The same old story, Expatriate!

THE RETURN!

2006-04-12T17:00:00.000+01:00

Dear shortchanged readers,

I'm back, but only for a few sentences, to explain and beg your forgiveness for my absence. The past couple weeks have been marred by the finishing touches (and beginning touches) of our internsh portfolio, a 40+ page volume which BU makes us write to prove we gained invaluable academic experience in our time in Britain.

I mostly just solidified an intimate relationship with Google. The internship's been mainly awake sleeping, just sitting in frontof a computer until one of my editors asks me to research something. It's truly ajournalistic joy.

But also: my computer screen has, appropriately, died. It was about time, knowing my healthy history with laptops. So I'm writing this from work, where there are no pictures to post...but I'll try to load up some of them soon, too.

Things:
--Trip to Wales that involved jumping off of cliffs into heavily-safeguarded water and almost seeing sheep jump off one into the lurching sea.
--Tay visit
--Irish festival
--Other pictures filled with colours.

I miss all of you quite much and am currently dragging myself through these final two-three weeks. Gooodbyyyeee

The Road to Westvleteren, taken

2006-03-28T21:31:00.000+01:00

Arrived.

The signs are easy to miss, no larger than a forearm attached to a wooden spike. Surely, designed only for the purest of heart. And you don't know you're there until you come up on a set of buildings that look like anything you've just cycled past for the past 30 minutes.

But that could be because your eyes have turned to frozen Vaseline from the cold.

But you arrive. And you rejoice, because the Vision Quest has neared its peak. Matt Modine would be proud. He'd be smiling that big American smile, those toothful American grins you miss so much when you're in London.

The cafe, De Vrede, sells the beer most of the week. During the summer months, a drive-through kiosk sells it, so you can quench your thirst on the drive home, undoubtedly.

E.N.T.E.R. Young Travelers...
The cafe brought together locals -- who I can imagine come here every weekend after going to church and while their Belgian children to do their Belgian chores, like cleaning sheep -- and people from all over the world. Languages collided here like the stretch of Boston where Chinatown melts into Government Center and melts into the North End.

Oh yeah, and it also had all the different Westie beers on tap. Including the best one in the world, 12*.

And there it is. Almost don't want to drink it.
Almost.

Six trappist breweries, circling round Belgium. Good London and world bars carry every one of them, except for this one. The reason: the monks brew just enough beer to keep the monastery going. They say they live for their prayer, not for the beer -- not like those sellouts over at Chimay. I bet they share some full-bearded laughs at those forlorn souls.

So we contributed to the monastery fund.
Crates. Crates everywhere of this delicious beer. Made by people who make it their life's work, because the Trappist/Benedictine Order preaches community service. Not too many better services to render.

The bottles are bare, just black/brown. The only way to identify them is from the cap. This, my friends, is Westvleteren 12.

It took us about an hour to get home. We treated it like we had immigrants in the back of a truck. Immigrants carrying Westvleteren.

Poperinge and the road to Westvleteren

2006-03-23T20:08:00.000Z

We continued through Poperinge, bike-topping and in pursuit of something that we were sure was there. And the nice part about looking with Nils is that you'll generally find something.

We left the church, outside of which we had not chained our bikes because there was nothing to chain them to aside from a large tree or small dog. We chose the humanitarian approach, figuring Belgians would not steal a bike from outside a church, lest a nun come and fire excommunications at them.

We biked back into the center of town. It was noon. We were not yet hungry enough for food. So we toured more. And arrived on an ex-soldier retreat for the Brits in WWI. It probably doubled (hell, it probably singled) as a brothel, but was a big mansion-house with a bunch of different rooms devoted to giving the troops diversion from the blood and their guns just miles away. Some guys would tell the chaplain there stuff like 'I'll probably not make it back this way again, father, so pray for me.'

War sucks.

But museums about it don't.

Nils proves that he did not sneak into the museum with a ticket.

The opening room, a cavernous square, had all these different signs that showed the different correspondences to and from the battlefield and soldiers' hometowns.

Soldiers today, like Nils, make such better targets.

We sat, alone in a room, and watched a sepia video about soldiers watching Vaudeville-type actors dance about and make lilting jokes about the war while blue smoke crept to the ceiling.

We got lunch afterwards, eating at a cafe right around the street. Lambics and omelettes (much to the annoyance of the staff, the omelettes were) were had. Oh yeah, and St. Bernardus Tripel, regarded as the second-best beer in the world.

The best one would come soon, soon.

And later, so was Dr. Quinn, before our love-cookfest!

Belgian supermarket = Belgian beers. It hurt to leave.

Kids parading, again, for Carnivale, the European Mardis Gras. This happened all night long, a lot like high school homecoming parades, with flatbed trucks and high-schoolers dreaming of the golden and definite future.

This is sleep, now.

Yup, more racism.

On bikes, taking a picture of the town center before we embarked on THE VISION QUEST.

For beer enthusiasts, Westvleteren is mecca. There are six Trappist breweries in the world, all in Belgium. The trappists, a form of the Benedictine Order of monks, brew some of the top-regarded beers on planet Earth, in short because they spend their entire lives doing it. Beer is their service of God.

Refer to the postings on Rome for my views on religious mission.

But anyway, the town sits 5 km north of Poperinge, so we set off.

The cold felt like constantly being slapped with brooms covered in ice. Mucus dragged along cheeks, like plows on fields, eventually flying off if they didn't freeze to facial hair. Well, Nils' facial hair. Even after a week, my face still was Sammy Davis-smooth.

Sheep! Nils got very excited, for obvious reasons.

Finishing tomorrow!

Poperinge

2006-03-22T21:41:00.000Z

But at any rate, because of the fall, we had to bring an end to all discussions of returning to Cologne, instead choosing to forge forward, one great forward push toward the end of our Vision Quest. This meant we'd enter our final country, Belgium.

On Saturday, we'd take the train back to London from Brussels, but in the meantime, we had to find the mystical monastery where the best beer in the world is brewed. Of course, just as Matthew Modine had to realize in Vision Quest (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090270/), such a journey requires the willful submission of oneself to time, and the blind pursuit of a ghost.

In order to reach our outpost, Poperinge, we had to travel 6 hours from Amsterdam, connecting in Brussels.

Three hours from now, on a train with broken bathrooms and bloated bladders, we made it to Poperinge, the town most west on the Belgian rail. We arrived at an almost entirely unlit train station, night and silence surrounding us and only pushing forward our quest. A kind man at the train station told us where we could find a hotel that would rent us bikes.

So we walked.

The Belgians think they're so smart. They can do math on billboards.

We checked into our hotel, as the only inhabitants. The stares we got would have shamed Sinatra; people looked at us as if one of us had considerable skin on the left side of his face absent. But we checked into our hotel, which was run by a sweet and frenetic woman and her thorough and bearded husband, who sat in a half-lit corner with a friend, draining glass after glass of Poperinge Hommelbier (the local beer, hommel being Belgian for 'hop')

HISTORY LESSON BREAK.

Poperinge, about 5 miles from Ypres -- one of the major sites of WWI, blown to smithereens as we would have said back then -- used to be a retreat for British soldiers. Around since middle-aged times, it's now the hop capital of the world, where the hops that go into thousands of beers are grown.

BREAK IN!

So we drifted off to sleep with visions of hoppy deliciousness floating around...

...and woke up to a market! Big market in the center of town (a small town with a large center) that's been going on since the 1200s! Almost non-stop, it's persisted.

We didn't buy any, but I'm sure over 800 years, someone's bought lingerie.

Instead, we continued our immensely fulfilling daily ritual, with some Belgian doughnuts because we knew they'd be nutritional and full of sugar and deliciousness, both important contents to fortify us against the oppressive cold that would meet us.

One of the most unfortunate parts about giving the British access to your town during World War I is that they take deserting soldiers (who were found to be deserting) and shoot them in your courtyards. Walking around town, we came to this really touching exhibit.

People come from all over to Poperinge, especially in summertime, and drop flowers and cards here. They're usually written in English.

All flowers & crosses, mainly 'you will never be forgotten.'

You know how black figures like this, ridiculing black people, are taboo in the states? Yeah, a big box of 'em got shipped off to our hotel. But these nice little figures bid us goodbye as we got on our bikes and prepared to cycle around town, a day before we'd head to Westvleteren.
Kind of an eery site at the entrance to town. It's a hop, inside of metal bars. I wasn't sure what they were there for at that point.

And this is a hop field. The hops grow up on these big metal poles. Aha! Learning!

Having intended to bike to Ypres, the cold lapped too hard on our faces, so we pulled back and headed back into town for more exploration, leaving the broken WWI history for our next visit.

With great luck, we arrived on a church, which ended up being far cooler than we expected.

We sauntered around the church for a bit. Pretty big for a small town.

BECAUSE IT HAS A RELIC.

According to legend, an unbaptised child died in town in the 1400s and his parents brought him to the altar here to pray to the Virgin Mary. They left him there, and a few days later, he was alive again. They baptised him immediately and an hour later he died.

Nils says he died because the water was too cold and he had just come back to life.

And the golden hawk agrees with him!

The big organ at the back of the church did not, though.

Now that I'm back to groovin', we'll get more posts a-coming. Goodbyyyeee

2006-03-20T23:19:00.000Z

Colochos,

So sorry for the lapse. London had to receive my full attention this weekend, owing to the lady's presence here. There'll be pictures of that later, but the author's mind has now re-sharpened, alive with the burst that comes with having your girl next to you. And in reference to the delay in postings, since the internship started, the adventures have subsided a bit, stomped by a lack of desire to spend more time on the internet after spending all day researching football stats on Google.

The Dam Breaks

2006-03-15T00:09:00.000Z

We spent the next few hours cycling around Amsterdam in concentric circles, finishing each swoop at this building right near Rembrandt Square. Every town has one of those places, a focus through with all motion goes, from Amsterdam to Munich to Boston to Northampton, Pennsylvania. But the biking continued, speeding through a city because we are young and because we are able and because, life is just renting energy from the air, taking care of it and making sure to keep it in good hands.

So the rest of Amsterdam, THE RED AND BLASTED CITY, goes...

He has a cogpiece. Is that how they're spelled? Cog-piece? But after I snapped a picture of him originally, he grabbed the cog-piece. I gave him a Euro, stood next to him and he grabbed me.

Our energies a bit depleted, we stopped at a solid Chinese place, which Nils said must be good because it was full of Chinese people. He was right. Good view across the street, too.

Same view on almost every street.

And, as usual, we had to break for our daily cholesterol implant.

And glamour shot.

Amsterdam's a great city for reflection, especially on the main canals, which give lines of sight that shoot forward like long beams of light.

Look, there's a bike behiiiiiiind the statuuuuuueeeee.

Ahhhh...reflection....

In Rembrandt Square, two British or Australian dudes battled a choreographed ninja fight scene for the viewing pleasure of us.

This, with our new friend Ryan, who's a teacher in Wales, was the last picture taken before an unfortunate trip-and-fall incident. Luckily, my face broke my fall and only suffered some temporary reconfiguration, aside from some less-than-stalwart front teeth.

But our journey did not end, my friends. We had to complete our vision quest. And, in the final three posts, you shall be privy to how we achieved it.

Amster-dam

2006-03-13T23:52:00.000Z

Amsterdam, upon final inspection, is a city capable of causing one's skin to turn to worms. Barcelona was a bit uncomfortable, but this was like watching the scene in Swingers where Mikey calls the girl over and over again. But the daytime (even at -5 Celsius) has its redeeming qualities, and we saw it by bicycle, the only way to see Amsterdam. Well, not according to the guys who slink along the streets with their heads slung low over their shoulders, but, ya know.

The first night, we shared a couple of Ireland's favorite beverages, and Nils regaled me with stories of his ability to dry out the insides of bottles of Jameson. And then proved it.

But our hostel, the Flying Pig, was worthy of the international acclaim. Apparently it's the most popular one in the world, with a really cool staff and a bar downstairs with a big screen TV. We watched some Olympics and prepared for another day.

The Pig even got us discounts on bikes!

Most of the corners in the city looked a lot like this, with tall, angled buildings built sometime between 1200 and 2000. That's one of the weird parts about the city, that it's always been near the forefront of civilization but loses the historical luster because of some relaxed legislation.

So we pedaled on, not really sure of what to look for.

We, without a doubt, had to stop.

And so did whoever had to wear this.

Most of the torture devices were perfected and utilized by the Spanish during those couple of years when Torchemade inquired as to whether one would prefer to join the Roman Catholics.

He, of course, employed some coercion.
Nils is a ghooooooooost.
Ahhhhhh!
This was heated over fire. Then a human being was placed on it. Then cold water was dripped on him/her as an act of purification.

I really don't know what any of the monuments are, but they all seem to have been built with care.
The state house, to the north of the city, in front of a platz full of pigeons outnumbering people by about 50 to two-tenths.

They wouldn't let us stand next to the hot dog cart, where it was so warm.

Ahhh. Nils tells me Amsterdam has more canals than Venice. And more Dutch people.

Maybe could have taken this as a bad omen...

