled on 7:1 euro, based on our plane ticket receipts. So after wandering towards an ATM, both of us took out large sums of upwards of 500 Polish Zloty (pronounce that correctly and I’ll give you some). Then we made another one of those treks towards our hostel that invariably involves getting lost 2 or 3 times. This one was a little bit easier because Krakow is defined by its city square, which Wikipedia tells me is the largest medieval town square in Europe at 200 by 200 meters.

Arriving at the square, I discovered this figure to be a bit deceiving because a large, World Heritage cloth hall which used to house a major trading bazaar sat in the center of the square. So while the square was still massive, it wasn’t 40,000 m² of open space and in that regard, isn’t even the biggest square I’ve been in this year ($10 to the first person who knows what that square would be, no joke). Like many other squares we’ve come across on this Eurotrip, this one was also decked out in Christmas Cheer, with a flourishing Christmas market that looked just like the ones in Prague and Berlin, and likewise smelled excellent. Now the hostel we booked here literally called itself the World’s Best Hostel, as ranked by Hostelworld.com for multiple years. In fact, the hostelworld description suggested that we were booking an unusual hostel. So we were extremely excited and curious – would there be elaborate carpeting, down pillows, sexy staff, complimentary saunas or a hilarious interior décor? I personally expected entrance shots.

The Flamingo, as this legendary hostel called itself, was actually totally undeserving of its award. I mean the place was nice and spacious and clean, altogether a pleasant hostel, but there was a complete dearth of anything epic. In addition, the hostel had just one set of room keys, so we had to return it when we left the hostel, which kinda irked me. The only reason behind its reputation that I could come up with was its thorough social calendar, with free hostel-led pub crawls every day. There were signs everywhere that said something like, “Party with your staff members!” So it was clearly a fun place and we decided we’d take them up on it the next night. Anyways I know no one cares about the hostel, so on to the city.

We headed out for food, and despite numerous kebab or sausage joints, we wanted to take advantage of the exchange rate and get a good meal, so we popped into a restaurant off the square. Somehow it was 10:30 at this point and the place was empty and unexpectedly formal. The waiter clearly thought that Diane and I was an item and really created an awkward mood. But anyways, we’re taking a look at this great menu and then see Euro prices next to the Zloty, and realize, oh shit…the exchange rate was not the 7:1 that we had thought, but was instead a humble 3.75:1, that really brought us down to earth. Suddenly, the restaurant seemed very expensive, and we were staring at hundreds of dollars in our wallets. Note to future travelers: don’t make that mistake, look up the exchange rate.

After dinner, we decided to walk around but not actually do anything. It would be the only night in the trip that I did not drink, and we ended up getting an early start to the next day, which was well worth it. Krakow really had a different air to it that I can’t quite put my finger on, but it didn’t quite feel like Western Europe. The town square was certainly a cool sight, a bustling space of stands, vendors, performers and odd promotions (two guys dressed as beer mugs walked around with a sign that said “FREE BEER”) surrounded by ancient and beautiful buildings, including two towers and a cathedral. I read a children’s book a long time ago called Trumpeter of Krakow, which I forgot about until I was on the train towards the city. This book talks about a trumpet player who plays a tune from the top of the tower every hour but cuts out in the middle of the melody. The book explained this cut off as an homage to the trumpeter who was playing with the Tartars invaded this city, who stayed true to the schedule even though the city was being conquered, and was struck in the throat by an arrow during his performance and thus abruptly cut off. This legend is apparently made up, but it is true, as I heard firsthand, that the trumpeters cut off the melody, which really does create a jarring ending. The cloth hall in the center of the square is also quite a sight. One can appreciate both the simplistic beauty of its design and its historical importance, as well as take something out from it as it is still a trading center, nowadays selling cheap souvenirs to tourists like me.

We then headed out to Krakow Castle, not really knowing what to expect. What we found was a walled complex rather similar to Prague Castle, with an actual castle building next to several other buildings that were once connected to the royalty. This includes a far less impressive cathedral and several buildings that are now museums. While I’m not an expert on Polish architecture, these buildings all felt Polish, with an interesting color blend that you just wouldn’t find further west. One of the museums that we checked out held lots of ancient weapons and armaments, and I made a quip about how this armor was worn by a soldier killed by the Tartars, this sword was used when the Russians conquered the Poles, and this crossbow was used in vain against the Austrians, and this cannon was involved in the loss to the Prussians. Oh Polish military history, they should be so thankful for the French. Well anyways the castle was really pretty.

We lunched it at a place recommended by our hostel. We were searching for something cheap and authentic and were directed to the perfect place: a hole-in-the-ground restaurant that styled itself after traditional Polish home eating. The place had large tables, where people sat cafeteria-style, and pumped out delicious and inexpensive dishes such as potato pancakes, Polish sausages and other authentic stuff that I can’t remember…I had an absolutely terrific meal, even thought it clogged up two of my remaining seven arteries.

Afterwards we split up to shop for a bit and spend our outrageous amounts of Zloty. I saw a ton of dragon souvenirs because apparently, Krakow was built on top of a dragon’s lair after a man named Krak slayed a dragon by feeding it a poisoned goat. Somehow, that legend has led to a dragon being the protector of Krakow. Well nearly every shop sold these bright green stuffed dragons, which while adorable, look way too much like Barney. Dragons are very meaningful to me, because I am born in the year of the Dragon along with my father and my athletic idol (Bruce Lee). On top of that, the best Magic card I ever had was a dragon, and if I could be one fairy tale creature, it would undoubtedly be a dragon (with a leprechaun coming in distant second). So I really wanted to buy some sort of dragon here, but all I found were cute useless toddler toys. I wanted a dragon that could defend Poland, not befriend my Beanie Babies. Well I soon learned that there was an actual bronze dragon near the Castle that we had managed to miss, and I told Diane that we had to go back there. Unfortunately it was twilight by the time we reached it and discovered that while this dragon, at 15 feet tall and claws that could cut bone, was pretty bad ass, it was possibly the biggest tourist trap we’d seen all trip. The dragon clearly had no historical significance, and was put there to impress little kids, evident by the fact that it breathed fire every few minutes! I was actually snapping a picture when the fire began and now I have that sweet picture.

