Off He Goes: Insight into Noah's travels

Trieste Photo Contest

2009-06-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

I've been back in VT for a week now, and though I am thrilled to be home, I find myself missing beautiful Trieste. What better way to remember my favorite Italian city than by blowing up a photo and putting it on my wall. The only problem is I am having trouble choosing just one.

Above are my top five Trieste photos of the year, and I was hoping you all could help me choose the best (see poll in the top-right corner).

Thanks,

-Noah

Last Post?

2009-06-12T04:11:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since my last post and with good reason...I've been busy. After struggling with exams, I had the pleasure of hosting Mom and Dad for a week in Trieste followed by more than a few celebrations, the best of which involved sipping cocktails at eight in the morning with surprise pancakes with smuggled Vermont maple syrup (thanks Mom).

I'm staring at a packed bag and looking for words as I head home after what seems like a lifetime in Europe. I'm not sure how I will adjust to returning to buffalo wings instead of buffalo mozzarella, shorts instead of speedos, and a 24 hour news cycle instead of no news at all.

The only conclusion I can possibly come to at the moment is the fact that it's not the places we go that make travel so fulfilling, but the people we meet along the way, so thank you to one and all that made this year unforgettable. Goodbyes are difficult, so rather than get emotional, I am going to think about what Groucho Marx would say to me if he were here:

"Go, and never darken my towels again."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

TRL Awards in Trieste

2009-05-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

Ah MTV...thank you so much for providing an unparalleled night of entertainment. Piazza Unitá d'Italia was full of live Italian pop music, snappily dressed VJs (Video Jockey's for anyone who grew up before Carson Daly was and then ceased to be a household name), thousands of screaming teenage girls, and a surprising amount of babies in strollers.

The performers performed, the crowd cheered, and jokes were made. Being an MTV, pop-culture driven event there was a lot of English infused into the dialogue, and some of the performing artists didn't speak Italian themselves, which always made for a nice awkward moment when the Italian VJ would say to the Norwegian singer, "May I kiss you?! I have to kiss you!" before leaning in for Baci on both cheeks.

As alway,s Italian idioms dominated, and I particularly enjoyed the frequent use of "Che bordello," which translates literally to "what a whorehouse," and was a great compliment to the screaming fans, in this sense meaning something to effect of "you guys are fucking crazy!"

My friends and I soon grew weary of bad Italian rap, commercial breaks, and award recognition for people like Hillary Duff over people like Beyoncé...an absolute travesty, so we moved out to the pier and shared some drinks and a full view of Piazza Unitá with other international students. When the ceremony and concert ended, we found an outdoor bar and made a bit of a bordello of our own. Below is the intro to the awards and above is a shot I snapped from the pier.

That's For Women!

2009-05-05T03:34:00.000-07:00

I bought quite the souvenir in Granada and just realized that I forgot to share the story so off we go...

I was walking around the squeaky clean cobble-stoned streets of the old city (tires and shoe soles literally chirp every time a person tries to change directions) and found myself in the Arab markets. My friend Sarah, who studies in Granada, which like Trieste is marked by the footprint of many cultures, suggested I pick out something to remember my trip.

As I meandered through shops full of hookahs, tea sets, and tapestries I wondered what I could purchase that would be a unique reminder of my time in Granada, something that I would not be able to find anywhere else in Europe. I was about to give up, when I was blinded by the bright blue and gold trim of an Arabian robe fit for a prince.

"Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick," I said before asking the smiley attendant if he could retrieve it for me from it's position on a high hook. He handed it toward Sarah, but she told him the robe was for me. He quickly agreed and told us how handsome it was. I tried the thing on, deciding that it's soft material and breathability would make it the perfect summer lounging garment; ideal for sitting in a Vermont backyard and arousing cockeyed looks from neighbors. My three female American escorts congratulated me on the purchase and we headed to one of Sarah's favorite hookah bars to celebrate.

When we showed my souvenir to the bar's owner, he held it out in front of Sarah just as the man who sold it to me had, but she was quick to explain that the robe was for me.

"For him, nooooooo," he said before doubling over with laughter. "haha he bought this for himself! It's for women!" He was so delighted that he had to tell someone. He shouted to the back of the bar and a waiter emerged to laugh with him,

"Che guapa! That's for women you know," said the waiter as the owner put the apparent dress on over my head and then pulled at the material until it appeared that I had the right sized chest to fill it out.

He asked if I had a camera on me, and when I produced it, the bar owner stopped a man on the street to take a photo of the two of us. The photographer removed his glasses, lined up the shot, and then paused and pulled his eye away from the viewfinder.

"That's for women you know," he said as a click sounded to produce the image above.

After bidding the hysterical group farewell, we continued down the street, but soon found that the heckling was not over. A man on a pay-phone told his wife, boss, or bookie to hang on a sec, before covering the phone with his palm and shouting,

"That's for women!" I laughed and shot him a thumbs up and he returned the gesture.

Though I am surely the laughing stock of the Arab markets, the good news is I do have a unique souvenir from Granada, and I can't think of a better way to confuse an old Vermonter than by asking him if he has the time while wearing a beautiful Moroccan dress. Although with my luck, he'll probably say, "It's 9:30...you know that dress is for women right?"

An Italian Education

2009-04-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

I've had a strange day. I was abducted after lunch by a Spaniard and an Argentine guy who's name I can't pronounce. They took me to a bar to have coffee and to do something they referred to as "selling each other to women." I think they wanted to talk to Italian girls and pull the ol' wingman routine with the help of a smiley American, but unfortunately, the girls must have heard we were coming and completely avoided the aforementioned cafe.

Though there were no females to be had, we found the next best thing: twenty rowdy Italian dudes celebrating the graduation of a friend by making him run shirtless through a gauntlet. We may not have been able to sell each other to women, but the three of us had quite the time drinking coffee and slapping a stranger until his back was red and covered in congratulatory welts. I am less shocked by the abuse for graduates as I am by the fact that anyone can earn enough credit to reach the gauntlet stage at all.

Upon returning from Spain, I tried to go to my comparative politics class and couldn't find it anywhere. This lecture had been an elusive catch to begin with, meeting from 6-8 p.m. on Tuesdays, 11-1 p.m. on Wednesdays, and 9-11 a.m. on Thursdays (how anyone is supposed to make a schedule without classes conflicting is beyond me). After trying desperately to find comparative politics for a week, even taking extreme measures such as looking for it in different environments, hunting early in the morning, and leaving bait and a rope-trap outside my room, I hung up my safari hat for the weekend and decided I would have to try to tackle my academic prey next week.

When I showed up at the original classroom at 5:45 on Tuesday, I found the door locked and the lights off. A few students had gathered outside by 6:00 which convinced me to continue to wait and sure enough, at 6:15 a young woman arrived and unlocked the door. I followed the students inside and took my normal seat in the back, but something seemed different and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Did the professor get a haircut? New shoes perhaps? I knew he looked different somehow but...oh I know, he's twenty years younger and a woman now.

When I asked this new professor what happened she gave me a look that said, "who are you?" and I gave her a look that said, "who are you?" It was awkward. It turns out that some time during the mysterious week where I lost my class, I also lost a professor, and worst of all I lost an exam, as in I missed it. There are only two tests during the semester so I thought my chances of passing the only class I need to transfer back to UVM had disappeared faster than an Italian university course. However, the new professor kindly informed me that the tests are only one option for passing the course.

I will be taking an oral exam on June 3rd...that is, if I can find it. Wish me luck.

Paella with the Family Gea

2009-04-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Gea (pronounced "Hey-Ya" with a bit of Chutzpah at the beginning) made good on his promise and drove us to his parents house in Orihuela, which has about as many gorgeous cathedrals as inhabitants.

Gea's family does not speak English, and my American companions and I do not speak Spanish. Oh what an awkwardly silent lunch we must have had you say, but no. In another example of how people can always find a way to communicate, the lunch was full of conversation. Gea would sometimes interpret from Italian to Spanish and vice-versa, or hand signals and smiles proved to be enough.

Mother Gea bopped into the kitchen throughout the meal, constantly returning with heaping plates of Paella, seafood platters, bowls piled high with fruits that I have never seen before, cakes, and even champagne famous in five continents. She seemed constantly disappointed with her own brilliant food. "Not enough meat in the Paella," she complained, shaking her head. I did my best to make her feel better by eating as much as possible and butchering the Spanish language, "es buena, esta me gusta."

Mother Gea seemed less upset by the food as by the information we gave her. When she learned that my American friends and I had walked fifteen minutes from the Valencia bus station to Gea's apartment she was concerned. When she found out that we would eventually be taking a twelve hour bus ride from Granada to Barcelona she was not pleased. She was visibly upset by the fact that I am only twenty years old and so far away from my family, and when we told her how much the average American education costs I thought she might faint.

Thankfully there was no reason to worry in an emergency as all of the Geas work in medicine, except Fernando. Because he studies engineering, the oldest son is the subject of constant jokes and ridicule, but he takes in good stride. "I don't like medicine, they do, but it's not for me," he told me proudly.

Mother Gea pointed around the table and informed us that Father Gea was a doctor, she helped at the hospital sometimes, the middle son was a nurse, and her youngest was studying to be a dentist. When we raised our champagne glasses we toasted to, what else? Salud: health.

When I had eaten more Paella and Spanish fruit than any hungover individual should, Gea took us on a small tour of pristine Orihuela, and even drove us to the train station and waited on the platform, completing his role as super-host. Next time I raise my glass in Spain, it will surely be accompanied by a toast to engineering.

Valencia

2009-04-20T01:38:00.000-07:00

My good friend Fernando Gea proved to be an excellent host when I arrived in Valencia, frantically driving a couple of hours from his parents' house to show me the city and let my friends and I sleep in his apartment.

Valencia has everything, including bumping nightlife, a medieval city center, the ultra-modern city of arts and sciences designed by native born Santiago Calatrava, a dry river full of palm trees, beautiful beaches, and even it's own language, (don't let anyone hear you calling Valencian a Catalan dialect).

My two American friends and I spent the days oversleeping and sight-seeing, Gea providing tours in Italian, which were informative and hilarious. When we arrived at a nearby restaurant around 10:30 p.m. it was deserted (too early for a Spanish dinner), but all of the tables were already claimed by parties arriving later. The sympathetic host was so helpful that he called another restaurant on our behalf, and five minutes later, I found myself drinking endless sangria and eating like a king at a table that read "Fernando."

The one thing missing from my Valencia visit was the real Paella. Gea had warned me not to try the famous rice dish in Barcelona for, as he claimed, I would only be able to find the true version in his city where it was created. Unfortunately, all of the good Paella places were closed for Holy Week. "No problem," Gea insisted, his mother also makes a great Paella, and she only lives two hours from Valencia; conveniently enough, on the way to my next Spanish stop, Granada.

I snapped the picture above after a rainstorm, and it might be my favorite from Europe so far.

Obama British Africa

2009-04-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

Barcelona is unique. Where else can one find wide elegant boulevards, dream-inducing architecture, sandy beaches, and hundreds of mustached men offering cold beers for one Euro?

I saw the sights, and the zoo too, but the most eclectic part of Barcelona, for me anyway, was the night life.

In only a couple of nights I found myself in Irish pubs, Tapas bars, a hip jazz club with a lanky white Louis Armstrong impersonator, an Indian tea bar with thrones for seats, and a pub devoted completely to tobacco pipes. The strangest of all had to be a place called Obama British Africa.

The bar was on the way to my hostel and the leopard skin and heads on the outside made me say to myself, I know I have to go in there, but do I really want to?

The inside was adorned with various pelts, statues of long necked Africans in glass cases, and signs that said things like, "I do enjoy my cup of Lyon's Tea sold in spreads of MOMBASA." The photograph directly across from me portrayed a particularly happy pith-helmeted imperialist displaying a slain crocodile while fifteen or so loin-clothed fellows looked on. As if the wall hangings and general backwardness of the place wasn't enough, every single plasma screen TV showed PGA golf. I felt uneasy to say the least, and when my seven euro margarita arrived and tasted like piss, I felt even more uneasy. I needed some answers.

The waitress was very patient as I peppered her with questions about the bar that seemed to be what the folks at Applebees or Chilis would come up with if told to decorate a British officers' club. The waitress informed me that Obama British Africa was opened a few months before the real Obama was elected. She wasn't exactly sure why.

"No offense," I said, "but I could not imagine President Obama coming here for a drink."

"I know," she replied. "people tell me that every day."

¿Is This a Spanish Keyboard or What?

2009-04-13T05:04:00.000-07:00

I used to hate Spain, and for terrible reasons. My first journy abroad led me to Italy with a group of high school friends, most of whom had taken a similar trip to Spain the year before. Naturally this resulted in a lot of,

¨Oh my God, that´s just like the statue we saw in Spain!¨
¨¿Hey speaking of restaurants, remember that fifty course meal we had in Spain?¨
¨Lets talk about the bullfight we saw in Spain.¨
¨This street is dirty. It would never be this dirty in Spain.¨
¨I love Spain.¨

This sort of banter was frustrating as it often led to unfair comparisons and resulted in a lot of discussion about a place that only some of us had been to rather than enjoyment of what was in front of our faces. Instead of taking things out on my friends (I hate you guys by the way), I took it out on the country itself. After making so many Spanish friends this year in Trieste, I have been anxiously awaiting a chance to put those feelings to bed, and ¿Guess what?

I love Spain.

Barcelona is unique and includes everything a city should offer. The wide streets allowed me to breathe again, the sights lived up to the hype, and the beach was full of characters, providing for superb people watching.

Valencia had an unprecidented mix of ancient and modern neighborhoods. We ate dinner at eleven and hit the clubs at four or five, and best yet, I got to hang out with Spaniards on their own turf.

I´m here in Granada where the sun is shining and the Tapas are plentiful. Pictures and detailed stories will arrive when I return to Trieste on the 18th of April, so see you then.

Language Tips

2009-04-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

For some folks just being lingual is enough, but for anyone looking to add a Bi- or a Multi- to that lingual label, here are some friendly suggestions.

1. Take a structured course or lessons: A capable instructor and regular homework assignments will not only be helpful for proficiency in a specific tongue, but will also provide necessary skills for understanding the mechanics of language itself. A general grasp on tenses, number and gender agreement, sentence structure, etc, will form a solid foundation for dabbling in any language.

2. Set realistic goals: Fluency takes years of practice or complete immersion. It's going to take a long time to become comfortable with any new language, so start small. Scoring well on an exam, understanding a foreign pop song, or looking across a restaurant table at a confused friend and saying "if you want chicken, go with the one at the bottom," are important steps.

3. Read the internet: There are a lot of free resources out there to improve reading skills. Before coming to Italy, I checked out an Italian newspaper online or browsed Italian Wikipedia whenever I got a chance. Learning about the life and times of a canine movie star might not be the most useful information in the world, but learning it in another language (even without understanding a great deal), will improve vocabulary, comprehension, and even writing skills.

4. Listen to the internet: Can't quite afford that $300.00 Rosetta Stone CD set? Try a free podcast; all you need is iTunes and an internet connection. http://www.apple.com/itunes/ is a good place to start.

5. Be wary of online translators: Yes, the internet does provide many free, useful language resources. However, direct internet translators like Babel Fish don't know a thing about idioms or context; the true essence of communication. Use them sparingly, like to translate a mystery word rather than a mystery sentence or paragraph.

6. Find someone to practice with: A native speaker can help with correcting mistakes and teaching the things we can't learn in a structured class (yes this includes profanity, woohoo). Sometimes native speakers can be intimidating though; after all, they are fluent.

Start with a fellow beginner, and even though mistakes will be made, progress is inevitable. Try mixing in food, drink, or sport to help the conversation flow.

7. Make lists: It's difficult to carry a dictionary around at all times. Try a tiny notebook instead, or even jot down unknown words on the back of a business card or receipt. Looking their definitions up later will increase the size of the all important vocabulary, and the act of writing something down in itself improves the chances of remembering it.

8. Leave the ego at home: Anyone practicing a foreign language is going to say things like, "I don't want to pay higher taxis!" and "May I find a piece of your lasagna?" Laugh it off and try again; the mistakes are half the fun.

Any tips to add? Share them in the comments section in whatever language you'd like.

Shameless Plug TIme

2009-03-27T05:11:00.001-07:00

I just got one of my articles and a few photographs published at In the Know Traveler, an online publication that is all about travel, so please check it out, and tell your friends about the site.

http://www.intheknowtraveler.com/3280

Don't be Scared

2009-03-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

Why are Italians so afraid of the weather? I ask myself this question every time it rains and I find myself outside surrounded by umbrella-covered Triestini running for shelter like its World War III. Literally every single person in Trieste carries an umbrella around all day, and they think I am crazy when I say, "It's just water."

At first I was convinced they were all witches and would melt. I imagined them saying, "Oh no, the water from the sky again! What a world what a world," but that's just ridiculous. Maybe it's because they wear more expensive clothes that I do and the rain is damaging to their fashion. Or maybe the rain in Italy is acidic, and my health is in great danger, but I won't find out until I have a squid baby years from now. Whatever the explanation, their fear seems to be present when the sun is out as well.

Today I strolled downtown for a haircut. Being sixty degrees and sunny, I said to myself, no need for a jacket, and took off wearing nothing more than jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. You would have thought I had left the house naked. Everyone stared at me, which I am used to being an obvious American, but today they weren't disapproving, it was more like the Triestini feared for my life. The ladies in fur coats seemed especially alarmed, and one even asked if she could help me in any way. When I arrived at the salon (barbershops don't exist here, sorry fellas), I thought the woman behind the front desk was going to have a heart attack when I didn't hand her a jacket to hang up.

I wish I could load them all onto a giant plane and take them to Vermont during a hailstorm, the type in April when the sun is out, and people are all outside in T-shirts saying things like, you call that hail? But then again, it's all relative. When my stylist went reaching for the hair gel, I ran out of there screaming like an Italian in a rainstorm. I's just a good thing I didn't have to stop at the front desk for a jacket.

Crying Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh

2009-03-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a wonderful, shenanigan-filled week in Ireland. With St. Paddy's Day, gorgeous weather, and the Six Nations (Ireland took home it's first rugby grand slam since 1948), my timing could not have been better.

Ireland is a difficult place to write about. I find myself having trouble coming up with superlatives, as most everything I experienced was either awesome, amazing, or green. The only real tourist attraction I managed to fit in was a day-trip to the Cliffs of Moher, an amazing sight on Ireland's West Coast. It's the kind of place where you can answer your phone like this:

Ring Ring Ring

"Hello?"

"Oh hey what's up."

"Not too much, just standing on the edge of Europe, what are you up to?"

The best part of our awesome day trip, which included stops at abbey's, ancient stone sculptures, and Fairy Forts (where the leprechaun's live), was our amazing bus driver/tour guide/comedian for the day, Ray.

