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.

STO: Bad Day

You know those days where everything goes just right for you?

This was not one of those days for me.

Not so brief summary: I woke up at 11 having gone to bed at 5am, after the Red Sox got eliminated from the postseason. I have a class at 11am but I decide to skip it because it sucks. I don't have any contact fluid so I haven't been wearing contacts for the last few days, so I put on my breakfast, get ready for school, check my facebook yadayada, skip breakfast and bike to school, stopping by the pharmacy to grab contact solution. I get some generic contact solution at the store but I realized I didn't bring my keys so I couldn't lock my bike, so I go back home after getting the solution to get my keys. As a result, I'm 15 minutes late to my 2nd class, although it turns out my 1st class was canceled because my professor was ill. The one stroke of fortune on that day. I basically doze through my 3 classes, all of which were shitty and uneventful. Then there's an indoor ultimate practice on, but I decide to take it easy because my ankle's finally getting better and I think that some extra rest and it'll be back to normal. I have Karate later that night anyways, and indoor Frisbee is a joke. Well halfway through it I decide to go to practice and I joined in the scrimmage and reaggravated my ankle. It wasn't a severe OUCH moment but my ankle definitely feels worse today than it did yesterday. Great. It hurts enough that I decide to skip Karate which I feel bad about. I go back outside to where I locked my bike...and see nothing. I know exactly where I parked and locked my bike, and there is nothing there. I bought that bike on Thursday, throwing down 200 euro with a promise of 100 back if I returned it in good condition. I biked home from school once, and to school once. That's it. And it's freaking gone. So now at home, I'm hitting the bottle and hoping Italy is better.

SPO: Red Sox

I'm currently watching the Sox and the Rays online on MLB TV. It's pretty cool, I was given an account by an Irishman who works at our nearest convenience mart who spent a year in Dedham and is now a Sox fan. It's the 9th inning, I was going to live blog but the game was too tense. Balls Kotsay just struck out.

STO: Who needs sleep?

I'm here in the computer lab at UCD, slumped into my seat, 10 minutes removed from a difficult search for a free computer, 45 minutes from waking up at the end of my phonology class, 15 hours from posing as an Olympian, 3 days removed from exiting Stockholm, and over 6 weeks since I arrived in Dublin. Wow. It's been a tiring stretch, both in the recent past and in the longer picture. In the short term future, I cannot wait to get back tonight and just fall into a nap, maybe waking up to catch the Ireland-Cyprus game. In the long term future, I cannot wait to get back home and curl up inside a warm house and admire the snow from outside, and then go see friends I hadn't seen in 7 months. But let's rewind the last 2 weeks.

I left off in London getting wasted in a pub with random Georgetown LSE people who heard I was in town and flocked towards me. The next day, after a prolonged slumber, I got going at 2pm to do some sightseeing. International phone rates and limited battery power complicated matters but eventually I learned that my housemates from Dublin, whom if you recall were also in town, were STILL sleeping, and I decided to meet up with this girl Jenna, who plays Frisbee at Notre Dame and is also at UCD. After lunch at a pub where Crystal and I sat down with two older women, one of whom was celebrating her birthday, with incredible life stories. I reluctantly had to leave that conversation prematurely to travel on the tube to the Imperial War Museum. It was a pretty cool museum, although while I had set out to learn about how the British conquered my people, I instead saw stuff like homelife during World War II, a Holocaust memorial and a movie documenting genocide. After that, I asked for directions to the Houses of Parliament, having absolutely no idea where they were, and was stunned to find out they were within a 20 minutes walk. In London, a lot of the famous tourist attractions are right next to each other, so in a 5 minute span, I passed the Eye of London, checked out Parliament and Big Ben and then walked right up to Westminster Abbey. These are all very famous sites and I really can't add a whole lot more to, especially since the twilight sky really made it difficult for me to take good pictures of any of them. I really wanted to climb onto the face of Big Ben and get my picture taken there, ala my Great Wall of China picture, but that didn't happen.