But stay tuned for the episode of Amsterdam at nighttime, when I made some superficial alterations to my face.

Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

2006-03-09T22:33:00.000Z

The town adequately vacant and our ecstasy adequately high, we carried about the town, looking for the three big churches and Roman ruins that are apparently the other big draw, aside from the wine. Instead, we got sidetracked by kitsch, in a store that sold beer steins made and painted in town, nutcrackers made and painted in town, amber melted and hardened in the forests around the town and Alcatraz Psycho Ward: Outpatient t-shirts. With a full knowledge of Boston, the owner enticed us to buy at least a reasonable amount of his products.

To celebrate, Nils rode the horse, to the horrification of the native Teutons.

Aha, but no, you aaaare.

On this street, more kitsch, including some corduroy German fedora-hats that German men wear when they're walking around their pretty towns.

By this time, my German had returned like springtime, so, like those people who try to show off by speaking another language, I was trying to show off by speaking another language. At one point, a befuddled Nils saw one of the churches and pointed, saying "This...thing...big."

It was big.

...and yet another pretty town beer.
So we bade goodbye to Boppard, and continued on our quest, moving mostly north and mostly quickly.

And we finally came upon Koblenz, where we decided to do a bit of hiking to the final castle before heading on to Cologne, one of the trip's main points.

Koblenz, because of its location at the confluence of the Rhein and Moselle, ingested quite a large amount of bombs in World War II, so most of the town is new, suburban, vinyl-sided row-houses. Not all that exciting, but we made our way up to the castle to see if it could offer redemption for the Wonderbread town.

At least we found what looked like to be a moat, and celebrated with ninja moves.

Then we remembered the very essence of our trip -- floating through Europe, pulling together energies garnered from sources everywhere. And we knew that Cologne on Thursday was to be incredible, the start of Karnival, a weeklong party before Ash Wednesday. So we made a quick decision to rearrange the schedule that had before been Cologne-Amsterdam-Belgium.

Amsterdam? On a whim? No.

Yes.

...and off we roared.

Hiatus because of the stressful internship

2006-03-09T00:02:00.000Z

I'm beginning to feel a little run down by the city and the British, so I'm gonna try to get a little more sleep tonight. The post will come tomorrow to finish up the Rhein tour. It'll be worth it, promise. But for now, let this vast generalization of British culture SMASH INTO YOUR BRAINWAVES.

-The distance between a British person and well, everybody else, stems from the fact that the British lack one great cultural tenet imbedded in America. They don't possess that speeding and headlong, endless and brilliant pursuit of JOY. The sense that something greater is always out there, just one stretch of the arm away as long as we keep running forward as fast as we can. Darcey said maybe it's because these people are the ones who stayed in England when others went to America. My professor said it was because America is a land of vast cities, of tumbling forests and deserts, of mountains that scratch heaven and deserts hot as hell.

-PS - Had to call Manchester United today to talk to Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand. Almost peed into my jeans. But nobody picked up.

Northward on the river

2006-03-07T20:43:00.000Z

Leaving the castle at 9 a.m., flinging our bodies onward, northbound to heaven (and St. Goar), all the while feasting on the delight of prospect and promise and the intoxication of movement. So we used the train to slide into yet another smallish town nestled against the Rhein with a castle surveying it, St. Goar. It's at a hairpin bend in the river, where the currents once swept boats into the rocks on the side, leading sailors to blame it on the Loreley rock and the siren who sat on top. We sang her song back in German class.

That being said, the way Germans treat women is really something. Nils made the observation on the first night we were there, at the Hofbrauhaus, where girls in dirndls (those puffy dress-type things you imagine when you think of boys in lederhosen) meander up and down the aisles between the tables, as men with minds drenched in beer buy cigarettes or pretzels from them. It's not exploitation, though. It's a form of great reverence for The Female, the wonderful and ethereal form of it, flowing and life-giving. Really cool, and, with enough experience as a dude, just very sweet and innocent.

So anyway, Loreley rock, right near the top of St. Goarsheim, on the East bank of the river. Used to sing the song to it (in iambic tetrameter!) in German class, so that was cool to be around it. Picked up a brochure, but didn't go to the rock, because it's hard to get there when most of the transport is in hibernation mode.

So we stayed on the Western side, at St. Goar, where the biggest and greatest castle on the Rhein sits. It's in ruins now, but for a while, was indestructible. When most of the castles faced their destruction at the end of the 17th century, Rheinfels stood intact until Napoleon stormed inside of it and blew much of it up.

There it is on the hill over St. Goar, another Lonely Planet-heavily-recommended sight. And who were we to go against LP? It had only led me wrong once before (see: Barcelona).

Nils stands in front of the cuckoo clock, which claimed to be the biggest one in the world. I'm not so sure about this. The Rheinland is pretty cool, but the Black Forest is the capital of cuckoos, according to an old German class presentation.

But before we could climb, we dropped our bags off at the tourism office. And then climb we did, attempting first to take the path that clearly led to the castle.

But we were thwarted by maintenance guys who were digging holes. So we took the alternate route, which turned out to be mostly an improvisation through the woods behind a hostel. Wet trees, bushes and berries really do a number on jeans. If you're planning to climb through forests to get to castles, see if you can pack two pairs of pantaloons.

But we made it, up to a car road. A real road!

Cars also took this way to the castle, where a sweet hotel and restaurant operates now.

The castle could keep the French out for a while, but couldn't do a number on this Swede.

Alas, the castle's gates only open in good weather during the winter season, so we were held.

...but could take a picture of the sweet town.

...and then, after walking back down, eat some sweet apple cake and cheese cake.

Stopping to take this car caused us to miss our train by a matter of 12 seconds. But the Bon Jovi Volkswagen requires reverence.

Goodbyyyeee, St. Goar!

Boppard, a town built around its tourism (reminds in certain parts of Rome, Massachusetts or Jersey) awaited.

We quickly made our way to the river in Boppard, where it snaps to the right beyond this church.

Hello!b
On occasion, the Rhein floods so high that it could drown Shaq if he were in town.

Aber Mutti, ich will, mehr zu wissen!

Nein, wir werden morgen wiederkommen!

(Back tomorrow, crazy babies)

Evening sets on the Rhein

2006-03-04T01:11:00.000Z

But man cannot live on flatbread pizza and only one type of Rheinland wine. So we pulled back, leaving our luggage and a comet trail of energies -- fused to the air as are all of the movements of the young -- in Bacharach. We'd spend the next day soaked in the northern part of the region and finish the rest of this fine evening in the South.

No more appropriate name for the town's pharmacy. Healed by the God of Wine.

The trains understood our ambitions, which, we are told by Lonely Planet, are shared by droves of tourists in the summertime. But winter, when the river runs brown and the mountains run brown and the sun barely shows, winter sees very little of the type of frenzied pursuit of everything that we brought to the scene.

That being said, we jumped the next train (they ran on the hour) south to Bingen, just 10 km south of Bacharach. But across the river sat Rudesheim, the wine capital of the region. Its hills, coated with vineyards that not only oversee the town, but sprout its life, its virility (and its money). Signs on the different hills mark the different types of grapes, from the reds to the whites, and a stationary chairlift hibernated until the colors of the valley come back in late spring.

We had to go, and thus, we did.

During the summertime, ferries run constantly from Bingen (the western shore) to Rudesheim, on the East. Today, unfortunately, only the car shuttle operated. So we jumped on the car shuttle.

A castle peers around the bend of the river.
Nils and I get across the river, where we see this sign.

Assmanhausen. The literal translation is something like place-for-men-to-eat (I think), but c'mon. Assman. Hausen. Kramer jokes were made.

Rudesheim, with its endless circling of cobblestone streets, sat almost entirely inoperative. The wine shops (Weingut...which means 'wine good') still featured ads in the windows, but featured doors locked to the world.

Of course, some places were still open, so we could take some shelter from air that had suddenly turned to a cold pool. It was heavier than the food we ate.

Thanks to Carl Ehrhard for bailing us out. The Riesling, as expected, did not disappoint.

Nor did the Franzozischzwiebelsuppe! (French onion soup, made with chicken broth and delicious cheese)

We caught the second-last ride back...
and imbibed the local brew to fortify ourselves against the thermal deprivation while we waited for the train.

Thanks to the rain, though, for providing us the ability to create some photographic impressionism.

...and to the cold for making this church, destroyed by the French, even more eery. From this point on the way to the castle, there was no light except that reflected by the moon.

But we made it up there, and slept immediately. In the morning, we could have chosen any of these myriad snacks or even a game of ping-pong (slot 13), but we opted for the continental Fruhstuck (breakfast), a tour of German grains.

The rain had stopped and some Spanish tourists had too, long enough to take this.

And we depart the castle, leaving the protection-against-the-French duties to the Australian check-in woman.

Bacharach & the Rhein

2006-03-02T21:18:00.000Z

On we fluttered, breeze-blown in a torrent of ambition onto the next destination, the stretch of the Rhein River between Mainz and Koblenz. Lonely Planet and my EuroStar book both recommended the region heavily, calling it 'The Romantic Rhein.' Considering my company, this seemed more than appropriate.

So we took the first train out of Munich, headed toward Frankfurt, where we'd then skip over to Mainz to begin the day. After walking past reserved seat after reserved seat, we reached the final car...where a totally unoccupied private compartment sat, ready for us to fill it. So we threw our bags down and slid into our seats, making sure the door was tightly closed and that our body language spoke with intimidation against joining us in the compartment.

It worked for a while, so did the gastronomic results of having eaten half-chickens and sausages on consecutive days.

After getting to Mainz, we wasted no time getting on our way. We hit the next train and headed for Bacharach, a town of population 2,400 snug against the West side of the Rhein. Aside from the Burt Bacharach references, the castle on the hill, inside of which a hostel operates, lured us there for the night. WE WERE GOING TO SLEEP IN A CASTLE BUILT IN THE 1200s!

BREAK FOR HISTORY!

The entire region, Rheinland-Pfalz (der Mittelrhein), tucks into the pocket created by the borders of France and Belgium, making it one of history's most hotly contested areas. Thus, the overall goal of the whole stretch of land was, since occupation, to keep out the Frenchies. This system of castle-building worked for a while, as the fortresses perched on top of the pelt-soft hills made sure the French ate brie on their side. Then Napoleon came and reduced most of the castles to gravel.

Strangely enough, Rheinland-Pfalz boasts some of the best wine in the world. Its Rieslings, the pride of the area, fill the entire sweet to dry gradient. They were delicious.

BREAK IN!

The ride from Mainz to Bacharach first wove through a cluster of tiny, either post- or neo-industrial towns. After a number of kilometers, it met the Rhein, sticking to the river through all of its bends until it got to Koblenz. Gorgeous. Even with most of the trees still barren and the temperature dropping like 1950s Americans during air raid drills, the whole scene mothers you, emitting feelings of safety and allowing the soul to breathe.

Bacharach, a town that struck immediately as a place that doesn't constrict when it keeps people there for the whole of their lives. Instead of a half-hearted effort to modernize like so many dead towns, it remains, not necessarily stuck in history, but almost exempt from the steamrollers and plastics of modernization. It exists on its wine and its stores and the tourists that string along its cobblestone walks during the summertime. So, pretty cool. Had to speak in German in the town, which was also real cool.

Imagine that his finger were in Germany (the big green one), in between the pink (France) and yellow (Belgium).

At the train station in Bacharach.

We doubled the population when we were there.

I forget what this says, but pretty much every storefront in Germany has some saying about how it's important to have (1) good health or (2) a drink.

The Castle, Burg Stahleck! We begin our assault on the Mount.

It was harder on Nils because he was carrying a backpack full of three+ months' worth of stuff, like carrying a house.

Look to the right of him. The hills are entirely covered in vineyards, grapes in diagonal ascent.

We have arrived! Inside the castle courtyard, surveying the land and doing our best to keep out the French.

...and being damn good at it.

After checking into our hostel (THE ONE IN THE CASTLE), the town awaited. So did pizza.

...and wine. We both got some Trocken (dry) Burg Stahleck wine, made from those grapes on the hills next to the town. One of the best whites I've had. Better than those I-talian ones.

And through laughter at limping German on my part and absolutely incapacitated English on the waiter's part, we got ourselves some Kasebrot (cheese bread) and delicious, heavily meated pizzas.

Next: The Night!

Munich in the light-time

2006-03-01T18:32:00.000Z

We peeled ourselves off of our beds at noon and set a going-out deadline for 1 p.m. This made the plotline for the rest of the day to Find Water, Especially the Bottled Type.

Somehow, by 5 p.m., that remained the quest. All through the town, very few convenience stores exist. But the Munich streets move in such a way as to draw you forward, like 2-for-1 specials at pubs, meandering through the town in an really intuitive way. Like the pavement winds alongside the mind.

So we walked. For hours, past the landmarks that I'd studied in all those years of German class, dashing through a list like a story we had to read in German one time...

An old German man was on the North side of the city and needed to get to the Southeast side for ein grosses Fussballspiel (big soccer game!), but so did everyone else in the city. Being a clever and aged Teuton, he took advantage of both assets. He called the ambulance, grabbing his chest when it came and pretending to have a heart attack. The traffic parted as he zipped through the city. The ambulance eventually stopped near the stadium, where the man threw open the doors and ran out, ticket in hand.