The rest of our night was rather uneventful, including a trip to the old Jewish quarter of the city, which was really cool but extremely sketchy at night. Apparently a factory owned by Schindler was in the area but if we saw it, we didn’t know. We got back to the hostel and prepared for another pub crawl, hopefully as exciting as our Berlin one. Well, this pub crawl differed from that one in both cost (much cheaper) and Americans (much fewer). It was cheaper because the hostel supplied us with several bottles of cheap, Polish vodka and basically forced us all to kill them. The event ended up being an organized pregame, where the staff members, mostly Polish, got their Polish friends over to drink on the hostel’s dime. While everyone could speak English, they generally didn’t, and between occasional stints of effort to get to know my Polish hosts better, I spent most of the time talking to the two Australians and one other American. The American was another “character,” who at 19 and sporting Napoleon Dynamite glasses, was one of the youngest and goofiest people I have met in Europe. He had been studying Armenian in Armenia, hadn’t entered college yet, and was in Poland for a few weeks with absolutely no clue what he was doing. So every 15 minutes or so, we’d say the Polish word for “cheers” and take a shot of vodka with our cheap plastic shot glasses. What begun as an interesting cultural blend of a pregame turned into an absolute shitshow when the
pregame entered its third hour and I lost count of the shots. I started making derisive comments about fluffy-ass dragons and suggesting we go “Pole dancing.” We did eventually make it out to a club/lounge where the music was loud, techno and Polish, which if you’ve ever gone clubbing with me, you would know that I was less than thrilled. In addition, this so called “pub crawl” ended at this first club, which really kinda takes the crawl out. Luckily the beer was cheap there, so another glass or two of that made sitting there listening to my cohorts jabber in Polish a little bit better. I think I was taught 15 Polish words that night and remember just the one for “thank you.” Luckily this club was very close to the hostel and we were able to stumble back just fine.

Diane was quite hungover the next morning, it was actually kinda funny. We departed for the train station/mall but got confused by the crazy setup and ended up missing the train to the airport. We bit the bullet and took a $30 cab ride, and after getting past some immigration officials who meant business (they didn’t want anyone to slip through the kraks), we were en route back to Dublin. I was just exhausted from the trip, oversaturated with Christmas Cheer, alcohol, fried food and medieval architecture.

STO: Czechpoint

Diane was stressing about the European train system, which has a reputation for being confusing to American travelers. Nonetheless, we reached the train terminal, bought tickets to Prague with the help of a very friendly assistant and got an empty compartment to ourselves on the train. The 5 hour ride took us through the German city of Dresden, which I'd heard was worth seeing for its still visible World War II damages but from the train the city also looked like a cool city in its own right. We passed through a lot of countryside, some mundane, some lovely. A stretch of the ride took us alongside a river community built alongside high, steep sloping riverbanks. Darkness hit early though and the ride was thereon after uneventful. We rolled into Prague right before 6 and found ourselves in a busy subway/train station. It was odd to be surrounded by everyday commuters while carrying a large travel bag. With the help of a beggar, we got some subway passes and made our way into the city center, although not before said beggar squeezed 50 koruna out of me. We then navigated around the very complicated twisting streets of Prague before finding ourselves in the stunning Old Town Square. The Square is one of the biggest tourist attractions of the city but was especially vibrant then because lo and behold, it was holding a Christmas market with a large, lavishly decorated Christmas tree. The lights on it flashed to mimic snow falling down it. I don't use this word often, but the Square actually smelt exquisite, with a great blend of Czech cooking. Of note were the potato pancakes we tried on our first night as an appetizer before getting an actual meal at an actual dinner restaurant. While potato pancakes may arguably be considered Jewish food, they are also now a staple of Central and Eastern European cooking. The restaurant we had also served authentic Czech food, which I think for me was garlic soup (sucked) and slow roasted pork (rocked). There was an interesting quandary at the end of our meal where I pondered how to call for the check in the Czech. Answer: wave a 2000 koruna bill, it'll attract any waiter's attention. And yes that is a big bill, the biggest bill I have held in my hands since I was in Turkey. The exchange rate was about 25 Koruna: Euro, or 20 Koruna: Dollar.

Although it was a near after thought while I was planning my trip to Prague was the fact that I knew someone there. Caitlin Astrue went to Winsor and her brother shares my educational info (RL, Georgetown) with one year of seniority. She's studying abroad in this program in Prague and so we met up by that Christmas tree. Caitlin's studying some Czech as well as Czech anthropology, and explained to us several sites within the Square. Most notable was the Astrological Clock, which every hour on the hour has a little show where a little bell rings and the top of the clock oppens up and 12 apostles come out one at a time. The show is cute and consistently draws a clock, and we waited 10 minutes for it. The clock itself is also really cool on its own.

We then walked through the city, which is just full of tremendous architecture. Prague is sometimes considered the most beautiful city in Europe and that's entirely due to the buildings. The distinct round Eastern European spires have also given it the nickname 'City of a Thousand Spires' and I know this because I go on Wikipedia too much. We passed the Opera House, walked across the famous Charles Bridge, which you'd think would cross the Charles River but apparently it crosses the Vltava.

The Charles Bridge is iconic, even though you've never heard of it, because of its grandiose south entrance and its history. After the bridges that spanned the river were destroyed by flood, the Charles Bridge was created and became the only bridge that crossed the river. It appears necessarily over sturdy, and legend has it that its mortar was mixed with wine and eggs to improve sturdiness. The south entrance towards the Old Town has a immense stone gate with a large sculpted facade. Statues are placed along the actual bridge and seamlessly enhance its design. The north entrance leads into Prague Castle and was totally forgettable. That night we went to a club on the other side of the town, where Caitlin ordered this incredibly girly drink that was half sprite half beer and we talked about our mutual high school friends.

The next day we checked out the Prague Castle and were not disappointed. Situated high on a hilltop, the climb was strenuous but the view exceptional. Then we entered the castle, where various sectors required their own admission. The cathedral was free, and we had heard from a guy in Berlin that it was extraordinary, so we went to that first and then bought tickets to see the armory and museum. St. Vitus' Cathedral, as it is called, was not in any of my Western Civ notes. I hadn't even known that Catholicism was practiced in the Czech, although that might be in my Euro Civ notes. But basically what I'm trying to say is that I had absolutely no idea that a wonderful architectural masterpiece of a cathedral existed in Prague. Now I've been to some great cathedrals, like Notre Dame de Paris, St. Peter's Basilica, Westminster Abbey, Duomo di Firenze, Christchurch Cathedral - there aren't a whole lot more famous than those. And St. Vitus' was on par with any of those, and I had never heard of it. It makes no sense to me. Maybe it's because the cathedral is actually not that old, with many of its impressive features added in recent history. Either way, it's sick with just incredible stained glass windows. I'll have to post those here so stay tuned.

The rest of Prague included a good deal of shopping, a trip to the oldest synagogue in Europe, a bit of absinthe, a drink ordering mistake by me, the best Chinese food I had had in Europe, and an unexpected dance session with female Indonesian masseuses. That last one has been a lifetime goal of mine, so now I can die happy. I left the city with an understanding of how touristy Prague is, all reflected in the storeowners whom I interacted with. All this to be elaborated on. In the meantime I am going to Belfast tomorrow, on a bus I do not have a ticket for. I plan to check out that city while also kinda studying for my exam. Then I'll hopefully see Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland the next day and then take a bus south to a random country town where I hope to find a B&B. Then I'll come back early Sunday and say goodbye to one of my roommates who's heading back to the USA. This could very well not work out at all because I haven't been able to book anything, but hey they said that about the Randy Moss trade too.