Afterwards I did manage to meet up with my Dublin housemates. En route to dinner, they explained how ridiculously exhausted they all were, especially Chad, who woke up at 5 past the meridian. I won't get into details, but let's just say they had a VERY hard night out. As a result, while we did go out that night, it was extremely subdued. The highlight was us asking cabbies for a good place to go out and overwhelmingly being directed towards the SoHo area. Sounds like a cool place, I need to research the history of Soho but I know that's a city section you'll find all over the world (South Houston in NYC, a chic living place in Hong Kong). Well we go into a bar there, and after mulling around for 10 minutes, we start up a conversation with the bartender, who happens to be a Mexican American from San Diego who informs us that we're in a gay bar. Apparently SoHo is the gay party area of London. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but we were fairly alarmed that everyone had told us group of 4 boys to go to SoHo. When Europeans think you're gay, it might mean a need to reevaluate.

I got home safely the next day, saying goodbye to Crystal and verbally slapping her for neglecting me upon my arrival. Getting home from the airport was very uneventful. I wish I could say that for my housemates. Chad and his friend Pat never boarded a 10pm plane, because they had actually booked a 10am plane. They realized their mistake during the day but still went to the airport and feigned ignorance, before biting the bullet and buying another ticket for the last flight out, arriving back around 12:45am. Matt was supposed to take a real early flight on Monday morning, but as it so happens, he had booked a real early flight on Sunday morning and realized halfway through the day as well. Well he didn't even bother going to the airport, and instead did some quick online transactions. He ended up boarding a train to the west of England, taking a ferry over to a coastal town on the south of Ireland, then another ferry to Dublin and then 2 buses to our house. While I was able to sum up his travels in one sentence, they actually encompassed over 12 hours because of extensive waiting at each port of entrance, although only a grand sum of £110. He got back Monday evening.

The week flew by and before I knew it, I was taking up the window seat of a Ryanair flight to Stockholm, with my high school compatriot Greg Speidel in the aisle seat. So why Stockholm? Raise your hand if you can find it on a map of Europe. Hmm, that's probably like half of you. Raise your hand if you know it's in Switzerland. Well that's 3/4 of you. Unfortunately, you're all tools because Stockholm is actually in Sweden, which is Scandinavia, north of the North Sea and rather separate from the rest of continental Europe, whereas Switzerland is smack in the middle of continental Europe. For your edification, stare at this for a while cause knowing European geography is really important in my book (although I've yet to find a publisher). So before I even reached Dublin, I knew I wanted to visit something "off the beaten path" of other American tourists. I definitely wanted to see Italy, London, Berlin and perhaps Paris, Amsterdam or Barcelona, but I wanted to do something different too, and I wasn't sure what that would be. Could I hit up Lithuania, Poland or the grand Prague? Or further into Eastern Europe and go to Serbia and hope to make it back to blog about it? What about Denmark or Switzerland, are those off the path enough? What about Oslo or Helsinki? Nay, after much consultation I decided I'd go to Stockholm and Sweden. My cousin Shu Yi of the Oxford trip has been to all those Scandinavian capitals of Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki, and told me Stockholm is the best. Furthermore, one of Justin's friends in Hong Kong was from Stockholm and told me that city rocks, and I had once played Diablo II with some Swedes (I'm really setting myself up for something there). Then a look into Stockholm's wikipedia page really had me watering at this opportunity. Finally, Sweden just sounded exotic. Now I know when most people think exotic, they don't think blond hair blue eyes, but screw most people. Sweden was just so far north, I wondered what could go on there.

Well somehow, there was a tremendous city waiting for us. Stockholm is laid out over an archipelago of 7 islands and is as beautiful as that would imply. The water that flew through it was possibly the bluest river that I've ever seen go through a city (resoundingly defeating the Charles, Liffey, Thames and Hong Kong Harbor). The city was very European in most aspects, with a strongly commercialized sector but still a very vibrant old town called Gamla Stan, based in the center island. Gamla Stan consisted of many buildings from the 15th century and the grand Stockholm Palace. Sweden is a constitutional monarchy and Stockholm Palace is the historical and current nesting grounds of the royal family, although I don't think they actually sleep there (it's their official residence but not their private one). It's rather unremarkable on the outside, appearing as a stocky, rectangular block on a small hill a block away from the water, dwarfed by some other nice historic buildings on the island. We went around it on our first day but were too late for the tours (they ran from 12-3) so we didn't do a whole lot there and even considered not going back. I insisted we needed to do this tour cause it was a must-see in Stockholm, although I had no idea why. So instead we toured Stockholm City Hall, where we thought the Nobel Prize is given out. Instead, there's just the Nobel Banquet held there, and for some reason the award is given in Oslo. Lame. The city hall is pretty grand and polished, complete with a dining room large enough to hose a wiffle ball tournament. Next up was the Nationalmuseum, no space in the name, which was your standard art museum that contained a lot of European pieces, none of note, and a fair amount of Swedish culture. It would make my list of top 10 museums I've been to only because I can't name 9 others.