Thus inspired, we hurried onward.

Walking to Marienplatz, the center of the historic district in Munich (WWII saw the real historic buildings reduced to ashes, so a lot of stuff has been reconstructed...it's all really gorgeous and welcoming).

Another weird but cool thing: Even though most of the stores had the doors closed on Sunday (Germany's still a pretty religious country), families still walked down the streets, especially Kaufenstrasse (literally 'buying street,' the main shopping street), just moseying on and peering into windows, admiring their good fortune at being alive in a wonderful part of the world.

The little stone boy is being spat on by the large stone head. FOREVER.

Musicians make Kaufenstrasse even better.

And so do manequins dressed as various foods and other things, in preparation for Karnival, the weekend-long fest before Ash Wednesday.

Frauenkirche, behind the statue of Our Lady. Apparently no buildings in Munich can rise higher than the double-domed Church of Our Lady.

Inside the Church.

Painted lions were everywhere. No idea why. This one was especially shameful.

Oh man the Glockenspiel! The wooden kiddies don't come out as much in the wintertime. Booooo

As we walked on, Nils felt that we needed a sword.

And also that it would be a good idea to slide on ice. My shoes had rubber cleatlike stuff on the bottom, so they worked as effective brakes.

In Viktualenmarket, one of the main beer gardens in all of the city. But, alas, only in the summertime.

Nils' beard only grew as the week grew too.

Some of the streets in Munich seem to be suited only for parades. Not convenience stores, mind you. But they have big monuments and things at the end of them. Pretty impressive, these wide-shouldered streets.

Onward, go!

Residenzplatz, in front of Residenz, where the leaders used to live and eat half-chickens. A guy was doing his workout on rollerskates, ala Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I've got videos!

We eventually crept back to our hostel in search of water and pizza, and received both from a place real close to it. Olympic-watching and naps ensued, before we took off for some Hofbrau (limited) indulgence and a nightcap at Augustinerhaus, a much quieter and more austere place, thus not quite as good. But it haaaaad...

APFELSTREUSEL! We visit another pastry upon our stomachs, in what became a rather unexpected yet delightful daily tradition.

Munich! Tomorrow! I'm sorry!

2006-02-28T23:49:00.000Z

Babies,

Got back late from a play tonight and now I gotta write the review of it for class. Yes, a play. Yes, it was A Man for All Seasons. But I'm gonna task-up the coverage of Munich: 2006 on Wednesday when I get back from the intern-ship.

I love you.

--Kev

PS - Munch on this fact. My professor today said that the Bible was a work of British literature. I'm not telling you this out of context.

Munich, in 2006's thinning winter

2006-02-27T19:44:00.000Z

The plane left from London Stansted at 1:30 p.m. At 12:30, the electronic board in the middle of this huge plaza of eateries and tax-free shops (tax-free GBP shoes still cost as much as an Upper East side apartment or year in Vegas, however) assured me that even though my flight was to be delayed until 4:30, it was only AN ESTIMATION.

So I ducked into an Italian restaurant that tried to model itself after some New York-style Italian joint. This meant that the Rat Pack's Greatest Hits murmured steadily from the muffled speakers and pictures of buxom (and cleavage-donning) women adorned the walls. As I waited for my order, I read the mythology behind the place.

It gave a Real Authentic Story behind how Tony (or maybe Guiliano) made his way with his family from Sicily to New York With Only Hope and a Recipe and how [Tony's Family] Opened a Small Restaurant Where They All Worked Together, then Tony Carried on the Business. It got so great that it made its way to a London airport.

Here I ate a calzone of despair.

Its pepperoni/salami and uncooked onions and strange, middle-school-plastic-cup-salad on the side only reminded me that I had no way of getting in contact with Nils to let him know. With Nils' lack of working cell phone and only a slight idea of where we'd be meeting (and no idea where the hostel was), I wasn't so sure we'd be taking this journey together.

Then the board started flashing and the spirits rose! They had changed gates and, if we could get out of the airport in 20 minutes, we could get out on time. The calzone! It was the Calzone of Joy! Of Future and Success!

And we were off. On the plane, I sat next to a German girl dressed in military camouflage and her mom, both of whom had spent some time in London. The girl was working on her English, and I, my German. Wonderful. We spoke about various subjects from study abroad to the snow that was covering her wonderful Bavaria.

We got to the airport, on time. Went through passport control, where the officer grilled a young Japanese boy before letting me just waltz passed. And Nils was there, waiting. And there was much rejoicing.

The train ride from the airport to the Hauptbanhof (main train station in Munich) shook with our excitement. Like fusion. After seeing each other for one day in the past 6 months, we steadied ourselves and prepared, heads locked straight ahead, to blast forward, to spin and soar and zip and tear through, without backward glance, the next seven days.

Lots of catching up and things over the 40 minutes, including his story of how the immigration control guards searched his bag -- which was the size of the Radiers' entire defensive line -- and found his copy of "The Bourne Supremacy." The guard looked at it for a while and asked:

"Is this a book?"

Nils confirmed this suspicion.

Just as he was telling me this story, the train guards snuck up on us. Scariest looking policemen I've ever seen -- all black, standing completely vertically with steel-like posture and gaze, with blood-red berets. They wanted our train tickets. We gave them our train tickets.

They were valid.

We arrived in Munich, a city more like a village than a city. But we'll talk about that tomorrow, including the fact that the air there, clear and heavy, allows you to see to the Alps.

Finally, in Munich, we waited an hour in our hostel (Jaeger hostel, which apparently was sponsored by Jaegermeister) for Nils' new buddy Christina, another hostel-stayer who went with the group to Neuschwanstein (the Disney castle in the Alps) the day prior. So we waited, watched some ski jump and prepared to do the one thing completely appropriate for the first night in Munich.

HOFBRAUHAUS! The world's most famous beer hall, with tables that filled multiple rooms and served to fill the stomachs and souls (which become one as the night ages) of thousands at the same time.

The band, which had 7 members, I think, played German athems all night long. People sang, mugs clinked -- but not too hard: their contents are gold.

A handful of gold.

Nils and I both ordered our first liters (of 4.5 as the night went on -- we started with the Hofbrau Original, a real solid lager [most German beers are at least considerably good, because they have to obey the Reinheitsgebot, the Purity Law, established hundreds of years ago to keep beer delicious]). We also ordered some weisswurst, thanks to Justin's suggestion from all those years ago, and half chickens. Each.

We chose a great table, too. And sat there for 4+ hours, singing and laughing through combinations of German and English that supported the entire night. People are people, and languages merely link them (the cool German 30-somethings complimented me on my German when I said I wasn't sure how good it was anymore, though -- thank you, Emmaus High School). And everybody in the world likes Nils.

Germans and Americans make perfect fits, too. Both boisterous, friendly people who exist communally -- our German buddies even said that they preferred Americans over all other foreigners. We all agreed that the British are the lamest.

Nils and Christina raise liters (Christina's is a dunkelbier), while Kevin lifts his chicken carcass.

Vanquished.

The designs over the lights are all swastikas. Hitler's orders, but never changed because the place has become such a fixture.

Dave, the one on the right, is from Florida. He met this woman, an East German from a small town, 6 months ago. Now they're engaged and will marry whenever she can get her visa to the States.

He tricked her into coming to Hofbrau by telling her that they were going out to an Italian place and then walking past Hofbrau and saying, 'oh wow, hey, the Hofbrauhaus, let's go here.' She acquiesced and continued smoking.

He was a relative expert on the Haus, however, telling us about all the band's songs and the swastika designs.

Tony's the guy on the right. From Berlin, and so are the other two. Tony spoke great English, and attacked life and conversation as one would a half-chicken.

'Thirst is worse than homesickness.' Jawohl.

Ja, Kevin. Vant to hear a joke?

Ja?

Ja, so vat eez dee difference betveen Budveiser und sex in boat?

Zey are both f***ing close to zee Water.

There was much laughter after this joke, which arose after round 6 and before Tony had us play a game in which we would all tangle our hands on the table in a circle and have to slap the table in a clockwise or counter-clockwise motion. It sounds simple, but with criss-crossed hands and minds that now operate inside a thick mist, it's really terrible.

I was one of the middle people to fall out of the game. The three women remained after all the men left.

But we had the last laugh. And more beer.

The two on the close left, Andreas and Bianca, replaced Dave & the German. They were really fantastic. Andreas bought Nils and me a round at the next place we went. But then he had to leave us because he said Bianca was sad that he wasn't paying enough attention to her.

I think they were getting married. I hope they were. They're great.

4 liters later, at least for Nils. German culture is wonderful

Nils shows German girls how to ride a lion.

And how to dance.

We decided that, because no places were open still serving kebabs at this time, we'd have to settle for Big & Tastys. They were accurately advertised. Do we still have these in the states?

We woke at the crack of noon and prepared for a day of lumbering around Munich. But this is how Tony gave me his e-mail address. If anybody can decipher it, please please let me know!

Day Two tomorrow

The Adventure Begins (in writing)

2006-02-27T19:34:00.000Z

I'm back.
Along the way I picked up a great deal of things, not the least of which was a strengthened profound love of Germany, nor was it the cuts and dents on my face (more on that later), nor was it the 6-pack of Westvleteren 12* that traveled with me from the innards of Belgium to London, nor was it the scattering of kitsch that bloated and inflamed the seams of my backpack.

It may have been one of the finest weeks of my life, at least the most geographically productive. From Munich Nils and I moved to the Rheinland-Pfalz region, riding on a train that slithered along the Rhein and paused for us to get off at all the tiny towns, up through Germany and into Amsterdam, cutting our tracks back West and into the Flanders region of Belgium, back to Brussels and into London.

And here is the story of how it went:

Deutschland, ja? Ja!

2006-02-18T09:42:00.000Z

Sailors of the high seas of the modern world,

We're going to have to say our goodbyes for a little bit, but just a little bit, mind you. Eight days, while I run around Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium with Nils (character profile: old roommate, great buddy whose barrel-chested approach to appearance is matched only by the wonder for life that resides within that barrel-chest).

If you're playing at home, we're gonna start in Munich, sweep through the Black Forest, flow along the Rhine into Koln and Dusseldorf, traipse into Amsterdam and rent bikes (maybe with streamers) and settle into Brussels and Poperinge, Belgium to finish up. Figure 2-3 days before we're chased out of each city for being gypsies.

So when I come back, there will be ample Wurst und Bier und lustige Dinge! Ich liebe sich!

Impressions and more word use

2006-02-15T19:29:00.000Z

A post without a mission...
Means
It's observation time!

-- Anytime you turn on British TV and there's someone who's overweight on it, the show invariably is about this person's desire to lose weight. Next week they're plying THE HALF TON MAN out of his flat.

-- The British communicate almost exclusively with their eyes while they're on the street. Don't say hi to anyone, merely look up and blink and carry on. Then cover your face with a paper while you're on the Tube. In such a culture*, cosmopolitanism can't really exist. It's all individuals doing their thing. You need ideas bouncing off one another in a public setting in order for such a dynamic culture to foment.

*They're actually good people when you get to talking, not much different than Americans or Spanish or Italians or Russians or people from New Jersey. One of them asked me to be his bodyguard a couple weeks ago because he said his friends were getting "flabby."**

** I had to decline the offer. We can't take money here, acc. to our visas.

-- Also: the culture's obsessed with race. Issues that we had to deal with about 140 years ago, they just felt after WWII. There was a long story on Michael Jordan the other day based on the fact that he was "the first black athlete to be accepted by America."

-- In the past week here, they just banned smoking in all pubs and clubs, made PINs necessary for every purchase and will vote for legislation against "glorifying terrorism." Some nails legislation, if you ask me.

I'll try to come up with more adventures this week, but I gotta pile up some stiff £s before they change over to €s for my WEEK IN GERMANY WITH NILS NEXT WEEK!

Belle and Se-BA-sti-an

2006-02-13T12:15:00.000Z

Sorry for the logjam, babies babies. The weekend brought the fun and the funk and all types of cool, or at the most modest, many types of cool. So we're back to Friday....and the Belle and Sebastian concert!

---

Ten feet from Stuart Murdoch we stood, admiring the vein that articulates itself along his right temple whenever he rocks out a bit too hard. And, having rocked out too hard during a very unexpected "Your Cover's Blown," he grabbed his side, leaning forward into a ray of golden light and saying, "ahhh, I pulled somethin' a bit durin' that song. Maybe, does anybody know a bit o' massage?"

This girl in the front row, leaning against the metal rail, thrusts her hand skyward. Stuart looks at her, laughs and says, "oh wow. Maybe, after the show, come backstage and you can massage it out. It'll be great.

"Well, for me."

This girl was Darcey, the one who bought me the tickets for the show. From this point forward, she, being adequately charmed by one of the world's premier charmers, imagined what vicious and terrible knots she would begin to hammer out as they discussed marital plans and the permutations of holiday-parent visits, year-by-year. In a flash, she became the envy of the circa 3,000 women in attendance and the majority -- no, the entirety, of the 2,000 or so men.