STO: Road to Germany

I recently embarked on an epic 6 day journey through Berlin, Prague and Krakow, as my previous post predicted. Along this path, I met many colorful characters, several shady ones and even an old friend. I used 3 different currencies, dealt with 3 different official languages, sat on 2 lengthy train rides, drank a ton of beer and devoured enough fried food to clog the average heart. Basically, I'm the Asian Odysseus. Although I haven't met my Circe and the closest thing to a Cyclops that I came across was myself.

I did in fact board my aforementioned 6am plane. If you readers haven't ever taken a flight at this ungodly hour, I actually recommend it. Despite the brutal sleep deprivation required and in addition to the cheaper costs, the whole process of getting on that flight is a real experience. So we're taking the 15 minute walk to the bus stop in the freezing 3am air and pass by scenes of crazy debauchery as the bars let out. That's one thing about Dublin, the streets at weekend nights are consistently filled with drunks, so if you're a light sleeper, anywhere near an Irish pub (read: all of Dublin) is not the place for you. But imagine that, you've just woken up, packed all your stuff and are anticipating a lengthy and exciting journey, and you then find yourself passing through crowds of partyers enjoying the end of their nights...it's rather surreal. And then the airport itself is surprisingly active with most of the restaurants still open and plenty of wearied travelers passed out on the chairs, legs covering their bags. By the way, I went on this trip with my friend Diane, who also goes to Georgetown (although we never met there) and lives down the court here in Dublin. We're not going out, although everyone who saw the two of us traveling together assumed we were.

I passed out hard on the plane and a short 2 hours later, it was 9am in Berlin. We trained it to one of the main stations Alexander Platz, where I was greeted with a beautiful logo that I have not seen in many moons - Dunkin' Donuts. Ah the orange and pink never looked so good - note that I usually have 3 Coffee Coolatas a week back in Newton, where the climate is uniquely suited for growing Dunkin' Donuts cups on trees. The train station also had a ton of diverse restaurants, ranging from German joints grilling bratwursts to Vietnamese cooks creating ambiguously-national Asian food. We reached our hostel, St. Christopher's, early in the morning and learn that we can't check in until the afternoon, so we throw our bags into storage and explore our surroundings. Our hostel is right in East Berlin, parts of which do look like they were under harsh Soviet control for 5 decades, and we walked around til we found the Berlin Wall. I wish I went to Hadrian's Wall in Scotland so that in conjunction with the big one in China, I could say I've been to several world famous walls, but whatever. This wall is extremely iconic and famous besides barely existing anymore, and altogether entirely odd. Unlike the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall, which were both built in antiquity for military purposes (to fend off Northern invaders) and are now protected historical sites, the Berlin Wall was of course a modern creation. It was freaking created in 1961 to keep people away from each other, a concept that really sounds totally barbaric when not referring to penitentiaries. For those unfamiliar with it, the Berlin Wall separated West Berlin, which was owned by West Germany but surrounded completely by East Germany, and East Berlin (and hence East Germany). While it served to encage the West Germans, the real reason for setting up the wall was to prevent East Germans from crossing over to West Berlin (which they could do freely), getting a West German passport and getting the hell away. The construction of the wall seems ludicrous when you realize that East Germans and West Germans weren't different people - they were all part of the same country and essentially arbitrarily divided after WWII. East and West Berliners were friends and relatives. So then the Wall was created, and actually almost done overnight in secret, so that one morning West Berlin woke up to find itself isolated. Imagine if you were an East-sider having a one night stand in the West that night - I'm not even sure if walk of shame covers that. Anyways, today most of the Wall has been destroyed, and the pieces that remain demonstrate more the artistic merits of graffiti than the symbolic barrier of the Cold War. It's tough to envision what the area used to look like, with infrastructure now resettled in areas formerly of the Wall and the divide between East and West Berlin not instantly noticeable. Without the barbed wire and East German guards, the Wall lacks any intimidation. Look at me hanging out with Gollum on the stretch of the Wall now known as the East Side Gallery.

After this, we found lunch at an Indian restaurant in some random side street and were delighted at the prices. I got a nice pint of something for 3 and a half euros, and that's be just about the most expensive beer on this trip and a full euro cheaper than you can get anywhere in Dublin. The alcohol reminded us that we had woken up at 2:40am that day and we promptly returned to the hostel, checked in and crashed. What was originally meant to be a 2 hour nap crept past the 3 hour mark and by the time we woke up it was dinnertime and our hostel room was buzzing. We discovered that our hostel was inhabited by cool people, but we wouldn't really experience that until the next day. Hungry and wanting to sample German food, we learned about a Christmas market and ventured towards it. We would find many more markets like this on our little vacation, but this first one was the coolest. On a cold dark night in East Berlin, the merry, lit tents of this Christmas market sold hot foods, steaming drinks and various cheap goods and otherwise exuded Christmas cheer. The sausages smelled great, the crepes were delicious, and I also bought a hat, an ornament and a mug, which happened to come with apple cider + alcohol. The mug is in my left hand in this one and my dinner in my right. The market even had a tiny ice skating circle where lots of little German kids were slipping and sliding.

Afterwards, we were in the drinking kind of mood, because you know we're in Europe, but we realized it was Sunday. So we decided to join a pub crawl advertised on our hostel map. And it was well worth it. This 12 Euro excursion was surprisingly well-attended, with about 20 people mostly English speaking. The meeting place was this uber-sketchy bar-ish establishment that was probably a bomb shelter 30 years ago. We were greeted with free, cheap beer, which normally would excite me but after a semester of great beer in Dublin, I could barely drink it. Nonetheless, I did, and partook in a few group shots of orange vodka before heading out to slightly less seedy places. Our group, led by an Israeli, essentially made up all the patrons of every single bar we went to. Side note: there were a fair amount of Israelis in the city. I do not know the historical reasons behind this. It was really cool to enter as a group and just take over a bar and not feel guilty about it (like you would if you were with a bunch of underage college kids). I really enjoyed talking with all these different people on the trip and really it shouldn't be that big a surprise that we were all people in our young 20s traveling around Europe looking for adventure. Who else would go on a 12 euro pub crawl? Not localers, and not high rollers, just poor kids old enough to be able to travel on their own but young enough that they don't feel the need to be productive and contribute to society. I met a lot of cool Australians and Americans, all on various stages of their various journeys of various lengths, but the most memorable ones were these two American girls from Ohio. I think they were studying or working in England and just traveling for a couple of days, but they got wasted (or pissed, as the Australians said) and started pole dancing on the subway and otherwise acting like obnoxious Americans. The night ended at this club called Matrix which was slightly less sketchy than the other bars though it was located right by the Wall. I think by the end of the night I was 8 drinks deep and Diane was around 10 and we were all having a good time. I won't go into all the details of that club but let's just say I took a cab ride home alone.

