What's a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?

12-14 March 2009

So…Dublin. Well, Ireland is great. There’s that. The people are really friendly. I mean, I guess I should start from the beginning.

So Thursday night we headed to Dublin for an awesome weekend partying right before St. Patty’s day. I was with all the boys, and it was set up to be a really crazy weekend. We went out for dinner when we first got there. I had an amazing shepherd’s pie (peppered with actual shepherd on top…haha). After dinner, we ran to a liquor store to grab some pre-gaming materials.

Our hostel was so nice; it was a Globetrotters Hostel. I bought a bottle of pinot grigio and the boys for some unknown reason bought this Irish Jamaican Sea-Dog Rum (not their best plan). It smelled so awful that being in the same room with those drinks was making my stomach turn. I couldn’t believe they actually drank two fifths of that awful Sea-Dog crap. I finished my wine and we headed out to the Temple Bar district to party. We met a really cool guy from the UK who showed us where to go and we got all set up to party.

We ended up at a bar called “The Temple Bar” in the Temple Bar district where there was live music. The band was pretty good and I ordered another glass of wine and bought it. I went into the room with the band, and this blond dude who looked like a marine and was Scottish starting chatting me up. He told me he was a banker and kept whispering in my ear and everything. About ten minutes later, I thought I felt something by my purse (which was on my shoulder) and when I checked, my wallet was gone. The boys thought that Scottish dude was distracting me while someone who was working with him opened my purse, rooted though it, and took out my wallet. I realized it fast, and I then I left and called USAA. USAA told me that they’d already tried to use it in an atm five or six times. I don’t know what the idiots thought they were going to do without my pin, but hey. At least I didn’t lose any money except the 160 euro in my wallet. When I called USAA, I was so upset and they were so awesome. I ended up in this fancy hotel called The Gresham where the night manager let me talk in the vestibule. Then I called the police who were also really helpful. They picked me up at The Gresham, I filed the report, and then they drove me back to my hostel.

In the morning, I borrowed 20 euro from Adam and headed out. I planned to just walk around and do free things in Dublin. First, I went to the police station to verify the police report and then I walked around trying to find the Irish Emergency Tourist Assistance office. I never did find it, but I got to walk around Dublin for a long time. I also got to see Dublin Castle, the Chester Beatty Library, and Trinity College. It was all really cool. Dublin Castle had a really great garden and the Chester Beatty Library was awesome. The library included all sorts of exhibits that this Beatty character collected all throughout his life. It was really impressive. Trinity College was also really cool. I hung out in there for a while reading and just enjoying the campus feel.

That night, I went back to the hostel and read for a while after spending the last of my money on dinner. That evening I was not going to go out, but then these two girls from our program in Maastricht, CJ and Nicole, convinced me to go out with the boys and them. We went to a really fun five-story club where there was a three piece band. It was SO fun. I’m really glad I went out because we had an awesome time dancing and hanging out and just enjoying Dublin and I actually stopped stressing for a minute about my wallet. I was completely sober the entire time, and it was just super fun.

We headed back to Maastricht Saturday morning and I was awfully glad to get back to my room and my stuff. Monique loaned me 250 euro to get me through until mom gets here on Friday. I am SO excited that she’s coming this weekend. We’re going to really explore Amsterdam and see the tulips! Woohoo!! Can’t wait.

Yes, citizens, plumbing! It's the latest invention to hit Rome! It's astounding, it's amazing! Get on the bandwagon!

5 March-8 March 2009

Thursday after class, my friend Julia drove Kyle and I to Dusseldorf where we jumped on a train to our airport. We were on our way to Rome!!! Unfortunately, our flight got delayed an hour and a half, but we eventually got there. We arrived in the ancient city and found our hostel. We dumped our stuff, grabbed some Mickey D’s (I know, I know…but it was the only thing open!), and then went to sleep. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep very well, but we got up at 6:30am the next day anyway because there is SO much to see in Rome and we didn’t want to miss anything.

We headed over to St. Peter’s first to start our day because we heard that it gets crazy crowded over there as the day goes on. Thank goodness, too, because we got right into the church with no line whatsoever. What a beautiful, breathtaking place! All the bronze was taken from the Pantheon and even though it looks really delicate in there, it’s about 2 tons of bronze! Crazy, huh? The Pieta is in there, and I am an idiot and didn’t really get a good look at it. I feel so DUMB about that, but it is what it is. I was too blown away by the church itself I guess…bummer, though.