That night, we had an early dinner where we had authentic Swedish food, which was an uninspiring plate of Swedish meatballs for me, and some very generic pasta and mashed potatoes for Greg. We hadn't ever heard of Swedish cuisine beforehand, and now I realized why. If you're not in India, China, Japan, Italy, France or wherever they have kebabs, odds are you don't need to feel obligated to try the local cuisine. We then went out for a nice of debaucherous drinking, except we couldn't find good bars to go too. I mean we left at 7pm, and walked around, back and forth throughout the city, and kept running into bars that hadn't opened yet, bars that were empty, clubs that were too expensive, bars that were too expensive, bars that were too full and a big building named "Pub" that got us all excited until we realized it was a department store, and it was closed. Greg and I both stood outside the entrance with our jaws dropped, and as we walked away we heard a Swedish couple chuckle, presumably at us. I can't blame them. The sad part of the weekend was that we found two kick ass clubs/drinking lounges: the Absolut Ice Box, and Cafe Opera, and went to neither of them. The Cafe had been recommended by my friend Emelie, who was actually Justin's cousin that I met in Hong Kong who was raised in Stockholm. I wanted to go there, but the cover charge was astonishingly high, about 23 euro, and Greg would have none of that. The Icebox was apparently 1 of 3 in the world, with locations also in London and Hong Kong. Guess what? I've been to the one in Hong Kong, and it's pretty freaking cool, no pun intended. Well this one required advanced booking, and an 18 euro cover that included a drink, with further drinks 9.50 a piece. That's a steep price but I was willing to pay it - Greg was not. Not that I begrudge him but he was pretty stingy that weekend, and that wasn't my idea of a weekend in Stockholm, which was a capital city that required quite some capital. So our nights out were rather uneventful - one of the nights I think Greg had just 2 drinks.

The next day we did see the Royal Palace and that was freaking cool. When we arrived, people were all standing around kinda awkwardly and still, so I expected there was some sort of formality going on. Sure enough, a bunch of guards come out and raise some flags very stiffly. When we get inside, I'm amazed to find the place so ornate. Here in the cold northern hinterland of Europe, in a palace that looked like a concrete block from the outside, was just a lavishly decorated marble built environment. While the tour guide kept talking about how the Swedes were overwhelmed by Versailles and trying to emulate that palace, I thought the interior surpassed Versailles. Perhaps that's a scandalous statement, but within a smaller framework, it was really just exquisite. The best rooms had corinthian style columns on 4 corners, with beautiful Sistine Chapel style artwork on the ceiling frames, and gold statues popping out from the art. It's a room easily worth billions of dollars. So Versailles is about 10 times bigger, generally much more grand, and doesn't look like a piece of shit from the outside, but I think Stockholm Palace is still one of the best palaces I've ever been in. After that, the last eventful thing we did was to go out to a bar in Gamla Stan. The bar looked pretty cramped and generally European from the outside, but inside there was a stairwell leading down to what was termed a "Jameson Cellar" which was as cool as it sounds. Basically, I felt like I was in the wintertime of 15th century Sweden, and things were so cold that all people could do was dig a cozy little hole and nestle in and get drunk. That was what the cellar was like. It was small rooms connected by gnome-like entrances, and somehow they fit a 3 man band in there. Twas one of the coolest bars I've ever been to.

We took a bus back to the airport, a typical Ryanair airport that was 80 minutes from the city and containing an astonishing 6 gates. It was easily the worst airport I've ever been in.

STO: London

I've been to London before, just once. I remember that we were coming back from a Mediterranean cruise and had done a lot of traveling - through Barcelona, Venice, Ethesus, Athens, Istanbul, I hit up all that as well as the boat's arcade. I remember that the fourth Harry Potter book came out just a few days before we arrived in London, so I bought a book at the airport and became consumed of course, because I am the biggest fan of that series (challenge me!). We were only in London for a few days so while I think I've seen the sights and rode on the Eye, I really don't know the city at all. I had thought that I was in London in like 2004 or 2003, but I looked up when the Goblet of Fire came out and was stunned to see that it was in July 2000. I was not even 12 on my one previous visit to London! So for all intents and purposes, this was my first trip to London.