The next day we woke up, not in the best of shape but in time for the free hostel breakfast. There was a walking tour leaving our hostel at 10:30am that we somehow missed and thus we were left to explore Berlin on our own. We decided we'd go on this other tour at 1 and check out as much of the city as we could before then. Well we hopped on the metro and arrived at Potsdamer Platz, a shopping center located in West Berlin and decidedly reeking of capitalism. Christmas cheer was decadently displayed at a mall there, and large lego statues (including a giraffe and a Santa) served as street decoration. From there we wandered to a Holocaust Memorial. This memorial was only created 4 years ago, by a Jewish architect from New York, and is essentially a field of rectangular slabs sticking out from the stone-tiled floor. The blocks are all lined up in an ordered grid but are of various heights, and in addition the ground level changes drastically throughout the memorial. Thus the sense of the memorial is to connote some sort of ordered chaos. I didn't entirely understand what the archietect was attempting to convey and really didn't find it as powerful as the monuments in DC. If anyone would like to read about the Memorial for the Murdered Jews, click here. A block from there was the Brandenburg Gate, which frankly I had only previously seen on Euro coins from Germany. I was somewhat surprised to hear that it is one of the greatest icons in Europe and acted as a symbolic gate from East to West Berlin. The gate is basically a gigantic facade of 6 free standing columns with a Greek statue of Athena on the top. Napoleon stole this statue upon conquering the city, and when he was defeated 8 years later, the Germans took it back. It now glares at the French Embassy, situated about 40 meters away. Also in the vicinity is the Reichstag, an incredible capitol building with a ton of controversial political history. The Reichstag has a glass dome on top of the parliament, where tourists walk around, but the wait for this was too long.

Unfortunately around this time, the weather got from cold to wet and miserable. We did go on the 1pm free tour, which is where I learned most of this history, but had to cut it short before I lost my extremeties. From there we ventured to Museum Isle, which as the name implies, houses several museums. Several of them were under construction and also closed on Mondays, and we mostly kept ourselves to taking pictures and going inside the Egyptian one for a half hour or so. Nothing too remarkable. Then on a whim, I decided we should check out the Olympic Stadium and we learned that it was just off a subway station (the U-bahn) about 40 minutes away. It was dark by the time we got there and the actual stadium (now a monument) was closed, but I got a few shots from outside and now I can say that I've been to two Olympic Stadiums from games 72 years apart.

A reststop back at the hostel introduced us better to our roommates. First we took the same elevator as Boreck (like a combination of Borat and Barack), a German Turk who was moving from Frankfurt, evidently permanently. I had known that there was a large Turkish population in Germany but I hadn't known why, and Boreck explained that many of them moved in after the War to rebuild Germany. He spoke German and was the only person we met in the hostel who was not a native English speaker. He claimed not to speak Turkish but his English accent didn't sound like that of a German speaker but rather Middle Eastern so I don't know about that. We were initially really creeped out by him because when we said we were in room 1, he was like, "me too!" I took my passport with me when we left for dinner (ironically I got a doner kebab). We also met many Australians, whom I've noticed love to travel through Europe. Basically traveling throughout Europe like we do is somewhat restricted to Anglophones or accomplished multilinguals, because English is the semi-functioning lingua franca. I think Australians are like more aware Americans and are thus overrepresented in European hostels. They have a closer connection to Europe because colonialism was more recent in that country, and perhaps due to their isolation and remoteness, many Australians recognize the need to see more of the world. It seems like a great culture. We met people from Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, basically every single city I can name in Australia. I'd like to highlight two characters.

Elliot was from Brisbane and represented Australia as the starting goalie of their U-17 team. I was really surprised to hear that he was an elite athlete, because he was clearly many months removed from his playing shape and didn't even bring it up until I asked him if he played sports. He was a soft 6 feet when I met him. Anyways he had come up to England to play semi-pro ball and work part time as a bartender, and described it as pretty boring because there was nothing to do in the day. Sure at night the Brits would go and get drunk just like the Aussies, but during the day when he'd be wakeboarding or barbecueing in Australia, here he'd probably just be staring at the rain. Then he went to Crete during the summer to work as a bartender at a resort town that was a hotspot for British tourists. He said the bar there raked in 60,000 euros a night and that the owner didn't care if they drank on the job. So he'd be there all night getting wasted and saw so much crazy shit. He would sometimes spot a pretty girl in the crowd, tell the server to give her a shot and say it was from him. Then he would make eye contact, take the shot with her, and in his words, it was "game over" from there. Smooth. To the young males out there, I'd recommend going to bartending school. And for the young females who want to get hit on by drunk guys, you can do that too. Elliot had been in Europe for over a year and had spent the last month or so traveling from city to city and was due back in Australia for Christmas.

Francesca was from Adelaide and had been backpacking nonstop for like 6 months. Honestly I don't know how anyone does that but it's a story I've heard a few times. She'd come in with just summer clothes and had since bought a few sweaters and a jacket. Along the way she'd visited France, Italy, Spain and Ibiza, in great summertime weather, and the rest of the continent in colder weather. On our first night, we had asked if she wanted to come drinking with us but opted instead for an easy night at the bar with a friend she had met on a tour earlier. She stumbled back to the room at 6:30am and somehow got up for breakfast, where she was a wreck. She also carried an iPod speaker in her oversized backpack, which she described as a great purchase because it helped to increase social interaction within hostel rooms, which indeed to prove handy.

So we hung out in the room for a while before going down to our lobby/bar and drank with these people we had just met. Boreck the Turk had been proudly showing off his "good friend" Jim Beam, a bottle he had bought that day that he was very happy to share with us. I only had one shot, but him and this other Australian (physics PhD) basically killed it between them. Boreck drank the whiskey in bed and stayed there, passing out before 9 and never made it down to the bar with us. The bar had a 2 Carlsberg for 3 euro deal going on and I took full advantage of that. That night I had some of the best bar conversations I've ever had and learned so much about about Europe, Australia, life and whatnot. I also met this girl Caitlyn from Melbourne who was born on July 22, 1988 and to date I think she's the only person I've ever met with my exact same birthdate. This was a huge cause for commotion when we discovered this fact and it was enough to warrant a Facebook friending.