Afterward, we got approached by a guy on the street asking us if we wanted to do a guided tour of St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums. We were skeptical at first because it seems weird to be approached like that, but we agreed. Thank goodness we did! Our tour guide’s name was either Michelangelo or Matteo (he was introduced as both by different guys bringing people in) and he was AWESOME. He was so knowledgeable on everything about St. Peter’s and all the art inside the Vatican Museums. It was AMAZING. The tour was really long and he explained everything so well and in such an entertaining way. I really enjoyed it. And the Vatican Museums have some incredible stuff in there. The four rooms of Raphael are incredible. I had no idea that Raphael invented the vivid colors in paint. He was the first put arsenic in his colors to make them more vivid. Unfortunately it made him go blind by the time he died because the paint would drip in his eyes occasionally when he was painting ceilings and walls and stuff. It’s probably also why he died so young. How sad. His paintings are unbelievable. Really. The Sistine Chapel was smaller than I expected it to be, but it was still just amazing to see the ceiling and the walls. My favorite wall was the Last Judgment because I feel like you can really see Michelangelo’s thought processes when you look at it. It’s so cool.

We got out of the tour around 1:00 and followed the secret passageway wall from Vatican City to the castle of Saint Angelo where the pope used to hide when the Vatican was threatened. It’s right on the River Tiber and it’s really neat to see. After that, we walked past the Ara Pacis where the Roman returning generals would stop to pay their respect to peace on their way back into Rome from battles, and headed toward the Spanish Steps. We climbed the Spanish Steps and took in the view from the top and then we headed for the Colleseum.

What an amazing thing that Colleseum is!!! Wow is all you can say when you see it. It’s absolutely breathtaking to see this huge structure that you know has been there for ages. It was hard to believe that I was really looking at the colleseum. We went around to the Forum after that and tried to get in, but all the doors were locked. By the time we found the ticket counter, we realized that both the Colleseum and the Forum close at 4:30 during the slow season, and so we couldn’t get in to either. BUMMER. We did see them both, though, and we thought we’d try again on Sunday morning.

After the Colleseum and Forum, we headed back to the hostel for the pasta dinner that is included in our room price. We ate and then kind of just chilled out (we’d been up since 6:30 walking all around the city! We were exhausted.) We found a small grocery store and bought some apples and Special K bars to eat the next day, because bright and early Saturday we were heading to Pompeii!!!

That morning we got up and went to the train station. The train to Pompeii took about 3 hours, but it was SO worth it. Pompeii is by far the coolest place I have been in Europe. The volcanic ash preserved a lot of the place so well that you can still see the murals and paintings on the walls of people’s houses. It’s just so incredible. It’s also a whole lot bigger than I expected it to be. It’s a real city. I mean, I should have expected that knowing that 12,000 people lived and died there, but still. The cool thing about Pompeii is that they let you just wander around in there. There are some places that they rope off, but it’s not like there are guards wandering around. They really trust people to do the right thing in there. And it’s SO neat. It’s like wandering around a museum where you’re allowed to walk on the exhibits and really examine stuff closely and everything. It’s so awesome!!! The Villa of the Mysteries was so well preserved and it was just awesome to see the way people really lived. We also saw a few of the casts of people that the archaeologists make when they find the people-shaped holes in the ground. We saw the amphitheatre, which is the oldest in the world (built in 80 BC), the tombs, the temples, the forum….it was all so awesome. I could hardly contain my excitement the whole time we were there.

After Pompeii, we got on the train back to Naples where we’d pick up the train to Rome. Our train got cancelled back to Rome and so we had to spend an hour and a half in the Naples train station. NOT the world’s most comfortable place, I’ll tell you. Naples is apparently the seat of the Italian mafia these days and the train station was not the most inviting place on earth. Haha…I was approached by 3 or 4 different guys, only one of whom was homeless who just wanted to talk to me. I don’t know what they wanted, but it really made me uncomfortable. Ick. When we got back to Rome, we just had dinner and went to bed because we were exhausted after getting up early and walking all day again.

Sunday morning, we got up again at 6:30 and headed to the Pantheon. We finally got there around 8:30, and it didn’t open until 9. We didn’t want to wait because we had to be heading back around 10 to catch our plane, so we just went to the Trevi Fountain, Barbarini Square, and then over to the Circus Maximus. From the Circus Maximus, we walked to the Forum and the Colleseum again to see if we could get in, but it was going to take another 40 minutes and we only had 20 left before we had to go catch our bus to the airport. So unfortunately, I never got into the forum or the colleseum in Rome, but I saw both. I don’t feel too awful about that, though, because I did see Pompeii and what I saw there was so much better preserved than it would have been in Rome. I hope I can get back there before I leave and see those things, but if I don’t, I have something that will still be new the next time I go there.

All in all, Rome was AMAZING. Pompeii was even more incredible, and I want to go back there and spend a full twelve hours exploring because there was just so much to see and I want to experience all that history completely.

You flunked flank? Get the flunk out of here!