As I left off in the last post, Thursday was a supremely hectic day. Getting to school is never easy here, and Thursday was no exception as I rushed to catch my buses and made it to my World Englishes class 5 minutes late. I bolted out after my last class, skipping a math tutorial in the process and came back home to pack up and prepare for my 9:15 flight. Somehow I ended up taking a nap, and when I woke up I realized I had to make dinner, figure out my housing situation back at Georgetown for NEXT YEAR, call Crystal (whom I was staying with) and my cousin Shu Yi (whom I planned on visiting), find out how to get to the airport in Dublin, find out how to get from the airport in London, eat my dinner, take money out of the ATM, finish packing up and get to my flight. This was one of the most hectic 2 hours of my life, but in the end I caught a bus before 7 and go to the airport with a good 40 minutes to kill.

RyanAir was my airline of choice and it is famous for being dirt cheap. Flights are as low as €1, but this roundtrip to London was just under €90. Now I understand why. The inside of the airplane can best be described as compact, with the hard plastic seat of the person in front brushing up on my skinny legs. There was actually no pocket in that seat to put any stuff, so I kept my passport, iPod, wallet and cell phone in my pockets and was uncomfortable. Luckily the flight was short, barely over an hour in the air. Upon descent into London, we landed so hard and violently that a third of the plane actually screamed and we were all relieved when we did end up taxi-ing into a gate. At this point I turned on my phone, discovered that I was now on the T-Mobile UK and that text rates had increased to 50 cents and call rates were something absurd like 27 a minute. Well I bit the bullet and texted Crystal that I had arrived. I then got some pounds, found out how to catch a train into Liverpool Street Station, where Crystal had told me to go. Done and done. The whole train ride I periodically called Crystal, to no avail, and eventually ran out of money on my phone. At this point I'm kinda freaking out, cause I'm alone in London and my means of sleeping indoors was not readily apparent. I add money to my phone on a call for the first time ever, which was extremely difficult but eventually I do get another 20 euro on it (I'd end up spending 40 euro in London just on phone charges and I wasn't on it very often). I arrive in Liverpool and call Crystal again, to no response. Well I have her address, so after much internal debating, I go outsidewhere it's rather chilly and hail a black cab to her house. The cabbie doesn't know where it is, but I sit and wait for him to thumb through a map and ultimately deliver me to this cold stone house in some back alley only a few blocks from the station. I buzz in the house but soon discover that Crystal is not home. I consider lying outside the door waiting for her, completely shaken at the prospect of being homeless in this greatest of foreign metropolitans, but eventually the dreadfully cold night time air urged me to call the one other London phone number I have in my digital address book. The number belongs to Jordan, another friend from Georgetown at LSE whom I'm actually going to room with next year, not the least bit because he saved my ass that night. When I called him up, he replied, "Dude I'm soo wasted" to which my response was: "That was not what I wanted to hear." However he did tell me how to get to his place, after catching a cab to Tower Bridge I spotted Jordan on the side of the road and almost jumped out the door. So yeah, I did have a home in London, and did not join the other homeless immigrants for a night of scavenging. Crystal called me at 1:40am to say that she was sorry but had been in a club with no service. I yelled at her.

The next day I took a noon train to Oxford to visit my cousin Shu Yi, who just wrapped up a 1 year Master's program in Environmental Studies. Oxford was only an hour from the city and well worth it, because the colleges are beautiful. Apparently there really is no Oxford University per se, because every student there is part of their individual College first and Oxford U second. Each College has their own campus and courses and everything and members of different colleges have nothing in common except that they're all serious academics and live in the same town. It was a beautiful college town on that early autmn day and the architecture of the place wa superb. I mean, some of the schools are extremely old, and they all have their own distinctive, unique and exquisite designs. I grabbed dinner with Shu Yi after she showed me around the city although I really didn't see any tourist attractions. Nonetheless, it was a very pleasant afternoon and I much enjoyed that town. While I'm not planning on ever studying there, I do envy Bill Clinton and his Rhodes scholarship.