So I left Berlin with great experiences and a newer and better understanding of the world. After a delicious lunch of sushi at the Berlin central station, we boarded a 1 o'clock train to Prague, and I will talk about those adventures in a different post. I'd just like to expound a bit more about Berlin because it was my favorite city out of the 3 that I visited, despite being the ugliest and smelliest. The hostel actually had a lot to do with that, but I enjoyed it mostly because I think Berlin has the most fascinating, compelling 20th century history of any city in the world. Paris, Rome or Cairo could make a case for the most interesting history of all time, and Beijing has undergone a lot in the last 100 years too, but I think Berlin has got to take the cake. It started the century as an Imperial capital, got besieged in a world war and underwent a revolution that deposed and exiled the Kaiser. It suffered through an unbelievable economic depression with historical hyperinflation never before seen and then the fall of the unstable democratic government. It saw the rise of a Nazi dictatorship led by a man who got rejected by art school, held an Olympics and subsequently became the center of the worst war we've ever had. It was then bombed, conquered and divded 4 ways. Then it found itself at the center of a new war, the Cold War, the divisions became deeper until the formation of the aforementioned Wall. The divided city was again essentially sieged and then there was the airlift. Then Kennedy came and gave a great speech ("Ich bin ein Berliner!"), then Reagan went and did the same ("Tear down this wall!" And then the Wall was torn, and then the reunification of an economic powerhouse with a sputtering economy met some predictable snags. Overall, the city's been through a hell of a lot, and I find that pretty cool.

STO: Getting off Scot-free

The plane ride from Dublin to Edinburgh was mercifully short, with a hangtime of under 40 minutes. I write mercifully because I sat behind 3 college age Irish guys who definitely hit the airport bar beforehand and were really enjoying themselves and seemed to have little volume control. Getting into the airport, I got an indication of how small the city was. Not only was the airport tiny, but the city centre was only a 20 minutes bus ride away. I got off at the last stop at the same time my friend, the indefatigable Dan Lin arrived.

It was an interesting time at Dan's pad. A 3rd year medical student at the University of Edinburgh, Dan lives with 3 other people including his girlfriend in a house that used to be own by a University professor. It's a place with such cleanliness and classiness of which magnitude none of my abodes which I may reside in for the next half decade is likely to match. In addition, while I was aware that Dan's girlfriend was from Taiwan, I didn't realize that all of his housemates spoke Mandarin around the house. The trip thus doubled as an exercise in Chinese, and I felt like I was visiting a country within a country, evident the moment I entered the house when I realized I would need to take off my shoes.

I think on my travels I can really divide the cities I've been to into two categories: the cities with lots of great sights that I could imagine visiting again, and the cities in which I think I would like to live in. Edinburgh falls into the latter category. Not that it is without attractions, because I really liked how Edinburgh Castle overlooks the entire city. It's a large sturdy block of ancient stone that is still nominally armed and holds among other things, the Crown Jewels of Scotland, and is situated on a hilltop near the middle of the city. There's the Scott Monument, which is a very interesting shaped structure that rises to about 3 or 4 stories that I thought was dedicated to the Scottish people, but instead is actually made for Sir Walter Scott, a prolific writer. Its rather shocking that one man who didn't hold political power could have such a grand monument - James Joyce just has a statue - and I hope my readers can give me a satisfactory answer. But overall Edinburgh just felt like a very nice walkable city, with some sweet shopping streets and lively coffee shops in which my heroine J.K. Rowling penned some of the greatest works of the 21st century. Dan may find himself living there for a few more years, and I really could imagine joining him. One of the odder highlights of my weekend in Edinburgh occurred during a beer run in a Scottish grocery store. The cashier exchanged a few words with us, one of which was "grand," and I gave him a quizzical look and innocently asked, "Are you Irish?" To Dan's surprise, he said yes and I told him how I was studying in Dublin, he said he was from Waterford and I mentioned their humiliating loss to Kilkenny in the All-Ireland Hurling Final. I felt so freaking cosmopolitan.

There is a lot more I'd like to write about, including trips to the farmer's market in Dun Laoghare (10 euro to anyone who can pronounce that correctly), Thanksgiving, and an epic night out that involved a gashed foot but right now I gotta go to bed so that I can wake up at 2:40am for a 6am flight to Berlin. I'll spend 2 nights there, then 2 in Prague and 2 in Krakow. It's a trip I'm looking forward to but very nervous, and I didn't really prepare enough for it today, so it's been hectic. Man this has been a strange time in my life and while I'll miss it, I can't wait for normalcy to return.

Take care all!

What's upcoming?

I've been doing a poor job on the blog and really haven't tried to advertise it, so at this point I think just DJ reads this, if that. But I have some good posts coming up before the year ends. This past weekend I visited my friend Dan at Edinburgh, Scotland which was really nice and I hope to summarize that one this week. I should probably have another one after my travels to Berlin, Prague and Krakow in the first week of December, and then maybe a last one about Dublin before I leave it on December 21st.

When I go home, I hope to make 3 posts summarizing the 2008 year. The first will be a sort of numbers-at-a-glance assessment of the year, including among many other esoteric figures, a count up of how many nights I spent in various cities, a count of how many UN World Heritage sites I visited (I'm excited to find out), a count of how many languages I said "thank you" in, and a quick recap of the most outrageous and odd things I've done and whatever other goofy stories I've encountered on my travels. This might include a list of the most absurd characters I've met, which is quite a list. The second will be a sort of guide on how to study or live abroad. The third will be a sort of essay on my experiences related to various relevant issues, such as globalization and cultural differences. I'm really going to tie in what I've actually studied, namely Cross-Cultural Communications, a linguistics class I took last year, Geography of Europe and World Englishes, both of which I'm taking now.

STO: Popping the Cork

Two weekends ago (10/31-11/1) was the one and only real Ultimate tournament of the fall. Come to think of it, I didn't play a tournament in Beijing so it was my first tournament since our pathetic performance at sectionals last April. UCD was sending two teams down to Cork for one of Ireland's biggest tournaments that had every single university club in the country, as well as possibly all of the other club teams and a club team from Belgium and another from England. All in all 22 teams were enrolled and I think we were seeded like 6th. We knew it was a down year for UCD with most of the previous year's stars graduated, but I was hoping my American expertise could sneak up on some people. I headed down by bus with Jenna, an ultimate player from Notre Dame, early Friday and we roll into Cork around 5, 2 hours ahead of everyone else who are taking the much more expensive train. So we're in the bus station, rather disoriented, and realize we don't know a thing about Cork, where we are, or where we're staying. So we wander around the city with all of our bags and decide to get a drink. Oddly enough, we walk 2 whole blocks without seeing a pub, before finally stumbling into this nice little place that happens to have the cheapest pint in town. This place sold all pints, including Guinness and this other lovely Irish dark stout Beamish, for €2.90 until 9pm. By comparison, pints in Dublin range from €4.40 to €5.50. So we took advantage of that and were semi-buzzed by the time our captain Dave called with instructions on how to get to our hostel.

Our hostel was actually very nice as we had completely booked 4 rooms, although you can imagine what the state of these rooms were by the end of the weekend, after dirt and grass from frisbee mixed with lots of college-age heavy drinking Irish folk. Friday night was also Halloween, and though I decided not to dress up, we all pregamed extensively and then went out. Perhaps the highlight of the pregame was a King's Rule (started by Jenna) in which we had to say "in my pants" following every single sentence, lest we take a drink, in my pants. It was a very fun time and several people got noticeably crazy, in my pants. One of the senior members of our team, Ciaran, who would be turning 26 the next day, dressed as Superman, in my pants. The only problem with his outfit was that he would have to take off his entire costume to take a whizz, in my pants. I think you get the idea of the rule, in my pants, and I think I'll give it a rest now.

