Europe 2007!

Back Home

2007-08-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

This will be my final post. I'm back in the states and catching up on emails and such. As promised, here are some photos I took during the trip:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/10091273@N06/az77hg

Also here are a selection of pretty pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/gp/10091273@N06/m4Tg42

This was an amazing adventure that I will remember for a lifetime. My travel buddies really made this trip great, so big thanks to Ethan and Tina. You guys rule. Also, thanks to our many generous hosts and to all the friends we met along the way.

Lastly, thanks for reading. Peace!

Goodbye Berlin

2007-08-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

Time flies! I'm back in the states, and sadly my trip has rapidly drawn to a close-- but I still must fill you in on the rest of my stay in Berlin.

In my last post, I had just finished retelling my fun meeting with Micha and Carissa. The next morning, Sarah, Kalani and I went for a delicious lunch at Cafe Orange and then took a pleasant stroll around East Berlin. I snuck off to catch the first part of the Jewish Museum which lies in an impressive museum designed by the same architect who did the new Denver Art Museum. I really like his work, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Libeskind>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Libeskind afterwords I met up with Barry's language partner Julia and we joined Kalani, Sarah, Daisy, Sam and Noah for Thai food and a trip to the Reichstag. The Reichstag has an interesting history, its a very old building that originally housed the Parliament for the German empire and then the Weimar republic. The Nazi's burned it hollow and it sat in disrepair for years. Now, however it sits at the middle of one of the most modern government centers I have ever seen. After the Berlin wall fell, the new capital of Germany had to be built from scratch in Berlin and all of the shiny newness is in stark contrast to the old-school neoclassical style of DC. The Reichstag is surrounded by sleek glass office buildings as well as the chanceller's residence. Although it retains its old-school facade, the inside of the Reichstag is a brand-new ultra-modern parliament building with a giant glass dome on the top. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_(building)We spent a few hours enjoying the view from the top of the clear dome as the sunset. There is a spectacular view of the entire city.

Julia is finishing up her masters thesis before she starts her doctorate. For her thesis she is comparing the rhetoric that Hitler and Mussolinis employed in their public speeches. As part of her research she gets to travel to Italy. She also does Model UN, and we had fun talking about travel and our mutual friend Barry.

As usual we all finished up the evening at a Bier Garten (this one was on a fake beach on the river) and then we parted ways. The next day I met with Kalani and Sara for Indian food and then started my long trip back to the states, via London.

I'm going to get my photos in order so I can write one last post and include a link to the photo album. Ciao!

Everybody Knows Somebody in Berlin

2007-08-05T04:53:00.000-07:00

When my friend Jenny heard that I was going to be in Berlin a few months back, she immediately said, “You have to meet my friend Micha!!” Micha worked at a DC think tank with Jenny doing education policy research last year. So, of course we met Micha! He arrived on bicycle and met us at Kalani's favorite Bier Garten. Then he took us to his favorite Bier Garten which was also quite nice. Micha met an eclectic crew. Kalani and his friends were joined by Noah, class of ´05 and Carissa, a friend I had met on the plane. Our party swelled to 9 people. It was a lot of fun and Micha was a good sport about meeting everyone. He gave me some great pointers on things to see, and we had fun comparing DC to Berlin. Hopefully he'll come back to the States and visit soon.

Tonight I will be meeting another Berliner and friend-of-a-friend named Julia who is also working on her PhD program. More to come.

Brunch in Berlin

2007-08-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

It´s good to hear from Ethan. I´m glad he made it home safe.

London wrapped up with a big send off from the investment bankers. Irungu, Tapiwa, Rashmi and I met up with Namisha (another Jerry hallmate) at Canary Wharf, just as everyone was getting off work. It´s a fun crowd—they all work within half a block of eachother. We split our time between talking about the subprime loan crash and reminiscing about college over drinks at the local i-banker bar. The place was swarming with ospiffy looking traders and analysts in slick suits. I was definitely the only one in shorts!

I bid Namisha farewell and wished everyone good luck with their training. The next morning I was greeted in Berlin by my cousin Kalani flanked by another group of Stanford friends. Kalani, Sarah and Sam had all studied at the Stanford House in Berlin over a year ago during the same quarter that I was studying at Stanford in Washington in DC. We all met for the first time when our programs converged for a conference in Beijing and now it was fun to reunite over a year later in Berlin. Kalani and Sarah have a great flat in Mitte in East Berlin that is serving as a focal point for all sorts of friends as they travel through Berlin. Last night I met Stephanie and Daisy, too other Stanford kids spending the summer in Germany. We all had a blast doing what German´s seem to do best; namely eat and drink. We went to Dolce Pizza, then a wine bar, then a beer garden and then a bar. It was good times.

This morning we had a big brunch and then Kalani gave a great tour of the Berlin wall and Potsdammer´s platz. We zigzagged back and forth across the former iron curtain and stopped by Kalani´s old office at the DB tower. Needless to say, this city has a lot of interesting history.

Now its time to get more food. Much more to discuss tomorrow!

Pictures!

2007-08-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys! I got some more pictures online, it might be slow to view them, and I haven't gotten to comment them or order them yet. Sorry!

http://townsend.mine.nu/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=5584

Ciao!
Ethan

Being Bookish at the British Library

2007-08-02T07:03:00.001-07:00

I'm here at the British Library which is by far my new favorite spot in London. This place is sort of like the British version of the Library of Congress, except it started as the King's personal library. Today it is part museum, part coffee shop, and very much the most pleasant library I've ever been in. (Not to mention free net access!)

The library is currently hosting an impressive exhibit called "Sacred" that showcases manuscripts of Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts side by side and shows how they borrow and adapt form each other's artwork and imagery. It might be my favorite exhibit yet, see http://www.bl.uk/sacred. The library has an impressive collection of texts and artifacts and the exhibit was very well done. Ethan would have liked it, as it is a nice capstone to our trip-long first-person exploration of various Mosques, Synagogues and Churches.

Irungu's house is fun to relax in. Since there is no net access or television, after work everyone just lounges about on the couch or floor reading. Nina and I are both catching up on Harry Potter, while Solomon studies for his job and Irungu reads some heavy fiction. This morning I tracked down the best cheap lunch place in London, conveniently named "The No 1 Cafe" (located on Tower Street between Covent Garden and Soho). Their speciality is potatoes so I had a giant spud with cheese, beans and lettuce for £2.65. I got the lazy-cashier discount and saved 15p because the chap behind the counter didn't feel like changing my £20 note. Always a win! I had a pleasant lunch with my companion Harry Potter in Nina's hidden garden from yesterday.

My camp friend Erica is doing well and it was great to see her last night for some good Italian food in a hidden pedestrian mall. She spends her days working at a small firm by Bond street where she shuffles around millions of pounds of other people's money. She has been maximizing her prime European location by spending lots of weekends traveling around. Last week she was in Iceland and soon she will be heading to Krakow. Its impressive to see her all professional and sophisticated after our days back at summer camp. We both decided we miss camp and we are jealous of our similarly aged camp-friends who somehow are still working there.

Tomorrow I'm off to Berlin. Later!

Dali at the Tate and More London

2007-08-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

I slept in until noon yesterday, packed my things, said goodbye to Kate’s family and headed to Irungu’s place at Canary Warf. After dropping my bags I tubed into London. While I munching on authentic local British food (a.k.a. Kentucky Fried Chicken) in Leicester Square, Caio mistook me for a local and introduced himself. Caio, like me was, looking around for things to do and people to meet. We had a nice chat. Caio is an American/Brazilian high school student who lives with his family on a US Army base in Germany. He is in London on holiday. His Mom is in the Army and he’s lived at American military bases all over the world. He was thinking of applying to Stanford so I tried to answer some of his questions. Maybe he’ll have his own StanfordGrad blog soon! It was a good day of exploration, and by nightfall I had walked all of the way from King’s Cross down to Westminster.

When I got back to Irungu’s place all of the i-bankers were unwinding after a tedious day of training on Excel. Irungu’s apartment is a lot of fun and has a dorm-ish atmosphere. There are four people living there and two guests, me and Nina. Nina is the girlfriend of Solomon, one of Irungu’s roommates. Nina lives in Germany and is here visiting for a few days. She spent 6 months living in London a few years back so she is an absolute pro at navigating the city.

Nina and I spent the day touring and it sure is great to be with someone who knows this city like a local. We saw the Dali exhibit at the Tate (just like in the movie Match Point) and Nina’s background in art history was particularly useful. After that we crossed the millennium bridge and wandered around SoHo and Covent garden. Nina knows all the little nooks and crannies, like a pleasant grove and garden tucked behind a gateway amidst the hectic Covent Market. We’re at a NetCafe nearby and Nina has to go to meet Solomon when he gets off work. Meanwhile, I’m going to meet an old camp friend!

I wish Ethan and Tina were here. More adventures to come….

GoodBye Ethan!

2007-07-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

We wrapped things up at the British Museum today and caught up with Kates family for dinner. We finished the evening by watching Terminator and celebrating our governor's 60th birthday. Ethan heads back to Ashland tomorrow morning through San Francisco. I'm going to miss him, but fortunately I'll be seeing him again in a few weeks back home in Boulder. And don't worry--- the blog will go on! I'll be staying with Irungu's here in London and he has already begun to share the blogging burden.

Ethan's imminent deperture is a perfect opportunity to reflect on our travel philosophy. We have developed the following travel rules:

Rule Number 1: No Dying

Rule Number 2: No rug purchasing.

Rule Number 3: Do anything for the blog.

These rules have served us well. I am adament about following the first. The second was particularly handy for Turkey, and the third has become a sort of a mantra when things turn sour. When luggage is lost or uncertainty abounds, we find consolation knowing that, at the very least we shall emerge in then end with an entertaining story for the blog!

More adventures tomorrow. Goodnight!

Europe vs. America

2007-07-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that with this trip's prolific blogging, one or two of the least dedicated blog readers may not have had time to study the entire novel we have posted online. For their convenience, and since my portion of the trip is coming to a close, I thought that I would take advantage of this "internet" thing (it will never catch on) to summarize the trip so far:

Prague: Absolutely beautiful town but the tourist area has nothing but tourism, it is like a giant club with tons of young adults except with beautiful baroque cathedrals every few blocks.

Rome: Fantastic all-around town. Wonderful reception from Massimo, lots of history, lots of culture, still being used today. Had a wonderful time exploring local haunts and ancient ruins.

Serbia: Wonderful experience by relaxing in Banya, immersing ourselves in a foreign culture few Californians have the opportunity to enjoy, and had a great time interacting with people of various english proficiencies.

Istanbul: Massive culture shock, hectic, busy, slightly intimidating, but fascinating and a great learning experience. One of my favorite museums EVER and we had a great day with friendly Turkish locals at the beach. Most foreign, most interesting (in my opinion).

I thought I'd also take advantage of this time to make another few lists, with the purpose of sharing cultural differences and similarities between continents:

Europe vs. America: Universal things:
- McDonalds
- Coca-Cola (although European coke tastes better, probably due to the lack of high-fructose corn syrup).
- the word "ok"
- bad US pop music
- fascination and familiarity with Hollywood movies.

Europe vs. America: European similarities:
- "WC" = bathroom, regardless of language spoken.
- Coins are actually worth something here (I have $4 coins in my pockets right now!).
- McDonalds are actually nice.
- Everyone hates Bush (in Turkey it was even to the extreme that after mentioning we were from California, the people selling us a sandwich told us "BUSH!" with a forceful thumbs down symbol. Local english vocabulary was limited, but they knew a surprising number of profanities to tie to our president's name. This european universality was noticably lessened as we moved west, to the point that in the UK, people even made "everyone makes mistakes" comments about the Iraq war.
- Public transportation systems are amazing, although all I have to compare with in the states is BART and Caltrain.
- Europeans think american girls are really hot, probably due to aforementioned fascination with Hollywood movies.
- Internet cafe's aer much easier to find.

Europe vs. America: Why I'm glad to be coming home:
- Free bathrooms (these WCs cost way too much for a hole in the ground)
- easy-to-find trash cans (in Turkey you can find some corners where everyone throws their trash, in the UK, you have to find a janitor and throw trash in his cart).
- Free water with meals, and drinks that do not cost as much as a sandwich.
- people are much easier for me to understand.
- Twix bars do not cost $5.

There are many more, but my easily-found internet cafe is going to charge me another pound if I stay much longer, so ta-ta for now! And I hope to see many of you (at least the ones of you who know who I am) when I get back!

Day at the Museum

2007-07-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

So I was meant to meet up with Ethan and Andy at 10:15am so that we can have an early session with the mummies and other precious museum artefacts. But as luck has it, I set my alarm for 9:15pm and true to my great time keeping background (kenyan... ahem!), my friend rashmi and I ended up meeting the Andy and Ethan at 11:30. Anyway, we had a great tour of Mesopotamia in 6000-1500BC and wow did the tour guide know his stuff. We covered from Pu-Abi and how rich and powerful she was to the pre-Akkadia periods. In all, that was amazing.

Instead of going for a guided tour through the Ancient Mummies, I went to read a book at Foyer (read "being Stanfordish"). We all bought a book or a guide... and complained of how strong the pound was!

Living it Up in London

2007-07-29T02:53:00.001-07:00

I was up late last night reading Kate's old copy of Anne Frank's Diary. (Thanks Kate!) It is a book I probably should have read 10 years ago, but never did. Anne Frank sure know how to write a journal well. Maybe some of her talent will rub off here.

That's Expensive: "Welcome to London"
We're in London and its good to be back in a country that speaks English. Yesterday we went explored Waterloo and Westminster stations. We're slowly working through Camille's list of things to see. We started with Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, 10 Downey Street and Picadilly Circus. We had a thoroughly relaxing time lounging in some chairs in St. James park until an official-looking chap came up to us and demanded 2 pounds for the use of the park chairs. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. "2£? That's expensive!" I said aloud. "Welcome to London" he replied.

Fortunately I haggled him down to only 1£ provided that we left immediately. The practice in Turkey was paying off.