19 February-28 February 2009

Tiffany and Sean finally came to visit!!! On Friday morning, I got my booty out of bed at 5:30 and headed to the airport in Frankfurt, Germany to meet Tiff, Sean, and Harper. Like a complete idiot, I forgot my cell phone on my desk, and so I was really stressing out that something would go wrong and they wouldn’t be able to get a hold of me. Luckily, though, they strolled right out of the place and we had no problems meeting up. That was the end of our having no problems, however…most of which could have been solved if I hadn't forgotten my darn cell phone!....more on that soon.

So we picked up the rental car, they upgraded us to a station wagon (woo!) with a navigation system, and we were off. Okay, it wasn’t quite that easy. The navigation system was somehow mysteriously in the radio console and it was in German, so we had to have the nice lady who worked in the garage help us change it to English. THEN we were off. We set off for our four-hour drive to Isny-Beuren where our family Corinna, Simone, Hermann, and Silvia live. Unfortunately, a few hours into the trip, the navigation system got really confused and kept telling us to get off the highway, then get back on the other direction, then get back off and back on again. Each time it would say, “Please proceed to the planned route,” as though we knew what that was. Isn’t that the point of a navigation system??? Haha…anyway, eventually, after stopping for directions twice, and finally getting a Mapquest at an internet café, we showed up at Corinna’s house at 10:30pm, roughly 4 hours later than we thought. It took forever to get there, but we had fun once we were there.

Hermann, Silvia, Corinna, and Daniela’s boyfriend Andy stayed up with us until 2am or so talking, drinking, and playing with Harper (who was NOT tired in the slightest…haha). We had a great time. The next morning, we got up to go to a parade for Fasching (what they call Carnival in Southern Germany) in Kempton, a nearby town. We had no idea what we were getting into. The parade started, and I went to take a picture of one of the really ornate wooden masks and costumes on one of the parade guys. All of a sudden, the guy charged me, and started rubbing my hair all around like he was trying to mess it up really badly. When he finally left me alone, I realized he had rubbed a huge handful of confetti into my hair and I was now covered in the stuff. This went on for the three hours of the parade. Every time anyone caught the attention of anyone in the parade they would come up to you and mess with you. One guy even pulled open my shirt, reached down, and shoved confetti into my shirt. I even had confetti inside my bra at the end of the day. It was CRAZY, but SO fun. Tiff was saying that we should take some of the fun “audience participation” stuff back to the states for parades. Ours are super boring in comparison. Daniela caught a lot of attention during the parade because she knows a lot of the people who were in the parade (also, because she’s GORGEOUS). At one point, these guys came and carried her away down the parade for like 400 feet. Another time these two guys grabbed her and performed a weird sort of mock rape on her. Everyone seemed to think that it was hilarious, although it shocked Tiff, Sean, and I slightly at first. Apparently, it’s just a big old joke there, though. Daniela also had her shoe strings stolen, her hair ties stolen, and almost got her scarf stolen. It was so funny.

That night we went out to the Beuren town Fasching party. It was in a sort of community center where there’s a big room with a stage and a small bar area. There were skits by locals in the community (they were all in German, yet still strangely entertaining), bands that played fun music, and other performances. There were times when everyone linked arms and rocked back and forth singing these German songs. It was so fun!! Apparently in Germany, too, it’s super cool to be in the marching band. These band geeks were treated like rockstars. It was unbelievable. Everyone would jump up on the chairs and dance to certain songs (of course I did too). When the show part was over, we all drank some more and started dancing to the rock band that had started playing. Hermann danced with me for a while, I actually got Sean to dance with me, and I also just danced by my lonesome for a while. It was SO fun. Finally around 3 am, Corinna, Simone, Hermann, Sean, Daniela, and I stumbled home. Simone told us how in Germany, it’s supposed to keep you from getting sick if you run through the fresh snow barefoot and then run back inside and warm up your feet really fast. In our state of intoxication, we decided that this sounded like an awesome idea, so we all ran around in the lawn where there was roughly 18 inches of snow barefoot and then came inside and warmed our feet in heated towels. We also ate Berliners. It was awesome. After all of that, I passed out hard in my room.

Unfortunately, running through the snow did nothing for me as far as keeping me healthy. Starting the next morning, I was incredibly sick. It was a huge bummer because that day was Corinna’s birthday party with the whole family and I couldn’t just relax and try to get better. It was hard, but it was also SO neat to meet the family. Oma’s brother Franz’s widow was there and she told us some stories about Oma before she came to the US and it was just so neat to see how people really live and get out of the touristy stuff that I normally do.