With his green top-hat and whimsical accent, Ray informed us about the Burren, the lunar-like limestone landscape unique to this part of Ireland, and why exactly you don't mess with the little people. His sense of humor was amazing.

After setting us up for twenty minutes about politicians who had homes in this part of Ireland, Ray drove the bus slowly past a couple of particularly dirty donkeys. When he explained the origins of Irish cowsheeps (apparently all the inter-species hanky panky started when the cows were cold one night) he showed us what clearly was a llama, and when the CD player in the bus broke, Ray sang.

If anyone else finds themselves in Galway, please take Galway City Tours specifically. Why you ask?

Because they're awesome.

Party Boat

2009-03-07T06:55:00.000-08:00

I finally understand why Europeans don't do Halloween. They have Carnival. It's another excuse for young people to get innovative with costumes, drink and dance like the heathens of old, and have a parade or two. My favorite aspect of Carnival is how each country, each city even, has developed completely different traditions, and unique ways to get into the spirit of Carnival.

In Venice they dress creepily and stand perfectly still, while Croatians prefer a good old fashioned block party. In the festive boat department, the Slovenes take the cake, notice the microphone...

Noah's Seven Rules for Passport Related Emergencies

2009-03-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

Traveling is a series of catastrophes. The better we cope with these daily crises when we're on the road, the better we can enjoy a sunset on a deserted beach, a bullfight on a deserted beach, or clinging to dear life while flying backwards through a British roundabout. What is the most terrifying of these travel emergencies you ask? Passport issues.

Unfortunately or fortunately, I have become an expert on passport problems, and by following these easy to remember rules, you too can seemlessly make your way in and out of many a country with insufficient or even non-existent documentation.

Rule #1 Don't Panic: Anyone who has traveled with me knows that I don't usually follow rule #1. When somebody tells me not to panic, I tend to respond by ripping handfuls of my hair out or throwing up on a nearby animal, but seriously, at the moment you first realize you have a passport problem, there is often nothing you can do about it. Rather than tearing your rental car apart looking for the thing, go party with Croatian soccer hooligans. You'll call the embassy in the morning with a headache, but it will be worth it.

Rule #2 Dress the Part: A collard shirt says, "I am an upstanding individual with enough money to support myself, you should feel honored to let me into your country, despite my damaged passport." A tie says, "I have something to hide."

Rule #3 Copy, Copy, Copy: A photocopy of a valid passport can be a lifesaver, and can speed up the process when applying for a replacement. Carry a few of them in a few different places. This is one of those things that Mom reminds you of every day that is actually a good idea, just remember to keep a copy in your coat...which you should always wear so you don't catch a cold.

Rule #4 Smile: It's not that machine-gun wielding government police officer's fault that you can't find your passport.

Rule #5 Lie: Seriously.

Rule #6 Lie Well: When I accidentally washed my passport the night before jumping on a plane from Italy to the UK, I told multiple officials that it had been damaged in Venice during the recent flooding. Had they asked any follow up questions, I was ready with a full story, the date of the damage, and which Ventian hotel I was staying at. When my passport was "stolen" in Croatia, I arrived at the American embassy with paperwork from a police officer in Split corroborating my story. Remember, lying is only helpful until you get caught. Don't let them catch you!

Rule #7 Drip Dry: Your Passport won't respond well to hair dryers, best to stand it up and fan out the pages.

Carnivale...in Slovenia?

2009-02-15T06:10:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, we must take a break from the chair shenanigans to discuss Carnivale. A significant celebration, which I thought was only significant on this side of the Italy/Slovenia border. That notion jumped out the window when I received the following email from the hostel in Ljubljana (which used to be a Yugoslavian prison) where I will be staying next weekend, when my brother comes to visit.

Hello,

Our bar staff organising the party during your stay and it would be really great if you could join us.

I am just sending you their invitation and it would be also great if you could tell me if you are interested in that party...

****We would like to invite you to our carnival party on Saturday 21st February. In our hostel we will organize a masquerade, dance in masks with our local DJ playing disco funk music. You can dress up however you wish to release your imagination, or we can help you by giving you face masks, so that you can join the party anonymously. A competition will also be held for choosing the best three masks and rewarding it properly. Through the whole night our "evil" barman will mix carnival cocktails and shooters so you will not go thirsty. Each mask will also get a welcome drink to get you started. The party in the hostel will last until 1 o'clock, after which our staff can help you with directions for continuing the party. We would like to know, if you are interested in joining us on our quest to banish winter so that we can make adequate preparations.****

Kind regards,

Hostel Celica

I told them that banishing winter was one of my top priorities, especially when disco funk music and evil barmen are involved...it should be quite the weekend.

Chairgate Part 1

2009-02-11T03:19:00.000-08:00

This is my chair. I have never complained about the top piece that often becomes detached from it's flimsy plastic body, nor have I made a fuss about the fact that I am the only person in my entire dormitory who does not have a nice, blue, rolly desk chair. Last night I went with some friends to Alberto's room in the building next to mine to watch a movie. Right before we left my phone rang.

"My friend."

"Yes?" I said.

"Bring your chair, because I don't think I have enough seats."

"OK," I said.

I put old reliable back together and folded him up for the journey downstairs, outside, and then up more stairs. I made it all the way out into the cool Trieste night air, before I heard the tell-tale whistles and claps of an Italian trying to get my attention. I turned around to find the bald, grey-mustached man who lords over the front desk in my building shouting nonsense. He beckoned me inside and I followed.

"Where are you taking the chair?" He asked like I had kidnapped a small child.

"I am going to my friend's room to watch a movie and he doesn't have enough seats. I will bring it back I promise," I said sarcastically.

"You cannot just bring chairs wherever you'd like Sir. You must sign them out at the desk, this isn't a circus."

This fellow is particularly fond of telling me what the dormitories are not. When we had a late-night game of dice in Alberto's room, he was quick to rap loudly on the door and tell us that the dormitories are not a casino. When Keith and I ran downstairs at 5:30 in the morning to shout and smoke victory cigars after President Obama's victory, he was insistent that the dormitories are not a political rally.

My favorite aspect about this mustached front-desk Czar is his vigilant security of the Casa Dello Studente. When I return in the early hours of the morning after a long night downtown, he always buzzes me through the front door and then stops me at the desk to ask his full-proof security question.

"Room Number?" The first time I told him 17, my actual place of residence, the second time I told him 100, and I guess next time I will be living in room 1,000. It is nice to go to sleep with piece of mind each night knowing that my building is under the watchful eye of Signore Mustachio: after all, the dormitories are not a crime scene.

And so after filling out a few documents, signing my name, and leaving my expired American drivers' license for collateral, I proceeded to Alberto's room to watch a movie. The top of the chair of course snapped off at some point, and we had to stop the film to turn on the lights, so I could fix it.

When I returned to my building and waved the chair at Mustachio, he seemed extremely angry that I had kept my word and he would not be able to report anything to anyone.

The funny thing is, this was not my first chair-related incident in Trieste...

Farewell Lucas Weber

2009-02-04T12:23:00.000-08:00

Trieste lost one of it's finest temporary citizens today as my friend Lucas boarded a train destined for his native Germany, where he will stay briefly, before beginning a seven-month internship in China; the first step in his future career as a superinternational business guru/tycoon.

For those who have never met Lucas, he's a stand up guy, who loves sports and beer (as long as they are German), and has the unique ability of being able to fall asleep while dancing in the middle of a sweaty European club. He made many friends here and will be greatly missed.

If you're lucky, one day Lucas will sing a German song for you.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

2009-01-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

My Spanish friend Charly was walking home from a night out, minding his own business, when he saw a garbage can that had been working way too hard. He decided to help the trash recepticle onto its side so that it could have a good night's sleep and get off its feet for a while.

A few policemen happened to see Charly's friendly gesture, and pulled up next to him, with sirens a-blarin' and lights a-flashin'.

Charly tried to explain himself, but the Carabinieri were not impressed, they insisted that he had vandalized public property, and threw him against the police car for a search. They delved into his pockets and found a car antenna and a side mirror, that Charly had righteously liberated from their slave labor positions on some Italian motorcycle.

Again the Carabinieri were not impressed.

They asked Charly where he lived and when he told them the Casa dello Studente, they knew he was foreign. They did not ask for his name, or any identifying documents, but simply slapped him in the face repeatedly and then knocked him to the ground so that they could kick him a bit. When the beating finished, the Carabinieri drove away, without taking Charly to prison or to any sort of detox facility.

When he told me the story the next day, I asked Charly why he didn't seem particularly upset that he had been beaten by government police, and racially profiled.

"Oh come on Noah," Charly told me. "In Spain it's much worse."

"And why is that?" I asked.

"Because in Spain, the police don't fight like women."

Io Sono Ebreo

2009-01-20T03:13:00.001-08:00

As anyone from Northfield, Vermont can tell you, I am used to being the only Jew in town. However, I am not used to Anti-Semitic and Anti-American graffiti staring back at me from every desk, every stairwell, inside each elevator, and on all of the walls of my dormitory at a major university, yet surprisingly, this is what I see every day here in Trieste.

I am not sure exactly who writes this hate speech all over the place, and I won't speculate as I live in a very diverse student community. However, I find it surprising that the school does nothing to clean the graffiti or distance themselves from it in any way. I am all for free speech, but I think there is a line. Written on the inside door of my elevator:

Bush=Hitler

Hitler fucked your mother

Death to Israel

Death to America

America is Darkness

Fuck Bush

Long-live Palestine

The one person who seems to agree with me that the graffiti has gotten out of hand is my Palestinian friend Mohammed, who is undoubtedly the nicest person I have ever met. He will literally stop in the middle of a meal to walk across a crowded cafeteria and say hello or ask me how my day is going, and I don't think he has ever allowed himself to walk through a door or sit down before I have done so. When I told him I had family in Israel, he didn't treat me any differently. When I confirmed the fact that I was an American Jew, he only wanted to ask me questions.

Mohammed and I had a long discussion the other night, and we agreed that people on both sides of the conflict need to talk to each other more. He explained that if more of his friends met real-live American Jews, they might find out that we're not all clever, rich, lobbyists, and that if more American Jews met real-live Palestinians who have seen atrocities that we could never imagine, we might be able to better understand each other.

The worst part is, I have never been to Israel, but if I wanted to, I could go there right now, even with my sorry excuse for a passport. Mohammed is not allowed to enter his homeland.

Rabbits

2009-01-18T09:01:00.001-08:00

Who is this happy looking fellow next to me you ask? I wasn't sure for a long time. I was convinced he might be my German friend Lucas' grandfather, or at least an uncle. Through conversations in broken English and with some help from Lucas, I managed to figure out that he is the family's Lebanese neighbor, and has been living next door to them for the last thirty years.

He is a furniture artist of great skill. In fact, he re-appoulstered all of the antique furniture in a nearby castle, which is the summer residence for the royal family of the Netherlands. He joined us for dinner every night that I stayed at the Weber residence in little Heistenbach, Germany.

One morning as I ate a meat sandwich for breakfast, I heard the front door slam shut. I poked my head out of the kitchen and saw the friendly neighbor stomping around in snow covered boots. In one hand, he held a large, folded piece of paper, and in the other, what looked like two very dead, skinned rabbits. When I got a closer look, I realized that they were two extremely dead, skinned rabbits.

He unfolded the piece of paper on the kitchen table, and revealed a giant world map that had a few sections torn away and some holes throughout. He said to me, "You. Where you," and indicated with a dangling rabbit that I should point to my place of residence on the map. I showed him Vermont and he seemed pleased. Alberto, and Keith, each indicated toward their home towns, and he seemed extremely pleased. Finally, after studying the map a bit, he gave us a look that seemed to say, oh sorry, you're probably wondering why I am holding these dead rabbits.

He motioned toward the holes and ripped away portions of the map.

"They..." he said, shaking the rabbits in my face and then making exaggerating chomping sounds, moving his teeth up and down.

"So I..." he said as he held up an invisible rifle with his hands. A loud pow sound flew out of his mouth.

"The rabbits were chewing holes in your map, so you shot them?" I asked to clarify, assuming that his English comprehension was better than his speech.

"Yes, and so...dinner."

The rabbits were delicious.

What a Country...

2009-01-14T10:25:00.001-08:00

And so after a quick social binge in The United States of America, I find myself stuck somewhere else, this time, the middle-of-nowhere Germany, as I await a budget flight to Venice-well near Venice, tomorrow afternoon. Thank God I managed to stumble on the lovely Advance Hotel where I may be the only guest, and there may be only one employee who bends over backwards to make my stay as comfortable as possible. For 45 Euro tonight, I get two beds, unlimited coffee and tea, unlímited breakfast food all day, unlimited German television (The Nanny dubbed into German is exactly as entertaining as it sounds), unlimited cheap German beer from the bar downstairs, unlimited shuttles to four types of ethnic restaurants, unlimited banter with the only hotel employee who's name I haven't caught yet, but he imediately knew my last name was Scandinavian and therefore he is wise. Did I mention unlimited sauna use?

I decided to go for the German restaurant since I am in Germany, and I wanted one more plate of assorted meats and kraut before I head back to Italy. When I read the menu and began to laugh the waitress asked me what was wrong. I told her everything was fine and as long as she got me a copy of the menu in English, there would be a big tip in store for her. Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the opening page.

A Hearty Welcome to You Dear Guest

We are delighted to welcome you in the name of our staff in our gastronomical area after only one year of construction time. We will do everything in our more and more hectical and superficial time to give you some beautiful moments which you will hopefully remember positively for a long time.

We can offer many other performances to you:

-Catering on birthday parties

-Meeting facilities

-Wine tasting with vintners from different regions, including a complete meal

There are always different dishes prepared for you from our plentiful menu. Brunch at the "Bohrinsel"- pure pleasure.

At this very moment, we wish you a pleasant stay and delightful moments.

-Your Bohr family and service staff

If anyone else gets stranded at the pathetic Frankfurt Hahn Airport and wants to be treated like royalty for a night, check out:

http://www.advance-hotel-zum-hahn.de/en/index.php

If This Plane Goes Down and I Die Surrounded by Dutch People, I'm Going to Lose It

2009-01-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has followed my blog closely will remember that the Dutch were some of the first people that I came in contact with upon my arrival in the Old World. At first, I was charmed by their gibberish language, their attractive females, and their disregard for acting normally, but I have since cooled on these strange folk.

Maybe it was the thousands of bicyclists that almost ran me over in Amsterdam, or the hotel employee who dropped eight Christmas ornaments on my head in a row while trying to dismantle the tree in the lobby, but the Dutch simply rub me the wrong way.

Now before anyone accuses me of Dutch-bashing, I will admit that I have not spent a great deal of time with anyone from Holland, and therefore my opinions of them are pretty shallow. I implore someone to prove me wrong, but first, a story.

I arrived in Schipol from Frankfurt after pulling an all-nighter, and expected a security checkpoint as I switched terminals, but was pleasantly surprised when I did not have to proceed through any metal detectors or answer any questions. I strutted up to my gate, ready to again move seemelessly from one country to another with a basically invalid passport, when I realized that I might be in trouble.

Gate 12A was completely on lockdown. Instead of a bunch of seated stinky people awaiting a plane, I was greeted by metal detectors, security guards in ridiculous blue blazers, and long lines of stinky people awaiting a plane. I inched forward until I was beckoned to a small podeum-like thing for a Spanish Inquisition of sorts, which of course, I did not expect.

"Are you traveling alone sir?" He began in a Dutch accent with the type of tone that I would use when wearing a headset and asking for donations from wealthy UVM parents.
"Yes."
"And where are you headed today sir?"
"Trieste, Italy."
"Cool Cool. And what's going on there?" He asked like he had found a friend.
"Well I study in Trieste, so."
"Oh cool...wow really cool. What are you studying man?" I failed to see how this was relevant to the security of the aircraft I was about to board.
"Political Science."
"Wow man, that is awesome. Wow. And why didn't you want to study in the United States?"
"Well I do, but I am studying abroad for like a year in Italy you know?"
"Yeah, I've heard of that. Wow." He had begun flipping through my passport at this point, and I interrupted with an explanation before he reached my illegible visa.
"Yeah so my passport got a little roughed up when I was in Venice."
"What do you mean?"
"Well I was there during the flooding and it got wet, so you can't really read the visa."
"Oh that's so crazy man. Crazy. It got all wet huh?"
"Yeah. I have a photocopy of the visa if you want to see it."
"No man that's alright, have a good flight ok. Really, have a good flight." He stamped my passport and was reminded of Groucho Marx quote,

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." I don't exactly feel safe aboard an aircraft that I am allowed on with my sorry excuse for a passport.

I sat in my window seat and prepared to catch-up on some much needed sleep. A squeeze to the arm interrupted me. I opened my eyes and looked upon a middle-aged man with green-framed glasses introducing himself in gibberish.
"No, I don't speak Dutch," I said and leaned my head against the window to indicate I wasn't interested in a new friend.
"Oh American! American!" He said and put his arms up in the air. He would not let me sleep without shaking my hand.
"I am going to America." He informed me. "For a conference."

I congratulated him and went back to sleep. He never let me doze for more than five minutes at a time.
"Sharp, what is sharp?" He asked after an arm squeeze, I did not explain very well.
"Haven't what is haven't?" No good answer there.
"Cut off, cut off." I glanced over at the laminated packet he was flipping through and became intrigued when I saw the subject matter.

Page 1: Characteristics of Roundabouts and Road Crossings
Page 2: Essential Characteristics of Roundabouts
Page 3: Design for a Roundabout that does not Give Cyclists the Right of Way
Page 4: The Mechanics of the English Roundabout
Page 5: Roundabouts and their Significance in Modern Society

Each page was covered with detailed diagrams of traffic circles, and he studied them like his life depended on it.

"Cut off, what is cut off?"
"It's like when one car goes like this, even though it's not their turn." I traced the action with a couple of fingers on one of his roundabout schematics.
"Cut off, this is cut off? No I think cut in."
"No cut off."
"Cut in."
"We say cut off."
"We say cut in." I stopped talking to him.

The aspiring roundaboutologist quickly ruined any chance of getting onto my good side by killing a special moment for me. United Airlines was showing the New Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and I was watching as intently as he studied his diagrams. Now for anyone who is a fan of Woody Allen, or a fan of girls kissing, this is the movie for you. Just as Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz began to experment in a Barcelona darkroom while developing some sensual photos, I felt a flying Dutch elbow to the ribcage.

"Ha," said the traffic specialist, pointing at the little screen mounted on the seat in front of me. He continued the nudging, the laughing, and the insistant pointing, until the scene was over, forever ruining something beatiful for me.

Sometime after watching him slobber over a mayo sandwich, the plane began to experience some turbulence. The captain warned us that things might be a little bumpy, an understatement to say the least. We bounced around and jolted from side to side, my stomach lurched. I chugged my coffee before it ended up in my lap, and just as the young passengers began to cry, I heard the traffic circle enthustiast laughing again.