Life in the American Ghetto
We are staying with Kate's family in Cobham just a half-hour train ride from London. Kate is our friend from Mirlo, our freshman dorm at Stanford, and Kate's family is a lot of fun. Kate's dad is a VIP at Cisco, her mom is a novelist, and her two brothers are in college. Sadly for us, Kate is at Stanford this summer doing research. Kate's entire family has a great sense of humor. Last night, we hung out with Kate's older brother Mark who told us his stories from travelling with friends in Japan. He was as lost and clueless as we were in Istanbul. His buddies developed a point system to keep track of shenanigans (Mark won the game after acquring a million points for getting stranded in a subway station as the brunt of a practical joke.) I am a strong proponent of adopting a similar system for our remaining journey.

Kate's dog Duke is also my new favorite. He reminds me of David's dog Milo.

Our physical accommodations are quite cushy. Kate's house is tucked away in a small gated community in the middle of a neighborhood full of US expats, hence the name "American Ghetto." Ethan and I both have our own rooms and private bathrooms.

Barely Scraping Buy With an i-banker's salary
Yesterday we met up with Irungu, another Stanford friend who just started two weeks ago at Citigroup's London office. He's what they call an i-banker in M&A who specializes in emerging markets. In english, that means he gets to travel all over the middle east, Africa and central Europe and hang out with top business execs. It sounds like a good life.

We spent the afternoon exploring his new neighborhood in Canary Warf looking for cheap eats. (So far they had only discovered the McDonalds.) It turns out that, despite the nice nice salary, at the moment he and his citigropu housemates are all totally broke. Their American bank account's can't accept sterlings and the UK banks are taking weeks to process their foreign passports. So at the moment their stuck in a bit of a financial jam. Paying the deposit on their 3-story waterfront apartment on the Thames didn't help either. Fortunately we found an awesome cheap chinese place for dinner and had a full meal for 3 for only 16£!

Fireworks
Last night Ethan had the bright idea of trying to walk back to Kate's place from the train station to find out how long it took. This would have been a good idea had it not been dark, raining and cold. 45 minutes later we arrived quite soggy, but we did catch some fireworks. It seems like everywhere we go our new city rolls out the fireworks for our arrival (See the post on Rome).

This morning we are waiting for Irungu and the plan is to tour the British museum. Tonight we will try to catch Mark perform at the local pub. Cheers!

Cheerio!

2007-07-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right, your favorite intrepid travelers have finally made it to London! The rug-vendor-free land of drinkable tap water! And what a welcome we received! British airways was prompt, served us a meal, even got all classy offering wine with dinner (I went with OJ). Upon landing, we were greeted by Kate's father Paul, world traveller and host extraordinaire. He waited for us outside of customs, drove us back to his house, and offered us our own bedrooms and bathrooms, drinks and food off all varieties (so far: pizza, waffles and steak), and his amazingly cool dog: Duke, to make us feel at home. Last night he introduced us to the wonderful tv show "my name is earl" and we went to sleep early and comfortably. Duke chilled with me as I read a little bit of my book and we awoke the next day to the aforementioned waffles. Meg showed us the laundry room and let us refuel our clean-clothes supply (Andy was on his last pair of boxers for at least the 3rd time this trip). Mark and Nate are great and the only regret is that Kate, the daughter of Paul and Meg and a former dorm-mate, is a continent away.

Although our hos's hospitality would have made us happy to stay in Cobham all day, we decided to take advantage of the lack of rain and see London. There are details but they are boring, in stark contrast to the rest of my blog posts, so I will skip them. Eventually we met up with Irungu, our fellow Jerry-mate who is currently and I-banker in London. We hung out, saw that the apartment full of I-bankers was living on a budget smaller than ours due to banking and paycheck timing, and tracked down some (relatively) cheap chinese food in his neighborhood. Later we took the train back to Cobham, and I got Andy mad at me by deciding to walk in the rain (the nice weather stopped about 8:00PM) back to the house.

London is quite a change, we are comfortable, stress free, and ready to see more of the city! I will leave the gory details to my illustrious and sopping-wet travelmate!

Goodbye Turkey!

2007-07-27T03:48:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to make a quick post before we head to the airport. Today was good, we tried to sell our empty waterbottle to a rug vendor, he was a good sport, he offered us 5 lyra for it, but we wanted to hold out for a better price. Then we saw the palace, sultans of bling, lots of jewels, lots of gold, lots of cool swords. After a nice picnic outside of the BLue Mosque (courtesy of our friendly neighboorhood market) we can't wait to get a few timezones closer to home!

Best Day in Turkey Yet!

2007-07-26T12:56:00.001-07:00

The final call to prayers for today just finished coming in over the loudspeakers. For me this functions like the Stanford clocktower.. it serves as a subtle reminder that the hour is getting late. Thus its time start blogging!

What a day:

Prepping for a Picnic on the Beach
After spending a number of days wandering around lost in Istanbul, I can now say we're pro's at getting around. We woke up this morning and maneuvered the streets like an expert to get to our favorite market. We're big fans of this particular mini-supermarket with its elitist English slogan "European Standards of Excellence." We frequent this market at least once a day partly because it has the cheapest chilled bottled water in town at 0.65 lira per 1.5 litres. Since drinking tap-water is a no-no, we've quickly become regulars. We always deal with the same check-out lady who is roughly our age and I can only imagine what this individual thinks of us. When we first arrived here a few days ago, she was one of the first locals we interacted with us and she rolled her eyes as we both walked in, spoke no Turkish and tried to pay for our water with a 50 lira bill (in Turkey getting change for is a huge imposition for some reason that still unknown). Today, however, we were on top of things. We got some bread, turkey, cheese and veggies, paid with Visa and even had a decent conversation with the deli guy behind the counter, without too many references to the phrase book. Then we headed to the Prince's Island to eat our lunch on the beach. The ferry-ride is where our adventures really began.

Ferry-Boat Diplomacy
I'm always surprised where we meet cool people. In Prague it was at the Subway sandwhich restaurant and in Belgrade it was on a 4-hour mid-day bus-ride without AC in the midst of a scoarching heat-wave. It's only fitting then, that in Turkey I met possibly the three most fascinating individuals on a lack-luster ferryboat ride to Prince's Islands. Ahat was the first individual who sat down across from Ethan and I on the ferry. We weren't sure what boat we had walked onto, so we asked him where we were going and we quickly became best of pals. Ahat is also 22 and he also just finished university. He is a local from Eyup a part of town a ways north west of us. He speaks a solid smattering of English and knows just enough crucial words and phrases like "no problem," "good," "bad," "nice" and "beautiful" that, between his pre-exisiting knowledge, our phrase book and various cartoon-pictures and pantemimes, we were able to carry on in-depth conversation and he was even able to translate for us. Ahat became the rock-star of the day as he showed us the ropes, took us to the local spots and introduced us to new friends! More on Ahat later.

Sitting next to Ahat there was an interseting couple from Libya. The husband was an EE professor at one of the Universities. (See Ethan's post) The Libyans were very friendly and we had a lively discussion about Bush's foreign policy. As the conversation turned political, we found out that the other group of people sitting next to us were from Iraq. Kareem was a former officer for (but not a fan of) Saddam Hussein. He says he is glad to see Saddam go and he personally welcomed US army officials into his home in Baghdad in 2003. He signed up as a translator for the US Army, and the stories he told made me feel terrible. He talked about how he recieved death threats as the security situation deteriorated. Insurgants tried to intimidate him from working for the Americans by harassing his family. They kidnapped his son and he had to pay a $40,000 ransom just to get him back. He had finally had enough so he took his whole family to Egypt where he is still out of work. He is here in Turkey on vacation.

To me the most demoralizing part is that the US refused to take care of him. He says when he fled to Egypt he contacted the US embassay there for help. "They said 'There is nothing we can do,'" said Kareem. That just sounds terrible!

Everyone is a Brother in Turkey!
We had to cut short our conversation with the Iraqi translator because we had reached the island where Ahat knew of "good swimming." Its a good thing he was there because we NEVER would have found this place. We walked on a seemingly arbitrary road behind some military installation for about 20 minutes but eventually we ended up at a cove with a small beach bustling with young-people! As the only foreigners in the area we were quite a novelty! We relaxed on the beach and swam in the Sea of Marmara. The swimming area was roped off and it was nice and shallow and full of people. We learned that water horse-play trasncends all language boundaries and Ethan impressed the locals by doing 12 consecutive under-water flips without taking a breath. This drew quite a crowd and was enough to initiate us into the family of a competing water-flipping group of Istanbulus. We spent the rest of the time in the water laughing and shouting "brother" in Turkish as we pounded our chests and generally had no idea what was going on but had a great time nonetheless!

Turkish Girls
Ethan's antics also earned us the attention of some of the Turkish girls. While Ethan was spinning in circles (literally), I met Elif and Nazan-- two university girls who were also enjoying the water. At first Ahat did most of the communicating, but we soon began the usual mix of pantemime and proper nouns and Elif and Nazan were quickly added to our growing party of friends. Elif was especially talkative and patient and she and Ahat worked together to teach us some Turkish! The five of us relaxed on the beach and then headed back to town to catch the ferry.

Discussing Brad Pitt while Marooned in Asia
Americans are equated with hollywood and pop culture and at times this has its advantages. Names such Ben Afflick, Eminem and Angelina Jolie are constant across all language so one of the few converstaions that we can consistantly carry out wherever we are is the canonical "List your favorite movies, actors and bands!" conversation. It always surprises me whichmovies are popular abroad. Star Wars, Pirates and Ocean's 11 are a big hit. Lord of the Rings--- not so much. We discussed movies and days of the week and the words for "nice to meet" you for a while and eventually found ourself stuck in Asia. The ferry boat wasn't running as scheduled or something (we're still not really sure) so we said goodbye to Elif and Nanaz and Ahat, Ethan and I started a long journey back home. A train and another ferry-ride later we landed in Europe and split ways with Ahat.

We swapped contact info with all of the friends we made today and hopefully we will all keep in touch. I'm encouraging everyone to come visit in Boston, hopefully somebody will! Its time for bed. Tomorrow we have a full morning in Istanbul and then its off to London. Goodnight!

Ethan and Andy: Local Istanbulis

2007-07-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

Today was further proof that our travel schedule allows us to tease ourselves by becoming familiar and comfortable right at the time we leave a city. Also, we saw again how much having a local friend helps make the experience.

Today, for lack of a clear plan, we got food at our market, Andy pantomimed a chicken to the deli guy, that was my high point. We next went off to the Prince islands. Since we are doing the "48 hour challenge" (48 hours on 32 lyra or less, we don't want to withdraw more money, it looks like we're going to make it) we walked along the tram lines to the ferry and got our 2 lyra tickets to the islands. Once we got on the boat, we tried to figure out which island we were going to stop on. Fortunately, however, the decision made itself. Everyone is friends in Turkey, and we met a crowd of unexpected but very friendly people. We met Nabil and Fatima. Nabil is an engineering professor from Benghazi, Libya. We exchanged contact info, took some pictures, and had a great chat, his english was excellent. We also met Kareem, an Iraqi. He was a translator for the US army until his son was kidnapped by insurgents (he was successfully ransomed and is now ok) and he left to Egypt, with no help or support from the US after being forced from his home to protect his family. It was a sobering but very interesting experience, unfortunately we got to our stop before we could talk as much as we would have liked.

The most important figure, however, was Ahad, "Information #1". He was a local, our age, who just graduated university and worked in a bank. He was friendly and helpful, and although we only had about 20 words between us that could be understood by the others (Andy and I had 3 turkish words, Asad had a small but useful english vocabulary) we became friends. We could share music and movies, and he talked us out of the island we were planning on visiting so that we could accompany him to a beach. It was filled with Turks, we went swimming in the beautiful blue water in an isolated cove, and made friends with the others splashing around. Our "meeting" consisted of yelling "Merhaba!" (means hello) repeatedly, and gesturing to get our message across. There was a set of brothers there, the oldest about our age, and by the end we had learned the word for brother and were applying it to ourselves, they enjoyed their American brothers and we had underwater sumersault and backflip competitions. We also met some Turkish girls: Elif and Nazan, who were very nice and chatted with us for a while and taught us some Turkish. They accompanied us back (with Ahad) and we were lucky to have guides, because we discovered that the last ferry back to Europe had gone (we were there about 5 or 6 hours). We took a ferry to the Asian side and once again, we ended up on the wrong continent. We took a tram-ferry combination that worked out ok and bid our new friends "Gule Gule" (bye bye!). It was a fantastic day with fantastic people and it makes us sad that we are leaving now that we know which areas the locals like. Oh well, there's always next time. Andy and I are officially well-seasoned travellers now, and I feel that we are ready for just about anything, which is good, because we are tackling the public transit route to the airport tomorrow. Istanbul was definitely the most foreign place we have visited, but we eventually got to love it too. And now we can stay with Ahad when we come back.

Cheers!

Nothing in London works either! (clearly I'm bad luck)

2007-07-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

I finally arrived in Cali last night, in time to have a nice dinner with John before passing out at 9pm. It was a journey…

I made it to Heathrow around 5pm on the 23rd and had to figure out how to get to my hotel which was a few miles from the airport (my flight for the states was scheduled to leave bright and early at 8am on the 24th). I was told by a very terse gentleman at the information desk that the hotel was across the street from Hatton Cross metro station, which I managed to get to by bus. Unfortunately, once I arrived at the metro station it was pouring, there were busy streets on all sides, and I didn’t see any hotels. I decided to wait for the rain to subside a bit. Starving, I went to grab a snack at a little shop near the main entrance. Sadly, the ATM machine could not read my card for some strange reason, so I had no way of obtaining pounds and remained snackless. I asked a woman in the store to point me in the direction of my hotel. She told me which street to cross and that it would be a 7 minute walk. As she ran off, I vaguely heard her say something about being careful in traffic and a footbridge.

