¡Viva los frikis!

Well, I got back to Paris on Monday. It's been a bit hard to settle back into classes, but the good thing is that we have two three-day weekends in a row.

I really want to go back to Spain. Wish I had another two weeks to explore the entire country instead of just Madrid and the sights from the train. I really should have gone to Toledo or Segovia on Friday, but Ana and I had made other plans. She's training to be a model, and I suggested we have a photo shoot to get her portfolio started. Unfortunately, Friday was consumed in hours of cooking for an international cuisine festival at Hendrique's school the next day. Her boyfriend Guillermo came over for a bit, and that night we went to a birthday party for one of Ana's friends and I got to meet all the members of her church choral group. I especially liked her 25-year-old pastor who, as a dutiful pastor should, expressed regret that I wouldn't be around for the mass on Sunday, and then told me the reason he holds mass in the evening instead of the morning is so that he can recover from all the drinking and dancing he does Saturdays. So refreshing to know that not all Catholics are like the Chamayous, and also interesting to call a priest 'padre' without it being a Clint Eastwood reference.

I slept in Saturday and went to the school to help clean up the food. Ana and Hendrique had been representing (surprise!) Japan at the event with ramen, chicken, and Japanese cheesecake.
After we got home we had a leisurely lunch of the leftovers.

And then we began the shoot. I really would have preferred to shoot before 11 in the morning for the softer light, but Cristal helped us with lighting by handling two large styrofoam squares to reflect sunlight. Personally, I love the shots we came up with. Ana's one of the most supremely beautiful girls I know.

Immediately afterward we changed clothes and left for Ana's aunt's house, where there was another birthday party for her five-year-old cousin. Nice tapas dinner with her grandparents and aunts and uncles.

Then we met Ana's friends from the previous night and went to a pub, and then to Avenida de Brasil to go to the samba club Lemon for Ana's own birthday party. The line outside Lemon was way too long, so instead the sixteen of us went next door to the more generic Club Flint. The music wasn't very good, but we made the best of it and got home at about four in the morning. I set my alarm to 6:15 to leave me enough time to pack and get to Chamartin to catch my train at 8.

Woke up without the alarm, which I thought was a bit unusual considering I'm only slept two hours, but I casually glanced at the clock to see how much time I had left. 7:01. Mad frenzy of packing, and then Cristal drove us to the train station to bypass the metro.

Long sleepy train ride to Hendaye, where I had my eight-hour layover to wait for the night train. I hiked throught the town to the beach, where I planned to find a place on the sand to sleep more. Too bad it was so cold and windy, and most of the beach was submerged at high tide. I still plodded along the tide wall to see what shots I could get of the sand and the cliffs.

Ate dinner in a fancy beachside restaurant, mainly because it was the only place that was open on a Sunday. The Basque cake was exquisite.

The night train was actually more comfortable than I thought it would be. No beds, but the reclining seats were pleasant enough. Got to Paris at 7:45. Metro home, where I unpacked and then went to class.

Today I went with a bunch of NC people to an Italian restaurant to celebrate Jen's birthday. And Laureline invited me to her birthday party on Friday. That's, what, five now? Crazy.

All this time I've been glued to the news to find out the latest about the swine flu. Yahoo says there is already a case here in France, but the BBC disagrees and- TWENTY cases?! Le Monde says there are twenty suspected cases here!! I just want y'all to know that if the cases rise above a certain level, like, if I see people getting sick on the metro, and they've already shut down air travel, I'm heading to Corsica. Or Ireland. And if it reaches either of those, I'm stealing a boat and sailing to Madagascar.

http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Pandemic-2.html#game

From the gutter to Paradise (2/2)

Ana's house is magnificent; small, but superbly furnished. I got the couch bed in the library on the top floor, which is the most beautiful room in the house, with sliding glass doors on two walls that can be opened for a crossbreeze. When we first got home I slept for about an hour and a half, then did some Tai Chi on the library balcony. When Ana's little brother Hendrique got home from school the three of us played SingStar, a music game with Disney songs, on Hendrique's PlayStation. I actually scored better singing in Spanish than in English.

That night Ana and I went out to a tapas-style Japanese restaurant near her house. Everything was delicious. We talked for about two hours about anime, relationships, and horror movie. Ana said the restaurant knows her as a regular customer, which isn't at all surprising, because she's one of the most ardent japanophiles I've ever met, and I'M IN THE YACHTING CLUB! Later, she showed me the photos of when she cosplayed Misa Amane from DeathNote at the ExpoComic anime convention last year.