This includes me. We are in a fight.

But anyway, it may be natural to regard a fine show as the best show you've ever seen, when you're employing such criticism on the night of the show. A few days after, though, it's still pretty close. For those of you who know Belle and Sebastian, just add an ocean of energy into each one of the songs, pulled together tight by 12 musicians that ran from the regulars (even though there were 3 guitars), to a 5-person string section, a trumpet and a guy who shook those egg-looking things that have rice in them and make a chka-chka-chka sound. Outside of the 6-7 songs they played off the new album, they tore most of the funky and wild songs from their legions of LPs and EPs, including a bunch off of Tigermilk ("She's Losing It" highlighted), "Your Cover's Blown," "Le Pastie...Bourgeosie," and a really punctuating finale with "Sleep the Clock Around" off of Arab Strap.

For those who don't know Belle and Sebastian (Mom), I'll send you some. You'll love it. They're really precious.

The Mexican restaurant lured us inside with the promise of free garlic bread. It delivered.

Yup. Going inside.

Darcey's quesadillas contained spinach and tomatoes and whispers of cheese.

And then we went inside! And watched two opening bands, both of whom had no songs over two minutes, spit out their songs like Vacuum Cleaners of Death In Reverse.

Failed picture, but a good chance for anyone handy in Photoshop to blend some faces.

Stuart Murdoch, who bears an uncanny resemblance to this kid that refused to participate in gym class games in high school, prompting Sue Butz-Stavin to allow various students to attack his forehead with a barrage of red balls.

Chka-chka-chka.

During "Another Sunny Day"

Stevie, the other dude in the band -- Jonathan to Stu's David

I liked the way the light wrapped around these guys, seeming to tug at their sleeves and soar onward. This picture at low exposure.

I think this was during "We are the Sleepyheads." (I'm sorry for the unoriginal captions, but I'm just very impressed by my camera being able to make things look as cool as they were)

"Fox in the Snow." Notice that Stuart has donned a hat.

"She's losin' it...you know she's losin' it...oh yeah she's looo-oo-sin' i-i-it"

"If you dance for much very longer, you'll be known as the boy who's always working (working!)"

This is right before he hit on Darcey. He stole a kazoo from a friend and then let the crowd sing the first verse of "Judy and the Dream of Horses"

All 12 of them after erupting through "Sleep Around the Clock."

So we set off to dance...

The non-post!

2006-02-12T16:56:00.000Z

The wireless internet in our place hasn't risen from last night, apparently. It occasionally sends out a few spurts of signals, just for good measure, but hits the snooze button directly after doing so. Thus, my connectivity meter is looming perilously in the red, walking along a taut string that could mean any picture-filled post could topple at the next whim of the internet machine. And while I could waltz down the melodramatic and sinuous hallways, false poetic and gluttonous on words, I'll avoid it. We've all got things to do, like cook with the pasta sauce and garlic and tomatoes and cheese that I just bought. So yes, come to London. I'll cook you a pasta dish with sauce and cheese and other adornments!

So we'll let the Belle and Sebastian post marinate in the bowels of my computer right now, but I'll just say that it was better than the beer fest. Second just to being born. Second to dying, too. <--- (they, 12 of them, played that song during the show).

Heute ist Biertag!

2006-02-11T17:23:00.000Z

Trust unconditionally men with beards and beer, especially those beards that look like they could double as blankets or caves. The passion of these great men for the The Drink precludes their need to shave or interact with any other humans without the help of The Drink. They follow festivals around England, all part of CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale -- an organization a couple decades old that is trying, successfully, to bring good beer back to England and tell Carling and other water-lagers to piss off). And next to these rows of metal, these stalwart gentlemen serve beer, like their fathers did to them when they were babies.

We found out through one of Mikey's British buddies, whom we met at a CAMRA-sponsored bar, that this festival was happening at Battersea, a town just to the south of London. The area around the building -- a very large town hall (where else would a beer festival be?) -- looked a lot like downtown Bethlehem, with restaurants and pubs and men sauntering about, confused about their lot in life. And if Bethlehem had a beer festival, where would everybody go?

Thus, there was a line to get in.

The kegs in the middle kegged hundreds of different British beers, most of which were delicious bitters. Served by sweet dudes. No pint of beer was more than £2.40.

There's an entirely different row on the next side.

Ross (back left), Willy (Asian), Nick (Soviet) all enjoy their Belgian beers. Ross and Nick both told separate guys at the Belgian booth to get them the best Belgian beer. They both ended up with Golden Carolus Tripel. It was the best Belgian blonde.

"No, we do not sell anything like Lager, but if you ask that 6'9" guy on the beer bar ... he may help you."

Cheers!

Mikey, whose energy for exploration is unrivaled (and had gone to the Fest the day before), dives into yet another realm of brews: Ciders and Perries. Darcey ponders what will come next in life.

A selection of the different Belgians poured into my collectible glass.

Nick and Willy bring home a collectible dog.

The man on the left, Peter, organized the Belgian booth. He likes the Red Sox.

The entourage.

And a collectible t-shirt.

Barcelona the final!

2006-02-10T12:51:00.000Z

I apologize for the lapse in posting over the last two days. Papers had to be written and such, because the London Programme wants to fervently assert the fact that although we are here to have fun, YOU ARE NOT HERE TO HAVE FUN ALL THE TIME. So, 4,000 words of papers later, I return. To the internet. For this exclusive performance.

--

Our aims and dreams were high, full of life and electricity at the possibilities for the remaining daylight. Barcelona's really pretty from the heights, with its chunky grid moving in lines without visibile end. So we wanted to make it out by seeing some pretty stuff from the ground. And, with the setting sun as our aid, it turned out pretty well.

Every big street in every Romance-language country features at least one column. Come to that, even Hamilton Boulevard, in Allentown, features one. If you're driving from the West, it looks like it's some guy holding a big fish. Turns out it's just parchment that Mr. Allentown's holding.

We had miscalculated the time that it took to get from where we were to where we wanted -- the end of Las Ramblas, by the harbor. So we scrapped the idea of the Picasso Museum, and thanks to a very well-written and far more than literal translation advertising for Port Vell ("breathtaking views of the city," "myriad options for entertainment," etc.), we walked out there. These bubble-arch things were on the road that ran along the shoreline.

The skyride allowed two gondolas up at a time along a ride that took about 15-20 minutes, running from a tower across the harbor to some other tower near the mountains (wait for pictures).

Seagulls, everywhere. They had a lovely tan color to them.

Tay said this sailboat, docked in the port, had some sort of special significance. Neither of us were sure about that, but most seaworthy vessels are pretty special, I think.

Channukah card, anybody?

Maybe this was intended by the builders.

And we fight, moment to moment, to find the brilliance that causes a breath, a slight pause to remind us that something's larger than we are.

This is the main building on Port Vell, a big movie theater, restaurant, bar, bar, bar, shopping mall. Like the ones in every suburban town. Just on the water in Barcelona. With cool reflective glass that better photographers would have more fun with.

Reflective glass!

The end of the sky ride!

Sepia!

Some cool, impressionist art along the backside of the building. Tay examines it to see how deep the paint goes. It was quite deep.

EUROPEAN HANDBALL! I'm not kidding. We strolled into Old City, just to the east of where we were, and this was playing in a window facing the road. I thought this game, a staple of Emmaus high school gym class, was the love child of Sue Butz-Stavin and Gene Legath.

I think the owner of this Vespa got on right after this picture was taken. We quickened our pace.

See the column at the end?

Now this stuff, taken earlier in the day:

Anarchy's still going strong in Barcelona.

People make some pretty decent money standing around the street for hours after painting themselves. It's kinda creepy, if you ask me. Especially when they grab lunch and you have this statue diving into ham.

At least the International Breakdance Society cooled things out and brought the noise and da funk.

Aaaaand...back to the nighttime:

Senor Barcelona, at the entrance to a big park that hosts Parliament and the zoo. He has much bird poop on his head. So does his horse, whose one foot raised means Barcelona died at war...another Tay fact.

Tough to see because my hands shake too much to take good night pictures, but it's a gigantic temple/fountain. It's as big as the Pantheon, and absolutely stunning. Just comes out of nowhere, this hulking and cavernous monument to Paganism and water.

There was a row of these next to the fountain/temple. For those who crave ping-pong at any time of day.

'el mamut chiquitito quería drogar....'

A huge, life-size wooly mammoth, donated at the turn of the 20th century for some reason by someone.

Sharing some hot chocolate and delicious pastries after a 6 a.m cab to the airport on Sunday. And looking ravishing. Because Tay won't make her next appearance in the blog until March, I'm very sorry, viewers. I'll try to keep my face blurry.

And it's supposed to snow tonight in foggy Londontown. If this is the case, that is fantastic.

Barcelona, The Second Day!

2006-02-07T22:40:00.000Z

It was because of this man's moustache that we ate Mexican food in the afternoon of our second day in Barcelona.

This day was to be the day when we did not get assaulted by A-rabs or assaulted at all, with any luck, so we had to stock up on guacamole and nostalgia for kitsch Mexican back home. I got fajitas. Tay got a burrito. And because I love the way 'cerveza' allows one to roll a saucy 'R' in the middle of a word, I got a cerveza (a Voll-Damm). It was Damm good.

Palm trees and pink houses!

Tay said that she thought the big orange cat used the small cat as the sympathy cat, like goons using dwarves. There was no sympathy to be had.

But we gave Lonely Planet a second chance because we lacked a geographical target of any sort. It led us to yet another of Gaudi's beauties/marvels/monstrosities, after we marched up a hill past some sun-painted clay houses, alternately off-white and tan with clothes drying on strings on balconies and Spanish women walking their Spanish dogs.

The hill kept going, defying the scale of the map. Then we got there, to Guelli Park, on the north side of the Gracia district of town. It was commissioned by this super-rich guy for Gaudi in the opening to the 20th century. Gaudi was instructed to build a 'Garden City' for other super-rich people, in the form of 'great European city plans of the day,' according to an info sign in the park. So he carried on, dream-strewn, throughout acres upon acres. They ran out of money in 1914... but this is what one gets when he gives Antoni Gaudi unlimited money and a copy of CandyLand.

Ain't nothin' like a mosaic lizard/dinosaur to gather the kiddies 'round.

This man does his laundry across the street. Washing and drying. Washing and drying. Washing and drying as people walk beyond.

Inside Guelli Park, looking back out. Still very excited.

Remember how the columns at La Sagrada Familia meant to emulate forests? These, in the 100-column room (meant to be a marketplace) look like mushrooms. And mosaics are everywhere.

(no idea why this font is blue) ... Above the 100-column room, there sits this huge courtyard, surrounded by a mosaic fence and populated by a wildly distributed mosaic of person, of people dancing and people watching, people eating baguettes on dates as they touch each other's hands, people dangling their legs over, peering out with young and deeply-soulled eyes on the city, people mindful of nothing but the sun and the day and the way it pulls us together.

People selling jewelry, made from glass or rocks or shells and hemp. Lots of hemp.

A pair of darkly-clad hipsters used these strings tied to two poles, dipped in bubble stuff, to make these huge, flowing bubbles that were chased relentlessly by this boy.

And these kids.

A string of walkways leads you to the top of the hill into which the Park is dug. On the way there, there's a soccer field. No action today, sadly, except for construction workers playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

As we lumbered up to the final staircase to the lookout point at the top, knees squeaking, a French woman, probably around 60, sped in front of us. She surveyed the stairs and pushed up them, step step step step. She got to the top, looked out, took a breath, and walked down, smiling.

A person with a lot of money lived here.

The guardrails for the walkways, at corners, spun on these blocks that looked like they had pineapples on them.

My happy sightseeing tour.

This is an amusement park! There's a ferris wheel and a roller coaster and it sits above the entire cityscape, silhouetted blue always, watching over the city with crazyman eyes.

Final travel installment tomorrow.

Soon:

Belle & Sebastian Friday (there's this hipster dancing joint afterwards that gave me a free pass to the guest list because I told them I'd invent a new dance move...stay tuned)

Pub on Saturday for Six Nations Rugby

Death of a Salesman

2006-02-06T23:38:00.000Z

Babies,

Tonight I had to do a whole lotta work and wasn't feeling overly fantastic. So I'm just gonna tell the story of THE A-RAB CONFRONTATION before giving a real XXL and luxurious post tomorrow.

Now get in the mood, you DiCaprios.

So Tay and I were waltzing down Las Ramblas, the center street in the Old City/Shopping District of Barcelona called by the Lonely Planet companion as "one of the most famous streets in the world." I'm not sure this is true. Is it true?

So I was walking with Tay, not this guy.

And we were walking down this street, but at night, before eating dinner at 11 p.m. I ended up getting the personal-pan pizza size of paella, though it had no shellfish and instead had chicken wings in it. And then we had sangria. (I had no camera this night, sadly)

And the moon was out in the final stages of waxing, blurred against a gossamer cloud cover that stayed orange-purple against the city lights. So Tay and I went out searching for food, sangria and general mirth. This is where we were done over by Lonely Planet. Wankers. Don't trust euphemisms in the book, I implore you.