Hmm, walking seven minutes in the rain with luggage was clearly not happening, so I hailed a cab. When I told the cabbie my destination he laughed and asked, “Do you have any idea where that hotel is?” I replied that someone told me it was a 7 minute walk. He pointed behind me and said, “No, it’s a 2 minute walk. Its right behind that big parking garage there.” On second thought, maybe that woman had said “several” minute walk. Damn British accent. I crossed the street, but all I could see far ahead was a tall black wall, which enclosed the parking garage. If my hotel was behind it, there was no way to get to it from that side. I had to cross further down the street at the roundabout, where there was no crosswalk and a swarm of cars was constantly zooming by. I only made it 2 ft before I was inundated with blaring horns from all directions. Frazzled and wet I stood by the curb and looked up in exasperation. The footbridge! How had I never noticed it before, looming overhead above the traffic? Once I finally crossed the street, I saw to my dismay that the sidewalk was closed due to construction, which meant I had to walk along the edge of the roundabout to reach the hotel, which I still couldn’t see. I ignored the honking and stubbornly pushed on until finally, the hotel came into view. What a glorious site! I trudged up to the front desk, barely noticing that I was completely drenched.

Once in my room, I was shocked to find that none of the light switches were working! (Apparently the front desk forgot to tell me that I had to insert my key card into this slot on the wall in order to activate the lights). I felt somewhat better, though, when I saw that the TV was equipped with a fancy entertainment system, which included internet, video games, and “on-command” movies for purchase. I excitedly fiddled around with the TV, only to find that my menu option weren’t loading. Fed up, I went down to the bar for a $17 sandwich (the cheapest thing on the menu). I told the gentleman at the front desk my TV wasn’t working. He suggested I turn it off and on again. I said I tried that and a lot of other things. He came up with me to my room and fiddled with it himself. Scratching his head, he admitted that the system must be down, which he had never seen before. He apologized and left. With nothing to do, I went to bed.

The next morning at 6am, I shared a cab to the airport with two men in their early thirties. One was from Scotland and the other from Poland. The Scot told me they were going to Peru to build boat propellers. The only response I could come up with was, “Interesting…”

The rest of the trip home was uneventful and long (much like this post), but I did read some interesting news about Europe, and Turkey in particular. A USA Today article began: “Weather extremes battered Europe on Monday as torrential rains flooded England and record heat roasted central and southeastern Europe.” You’re telling me! Yay, global warming. Also, an independent candidate running in Turkey’s general election was shot dead in Istanbul last week. Turkey just held a second tense election on Sunday. The original April election was stopped by the army, because the Islamist prime minister nominated a president that is seen as a threat to the secular republic.

Me thinks I got a little carried away with this (my last) post. I think Ethan has rubbed off on me...

So I'll add more....Ethan and Andy, I hope you guys had a wonderful last full day in Istanbul! (I'm curious if any of the locals talked to you about the election/politics of the country). Staying with Kate's family summer after frosh years was alot of fun, so I know you will have an amazing time in London, despite bad weather. I miss you! Thanks again for an amazing adventure!

Scenic Setting and Kind Comrades

2007-07-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

After talking Andy into exploring our neighboorhood one more time today, we walked across the street and up onto a roof restaurant that had a gorgeous view of the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sofia, and the Golden Horn. The view was superb, but the prices were atrocious, so we both got the cheapest thing on the menu, a 3.5 turkish lyra cup of apple tea. We were a little bit out of place in our sweaty t-shirts and dishevelled appearance amongst the glitz and glam of tourists who could actually afford their vacations. We drank the tea slowly as we enjoyed the splendor, and the nice couple at the table next to us struck up a conversation. They were from Chicago and had just flown in that evening. We tried to warn them about rug vendors and they told us of their plans to tour the synagogues and Ephesus, two trips that we wanted to do but didn't have the time and money for. They had old family connections in Turkey, brothers split between Turkey and the states in 1900, and we wish them luck finding them again. They brought us up to date on current events and the husband told us of his trip through communist eastern Europe in the 70s, driving through Yugoslavian borders and getting lost in East Berlin. It made us appreciate our trip all the more. After they had left we stayed a few more minutes watching the reflections across the strait, and asked for the bill. Much confusion ensued and 5 or 6 waiters were running around, but eventually it appeared that several of the Turkish phrases thrown at us meant that the nice couple had paid for our tea, so we went to their hotel and asked the receptionist to leave a thank you note for us. If this was some mistake, then we had to thank them for the confusion. It is so refreshing to come across kind faces in a foreign land. Alamo would have been proud of us (Alamo was the Prague Spaniard who wondered why Americans did not band together as the Spanish did). All in all, it was an extremely pleasant evening.

Cruising Down the Bosphorus

2007-07-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Well, today was a relief compared to yesterday.

After a leisurly tea on the roof, we decided to get out of this rug-dealer infested neighborhood and spend some time where people were less-inclined to try to sell us stuff. An hour-and-a-half ferry ride on the bosphorous did the trick. The only thing merchants were peddling on the boat was nice cold Orange Juice and it was well worth the 1 turkish lira. Ethan described our harrying race down from the castle in asia to catch our boat and our subsequent bus ride through the greater Istanbul area. We explored the Beyoglu neighbohood, a fun part of town north of the Great Horn. Like Paris' Quartier Latin or Italy's Trastevere it was that place across the body of water where the middle-class young-people hung out. I felt much more at home. Although there wasn't really anything Turkish about our cafe, I thoroughly enjoyed my yummy tuna salad!

It was tempting to stay and peoplewatch at the bustling outdoor tables around Beyoglu but unfortuantley people here smoke like chimneys and Ethan was getting nauseous (I wasn't enjoying it much either). So we wandered down past the Galata tower. My guidebook says this is the old immigrant part of town. Lot's of Jews, Armenians and Greeks lived here. We walked by an an old synagogue. There was no clearly marked entrance on the street level but we figured it was the one with the thick doors and security entrance. Lonely Planet says there was a bombing at one of the synagogues in this neighborhood. I had wanted to try to get inside some of these synagogues, like we had done in Prague. Apparently a number of Jews from Spain settled her after fleeing the Spanish inquisition. Unfortunately, the only way they are open to the public is through a "Jewish Heritage Tour" which costs 140 euros! No thanks. So walking by will have to do.

It's only 9:45pm and Ethan is antsy to go out and see some more stuff. "We're only in Istanbul so long!" he says. So anyway.. I better go see what he has cooking up.

Talk to you soon!

Turkish Delight!

2007-07-25T10:47:00.001-07:00

Today we finally worked up enough courage to leave the land mass with our hostel. We took a ferry up the Bosphorus, had lunch in Asia, and hiked up a hill to check out a castle near the Black sea. We had to sprint down to catch the ferry back, but we made it with minutes to spare. Andy made friends with some nice French tourists, and we got some good photos (they are hard to share, we promise to show them all to you when we get back). On the way back we were feeling confident and jumped off the ferry at one of the northern stops on the European side. We quickly figured out how to use the buses and Andy found us a bus heading towards a different part of town: Taksim square. Across the Golden Horn from our hostel.

We wandered around, and I tried some turkish delight, found it less than delightful, and got an apricot/nut ball instead. It was good. At one point we came across an alley one block from the main street with clotheslines, people playing cards, and small markets, it was really interesting, and I really wish I spoke Turkish so I could have asked chatted with the people living there and not felt so out of place. Eventually we got back to the tourist area, but even this was lower-energy than our area of town. Andy likes this area of town because the people are not as forceful trying to get you to buy stuff.

Tomorrow is our open day, and we tentatively want to go to the Prince Islands and play on the beach, I think we have earned it after our adventure into the english-lacking part of town, and our newfound mastery of the bus system. Gule-Gule! (this Turkish-word-of-the-day brought to you by the Turkish Delight salespeople at Taksim square).

There is a Rug For Everyone

2007-07-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

So Ethan and I are attempting our first joint blog post. Here goes.

Literally seconds after leaving our net cafe this afternoon, we were approached by a friendly man interested in where we were from. After an awkward pause, he asked "Do you know what I am trying to sell you?" Ethan ventured a wild guess: "A rug?" he said with trepidation. "YES!" After we emphatically turned down his offer, a conversation ensued in which we asked why in the world anyone would think we, two poorly dressed college males, would want a Turkish rug. We explained that there is absolutely no way we would buy a rug. We were overbudget as is, Andy is allergic to them, and Ethan doesn't even like them. We asked, do other college students actually buy these things? He replied, "Oh yes. They use parent's credit card! Don't you have parent's credit card?" We replied in the negative. A few minutes of small talk later, he asked again, as if honestly surprised, "So.. you really don't want to buy a rug?" We left exasperated and walked 30m before the next rug vendor stopped us.

"Where are you from?" he said as we passed. We turned around in unison and screamed "WE DON'T WANT A RUG!".
"I'm not trying to sell you a rug! Where are you from?"
"Oh, uh... California"
Again we casually wondered aloud why so many people stopped us to buy rugs, and explained that we have absolutely no desire whatsoever to buy a rug.
"Oh yeah?" He responded, "Well, you know, there's a rug for everyone."

That was enough and we headed on our way.

After a brief sojurn across a scary bridge, we found a little place to eat and sat down, and enjoyed the company of a nice Kurdish waiter: Beshi.

Ethan's thoughts on Beshi
Time and time again, the most interesting experiences have been the ones where we interact with the locals. Beshi was friendly, a math teacher from a small city near Van, deep in the Kurdish region of Turkey. He had been learning English for 3 months and was eager to practice. Additionally, he was learning Spanish and he and I had several practice conversations. It was very interesting to see the other side of the people constantly trying to sell us things. He chatted about his family and how he misses them (4 kids, 9, 7, 5 and 2 years old). He comes to Istanbul to work during the summers when school is out, and waits tables. We learned how the locals pick up phrase books to learn new languages very superficially (English and Spanish are the best languages in Istanbul apparently) and he was very helpful, teaching us some Turkish and warning us to stay away from dark alleys with pickpockets. We left him a big tip (the entire meal cost us about $8 for both of us) and said goodbye.

Andy's Musings
So far Istanbul has been a big scary place with lots of people always trying to sell you stuff. Before we met Beshi I had walked by a shoe-shine guy who had just packed up his stand. As he was walking away he dropped his shoe-brush. I said "Excuse me!" and pointed to the dropped brush. He seemed very grateful and offered to shine my shoe in return. I was dying of hunger and wearing my tennies anyway so I said no and kept going. He followed, was very insistant, and spent 10 seconds scrubbing my shoe. Of course at the end he wanted to get paid. I had had enough of people taking advantage of my hospitalty and said forget it.

I'm glad I bumped into Beshi because at that point my perspective on Istanbulis was rather low.

I find Istanbul very foreign and different. Beshi helped clear some things up and made it a little less foreign. He likes to learn languages and he has 4 kids that he likes to talk about, just like anyone else. And he enjoys conversation, even when he's not trying to sell stuff. It must be really miserable for him to have to spend part of the year so far away from his home and family who live in Kurdistan, but he seems to be making the best of it. The whole place remainds me of New York, another crazy city that I am only slightly more familiar with. Anyway, I look forward to high-tailing it to London where I know a little bit more about what is going on. In the meantime, I hope to run into more people like Beshi. Ciao.

Demolished at the Grand Bazaar

2007-07-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as a savvy shopper. When I went with Stanford to the Pearl and Silk markets in Beijing I walked away with some of the best deals-- far better than my fellow classmates. So when I walked into the Grand Bazaar today to purchase two backgammon sets, I was feeling pretty confident. Apparently that confidence was misplaced.

I don't even know what happened! But somehow, I walked out with my two backgomman sets for 65 lira, or close to $50!! I probably shouldn't have even paid half that much. All I can say is these guys are good.. and perhaps a tad slimy. After considerable haggling, my stately shopkeeper appeared to agree to 55 Lira, which was a little beyond the maximum I was willing to pay. It was a littel confusing because there were two seperate boards and the chess pieces were extra and so forth and then there was the option of paying in euros dollars or lira. At the last minute, the shopkeeper changed to 65 and I didn't catch it and paid him, only seconds later realizing he had said 55! I pointed this out. He said, "Ah! YOU said 55. But I said 65!" With a friendly grin he sent me on my way.

Ughh. These guys are good.

Anyway, the backgammon boards are quite nice, and I found one for my dad that should perfectly replace the one I accidently destroyed a few years ago. And next time I go shopping at the largest Bazaar in the world amongst people who've spent the last 4 mıllenıa perfecting their bargaınıng skılls.. maybe I'll be a little more careful.

Justinian Knew How to Build Stuff
Fortunately, the Bazar was only our most recent escapade. Prior to that, Ethan and I spent the morning exploring the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya. The Aya Sofya is definetely the most impressive building we have seen yet from any era. It is all the more amazing that it dates back to the same time as the Pantheon. Ethan was great and gave me a full art history course connecting the hellenistic and classical Roman architecture we saw in Italy with this intermediary Byzantine architecture and then placed that squarely as a precurser to some of the Baroque architecture we saw in Prague. Basically this whole trip has been a giant Ancient Civ / Art History course come to life. Its cool. I liked the cistern as well. (See Ethan's post)

"Dear Mom and Dad: Send More Money" (20th Century BC)
Ethan was loving the Archeology museum, so we got to spend a lot of time there. Certain parts were really cool. They had a collection of ancient cunieform tablets and their translations dating from the the 19th and 20th century BC. These were mostly Hittite and Assyrian IOU's. Things haven't changed all that much. "Moshe owes Joe Shmoe 24 shekels to be paid by harvest plus interest, signed by 4 witnesses.." But some of them were especially fun. One was from an uncle or something that basically said. "Send more money right away! I have been looking after your kids as requested but we have run out of funds. Send sliver or gold or tapestries. They are getting hungy!!" There also were some codes and laws. (If you blind someone you have to pay 6 shekels, unless its a slave.. then its only 4.)

I also saw the worlds' oldest peace treaty from the 12th century BC. Egyption Pharao Ramsey the 2nd made peace with his Hittite neighbors. I approve. Peace is always a good thing.

Yummy Shish Kabobs Without the Hassle
I was most excited today to find a yummy Shish Kabob place that was very friendly and reasonably priced. We were the only foreigners in the whole establishment! Best of all, there was no annoying waiter dragging us in from the streets with a "special student discount just for you" and forcing us to sit down and look at the menu. Instead our waiuters were kind, frinedly and spoke no English. I intend to go back, if Ethan doesn't mind.

