Milan

Whew. Back from Italy. I don't even know where to begin. I guess before I go through my trip I will start with a few impressions of the country itself. Italy was exactly what I was expecting in many ways, and so different than what I was anticipating in many ways. There were numerous times when I just laughed because I thought the Italian's could not be enhancing their stereotypes any more. (i.e. When I was showering in a public dorm-style shower room and a bunch of Italian guys were singing obnoxiously loud whilst showering. Really, sometimes the Italian males can be a little bit much.) Also, I think I ate pizza every day. If I wasn't eating Pizza, I was eating some kind of pasta, or perhaps Lasagna. Italian food is my second favorite (behind my beloved mexican which I haven't had since January...argggggghhh...) so I enjoyed the food a lot. As you might have heard however, Pizza is not nearly as good in Italy. It is extremely thin and doesn't have a whole lot to it. It is incredibly simple, yet feels very "homemade." I still miss a good old Woodstocks pizza, which will always be my favorite.

Things in Italy are expensive. Considering that the dollar is absolutely tanking right now (Don't you love this war???) that adds onto the already expensive Italian goods. It sucks to order a 6 dollar meal and realize that you are really paying over 9 dollars in reality. But, one needs to eat, and there is nothing we could do it about it, so we figured, welp, might as well enjoy ourselves.

One of the biggest dissapointments to my trip was not running into these guys:Apparently they are really busy this time of the year. Lots of clogged toilets or something.

Anywho, the trip started off at 4:30am on a Thursday morning. Joe and I cut it incredibly close to missing our plane, which probably would have put quite the damper on the beginning of the trip. We literally were running through the terminal like that awesome scene in Home Alone where the whole family is running through the airport. We reached our terminal right as they were announcing "last call" on the intercom for our flight. I say that I meant to cut it that close, because I like to live dangerously. It makes things more exciting that way. (Riiiiiight...)

We flew into Milan, which all in all was pretty disappointing. This city was kinda dirty, and didn't have a whole lot of sights to see. Howver, the main Duomo (cathedral) in the main square was worth the trip to the city all by itself. Apparently this is the 3rd largest cathedral in the world in terms of ground that it covers. Absolutely breathtaking. We paid a few euros to go to the top and see the view of the city, and we were blown away. Not only was this view a complete 360 degree panorama, but there was room to walk around and explore up on the roof. The weather was so nice that there were people sprawled out catching some rays attempting to tan. Joe and I stayed up there for a good 2 hours or so, just enjoying the view and talking about God and life and all that good stuff.

While wandering around the main square in Milan, just taking pictures and enjoying the weather, Joe and I both had some interesting experiences with some street vendors. (I'm really not sure what to call these guys, maybe "swindlers" would be a better word.) One second I am taking pictures, the next these guys come up to me, ask me if I want my picture to be taken and the next thing I know they are taking pictures with my camera (that I thought they were going to try and steal) and showing birdseed into my hands. Now, I hadn't really noticed the amount of piegons in this main square. About 2.6 seconds later, dozens of pigeons come flying at me like I'm Steve Irwin or something. I'm keeping a very close eye on the guy that is taking pictures with my camera, and am trying not to get my eyes pecked out. The second "swindler" comes up and keeps giving me more birdseed as to make for better pictures. At one point he put birdseed on my head so that the pigeons would land on my dome! Are you serious?!?!? I don't know about you, but Pigeons aren't exactly my favorite animals. They are like flying rats. I don't want flying rats on my head, thank you very much. I ended this madness, took my camera, and gave the guys one euro each, which I still regret. They were asking for 20 euros each! (30 bucks!) Are you kidding?!?!? Just because you swindled me and took some crappy pictures of flying rats eating food out of my hands I should give you 30 bucks? Um no. Sorry. Looking back on this story, it is pretty funny, but I just can't believe some of the things people do to try and get some easy money.

Joe had a guy come up to him, put a little colorful bracelet on his wrist and ask for money for "the children of Africa" or something like that. Joe gave him a euro I think, and the guy started getting really mad at him asking for like 20 euros or something. Keep in mind that this bracelet was essentially a thin piece of string. After our two experiences, Joe and I realized we were tired of being swindled, and decided to get out of the main square.