(in my pants)

So I actually managed to get a fair amount of sleep that night and was a bit chippier than other members of our team when we awoke to go to the fields. This was the first time in my life that we took a bus to get to the fields, but it all worked out well. We were separated out into A and B teams, although this resulted in both teams being severely understaffed and did not leave our A team as competitive as it should have been. Our A team had just 10 players on it, and our B team was completely woeful and got shut out in their first game. We then got to play our archrival Trinity as our first game, and I gotta say, this was our, and my, best game. As the secondary handler (an American grad student was the primary), I threw two nice hucks for scores, caught another huck for a score, and didn't make a turnover. The highlight though was on the last point, where we were up 7-6 playing to 8, and I poached off my man into the lane and got the D. We won that game but it was all downhill from there. We dropped our next game against the best team in our pool, this Belgian club team that smacked us down, and then narrowly lost to University College Cork. This game sucked because it necessitated us playing a 4th game that day, and our captain Dave got injured on one of the last points catching a score in the end zone and pulling his hamstring. That fourth game ended up being just brutal, and although I made a sick layout catch off an errant pass and drop by Jenna, we lost again and ended the day demoralized, exhausted and rather injured.

The night was very interesting, as there was a big tournament party in town. Now I'm generally all for drinking heavily after a day of Ultimate, and generally do, but these Irish kids just had nothing else on their mind. They didn't really care about the tournament the next day, cause it was just a useless fall tournament for them, whereas it was my one and only tournament with these guys. So I called it a night at 11, before they even freaking left. I was alone in our hostel room and slept like a baby, it was awesome - until Ciaran (on his 26th birthday) came back to the room with this girl Rachel (18). Let's just say they acted as more than just friends, woke me up, and I tried VERY hard to go back to sleep. Well I think I actually succeeded, and the next time I woke up was at 3:30am when the rest of the team was returning from their night out. At this point, Ciaran had migrated over to our captain Dave's bed for some reason, and Rachel had gotten dressed but for some reason didn't return to her room but joined Ciaran in Dave's bed. So the rest of the team comes back, and they see the two in the bed together and start laughing out of control. Now somehow Ciaran and Rachel are both totally passed out and don't even wake up to that, even when Dave comes in and cries murder over the fact that Ciaran and Rachel are in his bed. He basically kicks Ciaran awake, who calls them all arseholes, and denies any sexual misconduct. Dave delivers the memorable question, "Where shall I sleep tonight? You were wanking in your bed all last night and you've been boning in mine!" Rachel was silent the entire time and probably wished she could apparate. Then Dave rips off the blankets, exposing a clothed Rachel and a naked, and unfortunately sprung, Ciaran. You can imagine the commotion that created. The night ended with another hour of us chilling in another room discussing the events of the night (I actually got out of bed to attend), and then everyone was extremely tired upon the 8:30 wakeup (morons). The best part of the morning, without doubt, were the expressions of Ciaran and Rachel the next morning. Ciaran got up first, from Dave's bed, and just goes, "ah what the focck" and slaps himself on the forehead. A few minutes later, Rachel sits up from Ciaran's bed, and rubs her eyes open. I go, "good morning Rachel." She looks around, totally avoids eye contact, and then gets up and bolts for the door. Oh my goodness it was a shameful walk of shame.

We sucked that day too, basically due to the fact that we were down to 7 and a half players (Dave was injured but tried to play anyways) and most of them had gotten no sleep, and one of them had gotten some unrestful sleep. We lost our first two games, where I mostly played cutter because my legs weren't quite fried, and then went down quickly in our last game against a super shitty team. It was 8-6 when the cap sounded, so game to 9. We had been playing the sloppiest game ever, but we were like, fuck this let's win, and scored the next point easily to make it 8-7. Then the opposing team turned it on their half and we capitalized to send the game to universe point at 8-8. So we pull to them again, and they just march downfield on us with nice easy short passes to in cuts on the force side. They weren't doing anything special at all but we were just so tired that everyone was wide open. They seriously completed like 10 easy passes and before we knew it they were right at our end zone and TWO of their players were wide open behind the forceside cone of the end zone and the pass goes between them. One person calls for it, goes right to it and the disc just hits him right between the arms and drops. Everyone is stunned, mostly us cause we had played absolutely no defense on that point. So we get the disc back up, and with me, Dave and Ciaran handling, we just play extra extra conservatively and move the disc upfield in like 15 throws and finally Dave hits Olly on the break side for the score. So it was a great ending to an eventful but rather shitty Ultimate weekend.

POL: Live from the election

It's 12:21am here in Dublin as I sit here watching SkyNews and listen to British people talking about our election. They're calling it 8-3 right now in McCain's favor, with Kentucky gone red and Vermont stamped blue. Stay in touch as I'll be editing this all night.

12:31: It's 7:30ET and polls should be wrapped up most states there. West Virginia has been called for McCain, so it's 13-3, but Obama has a sizable lead in Florida which is very promising. The correspondent from Washington D.C. has a giant, McCain-esque chin.

12:40: Apparently the polls close at 8ET. Right now SkyNews is showing a Brit interviewing a black McCain supporter

3:03: Yeah I took a break. Ohio and Iowa have been called for Obama, so I'm going to go ahead and call the election for OBAMA. Bababababababababamaaaaaaa. I had envisioned this live blogging being more exciting and informative, but the UK feed coupled with a poker game really dampened those hopes. But hope is still alive, cause change is in the air.

The Next Day: So I was awake at 4am when the election was called for Obama. It was a really exciting time, although it would have been much more exciting obviously if I was in Georgetown, where a bunch of people ran to the White House ala the time we beat UNC. I slept in until 2pm today and basically did nothing all day, skipping all my classes. Hey, every so often you need a mental health day like this.