My Cousin Started a Rug Business...
I don't know what it is about this place and rugs, but for some reason two pasty disheveled white guys must look like the ideal rug purchasers. I cannot count the number of times people have accosted us on the streetwıth "Where are you from? EXCUSE ME!!! I said WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" "Oh!! California. My brother studied Economy there!" (Studying "Economy" in California seems to be very popular amongst rug salesmon.) "Let me just get you a business card. I sell beautıful rugs very cheap. Come with me!!"

I have decided that with so many people selling me rugs, I should really get ın on the action. So the next time someone accosts mein the streets I wıll ask hım where he ıs from and try to sell HIM a rug! Or maybe a nıce half-empty water bottel or hand-crafted paper aırplane or somethıng! Well just see about that!

Anyway.... thıs place ıs totally over the top. Its lıke New York but crazıer. If I get out wıthout losıng too much money I wıll be quıte content. Ta ta for now!

First full day = burnt out Ethan and Andy

2007-07-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

Well, today we woke up and had breakfast on the roof of our hostel, overlooking the Blue Mosque. At that point we went out, saw the Blue Mosque up close from the inside (it was interesting to see a mosque, this trip has done the whole religious tour very well, we need to go to India next), after being sufficiently wowed and awed, we walked across the street, saw the most famous Byzantine church in the world (it's about 1400 years old, used continuously as a church->mosque->museum) by far the oldest non-ruin that we have seen (think the pantheon in Rome except bigger, taller, and with minarets and mosaics). All of this is now outside of any art/architecture I have studied, being too "eastern". However, the influences are clear and I found it very interesting to see a place that people have worshipped within continuously from AD 500 to the 1900s. Next we saw a giant underground cistern Emperor Justinius built in the 6th century AD.

Clearly this wasn't enough for before noon, so we went over to the Topkapi Palace (giant Ottoman sultan habitat) and waltzed into the Archological Museum. We somehow managed to spend about 4 hours there, I could easily have spent 4 more, best 5 turkish lyra I have ever spent. It turns out that during the Ottoman empire (14th century to early 20th century) every cool thing people dug up in the middle east, turkey, or Bulgaria got sent to this museum. We casually strolled past Byzantine art from the 10th century, Roman friezes from the 5th century AD, Syraian tombs from around the 1st century BC, Greek statues from the 4th century BC, Hittite caravan records from the 14th century BC, Assyrian marriage contracts and IOUs from the 19th century BC, Babylonian art and pottery from the 23rd century BC, and some stoneage tools from about 8,000 BC. It was our ancient empires class come alive, and I learned details of cultures that I never even knew existed (Assyrians and Hittites were from class, Phrygians and Thracians sounded familiar, but Karamans were new to me)! This museum was probably the most amazing part of the entire trip for me. Many of the exhibits are arranged cronologically so that you can see how artistic styles changed over the centuries. Also, the posters provided an excellent background on the civilizations being displayed.

Having not eaten for 10,000 years (or at least for 6 hours non-museum time), we were starving and started exploring streets at random away from the tourist areas for a place to eat. Andy kept us going, I vetoed a buffet-style place, and we turned a corner to find a little hole-in-the-wall where the guy did not know English, but was very friendly and offered good food. We pointed to what we wanted, and I got an absolutely delicious kebab with rice, pita bread, and salad, similar to my meal of last night, but for only about $3. Andy was equally pleased with his meal and we went off happily to the Grand Bazaar to get Andy a backgammon board.

The Grand Bazaar: it reminds me of the guy at the beginning of Aladdin who tries to sell you the lamp. Those guys are good, really good. Andy thought he was getting a good deal until the add-ons for wood pieces, high quality boards, and rustproofing added up. The guys in there are good. Istanbul is on the border between two rather important continents, and it shows, they trade, they haggle, they bargain, they plead, they cry. They can see right through you and they can smell your fear. After getting run through the wash by these guys over a backgammon board or two, we crawled, panting, out the gate to the bazaar and found a nice icecream vendor who refueled us while we sat in the shade. I decided against trying to buy two embarrassingly shiny slippers for Hannah and we wandered the streets for a while before wandering across this internet cafe. Tonight the plan is to head across the river (not the strait, we'll stay in Europe) and find a good place to eat. Andy says this is where the locals eat, so this is where we will eat!

One other note on the city:

Turkish rugs, apparently buying one of these things is a multiple-hour ordeal. Today we have managed to make it through about 2,000 rug offers, apparently we don't look enough like students with no money and no place to put a rug. If you walk down the street, someone will try to sell you a rug, if you stand still outside, someone will try to sell you a rug, if you express the slightest interest in a rug, you are practically dragged indoors. We are trying to blend in with the culture, so I tried to sell Andy a rug earlier this afternoon. He didn't seem interested, but I will keep trying. I think I have the perfect thing for him, handmade by my own family, very high quality. I will give him the student discount because I like his attitude, good price.

Andy and I have been developing a top 10 list of things NOT to say in Istanbul, as each will result in being swarmed by guys selling rugs. We haven't gotten to 10 yet, but you should get the idea:

1) "That rug is perfect for me"
2) "I like that rug"
3) "I wonder if I should get a rug"
4) "I will not punch anyone who tries to sell me a rug"

Tomorrow we will try to camouflage ourselves, perhaps as camels, maybe even as rugs (although I dread buying that disguise). That should help reduce our travel time in the city.

Future plans include a ferry ride up the Bosphorus Strait, a visit to Synagogues/Aqueducts/Palaces/Universities that we have missed so far, and possibly a day trip to a fishing village. I am exhausted from just being in this city, but we are having a wonderful time and are starting to get the feel of the loud, hectic, haggling place that is Istanbul (Constantinople?).

In other news, a Monsoon hit London, emergency committees and severe flood warnings. That's our next stop. Nothing is ever easy, but everything sure is fun!

From Belgrade to Istanbul

2007-07-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Istanbul this afternoon and I'm totally beat. Of all the places we've visited, Istanbul is by far the most foreign and also the most overwhelming. But before I get to that, I have to finish up with some details and reflections on Belgrade.

Tina the Restaurant Hero

For our last night in Belgrade Tina once again landed us an amazing dinner through her usual mix of serendipity and apparent arbitrariness. Tina had a faint childhood memory of happiness on a restaurant/boat in Belgrade. Thus we set out to find Belgrade's "svats" or restaurant boats. After two bus-rides, many directions and a pleasant stroll along the river, we ended up in the neighborhood with all the boat-restaurants. After careful consideration, we decided to to got the boat with tiki-lamps because in Tina's words it "looks cool." And of course it totally was. We had a relaxing candle-lit dinner on the water. Prices were reasonable by US standards, the restaurant played good music and our waiter was friendly and jovial. He even spent 2 minutes talking rapidly to me in Serbian as I nodded my head and hopelessly looked to Tina (who was otherwise occupied) for a translation before he realized I had no idea what he was talking about and then kindly switched to English. It was good times.

Serbians = Chicagoans
I was very glad to make it to Serbia. Having Tina as a host was amazing. Serbia is unlike any of the other places we've been in that it was mostly absent of foreigners, and in the case of Banja, foreigners were totally absent. Thus for me it was a unique opportunity to peek into a culture and a country.

Also the Serbians grew on me, despite the fact that nothing in Serbia ever seemed to work. On my four hour bus-ride that had no AC, I sat next to Sasha a friendly Serbian programmer about my age. We had a lot of fun talking about travelling and programming and such. This was a surprise for me, because most of the Serbians I had seen on the street tended to be fairly stoic, and certainly not gregarious.

It all made sense, however when, Sasha had mentioned that the two greatest Serbian cities in the world were Belgrade and Chicago-- home to a a vibrant and thriving Serbian community. (Tina would know, she moved there when she first came to the States.) Anyway, Serbian cultulre is very similar to Chicago culture-- they may look and talk kindof tough but they are friendly all the same.

Goodbye Tina
It was sad to say goodbye to Tina today at the Belgrade airport. She's heading home via London. Tonight was the first meal Ethan and I have had without Tina in a long time. It was awfully quiet.

Tina: I know your reading this blog. Hope you had a safe flight home. This trip has rocked and wouldn't be the same without you.

Hello Istanbul
We're finally in Istanbul. Of all the places we have visited, this is by far the most foreign and overstimulating. Ethan and I just explored around today and evewhere we went restaurant owners accosted us with "special prices" just for us and shouted, cajoled or coerced us into their restaurants. One guy particularly annoyed me, although Ethan found him quite fun. This gentelamn yelled "Stop!" and demanded if we spoke English. He then wanted to know where we were from and pushilly demanded we sit at his restaurant. Upon hearing we were from california, he claimed he studied for 7 years there at.. you guessed it Stanford University where he got a degree in Econ. "Oh!" says I. "Who was your advisor?" "Oh, uh.. it was many years ago.. I opened a business here." He also lied about his ability to speak French, Spanish and Japanese, although I didn't catch him on the French until later.

It was interesting. This place is bustling and our hostel is literally meters away from the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia. We'll tell you how that goes tomorrow. But I'm little overwhelmed with the whole Istanbul thing at the moment and ready for bed. Good night!

Neznam Turkski!

2007-07-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is close to "I don't speak Turkish" in Serbian.

Well, things have gone from crazy to crazier. Serbia was fantastic, highlight of the trip in my opinion, we spent the last night's meal at a restaurant on the river, spent a good 3+ hours there due to pleasant surroundings and slow service. Packing was thoroughly enjoyable because once again, we had clothes, and this morning we got pastries and caught our respective planes out of the country. Andy and I are going on to Istanbul alone, at least until I duck out in another week, at which point Irungu will join the team and he and Andy will do Berlin.

Istanbul is absolutely nothing like any of the other places we've been. Every other place I felt like I had some idea what was going on around me. This entire city is like a giant used car sales lot. People come after you trying to get you to buy everything, and no price is non-negotiable. One guy even offered us a "student discount, very good price" on our dinner. Andy and I both agreed we don't want to haggle too much with the person about to prepare our food. My favorite interaction was on of the guys who stopped us on the street and asked us where we were from. We always reply "California" banking on the Hollywood element, and this guy immediately became our best friend, because, you see, he was at Stanford for 7 years, in "Economy". However, after we told him we went to Stanford, he sadly couldn't remember any of the details of his education, such as having an advisor or professors. This guy also "spoke" 12 languages. His English was very good, and his Spanish and French sounded fine as long as he got to choose the phrases to say and didn't speak too slowly, but he didn't seem to understand what we told him, it must have been our American accents getting in the way. He also spoke Japanese. I told him "All I know is Ichi, ni, san, she..." (1, 2, 3, 4...) and he went on to say "of course" and start counting, repeating those 4, then making up random sounds (certainly not the "go, roku, hachi..." I was expecting). But in his defense, he said those random sounds very confidently. Andy found his apparent insincerity insulting, but I thought the whole situation was pretty funny. I want to go back tomorrow.

Although I still feel perfectly comfortable here, this is by far the place that feels least safe to me. Serbia everyone seemed honest and helpful, Rome was filled with tourists and Prague just didn't have a bad time of the night. Here, however, we've already come across some interesting scenes with guys chasing boys holding cell phones down the street and I think i will be moving most of my money out of my wallet as a precaution. Andy and I explored the Bazaar district after we got off the plane, and this entire part of the city reminded Andy of a casino in that it was really hard to find the way out! People are selling things along both sides of every street, coming out and trying to convince you of the quality of their product. Everyone is dodging cars and there are little places selling water and snacks every once in a while. Eventually we used the sun to get our bearings and got out the map and found our way out. It was like "extreme shopping".

On the plus side, however, the location of Andy's hostel could not be better. We are literally a block from the Blue Mosque, which is absolutely gorgeous. The architectural style is vastly different here, some similarities to Eastern Orthodox churches in Serbia. There are mosques everywhere and we will hear a call to prayer 5 times a day. Our room is ridiculously hot (faces the afternoon sun) and I am less than impressed with the "friendly service with a smile" we have received so far. Also, this has been the first country we have visited where it is not necessarily safe to drink the tap water. Nonetheless, this seems to me to be the most alive city yet, fueled by tourism as well as floods of Turkish immigrants and industry. And I am looking forward to checking out more of the city. The only disappointment is that there seems to be more to do here than we could ever hope to cram into our measly 4 days. But that just means that we'll have to come back. I'll keep you posted on our Istanbuli exploits, and if we ever manage to learn more than three words in Turkish.

(Mostly) Good Times

2007-07-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well Serbia may have started out with unnecessary craziness, but the second half of the trip went splendidly (and reasonably smoothly…except for the stifling heat…)

The first night we arrived in Belgrade, we immediately went to the center of town (on the cobble stone promenade street Knez Mihajlova, which is lined with shops. Hundreds walk up and down the street into the wee hours of the night). Ethan and Andy seemed to like it even better than Wencelles Square in Prague, since it was full of locals rather than tourists, which apparently made it seems “more real.” Luckily, we found an internet café, so we were able to plan out our trip immediately and book the necessary flights. Since we no longer had tickets to Istanbul, I decided to go home right after Serbia, and end the trip a week early. I had a pretty bad bout of insomnia during the first week, and wasn’t feeling up to the challenge of visiting two more countries. Now that I’m well rested after four nights in good old Serbia, I kinda regret the decision, but I am nonetheless excited to see you all back in Cali.

We got back to the Belgrade apartment at midnight and Ethan and Andy stripped down into their boxers so they could wash the very few articles of clothing they had with them. I offered them a couple of night gowns to wear, so that they could wash the boxers they were wearing. Andy tried the pink, flowery, frilly, somewhat shear one while I was in the bathroom, and I heard him cry out, “No way am I wearing this! This is so demoralizing!” So the boys remained in their boxers. We all had a good laugh over it (I couldn’t stop snickering for a good while, in fact).