It called El Raval, the area directly west of Las Ramblas, "edgier." Having a long history of adventure and a desire to stay cool, we opted for the edge and hooked a right down a relatively well-lit street.

And were approached after about 70 yards by a very thin Arab boy, perhaps 18, with a zestful sense for entrepreneurism and a white track suit.

"Hashish," he said.

We declined. Tay did in Spanish, saying "no."

He continued, following us down the street. A true salesman.

Tay spoke in Spanish tongues to tell him to go away, that we did not want any. He did not know Spanish. Only Arabic. So he continued to repeat: "Hashish. Barcelona. Hashish. Barcelona."

Then he ran up next to me and threw a shoulder into me, ala Ben Hur, and...

I threw him against the wall.

His salesmanship refused, he did not look as if he were pleased with the entire situation. But he sauntered up to me, sizing up his prey, and began his string of errors.

(1) You don't wind up to punch on a street.

It was like he was loading a musket. We could've found a different restaurant by the time he unloaded.

(2) You don't swing your arm laterally to punch. My old football coach used to tell me (through grunts) that HE WAS SO GOOD AT BOXING BECAUSE HE SHOT STRAIGHT FROM THE HIP. The kid swung at me with his right arm, as if he were practicing lob shots at a youth tennis clinic. His forearm (I think it was the forearm?) hit my forearm and dropped.

He reached inside his jacket.

Paused.

And pulled out:

A bare hand. Nothing in it.

Nothing.

(3) You should have something in your pocket. Even one of those monkeys with the cymbals.

We laughed (well, I laughed) and started walking away at a pace a little bit quicker than we had been, not wanting to make the situation escalate at all. He trailed us for a bit, until one of his friends stopped him. The faces around us, blurred a bit as we passed them, looked disappointed, as if a ballgame were rained out. There would be no show tonight, friends.

Then came the delicious paella and sangria and just another perpetually smiling Spanish waiter. They're such good guys.

So that was the pinnacle of the negative aspects of the trip. Tomorrow there will be many pictures (over 120 to choose from...oy) and lots of fun again. Hooray, limited drama!

Holiday in Spain

2006-02-05T23:02:00.000Z

And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in someways I did not not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (Barcelona, 1936)

Think of it as maybe an enormous playground of varying degrees of vice and wonder, churned violently within, a gradient that unfolds before you as it fades out into a sublime and melted blue along the shores of the Mediterranean. It's a town where cultures don't blend but instead lurch around in a rather edgy sort of unease. Where architecture unparalleled (it avoids straight lines as much as possible, thanks to Gaudi, thus making it more difficult to parallel) tries fruitlessly to cover up for those hell-worn streets, trampelled by those in the religious pursuit of pleasures or pickpockets in pursuit of pennies and passports.

So Barcelona leaves me somewhat ambivalent, still somewhat shaken and stirred and frenetic yet bitterly disappointed at times. But we’re gonna deal with Mr. Gaudi today, who made Barcelona worth seeing. It's perfect architecture, not a rejection of classical or Gothic architecture, but a new paradigm, the child of an imagination that shows no sign of age and absolute mathematic brilliance. Gaudi was the king of the Modernistas, this group of crazy (and crazy-good) architects that beat through Barcelona between 1880 and 1920. He hated straight lines and right angles (they don't happen in nature, he said), opting for columns inspired by mushrooms, staircases that looked like shells, and a smattering of things inspired by fruits, vegetables, algae and much else.

I spent most of the time floating about in a state of levity and frequent (idiotic?) smiling brought on by having my girl by my side -- especially when it's only the second time I've seen her since August (she's in Madrid now, after Ecuador last semester). Nothing quite like it, walking hand-in-hand under the pastel-red sky that lingers for longer than it should. Tay said that the sun doesn't set there, and she's right. It drops below the Pyrenees to the West and settles down for a while, fading into a pinkish orange before nightfall, when fluorescence paints the unnaturally-painted people on the sidewalk in unnatural white.

View from Gaudi's Guelli Park, on the Northwest side of Gracia, the coolest thing in all of Barcelona - we'll treat it tomorrow. (CLICK ON THE PICTURE)

Tay, beer in hand, at lunch on the way to La Sagrada Familie. She, being able to speak fluent Spanish, which did not come in handy all the time in Catalonia (Catalonian is sort of French-Spanish, a language still used commonly in the area around Barcelona, a vestige of the time before Franco created 'Spain' as it is today in the mid-20th century), told the guy 'good luck' before he played the slot machine. He promptly hit big money. Here she is, looking smug. And pretty.

Chorizo on a baguette. That's one things I'm gonna miss when I come back stateside -- sandwiches here are all filled baguettes. But I'm not sure what the word for baguette is in Catalonian, but Tay knows a lot of Spanish words, so she resultantly did all the ordering for us over the weekend.

The floor of the eatery, littered with cigarillos in the midday sun.

La Sagrada Familia: "If you only have time for one sightseeing outing in Barcelona, this should probably be it," according to Lonely Planet. Gaudi, then 31 years old, took it in 1884. It had been planned as a regular neo-Gothic structure to crush revolutionary thought in the day. But Gaudi took it and twisted it, making it run wild (you get the sense that the temple's alive, breathing, pulsing). Unfortunately, he died with only some of the primary construction complete. Some more towers went up in 1930, but in 1936 (when Orwell was fighting in the Spanish Civil War), anarchists came in and smashed everything. But, using photographs of old designs and plans, construction continued, and it's set to be done in 2020, though a bartender told us that it probably will be done the same time the Big Dig is done. When it's done, the central tower (of 12 -- one for each apostle) will stand at 170m high (the ones we climbed were about 14o)

Front of the temple.

Josep Subirachs did the sculpture in the front, going with his own creative style to make some jagged and stirring figures.

Talkin' bout stirring figures... (look at the guy behind the column, hugging it)

Kissing?

The columns inside, designed to look like a forest.

More sculptures. They depict the Stations of the Cross as they ascend the building.

The area of town, L'Eixample, started life mainly after the Civil War, expanding from a really limited Old City to the South. So from the heights, you see long lines that march on like anarchists into their mom's houses so they can have their military uniforms washed and eat baguette sandwiches filled with sausages spicy enough to rivet up some good revoltin' blood.

The cross is a big mosaic.

OH MY GOD IT'S TOTALLY ANOTHER GHERKIN.

I'm just so amazed that two (maybe more) of these things exist in the world. The one in London was cool, but seeing that another one exists is like when I was so happy about coming up with "prose before hoes," then finding out that the Collegehumor boys made a t-shirt with that on it.

Grapes. On top of columns.

Tay also loves the Gherkin.

I'm beginning to think they're something like those monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey. They just start appearing and monkeys start hitting each other with shovels made from rocks and other monkeys' fingerbones.

The staircase down, supposed to look like a shell.

Tay should have pictures taken from close. Me, from afar. Or in very dim lighting. Maybe not at all.

Wow, I'm watching the Super Bowl right now. Imagine instead of watching the wonderful commercials you're watching, we get to watch some turtle going after Diet Coke. And it occasionally cuts to this studio where this female analyst who looks like Jodie Foster is asking Philly Eagle LB Dhani Jones to explain how good the commercials are -- and if players can pay attention to the game in the locker room while the Rolling Stones are playing at halftime.

TOMORROW

The Arab Confrontation

Gaudi's Park (like an architectural amusement park)

The harbor

Sunset Pictures

Sangria & Tapas

The end of the Colossal tour

2006-02-02T00:50:00.000Z

A crazy bunch of Italians on the street in front of the Spanish steps, where Keats and Shelley lived, possibly at the same time. Emily, in her wisdom, said that Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley as the fruition of a horror story write-off between her, Percy, Keats and some other dude on some weekend retreat. But apparently the boys decided some good splashing (of wine and in water) would be much preferred, so they let Mary have her fun.

Long exposure on the Spanish steps, apparently a landmark, covered by golden 20-year olds, looking down on a street filled with people and thinking of how damn pretty everything is.

There's got to be that one, perfect Italian restaurant. It's apparently common within Americans -- that one vision of some sort of dimly lit, back-alley, ivy-covered, surly-Italianed place. Though we may have very well found that the first night, we struck at our food mission with VIGOR in the second night, pushing through bodies that had staged revolt.

We arrived at a place that was medium-lit and certainly not in a back alley. But it did have the WWF (well, now WWE -- but that's like calling Lehigh the Mountain Hawks) on the TV for some reason. So, as Italians watched the screen and tried to compare their boisterous table-neighbors to the Wisconsin-sized combatants on the TV, we ordered.

Our waitress hustled around, as if it were important to clear the restaurant (only three tables were occupied -- Italians don't eat until well into the next day, it seems) for more worthy clientele later at night. Those who would order €17 sauvignon blanc instead of €15 pinot (us). So, through great use of elaborate hand signals, including the one that involves moving your hands slowly downward and outward, palms facing down, to imply the slowing down of things, we slowed her down. From then on, we communicated through handle signals and her rather fluent usage of "It's ok!" based on tone.

For when we asked about the wine: "ehh, isss okaaaaayyyyy"
For when the appetizers came out: "it's oKAY!"
For when, after seeing that only the plate showed through what was once covered in my four-cheese gnocchi: 'OHHH, ISS OKAY!"
For when we didn't get dessert: "iss ok"

Real good food, though, again. Made us very excited to come back to the Great Mayonnaise Sea. But before that, we had some Trevi Fountain to look at -- that thing you throw three coins into, presumably for good luck or to keep the pH level steady.

Then the wine tour began. After two at dinner, the plan sprang on us. We'd have to drink four more €20 bottles of wine over the course of the rest of the night -- no more, no less -- to make sure that economic distribution maintained equilibrium. It brought us to a wine bar where an Australian waiter kept us in our seats for two bottles by bringing us small pepperoni and cheese mini-wiches.

Move on.

So we walked around the corner. And the Pantheon was there. Looming, in front of us, where people came to pray to their various gods during the empire's height. But, with two wine bars across the piazza, Bacchus received the greatest amount of reverence on this night. After a couple more bottles of white, Joe and I decided that we had a really good idea.

If only some sort of carbonated wine beverage existed... (aha!)

If you are ever presented with the opportunity to drink wine under an Italian night, take it. The feeling produced is light, is warm, is lucid and able to paint the scene in thick, newly-formed colors that grow in our minds like flowers sprouting from the ground into their first visit with the sun. And it's just really great.

Joe and Claire, at the first place, looking rather pleased. And in control.

Notice the progression, after a few glasses at the next place.

Almost at the peak. (They weren't actually about to kiss)

Aaaaand there it is. He'd been trying to chase this flying toy. For one step. This scene provided a great deal of humor to a bunch of Italian loiterers.

Emily and I get no sort of accurate portrayal because Claire's hands were shaking at the languid brilliance of the whole scene.

The only bottle of red we had over two days. It matches Joe's hair and temper.

And gelato, purchased with our new Scowser friends (from Liverpool) finished off the night and the trip's consumption.

It's OK!

A British Note

2006-01-31T21:46:00.000Z

Check this out, homelanders. £ - My worst enemy right now. But from now on, the posts will be far more precise. No more "GBP" or complaining.

And I'm preparing right now for Weekend-Barcelona, where the lights never dim, they don't even flicker, and each tone will paint my girl anew. As a warm-blooded American, I'm not sure how much could make things better. I guess Taco Bell would.

But the British update:
Until very recently, football (soccer) wasn't really a national sport...as in, played by people of all classes. The upper-middle class tended to avoid it because of a great deal of football hooliganism greatly favored by Liverpudlians -- called "Scowsers," according to a guy we met on our Rome Wine Waltz. Hooliganism was a reaction that erupted against big unemployment in the 1980s and caused Britain to be banned from international play for a while.

But now they're back, happy after hosting the Euro Cup in 1996, and look like they might win the World Cup this year, even though their coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, said he's gonna leave after the tourney. Oh boy drama!

Roman' Around, Part Drei!

2006-01-31T18:45:00.000Z

This wall protects the Vatican from Italian invaders.

Over the years, the importance of religion -- and the height at which people hold it -- has waned in at least seven residents of the Western World. We can trace its decline to a variety of factors, ranging from poor PR in the form of wars, excommunications, bad communications, mass exterminations and unleavened bread.

But, we forget (or at least I forget) that religion (or at least the very strong affinity for it) built these things:

One of the ceilings in the Musei de Vaticani (roughly translated into Pope Hut), on the way to the Sistine Chapel.

The final hallway before you get to the Sistine Chapel and are forced to turn off your camera by men who speak as if they are train conductors, with voices that bounce and bound around the room.

The greatest product of religion. This kebab place right near the Vatican holds the Guinness World Record for largest spinning lamb thing. (They use shovels to hack some off for each kebab)

But this, my friends, is the product of secular humanism. I really had no idea that The School of Athens was in the Vatican. Is this common knowledge? But, it was! And, pressed along an entire wall, it beamed. The colors, thanks to some welcome renovation, shot off the wall. But I ducked, so none of them hit me.