"Haha weeee," he yelled, nudging me in the ribs again and throwing his arms up in the air like we were on a fantastic roller coaster. I may have attributed this to the man being a bit strange rather than his Dutch status, until I looked around.

Two thirds of the plane had adopted the same roller coaster pose while shouting wees and other nonsense. The parents cruelly forced their crying children to put their arms up as well, and I was sure that I was going to plummet to my death surrounded by blissfully confused Dutchmen. I imagined that if the oxygen masks fell from the ceiling that they would pretend it was Halloween, when the captain told us to grab the inflatable cushions from under our seats, the Dutch passengers would have a grand pillow fight, when we crash landed in the middle of the Atlantic, my final visions before drowning would be of Dutch backstroke competitions.

When we finally did touch down relatively unharmed, I vowed to go out of my way to avoid returning to the Netherlands.

Dam Square Please

2009-01-03T02:50:00.001-08:00

I just returned to the UK after four thrilling days in the Amsterdam, also known as Disney Land for American college students. The whole place seems surreal, with red lights marking the streets where one can be enticed by bored-looking women of the night in every window, a smell that's a mix of marijuana and vomit (heavy on the vomit), and the feeling that no matter what you do, there's no need to be embarrassed, for the person right next to you is usually doing something more incriminating.

Waiting patiently in line to buy a drug that's illegal in most of the Western world from a slow moving middle eastern guy wearing a christmas hat and sunglasses at eleven p.m. on December 30th, while he scarfs down pizza without a napkin is an odd feeling. The coffeeshops lack the warmness of the neighborhood drug dealer, these men are straight business, and they treat you as a customer and nothing more, no offers to watch Dazed and Confused on a smelly couch, no trading, no strange longing for companionship from deviant loners.

Although like the small town American dealer, the coffeeshop proprietors do indulge in the same ridiculous names for what all probably comes from the exact same place. In fact, to me, though I'm no connoisseur, Purple Skunk, Hawaiian Kush, Jamaican Zebra, White Widow/Jamaican Zebra Kush Cross, Orange Crush, Juicy Fruit, Blueberry Yum Yum, and Tropic Thunder all smell eerily similar...again, it's a business.

Seeing the fuzzy green stuff in a more or less legal environment has made me understand why Amsterdam is trying to gradually move away from it's anything goes image. With the recent outlawing of magic mushrooms and the soon to be true phasing out of coffeeshop toleration, simply put...they're tired of being infested with shady people, and to be honest, I get it.

Everyone seemed seedy, sketchy, or otherwise guilty of something, and it made me feel dirty inside, as if I would never be able to talk to a child again. The entire week I just wanted to take shower after shower, although don't get me wrong, I had a fantastic time, including the New Year's festivities in Dam Square, which involved a lot of shouting in Netherlands gibberish, giant multicolored glow sticks, groups of middle-aged Dutch women playing Motown songs on saxophones, and the largest display of unsupervised fireworks I have ever seen, (One such cracker ended up finding it's way to a rolling stop underneath one of my friend's who was having too much Dam fun to notice, luckilly it was a dud). I highly recommend Dam Square to anyone who has had enough of Dick Clark and the same old New Year's Rockin' Eve.

My New Years resolution? Demand that if anyone wants to use the words "Legalize" and "It" in the same sentence, white dude dreadlocks, hunger strike, drum circle or not, that they be forced to spend a week in Amsterdam and see if they don't beg to be rescued before it's over.

Sometimes We Make Stupid Mistakes...

2008-12-20T20:12:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, I am going to have to bow out on my outlandish Facebook promise of posting once a day as I am off to Amsterdam tomorrow and can't guarantee that I will be anywhere near the internet nor in the right frame of mind to eloquently write anything...

In other news, sometimes we make stupid mistakes.

Sometimes we make stupid mistakes at inconvenient times...

At two am...the morning before I was scheduled to fly from Italy to London, I realized that my passport was not in its usual place. I knew it had returned from Prague, where could it be? I unpacked my bag, unrolling and unfolding the contents until I felt a strange bulge in the pocket of my freshly cleaned khaki pants. My travel document, the one thing that can prove I am who I say I am in Europe, had been sent on a sudsy tumble through the washing machine.

The mangled thing was a shadow of its formal self, and I panicked to say the least. Ink was running, pages were separated from bindings, everything was in disarray, especially my

Italian visa, which had essentially washed away and was now completely illegible. I tried to dry it with a blow-dryer, which made things worse.

I got Mom and Dad on the phone and they called the U.S. State Department...apparently I might have some trouble, some unsympathetic woman claimed.

I fretted all morning on trains from Trieste to Venice, Venice to Treviso, and my friends got tired of reassuring me. I pressed my passport in a book, which made it flatter, but not necessarily less "tampered with" in appearance. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it to the Treviso airport and then fretted some through security. Thankfully, I was not hassled or cavity searched.

I ate a sandwich and laughed at the ridiculousness of my previously worried state.

"We're going to London!" I shouted to my friends, sure that I was home free.

I continued toward my Ryanair gate, not more than a hole in a wall, when I realized that I had claimed victory prematurely, there was another line leading toward a fresh passport check. I waited in the queue for non-EU citizens and held my breath.

Awaiting me inside a glass protected booth were two intensely uniformed Italian policemen, who looked like they meant business. I slid my sorry looking document under the glass and waited to be hauled off to some dungeon. The policeman reached my visa page, which looked like it had been purposefully scraped away, and gave me an appalled look.

"Ummm, when I was in Venice," I began nervously in Italian."

"Yes?"

"It was wet, and my passport became wet."

"It became wet?" The more intense looking of the two officers asked me.

"Yes sir, it became wet."

"In the water?" he asked while making a gesture like I had dipped my passport into a cup of coffee, "like so?"

"Yes, like so," I answered, mimicking the dipping gesture which must have been a sight for the people in line behind me. A pause. I assumed it was dungeon time.

He took out some sort of drill-looking device and I prepared for him to slice my passport in half dramatically, but he did no such thing. Instead, he started laughing. He tapped his fellow officer to make sure he understood what was so funny.

"In the water. Look at this, man. In the water." He repeated the Dunkin' Donuts move and stamped my passport multiple times with the drill.

"Enjoy London."

Aspects of Alice/ Call me Hurricane

2008-12-19T13:08:00.000-08:00

I awoke some time in the morning and dragged Sam out of bed for necessary sightseeing. We entered the touristy street preceding the famous Charles Bridge, built by King Charles IV of the Holy Roman Empire. After trying on communist hats and helmets of all shapes and sizes, we arrived at the entrance to the bridge where I saw possibly the only black men in the entire Czech Republic. They were all dressed as sailers and solicited tourists for river boat rides.

"You want a nice boat man? Free whole drink man. Freewholedrink."

We crossed the Vltava river on foot, over the exquisitely designed bridge, which would have been undoubtedly more exquisite if not for the metal scaffolding all over this piece of history that must be constantly renovated.

Winding through cobble-stoned street, we eventually reached the castle, which could have easily been classified as a district like in Budapest. The St. Vitus Cathedral was over-the-top in the ornate department, and gave me an excuse to drop the term flying buttresses into conversation more than once.

We continued toward the Golden Lane, the big tourist attraction in the heart of the castle that I had heard so much about. After purchasing an overpriced ticket, we entered a lane of medieval houses and shops. After passing through, we entered a tower dedicated to showcasing torture equipment and penis armor, and then struggled to find anywhere else to go other than an exit.

"So where is this Golden Lane?" Sam asked.

"I think that was it dude."

"There's no way." We asked a security guard and it turned out that we had in fact just passed through the most overrated tourist attraction on the face of the earth.

After a few beers and a few Becherovkas, we made out was to one of Prague's famous black light theaters for an Alice and Wonderland themed show. The middle-of-winter, Sunday night crowd only took up about 10% of the theater's available seats, making me feel like I was about to sit through an elementary school piano recital.

Alice flipped and twirled through the air often, while black lights flashed in the pitch black abyss behind her. Whether the lights of a candle jumped in the air spontaneously, white gloved hands attached to nothing played a magnificent symphony with mimed instruments, or clowns juggled neon green pins in slow motion, I felt like I was under some sort of influence to say the least.

At the end of this difficult to describe spectacle, we saw everything. Alice emerged from backstage naked as a bird to meet another nude woman center stage. The two caressed each other sensually while a confusing, out of focus video played behind them.

Inspired by our favorite aspects of Alice, Sam and I decided to venture to a strip club for some light entertainment. Luckily for us, there was one a block away from our hostel on Wenceslas Square.

There was no cover charge to enter Peppers, unlike every other such fine institution I had frequented as an underage teenager in Montreal. In the hallway, we passed a fully clothed middle-aged woman gyrating on top of a pedastol and as a giant bouncer thoroughly frisked me with his man-paws, I knew I was in for an interesting night.

It was Sunday and a week before Christmas, apparently not many people felt like going to Peppers for some costly teasing. To say Sam and I got special treatment is an understatement.

Every single dancer approached us multiple times for private dances or girl-on-girl shows, which we declined out of cheapness, and ill-conceived notions of self-respect. Interestingly, the girls would begin their pitches with "per piacere," Italian for "if you please." The first time, I responded in Italian and greatly confused Candy, who informed me that the girls are taught to approach people with this line because "it's very sexy." Of course, thank you Candy.

The only dark-skinned stripper was dressed in jungle attire and seemed to be a great hit with the small crowd. She shook her backside to the beats of '90s gangsta' rap songs or crawled around roaring like lion. I wondered if any of the Peppers regulars had ever met a black person who was neither a tourist boat sailor nor a stripper.

Sam and I were shocked at what was presented to the audience without paying extra. The lesbian show "preview" seemed to give away the entire plot, while the table dance next to us that we contributed no money for, featured a tattooed blonde Czech temptress whipping three Irishman who didn't bother to finish a beer before buying another.

Excited yet unfulfilled, we took our leave around four a.m. Outside, the friendly bouncer wished us farewell.

"Did you like?" He asked.

"Yeah very much, thank you." As we spoke with him, another man approached us and stood silently, laughing when we laughed, but otherwise contributing nothing to the conversation. He dressed like he made money, a long white scarf hung down to accentuate the dress shirt concealed underneath his formal coat. He had a few wrinkles in his pale face, and I guessed that he was somewhere near sixty.

The bouncer bid us goodnight and descended back into the seedy club. The well-dressed man opened his mouth for the first time, moving close to us and speaking quietly like he was being watched.

"You guys like the girls in there?" He kept his hands in pockets, but flicked his head toward Peppers.

"Yeah of course," I replied.

"OK listen." He moved even closer. "You want one hour with one of my girls it's two thousand. Two thousand Crown, one hour." He flicked his head again toward the club and I knew that I had just been solicited for prostitution for the first time in my life. There's another one I can cross off the list.

"No thanks man," said Sam laughing. "We have early flights in the morning so-"

"Guys come on, these are spectacular girls. Do you know who I am?" he asked with eyebrows raised. He removed his hands from his pockets as if to say, "well?"

"No I'm sorry, we don't know who you are," I replied.

"Guys come on. I am Hurricane." Years of acting and improvisation together immediately came flying back to Sam and me as the two of us began a chorus of oh my God's and No way's.

"You're Hurricane? I asked intently.

"The one and only," he responded puffing out his chest.

"Dude," Sam began, turning toward me. "This guy's not Hurricane. He might know Hurricane, maybe he works for Hurricane, but he aint no Hurricane."

"What? No guys, I really am him, really." He was crushed that we questioned his apparantly well-known street identity. "Really guys, I'll prove it."

"How?" I asked with a feigned skeptical expression.

"I do karaoke all over Wenceslas Square, everyone knows my karaoke. Only Hurricane does the best Wenceslas Square karaoke."

"What do you sing then? I asked. He cleared his throat and wrapped the hanging scarf around his neck before beginning a spirited,

"Happy Blowjob to You

Happy Blowjob to You

Happy Blowjob, My Darling

Happy Blowjob, to you." He bowed low and Sam and I lost it. We slapped our knees and wiped tears from our faces, laughing until our stomachs were in serious pain. This reaction seemed to appease Hurricane.

"I like you guys," he confessed. "Here." He took out a business card, which really provided no information other than the fact that he was Hurricane in Prague. He scribbled a phone number in black ink and told us to call him anytime we "needed it real bad." I never gave him a ring, but bidding the Bohemian pimp farewell, I could not help but think that if I was ever going to pay for sex, I would ensure that Hurricane got the commission.

Miminka-Babies

2008-12-19T12:43:00.001-08:00

Sam and I awoke at noon confused as to why we had both slept in our shoes.

After showers and coffees, we made our way to Prague's famous TV Tower. Despite being isolated away from the Old Town, the TV Tower is by far the tallest building in the city. We approached the gray structure and became confused like we had woken up with our shoes on or something.

"Are those babies?" Sam asked me, indicating toward the giant, naked, black, sculpted infants that seemed to be crawling up and down the tower. They had no faces. Rainwater dripped from their bald heads and asses and assaulted our cameras.

We paid for admission tickets with free money from Yellow Tooth, and flew up the elevator shaft at four meters per second to reach the observation deck, one hundred meters off the ground. The view spanned every inch of the city of a thousand spires, tiled rooftops of many colors penetrated the gray fog.

I hoped an information pamphlet would shed some light on the babies, but alas,

"The architecture of this unique project was accentuated with a bizarre yet thought provoking series of huge black crawling infants which now adorn the facia of the magnificent tower adding to its mystery when shrouded in blue and red lights during the hours of darkness."

We descended and made our way to the national museum at the apex of Wenceslas Square. The building itself is grand, covered in detailed sculpture and columns, it's lit in a way to make a person feel small. We wandered through different exhibits, which were impressive, but often missing key information,

One caption would begin, "Before the war..." while the next would start with, "Years after the war," causing me to wonder what could have possibly taken place in between. The entire visit became worth it when I saw the original documents from the 1938 Munich Agreement, or as the Czech's call it, the Munich Dictate, or the Munich Betrayal. No Czechoslovakian delegation was invited to a conference during which 3.5 million of the country's citizens and 70% of its iron, steel, and electrical facilities were handed over to Hitler and his cohorts.

Britain's Neville Chamberlain decided to appease the Nazi's in hopes of avoiding a second world war, but by giving away the Sudetenland, he only delayed the inevitable. This embarassing moment in Western history has become a bad precedent, a lesson in f what not to do for American foreign policy makers ever since, "No More Munichs."

Sam and I returned to the hostel with vodka and Red Bull, and got dressed up for Central Europe's largest club, impossible to tell, if not for giant blue neon letters announcing this very fact on the side of Karlovy Lozne.

We entered after paying the equivalent of a six-dollar cover and walking through metal detectors, only to be hand frisked by Neanderthal-like security guards on the other side. I checked my coat in the lobby with a woman who asked me my name. She wrote nothing down, nor did she had me any sort of ticket. I assumed she had a photographic memory.

Sam and I wandered around the club's five paters (levels) and explored the various dance floors, each uniquely decorated and featuring a different type of American pop music.

Things escalated quickly, and after a number of cheap cocktails, we soon found ourselves dancing on either side of an old Asian woman, while her handlebar-mustached husband glared at us from a nearby bench.

Later we met a Turkish guy who might still be Sam's favorite person on Earth, as well as a depressed Russian who complained about the herpes on his face and apologized repeatedly for his "small" English. We also met a sweet Czech bartender who loved Sam and I and repeatedly encouraged us to continue dancing with Yoko Ono. I even think I caught her husband smiling once out of the corner of my eye.

When we crawled out of the club around five a.m. after receiving cheek kisses from Yoko, I had my jacket in hand and no longer questioned the coat-check girl's memory.

No, Fuck You

2008-12-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

I woke up in a daze around ten a.m. the next day, with a post-it note stuck to my back containing Naveem's contact information, but no reimbursement for the money I had dropped on shots for sketchy Czech bartenders. Out the window, Prague was engulfed by a white sky depositing thick flakes of snow all over the city. I worried my friend Sam's flight would be delayed.

He arrived on time, after struggling to understand the public transportation and assuming he had greatly overpaid for twenty-six Crown map of Prague. We walked the city, both sleep deprived, as he had just returned from a bender in London and Ireland. Exchanging stories with my best friend on earth was fantastic. I had shenanigans to the east, he countered with canyon jumping in Switzerland, the biggest techno rave in Europe, and being limosined to a club opening in London where only "smart" people were allowed in (smart in dress rather than intelligence...fucking Brits).

We had lunch and a beer, handed to us by a waitress with reindeer antlers on her head, "Please Gentlemans," she told us and we laughed at her rudely. After a much needed nap at the hostel, we were ready for a Sam and Noah pub crawl. The goal: Ten bars and stay on your feet.

After the first two places, I introduced Samuel to the Labrynth. We sat at one of the bars with a younger crowd, a sixteen year old Czech kid asked us where we were from.

"America," answered Sam, making me realize that I always answer that question saying the United States, as not to offend Alberto, a fellow North American.

"Oh very nice. Good place," replied the Czech student. "I don't like here," he told us pointing to the floor.

"You don't like this bar, or you don't like the Czech Republic? asked Sam to clarify.

"Czech Republic," he answered, shaking his head.

"Why not?" I asked. He put his arms up and I knew that he did not possess the English words to explain. We settled for buying a round of beers and saying cheers together.

After the Labyrinth, we hit pubs four, five, and six for more cheap Pilsner and for Sam's introduction to Becherovka.

"It reminds me of Christmas. Is there cinnamon in there?"

"We can't rule it out."

We made our way through the Old Town Square, still enchanting at night, toward an Irish pub to work on our accents. Inside, the female Czech fifty somethings danced like they were playing imaginary pianos while their husbands watched them shake their backsides in tight pants. I spotted a gorgeous blonde sitting at the bar alone, and after six pubs worth of alcohol, I possessed just the amount of courage to talk to her.

I ordered two beers for Sam and I and then asked if she was from Prague.

"No, I am from Slovakia," she replied in perfect English.

"Oh cool, like near Bratislava or?" I assumed showing that I not only knew of her country, but also what the capital was would catapult me into her good graces.

"Oh you know Slovakia! Yes my family lives outside of Bratislava."

"So are you just in Prague for holidays?"

"Yeah I am here to visit my boyfriend. He works here." She indicated toward the tiny man spinning a cocktail bottle up in the air for a catch and pour move that every bartender in the history of showing off has performed. He had a receding hairline and a pronounced gut and could have easily been thirty years older than her. When my beers arrived I wished her well in an Irish accent and Sam and I moved on.

Bar eight was down a set of stairs. After a Pilsner and a much needed urinal visit, my clothes reeked of cigarettes, and I followed Sam outside. Across the street lay a brown awning with the words, "Jack Lives Here," in a font reminiscent of the famous whiskey brand.

"JACK!" yelled Sam and I stumbled after him.