The next day was incredibly hectic. We went to see Kalemegdan, a fortress from the 1400s that lies at the intersection of the two rivers passing through Belgrade, the Sava and the Dunav. We called the airport nonstop, trying to find out whether/when our bags would arrive. We were told 1pm, so we booked a bus to Banja, my home town, at 6pm. We called at 1pm to confirm, and were told to call back at 2pm. We did, but the phone was busy for the next 2 hours! During what felt like the hundredth call, we finally got through and were told our bags had arrived. We hightailed it to the airport and then to the bus station, barely making our bus, which unfortunately didn't have AC. We bathed in our own sweat for 4 hours in the 100 degree heat, but the locals were intrigued by us, so we had some good conversations (The 23 year old guy behind us must have been very excited to get to practice his relatively fluent English because he didn’t stop talking. He told us the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rolling Stones had done a concert in Belgrade a couple days ago, and that Banja had just had this huge carnival drawing over 200,000 people. We were pretty bummed to have missed all this!) Exhausted upon our arrival to Banja, we nonetheless went for a stroll in the downtown area (again, a cobble stone promenade street adjacent to the park with shops, restaurants, and many people). Finally, sweet sleep.

The next day I took the boys to see the mineral springs, and laughed as their faces contorted in disgust upon drinking the rusty-tasting water. Andy was amazed with the bustling market and cheap fruits and veggies, so we decided to stock up and have a picnic at the park. We strolled up and down the small creek that runs in between the park and the promenade street. We passed a playground, and Ethan and Andy just had to play on the seesaw, as I looked on embarrassed. Later, I was pressured into joining Andy on the seesaw, and we determined that Ethan was clearly the fattest. Once we were sufficiently tired, we had dinner at my favorite Pizzeria and then some gelato. Since the Pizzeria is next to the movie theater, we couldn’t resist and went to see 300. The movie started playing without sound, at which point Andy and Ethan cried out, “Nothing in Serbia works!” This was in reference to the horrible airport experience and the lack of AC in the bus. I tried to explain that nothing like this had ever happened to me in Serbia before, and that they must simply be bad luck. After the movie, we walked by a club. We wavered as to whether the cover charge of less than $2 was worth it. When I said the club was too loud, Andy replied, “Well the balcony up there where those two high school girls are hanging out doesn’t seem that loud.” Ethan and I had a hearty laugh over this! Nonetheless, we decide to call it a night. Being the big nerds that we are, we played cards (Egyptian Rat, to be exact) at home instead. Andy bragged that he always won this game, but unfortunately we were both creamed by Ethan.

The next day we left for Belgrade with a nicely air-conditioned bus, which made me feel redeemed. Ok enough babble. Time for dinner!

Banja! And Tina the babysitter.

2007-07-22T09:46:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone! We've been out of touch for a while due to lack of internet, but it's been an exciting and fun time. As mentioned, our luggage decided to spend an extra day or two in Rome. Andy and I made good use of the handful of dirty clothes I put in my backpack and managed to avoid having to wear Tina's nightgowns (although it was strongly considered).

The first morning in Serbia we went to the fortress on the river: Kalemegdan. It was fun, we got to wander about. History here in Belgrade is much more alive than anywhere else. The fortress is still being used as a park and every once in a while we see a building with a giant hole in it from the last war. Here we've seen 20th century tanks instead of 12th century armor.

On a very happy note, we got our luggage back. After 3 hours of busy signals, dropped calls, and impatient people on the other end hanging up before checking on our bags, we finally learned they had our bags so we jetted down, and Tina talked to the people behind the counter (who seemed grouchy). She turned to me and said "You have to go back because your name is on the baggage". I was thinking "ok, fine, whatever" until I realized I had to go behind the airport security with a special badge, and that I'd be going back alone (a.k.a without Serbian-speaking Tina, also known as Serbian Fearless Leader). I followed the 2 people who had similar badges and eventually got to a window. The lady started speaking to me in Serbian, I shrugged and pointed to my name. She was nice and pointed where I needed to go. I wandered in that direction until I saw our bags, got really excited, and then had to convey, using grunts and gestures, that Tina, outside, had the paperwork I was supposed to have with me. Eventually, with the help of a nearby english speaker, I got our bags back through security and we all cheered at the thought of our travel mates having deodorant in the sweltering heat. We would no longer be forced to split up on the buses.

Then we immediately went to the bus station to catch a bus to Banja (pronounced Banya, where Tina was raised). Notwithstanding the killer heat and the lack of AC, the trip was pleasant, with several enthusiastic Serbs chatting with us for the majority of the 4 hour trip. Banja seems like a Serbian Ashland. 20,000 people, we can walk across it easily, it has a giant park, lives on tourism, and has mineral springs which taste really bad. We stayed in Tina's house and had a wonderful time cruising the city, getting fruit and picnic food at the markets, and eating that food in the park. We embarrassed Tina constantly, she made the mistake of teaching us a few words, so we'd repeat those words in public around her constantly. Once we learned to read Cyrillic, we started reading every sign we passed, which was really fun for us, but resulted in a misunderstanding where a local tried to sell us his apartment. Tina has been incredibly patient with us.

People are very friendly and helpful, and all of us have enjoyed this part of the trip immensely. It even made us glad we went through all the hassle of getting to Serbia. We occupied time between dinner and an evening stroll by watching "300" with Serbian subtitles for $2.50 at the local theater (only one screen, only one movie).

At night we'd have "story-time with Tina" where we'd try reading Russian fairy tales in Cyrillic Serbian. We enjoyed a plethora of cheap produce. Peaches, blackberries, plums, grapes, bananas, tomatoes and cucumbers all fresh from the farmers market in the morning. The "meat" was a little bit sketchier, the ground turkey has a consistency "somewhere between marshmallow and toothpaste" according to Andy. We've been living life Serbian style and loving it.

We got back to Belgrade today, taking care of a few late obligations and money things. Massimo has continued to be amazing by supplying us with more details for the blog (check the posts from Rome, I will add a few more names of gelato places).

Tonight is our last night in Serbia, and we will be sorry to see it go.

Stranded in Serbia...

2007-07-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, so, we are currently in Serbia with no luggage, no AC in the midst of a huge heat wave and intermittent power, and no way out of the country. Clearly we've been having a lot of fun. Sorry this post is so long, you know how I am, I blog while everyone else takes care of important things...

We got up bright and early, 6AM, took the metro to the terminal, jumped aboard our train to the airport just as it was taking off, and arrived safe and sound about 1:45 before our flight. Then things got hectic. We showed up at the ticket desk for Jat airways only to find that we were not in the computer. Apparently the clerk Tina talked to on the phone at Jat airways did not put us into the computer. We had reservations to get to Belgrade, which had been automatically canceled due to the our supposed inability to confirm, despite Tina's assurance from the clerk that nothing more needed to be done. After an appropriate amount of frustration, venting, and speaking in Serbian, we were told that the only way we could get on the plane was to go to another desk and have them re-book our flight. They gave us the lowest price available for the flight, so it ended up only being an additional $30 or so, but time was rapidly running low. Andy and Tina stayed at the desk to get tickets, I took the baggage over to the counter, only to find that they were closing. I begged the nice Italian lady to keep it open while Tina and Andy finished signing something and sprinted over. I was hesitant to give up my bag until I was sure that we were going to be in Serbia. Eventually, at 9:52, Andy and Tina got our tickets (the flight started boarding at 9:50, left at 10:20). They ran over, the paper-work took way too long as the exasperated lady behind the desk checked our passports and said "You have to run, you know that right?". Tina, thinking out loud, noticed that there was no way we were going to make it through security in time. Andy and I confidently stated that we could make it.

As soon as we were released, each of us grabbed a third of the tickets/passports/receipts/papers on the desk and we started running for the terminal. We got to the security checkpoint and Tina charged ahead, running past people waiting in line. Meanwhile Andy handed out tickets as we passed in adjacent lines and I kept shouting "Mi scusi at the confused masses". At one point we lost Tina, only to hear a flurry of italian swearing from ahead (we knew this language pretty well after experiencing Roman traffic). Looking ahead we found Tina somehow at the front of the line but we were scared to pass the angry passengers. We looked at each other, and the lady behind us pointed at the railing next to us and said "just go" so we "just went" and arrived at the x-ray screening. We explained the situation to every English speaker in front of us and got to the front of the x-ray machine. At this point it was past 10:00 and we were very concerned, so I dumped everything metal into my backpack, dropped it on the machine, walked through the metal detector, and immediately started sprinting for the gate to try and delay them. I got about 40 yards when I ran into another, larger line for passport control. I found some people who spoke english and explained the situation, and showed the time on the ticket to everyone else, and the people there (Italians seem incredibly helpful in general) all let us cut to the front of the line. Thanks Italy! When Andy and Tina arrived we waited for the lady at the booth to finish, she took just about forever, and then I went through, and started sprinting again (it was like interval training in track).

It was now 10:15, I assumed the doors were already closed and our baggage was on our way to Serbia without us, but at this point we had to keep trying. I followed the signs to C33, took several turns, ran up an escalator, and dodged people and luggage at every step. I turned one last corner and ran into a dead end. I did the dear in headlights and screeched to a stop, then realized that C33 was a remote gate that needed a bus stop to get to. I turned around to see my travel mates making the same realization that I had moments before. I told them "ok, now we're cutting it kind of close". The train came, the doors stayed closed for what felt like hours as our means out of Italy were slipping away from us. Eventually we got aboard, got there, got out. 10:18 we were sprinting around the corner and ran into C33. Against all of our expectations, Jat airway's bureaucratic incompetence was solved because they were also experiencing delays, so we made it onto the flight (of course I was picked to have my bag searched, adding insult to injury). We boarded the flight covered in sweat.

After that things got really hectic...

We landed successfully, and left the plane to the terminal. Serbia had a good first impression, the airport was full of natural light. However, as we tried to use a bathroom, we realized this was because the power was out. We got through customs fine and waited by the baggage claim. There were three conveyor belts moving, some were labeled Dubai, some London, some had blank screens, but none were labeled Rome. Andy took the right belt, Tina the center, I the right. We heard an official say the bags were "all mixed up". The lights kept flickering on and off as power came and went, backup generators turned on and off, and emergency lighting couldn't make up it's mind. About this time Tina got a call from her mom, apparently she was concerned because the news said that Serbia was experiencing a terrible heat wave and the use of AC was setting records on Serbian power consumption. As a result, the grid couldn't handle it and this was causing the power failures. We held on hope for our bags for several cycles of the belts turning on and dying, then realized that our luggage was probably still in Rome (there's no way it moved through the airport as quickly as we did).

Tina talked to the lost luggage people in Serbian (in the dark) along many other upset passengers. Apparently the power outage wreaked havoc on their system and they were inundated with lost baggage and had no way to track where any of it was. They could not promise they could find it in the 4 days before we (hopefully) left Serbia, so we were forced to give them an address in the USA (and only one address, due to the rushed checking, all the bags were in my name).

So, to make a (very) long story short, we are all incredibly stinky, and likely to remain so for several days, if not longer. We are still trying to figure out how to get on to Istanbul (I was in favor of a 24 hour train ride through Bulgaria, fortunately it won't come to that).

In the meantime, Serbia is great, a very different experience than the tourist-infested locations so far, and we have our own personal guide/translator (although Andy and I are rapidly improving our Serbian). We are looking forward to enjoying a new cultural experience in this former-Yugoslavian country.

Wrapping Up Rome

2007-07-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

This post took four days to complete (the date is a little funky) but here are few more stories from our last night in Rome that should not be left untold:

Driving in Rome
Driving in Rome is like something out of the videogame Crazy Taxi or SF Rush-- it makes driving in the States look boring and dull by comparison. For our last night in town, Giulia took us out with her friends to Trestevere for dinner and then to the University and around San Lorenzo for a stroll. This meant driving across town-- definitely an experience not for the faint of heart. There are no lane lines, nor any clear rules. And in Trestevere cars shared the cobblestone allyways with pedestrians, bicycles and restaurant tables. The Romans make up for this lack of order with animated hand gestures, passionate epithets, and the occasional emphatic use of the horn. Fortunately, our host Giulia was well versed in all of these maneuvers. She also has an uncanny ability to squeeze her small car into even smaller parking spots.

American Music is Universal (Almost)
Giulia and her friends listen to lots of American music abd we share many of the same favorite bands, Green Day and Matchbox 20 being just two examples. What I find interesting, though, is that, for a given band, we listen to very different songs. Giulia skips over the popular songs that get a lot of radio play here in the States in favor for songs that I had never heard of. Its actually kindof cool. I, like most other Americans, probably learn about these bands from the radio and then we work from there and buy albums and explore the music. Giulia and her friends have it more "pure" they probably find their favorite songs on their own, not by having them hammered into their heads from constant radio play.

A Night on the Town
Possibly the coolest part of the trip was hanging out with Giulia's friends and wandering around San Marcos square. Giulia brought along her friends Guilio (perhaps spelled differently) and her high school classmate Silvia. Silvia was celebrating finishing her psych exams and Guilio was still studying for his in engineering. Guilio is a big film buff and we had fun comparing films. As soon as he is done with exams, he has big plans for a trip to Tunisia. Giulia and Silvia are also planning their own vacation. All three spoke excellent English and Silvia warmed up to us after she found out that we too don't like Bush.

The area around the university was alive and packed with people, even late at night. There were a number of bands out playing and there was some kindof festival with outdoor cinema and street vendors. San Marco's square was full of college students just chilling on the steps. Giulia bumped into friends everywhere she went and all the Roman's we met were friendly and talkative! It was good times. If only Boulder had this much happening on a Wednesday night!

Patience Makes Perfect
We even got to learn some Italian. Silvia was a patient teacher. The whole group had to put up with us painstakingly practicing such banal phrases as "Mi kee ya mo Andrea," over and over again. But I think I'm improving and hopefully I'll be in good shape next time I'm in Rome.

Off to Belgrade
Rome was good food and good times. I hope our new Roman friends will come visit us in the states so we can return the hospitality. (Silvia: Bush will be gone in January 2009!) Read Tina and Ethan's post to find out about all of our Serbian adventures...

peace!

Ciao Roma!

2007-07-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day in Rome. We need to leave early tomorrow for Belgrade so I will make this short. I started off the day by taking the group on a nice half-hour metro sightseeing tour to the far South of the city. Certain fearless leaders were not amused by the detour and I now have to immediately give up my map upon request. I still "get to" carry it around until it is needed though.