In this other product of secular humanism, a little boy beats the hell out of a swan (goose?). Ha, in the Vatican ... beats the hell out of ... ha.

But the Sistine Chapel. I think what I remember most about it was the humility that rippled through me because of it. Whereas other things in Rome strike you because of their age -- and size, compared to previous mental projections -- the Chapel simply radiates brilliance. It's not a large place by any means, but it almost spins, covered in fresco. Adam sits above you, hand extended and limp, casually accepting God's offer of life as everything else around him seems to move. And it is everything around him. Not an inch of the Chapel goes unpainted. The curtains painted along the side sway in our perception while they remain stationary, as they have since Michelangelo first drew his designs. We turned our heads to the ceiling, imagining creating something lasting more than a few days, a few months, a lifetime. Something that meant something (and means something!) and something only comprehensible at direct glance, without aid of a medium or interpretation.

Lucky for us, a great majority of NBA players take up more space than the Vatican does, so we could make our way to St. Peter's shortly after picking up delicious pizza that may or may not have been blessed by the Pope.

Three very handsome and worthy travelers traipse into the Piazza San Pietro, as one lags behind them to chronicle the mission and a very large Christmas tree races skyward with yet another obelisk. And there was this huge Christmas manger in the middle complete with ethnic wise men and a huge wreath that had to be held up by iron wire. By all means, it was a pretty sweet manger.

I'm telling you. Japanese tourists don't get the art of background.

Wowee wow wow! If you stand in this place, the three-deep columns all file into line, as if only one supports this huge arc that swoops alongside the South side of the Piazza. Emily showed us this because she's really great.

Told you.

You want to see the inside of San Pietro? It's really big and full of paintings.

AAAAND A CRYPT where all the popes are entombed. I wonder if they're mummies.

Alright you crazy kids (and Mom), we're gonna get to the wild and crazy antics of the night and Rome Wine Waltz in the last and final edition of this probably-too-long post of a journey. I promise that it will involve the following things: Joe Downer wiping out, belly full of Pinot, in front of the Pantheon as the Roman gods smote him for being irreverent.

Until next time, dolls and dollops, keep on donuttin'

When in Rome, Part Deux

2006-01-30T18:29:00.000Z

So we'll deal with the Colosseum in full right now, breaking a little bit with the chronological structure of the overall piece. But, in the future, AND ON THE INTERNET, we have the privilege of writing whatever we want! However we want!

Day One brought us down the road toward the Colosseum, a building "much smaller than Gillette Stadium," according to Joe. The Romans, having opted not for steel but for the far superior system of stacking bricks, only created a bowl that could, at peak 1900 years ago, seat 50,000 people. The gates closed at 3:30, pre-empting our visit by 15 minutes. So, fearing we may not be able to make our way inside at all (unsure of the depth of exploration that Day Two would bring), we attacked the problem the only way we knew how: pictorally!

But, after hanging out at the Pope's digs on Day Two, we took the Metro (a system in which large steel boxes carrying gallons of graffiti on their exterior carry people with gallons of sweat attached -- and later unattached -- to themselves). Riding the train is not unlike living inside a carpet after a dog pees on it.

But it got us there, and we made it inside at 3.15. You hear stories. You read books. You look at pictures in those books and on the internet in the future. But you never really understand the enormity of the place where Russell Crowe made a name for himself before you sit inside. And really sit, really kick back and let tourists from Dallas tell you to watch out for pickpockets. And point to the spot where the emperor would stand and give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down after drinking delicious wine (which was very cheap, as we will deal with later). And look as the sun meanders through the arches, breaking apart as it nears an edge and shattering into diagonal and radiating and true rays that hug every edge and lance along every line. And remember that 1900 years ago, somebody may have been sitting in the same spot, admiring the craftwork of a lion as it eats someone's head.

Poor showing, Gladiator.

Alright, time to zip back to modern history. Back to Day One, which progressed, as days do, into Evening One. And as the day faded, so did our tolerance for not eating

Though a quick drop-in at a pasticeria allowed for ample whimsy and caffeine and, after we took this picture, some Italians who made fun of us in Italian -- even though one of them did not comprehend the irony of the fact that he was wearing a "Boston" sweatshirt. He had not been there, we found out, upon inquisition.

So Emily (who had spent time in Rome with her family over the summer) recommended Trastavere, this neighborhood on the opposite bank of the Tiber and very much out of the Roman crowd. But perfect, oh man. The cobblestone streets seem to barely squeeze between buildings, and even of the larger ones, rarely does one appear worthy of hosting any vehicle that runs on wheels, including baby carriages. But Piaggios (the Italian Vespas...you don't see the brandname "Vespa" ever, even though the scooters line the streets) zip through them, as do buses. Without warning, too. People scatter like gazelle when the lion comes, after it's eaten someone's head at the Colosseum. They should film car chase movies here.

Bad camera work = impressionism.

Emily loves those who drive SmartCars because she fancies some good ol' fashioned pragmatism.

The bridge that spanned the Tiber and brought us to Trastavere. At 7 at night, the Tiber appears a sort of bright green, like a heavily-chemicaled fountain. I'm not sure if this color means it's healthier or less so than the Charles.

The Vespa's name may have been Ruby. That would be best, I think.

A basilica which we had thought was St. Peter's, but turned out according to our map not to be so. This meant we were a bit off of our original course. Joe and I celebrated more wandering with two 66cl (double-sized) Peronis bought from a street vender (everyone wants to sell everything they can in Rome). Upon later conversation, the beers were probably non-alcoholic. But delicious.

After dinner, though, almost everything in life was gravy. Delicious, wine-and-garlic enriched gravy. In most likely the best meal I've ever purchased in Italy and the surrounding world, our foursome revelled in the very advantageous exchange rate. After multiplying all purchases in the UK by two (we round slightly up) to get the US cost for three weeks, we took the liberty of lopping off the .2 in the 1.2 Dollar-Euro exchange. It carried us through appetizers (bruschetta, prosciutto/mozzarella, tomato/mozzarella), main courses (pasta with flavors formerly unprovoked in my palette), dessert (apple cake) and two bottles of white, whose lovely taste and effects were enhanced by money saved by having been made in Italy.

A really fortunate time for extended exposure.

So we strutted out into the night, full of contentment and carbohydrates and rather dripping with a very electric ebullience and the rain that fell lightly. The walk back to the hostel took about 2-3 hours as we wound past things like THE PANTHEON and various fountains and obelisks. It seems that, for a time, as long as you died after the age of 30 in Rome, you could get at least a 20-foot obelisk out of the deal.

Finally, after walking next to the train station where birds sat on top of trees in numbers that exceeded hundreds and hummed in high pitches while they peered down at men (and occasionally fired their poop at passersby), we made it back to the hostel.

The bed was encased in dew and so was the floor and when we woke up for Day Two, our clothes were more moist than they'd been when we got back. But no matter. We had some Vatican-ing to do in the morning.

When in Rome - Installment One

2006-01-29T15:40:00.000Z

Ahhhh! There's too much to write to do this all in one piece. We'll all have a lot more fun if I don't get too verbose over one long piece.

I'll do it over three or 10. Anyway, this was one of the best weekends in the history of my life and the world. Hoooorayyyy!!

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Have a Japanese tour group take your pictures trying to signal with your hands that you want to be able to see the whole group with lots of stuff in the background. But anyway, the main characters, from small to tall (right to left): Claire Tynan, Emily Fox, Joe Downer, Kevin Scheitrum.

Supporting cast: Plato (left), Aristotle (right). Not pictured: Raphael, Michelangelo, The Pope, various salesmen, hundreds of deadly Vespas, The Collusion of Science and Imperial Passion, Hundreds of Birds that Sat on Trees and Planned Their Attacks Before Carpet-Bombing, The It's-OK waitress, RyanAir, Hostel workers, and all the rest who flew by.

This panoramic view (from the Italian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier-type building...huge) between Trajan's Market and the Colosseum is where lots of things went on, including, but not limited to: The Building of the heart of Roman Empire.

Piazza San Pietro. The plaza in front of St. Peter's Cathedral, into which we eventually went when we got over the fact that this was all built before Popes didn't fight in wars.

The Roman Forum, where the Romans went for everyday things, like shopping, the post office, or riots.

[With more than 250 digitograph pictures of the weekend on my ca-me-ra, check out Webshots for a bulk of them -- they're not cropped or edited yet, at least most of them, but it'll be a good appetizer...like the pounds and pounds of mozzarella-based dishes we had]

In the 2004 film, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (starring Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate and a cast of other considerably jocose characters), Mr. Burgundy occasions to bedtime with his new lovething, Miss Veronica Corningstone. Without going into such devilish details of the deed, we see the always gelastic yet befuddled Mr. Burgundy admit he has no idea what "When in Rome" means. Oh! the joy! Please alert Mr. Burgundy that any questions hitherto have answers!

Now, at least two stones heavier with pasta and dirt and head-grease, I sit to collect myself and sort out everything we saw, all the feats of human passion and civilization that had previously existed only in textbooks and abstractions within the dream-oriented mind; everything we did, from destroying new pairs of sneakers and body joints that are quickly becoming old with miles and miles of walking to a wine waltz that brought us in front of the Pantheon; and everything that was lit anew inside of us, the re-emergence at the Eternal City of wonder we all know in youth.

I guess I'll go about this chronologically -- at the very minimum, in a sort of looping, swooping way that fits things that are extremely awesome.

CHAPTER ONE -- ASSAULT ON ROME!

We began without sleep and with great hopes at 4.30 a.m. on Friday, when the cab pulled in front of our apartment with misses Emily Fox and Claire Tynan in the back, looking rather cloudy due to a lack of sleep and the compensatory hormones that prepare the body for moments of great excitement or great strain. We humbly hoped for the former as we made our way through the empty and dark London streets, eventually to a train carrying us through the countryside north of London to Luton airport, the Anglican hub for economy flying (and the host of the 264 RAF Fighting Squadron during the Second Teutonic Migration).

We flew Ryanair, paying 60some GBP for the round trip to Rome, which includes (and is completely limited to) a round trip to Rome. Leathery plastic covers the seats which don't feature the recline function. That's one weird thing -- I had no idea that planes actually came with non-reclining seats. Almost like you have to custom-remove the joint.

But we got there, after taking a bus past miles of junkyards, scrapped cars and houses and walked around Termini, the bus station, four times as we tried to orient ourselves to get to our hostel, which was very much a hostel and looked like a place that Janis Joplin would have painted. And built. And then sweat all over. It rained a little bit the first day (only when we got close to the Colosseum), so when we slept, it was as if the walls, the lights, the floor were all pouring out sweat. So that was pleasant.

But we'll get to the good stuff, at long last. Just like

Rome's gross up where the hostel is. Fountains dribble out water as birds, in hundreds, sit on top of trees and cover entire benches and people in poop. But move southward, ambling through streets that grow cleaner and cleaner and then finally,

BOOM.

To the right is Trajan's column, with its war story spiral ascending skyward. To the left sits the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, built in the 20th century to commemorate the Italians defeating somebody else (the French?), including themselves. Then they unified and made 1700 statues of Garibaldi.

A walkway surrounds the building, and offers views everywhere, as sights extend into the mountains and fades into the fog.

Rome. God. 2000-plus years of civilization. Buildings that are seven-to-eight times older than THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which is older than at least half of the people alive. Really old!

So at any rate, we made our way down the Tomb toward the Colosseum.

And that will be the post for Monday!

Rome!

2006-01-26T22:26:00.000Z

We're heading to Rome in 9 hours. So in the meantime, please send your attention to a website with educational value, perhaps.

I'll be back with pictures of people with moustaches, and with pasta in their moustaches. Perhaps the Colosseum, also.

Injuns

2006-01-26T01:27:00.000Z

By the great feathers of Crazy Horse, we had some great Indian food tonight!

The name of the place was Memories of India, and it did, indeed, stir up a great reminiscince for the days of Indian food in the old country. Indian food fulfilled these desires, luckily.

So, on this, the third leg of the Great London Culinary Mission (yesterday, we devoured a sandwich that involved the flanking of tomato, mozzarella and basil with two slabs of panini, slung to us by a great Armenian man who said he would have given us better service if we were not male), we waltzed into a completely empty Indian place. It had Zagat Survey ads from 1984 in the window. So we knew that it was good even before we were born.

The characters: Darcey, Alyce, Catherine, Kelly Travers (one of those people who exist best with multiple names, such as Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Prince William) and myself. Until around the 20-minute mark of being in the restaurant, the only sounds that broke through the crystalline silence came from the occasional clink of a glass being cleaned at the bar. Eventually, we had the audacity to converse but Alyce and I had not the gall to order anything outside of Chicken Tikka Masala.

Kelly Travers (left) and Alyce hang out behind a piece of garlic nan and some masala and rice.

Darcey and I raise a fork for love and for nutrition.

WE ARE FULL AND THUS WE ARE JOLLY! Except Alyce has diabetes (in small amounts), which means that she doesn't have the chemical that tells her she's had enough food. That means she's led a life being totally unfulfilled and has no chance of being there. This is sad.