Downstairs we found a couple of bars and a small dance floor. After a Jack Daniels and Coke, a red-faced middle-aged man approached the bar and stepped awkwardly between us to order a drink. When his whiskey on the rocks arrived, he did not move on, but began conversing with us in Czech. The fact that we did not understand his language did not deter him in he least, and I was immediately reminded of the Bosnian cyclist from the train ride to Budapest.

"Da prosím shish-No, fuck you." He laughed and clapped us each on the back, exposing a row of bright yellow teeth in the process. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and seemed to be the most casually dressed person in the place. After our drinks were finished, he ordered us each a whiskey on the rocks.

I took a sip and feared a vomit. After focusing intensely on other things, I managed to choke a couple of gulps down, and by the time I placed the half empty drink on the bar, another had arrived.

"My mother, Vancouver-No, fuck you." Another clap on the back and another new whiskey on the rocks. Sam and I now each had three unfinished drinks in front of us. The happy go lucky Czecker finished his beverages with lightning speed and continued buying rounds until the entire bar in front of us was a mess of glasses half full of amber liquid.

Buying drinks for us did not seem to satisfy him enough, as the opening rif to Smooth by Santana and Rob Thomas came on the speakers overhead, he handled a crumpled bill to Sam, who tried in vain to decline.

"No no, thank you, but you already bought us so many drinks."

"No fuck you." He pushed the bill and closed Sam's hand around it before emerging from his pocket with another. For some reason, Sam did not feel comfortable taking the money, and we began an awkward assembly line. Yellow Tooth would hand a crumbled bill to Sam to his right, who would pass it around the Czech whiskey champion's back to me on the other side, while continuing with conversation so that he was none the wiser. The crumpled bills would finish their journey in my coat pocket.

The walk home is a bit of a blur, but I remember successfully convincing Izor, who was out in the hostel kitchen so as not to disturb others with her incessant hacking cough, that Sam was from Ireland. She did not question his nationality despite the fact that I had told her multiple times the day before that my friend from Vermont would be coming.

Milan the Butcher...as Recommended by Lonely Planet

2008-12-19T09:12:00.000-08:00

I just made it to London after sending my passport through the wash and talking out of my ass to various passport authorities...empty your pockets before laundry people.

And Now, on with the Praga Saga...

After mastering the Czech language, I had a shower and returned to the dormitory room to find a girl munching on a snack and staring out the window.

"Where you from?" I asked after putting on a shirt.

"Texas," she replied with a breathy laugh like she had just remembered something hilarious, long ago forgotten. I was convinced she was stoned.

"What are you eating? I asked, eyeing the little plastic bag in her hand.

"It's like this weird thing they have in Spain. It's like bread...well stale bread I guess." Another breathy laugh. I tried a piece.

"Yeah that tastes exactly how you described it." Another breathy laugh followed by a long exhale and "whoo" sound. After she recovered she informed me that she was also waiting for a friend who would arriving tonight.

I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and when I returned there was another American wearing a sweater and a knitted hat. Naveem made me completely nervous by bopping around the hostel and probing everyone with questions. Apparently he had graduated from MIT pre-med and was currently working on a masters of public health at Cambridge. He made sure I understood Cambridge, England, not Massachusetts. He carried a Lonely Planet: Prague around like a bible.

"The book was talking about the Charles Bridge and the castle and shit so I checked all that out today."

"Yeah the book recommends a lot of different pubs so I want to check those out."

"The book mentions microbrews, what do you think of microbrews."

"Noah I started circling all the places we need to go to night. While I'm in the shower, find some more sick pubs and shit and circle them with this pen." He placed the travel guide and writing utensil on a table, ripped off his shirt like he was allergic to it and then sprinted off toward the shower. I left the book exactly where it was.

"You didn't look at the book did you?" He asked after emerging from the bathroom.

"No sorry I-"

"What have you got against the book?" He said like I had just insulted his pet cat.

"I don't know I'm just not really a travel guide kind of guy."

"Dude it says everything we need to know. How else would you find out about this shit."

"You could walk around, or ask someone who lives here."

"Good point, the book does say they speak good English in Prague for the most part."

I headed with Naveem and Izor for a frantic bar hop. The book would end up taking a beating from the relentless cold rain that poured down on us. Despite my anti-travel guide attitude, the book did lead us to my favorite bar, so far, in all of Europe.

Vinárna U Sudu looks like a cramped bar for elderly people upon first glance. Thin enough for only one lane of human traffic, a few old Czechers, wise beyond their years, sipped beer and smoked constantly. The parasitic Lonely Planet through its host, Naveem, insisted that we make our way toward the door in the back and I reluctantly followed.

A set of narrow wooden stairs led us to a crowded basement bar. Alternative artwork adorned the walls and students milled about with giant Pilsners with hats of foam on top (this is how beer is purposely poured in Prague). We continued through a brick archway into a small hallway that led to another bar. Through another brick archway and another small hallway, a third bar greeted us. The fourth bar was in a room full of fooseball tables, the fifth was down another set of stairs and seemed to be reserved only for kissing couples, while frequenters to the sixth bar all brought their family dogs along. The seventh bar smelled distinctly like Marijuana, and the eighth played rock music so we settled there for a drink.

"Told you man," said Naveem, closing the book for the first time all night to clink his mug with mine.

We enjoyed a couple of cheap delicious Pilsners, and then switched to shots of Becherovka, a liquor native to the Czech Republic (Lonely Planet recommended of course), that can only be described as spicy. Before long, Naveem became restless and moved us along.

"We gotta' find a place with microbrews." I followed through the continuous rain into Prague's Old Town Square, a beautifully cobble-stoned piazza full of lit-up Christmas trees and empty market tents and stalls. The skyline was dominated by the spired Gothic Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, an intricate and intimidating structure that looks like it belongs in Tolkein's Mordor.

I followed Naveem into a trendy bar where they asked for my I.D. before entering (first time occurance in Europe) and drinks cost as much as they might in the middle of Manhatten. We met an overly-friendly Dutch girl who claimed she could not only guess where each one of us was from, but also where we were studying. She pointed at Naveem,

"You. You are from India."

"My parents are from India."

"I knew it." She continued,

"You are studying in England." Naveem tapped his nose with a finger.

"I knew it." She moved toward me to study my face.

"You are from the United States." I touched my nose like Naveem.

"You are studying in Europe."

"How did you guess?" I asked.

"I am very good." I excused myself from the Dutch psychic, who insisted I come to Amsterdam and stay in her apartment, to get a better look at the scene going on behind me.

A group of forty something Czech woman seemed to think it was a good idea to wear plaid miniskirts and dance erotically together. Men circled around to watch without embarrassment. Naveem urged me to talk to some Indian looking girls with him, but I declined as they looked neither attractive nor over the age of eighteen.

We returned to the hostel briefly to grab Izur's friend Shane from Missouri, also studying for a semester in Seville. I followed Naveem and his printed master to a small bar advertising microbrews, which were dark and delicious and served by two enormous gentlemen with shaved heads and black butchers' aprons. They made me uneasy to say the least.

"Becherovka?" asked Naveem to the group. Izor was suffering from a bit of a cough (maybe from too much pot smoking) and had stopped drinking, but Shane and I nodded, and Naveem approached the bar. We watched him begin a conversation with the older and more menacing looking bald Czech man, and then proceed to order five shots of Becherovka instead of the necessary three.

"Nastrovya," said the butchers in unison as we all downed our spicy shots.

"The guy told me he hadn't slept in three days, so I bought him a drink," explained Naveem, "plus they only cost sixteen Crowns, that's like less than a dollar."

We continued rounds of shots with the bartenders, including a special peach flavored vodka that may have been mixed in a bathtub behind the bar. When the older butcher left to deliver a round to another group, the younger one pulled us in close for a huddle.

"My name is Milan. You have been very nice to me. When my boss is not watching, I will bring you free drinks." We thanked Milan and agreed to play it cool, continuing to order more and more sixteen Crown shots until my head was spinning.

Naveem asked Milan when the free drinks would arrive as he wanted to hit one more, book-recommended bar down the street. Milan assured us that the other place would be closed, but if we insisted, he told us that when we returned the endless free drinks would begin. He handed Naveem the bill and I heard a loud F-word.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Sixty."

"What?"

"He was saying sixty. Sixty Crown shots, not sixteen." About three dollars per shot. The bill was quite lofty and Naveem did not have enough Czech Crowns on him to pay for it. Unfortunately I did, and out of fear of being butchered, I paid Milan and we made our way to the other bar, which was in fact closed.

We returned to Milan's bar and inquired about the free drinks, the place appeared to be empty. "The boss is watching," whispered the younger butcher as he stacked a barstool. "Next time. Come back tomorrow. Free drinks."

It seemed Milan the Butcher had gotten the better of us.

Some Useful Phrases

2008-12-17T02:32:00.001-08:00

I was given a Czech language pamphlet at the hostel, here it is verbatim, translated into phonetical English for my convenience I suppose. The comments in parenthesis are some of my initial reactions.

...Some Useful Phrases...

Yes=No (good start)

Thanks= Dick-y (ha)

Sweetheart= Mill-A-tch-kuu (aw)

Pen and paper= Pero a Papear (but what if I want a pen and big papers?)

Just let it flow != Neck to plaavat (way ahead of you)

Twin tailed lion= Dvo ott-sas-see Lev (symbol of Prague)

Toe nail clippers= Klesch tay na necktey (useful indeed)

The next few are best presented in pairs and read one after the other:

Have you got any availible sisters/brothers? Mash nay-yakkay voll knee sestrey/bratay (yes)

I'll have one of those= Damn say yeden to ho led ens to (damn indeed)

You have beautiful eyes= Mash motcz p-yeah-K-nee ott she (aw)

Have you washed your hands?= U-mill says ru-tc-say (a bit rude)

How do you do Madam?= Nazdarr ek Hol tchitch kaa?

Help yourself please= Po-slush say Sam Pro-seam (there you go Simmy)

Life goes on= Ten dzz-ievot poke-ratch-U-yeah (good advice)

Fish and eggs= Ribby ay VaY-tchkey (better advice)

Big Papers= Da-may shh-pekkA voll-ay, nebbo so? (finally)

I'm having a heart attack= Ran-E-min-yey, Mert vit-Say (chances are in this case I'm not going to have the composure to let everyone know in Czech)

Another Pair:

Are those teeth false?= So Tea-hLay zub-bey prr-avvy?

Make me a nice price= Dyel-eye me lep-she-ho senna, neigh

Please may I fondle your buttocks?= Pro seam vass, mou who phlad eat vashe Prr-del-kuu?(sure, go ahead)

How much you want for him/her/it?= KoLick ktchesh pro hoo/yee/toe (I will take two hers please, make me a nice price...I also really like hoo/yee/toe)

Do you like soul music?= Lee-bey say tay Soulova hud-bitch-ka? (yes)

My name is Sue. How do you do?= Ya sem SuZko, Yak tea-duppo Krraleet-say? (my name is Noah, how's it go-ah? Why doesn't it rhyme in Czech?)

Wine Red/White= Venno chervenny/beelay

Good Bye= Chago Baggo she-len-say (Chago Baggo: great name for a puppy)

Help me= Po mou dzesh Min-nay

Transport ticket= Yizz den Kuuu

Rude Word= KuRRvaa Par-eck (I was told that this is actually the offensive expression, not literally how to say "Rude Word")

Shoe string= Tkahnn itch kaa (useful)

Tea pot= Kon vitcz-ay (useful)

Shots= Pan A tch key (more useful)

Condoms= Pre-searve-a-tivvy (safe)

Back Scrubber= Kar-tat-shh na zadd-Ahh (most useful)

Bread= Klebba

Beer= Pivo (like in Slovenia)

A trio:

Garlic= Chess e neck

Nurses= Sess tritch key

I'm lost = Ya sem mee mou

(I am reminded of Wayne's World, "Garth, that was a Haiku")

Horse shoe= Pot-ko-vaa

Cheers !!= Nass sDrravvee (like in Poland)

Meat= Masso

No=Nay (I was hoping for yes)

Numbers:

1= Yeah-denn

2= D-vee-yeah

3= Trree (my favorite)

4= Stear-reeh

5= P-yett

6= Sh-est

100= Kilo

1000= Leet-rrr

69= She-does-that deviant (what??)

A note from the author:

I feel quite high= ya ass'm seat-him horny (him horny indeed)

Prague Part One (I think it's worse for me)

2008-12-16T22:50:00.001-08:00

I just returned from five days in Prague, and this is the first post that includes a disclaimer. I definitely had an R-rated weekend, and please, if anyone is interested in keeping a wholesome image of me, for your sake, don't read the Prague posts. If you are under 18 years old you should not continue.

Now that we've weeded out the prudes, lets do this...

If I had a nickel for every time I've watched a nude and tattooed Czech stripper crawl across a table to whip some horny Irishmen...Well, I think I know where she would want me to put it. But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. How did I get to Prague you ask? Good Question.

I began by taking a quick commuter train north to Udine to catch my direct thirteen-hour sleeper car to Prague. The thing was an hour and a half late because of thunderstorms. A bad omen.

An Austrian conductor in a red suit with a face like a weasel sprinted around the train showing me various things and making me extremely nervous. He put me in a compartment with Gaetano, a thirty year-old portly Southern Italian on his way to a wedding in Prague. We became fast friends and I am confident that his two giant suitcases contained only candy. I fell asleep during the early morning hours, somewhere along the Austrian border.

My compartment door flew open and the light flicked on. The weasely conductor stood there with papers flying all over the place. He spoke rapid German into a cell phone and I noticed that the train was not moving, yet I saw no lights that would indicate we were at a station.

Snow was delaying us. I looked out the window into a white-out, the first time I had seen the fluffy stuff on this side of the world. The frantic conductor paced around and informed me that we were running too late, this train would not be able to continue to Prague. "My boss is quite angry, so I think it's worse for me," the weasel said as he sucked his teeth and scribbled timetables on scraps of paper for Gaetano and I. Once the tracks were cleared we would have to change trains in Austria.

And change trains we did.

For those of you keeping score at home, I jumped on my third train in some podunk Austrian border town, trudging through knee-high snow to get to the platform, I had to help Gaetano with his candy bags so that he would not be blown over by the wind.

On this train, I learned that there had only been four passengers on the direct overnight to Prague. A Czech student with a certain fondness for Grappa (Italian grape alcohol), and an enormous, dark-featured Moldovian guy, who spoke no English or Italian rounded out the quartet.

The Prague Four arrived in Salzburg and then switched again to head toward Linz. Weasel told us track eleven which appeared empty upon arrival. I turned around and spotted him leaning his head out the window of a train across the platform, waving like there was a fire inside. The train had given it's all aboard whistle, and without time to cross underground, we illegally ran across the tracks.

A professional looking man, who I assumed was Weasel's boss, yelled at us in German for a while. Gaetano and I munched on candy and listened politely.

Between Salzburg and Linz, the Weasel sat across from me and continued to tell us why it was worse for him.

"You know I haven't slept in a while so I think it's worse for me." He handed me a map of Prague. "You know I was supposed to bring my wife many presents from Czech Republic, but I don't think I am allowed to go now because you ran across the tracks, so I think it's worse for me."

"Hey can I keep this map?" I asked.

"No."

In Linz we parted ways with Weasel who was on his way home for a hot shower, but I would imagine he wasn't crazy about the smell of his soap and therefore it was worse for him. He assured us there was a direct train from Linz to Prague and we would be a few hours late, but our tickets would be honored.

My traveling companions and I drank Grappa with coffee and got to know each other a bit. We spoke in Italian with the Czech photography student translating for the Moldovian guy, who became a lot less scary when he smiled.

At Summerau, the last Austrian town before the border, we were told that the train did not continue to Prague. We switched onto a Czech clunker, most-likely built between the World Wars. Every window had to remain open, despite the snow, to balance the ninety degree temperature inside.

The Czech photography student had his camera out now. "Lets be like tourists!" He told me laughing, insisting that the rest of us pose for photos with every single Czech train conductor, as well as an elderly woman traveling with no luggage except for a neon yellow sled.

At a station I can't pronounce, we switched to the seventh and final train. The Czech landscape is more than depressing. The only place I can compare it to is the drive between the Vermont border and Montreal. Long fields of brown grass and dirty patches of snow are only accentuated by rusty farm equipment, one tree every ten minutes or so, and groups of deer huddling together and saying to each other, "seriously what the fuck are we doing here?"

I counted eight men walking alone through eight different fields in trench coats.

I arrived in Prague around 5:30, a twenty hour trip in total. Hlavni Nadrazi station is the seediest place I have ever been to, and terrified, I got the fuck out of there and checked into my hostel.

Dvanáct Piva Prosím

2008-12-05T06:11:00.000-08:00

The title is Czech for "12 beers please"...I think. Either that or gibberish, I should have a better grasp on the language after my trip to Prague next week. It might be touch and go coming back, since I bought my ticket one way and the TrenItalia emplyee assured me that it would be impossible to return to Italy after December 13th. She seemed personally offended that I wanted to know why there were no more trains returning from Prague, and refused to give me a reason, but no matter, I will most likely return through lovely Slovenia and have a dragon beer on the way home.

Here are some conservative estimates about what will happen during my four days in Prague with my childhood friend Samuel.

161- The number of Czech beers that Sam and I will consume between us.

19- The number of Czech beers that will be partially or entirely spilled.

84- The number of times Sam or I will utter the words "We are...two wild and crazy guys!" or otherwise imitate Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's depiction of the swinging Czech Festrunk brothers from Saturday Night Live.

7- The number of times I will try to convince Sam that we are walking in the wrong direction.

14- The number of times Sam will give me shit about having a terrible sense of direction.

96- The number of times it will be undoubtedly clear that Sam is a better dance than I am.

1- The number of meals that I will not remember eating.

9- The number of times we will be confused by the multiple incompatible district systems used simultaneously to label different parts of the city.

16- The number of trinkets I will buy at Christmas markets.

15- The number of trinkets that will either break or will not fit in my backpack and therefore will not make it back to Trieste.

4- The number of times one of us will be pushed into the middle of some dance circle when the song "American Boy" comes on at a club.

4- The number of times I will have to apologize to a hostel employee for one thing or another.

71- The number of times Sam and I will butcher the pronunciation of simple Czech expressions such as, "Máte tohle i v mé velikosti?" (Do you have this in my size) or "Potrebuji zubní pastu." (I need tooth paste).

Window Men

2008-11-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

9:50 am: Two guys with rectangular heads who could be twins, burst into my room with a briefcase.

9:51: It turns out the blockheads have brought tools of various kinds. Starting with hammers, they begin doctoring my window.

9:52: They are chirping back and forth to each other in some serious dialect and I can't understand a word of it. They seem to be adding something important to the top of the frame.

9:54: I can't go back to sleep as the window men have begun obnoxiously hammering different parts of the window arbitrarily like they are trying to find its knee so it will make a little reflexive kick.

9:55: The power drills are out now, they seem to be set on loud.

9:58: The preferred drill setting has been changed to really loud.