St. Peter's Basilica, while not quite as grand as St. Paul's Metro station, was nonetheless as I remembered it. We were herded like cattle to the top of the building and then through a nearly endless museum full of priceless ancient artifacts and renaissance works of art without any sort of descriptions whatsoever. At the very end of this we saw the "Raphael rooms" which we all recognized from various art classes, and enjoyed perusing for a while. Finally we got to the Sistine Chapel and enjoyed trying to match the various paintings to stories from the bible/torah/our youth/whatever. After leaving, Fearless Leader found a tram that took us within a block or two of our apartment, no transfers, and in about 1/5 the time of my original route. It was then 4:00PM, siesta time, so everything was closed. We finally found a small cafe to grab a sandwich (best deal in Rome yet!) and took care of some errands while we said goodbye to Priscilla and Plinio, and already made an agreement to meet in Brazil next July.

After returning to the apartment, Massimo's daughter, Giulia, took us out to have dinner with her friends, Silvia and Giulio (possibly with variations on the spelling). We went to a wonderful restaurant, I had Brischetta (pronounced Bris-ket-a) and authentic Italian pizza. Andy and I did a local food swap and his pasta was excellent. From there we went to the University of Rome (one of three) and saw where the students hang out. There were tons of people on a Wednesday night and there were movies playing on projected screens everywhere, several bands and DJ's, and lots of students just hanging out and chatting. Silvia, fiercely anti-Bush but willing to associate with eager Americans, taught us some Italian (better late than never). Giuseppe, future doctor, told us about the Italian higher education system, and once again, we found that the local touch really makes a place step out of history and bring it's differing culture into focus for us. Mom and Anne, you are probably the only ones still reading at this point, but buona notte and ciao to all of you! Internet access is dubious in Belgrade, so be patient as we may not be able to post for a while.

Ethan's Map Privelages are Revoked but All Ends Well

2007-07-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

A few things to add for yesterday.

We went to the Pantheon. It was cool and extremely old. When we first told our host Massimo that we wanted to go to the Pantheon he said, "Why do you want to go there? What is there to see at the Pantheon?" I said "I don't really know.. I heard there was really big dome." Massimo had no choice but to agree. "Well true, there is a big dome," he replied. So sure enough we went and there was a big dome and that was pretty much it. The whole thing took about 7 minutes. Apparently the dome used to be cooler, but sometime during the renaissance the pope stripped out all of the metal and decorations and used it to built St. Peter's Basicalla (which we saw today). One nice aspect of the dome was that it was REALLY old. Like 2000 years really old. Other than that there wasn't more to see, so we took our photos and went on our way.

After a fun evening exploring Trestevere (pronounced Treh-stev-r-eh), we wandered over to Michaelangelo's Piazza de Campidoglio for an evening stroll. At that point we were fairly tired because we basically had been crisscrossing all of Rome on foot, so we risked our lives crossing the busy traffic circle around Piazza Venezia and started looking for a bus to take home. ( I should note that crossing streets in Rome requires confidence, machismo, and a Machiavellion determination-- you have to basically stare down the oncoming traffic to get them to stop.) As we scoured the bus maps, I heard my name shouted out from nowhere, and there was Priscilla and her husband Plinio shouting from a window on a bus heading for their hotel! There is no better feeling than randomly bumping into friends thousands of miles from home!

And now a few brief notes for today before I leave Ethan and Tina to do the heavy lifting.

We started off the morning by heading to the Vatican. The Vatican is the only museum I have ever been to that has a strict dress code. Fortune was playing games with us because of course the one day that I was required to wear long pants was also the hottest day of our tirp. It was 35 celsius. I don't know what this is in Farheneheit.. but it is HOT! The Vatican was interesting, but more worthy of note is Ethan's map-leading antics. Despite skepticism from others (*ahem*), Ethan decided that St Paolo sounded close enough to St. Peter and thus led us on a wild excursion across the Rome metro system. The Vatican and St Peter's Basilica were in fact only two stops away from our apartment, but thanks to Ethan we got to see both metro lines and a number of stations well outside of Rome. Let's just say that Ethan's map privileges are now severely limited.

It all worked out in the end. We did the Vatican thing and then met up with Pri and Plinio for Trouffles at Tre Scilini. We saw Piazza Navona one last time and bought coffee for our hosts at La Tazzo D'Oro. The best part of all was in the the evening Giulia we hung out with Giulia and her friends for dinner in Trestevere and then explored the nightlife at the University and around Piazza Lorenzo. I've never seen so many students out and about relaxing and having a good time! I'm sold. I need to find a way to move to Rome. More to come on this later. But for now I must sleep and pack for Belgrade!

Ciao!

Artsy fartsy fun...

2007-07-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

Since Tina already covered the "cultural" and "intellectual" parts, I thought I'd share a few things that make American students (specific ones anyway) the laughing stock of Rome.

Our artistic determination. At the Villa Borghese there was this beautiful fountain with an arch behind it. We decided to take a picture of us within the arch with the fountain in front. It was a beautiful shot, but it consisted of someone pressing the button on the camera, sprinting across a busy street, climbing up a rock, and striking a pose before the camera's 12 second timer went off. We tried it 5 or 6 times. The first few weren't even close. After we had perfected our rock-climbing/jumping technique, we got a wonderful shot of Andy just coming over the ledge, out of breath. Not quite satisfied, we kept trying, trading off runners when one got tired, and finally got a picture of the three of us, except Andy was turned towards me, telling me to hurry up. We were frustrated, but the tourists walking nearby were thoroughly entertained, and finally a nice Dutch lady offered to take the picture for us.

We are goal-oriented. For dinner we went to a new part of town, Trestevere, across the river, because Andy's guidebook had a nice looking restaurant. Unfortunately our guidebook did not have a sufficiently detailed map to find it. We easily got to within 2 blocks of the place, passing dozens of wonderful restaurants. From there, it was trial and error, mostly error, as we systematically searched a street, returned to the starting point, then developed a renewed faith in our original direction and re-explored the street half a block further. After a number of iterations, much discussion, and probably 15 minutes of walking after a long day of much more walking, Andy finally talked us into turning one more corner and we found it. It looked kind of lame and over priced, lots of American tourists, so we scrapped the plan and returned to this wonderful outdoor place that we had seen earlier. The people who were positioned to see us trek back and forth 5 or 6 times probably have a good story abut these lost American tourists they saw. Which brings me to the next point:

Our impeccable sense of direction. Tonight, in search of a specific monument, we decided to take a back way, so we walked along the river, and I led us right into a fenced off ruin. We wandered around a bit when Andy (also known as "Fearless Leader" to half of the group) walked beneath a scaffold beneath a giant ancient temple ruin, and somehow managed to find an alleyway to get through. We didn't really know where we were (our map seems to be missing a lot of the streets) but we choose a path each time the road forked, and maneuvered our way through nearly-deserted back alleys until we pop out of the street with the statue of Marcus Aurelius we were searching for pointed right towards us. Tina was impressed, Andy and I were more surprised. We all were pleased.

Our immediate immersion into the culture. We practice our Italian every chance we get. Unfortunately we only know about 3 words (which is better than it sounds, "Prego" is used for just about anything) so we end up having entire conversations on the street consisting of "Mi scusi", which always gets a smile out of the Italians nearby.

One last fun thing about Rome is the traffic, the drivers are crazy, but the pedestrians are insane! Crosswalks often do not have lights, but the tourists are intimidated by the fast moving honking cars. What it usually takes is for some brave or possibly suicidal Italian to step out in front of oncoming traffic and slow the cars down enough so the rest of the meek tourists can swarm across. The drivers always seem to slow down, and we just follow behind the crazy Italian pedestrian leader, use him as a human shield to get across. We're finally going to get the hang of it right before we leave. We need Deepa here to hit cars for us and put them in their place.

Having fun, Vatican tomorrow, Serbia after that. Woohoo Europe!

Tina's turn again

2007-07-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

Andy and Ethan slept for what seemed like eternity as I went for a jog, took a shower, had breakfast, and even went out around the neighborhood to buy groceries with Massimo. I finally woke them up around 10:30 am, and since Massimo invited us to have lunch at 12:30 we figured we would just chill around the apartment. Nice and relaxing after a long day yesterday. Of course, little did we know that even this day would be rather crazy!

After an incredibly delicious and filling lunch, we said goodbye to Massimo who was leaving for a business trip. I was going to skip the following part but Ethan insisted that it was crucial: we did laundry! (well Massimo's maid did most of it for us cause apparently guests are treated like kings in Rome)

Since it was rather hot we headed off to the Villa Borghese, which is a scenic park that contains the Villa of an Italian cardinal, who lived in the 17th century. Highlight: turtle fountain (i.e. water spouting from turtles encircling a pool). The cardinal was an avid art collector and his villa is currently a museum that houses all of the pieces of his expansive collection (a good number were forcibly obtained). I decided to buy the audio tour, which was soooo worth it, since I learned all sorts of interesting and exciting facts about these masterful works of art, which included ancient sculptures nearly 2000 years old as well as Renaissance and Italian Baroque pieces. The Baroque artist Carvaggio was convicted of murder and exiled, during which time he created a work depicting David holding the artist's own severed head by the hair in place of Goliath; this painting was suppose to represent Carvaggio's penitence. The museum was also filled with works by Bernini, who was internationally renowned 17th century sculptor commissioned by King Louis XIV, the pope, etc, and who produced important architectural works in Rome, including several palaces. His architecture was at one point deemed unsound, and as a response he created a sculpture of a beautiful women holding the sun, which represented Truth: the Truth of great art/architecture and the truth and soundness of his own works. Finally, the most important work in the museum was called Sacred and Profane Love, valued in the 17th century at would be 14 million dollars today (the entire Villa Borghese with all of its other works was only worth 3.5 million). I wasn't incredibly impressed with it, and found a lot of other works much more powerful, which clearly shows wan an awesome collection this was.

Now that I've spend way too much time on the boring museum part, I'm handing it over to Ethan for all the fun and juicy parts of the day. I know, the anticipation is killing you...

Old Friends in an Even Older City

2007-07-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

Today was a day for old friends and even older Ruins. In fact, "old" takes on a whole new meaning here. We explored the Roman Forum, the Colosseum and the Palatine hill, ruins that are 2000 years old! All of those hours in my Ancient Civ IHUM course freshman year finally came in handy-- the places we visited practically jumped out of the pages of our old textbook. We strolled past the Roman senate, stopped by the spot where Ceaser was killed in 44BC and then we visited the Domitian palace and walked across the same marble floor that Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus used himself in 92AD.

With ruins this old it is easy become spoiled. By the end of the day anything post-1400 felt "modern" and boring by comparison. Speaking of spoiled, the Romans sure knew a thing or too about hedonism. The royal palace had special vomiting rooms just so that the local elites could have 8 hour non-stop feasts without ever getting full. My awe and amazement was tempered with a tinge of revulsion. The grandeur of these audacious buildings and good living came at a great cost. It took 50,000 Jewish slaves to build the Colleseum and another 90,000 Jewish slaves to construct the palace on Palatine hill.

Fortunately slavery is over and today's Romans have been exceptionally outgoing and helpful. Everywhere we went, Romans were eager to try to understand our mumbling mix of English, French or Spanish and-- archaeologists notwithstanding ---most locals were happy to stop and chat. I love how Roman's like to hang out on the street! Just blocks away from the major attractions clumps of locals were chatting away in front of storefronts or houses. They also never seem to be in a hurry. Walking down the streets of Rome, you get a real sense of community! I'm jealous.

I think my favorite thing to do in Rome is to ask for directions. (This is a great game to play with the locals.) The Roman's get very excited to give directions! Perhaps on account of the language barrier, most of the directions we receive consist of rapid hand-motions followed by enthusiastic pointing in one direction. Since it is rare that we are ever on the right street to begin with, these enthusiastic directions often overlook certain subtleties like turns, streets or alleyways. Thus it is necessary to repeat this game two or three times with other locals throughout town. I call this the brute force approach. Its a fun game, because you get to meet lots of people and see parts of Rome you wouldn't otherwise see.

The main attraction for me yesterday, actually had nothing to do with Rome. For dinner we met up with my earliest and closest friend Priscilla. (We met as newborns back at Stanford). They say all roads lead to Rome, and this is just further evidence. Priscilla and her husband Plinio are spending four months visiting every major city between Madrid and Siberia. By pure chance they are in Rome for exactly the same days that we are! I haven't seen Pri for 6 years, so it was fun to catch up and finally meet her husband who I have always heard so much about.

We met up at Fontana Trevi, my new favorite fountain. We did as the Roman's do and made a wish and threw two coins over our shoulder and into the fountain. Pri pointed out that the Roman's don't actually do this at all-- only the tourists. But we threw the coins in anyway. After that we headed to the second-best Gelato place in all of Rome: "San Crispino". Their specialty honey gelato was well worth the trip.

Pri and her husband are doing well. Hopefully the two of them will move to Boston! The amazing thing about Priscilla is that we go for years without seeing eachother, but when we do finally meet-up its still as if we are best of friends. I hope to see her often in the states, and maybe I can find some time to squeeze in a trip to Brazil! I can't wait.

Well.. I fell asleep half way through this post so now its tomorrow! We are having a leisurely morning and having lunch with Massimo before he departs. We will write with more adventures later! Ciao!

Archeological antics and translational troubles

2007-07-16T15:26:00.001-07:00

This morning we got a bit of a late start, but once we got going, we walked from one side of this city to another, quite literally.

First we walked away from the historic center to find a store to buy food for a picnic. We found a fruit stand, and a store that sold bread and cheese. Initially we were frightened by the prices, then we realized that everything is sold per kilogram, even bread. Our estimation skills were put to the test, guessing bread weights in the metric system, but eventually we gave up and decided to go for it. Picking out the bread and fruit was easy enough, using pointing, numbers of fingers, and grunts of affirmation. However, Andy insisted on getting a local recommendation for cheese. After 5 minutes of wild arm gestures and speaking Italian through "guess and check" we had the storekeep thoroughly confused. Fortunately, Andy made a sweeping gesture towards the cheeses, and the shopkeep cut off a chunk of the random cheese he thought Andy pointed to. It was an excellent cheese, Andy has good taste. From there we continued to the nearest metro.