Felt so good to sleep in a real bed, especially one so luxurious.

Yesterday at breakfast I had a culinary revelation: café à l'espagnol. It's so simple and so delicious! You simply stir instant coffe directly into milk instead of water. I am going to start having it every day.

Then Ana and I went into the city and explored all the major historical sites of Madrid, except the museums. We saw the Palacio Real, the Teatro Real, and then walked to the Plaza Mayor, where we stopped at a tapas restaurant. We got a plate of Spanish meats and Ana insisted I also try the octopus cooked in oil, which was pretty good. We took the metro to Retiro Park, where we found a spot away from the tourists and sat down in the shade to relax. We talked about roleplaying games (how I've missed these discussions with hot nerdy girls), and I got to recount the epic saga of Vortigern the Immortal and the Dark Duchess, mine and Abigail's characters from last year's Changeling game. Afterwards, we went several goth shops at Funcular, and I bought a jacket.

When we got home, Ana's mother Cristal actually gasped at how sunburned I'd gotten, and rushed to get me some AfterSun. I know I should be more aware of sunburn, but I figure any risk of skin cancer has already been balanced out by the sunny days I've spent inside playing Civ III and Age of Empires.

Ana made dinner, and that's when I had my second culinary epiphany. The meat dish was ground beef in a sweet dark brown sauce. I asked Ana how she'd made it and she said it was just beef with sugar. Just beef with... sugar? How have I not heard of this before? Spanish food may be my new favorite cuisine, simply because of the way it so delectably subverts the conventions of most Western dishes.

I love it here.

You. Fail. It. (1/2)

Shall I enumerate the major failures of my life? Somehow I think such an exercise would be neither healthy nor constructive, so perhaps not right now. Suffice it to say, what happened Tuesday night is on the list.

I spent most of Monday vegging on Lost and Torchwood, but I did get some exercise when I walked from La Defense to the Arc de Triomphe, probably three or four miles.

Tuesday, got up, metro to Gare Montparnasse, caught the train to Hendaye on the French border no problem. On the way I watched the film This Is England that was assigned for Cinema on my laptop; powerful movie thoroughly examining the concept of bullies in society, I highly recommend it.

When I arrived in Hendaye, I debated whether to just stay on the train because it was going to Irun, the station on the Spanish side, anyway, but my ticket said to disembark at Hendaye and the ticket agent at Gare d'Est had assured me it was only a short walk between the two stations. With the US-Mexico border in mind, I thought it made sense to cross the border on foot, so I stepped off. I probably would have made it on time to Irun if I had had a map, but instead I got lost and missed the train.

This is not the failure that I mentioned above.

There was another train to Madrid, leaving fifteen minutes after I got to the station; it went to Atocha Station, not Chamartin where I'd told Ana to meet me, but I figured at least I'd be in the same city as her. The Spanish scenery was amazing, especially the misty hills of the Basque Country and the fields around Pamplona.

I got to Madrid at 10:50 and followed the directions Ana had given me to the metro stop Nuevos Ministerios. The next step of the directions said her house was on Avenida de los Prunos.

There is no Avenida de los Prunos near Nuevos Ministerios. It wasn't on any maps of the city I could find. Nevertheless, I spent more than two hours looking for some clue. When I gave up, I couldn't find any hotels in the neighborhood. The streets were deserted except for taxi drivers and cops, so I slept on the street. Although it really was too cold to sleep, so I walked around all night to stay warm.

When the sun rose I slept for an hour on the grass in front of the Ministry of Transportation. I finally found an Internet cafe and called Ana to, as she put it, "rescue" me. She and her mother picked me up in front of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The taxis, man. All I had to do that night was to hail a taxi and ask for Avenida de los Prunos. It's in an outer part of Madrid that was only recently incorporated into the city. The directions said Nuevos Ministerios because that's where the most taxis are! Seriously, I must have seen over a hundred taxis that night, and all I had to do was catch ONE!

I have failed at being a European traveler. And as much a feat of machismo as staying on the street was, stupidity in the name of stoicism is stupidity nonetheless.

Wanderen

Yesterday I climbed an Alp! A WHOLE ALP, the entire mountain, from foot to summit. Granted, it was one of the smaller mountains in the area, but it was within sight of the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany, so it couldn't have been that small.