10:00: The window is open. They are chasing a piece of paper around like a renegade butterfly, trying to prevent it from flying out into the street.

10:02: One of them continues to drill while the other explains something to me, he keeps mentioning 17 like I don't know my room number...or maybe this is the amount of windows he has doctored this morning.

10:03: The drills are finally returned to the briefcase, it seems the blockheads have replaced the metal rod-like thing that used to control my sci-fie movie window shade, with a dangly string apparatus.

10:05: The Window Men demonstrate the dangly string apparatus.

10:11: Still demonstrating.

10:14: They take their leave, thanking me multiple times like I just allowed them to do something so important that now they can both die in peace.

Posted above is the only photo I could manage to discreetly snap with my computer.

10:16: Unfortunately I can't fall back asleep...maybe I will go to class today.

I'm with Stupid

2008-11-18T08:49:00.000-08:00

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrived in Trieste today, resulting in hundreds of policemen filling up Piazza Unitá d'Italia, buses being rerouted and making me late for class, as well as German and Italian flags flying everywhere. Berlusconi was here to attend the Italo-German summit, trying to forge a deal with Lufthansa to save Italy's debt-ridden, strike-prone disastrous airline AlIitalia.

My Italian friends kept complaining about him and I found myself asking questions like, "If nobody likes this guy, how come he keeps getting elected?" "If he's so stupid and corrupt, how did he become Prime Minister?" My friend Maria Laura reminded me of how short my memory has become, asking me, "Noah who still lives in the White House?"

Fair point Maria.

Budapest...A Pest for the Rest of Us.

2008-11-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

I just returned from four days in lovely Budapest, and unfortunately my Festivus joke hasn't really panned out the way I would like it to. After a lot of champagne, imported Budweisers and chants with Spaniards of "Yes we can! Yes we can!" the eleven hour train ride left me trying to sleep next to a crazy old Bosnian man who rambled at me in his native language and broken Italian, mostly about his non-functioning bicycle, which was, in reality, nothing more than two spoked wheels wrapped in plastic. He would often wave the wheels in my face for emphasis, while baring his nine crooked teeth. He told me I was a good amigo for listening, and presented me with a beer, an orange, and a kiss on the forehead before getting off the train in Zagreb...Don't worry, pictures will be on Facebook and Picasa shortly.

Budapest itself is quite the place. My first departure from the Euro left me feeling like Bill Gates, walking around with 22,000 Hungarian Forints in my pocket, dropping two or three hundred on every beer (actually only about one or two dollars, Budapest is incredibly cheap).

We visited castles, churches, and synagogues, hiking up to the citadel to get the best view of both sides of the Danube. The most moving thing I saw was the terror museum (www.terrorhaza.hu), located inside the old Nazi and then Soviet headquarters and prison.

Every young American should be forced to go to a place like this.

Sure we learn about genocide and oppression in school, but I think it's difficult to relate until you find yourself inside a windowless prison cell, staring at real torture equipment that was actually used on everyone from political dissidents, to free-thinking journalists, to Catholic priests. It's remarkable how recent all these atrocities are, with the last Hungarian prisoner being returned from Siberia in the year 2000. I used to think that America spreading democracy and being a beacon of hope for the world was sort of bullshit, but after seeing how much Hungarians love America and what our country represents, I'm not so sure anymore.

The highlight of the trip was of course the Sparty in the famous Rudas bath house (setting of a scene from 1988's Red Heat starring Governor Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi, and featuring the fantastic tagline: Moscow's toughest detective. Chicago's craziest cop. There's only one thing more dangerous than making them mad: making them partners). We waited in line outisde, receiving endless energy drinks from absurdly gorgeous Hungarian women. Once we entered the party, which had a "dry disco" in the first room, we were handed sealable money pouches by yet more absurdly gorgeous Hungarian women.

The Sparty itself is where dreams come true. Imagine a naturally hot pool filled with scantly clad Europeans dancing to techno music while surrounded by crazy lights and giant screens featuring trippy animation. When water droplets splash into the air and mingle with the strobe lights, they seem to fall back down into the pool in slow motion. The effect is amplified by the inflatable red balls dropping from the ceiling to be happily batted around by the spartiers. It felt like a cross between an American pool party and a Flaming Lips concert...only with considerably more Spaniards. They took over the place, many of them sporting Looney Tunes floaties and riding around on noodles, they led the entire place in rousing renditions of, "Yo soy Espanol, Espanol, Espanol! and "Campiones d'Europa, Campiones d'Europa!" the second song to the tune of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, allowing everyone to join in and help celebrate their Euro 2008 soccer championship.

Drinks were insanely cheap, and when my money floated away in the pool, I didn't care. When my friend Keith told me that our clothes were gone, I didn't care. I was having the time of my life. Somewhere around 2 am, a team of synchronized swimmers gracefully dove into the pool to entertain us while bearded Hungarian performers majestically spun and tossed flaming sticks around like toothpicks.

At some point, the Sparty began to take a serious turn for the orgy, drunk boys and girls making out all over the pool, with pruny hands diving into the water to find genitals. To top it all off, when the thing ended, well after four in the morning, they had sandwiches...fucking sandwiches! It was as if they knew we would be hungry while partying in Hungry. It turns out, my friend Alberto somehow found my clothes, and I was able to stumble back to the hostel, thankfully, with a shirt on. My only fear is that I have peaked and will never be able to enjoy myself again...although on December 12th it looks like Sam Simon and Noah Nielsen will be reunited in Prague, so I can't exactly give up hope yet, especially with the time melting away until an Obama administration takes over in Washington...yeah I think I like the sound of that.

Flotadores!

2008-10-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I played basketball with my close-talking friend Francesco and some other Italians. They don't check the ball, which makes the game continuous and much more like soccer. After each point I would sort of relax for a second to catch my breath, losing track of the man I was guarding in the process. The playground crew was pretty good, lots of pick and rolls, ball movement and solid fundamentals...my only complaint is that every time I blocked someone they would call foul, or FOULO!, and clutch at a random body part while grimacing and cursing under their breath, again the game has clearly been influenced by soccer.

The big news is that on November 5th I am going to Budapest. If Obama wins the election, it will be a great excuse for a giant celebration, and if McCain wins, I will be appropriately moving farther away from the United States. The trip itself sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke, "So two Americans, a Mexican, and 33 Spaniards take a twelve hour train to Budapest..." The Spaniards organized the whole trip in search of an exotic festa, and the Hungarians have something called a sparty (Spa + Party = Sparty), a disco inside one of Budapest's famous Turkish bath houses. "We will buy flotadores!" My Spanish friend Charlie excitedly told me, and he's absolutely right...when dancing and drinking in a giant pool, I think it's imperative, for safety as much as anything, to have some floaties around.

With this aquatic party in mind, I am a bit concerned about the P-word...but I suppose if I get prune hands then everyone else will also get prune hands. Copy the URL below and paste it into your web browser if you are interested in seeing what I am getting myself into.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-iHlbRV6rQ

The Gel Smells like Candy....

2008-10-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

So after seeing all the pictures that I have tossed around the internet the last couple days, one might expect this post to be about my recent trips to Verona and Venice. I will give you the Cliffs Notes since something far more hilarious has happened. Verona-awesome. Horse meat-awesome. I am sort of done with Venice-too many tourists.

Moving on...since I went to a terribly long six hours of class yesterday, I decided to skip my last one today and venture off in search of a haircut. As you can see, I found one. Everything was going fine, the hair cutter, or stylist as I would find out, was very friendly and complimented me on my Italian skills, which is always a sure way to win me over. After some shampoo and a thorough towling, I was ready to pay and return home, but she turned around with a container of gel in hand, clearly wanting more time with me and my American hair.

"Gel?" She asked. This Italian word I understood.

"No, grazie." I explained to her that I was about to go home and take a shower.

"But it's free..." she told me in Italian and covered her fingers in the viscus yellow liquid. "You shower later."

She dove right in before I could protest and began sculpting my hair into some sort of Euro spectacle that made me laugh hysterically when I looked at myself in the "specchio."

I walked home with this monstrosity on my head, blasting daft punk on my Ipod. Unsurprisingly, I received more strange looks than I normally do.

Oh there goes one of us, hair perpetually wet, tight sweatshirt, soccer shoes, listening to techno, what a nice young boy...

wait a minute...something is not right here...

I sort of felt like the equivalent of an Italian driving a Hummer down Main Street, wearing a John Wayne costume, with a football helmet on his head, singing, "Born in the USA! I was..."

The pictures don't quite do the haircut justice, and it's also difficult to pick up on the fact that I hadn't shaved in a few days and was sporting a pretty solid bad-teenage-mustache, completing my creepy guy look.

Unfortunately, I just got out of the shower, where I shampooed, rinsed, and repeated, and then shaved, ending my stint as a faux European. On the bright side...my hair still smells a bit like candy.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

2008-10-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

I have been in Italy for one month, so I think it's time for a list of unrelated things:

In my dining hall, they serve cheeseburgers without a bun, on top of a bed of french fries. It comes with Salsa Rosa (a sloppy mix of mayo and ketchup) if you ask for just plain ketchup, they will not give it to you.

If Spain and the United States had a fun contest, Spain would win. I am confident that we could somehow cure depression by exporting Spaniards to all corners of the world.

There are creepy millipede-like insects that live in my dormitory and only come out at night. I hope they all die when winter comes.

Explaining the ins and outs of the MLB playoffs is very difficult in broken Italian.

Italians cancel class like Americans watch TV. I am supposed to have three classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I have not attended three lessons in one day here...ever.

I have signed up for a mandatory fire safety class on October 22nd. It takes four hours, two of which are in a lecture hall, and rest of the time is at an undisclosed location. I hope we get some real fire experience, because there is only so much you can learn inside the classroom.

In Verona, horse meat is a local delicacy. I will find out if horse tastes more like chicken or glue this Saturday.

Little kids in Trieste are brilliant. They are already fluent in Italian.

In Italy, the ratio of lingerie stores to fast food restaurants is a healthy 20:1.

A trio of Portuguese girls thinks I look like Ryan from The O.C. I looked into it. I don't see the resemblance.

Barcolananananana-na

2008-10-13T00:24:00.001-07:00

I just finished celebrating the 40th Barcolana, and boy is my liver tired. The festival is centered around Europe's largest sailing regatta and is hosted annually in Trieste, providing us with beer and food tents, free concerts, Italian style revelry, and oh yeah, over 2,000 mahfuckin' sailboats, perfect ingredients for shenanigan stew.

Friday night led me to my first ever European house party, thrown by my Spanish friend Adrian, which included home-made twister and of course American dance songs. The theme of the party could be best described as "What Spanish people think the American '70s were about," although there were plenty of guests dressed as hippies and in '80s fitness gear, so I think they were just happy to represent an American decade.. Listening to Spaniards hum and deedeedee through the verses to songs in English like YMCA, We Will Rock You, and Mamma Mia is always a good time, especially when they finally reach the chorus and sing their little Spanish hearts out (See Video below for Spanish Summer Lovin').

Saturday involved walking around the harbor and observing intense Italian sailors, with steadfast expressions and awesome outfits. The night brought visitors from all corners, including our abductee from Udine, Raf (originally from Togo), and my friend Sarah, from Vermont, who is currently studying abroad in Spain. Sarah arrived just in time to have a Triestine 21st birthday, prompting many Europeans to sing to her in different languages and to shout things like "You can, you can!" and "Hooray to you Sarah, drinking, drinking, you drink at home now!"

We watched some fireworks and a free concert in Piazza Unitá, which included a performance by a strange Italian ensemble, which Keith aptly described as "reminiscent of a bunch of 7th grade parents trying to be hip." One lyric, translated from the Italian, went something like this,

"My cousin, he is a bit worried...he is in prison." I gave a puzzled look to my friend Eric (from Trieste), who chose this moment to tell me,

"I do not prefer this band."

After staying out all night, we snagged two hours of sleep, met at the supermarket to buy some supplies, and took the old streetcar up the mountain to Opicina to view the regatta. We found a decent, albeit partially obscured view and had our picnic, with brie, wine, french bread, prosciutto, olives, and some cookies bearing the same name as Raf's home country. After watching Lucas take his fill, Raf yelled down the line to him.

"Lucas if you have any more, I will have to invade Germany and eat your country."

We walked a few feet to the right and realized there was a much better view, with no trees in the way, we had been completely overzealous in choosing our picnic spot, laughter ensued.

Wine, heat, and sleep deprivation led to a very silly afternoon involving a lot of dancing and daydreaming. At one point, my Polish friend Kamila and I had a quick foot race then sat on a concrete wall for a minute where we completely passed out, strewn all over each other. I awoke some time later to the sound of an Italian family, complete with Grandparents, pointing and whispering about us, no doubt warning the wee ones about the consequences of having mountaintop picnics with international students.

Of course, the Poles came prepared for Sarah's birthday, providing Mickey Mouse birthday hats, and one balloon, which popped on the tram ride home, and I feared, surprised an old Italian woman to death...thankfully she survived long enough to give us an awesome look of disapproval, I don't think she was into birthdays.

Thumbing My Way

2008-10-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

My Polish friends invited me to hitchhike to Slovenia with them. I was a bit intoxicated when this invitation was presented to me, so of course I gladly accepted. However, when a follow-up phone call ensued the next day, surprisingly, I was still just as interested in going. I justified the whole thing by reminding myself that I had only one more day before lessons began, and I really should go on another adventure before I had any real responsibilities. The funniest part was that I wasn't exactly sure where we were going, I assumed that the Poles simply wanted to venture into Slovenia because they absolutely love the place. They had raved to me about how they could understand all of the street signs and everything in the supermarket had the same name as in Poland. I did notice when I was in Slovenia, how consonants seemed to be thrown around with reckless abandon just like Polish, and my friends confirmed my suspicions about how similar the two languages are.

I made my way down-town and met the five Poles, who's names I will not try to butcher at this point. We took a bus up the mountain to Opicina, which is a suburb of Trieste, and even closer to the Slovenian border. They assured me that this would be the best place to hitch and also informed me that we would be breaking up into teams of two, as the six of us would surely have a difficult time catching the same ride. The plan was to meet up in Pistonja, a Slovenian town about forty kilometers away (I still have no idea how many miles that is), because apparently, "Pistonja Jama" is one of the largest caves in Europe. Perfect, I thought, we at least have a common destination, now we just need a ride.

Kamila and I, being the youngest and least experienced hitchers, were to go first. The other Poles hid a ways back from the road and the two of us got started. I used the thumb out, big smile technique, while Kamila perfected the jumping up and down approach. Many people returned our smiles and outstretched thumbs, but no offers for a ride. After about twenty minutes, we heard a yell from the concealed Poles. We turned to our right and saw that a small, blue Volvo had pulled over a few feet ahead of us. We ran over with delight as we were greeted by two Italian men.

"Where are you going?" One asked, in decent English as he shuffled some of the car's contents into the trunk. Kamila and I looked at each other, we had said the name Pistojna over and over so we would not forget.

"umm Pis- Pis-,"

"Pis-tojna Jama!" thank God she remembered.

"Oh belissima." The Italians beckoned us into the car, where a small wooden ladder occupied the seat between us. I asked them how to say ladder in Italian.

"Legno, diciamo legno." I proceeded to ask them why they had a ladder in the car, and could not get a straight answer, they preferred to answer my questions with some of their own. We told them about being exchange students in Trieste, and how I knew a bit of Italian and Kamila did not.

As we crossed over the border into Slovenia, the driver (who spoke no English) told me that they could not bring us all the way to Pistonja, but that they would bring us about five kilometers in the right direction. We thanked them and came to the unfortunate realization, that this would take more than one ride. The mountains surrounding us had a bit more color than the last time I was in Slovenia, and again I was reminded of Vermont. I listened to the Italians speak, picking out bits and pieces of their conversation.

The passenger was complaining about someone smoking cigarettes in his house, the driver could not understand the problem since he claimed everyone smokes in the house. The passenger added the fact that this was in the morning, when he first woke up, which seemed to make the driver understand his pain, and then there was a bit about running or chasing that I did not quite understand.

As time continued to pass, I got the feeling that we were going farther than the five kilometers we had been promised. At one sign that showed a fork between Ljubljana and Pistonja, the passenger beckoned the driver to go toward our destination. The Italians even drove the extra 2.5 kilometers from the town center and dropped us off at the cave itself. We thanked them profusely, and had a coffee while we waited for the others, patting ourselves on the back for being professional hitchhikers.

After about half an hour, Voytek and his girlfriend Agata arrived (I have seized my opportunity to terribly misspell their names, I apologize). Like us, they had only required one ride and considered themselves lucky rather than skilled. We waited a while for the other duo, all female, who called at one point to let us know that they were waiting for their fourth ride, and had been propositioned for sex by two separate drivers. We had let them go last because they were by far the most experienced, one of the girls had hitchhiked all the way from Poland to Spain. Outside the cave entrance there was a skeleton of a prehistoric bear, which was mildly entertaining, but a better way to kill time lay beyond the extinct creature.

Voytek and I dove into the giant blue and yellow legos and then began constructing man-sized robots. When we were finished we had a father with no hands and very square features, standing next to a child with no neck. We posed for some pictures with our creations until at about five minutes to two, the girls arrived and we hastily bought our tickets and hopped onto the tram to enter the cave. The tram raced us through the beginning of the jama, with Voytek repeatedly turning around to tell me,

"Noah, there is no safety on this roller coaster!" We all threw our arms into the air and then quickly pulled them down, the cave had very low ceilings.

Kamila and I sat very close to each other to take advantage of body heat (only eight degrees celsius inside the cave, which means absolutely nothing to me). After the tram ride took us through chambers past stalactites and mites, which were very impressive, and a few rounds of humming the theme music from Indiana Jones, the tram stopped inside the cave, and we were beckoned to get out and find a guide.

We stood in a vast chamber, and looked around at signs advertising tours in various languages. Since the Poles don't speak any Italian, and I am not yet fluent in Slovenian, we compromised on an English group, which included of the six of us and about forty Japanese tourists.

Our guide was a red haired Slovenian woman (reddish-purple to be more accurate, the Slovenians are very fond of dying their hair) who spoke completely broken English. I am sure that her amazing sense of humor was lost on everyone but me.

"OK so it take ten sousand year for stalactite and stalagmite to meet and form a peelar, so we come back in ten sousand year with new haircut." These hilarious one-liners were delivered in a spectacular monotone, making it impossible for anyone but me to realize when punch-lines arrived. Our guide took us through various, impressive chambers, describing the history and geology of the cave.

As we walked, she repeatedly told the Japanese tourists not to take photographs.

"OK no pictures please, because you will disturb the animals. We have over eighty-five specie of animal."

"What sort of animals?" I asked, curious because I had not yet seen any sign of non-human life down here.

"There are many animal. Eighty-five specie. They are below us, in the river. They feed on spider." As the Japanese tourists continued to snap pictures left and right, our guide became more forceful, which was impossible to tell as her tone never changed.