When we checked into our "hostel" (I call it a hostel very loosely) we realized that hostels in Italy were going to be a very different experience than our hostels in Germany. First off, no one really spoke any English at this hostel, so that was our first obstacle. After a lot of gestures and pointing at things, we were finally checked in. The maid, this younger girl who spoke the most English, took us to our room. Joe and I were extremely tired after a long day of traveling and walking around, so we decided to go to bed pretty early. We met this guy Gerry who was staying in our room with us, a young black dude from London, who was backpacking around Europe. He was a great guy and we made plans with him to go to the Leonardo Da Vinci National Science and Technology Museum the next day.

I was the first to wake up the next day, and I soon learned that our door had no handle. I guess it had either broken off, been torn off in a fit of rage, or some other crazy scenario I can't think of. There was no way to open our door from the inside. After quickly dismissing some thoughts as to if this is how any of the horror scenes from the movie "Hostel" (which I have never seen and never will) start, I realized we were on the first floor, and being the young agile whippersnapper that I am, I could just hop out the window and run around to open the door from the other side. Thus, this is what I did. I chuckled to myself at the ridiculous situation I was in, and ran around and heroically opened the door. This story, in a nutshell, sums up our first hostel in Italy (which was called "Medusa Hostel" if you ever plan on going.) A few other things led to us not being so fond of this particular hostel, for example, no hot water in the shower, a joke of a continental "breakfast" and the fact that our welcome to the hostel wasn't exactly warm and cuddly like we had been spoiled with in Germany. The one plus side was that this was one of the cheapest hostels in Milan, so I guess we were saving some cash, but getting what were paying for. Hey, we had semi-comfortable beds and a roof over our heads, it could have been much worse...(which as you will read later, it will...)

Once Joe, Gerry and I got going, we started our trek to find this museum we had heard about. After spending a while looking for this museum which was supposed to be equivalent of the Italian Smithsonian, we finally found it. Once I get my pictures posted, you will see very clearly why this museum is not exactly what we were expecting. It was interesting in some respects, but I think the main reason it was disappointing was because we were all expecting to see some of Da Vinci's actual works. There were a lot of replicas and models built based off of Da Vinci's works and drawings, but nothing original, crafted by Da Vinci's own hands himself. Oh well. The museum was entertaining for the most part, but was pretty unorganized. I don't think I have ever been to a museum in the states where things are so randomly scattered and poorly labeled. The best way to describe this museum is random. Maybe I was just disapointed because there weren't any sections devoted to this guy,who was always my favorite:

Leaving the museum, I realized I needed some more Gelato. If you have never had Gelato, it is basically Italian ice cream, but for some reason tastes soooo much better. After grabbing some more Gelato and another Pizza, Joe and I were ready to leave Milan and catch our train to Florence. We said our goodbyes to Gerry, got his contact info (this is a more professional and classy way of saying that we would just add him on Facebook) and peaced out of Milan. Oh, except leaving Milan was not so easy. You would have thought that we would have learned our lesson from our Airport experience the previous day, but nope, I guess we just aren't that intelligent. Joe and I barely made it to our train. Running through the train station, at full speed with our huge backpack on, this must have looked like a chase scene from The Bourne Identity or something. You would have thought we were being sniped or something. Catching the train minutes before it left, we jumped on and realized we might have been on the most crowded train in all of Italy. Finally we found an open compartment, and were able to relax. About 3/4 the way into our train ride, more and more Italian's keep piling onto this train, regardless of the fact that there are no more seats, and our compartment fills up with this huge Italian family. This happened right when Joe got up to to go to the bathroom, so his seat immediately got snagged. I guess you snooze (or you pee) you lose. The fact is, we made it, by some miracle or another, to Florence.

Since I write way too much about the smallest details, this blog has already gotten a little lengthy and I will end this one here. I think I am going to split this up into three different entries, one for each city (Milan, Florence and Rome, each having more to write about than the last...) So stay tuned!

To be continued...

P.S. Pictures are coming ASAP, I took over 300 in Italy, so obviously I will only post some of these. My computer is broken (the motherboard flipped out and died on me) so I have to get that repaired. I have no idea how long that will take, and until then I am using my generous roommate's computers and won't be able to upload photos...

...sigh...

So my computer broke. It froze and the screen started turning weird colors. I turned it off and it only would turn onto a black screen. This morning, I turned it on and honestly, I'm not joking, I got what I could most closely describe to as that falling green "code" from The Matrix! Asian symbols, numbers, and other random shapes were falling down the screen! Ah! Is this some kind virus or something?