Shortly after posting on Thursday I met Vicky at the Hauptbanhof and we went back to her family's house. I got the same room as four years ago. Horst and Sonja, Vicky's parents, and her brother Tobias, were much the same as I remembered them.

The next day Vicky had to work, so Toby and I went to the Olympic Park to view an exhibition on Tutankhamen's tomb and the Egyptian politics that surrounded his death. I learned that despite however much people want to believe he was murdered by the high priest Ay or his successor General Horemheb, the forensic evidence actually points to a chariot accident. The exhibition was full of replicas of the treasures found in his tomb and the sheer number of objects, let alone the sumptuous quality of them, was staggering.

Saturday Vicky, Toby, and I got up early and drove to the mountain town of Garmisch, intending to hike to Partnach-klamm, a long and geographically unique canyon cut by an alpine stream. Klamm is actually German for "U-shaped canyon." But it was closed due to the stream being flooded from snowmelt, so we started up the aforementioned mountain to the village of Eckbauer at the top. The terrain was very steep, but the views of the Alps all around were unforgettable. I didn't know that Toby had packed a veritable feast for us and we had lunch on the deck of a nineteenth-century tavern. On the route down we went through another tiny village that had a church that was built in 1720. The meal when we got back to the Preglers was astounding; Vicky' boyfriend Flo came over and grilled schweinebraten while Sonja made two salads. We all stayed up talking in mixed German and English until almost midnight.

This morning I wake up packed quickly, and left for the Hauptbanhof with Vicky. At her suggestion, I bought a book for the journey: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. 'F anyone tells you this book is equally as good as The Kite Runner, don't believe them; it's about four times better. The story arc between Tariq and Laila is one of the greatest love stories I've ever read. I'm already about four-fifths through.

With the book to occupy me, the train ride passed fairly quickly. There was some minor unpleasantness while leaving Stuttgart about my not having a reservation for the TGV back into France, but once I said I was perfectly willing to cough up the €15 fee, the comptroller relented and let me sit in the space between cars again.

Thirty-nine hours till I leave for Madrid. Now, if you'll excuse me, these six episodes of Lost aren't gonna watch themselves.

Reisen

Wednesday night I shaved. Let's just get that out of the way. One of the girls in the program (won't say who, because that would be mean) actually took all of Thursday to figure out what was different about me. I kid you not. Simply put, I needed a change, and I've actually gotten a fair number of compliments as a result. Yes, Bennie, you were right all along.

The rest of the week was torture, having the break so close and yet still having to go to Grammar and Phonetics. But finally Friday night came.

Saturday I went out with Laureline and her friends. We took the Metro to Montmartre, saw how you could barely move for the tourists around Sacre-Coeur, and then went back to the Black Dog at Chatelet.

On Sunday I got up at 5:30 to get to Gare de l'Est to catch the train to Munich. I was worried because I hadn't known that I needed a reservation for the TGV train acrosss the border. When I asked at the counter I was told that all reservations in all classes for the next five days were booked, but the ticket agent said that I should still wait for the comptroller to show up and ask him if there had been any cancellations. When the train finally arrived, the comptroller's assistant informed me that I could sit in the space between cars for a fee of only €15.

I transferred in Stuttgart and got to Munich at about 5:30. You don't need any reservations to travel within Germany and Austria with a Eurail pass. Found a hostel and met some friends, Katie, Victor, and Aeshi who were touring all of Europe on their month-long break from their school in Leeds, England. Katie was American and the other two were Australians. We went out to a biergarten adn had a really good time.

On Monday I got to Wieselburg at 2:15 without any trouble. Marion showed me around the town and took me out for Chinese. The next day we went for a hike in the woods with our cameras. Felt really nice to be back in a natural setting. Wednesday passed quickly and now I'm back here in Munich, sitting in an Internet cafe, waiting for my friend Viktoria. The plan is for me to stay in Munich til Sunday, then go back to Paris before leaving for Madrid. Hope the same TGV option is available coming back from Stuttgart.

Timing

I was going to spend this post crowing about how I slept in the airport and got back to Paris in time for my entretien. Then I checked the news.

Saturday night I was going to go see the Spanish Steps, but I wound up polishing some last-minute stuff for my entretien in a pizzeria, and I got so wrapped up in that that by the time I finished it was already 10:30. So I just went back to the hostel. I got into a conversation with the guy at the front desk and he mentioned that the Vatican was closed on Sunday and you had to call well in advance to get tickets to the Villa Borghese. Thus cancelling both my plans for Sunday.