"OK if you do not respect nature, please respect me, because my eyes are accustomed to dark and the flash iz very bad." After a while she gave up and returned to being hilarious.

We reached a small corridor where we were forced to walk single file.

"You want to see natural beauty of cave?"

"Yes," I replied alone. Our guide walked over to a small breaker and shut off the lights around us. The place became so dark that I could not even see Kamila's blonde hair in front of me.

"OK see you later," said the guide and I laughed hysterically.

When the light returned, she showed us a small tunnel, blocked off by large, steel doors. She explained how the military used to hide troops and supplies in these caves and how they had built this escape tunnel some years ago.

"OK, so if anything bad happen, we run through there. Small problem, we lost key many years ago." This time I could not contain myself. I started crying I was laughing so hard, and had to steady myself by placing my hand on an old Japanese man's shoulder. He paused from his prohibited picture taking to give me a look of disapproval. I removed my hand from his shoulder.

Our tour ended in the concert hall, which was an enormous chamber, capable of holding eight thousand people. There was a small stage on one side, and a tremendous echo to anyone who wished to shout, whistle, or clap. The Japanese politely clapped in unison as if they were at a golf match, and then began a chorus of "Ahhhhs" when the sounds returned, pointing their cameras up toward the ceiling to snap pictures of the echos. I tried to ask the guide to explain to me how flash photography bothered the mysterious animals below us, but loud concerts were not a problem, but I don't think she understood the question. I could not even get her to tell me if the animals were birds or fish or bears or what.

After the enchanting jama, we had a kebab and prepared to hitch home. Again, Kamila and I were to go first. We tossed our thumbs out and again were greeted by honks and smiles, but no rides. The most excited people to see us seemed to be Slovenian farmers, who drove their tractors past us and waved madly. One such tractor, pulling a load of what looked to me like the wood chips found in the bottom of a hamster cage, stopped and beckoned us inside.

"Where you go?" The driver asked, as his overall clad son looked on.

"Italy."

"No, no, not Italy, come I take you one kilometer." We declined, although I sort of wanted to check out a Slovenian wood chip farm.

Like clockwork, after about twenty minutes, a blue Volvo pulled over to the side of the road, and sure enough it was the two Italians again, this time with Voytek and Agata in the back seat. We squeezed in, forcing the guy in the passenger seat to hold the ladder between his legs.

We exclaimed for a while about the unlikelyhood of meeting twice and told them about how much we enjoyed the cave. I asked them what they had done that day, and the Italians told me that they had some lunch somewhere in Slovenia and then walked somewhere else, they could not remember the name of the place. When we reached the border, Kamila had to duck as there was one extra person in the car. After avoiding trouble with the polizia, we returned to Trieste, discussing everything from the upcoming sailing regatta (the largest in the world) to the daily stress caused by Italian Wi-Fi, or lack thereof.

Alessandro, the driver, dropped us off at the train station in Trieste, and we thanked him repeatedly, agreeing that this would not be the last time. Maybe Croatia next? As I exited the Volvo, I tried one more inquiry about the ladder.

"Perché il legno?"

"Sí, legno...our legno." We slapped hands and I was satisfied with his answer, the first English word I had heard from Alessandro all day.

Slovenia Part 3: Bleddy Track 3a

2008-09-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

Just to let everyone know, there are three parts to this Slovenia trip, and I think it will make the most sense if you scroll down and start with part 1...enjoy.

We took an hour bus ride north to Bled, Slovenia, partly because we could make excellent Bleddy puns in British accents all day, and partly because we heard there was a lake there. I got off the bus around 11 a.m. and felt terrible after two long nights and not a lot of sleep. We found a small pub and decided to have a coffee before heading for the lake. The bartender spoke excellent English and the ceiling of the place was decorated with license plates from all over the world, including one from Vermont, which I took to be a good sign.

Lucas came out of the bathroom and told me that he had met a hockey player who spoke decent German. I saw this enormous man emerge from the WC, with flushed cheeks, holding some type of drink with a lemon in it. I had just finished my coffee and stood up to grab my pack.

"American?" he asked, with a thick accent.

"Yes, yes, I'm from the states," I replied.

"I know George Bush," he informed me, making a telephone with his hand. "He is my friend, I call him."

I nodded and smiled, not sure what to expect from this guy. Lucas exchanged a few words with him in German, and told me that he wanted us to have a drink. I was not really interested in touching any alcohol today, and with no food in my stomach, I wasn't sure it was even possible. I tried to decline, shaking my head and pointing toward the door.

"We have to go to the lake, I'm very sorry."

"Lake is right here, is very close. Lake later. Now, one drink." Ok, I thought, how much harm could one drink possibly do? I asked the hockey player what he was having, and he said something to the barkeep in Slovenian, who turned around with two giant pitchers of wine.

Fuck.

"Is good, strong Slovenian wine. Please, Please." The hockey player indicated to the pitchers that had been accompanied by six glasses.

"Who knows when we're going to be in Bled again, why not have some Bleddy wine," said Keith cheerfully and I reluctantly gave in.

The wine was delicious. One was a Cabernet Sauvignon and the other was a different type of red, the name I did not catch. As we drank, I started to relax a bit while I listened to the hockey player regale us with stories in broken English.

There was one about a crazy motorcyclist in Tajikistan, another about when he was in the Slovenian army and had to hide in a mountain, but my favorite was when he would tell us about his hockey games.

"You get very thirsty. You play and train, and then you need a drink." He made a motion like he was drinking liquid out of a teet, while he made a ridiculous sucking sound.

The hockey player also told us about his nineteen year old son,

"He is very good boy. He play chess in Russia."

After a few more glasses of wine, an older man entered with a very expressive face who was dwarfed by the hockey player.

"This is Morris, he is good friend."

Morris carried a small cactus in his hand, and put it down on a nearby table for a bit. He began to dance with Lucas, the bar had been pumping out American pop songs all morning, but paused momentarily to grab his cactus, apparently it made him a better dancer. I took a discreet video of him (below), as both he and the hockey player refused to be in any photographs with us.

After over an hour of socializing with Slovenians, we grabbed our things to go, my head greatly feeling the effects of the wine. The barkeep brought out another liter and the hockey player gestured toward it, and was greatly disappointed when we refused to stay.

"No, no, no American...I will call President Bush, I am his friend." he gave me a big pat on the shoulder and whispered in my ear.

"I am very sorry...no money is not so funny." I think he was referring to the present financial crisis in the States and I thanked him for his concern.

We took off on a very silly walk toward the lake, Keith and I sharing a long discussion about drugs and stupid, young decisions. Alberto was next to us, with his eyes closed, completely sleep walking...I had to direct him so that he would not bump into people or walk into the lake.

Lake Bled is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. It reminds me very much of something one might find in up-state New York or Vermont, with clear water, and mountains surrounding. However, with Austria just over the border, the mountains are much higher and more breathtaking, with snow on the peaks.

We stumbled into another bar and had a couple of shots of Jagermeister for some inexplicable reason, I think it was Lucas' idea, and then we rented a couple of rowboats to take to an island in the center of the lake. Alberto, Isabelle and I had great trouble in our boat, Isabelle kindly telling us suggestions while Alberto and I refused to let her row. It took us about twenty minutes to weave our way over to the island. Lucas easily directed his in a very straight and efficient way, and when we finally made it, he, Keith and Noelle had already climbed up to the church located there. The panorama from the island was spectacular, and I snapped pictures left and right.

On the way back, we reluctantly let Isabelle, the lady, try her hand at rowing. She was incredible. I had no idea that she was a closet crew superstar. She brought us back with lightening speed, where we found an area to do what we had been waiting for all day...have a Bleddy swim.

Keith, Lucas and I were the only ones who dared jump into the freezing cold mountain water, but it was so refreshing, and just as we got out and started to dry off, the sun came out and warmed us. As an added bonus, we ran into the dangerously charming British couple again, who were camping next to the lake and enjoying the long reach of Slovenian Wi-Fi. We made them promise that they would come visit us in Treste, and they agreed,

"Lets make it a hat trick," they told us in their amazing accents.

After parting with the Brits, we walked back to the station and took a bus to Ljubljana, where I sobered up and got some sleep. We grabbed a quick meal, walking out to the platform just at 6:50, when our train when supposed to leave. We stood at platform 3A and asked a girl if this was the place to get the train to Sessana, a border town, six kilometers from Trieste. She nodded, so we waited and watched another train come and go. As 7:00 approached, we knew something was amiss. We waved down a rail employee who looked at our ticket and told us.

"Your train left from platform 3, this is 3a." Fuck.

"Is there another one to Sessana tonight?"

"No, you will have to wait until morning." We could not believe that there were no trains directly to Trieste or anywhere nearby, but we kept asking and finally found one at 2 am that went to Monfalcone, a station farther West than Trieste, but from there we could get another train and go back East. We bought our tickets and began a depressing search for the best way to kill time.

We spent a couple of hours in an underground mall with some homeless people, and a few outside in the cold with more familiar homeless people that we had met Friday night. One of them told us a story about when he was in Portland, Oregon where he claimed there was a strip-club open in the middle of the day.

"Portland Oregon, is one of best places in world. There is a restaurant with the naked girls, you can go all day...when sun is shining!"

Around midnight we found a nice Slovenian pizzeria and a man who spoke excellent English and even stayed open a couple of hours late, because I think he was just happy to finally have some customers and some company. Another group of Spaniards who were taking the same train found us and shared some pizza and coffee.

When we were walking out to the track we could not find a way across, Slovenian train stations are very confusing, so we had to jump over a fence. Poor Keith slipped and fucked up his ankle and had a nice ambulance ride to an Italian hospital the next day, where in the ultimate Catch-22, they had no crutches to give him, but also would not let him leave because he did not have any crutches. He returned home with a cane, that they insisted he return the next day, in a cab and asked me to run outside to pay for him and grab his bag and shoe.

"Fucking 3a," he said appropriately.

Slovenia Part 2: Things Get Real

2008-09-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

We awoke mid-morning, had some breakfast, and then headed out to experience all that Ljubljana has to offer. We found an outdoor market, which Lucas accurately pointed out is a great place to experience what local people eat and how they act. I managed to spill some coffee on my shirt, which was an excellent excuse to buy a new one with a dragon on it. Apparently there is some legend about a Greek warrior who came to Ljubljana and slayed a dragon, which explains why they all over the city.

After trying on some cool hats and sampling local food and drink, we hiked up to Ljubljana Castle, which has an amazing view of the city. On the way, we were passed by a sprinting Slovenian man, who upon closer inspection had a very weathered face and was probably about eighty years old. When we reached the top, we noticed him jumping from rock to rock with his capri pants swaying in the wind. I hope I am in half as good shape when I am that old.

In the castle courtyard there was a wedding taking place and two little kids were kicking a little nut around. When it reached me I kicked it back, which prompted the little blonde Slovenian girl to say, "Hvuala," which means thank you, and is pronounced to rhyme with Koala, in the most adorable way.

On top of the castle we met a dangerously charming British couple. Everything they said had me hypnotized. They could have told me to jump off of the castle tower and I would have done it without question, because they are just so damn charming. Apparently they had quit their jobs and were spending their savings driving a van around Europe. The Brits are able to use certain verbs that American could never pull off.

"Yes we had considered wintering in Tunisia, (Tunisia with four syllables as opposed to our measly three) but we're not sure if government will permit us to drive there." Everything to them was "really fantastic" or "absolutely brilliant" including Budapest, which they recommended highly for New Years, and Czech beer which they said is the best in the world, to groans of protest from Lucas and Isabelle who had spent all morning debating if German or Belgian beer was better.

After absorbing the gorgeous surroundings, we descended and toured the city's churches and museums, including a stop at the library, which was designed by a famous Slovenian architect and I know my parents would enjoy it very much. We also found the Parliament building which is not terribly impressive except for the doors, which are famous and filled with sculpture. Isabelle proved to be a great guide, translating her French information on Slovenia into broken English or Spanish, and explaining the significance of every building and statue.

For dinner we went to the supermarket and bought some pasta and meat which I happily cooked in the hostel's kitchen. Alberto thanked me for cooking and began calling me, "The Cookie," as in

"Thank you for cooking, Cookie...you are a great cookie!"

We drank some wine and tequila that Alberto brought and prepared to head out. Thankfully Noelle agreed to stay in, which meant nobody had to take care of her. This time we wanted to avoid the turisty clubs and decided to venture deeper into the city, following advice from one of the hostel employees. First we had some wine on the Dragon Bridge (my favorite spot in Ljubljana) and discussed conspiracy theories, agreeing that the U.S. government has far too many secrets.

We went from the Dragon Bridge to the art district, where apparently a group of students had congregated in the '90s and I didn't quite hear the whole story, but I guess the government tried to stop them from taking over the square, but they finally gave up and just let them have the place.

As we ventured further and further from the downtown Ljubljana, there was less light and fewer people, I started to feel a bit uneasy, but we were in a group and Lucas seemed to be confident that this would be a cool place to go, so I tried not to worry.

When we reached the square, we saw that there was graffiti and post modern, abstract, metal sculpture everywhere. Students stood around with drinks, wearing leather and sporting piercings of various kinds. I felt that something was not right about this place as we opened our last bottle of wine and listened to the strange music that leaked out of one of the buildings.

After a bit, two young men approached us, one wearing a black jacket and the other with sores all over his face. I told them I was from the states, but only the tall one, without the sores, seemed to know any English. Every other thing he said was "fuck's sake," as in,

"You'll have to excuse my friend," he gestured toward the red, sickly looking spots all over his face. "He has the H.I.V. very bad, fuck's sake."

I started to become more and more uneasy, and then things escalated quickly when Lucas tried to ask what the word for Prost (German cheers) was in Slovenian, raising his cup to clink it with the Slovenian student's. Upon hearing the word Prost, his expression changed drastically, and he said quietly but forcefully,

"German...you are German." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah," Lucas responded in the kindest voice. The student removed his black jacket to reveal a red soccer warm-up.

"My grandparents were killed by the Germans, forty-five kilometers from here. Now we fight."

He put his fists in the air, and I stepped between him and Lucas, who walked in the other direction trying to avoid a confrontation. I tried to talk down the angry Slovenian who kept explaining to me about his grandparents.

"Fucking Germans for fuck's sake, killed my grandparents, fuck's sake. Fort-five kilometers from here."

"Look I told him. I'm Jewish. I understand. I understand your anger, but this is a new generation. Lucas did not kill your grandparents, you have to understand that." I don't think he quite got what I was trying to say.

"Fuck's sake, you go forty-five kilometers. You go there!" He looked around crazily for Lucas who had disappeared with Isabelle, and then finally put his jacket back on, seeming to give up. Keith, Alberto, and I had a seat on the curb and tried to wrap our minds around what had just happened.

"I don't really feel safe here, like I think we should go." I could tell Alberto was shaken up. Keith and I consoled him and tried to sound like everything was fine when another student came over and sat next to us with his head in his hands. He looked at us momentarily and then let out an extraordinary amount of vomit onto the street, which did not contribute to making Alberto feel safe. We watched the angry young Slovenian emerge from inside the building and take a serious fall, the force of which pulled off his pants and exposed his entire bare ass.

"Lets get out of here," Alberto said, and Keith and I did not need any more convincing.

I told them to wait where they were, and I walked into the dark club, which was filled with smoke and art students dancing strangely to music that was a mix of techno and wailing folk rock. I saw Lucas and Isabelle happily sipping dragon beers at the bar.

"Look at how they dance!" Lucas seemed to love this place. I told them that it was time to go and they agreed. We left the place, which is how most Americans would probably imagine night-life in a former Yugoslavian Republic. It was about 4 a.m., so we decided to see if Bacchus was still open, but because they were closing soon we figured it wouldn't be worth paying the cover, although I wondered if my princess was in there.

We walked back to the hostel in near silence, and when we were about to make the turn onto Tomisceva Ulica, we heard a shout from across the street.

"GERMAN!" The angry student and his afflicted friend had found us, so we took off at a fast-paced walk and made our way into the safety of the hostel. I consoled Alberto by telling him that now we had an incredible story to tell. We set an alarm for 7 a.m. to make the trip to Bled in Northern Slovenia.

Slovenia Part 1: My Slovenian Princess

2008-09-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

I just returned from Slovenia, a wonderful country that is much more developed and modern than most people think, making it a model for Eastern European democracies. A lot happened there and it might take a couple of days for me to write it all down and post the pictures, but it's not like I have to go to class this week, so here is what happened day 1.

We took a bus to Ljubljana, the capital, which took about two and a half hours from Trieste. I traveled with an international crew including three Americans, a Mexican, a German, and a Belgian. Of course we were accompanied by over twenty Spaniards who stayed in a different hostel and were very cold in Slovenia. On the way, my friend Keith (from Montana) and I started looking at a Slovenian travel guide (pictured above) and decided that this weekend was going to be a good time.

I mean just look at all of the amazing things Slovenia has to offer: dragons and giant flowers, white water rafting and ice climbing, tree houses suspended on ears of corn, flying horsemen with tophats, cliff diving, and of course housewives, traditionally dressed, and doing their cleaning while standing on top of pastries. What's not to like?

We arrived in Slovenia, which looks exactly like Vermont, at about 5pm. I mentioned the similarity between Slovenia and my home state to Alberto who took this idea and ran with it, frequently tapping me on the shoulder and telling me things like,

"Hey, I think this looks like Vermont."

"Noah...we must have fallen asleep and now we are in Vermont."

"Keith, I think it looks like Montana now." Keith responded by telling him that it looked nothing like Montana, and more like Mexico to him, which had Alberto holding his sides and laughing hysterically.

Alberto also informed us on the bus that life is like a box of chocolates and he got very excited when he saw a Mcdonalds in the Slovenian bus station, making up a new song on the spot that he sang throughout the weekend. It was a serious of deedeedee's followed by a two word hook,

"At Mcdonald's!"

He also introduced us to some of his favorite English sayings including "Awesome Possum," and "Of Course my Horse." Alberto makes me laugh more than anyone else on earth, and I could not imagine traveling without him.

We checked into our hostel which was right downtown and looked like the entire place had been purchased out of an Ikea catalogue, complete with pink walls, bunk beds, and very modern looking reading lights and appliances. The staff was extremely friendly and patient with us and I highly recommend Fluxus hostel to anyone who finds themselves in Slovenia for a night or two.

We left our stuff and went out for a Kebab (delicious) and to buy some alcohol for the night. We discovered that Slovenians have two types of cheap beer which are quite tasty, one featuring a Dragon (an important symbol for Ljubljana) and a Goat (not sure of the significance there). We bought a good number of Dragon and Goat beers and some wine and headed downtown for Botellon, which is the Spanish term for drinking outside in the town square. We walked along the river for awhile, noticing people enjoying a drink or dinner outdoors, many bridges, and some beautifully lit up buildings.