STO: There's no place like Rome (getting a Pisa Italy)

Monday was a bank holiday here in Ireland, and with not having Friday classes, I had a rare 4 day weekend and used it to take my most ambitious trip thus far - to the boot-shaped land of spaghetti, gelato, the Papal seat, the Renaissance, the World Cup trophy, prosciutto and rampant disorganization. The timing of the trip really could not have been better. I had been having a difficult stretch in Dublin between my slow-healing ankle, my stolen bike and my cell phone's struggles. I haven't documented this but one night after an Ultimate practice, I did my laundry and threw in my warmups, which held my cell phone in the pocket. I actually realized this pretty soon but our demented washing machine autolocks its doors, so I had to watch in horror as my cell phone bounced around in the detergent-filled water. When I fished it out afterwards, it had obviously suffered tremendous water damage. I took out the battery and dried it out, and while it would turn on, there were all sorts of problems. Usually the cell phone would work fine except for the 3 button, which was just totally dead. These were actually ok times, except that I couldn't use the letters 'd, e, or f' in text messages, so I never texted in the past tense. However, at other times, all the top buttons on my phone would act as the 3, and a simple click on any button would count as like a double or triple click. Well Greg Speidel was set as the speed dial for 3, so by pressing basically any menu button, the phone thought I was double clicking on a 3 and call Greg. The cancel button was also a 3, and I couldn't cancel the call by closing the phone until after the call started, so all I could do was take the battery out. Basically I ended up calling Greg like 8 times, including a few on early Saturday morning, and he was not pleased. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and shelved out another 60 Euro for a new cell phone. It hurt me real bad deep inside, and I've not spent so much money I can be assured that I will not be making any big Spring break plans.

Oh so yes, Italy. While I was initially planning on traveling solo, I was able to recruit Thuy and Matt to come along. We flew down to Rome on Thursday night, stay there until Saturday when we'd take a train to Florence. I would stay in Florence until flying out of Pisa on Monday, whereas Thuy and Matt would board another train to Venice for Sunday night. My reasoning for staying in Florence was to hang out out more with my friend Christine Pfeil, who's studying at the Georgetown Villa program right outside the city, and that I've already been to Venice and hate water. Which makes me question why I'm in Ireland, but I digress. So I had an idea that our travel group might be dysfunctional when Matt ran away from us as we switched buses en route to the airport. When we finally caught up with him just before the airport bus left, I cussed him out in public, which was very satisfying.

On our packed RyanAir flight, I sat next to an Irish couple in their 40s who were attending a marriage in Rome. The husband convinced me that Biomass was the energy source of the future, and said that if he was my age, he would invest in a plant in the wilderness of Canada. Then he bought me two beers on the plane, for which Matt and Thuy greatly derided me. He may make the cut for the more interesting people I have met on my travels, the list of which I will release at the end of the year. We did reach Rome in 3 hours + one hour time difference, caught a bus to the city and managed to walk to our hostel. There, our nice Vietnamese-American hostel proprietor informed us that after two beds were destroyed by a drunken idiot the previous night, 2 of us would have to move to a separate hostel down the road. So Thuy and Matt went to this shitty place called Gulliver's, while I was put in a 10 bunk room populated by 9 Canadian girls. Cal 1, Matt & Thuy 0.

The next morning we got up bright and early, and headed across the Tiber to another country: Vatican City. The dome of St. Peter's Basilica (or Basilica di San Pietro) was visible from a way's away and really an impressive bastion of faith and architecture, and totally dominates the city skyline. Though it isn't even the largest dome in the city, being a meter smaller than the Pantheon, it is among the bigger domes in the world that doesn't host professional sports teams, and probably the biggest dome I had seen up to that point. Before we realized it, we had crossed the world's most open border into its smallest country. We fended off various salesmen trying to pitch us a tour for €40+, before finding one for €28, which was well worth it. In our 5 hour excursion within the Vatican, we saw many of the great art and sculpture of the Vatican Museum (the largest museum in the world in terms of total works), the Sistine Chapel, the inside of the Basilica, Michelangelo's Pietà, the Papal tombs and the top of the Basilica. It was a loaded journey, where I learned of the dual nature of Rome. Here was a city with a rich ancient history, with its glory days as the capital of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. It was the first ever city to reach 1 million people, and remained the biggest city in the world for centuries. Then it was sacked and later hit hard by the plague and its population dipped to around a striking 20,000. However, the Renaissance saw not just a rebirth of classical ideas, but also a rebirth of Rome, and the city saw a second set of glory days, this time not of military conquest but rather of artistic brilliance. So today, the modern metropolis of Roma is built around the ancient Roman columns and archs and the 16^th century Italian oils and perspectives.

The Sistine Chapel was easily the sight of all sites in that city. It's history itself is remarkable as a product of a contentious quarrel between Pope Julius and Michelangelo, but what instantly grasped me was the sheer size of the room. One needs to enter it to grasp how saturated a space can be with art, how much magnificent detail can be stuffed into one room. There is lots of literature out there on the room, most of it written by people better qualified than me, so all I will add is that is freaking sweet. The other highlight of the trip was the Basilica, which beats out any of those grand Parisian cathedrals as the best cathedral I (or the world) has ever seen. We walked to the top of the dome, an arduous climb through crawl spaces that almost caused the claustrophobic Thuy to have a panic attack. Once we reached it though, we had a dazzling view of Rome, and I'd recommend anyone else going there to sacrifice their legs for that view.

We later walked over to the Pantheon, which then became the biggest dome I had ever entered. While there was plenty of great art inside this ancient pagan temple, we were all very arted out at this point. In addition, this dome was less impressive only because it wasn't set on top of a large cathedral and as a result, was not visible from the exterior the way St. Peter's was. Nonetheless, it is a wonder that something that gigantic and unsupported could have been built so long ago. I think after that we attempted to walk home, and ended up making a 15 minute walk take over an hour and a euro, after we got lost and had to take the metro. That night also involved a lot of nonsensical walking, and never again will I neglect to ask for decent places to eat and drink. We spent half an hour trying to find a quality restaurant fitting our budget and our desires for real authentic, delicious Italian food (ultimately successful) and then several hours trying to find a quality bar fitting our budget and our desires for real, authentic debauchery (ultimately unsuccessful). Really the night was only eventful because of Rome's lack of open container laws, which allowed us to buy a bottle of wine and drink it through the streets and subway, and even right by the Coliseum.

We would return to the Coliseum the next day, when it was much more impressive in the daytime. There we paid for the worst tour any of us had ever taken, as the tour guide knew relatively little about the Coliseum nor the English language. It was still a nice structure, and I appreciated the history of walking on the same stone and marble that ancient Roman sports fans had done 1800 years before me and staring at tons and tons of arches. From a distance, all the arches made the Coliseum look like a beehive, but from up close, I was focused on the weathered rock and marble.

Afterwards, we visited the adjacent Forum, which had lots and lots of old structures. My favorite were the free standing columns that were part of a temple long destroyed. My Western Civ knowledge really made this experience more enjoyable than it otherwise might have been. It was hot and we were tired, so the Forum trip only took about 40 minutes, but there was so much stuff there that I think if I had a guidebook with me, I could have spent the whole afternoon staring at Corinthian columns and trying to read Latin. Part of me thinks RL's sole purpose was to prepare us to visit Rome.