I got up about 8 and walked down to the Colosseum. I was doubtful about the prices for tickets, but Mom and Warren had raved about it, so I joined an English-language tour group to skip the tourist lines. The architecture was very impressive, but unfortunately the history was all stuff that I'd learned previously in Latin. Our guide, Luca, kept insisting, "I not kidding you, is inna books." The tour was supposed to go on to the Palatine Hill afterwards, but it was pretty poorly organized, and I think only a few of the others found the meeting point.

Chagrined, I grabbed a kebab and walked over to the Capitoline Museum behind the Vittorio Emmanuele II monument. The art inside was amazing; lots of incredibly lifelike busts of ancient Romans, Renaissance paintings, and sculptures like the Dying Gaul. More than anywhere else, I'm glad I stopped there.

Then on to the Spanish Steps. Bloody tourists were as thick as pigeons. Enough said.

Near the Vatican I stopped in a clothing store and bought a shirt that I saw in the window.

St. Peter's Square at sunset was magnificent. They still had all the chairs out from the Palm Sunday service that morning.

I picked up my luggage from Casa Olmata and headed to a restaurant that the owner, Mirella, had recommended. Good food, but the service was so slow that I had to scut it short to catch the last train of the night. Yeah, I know service is slower in Italy to give you time to enjoy your meal, but I had no choice.

Took the train out to Agnanina. While waiting for the bus I met other travelers who were about my same age. Helen was German and had been staying with in the countryside of Italy for a week, and was flying back to school in Berlin. Jordan was from Pennsylvania and was studying in Granada. And Ning was Chinese and had been in Rome for a weekend like me. She went to a business school in Gottland, Sweden. Turned out we had all planned to spend the night in Ciampino. We got there and picked a spot on the concrete terminal floor. Jordan and Ning fell asleep at about 1:30, but Helen and I stayed up looking at my photos.

At about 3:30, I felt a distinct tremor through the floor. No one else seemed to notice, so I assumed it was just an airplane landing, and went back to sleep.

At 6 I woke up to find that the others had all left, because their flights had been earlier. I waited for the EasyJet counters to open, and was fourth in line behind a trio of Norwegians. My backpack was too big for EasyJet regulations, and I'd managed to sneak it past 'em on the way down, but they caught it this time and I had to check it. On the plus side, it made it much easier to go through security.

Because I'd been among the first thirty in line, I got to board the plane a bit earlier than everyone else. A group of American guys came and sat down near to me just before we started to taxi. The one sitting next to me introduced himself as Grover and said that they were a group of seminarians who'd been in Rome for the past year learning Italian and studying for the priesthood.

"So where're you from?"
"Virgnia."
"No way, what part?"
"I'm from the Shenandoah Valley."
"Whoa, I'm from Clarke County!"

Grover was from Stephens City. How cool izzat?

When we landed in Paris I sprinted through the airport to get my backpack and get on the train. I needn't have worried about being on time; I boarded the train and got to Luxembourg with ten minutes to spare.

The entretien went well. I think M. Bondurand penalized me because I had failed to look up some words I really should have known, but surely my discussion of Barthean philosophy in regards to French fashion photography gained me some points back.

Afterwards I looked up the BBC online, just to see what I'd missed over the weekend. Now as Sarah pointed out, I have an indelible connection to the tragedy in Aquila.

This last week before the break is really trying. I haven't felt this eager for a vacation since high school. Right now I have to go back into Paris to see about booking the train too and from Madrid.

Now that was fun! (2/2)

But in Soviet Italy, protest finds you!!

I had no sooner stepped out of the hostel than I saw people marching and waving red flags in the Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. I started following the stream backward, and it just kept going! The marchers went all the way back to the Piazza della Republica!

One thing I noticed in particular was that the vast majority of these protestors were seniors and parents with their children. But finally, almost at the Palazzo Margherita, I found the students. As I said they were all marching behind this large truck rigged with huge speakers, with a DJ and everything. I marched with them for most of the time, sometimes going ahead to search out shooting spots. I lost rack of where we went before we got back to the Colosseum, but it was a long way.