Ok so I get back into London, contact Crystal who picks up my 4th call and in the unclear reception, tells me to go to some Underground station. Great. After finding it on the map, I head over there and give Crystal another 2 calls, and when she does answer, she tells me to walk West to where she and her friends are eating sushi. Then after walking half a mile, she responds that I should have gone East. Finally she texts me the address, and I ask someone where it is, and they kindly point me Southwards. I doubt Crystal is reading this so let you viewers be known, she is in store for a nasty April Fool's trick in the future. Ok anyways, I finally meet up with her, completely exhausted cause I've been toting my bag around this whole time (keep in mind I don't have a place to stay). The night took us many places, beginning with Sake Bombs and ending with getting bombed, but the highlight was definitely when we entered this pub near the Underground station. It had actually been on a whim, we were considering dropping my bag off at her place before going back out before I said we should grab a beer at this place. Inside, I was immediately spotted by Arthur Smith, another Georgetown LSEer whom I had forgotten was in London, and this chance encounter led to loud celebration and a lot of "holy shit" moments. I had also randomly bumped into Arthur at a News Years Eve party at Harvard this year that was totally random too. Jordan also showed up at this pub and it was pretty sweet, and as I got to the bar and got a drink, I turned around to find myself face to face with Eric Bodzin, yet another Georgetowner, this time one who lived down the hall from me last year. This coincidence was even more unexpected and I almost dropped my beers in exclamation. Crazy times.


Ok I gotta run to class and afterwards I'm leaving for Stockholm, Sweden, so yeah this has been pretty nuts. I need to further my stories when I get back, including sightseeing in London, my roommates difficulties coming back from London, and the house alarm that deprived me of an hour of sleep last night.

STO: A week in the life...

I've been updating this blog extremely seldomly, far off my China pace. I owe this to a combination of less interesting cultural encounters, schoolwork, and the fact that no one actually reads this blog. But hopefully these next posts will be special, cause it's been a rather eventful week plus and bring an audience back.

I think I'll start with the Monday after Galway (two Mondays ago) when I started Karate. This has been a goal of mine for a while I guess - I've often said that if I could redo my life, I'd learn Kung Fu at an early age. The response I usually get is, "Is that all you'd redo? Really?" Well to all yall haters out there, I've actually picked up Karate now and I will come back and kick all yalls asses in. Actually I think I'm pretty terrible so far because Karate takes a balance and coordination that I kinda lack. Also my ankle is still giving me problems and I can't properly perform a few exercises. I wish I was learning Kung Fu, a Chinese art used by baller people like Wong Fei Hong and my 2nd cousin, as opposed to Karate, which is Japanese and used by people like Sean Connery. Right now I can't tell the difference, all I know is how to throw a punch and block one, all in slow motion.

On Tuesday nights, Ultimate practice has started up and I've quickly blended into this team. From a neutral perspective though, I'd have to say this team's really pretty bad especially in terms of organization, with practices fully incorporating brand new players. That's always one of the problems with Ultimate, because while the need to recruit and train new players is crucial, they can really slow down the development of the veterans and thus the A team as a whole. It seems here that the veterans, a few of whom are really quite good, play pickup on their own and don't actually try to improve at the team practices. The captain Dave is particularly sick - while playing pick up with him, he would burn his man deep and then actually catch the frisbee by spinning it on his finger. On the last point we played, he received a pass a few feet from the end zone and successfully macked it to an open teammate in the end zone. While the "purists" will scoff at these freestyle antics, I thought it was freaking sweet. I haven't sprinted yet, and on my ankle it's hard to even pivot. I've been point-blocked twice in play already, but during the scrimmage, I just took the pull and put a forehand 70 yards deep before anyone marked up on defense and a teammate caught it for a score. I think my forehand's gotten even stronger since the end of sophomore year. Btw, getting back from these late night sports practices sucks. Ultimate ends at 10 and the buses run so infrequently that it takes me over an hour to get home.