We next went to the Colosseum, but were intimidated by the line, so we took off away from the ancient ruins and grunted and gestured (amid cries of "fontana") our way to one of the many public fountains that ran drinkable water into the streets 24 hours a day. We washed the fruit and found the nearest green area on the map. We enjoyed our wonderful cheese in a park overlooking the Colosseum (although we found out from Massimo later that after dark our tranquil park became the red-light district). Then we took a long walking tour around the oldest of the old ruins (from back in the days of the Etruscans prior to 500 BC). We also saw the Roman forum, the senate, the triumphant arch, and the rest of downtown ancient Rome. It all really came together, however, from the top of the Palatine hill. This was the location of the emperor's palace (and is, in fact, the origin of the word "palace"). From there we could see the entire layout, including the path victorious armies would march to receive their laurels (or bay leaves, they are one and the same). On our way out, Andy tried to start a friendly conversation with a bunch of bitter and sun-weary archeology students, but was shot down in every language he tried.

After our sweeping tour, Tina decided to go native by taking a siesta between a few phone calls, while Andy and I did the manly thing by visiting the Colosseum. We walked around, said "cool", and sat down to plan out the day. As we were preparing to leave, an english speaking tour group swarmed our seat and the guide started telling his group (and us, via proximity) what we had just seen. This was much more interesting than our guesses and we decided to follow the group back to Palatine hill and see what else we could learn. It turned out that we had only seen half the hill before, and had missed Domitian's palace, which was basically half of the hill and included it's own private stadium. It was opulence to an incredible degree. Our British tour guide was great and told us fascinating tidbits, such as how Romans washed their clothes in urine.

From there we climbed the Capitoline hill, designed by Michaelangelo, then we started walking to the Trevi fountain. It was big and I remembered it well from Mr. Freeman's trip. I also remembered that it was close to an amazing gelato place. After we met with Andy's friends later that evening, we went for an ice cream snack. Tonight we are exhausted from a day of city walking and hill climbing, and I am going to sleep well soon!

Starting off Rome with a Bang!

2007-07-16T01:27:00.000-07:00

So much to cover and so little time!

Our last day in Prague was a big success-- we made some new freinds and explored the local's hangouts. If you haven't already, go back and read about meeting Milos, Alamo and Molly. Who would've thought Subway sandwiches was the place to go to meet locals!?

My new personal plan is to try to meet as many cool people as possible from all over the world! Hopefully, then these people will come visit when they stop by the States. That way, even though I will be stuck in a basement laboratory for the next six years and will thus be unable to travel the world, hopefully I can recruit some of the world to come travel to me!! I'll let you know how it works out.

We started off Rome with a Bang, including our own personal fireworks show. I LOVE the feeling of this city. Rome is alive and bustling with real people living and working amongst gorgeous buildings and unbelievable ruins. We're especially fortunate to be staying in a central location right on Via Flaminia. Its not a toursity part of town at all, but its only a short walk to the elagant Piazza Popolo, the metro stop or as we learned last night, its a not-so-far walk to basically anywhere in town.

I cannot stress how beautiful this city is. Rome has a gritty sincerity about it that Prague, with its made-for-film Disney-esque perfection, seemed to lack. And, even better, the Roman's we meet have been friendly and seem excited to practice their english!

Best of all, we have excellent hosts. Those cheezy Olive garden commercials say, "When you're here your family!" and thats exactly how I feel here today. Mossimo is a long-standing friend of my parents who I haven't seen in at least a decade. But without hesitation, he and his wife Stephania have opened up their home and they've served us one of the best meals I have ever had! (Beef briscuit, a lentil dish, cooked veggies and eggplant, a delicious green bean dish that I can't fully explain which was then followed by salad, fresh fruit and a trip to the best gelato in the world, at "il settimo gelo", which apparently is an Italian pun, perhaps Massimo could explain it for us!)

We have big plans ahead! Today we are seeing old ruins. Mossimo's daughter Giulia will show us where the local kids hang out Wednsday night and this afternoon we will meet up with my Brazillian friend Priscilla and her new husband who I haven't seen in years and who just "happen" to be in town!

Life is good. Ciao!

Roaming around Rome

2007-07-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

Wow, Rome is amazing! I know because when we first stepped into the streets, I saw the exact type of purse I had been looking for all over Prague, and it was only 5 Euro! In general the shopping here is infinitely superior to Prague. The first thing we did when we arrived was walk down the Via del Corso, which is a wide cobblestone street lined with every type of store you can imagine and crowded with hundreds of people. The night life here feels somehow so much more vibrant. Perhaps because the tourists are more evenly interspersed with natives, unlike Prague. Or perhaps the three of us are just really excited to be somewhere new.

Even better than the nightlife is the food and drink! Apparently no one is allowed to be thirsty in Rome, since there is a fountain sprouting cold, refreshing, drinkable water at every corner. Then there is the gelato.... Massimo took us to the best gelato place in Rome (he would know, since he has lived in the city all of his life). Lets just say it lived up to its reputation. All three of us tried Zabaione, which is wine flavored. The guy who sold it to us was very surprised, since apparently American tourists rarely if ever order that flavor. But Ethan's been to Rome before, and I absolutely love the Zabaione dessert at Il Fornaio. But the main event, for me at any rate, was the Iranian Gelato. It's the most refreshing cream gelato I have every had. It has this mild, undescribable spiced flavor. Mmmm...ok can't focus on writing anymore. All in all, a wonderful first night. Massimo's family is unbelievable nice and I can't wait to see the city during the day!

Roma! What an entrance!

2007-07-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

Today we packed up and took our flight to Rome. As soon as I got on the plane I conked out until we landed. I was supposed to learn italian, oops. Refreshed, we embarked on the Roman public transportation triathalon: train, metro, and tram to get to Andy's friend Massimo's house. Amazingly we actually found the place and Massimo's daughter Julia let us in and showed us the ropes. Massimo's family is awesome, more on that later.

Our friend Daniel, well-known for his juggling, wild hair, and international scavenger hunts, had set up 3 clues in Rome for us 11 days earlier. We decided to explore Rome and find the first clue. It was at the Spanish steps, 18th century staircase, really cool, really nice, lots of people. We made our way towards the steps with only a few wrong turns (and very enjoyable wrong turns) and found the lamp post that supposedly held the clue. There were 3 items: a broken piece of glass, a sticker from florida, and a magnet. We brainstormed possible meanings (I thought Florida was Florence at first and prepared to travel across the country to find the next clue, Andy suggested that the magnet meant go North, and the piece of glass we unanimously agreed was trash. Eventually Andy developed the theory that the magnet was holding something else which had since fallen. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Since our entrance to Rome, creepy middle-ages feudal castles have been replaced with much older classical Roman architecture. It is amazing how much of this city has survived the milennia intact. The Piazza de Popolo was our first stop, complete with an Egyptian obelisk from 10 B.C. That's right: 10 B.C. That was before I was born. It is still here now.

After returning we met Massimo, once again, the family is amazing. After giving us dinner he took us out for a gelato and upon returning, we saw fireworks (as yet unexplained) so he stopped the car in the middle of the street for a few minutes to watch. Then he brought us closer and dropped us off so that we could explore further. The firework show was amazing, huge bursts of colors between the Tiber river and the Castel Sant'Angelo, a breathtaking fortress first built about A.D. 135 lit at night. We then walked to the same square that has been a central part of Rome for the past 2000 years. This is going to be an excellent adventure.

Long Live Spain! Goodbye Prague!

2007-07-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well, we all knew this day would come. The whirlwind tour of Prague has finally come to an end. Tomorrow we leave this life of failing to speak Czech and continue our sojourn in Rome, yes, THE Rome. However, as far as last days go, yes, there were tears, there was sadness, but it was by all accounts an excellent way to end.

We had a nice siesta this afternoon, after seeing the church of Saint Nicholas (which was absolutely awe-inspiring) and wandering about in "Little Quarter". After waking up, we determined that Czech food met it's reputation (it doesn't have one as far as we know) and that we were done with overpriced cafe's catering to tourists, so we went to Subway. In a strange twist of fate, this turned out to be one of the most authentic cultural experiences we have had. The guy who made our sandwiches, Patrick, was very friendly and we started talking. He and his friend, Milos (that s should have a v above it, but I still haven't figured out these Czech keyboards) gave us a few suggestions on places to go. It's always best to have a local connection so we went off to the main square, and followed his direction for a measly few blocks when we were in what appeared to be a deserted alley, complete with graffiti and broken signs. All the doors were closed and we didn't see any signs, but we kept walking, finally found a door at the end of the alley that would open, and stepped into a huge, 3 story pool/billiards/ping pong/bowling/foosball hall. It was clean, nice, cheap ($5 got us an hour of pool on the nice tables and a Fanta) and we didn't hear a word of english from anyone in there. It was great.

After we'd had our fun and returned to the hostel, Andy and I decided to take one more trip into the city. Initially disappointed because the place we wanted to check out was out of business and the trams were too hard to use (some ticket system, we couldn't find a ticket) we found ourselves on the Charles bridge once again. We were walking next to some Spaniards in musician garb and instruments, and thought they might be the same ones we saw at that bar the other night. I asked them if they were (I forget the vosotros tense, so they responded in English) and they said "no, but we know them! They are our friends!" It seems that everyone from Spain was their friends, if there's one thing we learned about a foreign culture, it was that the Spanish are friendly and awesome. They were some sort of traveling musical fraternity and one of them, Alamo, chatted with us for a while about Spanish films, American films with Spanish actors, American films regardless of Spanish connections, and the resemblance of his name to the place in Texas. As we talked, we were walking, and somehow we ended up in old town square when 5 Spanish girls came running up and demanded that they play something. Alamo apologized and asked permission to play, which we readily gave! They started a series of Spanish songs (including "Guantanamera", my favorite) and attracted a huge crowd. Several tourists started dancing in the front and the whole group joined in on the chorus (including Andy, he got "Guajira Guantanamera" down pat!). And there was much rejoicing. It was the greatest impromptu late night concert ever! If there's a way, I'll try to post a video online.

In respect to Alamo, who asked why we did not bond with other Americans as he did with his fellow Spanish, we met some girls from UCSD who were very nice, including Molly the future large-animal vet. After the concert Alamo invited us to go to a bar with the group, but we declined in order to get our 8 hours of sleep before Rome.

The others are sleeping, but I will toil on to bring the latest stories to you loyal readers. Prague was excellent, and it was just our "practice city". We are extremely excited about the remainder of this trip. Dobre den to all of you (It means good day in Czech)!

Dropped Gelato = Sad Andy

2007-07-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Tina is taking a nap, so Ethan and I are checking the mail and planning for Rome!

Last night was fun. We went out for Gelato's and wandered about whole new areas of town. Exploring uncharted territory seems to be a theme this trip--- a nice by-product of the fact that neither Ethan nor I have been very good about consulting maps.

At the net cafe last night, we met Casey a nice girl from Alabama who is interning at a Hospital here and offered to show us around. In a cruel twist of fate, I accidentally threw out the small slip of paper containing her name and number when I tossed the crumpled napkin that had sopped up the double-scooped lemon & raspberry gelato which I had clumsily dropped just seconds after purchasing. *Sigh* Fortunately there is a clear moral to this story: always get cups, not cones.

Today we went to the Globe, an English-language bookstore/cafe/restaurant that Casey recommended. It was a win. Ethan and I got smoothies!!

Here are some things I missed: Our neighbors in the hostel are a nice couple who just graduated from UC Davis. Turns out the girl was roommates with some old classmates from my high school in the Bay Area. Its a small World.

For those who are planning a trip to Prague skip the Bake Shop, a breakfast joint south of the Jewish town that Erin recommends for a delicious breakfast-- It's currently under construction.
Lastly, the best thing about Prague is all of the towers. I think we've gone up at least 5 or 6 and we just got back from one today. Look for photos of impressive cityscapes!

Tomorrow we are off to Rome! Ciao!

Photos

2007-07-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the shortest post you will ever see from me (it might even be worth reading!)

Photos online:
Europe Photos

enjoy!

Quickly Now

2007-07-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some snip-its from today:
1) My back was killing at 5am this morning so natually I got a professional massage from none other than Andy Masseuse Extraordinaire. I conked out for the next 6 hours.
2) As I slept in until noon, the two 'early birds' wandered around the Jewish Quarter
3) I joined Ethan and Andy for lunch and we visited 2 synagogues and got a informative Jewish history lesson (detials to be covered by Andy).
4) I forced the boys to go into about 20 shops, since I was in search of a particular type of purse that seems to be impossible to find. Sadly, they ended up buying stuff (czech t-shirts), while I remain empty-handed
5) I took a picture next to statue of a giant white shoe. The boys sarcastically asked me to try it on, to which I replied, "I think it's too small for me," to which Andy retorted, "Are you calling me fat, Tina?" Just a taste of the nonsensical nature of our convesations...
6) I want gelato!!!
7) Sorry, back on track now...We climbed up onto a clock tower. I saw a restaurant on the roof of one of the buildings. Perfect dinner place! Vetoed for Pizzaria
8) Internet cafe

Hanging with the Homeboys in the Jewish Ghetto

2007-07-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

Last night was a big success. If you haven't already done so, go back and read Ethan's description of our time at U Fleku-- quite possibly the best bar in all the world. (Sorry, but accordion + enthusiastic Brazilions gives Boulder's Catacombs a run for its money.) I only wish I knew more Portugese drinking songs.

I'm still adjusting to the whole 9 hour time difference, so I had some quailty alone-time with my iPod at 5AM this morning. Fortunately I'm always down for tunes and getting up early actually paid off because Ethan and I were able to beat the crowds and get down to Old Town by 9 AM.

We spent the day exploring the local history of Prague's formerly thriving and now-absent Jewish community in the Jewish Ghetto. I have never seen so many Jewish artifacts or such impressive Synagogues. Progue was the old stomping ground of Franz Kafka, Rabbi Loew, the magical Gollum, and Tom's parents and family (here I am referrring to Tom of former U Fleku fame). It was very sad but powerful to see Tom's relatives listed on a memorial at the Pinkas synagogue. I also had a lot of fun showing Ethan around an impressively thorough exhibit about 19th- and early 20th-century Jewish relgious practices housed in the Klausen Synagogue. Judaism hasn't changed much in the past few centuries, so I knew this stuff already, but it was convenient to have exhibits on everything from tfilin to mezzuzzot. They even had a moyel's kit on display. I gave Ethan a whirlwind course on Judaism 101.