We arrived in a square next to three such bridges, and saw a large group of people bopping to loud house music. On either side of the square were two phone booths, and in the center was a Heineken tent, a couple of large LCD monitors, and two good looking young people with microphones. Before we had time to say "What the fuck?" a woman with a clip board grabbed us and ushered us toward one of the phone booths.

"You have to talk, thirty seconds," she informed us, in a thick, Eastern European accent. I asked her why, and she explained to me in broken English that there were two teams, and whoever could get more people to talk in their booth would be flown to New York City for a Madonna concert. This was completely unexpected, but I knew that we had to help, realizing that the stakes could not be higher. We each had our turn in the booth, yelling things in our native language, hearing our voices on the loud speakers reverberate throughout the square. I said something about being born in New York and people cheered when they heard the name of the city that they were trying to get to, so I closed out my thirty seconds by yelling MADONNA!!! to the delight of the crowd.

After our booth time, we were handed a ticket and told to scratch. I did so, revealing a long code of letters and numbers. They pushed me into the Heineken tent, where I was handed a freezing cold beer and a free hat in exchange for my ticket. Some won shirts and various other prizes, and to top it all off, the tent was full of gorgeous Slovenian women. After a few minutes of oggling, I went back out into the square to see the Spaniards arrive.

We took over the piazza and had a tremendous Botellon which involved a lot of shouts of "Grande!" some national anthems, some discussion with a Slovenian homeless man, and pictures with a big ladder that the Spaniards found somewhere. After a few too many dragon beers and some strong Slovenian wine (the labels say 13% alcohol, but it feels like more), my American friends needed to be put to bed. I was not happy, because it was only midnight and I was ready to hit the clubs. Alberto and I walked Keith and Noelle back to the hostel with Alberto doing all of the work, because I refused to help them.

"They are 23 and 24 years old," I kept reiterating.

"They should be able to handle their liquor." Keith began telling my to go fuck myself in Italian when I told him to walk straighter, which did cheer me up, and he begged me not to leave him alone with Noelle (a stereotypical American from San Diego), repeatedly telling me that he was going out with us. As soon as we entered the hostel he was in a bed, asleep, while I profusely apologized to the hostel employee David who was very understanding. After convincing a hammered Noelle not to go out alone to get food, Alberto and I went back out and met up with Lucas (from Germany) and Isabelle (from Belgium) at a club called Bacchus.

We paid our five Euro cover and hit the dance floor, where beer was not too expensive, and the odd array of American pop songs kept coming, which were thankfully not remixed. We heard everything from Love Shack, to Uptown Girl, to Eye of the Tiger, to One More Night by Phill Collins.

Alberto met some terrifyingly young girls and tried to get me to dance with them.

"They are children," I kept telling him, "absolutely not." He was convinced that they were much older, or at least that one day they would be much older, and therefore it was no problem. I found some British girls that were closer to my age and a lot of fun. We did the twist and I was immediately reminded of my friend Brett's excellent impression of Chubby Checker, which made me wish he could be there to experience this with me.

I laughed as a watched a crew of Sovenians all dressed in orange jumpsuits, who danced on top of a balcony, and then came down to sneak into people's photographs. Their leader sported a large afro and was one of the more interesting dancers I have seen in Europe, and I wondered if they dressed this way every time they went out or if tonight had some special significance. At one point I looked across the dance floor and saw a gorgeous girl with blonde hair and my jaw completely dropped.

"I have to dance with her," I told my friend Lucas, just as a swing song came on and a guy started dancing with her friend. I seized my opportunity, grabbing her hand and dancing with her until the song ended, at which point I was completely smitten. A tiny man with a unibrow grabbed me on the shoulder and looked at me very seriously.

"Do you have any idea who she is?"

"What? No, why would I?"

"You are unbelievable," he told me, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry but I am not from around here. Who is she?" I asked.

"She is an actress, very famous in Slovenia...all of the movies. How can you not know her?" I talked to her little handler for a while who kept calling me ignorant as he condescendingly informed me all about her film career, like I was a child who had never heard of Slovenia. He seemed to be very surprised that I was able to dance with her, frustrated that I had penetrated his vigilant defenses against potential suitors. I noticed a large group of men gathered around her looking to dance who were unsuccessful. I felt pretty proud of myself for getting that far, but when the club closed, I became separated from her and her little minion before getting a phone number or planning to meet again, and I was devestated. I had lost my Slovenian Princess forever.

Alberto said goodbye to the children and we headed home around 5 a.m. for some much needed sleep...sightseeing in the morning.

Udine, Grande!

2008-09-24T03:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my friends and I went to an Italian class for absolute beginners. There was no need for us to go, I am going to take an intermediate class later in the semester. However, like we expected, it was a great place to meet more international students (especially female ones). We ended up abducting some from Poland who had just arrived in the city and were still living in a hostel...We drank wine all day and then thankfully, they finally found an apartment, which is very difficult in Trieste. Later, we went to Piazza Unitá and then to some strange Carribean Bar that of course played Euro remixes to a variety of American songs including a disturbing techno rendition of Country Roads by John Denver. But, as i am a few days behind on my blogging, here is last weekend's trip to Udine.

We got a call from the Spaniards telling us to meet them at 6:00 p.m. at the train station. We arrived on time with a few bottles of liquor, some tonic water, and a lot of Fanta, and of course they showed up just in time to take the 7:30 train. We were allowed to drink in the station and on the train, and people were very congratulatory to me as soon as they found out I was twenty.

"No, you can't in the States! You can't!" One of my Spanish friends had a Deep Purple shirt on and he told me he got it at one of their concerts in 1975, but I think he meant something else.

On the train we tried a bit of Alberto's tequila from Mexico, which made the tips of my ears turn red, but I find that Tequila improves my Italian, so I conversed the whole time with Isabel from Belgium and Sandra from Spain who both speak a bit of Italian but mostly Spanish. My friend Lucas spotted a guy sitting by himself on the train with one of those shirts that has German flags on the sleeves. We invited him to have a drink with us, and found out that his name was Raf and he was from Togo. Raf had been living in Italy for a couple of months and was having trouble making friends. Well he found the right group, and agreed to take the train past his stop to come to Udine with us and celebrate.

We arrived in the other major city of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region to find thousands of people outside, socializing in and out of large tents set about the main piazza. My new friend Fernando from Spain insisted that I speak English with him, which was a bit tedious because he only knows how to say a few things and he repeats them over and over.

"In my country we have this." He gestured toward the tents and the groups of Italians.

"We have the people...outside."

"In my country we have more...soccer."

"In my country we have late eating."

This back and forth tested my patience because I was eager to practice my Italian, which I eventually did with Raf, who turned out to be the man. He taught us a toast from Togo that we still use all of the time even though we are probably mispronouncing it. We got a text from him yesterday, so I hope he comes with us this weekend to Croatia or Slovenia.

The outdoor party in Udine had some interesting elements to it. There was local food and Tocai, the white wine that his region is famous for, everywhere that you could sample for free and lots of remixed American songs...I think I heard Grease Lightning seven or eight times. African venders were walking around selling cowboy hats and sunglasses with crazy, flashing lights on them, which the drunk Italians bought in bulk wore proudly. We received free T-shirts and I got some sort of sandwich from a girl who spoke to me in English and Italian.

"Your English is very good," I said to her in between mouthfulls. "Where are you from?"

"Denver," she replied. Small world.

After seeing the character pictured above riding down the street I decided I had had enough...I needed to find out why they were having this ridiculous party, but it was difficult to get a straight answer out of anyone.

"Ciao, ragazze...forse potreste dirmi...perche questa festa...che significa?"

"Oh perche ogni anno...stasera, tutti vengono qua, e c'é un buona festa."

I got similar answers from everyone I asked. Apparently they were having this party because every year on the same day, everybody comes to Udine. They seemed to be troubled by the fact that I wanted there to be a reason for the party. They were insistent that they festival occurred because many years ago, everyone decided it would be so. After I received similar responses from a few groups of Italians, I was satisfied...who needs a reason to party?

At around four a.m. we made our way back to the station to catch the first train back to Trieste at half past five. My friend Fernando (who's last name is Torres, which you soccer fans will find interesting) found me on the way and was very apologetic because he wanted to speak more English with me, but he is from Southern Spain and he was far to cold. He kept rubbing his throat while smoking a cigarette, showing me that he was in pain.

"In my country, we don't have this, this cold."

"In my country..." He couldn't go on, he clutched his throat and shook his head, I put my hand on his shoulder and told him not to worry, and then he proceeded to go on a thirty second rant in Spanish. Apparently the cold was only affecting his ability to speak English.

A few meters from the train station, a couple of the Spanish guys found some old abandoned bicycles and were riding them around the train station. They would refer to everything as "Grande," which can be used to mean big, great, or awesome.

"Udine, Grande!"

"Espana, Grande!"

"Le biciclette, Grande!"

When I stepped onto the train, I found that the bicycles had been taken aboard and were coming with us to Trieste, prizes to remember an excellent night out. They are still sitting in my friend Fran's apartment downtown, one with a homemade license plate that says "Espana 1"and the other with a plate that says "Italia 1."

I slept for most of the train ride, but did awake briefly to see Alberto standing at the front of the train car, eating pretzels and conducting the Spaniards in a spirited rendition of "Cielito Lindo." Which involves a lot of Ay yay yay and something about Senores...I have to learn the words.

Don't Worry...

2008-09-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

To anyone who read that entire last post...Bravo. It's long as shit at not terribly uplifting, but I wanted to include it, because that's how I felt at the time, and I wanted to show everyone that this trip really was difficult. I have never felt more alone in my entire life, which is why now I have so much appreciation for all of the fun I am having, because I really had to earn it this time. Yes, it has only been a week, but those first few depressing days seemed like a lifetime. The situation reminds me of one of my new favorite quotes, a revelation during the film Into the Wild (featuring the music of the one and only Edward Vedder).

"Happiness is only real when shared."

So true. When I was alone, I doubted everything from my Italian, to if I was heading to the right office, to if I was getting the right piece of paper signed by the right person and returning it to the right office, to if I should have even left the States in the first place. After the debacle that was my trip to the Segreterie Delle Studente, I returned to the Erasmus office, got the ball rolling on the absurd amount of paper work I had to do (every Italian who looks at my passport is amazed to see that I was born in New York City...one guy told me had a cousin who lived in the Hudson River. I knew what he meant). At the Erasmus office I also met my two best friends here, Alberto (Mexico) and Lucas (Germany). Since then, a lot of new characters have joined our crew, including a couple of Americans, obviously a few Italians, and about 30 crazy Spaniards. I am having the most amazing time exploring delicious local cuisine, swimming in the Adriatic, and visiting Castle Mirimare, which is the old residence of the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and has a gorgeous view of the Sea and the City (Pictures on Facebook).

Every Wednesday, the international students gather in Piazza Unitá, one of the most beautiful squares I have ever seen, that opens to the sea. Each group brings their own drink and cups and we make an outdoor bar, conversing in five different languages with everyone finding a way to communicate. My Italian gets drastically better every day and I can actually understand a bit of Spanish as well now. Whenever we are interested doing something ridiculous, we just call the Spaniards because they are a giant mobile party, and they always know where to go. Last Wednesday, we entered the local disco at about 2 am and danced the night away to one long techno song, crawling home around 5.

The people here are so relaxed, it took me a long time to get used to offices only being open for a couple of hours a day, but now I love it. Everything takes time and a ticket here, but nothing needs to be on time. If you walk into the post office and you are the only one there, you take a ticket and you wait until your number is called, if at all. The Triestine way of doing things is incredibly inefficient, but it's not about being efficient, it's about enjoyment and satisfaction, it's about not worrying about every little fucking thing like in the States. For example, my classes either start October 1st, October 6th, or in November, and none of the classes have schedules made up for the entire semester, because they change weekly or monthly, making it impossible to choose classes without conflicts and prompting my advisor to tell me, "Don't worry, you will go to class if you can."

I have come to the conclusion that unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, I will never become an old Italian man. I have decided that they are the coolest people on Earth. They stroll down the street with jackets hanging over their shoulders, hands behind their backs or sipping glasses of wine, even when there is no bar or cafe in sight causing me to wonder where they get the drink and the glass. They discuss everything from politics, to soccer, to when the Borra (the strong wind from the mountains that Trieste is famous for) will arrive.

I witnessed one such man having an argument with a cat on the street. Yes, this looked exactly like you might think, the cat sort of meandering back and forth, rubbing up against the man's leg and then moving away. The man in a nice suit waving his arms around, talking loudly, and pushing his index finger right between the cat's eyes at times for emphasis. I walked over to discreetly capture a picture, but he caught me and gave me the most mortified look, as if I was the son who had just walked in on Mom and Dad having an argument. After a while, the man threw his hands in the air, admitting defeat, and left the cat to cross the road. The cat watched for a minute and then raced across the street where they continued their discussion.

Last weekend I had a silly night in Udine, a nearby city, which I will explain in detail when I have some more time...those pictures should also make their way onto Facebook soon, but now I have to go to bed because in the morning I am going to a supplementary beginner's Italian class and then we are planning this weekend's trip to either Slovenia or Croatia, so until then...

Mi Chiamo Noah.

Le Segreterie Delle Studente

2008-09-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

I woke up promptly at 8, made my way to the dining hall, which is called a mensa here and had an amazing cappuccino. I love the coffee in Trieste, it is much sweeter than in the states and is a great way to start the day. I headed in the direction of the main campus building, and when I saw it, I was astounded. It's enormous, definitely one of the biggest single buildings I have ever seen. It's not too tall, but it's wider than a football field and deeper than a major hospital. It's all made out of white marble and has statues and an impressive set of steps in front. When you get to the top there is again an incredible view of the sea. It is fashioned in some sort of Byzantine style that I know I learned about in my art history class last year, but I can't really remember any relevant terminology or history of this type of architecture...I will include a picture when I take a good one.

I walked inside through a giant revolving door and was immediately the picture of a flustered foreigner. There were Italian students all over the place, talking at a riduculously fast pace, sipping espressos. A giant board was mounted in the corner of the lobby with different electronic letters and numbers that beeped every time a number changed. I found a sign that said, "Segreterie Delle Studente," listing all of the different offices. Letter I seemed good for me,

"I servizi per studenti stranieri"-"Services for foreign students."

I tried to ask a girl in broken Italian where to find this office. She showed me to a machine in and pushed a button. A small, white ticket came out that read I-23 on it. I had no idea at the time that this would be the first of many tickets I would have to take for various things in Italy. She told me something in Italian and pointed over toward another revolving door. I thanked her and headed through the door, which took me outside. What the fuck? This can't be right.

I came back in and noticed that there were cats strewn all about the building. Some sunbathed in chairs that were located next to the windows, while others roamed the halls. I wondered if somebody fed them here, or if they just came and went as they pleased. Perhaps the cats owned the building and the University leased it from them. Either way, they seemed quite comfortable inside. I asked somebody else where to find office I, and they showed me to the elevator and pointed down. I had to hunch over to fit in l'ascensore, which was hardly big enough for two, and I noticed that there was a little sign that said that the elevator could take a maximum of four people. Maybe they meant four cats.

I went downstairs and saw a giant hallway with another electronic board at the end of it, and some large glass doors that led into the segreterie delle studente. I took a seat among some Italians and watched the board change. There were a lot of letters and numbers, but never I. I asked somebody and they assured me that I was in the right place for the office for foreign students. After about forty-five minutes, my heart skipped a beat when I saw I-1. I knew this was going to take awhile and decided to change seats, moving away from the intimidating doors and the giant board.

I noticed some interesting shirts as I watched the Italian students come and go. Many of them said random things in English, my favorite being a hoodie that read, "Alcatraz Psycho Ward," in huge letters, worn by a guy drinking a coffee with comically large purple sunglasses, tight jeans, gelled hair, and tiny pink sneakers. After another forty five minutes, when we had made it to I-10, an Italian student sat next to me and started a one-sided conversation that gave me a chance to practice my language skills.

Pretty much all I could manage was to tell him that there were too many people here and that Monday morning was a bad time to see the segreterie delle studente. He agreed and kept elaborating in fast Italian, leaving me nodding and saying "Sí" a lot in that confused foreigner kind of way. His number came up and he ran down the hallway and through the glass doors so that they wouldn't skip him.

In the next couple of hours, I took to watching the ticket machine crush people's dreams. Usually somebody would walk up to the machine in mid conversation, enjoying their morning. They would take a ticket, look at it and then up at the board, and then they would begin shouting and waving their hands around, knowing they would be waiting all morning.

My favorite ticket taker was an old man wearing a checkered shirt tucked into khaki pants, with reading glasses hung around his neck and a small, red book tucked under his arm. He paced around talking to himself, shaking his head back and forth. Every once in a while he would read one of the signs placed around the hallway while touching the wall with an extended index finger. He would finish reading the sign, look back at his ticket, and then continue muttering angrily under his breath and pointing at people, trying to make them understand his pain.

Finally, at about 11:45, I saw I-22 appear on the screen and I made my way toward the glass doors. A loud beep followed and I-23 was requested at window 14, it was my time. I walked in confidently and a young girl stared back at me behind the desk, which was exactly the same as the other 19 desks inside.

"Prego," she said, and I began reciting the lines that I had carefully been practicing in my head for the last few hours.

"Sono un nuovo studente degli Stati Uniti, e ho bisogno un username per l'internet e ho bisogno scegliere i miei lezioni." She said a few things very quickly that I could not understand. When she saw my look of confusion she asked me my name and I told her. She disappeared for a moment and returned, again speaking rapid Italian. She typed something into her computer screen and showed me some information about non-EU students who wanted to take a class at the university. I think I told her something about being an exchange student, similar to Erasmus, the European version of my type of program that everybody knows about here. She went back into the office for a bit and emerged with another woman who tried to talk to me.

They asked me if I was looking for a masters degree, and when I told them I wasn't, they disagreed with me and handed me a bunch of paperwork about a masters program in international economics. When I finally convinced them that I was only twenty and still an undergrad, they showed me a list and asked if I was any of the three students on there. Two were from The Congo and one was from Iran. I wanted to ask them if I looked like I was from either of those places, but I didn't know how.

After enough broken English and Italian to test anyone's patience, they told me that I should try some other office. Fuck. I worried about taking another ticket and waiting for so long again, which would probably result in me breaking into tears. The only word I remembered was "mobilitá," and I think they told me that it was on the second floor.

I meandered around the giant building for a while looking for mobilitá, walking up many different sets of stairs and taking more small elevators, while running into a few more cats along the way. At some point I took a set of stairs, and found a small sign that said something about a mobility office, and it also hadthe word Erasmus on it, which I took to be a good sign. I found the office and saw a few people waiting there with tickets. You have to be fucking kidding me. More tickets. At least there were only about five people waiting here, but still, I didn't understand why the people in the office couldn't just ask who was there first.