Friday night, my roommates Jason, Chad and his friend Pat and I all went out to the bars. We found out after quite a few drinks that Jason had just gotten a job offer from JP Morgan (amidst the financial free falls) in Boston. We each proceeded to buy him a drink, and when we tried to enter another bar, the bouncer actually stopped him saying he was too drunk. After extensive debate with the bouncer, we stumbled to another bar where this creepy 40 year old woman started hitting on us, and Jason entertained her with a dance. It was possibly the funniest dance I had ever seen and I laughed so hard that I'm no longer allowed in that bar. The scary thing is that I only made up that last part. Jason was hungover until 4pm the next day, and as hilarious as he is when he's drunk, he might be just as funny hungover.

The rest of the weekend was very uneventful - I got up early on Saturday morning to try to get my entry visa. Despite all the drinking, I got out of the house by 10 and to the Garda National Immigration Bureau. Although it opens at 10 on Saturdays, there was already a line around the block by the time I got there at 10:10. They only gave out 500 tickets that day, and I was probably somewhere between 600 and 700 in line, so I went home early pretty frustrated and wondering if and how I was ever going to legally get in this country. After some serious debate, I decided that since my I was going to London this weekend, I would need to get my passport stamped before I left to be safe, and with few classes on Tuesday and Thursday I'd skip one of those days. After learning that there'd be a big Frisbee social on Wednesday night that would involve chugging out of the disc, I decided on Tuesday.

I got to the Garda at 9:15am on Tuesday and finally got a ticket - I was #304, and the 234th in queue. I got out, grabbed breakfast, walked miles down the canal and still couldn't see the ocean, came back and waited another 4 hours. I chilled inside the bureau for a while, observing immigration at its finest. The country really was overworked by the amount of immigration they've been receiving, and I think that this one building in Dublin services the entire country. I saw passports from the UAE, Pakistan, Brazil, China, Malaysia, everywhere but the EU. After a lot of reading, iPod listening and occasionally talking to random Chinese people that I could find, I was called sometime after 5pm. I had all my papers with me and the process went by quickly, and amazingly the official waived my 150 euro charge because he said I was only here for 1 semester - if I was here the whole year there'd be some payments but he was really nice and told me to spend it well. I realized afterwards that I could have just gone there in the morning, gotten my ticket, headed to school and come back in time, but I learned early on in my life that if you have an excuse to skip class, use it.

Frisbee practice was a joke that night, with scattered rain and shifty winds that just destroyed all the newbies throws (and most of the vets). My friend Thuy from down the street had joined the team and came with me on her first practice and absolutely loved it, although she was soo clueless. Yeah actually, if I was making a movie about her, I'd name it that and set it in California. Although maybe I should check copyright services first. I still couldn't run during practice and decided staunchly to sit out the scrimmages. However, the scrimmages were on this tiny field and still no one could score. On the very first point, there were at least 10 turnovers and finally I couldn't watch anymore and I played the next point. Not good for my ankle but I threw for the score.

Ok the party the next day was quite legit. It was held in a University function room, which I thought was odd, but you know with the 18 drinking age, drinking can be sponsored by the university. So we really just destroyed a room that might be used as a classroom the next day. While they only had cider there, cider can get you drunk well enough and we played drinking games for several hours. Actually the first game that got going was Flip Cup, introduced to the Irish by yours truly and they seemed to really like it. Nearly all the Irish were unfamiliar with the game although some had heard of it. They were all aware of Beirut/Beer Pong but thought it sucked cause it involves relatively little drinking. Fair point. Moving on, we poured cider into Frisbees and started chugging with straws, 2 to a disc. I gotta admit I just couldn't do it. Although for initiation in the States nearly everyone has to drink a disc of beer, I was too full by this point and came nowhere close. I stepped up the plate and completely whiffed. Afterwards, we went downstairs to the student pub where we took a shot of vodka and bought a pint of beer, and it was good times all over. This kid Sean from Texas turned 21 that day and so we all were happy and bought him drinks. Then we caught the public bus down to city centre and basically turned the upstairs of a Dublin doubledecker into a party bus. Our captain Dave was chanting these call-and-responses that were just absurdly dirty and I wish I could remember them. One kid Shane actually passed out on the bus but somehow rallied into the club. At the club I splurged on another few drinks and danced and whatnot, it was a pretty typical club experience. I was going to catch a cab back with Thuy, but she was waylaid by a tall Irishman.

That was Wednesday. It was a lot of fun. Thursday was a different story altogether. Thursday quite possibly the most hectic day of my life....
Next up: London