And the whole thing was indescribable, really made me realize how long it’s been since I went to the last protest in Washington, although I guess the Inauguration sort of counts, because there was the kind of same camaraderie in the crowd. But none of the DC protests had anything like the mobile music festival, complete with mobile mosh pits when the songs were right. I sang along with the choruses in the Italian songs, even though I had little idea what they meant beyond the whole ‘anti-fascisti’ thing. When they played “Get Up, Stand Up” I began singing at the top of my lungs, listening as only a few of the Italians did the same.

We finally ended at 11:15 at the Circus Maximus, where I finally got a sense of how big this thing actually was. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people covered the grass. A stage had been erected at the front, and a singer was interspersing American songs with short speeches in Italian.

Shortly afterwards, people began to leave, and I took it that the protest was over. Were I back in Virginia, this is the point where I would go home and play two or three hours of Age of Empires to congratulate myself for being such a good citizen. But as it was, I started walking toward the Pantheon. I got a sandwich on the way and then some gelato. The Pantheon was absolutely packed with tourists, but as a building it was still amazing.

The Trevi Fountain was even more magnificent. I loved how the sculptures are framed by the uncut stone, and how the water flows apart from the main pools in channels that look like they formed independent of any human design.

Unfortunately after that, I had to come back to the hostel, because my camera was almost out of battery and my left foot felt like someone had tried to hack it in two. Had a nap, and since then I’ve been writing this blog entry.

I’ll try get up early beat the lines to the Vatican and the Villa Borghese tomorrow.

Pretty good weekend so far.

Italia! (1/2)

This is how I know there is a God!

The Saturday of the weekend that I picked to come to Rome was the same day that was designated as a national day of protest by Italy’s left-wing political parties. Yeah, maybe I wasted a bunch of time that could have been spent in museums, but keep in mind that the monuments and cathedrals you will have with you always; the feelings of elation that go with thousands of yelling students marching behind a truck outfitted with giant speakers blasting Italian Celtic Rock protest songs and Bob Marley you will not have with you always.

So the flight went well. I got up at 6:45, finished packing, and took the train to Orly. The time from Luxembourg to Orly is about 27 minutes, giving me a leisurely 38 minutes to get from the plane to the train on Monday. We had beautiful views of the Alps and the Italian foothills on the way down; somehow it’s still a strange concept for me that there are mountains high enough to keep their snowcaps while it’s in the thirties down below. When we landed at Ciampino, it wasn’t quite that hot, but still a lot warmer than Paris, a lot like flying from Washington to Miami.

Took the COTRAL bus to the train station, rode in to Termini in the center, found my hostel, the Casa Olmata. I’m sharing a room with three Colombians and two other American backpackers. The Columbians were friendly even though their English was limited, but the Americans didn’t come in till I was asleep, and I left before they woke up this morning.

It’s a pretty short distance from the hostel to the Forum, so that was where I headed first. I got to the Palatine Hill just as it closed. I explored that area for a while, and then had dinner: spaghetti carbonara, as recommended to me by Margherita, the Italian girl in my Grammar class. Then I got some gelato and explored some more. Got some night shots of the Vittorio Emanuele II monument and the Tiber.

As I was walking back I noticed these posters for a protest for... sabato 4 aprile!! Of course I was enthused, especially since I saw that the posters all seemed to have been put up by different political groups, but they were all quite definite about the date.

Got back to the hostel, shared some wine with the Colombians, and went to bed, resolving to go visit the Pantheon the next day and try to find the protest.

Precautions are for losers

Two days to go.

I should have known going to Rome wouldn't be as easy as I thought it would be. Getting up early on Friday, getting to Orly, finding the flight, figuring out Roman transit to get to my hostel, and spending three days there, all that is fine. But Monday morning is when it'll get hairy. My flight back leaves at 8:55, which, according to the EasyJet rules, means I have to be there at 8:15. The trains in Rome don't start til 5:30, and the bus to the airport only leaves every half-hour, but if it comes down to it I'll probably just get a taxi.

THEN, once I get back to Paris at 10:55 I have one hour to get to class to give my entretien presentation. I think I can do it; as long as I'm on the train by 11:20 I should be just fine.

And I still haven't decided which hostel to stay at. I really should have booked earlier. Oh, well, I'll find something.

Spring has hit Paris like a green bomb. All of a sudden the weather's consistently sunny and people are coming outside. I couldn't believe how many people were in the Jardin today!

If anyone has any more suggestions for what I should do in Rome, leave 'em in the Comments. Now I have to plow through the rest of my homework.