This means that I can't upload pictures, update my blog that often, or talk to people on Skype, if I don't get my computer fixed. This really is not what I needed. I'm not sure if the computer is beyond fixable, but If I lose everything on there, it would really suck. I would have lost all the pictures that I've taken since I've been in Prague, and various journal entries amongst lots of other documents. I'm planning on getting a Mac as soon as I can, because my computer just flat out is not reliable. But until then, this will be so annoying! I already had something stolen, I didn't need to lose everything on my computer!

Okay, that's enough complaining, but I could go on... I will say that I did find the blessing in the midst of this curse. Having no computer forces you to get outside! I went over to the English bookstore/cafe called The Globe, used their computers, got some lunch, did some reading and journaling and even met two girls from New York. This was cool because they were both film majors and really into movies and filmmaking. I might even try to make a film with one of the girls, since we are both in Prague until May. So that's pretty cool.

I can't believe I've been here just short of two months and I've still got about two months until I come home. I'm at just about the halfway mark. Crazy. Time sure has been flying. I've been doing the best I can to take it all in, as its happening. So often during fun times we don't really appreciate what is going on around us. We just ride the wave, enjoying it. This is fine, but sometimes I like just sit back and really take in what is going on around me. I can already picture myself in Chico this fall, going to class, and randomly thinking of some of the fun times I had here in Prague. It's strange to think about that.

It snowed so hard today! Today was the coldest day in Prague since I've been here. Sheesh. It was funny too, because my roommate Jared and I were thinking about going to the Zoo. When we walked outside and saw it snowing, I just laughed. I've never planned on doing an activity you usually do when its really nice and sunny out and had it turn out to be snowing!

Random thought: I miss longboarding. And driving with my music blaring. And throwing the disc around.

But I'm happy here. I'm learning a ton, seeing the world, and discovering tons about myself. Isn't that the most stereotypical study abroad comment you've ever heard? Ha.

Oh one more thing, if you could shoot up a prayer for me and my need to raise $4,000 for Africa this summer, that would be much appreciated. It's already stressful enough that I have to raise that much money overseas, and now its even worse not having my own computer...

Deutsch-land (pictures!)

Hopefully I spelled Deutsch right.

Germany is a crazy, but extremely interesting place. I still am not a big fan of any language that makes you sound as if you have something stuck in your throat, but the country, is extremely intriguing and has a ton to offer.

Walking around, I'll admit that it was hard not to think of this country's horrible low-points. Being an American, mostly everything I've ever seen or read that had to do with Germany had to do with the Nazi's and WWII. Walking around and seeing older Germans, it made me wonder what they had seen and experienced. The last country I traveled to was Poland, where I visited Auschwitz, so it was weird walking around the country that occupied Hitler and his followers for years. I know the current German generation had about as little to do with these things as I did with mistreating Native-Americans, but you can tell that the vibe is still in the air. Around every corner, there are reminders of WWII, or the communist era. German's aren't forgetting about these things anytime soon.

I noticed that wayyyy more German's speak English that Czech's, and that they are much, much more polite. People were very helpful, and we had no problem getting directions or help. I definitely enjoyed being surrounded by the German people for 5 days, they were actually very pleasant people.

My roommate Joe and I took a bus to Dresden, where we arrived at about 3 in the morning. My introduction to Germany was in the middle of a cold and dreary night. Walking through the city to our Hostel, we probably saw about 4 people. This was a bit eerie, but actually quite peaceful. Dresden is a quiet city, with kind of a relaxed and subdued feeling to it. This was the city that was bombed to smithereens by U.S. troops, (Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse 5 was set here) and you can really tell. Only a few buildings look old and everything had kind of a modern look to it.

Our hostel was really cool. You'll just have to look at the pictures below to understand...it was very cozy, and all the rooms had fun themes. We saved ourselves some money by cooking some rice and chicken that we picked up from a local grocery store in the little guest kitchen. After a day of walking around Dresden, we went to this Bar/Club that these two Irish guys showed us. It was there that I met this Italian girl named Martina, and her friends. We talked about how awesome California is (everyone is always a little impressed when I tell them I'm from Cali...) and I how I need to make it to Italy. After a while of getting to know this girl, her and her friends had to leave, because they had a plane to catch early in the morning. Joe and I were disappointed that they couldn't stick around, but after a satisfying day of traveling and sightseeing, we were ready to head back to the hostel and call it a night.