At this point, Thuy was feeling very despondent for reasons I can't remember, and she headed back to our hostels separately. From there we walked to the train station, unwittingly through some sort of political rally, and with the weight of our bags bearing down on our very weary legs, we finally reached the ticket booth in sheer exhaustion. Buying tickets for Florence, Thuy insisted that she had to go to the bathroom. I suggested going to the train first, but she snapped that she had been holding it in for 2 hours. So I headed to the train while Matt decided to refill his water bottle. I plopped down in front of the Florence platform, and looked looking up at the clock, I realized that the train would be leaving in a mere 5 minutes. No sweat right? It'd probably leave 5 minutes late, we are in Italy after all, and they'll both be back way before then. So I waited. And waited. I heard a whistle blow. I waited. I considered running onto the train, telling the conductor to hold up. I considered abandoning my friends. Instead, I stood there and watched as the train blew its whistles a final time and slowly rolled out of the station. Thuy and Matt came back a few minutes later. I cussed them out again. It was very satisfying.

After some serious discussion, during which Thuy was in tears, we decided to upgrade our tickets from the 14 euro slow trains (the next one was in 2 hours) to the 30 euro fast trains (the next one was in 15 minutes). So that was a tight bullet to bite, but we bit it and coasted into Florence by 5 o'clock. There I texted Pfeil, who responded in freaking Italian. We ended up meeting her at around 8:30 in some bar across the river which had a free buffet with the purchase of one drink. Crossing that river, we did take the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge famous for the shops built right onto it. While walking down the street that leads into the bridge, you don't even realize you're crossing water because the transition is so smooth. The shops just continue right onto it, and the effect is something special.
Pfeil was showing the signs of a full day of drinking wine by the time she met up with us at the bar. She was her usual sporadic, I-don't-care-what-people-think-of-me self, and was clearly enjoying her time in Italy. It was somewhat disappointing that I only got to see her for a little over an hour, but it was also cool that that hour was in Florence, Italy. That night was yet another uneventful Italian night, but the next day, Sunday, was jam-packed with culture.

Matt and Thuy were planning on leaving in the early afternoon while I would stay another night, and we set out to have a productive morning and see the David di Michelangelo. The original David is in a museum in Florence that is actually rather hidden and not near the central Piazzas as we had thought (its original location was outdoors in the Palazza Vecchio). So we went through the museum, the Academia, a surprisingy minute building housing such a famous work, and soon enough came into a gallery dominated by this marble masterpiece. I had studied the David in Western Civ, but I don't recall anyone telling me how big it was. I thought it was lifesize, but it was actually 17 FEET TALL. It's rather ironic that the statue of David is a GOLIATH. He's shown in a pose after just defeating Goliath and he's holding onto the thin leather strap of his slingshot. We observed that statue for nearly half an hour, sneaking in illegal photos when we could (like the one I have there), because there really was so much to see. Michelangelo carved an incredible amount of emotion into that marble, and I really felt that David was just taken out of a living moment, instead of a preconceived pose. Adding to the experience, unlike with a painting or a sculpture like the Pieta, we could walk around all 360 degrees and see that Michelangelo didn't leave out any details. I really cannot gush enough about the David - it's just so graceful.

Afterwards, we were hungry and tired, and after debate agreed that the needs of our stomachs were more important than our legs, and decided to get some Italian lunch. Like I'd said, the Academia is in an odd corner of Florence and we couldn't find any food in the immediate vicinity. So we're wandering aimlessly around the back streets of Florenced, hungry and tired, and finally decide to ask someone for directions to a restaurant. We go into the first store we see, and it happens to be a grocery store operated by an Asian lady. So I ask her, "Do you speak English?" to which she replies no. Bah. We then ask "Parliano Italiano?" which is incorrect grammar but she got the idea and said "Si." Well we tried to then ask in Italian for the nearest restaurant, which I think you can kinda say with "Dove Ristorante?" but we failed to do that with the Spanish, French and English hybrid that came out. So she's just really confused, and I want to see if she speaks Chinese, so I try to ask what other languages she speaks: "Er...quelle langues parler?" She is utterly bemused by me, so stuttering and frustrated, I realized there was another option here, and I asked, "Ni huo shuo putonghua ma?" And incredibly, she said "Dui." So I was able to ask directions to the nearest restaurant in a corner of Florence by using MANDARIN CHINESE. What a useful language - there are just so many Chinese around. I guess it doesn't hurt to speak the world's most spoken language.

So we reach a restaurant that looks quality and as we do every single time we go to a restaurant in Italy, we stand around awkwardly, unsure of what to do. Our instincts tell us to wait for a host to seat us, but our experience has implied that in Italy, people seat themselves. So we stand there near a table, and finally ask a server whether we can sit down. The server doesn't speak English but says, "no!" and when we ask why, he points to a sign on the wall that says Open from 11:30pm to 10am. Huh? It's open just at night? We stare at the sign utterly bemused, until we realize taht the ams and pms are reversed, because there's a sign next to it saying Aperto di 11:30 a 22:00. Well our cell phones tell us it's 12:05pm, so we grab a seat. Instantly we're shooed away, and when I complain that it's freaking after 11:30, my pleas fall on deaf ears. So we exit in a huff and can't make any sense of our encounter. Luckily there's anothe restaurant down the street, with the most hilarious logo that you'll see in my facebook album soon enough, and they're willing to serve us. So after we order, out of curiosity we ask the waiter what time it is. Our clocks say 12:20 but she tells us its 11:20. Ah. So Daylight Savings happened that night. Awesome, we got a totally unexpected hour gift wrapped. The US wouldn't have DST for another 2 weeks, so this caught us completely by surprise. Now I'm sorry for being so rude to that previous restaurant.

Then Matt and Thuy left and I took a giant nap. When I woke, I headed to the Uffeze without any real idea what it was, simply because Dan Fine had told me to go there. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that Botticelli's Birth of Venus was there, as well as his Primavera. Once again I gave a silent thank you to Mr. Jarvis and his Western Civ slides, and then power walked through another quality museum. I wanted to go to a 6:00 mass that night so I had to cut my stay short, but I did manage to find my first Cantonese speaker in Italy before I left. She happened to be a gorgeous 24 year old who was sadly with her mother.

I was 15 minutes late to Mass, in part due to that last encounter. When I entered the Duomo, one of the most impressive cathedrals I had ever attended mass in, I was stunned to find a giant throng of people standing inside. There were probably 3 times as many people standing as there were sitting, and all in all maybe 3,000 people present. My first impressions were taht Italians were much better about attending Church than the Irish. The whole show was in Italian so I didn't really understand much, but even I noticed that this was an unusual mass. There was no communion, and towards the end, this priest stood up, flanked by 15 priests on either side of him, and started making a speech. And people would periodically applaud! What was going on here? He spoke for a solid 10 minutes before ending in tumultuous clapping, and I had to ask someone what was going on. She explained to me that this was the first ever mass by the new Bishop of Florence, and I realized that this was a big deal. As the new Bishop walked down the aisle, followed by possibly every single priest in Tuscany, the Church bells started ringing nonstop and some people in the crowd started standing on the pews and taking pictures. It was really a scene unlike any other I had ever witnessed in a church.

To come: Pisa.