The next morning, we went to Wangen am Allgau to see Onkel Adolf and Tante Resl. Those two are so incredibly wonderful, I actually cried a few times when I was there. It was just like being at Oma’s house; even down to the way that they decorate their house. We called Oma and talked to her for a few minutes and then we just talked and had lunch. After that, we went to Wangen’s Fasching parade and it was also so much fun. This time for the mock rapes, they even had beds on wheels that they wheeled down the street for their shenanigans. It was so funny. Onkel Adolf even got confettied this time. SO FUNNY. I was really sad to leave Onkel Adolf and Tante Resl, and I am planning to go back down there to see them once more before I leave Europe. I’d really like to see Bodenssee and the castles when the weather is nicer.

The next morning we left Beuren, and it was really sad to leave the Ulrich relatives. Everyone was all weepy and it was funny because a week before we didn’t even know them, and it really felt like family after that. So awesome. I fully intend to keep in touch with them all because I really feel close to them. We set off to drive to Oberstdorf, a ski town in Germany that the family told us about. Oberstdorf was an awesome town! I wish we could have skied a little bit, but it was hard with the baby. We had lunch, walked around, made a lot of new friends with the baby, and just had a great time. Afterward, we set off for Luzern (Lucerne) in Switzerland where we had been told to go because it is a “typical Swiss city.” It was snowing and dark and we were driving through the Alps. It was scary. I kept telling Tiff and Sean that we should stop at every hotel we passed (they stopped thinking it was funny after a while I think…) but we pressed on until Austria where we stayed at a really cool Gasthof. Our view from our balcony was awesome with a mountain and a castle and everything. It was a really neat town.

The next afternoon, we arrived in Lucerne after driving through Liechtenstein and we were hungry. The Alps were BEAUTIFUL and we had a really fun time looking at the views. Lucerne is also on a river that just makes it even more picturesque. Unfortunately, that’s really all the nice things I have to say about Lucerne. Almost everyone we ran into was rude, even the servers at the restaurants. It’s the first time I actually felt any anti-American attitudes. It’s weird, because I felt like they wouldn’t be that way what with the whole NEUTRAL thing…but whatever. Haha…The city was beautiful, though. There was an ancient wall around the city which was really cool. At one point when I was wearing the Baby Bjorn, I tripped on a stair and twisted my ankle. Tiff didn’t let me wear it any more after that…haha…can’t imagine why. I’m an idiot. Anyway, we left Lucerne that evening and headed off to Zurich where were planned to stay the night. Unfortunately, the hotel was crazily expensive in Zurich, so we drove on and tried to find another, less expensive place to stay. We stopped at one place where they told us we had to get two rooms because they don’t have “Big American beds,” and it ticked us off a lot at the time. In retrospect, it’s pretty funny…haha Finally we just drove to St. Gallen where we stayed at a Radisson. We ate dinner at this gas station restaurant which was surprisingly nice and passed out after getting drunk and wearing robes. It was pretty fun. We also got free movies because they upgraded us to the business class floor! Awesome!

The next morning we explored St. Gallen, and Switzerland was redeemed by the adorable city. It felt a lot like Maastricht to me. Really old, cool city where people were as friendly as if they were in a small city. We saw a neat art museum and a cool photo exhibit showing life in the ‘50s in Switzerland. The art museum was mostly modern art, and at first Tiff, Sean, and I were mortified because someone had gone through the whole museum with a Sharpie drawing pictures and writing little commentaries about the art on the walls! We couldn’t believe it, although it was pretty entertaining. As it turns out, it was a new exhibition’s artist who had made the commentaries as a sort of advertisement for his exhibit which was opening the next day. We ate the most DELICIOUS meal in a little café, and then we headed to Munich where we were staying with Daniela and Andy.

Unfortunately, we had a few issues and again got to our relatives’ house really late. I really feel bad about that, but there’s not much we could do. Driving is hard in Europe!! We stayed up for a while talking to Daniela and Andy, and then got up in the morning to do a bus tour of Munich. The bus tour was cool, but the English was awfully quiet so we couldn’t hear as much as we would have liked to. Also, it was raining and cold. But I’m glad we saw Munich. I’d really like to go back at some point because there were these two museums that are supposedly the biggest art museums in the world (modern and classical art).

After our short stay in Munich, we began our drive to the hotel in Frankfurt. We got there (surprisingly) with almost no problem, and then the next day Tiff and Sean had to leave. I felt my first real homesickness when they went through security. It was SO sad. It just felt wrong that I wasn’t going home with them. My train ride home was sad, but I got over it. The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS in Maastricht when I got home and so I went for a really long run and felt a million times better when I got back.

It was so awesome to see Tiff and Sean and the baby, but it was sad when they left. I realized though, that I only had 3 and a half months to go here, and that helped snap me back into shape. That’s not that much time and there’s still so much I want to experience. Next weekend: ROME!