The next day we realized that we had to deal with the problem of getting to Berlin. We thought we were going to have an easy time getting a train or bus to Berlin, and that it wouldn't be too expensive. This guy and girl that worked at the hostel told us we should try a different approach: Hitchhiking. I'm not joking. Joe and I looked at each other, thought about it, and said: "Why not!?!?" Guy and girl behind the desk at the hostel told us just the place to do it, and that it should take no more than 30 minutes to be picked up. The assured us it was safe and that people do it all the time...so Joe and I felt confident about it. Cardboard signs (with Berlin written on them) in hand, Joe and I walked to our thumbing zone. We kept getting more and more excited about the idea and thought it would be such a cool story to say that we hitchhiked on the autobahn. After about 30 minutes of tons and tons of cars passing us, we started to get a little discouraged. Were we doing this wrong? I mean how hard can it be? We tried everything. Switching signs. Switching positions on the street. Laying down the signs and using just our thumbs (that is a universal signal for hitchhiking right???) Finally, one guy pulled over. Giddy, we ran over to him. He rolls down his window, and I realize that this is the fastest I have ever judged someone. Is this guy safe? Is he going to blow my head off with a sawed off shotgun? Has he done this before? He told us he was going to some city called "Hollen" or something like that, and we told him we were trying to get to Berlin. Here was the problem: He didn't know where Berlin (a city of 3 million people) was! Are you kidding me! We were only 2 hours away! This is like someone being in Orange county and not knowing where Los Angeles is! Joe and I passed, because that was just too weird for us. Sadly, he was the only guy who stopped for us, so we accepted defeat after about an hour, and walked to the train station. We ended up paying about 50 bucks for a train, which is a little steep, but at least the train was really nice. We also met this really nice girl Chelsea, a Canadian, on the train. She is living in Hamburg and is a full time Dancer with some pretty prestigious dancing company. So that was cool. It was nice meeting a stranger who knew English well. We probably talked with her the whole way, and we parted with each other's contact info. (Facebook is having quite the interesting role in my travels...)

Quick tangent: One of my favorite quotes from this trip so far happened while we were failing to hitchhike. It went something like this:

"We're eating rice and now we're hitchhiking.... What is this?!? Into the Wild?!?!?"

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, then you won't really get it, but I found it humorous.

We arrived in Berlin in the evening, and we were immediately intimidated. The city is huge! There are tons of people everywhere! Plus, the public transit was on strike, so almost everyone was out walking around. This made for a pretty cool introduction to the city, but needless to say, I was taken aback. I thought Dresden looked modern (remember I'm comparing these cities to Prague, which is a city that has a much older feel/look to it), but man Berlin is so much more modern/contemporary. You'll get the idea when you see some of the pictures I took. There aren't many buildings that have a renaissance or gothic look to them in Berlin, that's for sure. However, on the flip side, some of the architecture in Berlin is very impressive and very cool.

We made it to our first Hostel in Berlin, Heart of Gold, which was themed after The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. A sweet hostel with tons of people and a very energetic vibe. I'm really glad we got to stay there. Walking around Dresden, Joe and I stumbled upon the German parliament building, The Reichstag, which has this really cool orb-looking sphere on top that you can go up and walk around in. (Again, check the pictures...) We also saw the Jewish memorial, which really can't be explained. It's a ton of rectangular stones (over 2,000) lined up in rows. No one really knows what it symbolizes, but it is still extremely powerful.

The thing that really defines Berlin is its night life. There are tons clubs, pubs, bars, etc. Joe and I went on this "Pub Crawl" through this great touring company. About 75 college-aged students from all over showed up, including about 35 girls from Ireland. (!!!) It costed 12 euro's for the whole night, but they took us to four different bars/pubs all over the city and gave us a few free drinks here and there and we got special deals at all of the bars. It was a great way to see the nightlife throughout Berlin. This was where I met an Irish girl, who quickly introduced me to all her friends. Good times.