But Alyce and Catherine are still excited because they ate delicious Indian food for under $20.

BUT SHE IS VERY AFRAID OF THE MOIST TOWEL.

So that should catch us up with ridiculous ramblings and journeying. Love, me.

St. Pauli Boy

2006-01-25T20:54:00.000Z

The Tate Modern, as seen from THE SKY.

The steps spun along a curve that maintained angular velocity as it rose. For the first 150 or so steps winding around the dome at St. Paul's Cathedral (out of the eventual 530), the climb moves gently, meandering around a long and gradual ascent that conveyed us to a ring around the altar and main seating area. Directly under the painting on the ceiling of the dome, vertigo began to ensue.

And what else could we do? We are young and powerful and with futures that will only go upward, not the least concerned with the possibilities to the contrary. So we might as well chase it. We hiked, onward and upward, as the astronauts say. Do they say that? They should. At least until they come back to earth. Then they should say, "see you next time, space."

But anyway, we moved back toward space. The next phase brought us to the first outdoor deck, 2/3 of the way up the Cathedral. We were now at a height that rendered impossible any sort of weight applied to the outer railing. I am one of those people whose disposition tends away from plummeting to death down the side of St. Paul's Cathedral. Perhaps you are a guard-rail leaner. They are made of steel, a substance I trust categorically.

Anyway, the picture that started this great ramble is from that level, of the Tate Modern (art) museum, a converted power plant whose front meets the Millenium Bridge, known as The Wobbly Bridge to the British. As part of an incredibly embarrassing celebration of the year 2000, the British avoided Y2K fear through wasteful and ill-conceived construction. The Bridge, on the third day of use, wobbled under the weight of its pedestrians. It was closed down for a year and a half so that 5 million GBP could go into it to make sure it no longer wobbles. The name stuck, though. It Wonders of Architecture brother, in Greenwich, the Millenium Dome, looks like one of those big plastic things with the holes you fill with pens, pencils or other long, sharp things. Asparagus? They're still trying to figure out what they should put in the Millenium Dome.

After that level, we embarked on the final ascent. Due to a rather inconvenient fear of heights, the tight steel staircase, which appeared to be capable of falling at a sneeze or breeze, was not the most fun.

Nor was the final walkway to the outside, which brought us to this circular platform around the top of the dome, wrapped around a circle around 12 meters in diameter. As one of the tallest non-skyscrapers in London, it was very scary and resulted in my being glued to the wall. Not these people, though:

The one looking irritated is Dave. He's irritated because he's one thousand feet in the air.

Then you get this view. And any agony, fear or trapping shatters. Crashes to earth. But not literally. That'd be dangerous from this height.

Top: The Erotic Gherkin; Bottom: Tower Bridge

If you ever get the chance to go to St. Paul's, do it. Do it if you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Spanish. Whatever. We don't get the chance to see such intricacy so often, such minute enormity. Hooray!

Internship!

2006-01-25T20:40:00.000Z

If anyone has any information on the proper positioning of wickets or the 10 different ways to make outs -- or how many outs constitute an inning -- in cricket, this information will be of the greatest use to me. Don't send money. Don't send fruit leather or even Fruit by the Foot (they only have fruit by the centimeters here). Send information. On cricket, please.

Unless I show up at my interview in the following fashions: (1) Pantless; (2) Crying; (3) Eating a sandwich that spews mayonnaise; (4) Humorless; (5) Considerably drunk, it looks like I'll be working for sports section at The Observer, The Guardian's Sunday paper.

Fate followed me over-the-seas, perhaps stowed away in baggage. Having tried to land an internship with a music or 'lifestyle' magazine (which originally intended something along the lines of FHM, but led many friends to pull up their eyebrows and laugh at the possible euphemisms ... yes), the internship coordinators offered me the spot at the Observer. Apparently I'll get clips at a 400,000+ circulation paper, so long as I have a 'working knowledge of football (soccer...gah), cricket, rugby and tennis.

I anticipate meeting the Williams sisters. Or at least a man who looks like the Williams sisters. This makes me very happy.

Food Trip the first, continued

2006-01-24T00:41:00.000Z

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for people to Cook at Home, it becomes necessary to cultivate the power of improvisation and flexibility. Thus, for the beginning of this week's food tour, we will set upon heating up different foods that could be considered from different cultures, though indisputably cooked by one incompetent chef.

The weapons we have at our disposal go, clockwise from the bottom right: Sainsbury's packaged honey cured ham and turkey (30 slices in each package), Old El Paso tortillas, Kikkoman soy sauce and too much rice; clementines; English Mustard!; Cheddar Cheese; Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale (not pictured but later imbibed).

The pair of tortillas enclosed a liberal distribution of mild cheddar cheese, which milds out onto its equally mild terrain after heavy heating under a wet paper cloth (for the tortillas) and in the microwave (for modern deliciousness).

The quivering ham and turkey are laid next to each other on their trembling death bed, primed for the smothering by their oppressor, King Mustard.

Smothered!

The tortilla curls up, enclosing its contents in their final death shroud. The rice, having been boiling the entire time, joins with the soy sauce to create something that looks like fried rice and tastes like rice with all of the salt from the West Indies. The clementines later absorbed some of the runoff from the soy downpour.

Aunha! 'Vee do not hyave such very good cooking in zee France,' says Baptise, who is sad for the lack of hugs he suffers from due to the distance from his girlfriend.

But we do in America, my friends.

We do in America.

(this is a celebratory ice cream bar)

Food journey!

2006-01-23T21:44:00.000Z

For millenia, man has eaten food to allay his desire to gain nutrients. George Washington ate food. So did Abraham Lincoln, and so did people who weren't presidents. Like Warren Harding. Women have eaten food. Food has also been eaten by the following people: people in different countries, people with long hair and bald people, people who smile or cry when they wake up in the morning and even some animals. One time, I heard that people have even eaten other people for food. It's really important!

But in London, peope aren't as fortunate as the rest of the world. Whereas in America or Bratislava, people have eaten foods made more excellent through the use of spice. Did you even know that BRITAIN WAS A BIG COUNTRY THAT USED SPICES BACK IN HISTORY? Yes! The East India Trading Co. brought things like salt to the white man. But ever since the British lost their stake in The Burden, they spent more time concentrating on metaphors with America (I heard today that Britain was Greece to our Rome -- that they created a great deal of art and retained a culture while we 'adopted' everything we had) and less time on paprika or coriander.

So this week, I bring you the various sides of British culture. Or, some of the various sides. I'm sad to say that alighting this ever-speeding train got off to a bit of a bump and has yet to move at the speed of America. However, one must understand that in Britain, change always occurs gradually -- it creates the tradition of stability, according to Professor Michael Thornhill, who said today that the British can take their beer better than the Chinese because "we've had centuries of experience."

The Odeon movie theatre in Leicester Square, right next to Picadilly Circus. What happens when movies without the epic nature of King Kong aren't playing? Like, "

Every 1GBP (GBP = pound sterling) pizza I've found sports a composition of around 97% bread and a trace layer of cheese atop insinuations of sauce that-once-was, resulting in a very soft and heavy final impression, not unlike that of oatmeal or the mentality of suburban teens.

But when I took a picture of the pizza place, this Portuguese man suggested I buy a slice. It was, as he said, da best.

Baguettes

2006-01-22T23:03:00.000Z

Perhaps the largest and most primal component of adventure and exploration is ingestion. When we're young, we put everything that our hands can manipulate into our mouths -- pens, video game cartridges, bottles and the other source of liquid nutrition. It's all in the great and lofty pursuit of learning -- the drive behind adventure, as far as I can tell. But we never really lose the urge. All of our adventures in high school usually ended up in some sort of diner or other place that allowed us to eat something fried or drink something that was the next of kin from the coffee bean. This week, I'll try to undertake a diet that aspires to achieve a multitude of goals:

Intelligent eating, so as to be in better shape by the time I go to Rome this weekend and Barcelona in two
Creative eating, so as to prove that London food isn't all mush and mayonnaise.
Exploratory eating, so as to promote the sense of adventure around various parts of the city, which will be catalogued in digitized pictures
Economic eating. Expect a few visits to baguette places that fill their delicious and elongated bread with chopped meats and mush and mayonnaise -- before I go to the real delicious eateries at night. But I'll stay away from retelling the rather droll stories of baguette and arid chicken.

Life inside and around the Thames

2006-01-21T15:50:00.000Z

While the whale in the Thames struggles against its captors to land a fine rally of bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes -- actually just sausage-flavored breadlike liquid over a pillow of salty foam), the early part of the day saw a voyage to Camden, the largest outdoor market in the whole of London.

The sight amazes immediately when you leave the Tube station and wander into (not onto) the street. In a day unusually rife with sun, Camden hums. Its stores stick out into the street whose traffic zips by on the infrequent Vespa or bus, while guys in torn-up clothes with torn-up faces pitch, in torn-up accents, their respective stores, products or substances. An open-air building, which is more like an above-ground labyrinth, meets you first, and greets you with a rather impressive display of t-shirts that boast a full command of the word 'fuck' and all of its conjugations. Also, some jolly plays on those crazy antics of President Bush.

Down the street, the stores fade into more indie stuff -- which often means 'metal' in London. This is not the place to talk about the whimsies of Belle and Sebastian. Or anything less than Motorhead playing their guitars with the bones of the men who rocked so hard that their heads fell off, onto spikes, and were carried away by the devil on a flaming motorcycle that jumped so high that it crashed into a Trans-Am driven by a flaming horse on the moon.

British stores offer kitsch, including action figures of Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. Some offer shoes. Some socks. Most offer area workers who have a latent scorn for what their media portrays as America; that is, a bunch of loud buggers with no care for their society. One of the saleswomen (a Brit with golden hair that clung to her forehead as if rained-upon) told me to tell George Bush to stop shooting her countrymen with a soft and disarming, yet non-aggressive smirk. But their curiosity overcomes initial impressions, just as does ours. As it should, especially at a place like this, when each store offering buttons melts into one offering jagged belts and plastic viking horns into one offering hemp into one offering tikka masala.

I bought a doughnut for 1.50. I still don't know the sign for the British Pound. But it was sort of a sandwich donut, with two pastries (one iced with chocolate) flanking banana icing in the middle. This gave me another step on my march toward diabetes and a great feeling of levity and daytime languor, of sun-starched happiness and full contentment drawn from the stomach. Unfortunately, it also meant that any further admission to the stomach would have caused crowding, thus excluding the very worthy Thai, Japanese, Chinese guests and the lady of mulled wine.

No matter. This market was what London should portray more, this clashing and vibrant stream of culture blended together but with each ingredient still radiating its own taste. None compromised, but together greater. Fuller.

EXPLORATION YIELDS BRILLIANCE

2006-01-20T21:30:00.000Z

The British Museum offers the most misleading term in all of England, aside from perhaps "free drinks" and "club without cave people inside of it." The museum, in fact, serves as the new host to the collective pillaging of every British explorer or archaeologist or man with waxed mustache and breaks for brandy. Civilizations from the Old Kingdom in Egypt to the Mesopotamians have gladly donated their corpus of art to the men who poured into and tore through their lands after these works had time to settle under layers of dust. The original pediment of the Parthenon sits, refurbished and whitened. Mummies remain, dozing in coffins before they haunt some tourists. And the Rosetta Stone's here.

The Rosetta Stone.

Not that it's bad this way, really. They're preserved, probably better than they could be, anywhere. Except for America.

This Druid, drawn by a guy who did a lot of research on Stonehenge, tells a squirrel how much he'd like to eat him.

Above: Corpse of dead man. 2,000 years old. Still has skin, internal organs, hatred of Lower Egypt.

Below: Skeleton of a very small man. He may have been killed because he was short.

Porcelain Prince

2006-01-19T18:18:00.000Z

One must approach it as if stalking a tiger. It must not know the direction or rate of your pursuit. You must conceal your smell, your sound, your every breath. It's a marvel, really, how it stands, white and sturdy and shining as if under fluorescence. If it catches you, it does not surprise, it merely weakens its lever so that the accompanied flush is little more than a water-bottle's worth of a squirt and the flusher is stuck pumping, as if an old maid, dressed in off-white dirtied through sadness and time, covered by overalls fashioned by old man Levi Strauss, pumping water from a well. When enough water has filled the bowl, forces of gravity overcome recalcitrance.

And this is our toilet.

---
Does Taco Bell ship overseas?

British Journalism is not so much so good

2006-01-18T18:39:00.000Z

Today we learned the following things in journalism class:

The British media (and its readership) doesn't hold attribution of sources in as high regard, as say, topless women on Page 3 of The Daily Sun. (Every single day) In fact, high political stories don't need facts attributed to sources at all. Brilliant.

A militant father's group (Fathers 4 Justice...also very nominally clever) hatched a scheme to kidnap the Prime Minister's son, but was foiled by the New Scotland Yard. The group, having already dressed three of its members as Batman, Robin and something like Captain America and sending them scaling the walls of Buckingham Palace and also having thrown condoms filled with purple chalk at Tony Blair during Parliamentary Questions, will soon be disbanded.