We wandered past the "Gollum Cafe" and I saw the oldest Synagogue in all of europe (from the late 1200's). We also oohhed and aahhed at an immaculate Ashkenazi synagogue that seemed to sparkle with intricate tilework. I would have taken a picture, but when Tina tried the grumpy old ladies yelled at her. For a peek, Google Spanish Synagogue Prague.

Although undeniably beautiful, there was something a little eerie about today's Jewish sight-seeing . We saw half-a-dozen synagogues yet all of them were museums-- no sign of an active congregation around. Also, there were no local Jews. Everyone was a tourist. In fact, there was no sense of any local living Jewish community whatsoever.

The Nazi's had planned for Prague to be home to a giant musem dedicated to the "extinct race" of the Jews. According to a guide, many of the artifcats in Prague today are left over from the Nazi's unfinished collection. On the one hand, it was very exciting to learn all about the history of Prague's rich Jewish heritage. On the other hand, there was something a little unsettling about touring the would-be-memorial to an extinct race.

Anyway, Prague is still as beautiful as ever. Now that my Pizza is disgesting, its time to bust out of this net-cafe and get out to New Town for some gilato, and then perhaps we can drag Ethan to another "social" activity, like a bar or-- *gasp* --maybe even a club.

I hear there are photos fortchoming! Keep an eye open-- I've been working hard on my pics. Ciao for now!

Day 2: Jewish Quarter

2007-07-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hello again! After posting my blog last night, I realized that neither of my travel mates shares my enthusiasm for medieval warfare, so I wanted to bring up a few highlights from the first day in Prague castle, as well as our trek to Jewish quarter today:

1) Saw a 10th century sword. They clearly didn't have stainless steel back then, right now it wouldn't cut through much of anything, but it's still pretty cool!

2) Ridiculously old buildings. Over in the states, a building from the 1700's might be noteworthy. Well, anything after 1700 didn't even get a glance over here. We saw a 14th century cathedral. 700 years and still going strong. They just don't make them like they used to. We also saw a church built in the 10th century. Romanesque architecture. Today we also saw a 13th century synagogue, and literally, the city is chock full of every architectural style imaginable, moorish, gothic (those 14th century buildings kinda scare me) baroque, renaissance, you name it. It is hard to find a place in Prague more than 4 blocks from a towering cathedral/church/synagogue/monument that was built before our country existed. It is fascinating to see how the buildings were modified or adapted after large fires or renovations.

3) Actual history. Today in the morning Andy gave me a private tour of 5 synagogues in the Jewish quarter. It was kind of eerie because the Jewish population here never really returned after the holocaust. The population went from 92,000 pre-WW2 to 13,000 afterwards. by 1950 half of those had left. However, on an even more chilling note, the Nazi's had chosen Prague for a "Museum of an Extinct Race" and as a result, there were many jewish artifacts in the city, now these form a part of the exhibit. Today gave me chills but I did learn a significant amount of Jewish practice from Andy, and about 1000 years of Jewish history in eastern europe from the synagogues (now converted to museums). The history of anti-semitism in Bohemia is far more complex than I had imagined, extending back 1000 years to the first jewish settlements, and this was tied into power struggles and ruling parties in the area. Once again, it makes US history seem kind of trivial in comparison (Colombus came, George Washington beat up the british, then we did pretty well). I did develop a much better understanding of a culture, although it was mixed with the disgust and depression that so many others did not bother with such an understanding in the past.

4) Blood and guts. These Czech rulers are crazy, they kill their brothers for control of the crown, fight with Hussites, and throw people out of windows (I was very surprised to find that the famous "defenestration of Prague" consisted of throwing two people out of a first floor window onto a dung heap without serious injury). I finished with a better understanding of Catholic and protestant revolutions, the Hapsburg empire, and my complete and utter lack of knowledge in Eastern European history.

5) This has been mentioned, but the city is absolutely beautiful. The historic section of Prague has been developed continuously since the 10th century, and every where you turn is a huge building. It has gotten to the point that we walk by a 7 storey stone 16th century cathedral without even turning our heads. If we stopped at every sight we would never get more than a mile away from our hostel. Exploring the quaint restaurants has led to an underground stone viking hall serving me mozzarella and tomato salad, a Czech place with beef dumplings, and french and italian food galore. Everywhere we go we try to guess people's languages and always meet someone with an interesting story.

Basically, life is good, some of our knowledge is depressing, but all is fascinating, and life should keep getting better as we adjust to the timezone. We should find a way to upload pictures soon (we already have over 100). We'll keep you informed!

Castles and Craziness!!!

2007-07-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

We made it onto the continent proper! And started the day off with a wonderful castle tour. I've decided that I'm going to build myself a castle in Boulder next year. If any of you see any big rocks, save them for me.

Andy and Tina probably told you all about that (they took long enough in that internet cafe to transcribe the entire tourbook) but since the tourist traps have closed, we were forced to diversify. Andy's friend Erin suggested climbing a tower on the Charles bridge, WOW! I hope to upload some pictures soon but, in your mind's eye, imagine an ornate bridge leading off to a grassy hill and a tower with a gothic cathedral rising above the outer walls, at sunset, complete with reflections on the river. We spent a while just enjoying the scenery and then hopped down to try and catch a classical music concert. We found out that the concerts are cheesy, relatively expensive, and short, so we passed and decided to walk along the river instead. On our way to the hostel, we were sidetracked by a bug-infested island with an amazing playground. There was a cool little spinny chair that, between Andy's mastery of conservation of angular momentum and Tina's high pitched screams, was incredibly entertaining. The toys meant for 4-year-olds distracted us so long that we realized it was already 10:00 when we had finished, clearly time to hit the bars.

Andy wanted to go to a restaurant/bar that his friend Tom told him about. For those of you that know me, I was initially somewhat reluctant to go to a bar, however, once we got there, the wall said that the bar was established in 1499, and then, after we walked in, we found there was loud drunken singing from a sideroom. Tina, as brave/courageous/clueless as ever, ignored the "Reserve" sign on the door and walked in, and was immediately greeted with a roaring cheer. After telling them she was from California, and getting another even louder cheer, Andy and I exchanged looks, and rushed in to join. I was sold.

Apparently in the Czech Republic, it is considered improper for a customer to spend more than 2.7 seconds without a beer in front of him/her, so we were immediately supplied with a pure black foamy concoction, that, despite my dislike of beer, was actually pretty good. Even Tina managed to eventually get hers down within an hour or so. Having tolerable beer was not the highlight, however. The adjacent table had 4 crazy brazilians who were working with two musicians to keep the room singing. The entire room clapped sang along with "Oh When the Saints..." and various Spanish songs (my personal favorite was "de colores", Papa, you should have been there). Even the elderly couple in the corner was enjoying the show (more than the kids it seemed) and the lady even got up to dance. The kids across from us were clapping along while Andy and I were trying to find a song that the spaniards next to us would also know. Eventually all we could get was "Hakuna Matata", although those were the only two words we shared (the spanish version was fun too though). After getting pulled into a few pictures was some other fancily dressed spanish speaking types, we finally got out (at 11:00) me having my first (and possibly only) good bar experience. The key is minimal alcohol and lots of singing foreigners. Thank you Tom for the wonderful suggestion! I will try to post a video as soon as I can.

Everyone here is fun, friendly, and speaking crazy languages all over the place. After we got back, I decided to head back to find an internet cafe when I ran into 11 mexicans looking for a discotec I remembered passing earlier in the day. I took them to where I could give them directions and in travel learned that there was free internet at this club they were going to. I cheered, tagged along, and, having 5 or 6 scantily clad mexican women with me, made friends with the doorman who let me sneak into the internet cafe section without paying the cover. Also, the discotec is not just a loud, obnoxious dance floor with poor lighting and no chance to talk, it was FIVE FLOORS of the previously-mentioned benefits. I hope I don't get dragged to floors 2-6 of this building. In summary: it has been an exciting and fun first day, full of cultural, historical, and any other types of experiences one would want from a european tour. If the remaining 20 days are like this one though, I am going to be exhausted by the end of it. Ethan out!

Sleepless in Prague

2007-07-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

So we finally made it to our hostel in Prague at around 11pm last night. It was a surprisingly comfortable and easy journey from the US. (I actually slept for most of the plane flight!). And since we are too posh for public transportation we were delivered to our 'hostel' by the very nice manager. I put 'hostel' in quotes because really it's essentially a hotel. We get our own private room and bathroom with a TV, towels, fridge, etc. Tired, but elated to finally be in the city, the three of us went for a midnight stroll. I walked across a bridge and back, taking in the beautiful city lights reflecting off the river, while Ethan and Andy tried to figure out how to take good night photos with their cameras at the entrance to the bridge. Finally, it was time for bed. I woke up feeling really refreshed before I realised that it was only 2:30 am! I tossed and turned in vain until Andy woke up around 5am. We started talking and woke Ethan. I was pretty giddy from boredom, and we had some good laughs and pillow fights (pillow catch, really) until 6am when we finally decided to shut up and get some sleep.

We headed off to an observatory at 10am, which is like a mini Eiffel Tower. Beautiful 360 degree views of the city with alot less steps (granted a nice uphill hike through a park was necessary). We then went to the Prague Castle which contains a gorgeous Baroque cathedral (similar to Notre Dame). Don't get me wrong, Prague is quite different from Paris. More beautiful, in my opinion, with so many more castles and churches. We visited many little buildings and displays around the castle. Including dungeons!! (I have some mobrid facination with such places, Andy was creeped out). I also really loved seeing old clothing in the 'history of the castle' museum display (not surprisingly, I was the only one of us who felt this way). Hmm, I should torture the boys with some shopping....Ok time to go. Andy and I are such slow bloggers that Ethan went for a walk, and I'm afraid we may have lost him....perhaps he got to Rome by now.

The Adventure Begins!

2007-07-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

Well we made it and we're here in Prague! It's been a great start to what should be an amazing adventure.

Yesterady morning I arrived at Heathrow where Ethan was waiting for me "Love Actually"-style. We had some time to kill waiting for Tina, so we acquainted ourselves with Heathrow's many tunnels and passageways. The Brits sure have a knack for making their airport complicated! Fortunately, Tina showed up right on time and completed the team. After some more Heathrow-exploring, it was off to Prague!

We got in at around 10pm and someone from the Hostel met us at the airport and drove us into town. The city is gorgous and our living arrangements are awesome. Mad props go to Tina for finding this gem. We have our own room with three beds, a bathroom and even a mini-kitchen! Just about anything you would want to see is within walking distance. Walking around prague is a little bit like walking in a Disney animation. There are picturesques castles and buildings everywhere. Photos forthcoming!

Today we explored the castle and cathedral. The day was a whirlwind of stained glass, tourists, 10th century art and architecture, along with some elegant gardens and creepy dungeons and turture devices thrown in for good measure. Tina really likes the "Spanish boot." Wikipedia it.

I've had a lot of fun meeting fellow travellers so far. On the flight from Denver to O'Hare I sat next to a lovely second-year medical student from Pueblo who is just starting her rotations in Chicago. She studied medical school in England and got to do a lot of travelling between exams. Sounds like the good life. Talking to her was especially reassuring-- there are others out there besides grad students who have opted to continue on with school for a ridiculously long amont of time.

Everyone has been friendly and excited to hear about our trip. I sat next to a giant British Jujitsu wrestler on the flight to London. He showed me pictures of his most recent fight-- they looked like something out of WWF wrestling. He even got a big silver belt, just like in the movies. I asked him what he does with such a big belt, and he says he puts it with the others in a big trophy rack at home. This seems reasonable enough. He was a fun character to sit next to, and in between quoting Bible-verses, he liked to try to sit in empty isle seats until he was told that they were already taken.

Finally, on the flight to Prague I was especially excited to sit next to a fellow Harvard student. This young junior just finished 40 days in Finland and Switzerland writing for Let's Go Europe, which sounds like the most awesome job of all time! She ison her way to vist family in Prague and she speaks Czech! She gave me some good tips for Boston and hopefully she will join us sightseeing in Prague.

My internal clock is going a little haywire-- but it seems to be the norm of the group. We all had fun staring at the ceiling wide-awake at around 5AM this morning. Right about now Tina and I are ready to fall over. Ethan of course is as chipper as ever.

Tomorrow we are off to see the Jewish part of town and I'm cooking up a wicked-awesome itinerary. Check back for more updates!!

Talk to you later!

Ethan Sits around at Heathrow!!! WOOHOO!!!!

2007-07-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

After several delays and an entire day of missing breakfast food serving deadlines by a few minutes, I made it to London, powered by the lunch my mom packed for me (pb&j never gets old!). I managed to get through 4000 years of european history and meet two other groups of like-minded peers doing similar travels, although no one who can teach me czech, yet!. I am now waiting for Andy's flight to arrive (also delayed by 1:15 or so) so that we can get started. I have the tickets for the next leg, so I am considering playing an international prank by hiding their tickets in London with clues.

In other news, Kate's family is amazing and has offered us a place to stay in London. We will keep you all posted! At least now if I never get online again at least I can say I posted from Europe.

And I left my passport in my closet at home, which was good, because when I got mugged getting off the plane they weren't able to take it from me. And then I found $5. Kidding, nothing exciting yet, but hopefully future posts will leave you, the loyal readers, begging for movie rights.

First Post!

2007-07-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow at 9:05AM I fly to Europe! Well, actually no, I fly to Portland, chill for 2 hours, fly to Chicago, sprint to make my flight, either make it and get into London, or miss it and explore fermilab.

Andy and then Tina will join me later in the day, and then we leave to find out what what secrets Europe holds, or maybe just how many castles we can find. Regardless, this is the start of a fun new adventure, and we will try to keep you posted on our progress as we tour Prague, Rome, Belgrade, Istanbul, and London. This is so you guys can try to live vicariously as we get tired, dirty, lost, and who knows what else in our friendly continental neighbor to the east.