My highlight, hands down, was our tour of the city on Monday, which was our last day. This company called newEurope tours gives free tours throughout major European cities. Our tourguide, named Per (pronounced like "Pear") was from London, and was probably the greatest tour guide I've ever had in my life. When I'm casting people for movies in the future, I want this guy to play a major role in one of my movies. He's just one of those people that is incredibly wise, charismatic, energetic and loves his job. He showed us the Brandenberg gate, (most famous symbol in Berlin), the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler's bunker, the Jewish Memorial, and various other sights. The tour finished with our group of about 30 sitting on the grass in front of this church on a sunny day, with Per standing over us telling us his amazing story about how exactly the Berlin wall fell. It was amazing. I wish I would have recorded it. Between his amazing vocabulary, storytelling abilities and overall knowledge on the subject, it made for a spectacular little speech/story/tale/whatever you want to call it. Needless to say we tipped him heavily for his fantastic four hour tour.

After wandering around Berlin waiting for our bus to come at 11:55 pm, we finally were on our way back to Prague. After about a 5 hour bus ride (which was playing "Must Love Dogs" dubbed over In Czech and was about 95 degrees) we finally made it home.

Another tangent: On our bus ride to Dresden, Mr. and Mrs. Smith was being played. I have been wanting to see this movie for a while because I love Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is alright, and I figured, hey, this is the guy who Directed The Bourne Identity so it's got to have something going for it right? Wrong! This movie sucked! The screenplay was absolutely terrible, and this movie was completely and utterly stereotypical "Hollywood." Sex! Explosions! Gunfights! This does not equal a good movie. I was disappointed in Brad Pitt for being in a movie like this...but anyways...

I only have one more week until my next travels begin! A week from today I will be leaving for....Milan, Italy! The original plan was to go to Bulgaria and Istanbul, but because we waited too long to get our tickets, we were forced to back out due to the extreme costs of traveling. At one point we were looking at taking a train for 40 hours! Long story short, we nixed that idea and decided on Italy. I will be spending about 4 days in Milan, taking a day trip to Naples, then going to Rome for another 5 days. Viva Italia!

I better wrap this up, considering most of the people I know who read this probably gave up on this blog about 6 paragraphs ago...haha (I still love you guys). Anyways, here are the picture links:

Set I

Set II

Set III

Enjoy!

Snow from the blue sky

Today I woke up to blue skies. No more than an hour later, dark, gray gloomy clouds took reign over the skies and unveiled the first real snow that I have seen in Europe. 15 minutes later...blue skies. 30 minutes later...snow. This has been going on all day? Why are the Prague skies so bi-polar?

Lately life has been entertaining. We found a way to hook up a friend's playstation 2 to our TV, so we could watch movies now and then. We just watched Run Lola Run, which is an excellent German film. The girl from The Bourne Identity (Franka Potente) is in it, and she's fantastic. Go watch this film.

Haven't been going to as many pubs and clubs lately, because money is getting a little tight. Everybody in our program kind of went crazy the first month, and then realized all the traveling they were going to be doing, which led to people not going out as much. Makes sense, considering I'm going to be going to about 8 countries in the next two months.

Tonight at midnight I'm off to Germany for 5 days. My roommate Joe and I are leaving on a 3 hour bus ride to Dresden. We'll be there for a day, and then off to Berlin from Fri-Monday. We wanted to come back Sunday at midnight, but according to the lady at the student travel agency, there are no buses on Sundays. This meant that we had to miss our Czech film class on Monday and come back Monday at midnight. Not a big deal, but I'm a little worried about spending too much money in Germany because the Euro makes everything so expensive. So needless to say, I won't be blogging or anything, but I will be traveling and taking lots of awesome pictures!

Just bought the book Everything is Illuminated which was actually turned into a film a few years ago with Elijah Wood. I hear the book is great, but I guess I'll find out this coming weekend as I read it on my travels around German-land.

It's a verb

My roommate Logan said something very wise tonight. (I'm paraphrasing.) "Love can't be put into words. If you think you can put love into words, you don't know what love is."

This lead me to thinking about a question that I think about quite often..

What is love?

Is it a feeling? An emotion? Feeling God? How do you even know if you are in love? When can you rightly say that you know you are in love? How is loving your neighbor different than loving your wife, your friend, your family?

Is giving your life for someone else the greatest sign of love?

the daily terror of eternity

"I had rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was only a children's game in which all of the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end."

-T.S. Eliot