The coach of the British national soccer team told some random sheikh who bought him an expensive dinner that he'd be willing to leave the team after the season for the right money. As it turns out, the sheikh was actually an undercover reporter.

An undercover reporter.

And the paper for which he works sells 3.2 million copies every day. That paper is the same one with the Page 3 girl.

--

2006-01-17T19:42:00.000Z

As I'm writing this, the alarms are going off, sounding the certain destruction of one, fateful egg. (We read Orwell today)

Mike apparently was not around for the first set of false alarms, and in his ebullience at turning the yoke into a scramble, released a cloud of smoke into the apartment, which the alarm sounded to the residents of Lexham Gardens. They got well-adjusted to sirens in the 1940s, so I'm sure they don't care too much. They're stalwart folk, with constitutions fortified with mayonnaise incessant.

Having now planned most of the trips, I'll say to you that it's very important to win at least four consecutive Superball lotteries or be the son of someone named Rockefeller to live very comfortably in London. So, make the necessary arrangements. It's not so bad when you first look at it -- a small burger, you'll find, costs 5 pounds. Now multiply that by the current dollar conversion rate, which has the proportions of the old (hot) Barbie's bust-to-waist.

But Rome's been booked -- two weekends from now. So has Barcelona, to see the feminina!, in three weeks. Then there's spring break -- maybe a long date with the Weissman? (Nils, who's hermiting around Europe before returning to a school in Greece that by all evidence doesn't require attendance or any sort of inclination toward work).

Anyway, more pictures! AHHHHH, ON BBC2 THEY'RE SHOWING PICTURES OF A FAT GUY'S POOP!

To the French! (The British hate them more than we could ever comprehend)

It's the tower for a Swiss financial group. The Brits call it the "Sexual Gherkin."

To the French! History dog pees!

2006-01-17T00:02:00.000Z

This is so cool.

Tower of Londoooon (oooooh)

2006-01-16T23:41:00.000Z

In the post the other day, when I said that the crows can't leave the Tower, I meant ravens. And when I said "wings clipped," I meant "wings clipped and put in cages at night."

Today had very little that paired with the excitement of the past few days, with perhaps the greatest scintillation arising when I found microwaveable Chicken Tikka Masala for 1.29 (I can't find the British Pound sign on the keyboard; if anyone is privy to this secret, please spare not a second in sharing it!). This purchase, as part of the body detox mission -- an attempt to roll back the waves of assault that fried food and beers thick as war heroes have perpetrated unto my body -- could leave one or two lasting effects:

1 - If great, it costs around 1/10 of other Indian food around London and the world and could potentially destroy the Indian food culture. Go, Pakistan.

2 - If bad, I promise that my stomach will entertain you over the next few days.

But anyway, here are some more of the pictures from the panoramic tour. Today's set features the Tower of London, which is pinpoint what a castle should look like. Except for the torture devices, which were sorely lacking...or still in use.

Above: A pointed arch in the Tower, inspired, of course, by those who originated the pointed arch (Romans?). Below: A view from in front of the Tower, standing right off the Thames River (not quite as clean as the Charles).

The Greatest Pub Yet and Musings

2006-01-15T22:15:00.000Z

Sepia makes things look much cooler. Tower Bridge. Not falling down.

We had an adventure! Thanks to the Beeradvocate.com, we set our mission toward Parson's Green, in search of a pub called The White Horse. We found it. It was brilliant. Had a huge array of beers from the Isles on tap and then a bottled beer menu that strode through the continent, pausing for extended holiday in Belgium. The place was crowded, filled with various degrees of buggers. But they were great buggers, all so willing to talk about beer and music (don't tell the British you like Oasis, especially if you're not someone who likes Oasis -- it makes them suspicious of you as an citizen of this world. Belle & Sebastian's good for them.) and women. And the more you talk, the more you can prove that it requires a great deal of work in order to slur your words, the more they set upon making you slur. The group of four hipsters from Wimbledon bought me three beers -- a Chimay, a Duvel and an Anchor Liberty (representing the greatest beer-brewing nations in the world). Fantastic! And another guy sitting with one of the members of our entourage mentioned that we may be able to work at a beer festival in the area. Bang-up!

Today's panoramic trip through London (sponsored by Boston University) coursed all through the city. We stopped at the Tower of London, where traitors were killed. Very cool. I'll include pictures all week. Promise.

And our balcony possesses a power splendid for the breeding and collection of thought. It's quiet in South Kensington -- money keeps the volume subdued. In a time when everything races, the balcony's a luxury. Well, so is the entire flat itself. But I guess that's why I'm writing all of this. To capture moments, or at least try to equate some shade of the brilliant vision that accompanies being young and carried away. So, I apologize for being maudlin.

Herra Haiku

2006-01-15T02:15:00.000Z

White Horse Pub.
Parson's Green.
Where the British are philanthropists,
and buy Americans
Belgian beers.
Many.

Weekend Facts!

2006-01-14T12:58:00.000Z

-- On the Tower of London (where all those nasty and exciting torture devices brought justice to traitors), it's said that if the crows that perch there ever leave, it'll be the end of the monarchy. To avert such a paradigm shift, many of the crows have had their wings clipped.

-- Notting Hill isn't so much an all-white district that allows itself to be governed by Hugh Grant; rather, it's quite a ruddy and ethnic district.

-- The most televised sport in London so far has not been football (soccer). It has been darts. And both men enter the tiny circle to the Rocky Theme.

-- The British hate the French much more than Americans ever could.

-- One of the contestants on the latest Big Brother (with Dennis Rodman!) is a Member of Parliament (MP). But because his celebrity makes other MPs wildly jealous, they are clamoring for him to return.

On for a run through Hyde Park and to Harrod's!

These are pictures:

Joe, standing in front of King William III (the one who married Mary, and inspired the thusly named college in Virginia). This castle, Kensington Castle, was where all the flowers were laid when Princess Diana died.

The Indians suffer from a very great lack of fonts on their design computers. The Irish are very quick to lend theirs, though.

The Meanest Time

2006-01-13T20:53:00.000Z

Note: The camera has not accompanied me in the last two or three journeys because it has been a real bitch about reminding me.

Today was Thames River cruise day, the final in the very well-planned and confusingly executed orientation scheme of the Boston University London Internship Program. So, after imploring that we all go to Bunker Bar (this copy of a German beer club [or what the Brits would conceive it] with copies of American German-inspired beer) and giving us free drinks with our tickets, the sponsors took all 350 of us out on two river boats. The Thames is now even dirtier, though now it's full with American insides!

That was pleasant. But those of us with well-worn and hardened stomachs had the privilege of viewing the myriad of London landmarks, from Big Ben/Parliament to Tate Modern (an old power plant!), from places where a judge once sentenced criminals chained to the river bed to drown under three high tides to THE MIDDLE OF THE HEMISPHERES! Greenwich, England, home of the very aptly called Greenwich Mean Time. Aside from its very fortuitous geographical persuasion, the town also boasts an array of residences for the very rich and those whose blood courses through golden and aristocratic veins. It's quite a place.

All in all, another lovely day. I promise I'll have proof next time.

2006-01-12T20:55:00.000Z

Oh and great news! The British only have five terrestrial channels -- that's what they call them: 'terrestrial!' Isn't that exciting? And more to that: more to that, even: they have to pay for TV licenses every year. It keeps BBC 1 & 2 free of commercials. So you gotta pay 126 pounds every year to be able to use your TV. If you get caught cheating, you get fined...if you get caught three times, you go to jail.

Jail.

Schedule (pronounced Shed-u-wl)

2006-01-12T20:09:00.000Z

Classes began today. We're here. We're residents of London, finally, stepping past the early and tremulous stage of tourism. And I even convinced the two girls downstairs (Kaylan, a buddy from BU, and Michelle, from Lafayette) to cook stir fry with me. So, for the slight cost of 20+ pounds ($36 or so), we got to save money. Lovely. And in a few hours, the Americans will raid yet another British pub (Bunker, this time -- a German bier hall, apparently). From then on, it's

The advent of classes, the renewed rigors of a schedule, offers the holy chance for expansion. With unlimited options (and a surfeit of nebulous time), life loses form. Loses initiative and direction. Now now now, I can set some time to actually find good fish and chips AND THEN go to the gym. And it's brilliant to walk around in South Ken, where the apartments fade off down streets in benign and ceaseless white.

But now, the time has come to collar-on and tighten up some jeans. Cheers!

There are no atheists in South Kensington

2006-01-10T20:51:00.000Z

When the alarms sound, reverberating off each other in disastrous cacaphony, frenzy tears through the mind. What have I done wrong? Whom should I tell I love? Whom should I tell has pastoral eyes or enviable posture?

As it turns out, the alarms woke up because our Soviet roommate Nick encouraged them to do so with very poorly planned steak-cooking that birthed a cloud of smoke. The entire apartment cleared, and a group of about 25 very irritated, loud and unkempt Americans stood next to the park that serves as the focus of the oval of fog-white apartments. And then the RA on call wouldn't pick up her phone. Neither would anyone affiliated with BU. But the fire company did, and they very kindly sent a fire truck with four firemen in helmets to battle the recalcitrant smoke alarm system. But the alarms won, subduing the best button-pressing efforts of London's finest.

We eventually found keys for the alarm box in a downstairs closet. And now I'm writing this. But we're going to watch cricket or some other British fun at a sports pub in Picadilly tonight. Should be ... American.

Adventure One

2006-01-09T20:00:00.000Z

We walked to Picadilly Circus/Trafalgar Square today. Over an hour hike. Brilliant.

The walk harkens back to Boston. We live a few blocks south of Kensington Gardens (where William and Mary once looked over from their palace while eating fish & chips and watching Ab-Fab on BBC2), which sits right next to Hyde Park, separated by a street, leading the mind toward comparisons between these parks and the Public Garden/Boston Common geography. And the street that serves as the top (North) border of the Garden/Park separates the well-maintained natural lands from equally well-maintained apartments and people who sip brandy while they eat fish & chips and watch Ab-Fab. Much like Beacon Street.

Anyway, the pictures have come!

This swan's neck was a snake that flowed from gaunt and limber shoulders. It later ate this woman.

Central London (and London cuisine in general) poses great danger to American pedestrians for manifold reasons, not the least of which is the direction of traffic (left side) and the pervading bloodthirst of those who compose the traffic. But secondly, and most importantly, its architecture rises in an alarming fashion:

In America, we have New York, Philly, Boston, Los Angeles, Des Moines. Buildings rocket skyward, almost beyond the realm of comprehension of humans. Tall buildings impress, but they also dizzy in a repetition benign. In London, the structures ascend along a surprising line. Something so ornate and positively kinda-modern should not stand as tall as it does. Yet, there they stand, awing like they have for more time than people have spent eating fish & chips and watching Ab-Fab.

Also, I have taken a football team! Its name is Wigan and it's really fantastic! It's No. 5 in the British Premier League this year, but it's this team of scumbags who get drunk and play soccer (football...bah) and just made it back to the Premier League this year after being banned or something for a while. They're so poor that not a single soccer store in London carries their t-shirts, according to our study that involved a sample size of one.

No one slipped.

Requesting Entry

2006-01-09T10:06:00.000Z

Flying through the night and into the light was a very cool experience. Aside from the torturous jet lag, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Then we arrived in London and went through all those laborious and generally boring details of moving in: unpacking, pleasantries, grabbing a pint (Fuller's Special...very warm and pleasant with unexpectedly bold hops) buying beer, etc.

And upon first glimpse (and final impression, I presume) of Londoners, all stereotypes are true. After sitting next to a sweet Irish lady on the plane, who discussed politics, postmodernism and Houston, Tx. with me, I was prepared for a group of people who already aren't too keen on conversation -- especially with American devils. And we are American devils, especially William, a colossal Asian man with a voice like a volcanic eruption and a hatred of Russians. London waitresses don't serve you; they wait for you to leave so they can continue their conversations while their tiny and silver-haired male accomplices waltz around your table and stare at you with eyes that demand your attention and annoyance. And their food is terrible. Just such basic mistakes made in cooking: what should be hot is cold (and vice-a-versa) and sauces are choked by an abundance of mince meat that renders the product some sort of bland, tomato-sauce-resembling mush. Delicacy here, apparently

But today will be mega tourism day. I'll check back in with pictures soon, I promise.

Takeoffs and Landings

2006-01-07T08:20:00.000Z

Song: Inner noise!

The BU London website is undecided between accusatory and apologetic tones, telling me at once to 'not think of the differences [which I'll soon talk about] in cultures as inferior or wrong, because that will ruin [my] trip,' but also that 'the English prefer to live in less modern residences; that is, if you take a shower, it could take perhaps a few hours to not only refill the water but to also heat it up!"

According to the site, the British also prefer to live without desks and are "quite comfortable" in the computer labs provided. And with blood pudding.

So the plane leaves Newark at 9:45 p.m. and will land in London about 5.5 (+5) hours from then, settling onto the landing strip and opening its doors to a land of colour and pubs that close with the frequency of planetary alignment!