A nice guy with a pony tail showed me the ticket machine, but it stopped dispensing tickets at 11:30 and it was almost 1:oo now. I saw a sign with the hours of the mobility office on it, and it was similar to how things worked at the Visa office in Boston, completely inefficiently. This office is apparently only open for about two hours in the morning, two more on Monday and Thursday afternoons, and closed completely on Wednesdays. I wondered how they could possibly deal with all of the international students if they were only open for 15 hours a week. I suppose they can't, and that is exactly why I received no information about where I was supposed to go when I arrived and why there is no orientation for new students.

I watched each person wait until their number was called, some forcing their way in when it wasn't their turn, usually resulting in an argument with a lot of hand motion and ridiculous facial expressions. When his number wasn't called, the guy with the ponytail, who was wearing red wind-pants yelled something that was probably profane and then threw his notebook against a file cabinet. After everybody had left, a blonde woman opened the door and I didn't have the energy to try to speak Italian.

"Parli ingese?" I asked.

"A little bit, yes."

"Thank God." I told her who I was and once she knew that I had my room key and my meal card, she told me to return at 3:15 when the office reopened after a conveniently long lunch break.

"Don't worry," she told me. "We will explain everything." I hope so, I thought to myself, because I am fucking depressed.

Trieste

2008-09-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

So after a stressful train ride, where I had to pay for my ticket with my emergency credit card (apparently my ATM card does not work in Europe), some small talk with an awkward Greek girl, and a lot of sleeping while clutching my fashionable messenger bag, I made it to Trieste. It's beautiful here. The mountains and the scenery are incredible, almost like somebody moved Rome to Burlington, Vermont. The bright greens and the wind remind me of home, but as with Italy in general, every piece of Trieste could be it's own museum, there is so much history here. I haven't really met anyone yet, which is incredibly depressing, but at least I managed to get into my room which is pretty standard but the bed is much more comfortable than any dorm room I have ever been in. I ate in the cafeteria once, which has a beautiful view of the Adriatic Sea, but I only got a little bit of food and when I tried to get more and they refused to swipe my card again. They told me I had to go get some sort of ticket or something, but I couldn't figure out what they were saying so I just left. After two years of getting A's in Italian classes I am sort of surprised that I understand nothing here, not a word. My Italian also gets worse when I'm flustered, which I usually am. However, people are very patient with me and hopefully tomorrow I can figure out if there is any sort of orientation or anything, but I am guessing not. The girl who let me sign on with her internet password told me to go see the Segreterie Delle Studente in the morning, which is in the main building on campus so wish me luck.

Dr. Miguel A. Guillén Alcalá

2008-09-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

Soooooo traveling here by myself was a bit of an ordeal, although I did meet a lovely Dutch couple on my flight from Amsterdam to Rome who gave me puzzles to do and candy that tasted like Jagermeister...I know what you are thinking. But really, the candies tasted like Jager and not like licorice, it was different. When we landed in Rome and I got onto the shuttle, I spotted a very short man with dark skin and tiny, perfectly round glasses covered from head to toe in Chicago Bears apparel.

"They looked good week one," I said, gesturing toward his matching jacket and hat that read "Monsters of the Midway," The Bears had unexpectedly beaten the Colts the previous Sunday. He looked down at the jacket and then up at me.

"Yeah."

"I'm from New England so we were hurting week one, it was tough." Tom Brady's torn ACL and MCL fresh in my mind.

"Yeah," he replied again with a big smile and nodding this time.

"I think Matt Cassel will be ok though. I mean, he has been there for a few years so he should know the offense."

"Yeah." Same big smile and complete lack of comprehension. Something is amiss here...perhaps this Superfan is not from the States. Lets try Italian.

"Sei di Roma?"

"No, no, no, sono di Mexico." Definitely not the response I expected, but few are when one travels. He asked me if I spoke Spanish and unfortunately I don't, so I spoke to this Mexican Chicago Bears fan in broken Italian for about 5 minutes until we arrived at the next terminal to get our luggage. It turns out he is a doctor who is in Rome for "Doctor Things." As the shuttle came to a stop he handed me his business card and shouted,

"Email me! You have to Email me!" I don't know exactly what I will write to Dr. Miguel A. Guillén Alcalá, but I don't think it could hurt to know a doctor in Mexico city.

Amsterdamnit

2008-09-14T01:30:00.000-07:00

So I've been in the Amsterdam airport for far too long, and I noticed a few things.

There are no baseball fields in Europe.

I could have told you this before I looked out an airplane window at 30,000 feet, but the thing I always notice when flying over the United States is how many freaking baseball fields we have.

Last time I few to Europe I was listening to a Discman.

I believe at the time I was raving about how it was way better than a Walkman. Now I can listen to whatever the fuck I want on my Ipod, and if technology continues to advance at this rate, then next time I fly to Europe, I will most likely be listening to a live robot band that fits in my pocket and can be taken out to entertain my entire row at any given time during the flight.

There are a lot of Connecticut fans in Holland.

Both of the guys on the tar-mac who taxied my plane up to its gate were wearing Uconn hats.

Men's rooms in Amsterdam are called "Men Toilets."

As in "This Men Toilet is out of order. Please proceed to the next Men Toilet."

Dutch children are adorable.

Ok before I get to this point, an entire team of attractive Dutch flight attendants just sat right next to me and I can't stop staring at them. What was I saying? Oh yeah...

Dutch children are adorable.

I think that their appeal is mostly due to the fact that when they talk I can't tell if it's baby talk, or if it's Dutch, or some sort of combination of the two. When I hear people speak Dutch it makes me laugh...I can't help it. Earlier there was a little Dutch girl running around and clapping with everyone waiting at my gate. Two old Scottish ladies took to her and while they were playing patty cake, the well-dressed, elderly gentleman they were with struck up a conversation with the little girl's father. They were speaking English to each other, the Scottsman and the Dutchman, and I couldn't understand a word of it. I knew it was English but I couldn't tell you what the conversation was about, although they seemed to be on exactly the same page.

At some point a small Indian boy entered the picture, holding hands with his mother who was wearing a multicolored sari and sporting a red jewel between her eyes. He gave the little Dutch girl a death stare as if to say,

"Yeah you're cute. I'm cute too. All little kids are cute. Get over yourself." Her bright smile dissolved for the first time. She looked up at her dad and pointed over her shoulder with her thumb at the Indian boy as if to say,

"Who the fuck does that Indian kid think he is? This is my gate, this is my crowd, and I have those Scottish ladies in the palm of my hand, so he can sit here over my dead body."

Then a few things happened very quickly. The Indian boy seemed to wink at the Dutch girl, but I don't think he did it on purpose, and then the Dutch girl started laughing, and then it was more like cackling, until it progressed to shrieking. She took off with a wobbly sort of sprint toward the Indian boy who ducked for cover behind his mother. Just before the cross-continental collision, the Dutch Daddy swooped in a grabbed his daughter preventing an international incident that I was sort of hoping for, but the Indian boy and his mother retreated. By my tally it's the Netherlands-1, India-0...but something tells me this isn't over. However, this blog post is over. I'm going to go drink a beer. Why you ask? Because I can.

My Mom Called Me a Metrosexual

2008-09-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

So my mom called me a metrosexual today. It's actually a longer story than you would think. Last night I tried packing, and my plan was to put everything in my giant hiking backpack, leaving enough room to fit my little backpack and laptop in there once I got off the plane. After rolling clothes into vacuum bags and shoving pairs of socks and random electronic cords into all the nooks and crannies, I realized there was no way I was fitting my school bag with a laptop in there. Fuck.

Thank God for my mom, who came to the rescue with the brilliant idea of buying one of those messenger bags with just the one strap. I could carry that on the plane and then keep it over one shoulder with the backpack on and my travel guitar in one hand. This set-up would make sure my big backpack stays under fifty pounds and would give me a free hand for waving, itching, slapping, or whatever else becomes necessary while traveling from Rome's airport to the train station and then all the way up to Trieste.

I returned home triumphant with my purchase, ready to tackle Europe in a classy way. My dad greeted me when I got there.

"Hey what did you end up with?" He asked.

"Check it out." I took the bag out and put it over my shoulder so he could see, just as my mom came inside.

"My God Noah, you look just like a..."

"Metrosexual," my mom blurted out. I didn't even know she had ever heard that word before.

"I was going to say lawyer," finished my dad. "What's a metrosexual?" After a lengthy explanation that left my father still scratching his head, I placed the bag in my room and chuckled to myself. Definitely did not see that one coming...but she does have a point.

She Calls me Goliath...

2008-09-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back from my last night at UVM for a while. I'm glad I got to walk around campus and see some people before I left, including my favorite professor who is helping me with my thesis project. We'll see if I still want to do it after a year in Europe. I saw so many officers with badges, I feel like Burlington has become a police state. There are usually cops everywhere the first couple weekends of school, but I have never seen it this bad. Last weekend my buddies received a $200.00 noise violation when their TV was on really loud and the windows were open, no party or anything. A lot of underage kids have gotten drinking tickets, and I'm really glad I don't have to deal with another year of dodging cops and trying not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was really interesting to see how when we were down by the bars, there were drunken idiots everywhere, but no cops to be seen. As if they were all saying..."Oh those kids are 21...it's fine." Because it was assumed that I was 21, I could stumble around as much as I want, but the second I got a couple of blocks uptown I had to have eyes in the back of my head, because every other car is a cop. It just seems so arbitrary.

At about 10pm I tucked in my friend Dave who had started and finished the night early, loudly playing the first verse of Cumbersome by Seven Mary Three on his computer over and over again. Then I headed downtown with some people where my recently expired ID was surprisingly effective. After having a few drinks at RJ's, and escaping from a girl who kept inappropriately rubbing my inner thigh and buying me tequila shots, my friends Indy, Glenn and I moved over to What Ales You, and despite the issues we had getting in, it was a great time. The bouncer grabbed Glenn's ID and began bending it back and forth like the home-made, poorly laminated piece of shit that it is.

"This is fake," he informed us. Indy was about to step in and try to say something helpful when Glenn through his arm up in the air to stop him and said the most unconvincing thing I've ever heard.

"No it's not...that's my ID...I come here all the time." He sounded like a little kid with crumbs all over him, claiming that he hadn't stolen the cookies from the cookie jar. Then, for some inexplicable reason they let him in, and the three of us had a few shots, I managed to get bumped into and spill a drink on myself, and somebody bought me a Jager bomb that made me throw my arms into the air and yell "Done." After some pizza and a failed attempt by Indy to take home the coach of the women's lacrosse team, we really were done, and made our way back to Indy's house for some late night Mario Tennis and passing out. All in all, an excellent night, and though I couldn't imagine spending this entire year in Burlington, I will miss a lot of the people.

Hepatitis

2008-09-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

I went to the doctor's office today to get a check-up, and my doctor, who is the man by the way, told me that I was perfectly healthy and there was no real need to have a physical. Once he found out I was going to Italy we ended up talking for over forty-five minutes (he is very proud of the fact that his ancestry is 100% Italian) about everything from books I should read, to wine and vineyards, to how I should wear a condom when I am over there. He did end up giving me a Hepatitis-A vaccination which has given me a serious dead arm, but it reminded me of that old saying...

"I'd rather have a dead arm today than get Hepatitis-A."

I also just bought a sick rain jacket, my new camera and my visa came in the mail, and I found out that I will be living on Via Fabio Severo, one of the main streets in Trieste, so things are coming together...10 days people.

Dirty Words

2008-08-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting out in the sun as I write, and it's beautiful here in Vermont. I have been running the last few days and jogging by all of the rivers and streams, looking at the mountains, I realized that there were some things I missed about my home state. However, every time I run I see at least five or six cars drive by with familiar people and I remember exactly why I can't be here anymore. They all look at me like they recognize me which really bothers me for some reason. I feel very anxious when I am constantly surrounded by acquaintances and familiar faces and I love the freedom of being unknown.

Speaking of freedom, it was very liberating this summer having so few possessions that I have begun to get rid of things. Yesterday I filled two garbage bags with clothes that I rarely wear to give to charity and I plan to do the same with many of my random belongings strewn about the house. My goal is to get to Trieste with only my big backpack and my travel guitar. We'll see if I can pull it off.

My Dad and I are driving to Boston tomorrow to try to secure my Italian visa. The process has been a giant headache, and I hope I have the right paperwork with me. If they don't give me the visa I will probably curse at them in English because I don't know any Italian profanity. In fact, that is going to be my first order of business when I get over there, I need to have an arsenal of dirty words at my disposal, and I hope I meet someone who is ok with swearing at me until I learn them all.

Home

2008-08-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

I arrived home in Vermont in one piece at 2:30 this morning, unpacked the car in the 40 degree cold at Sam's house, and promptly fell asleep at about 6 a.m. I came home to meet my parents on their lunch break and it was great to see them. My house is a bit different, the old dilapidated shed to the side has disappeared, my apartment is the cleanest it has been in decades, and there is a new washer and dryer in the laundry room which my parents are ecstatic about (they mentioned it to me on the phone a number of times when I was in NC and they insisted that it be the first thing I see when I walked into the house).

Unfortunately, my Great Uncle Stuart passed away on Tuesday. He has been battling health problems for a long time, so I hope that he is at peace now. I will always have fond memories of him driving his custom coach all the way from Oregon to come see us, and he absolutely loved my family. I was definitely the closest with him out of all of my Grandfather's siblings and he will be missed greatly.

Speaking of missing things, I am missing Elon already.

It's nice to be home, and with my Italian trip approaching, it's hard to complain, but I wish I could have spent a few more months in North Carolina with my new friends. I feel like I was really just starting to get to know people, and my last month in Elon especially, was ridiculously fun. I hope that everyone there knows how much I appreciate them for making me feel welcome, and we better keep in touch, or else...

Some of my fondest memories of the summer are listed below in no particular order:

Bonnaroo '08

Garrett's Birthday in Chapel Hill

Tom Petty and Steve Winwood in Raleigh

(thank you to Anthony for being a DD)

Cheap Trick/Heart/Journey in Raleigh

(thank you to Sara Beth for being a DD)

Late Night Games of COOKE

(a game that is strikingly similar to HORSE played with a beer in hand)

Hangin' with Steve, the Coolest Puppy of all Time

Kegs and Buckets at Maple Ridge

Brian's First Time Watching Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

Visitors, Including Sam's Family, Monti, Howard, and Brett

Brett Getting Sam's ID Taken Away at the Bar

Brett Getting Kicked Out of the Bar

Hanging Out With and Giving Life Lessons to Darrell and Jamal

Working the 3:30 Serving Shift at Sidetrack and Making Eleven Dollars in Tips

(on a good night)

Awkward Staff Meeting with Chad

Road Trip Home with the Tripod

Chapel Hill

2008-08-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

Friday night was fun. Our friend and neighbor Garrett rented a stretch Hummer for his 21st birthday that took us to Chapel Hill and back. After trying a couple of bars that were less than spectacular, we found ourselves at Top of the Hill, which makes their own beer and has an amazing view of Franklin Street. Definitely one of the coolest bars I have ever been to, I hope I can make it back some day.

Straight Up America

2008-07-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Sam took me to a drive through convenience store. Yes, that. I couldn't believe when we pulled into this tunnel-like structure that there was even a man who would get whatever item I pleased for me, so that I wouldn't have to leave the safety and air conditioning of my automobile. I struggled when he asked me what I wanted. Everything looked so fucking convenient. After some careful deliberation I went with a blue Gatorade and handed the man exact change, trying to reciprocate the spirit of convenience. I could never imagine one of these "Cruz Thru's" in Vermont, and the more time I spend in other parts of the country, the more I realize how different VT really is.

Sam thought it was hilarious how I kept talking about the place and couldn't get over the fact that we didn't have to get out of the car. I decided that the drive through convenience store was "Straight up America," and would probably fit right in with the view that people all over the world have of this country. Although come to think of it, it's not as "Straight up America," as the McDonald's that's located inside the local 24 hour Wal-Mart...or the 12 places where one can get fast food breakfast here, Biscuitville, Waffle House, and IHOP just to name a few. I guess shopping for guns and edited CDs just isn't the same without a Big Mac, and who wouldn't want a choice when it came to where they ate their eggs. Either way, you have to admit... That's fucking convenient.

Tom Petty and Steve Winwood

2008-07-13T13:27:00.001-07:00

Last night I saw an excellent show in Raleigh, Steve Winwood opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I could have used more Winwood, but I am just glad to say I have seen him. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were amazing, playing everything I wanted to hear. They even did a Traveling Wilburys song called End of the Line which has become one of my new favorites, dedicating it "to all Wilburys...wherever they may be traveling."

Winwood playing Dear Mr. Fantasy

Petty playing Learning to Fly

More Learning to Fly

Karma

2008-07-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

If I didn't believe in Karma before yesterday evening, now I do.

My job as a host at a small, locally owned grill is pretty uneventful. At first when customers tried to engage me in small talk they would ask me who my parents were.

"Oh I'm not from around here, I'm from Vermont" I would respond as if they couldn't tell from my accent.

"Ah, an Elon student what year are you?"

"Oh I don't go to Elon, my friend does, I'm just here for the summer." This line signified an abrupt end to the small talk and usually the rest of the cash register transaction or seating process would be conducted in silence. By telling customers exactly who I was, I immediately made it impossible for them to bond with me and I the awkward silence that ensued made everyone uncomfortable.

One day, I decided to mix things up a bit as two older ladies who regularly have lunch in the restaurant slowly made their way to the register to pay for their lunches.

"How was everything ladies?" I asked as usual with a big smile on my face.

"Oh just delicious thank you," the one with glasses responded as she indicated which items on the check she would be paying for.

"Are you an Elon student?" She asked me. I paused for a moment and then made my move.

"Why yes, yes I am." Big grins all around, I was in.

"What year are you?"

"I'm going to be a junior."

"Oh how lovely." As the ladies continued to ask me very general questions about how I enjoyed the University and if I was taking any classes this summer, I realized this was my ticket to bonding with the customers. In the next few days I honed my skills as a pretend Elon student, helping high school kids who came to eat with their parents.

"So what do you think of the size of Elon, like is it too big, too small?" A young curly haired kid asked me one day at the register while his mom and dad looked on. My skills as a UVM Phonathoner immediately kicked in, as I built case for a school that I don't attend.

"Oh I think it's perfect. There are between four and five thousand students so you don't feel like just a number, but at the same time you can always meet new people, and you don't feel like everyone knows everything about you. And classes never have more than like thirty people so you can get to know your professors and everything which is sick. It's a great school, you should go here." Elon should pay me.

"Oh thank you so much for all of your help," the mother said to me warmly as she handed me a fifty dollar bill and I began to make change.

"No problem."

Everything was going perfectly with my little act until yesterday.

After seating an elderly couple in the back by the window, I noticed that as Sam served them, there was a lot of chit-chat which didn't surprise me as the couple seemed very friendly and Sam is pretty outgoing himself. As I tended to my hosting duties which mostly involves moving menus around, drinking water, and eating soup crackers, and the couple ate their meal, I had no idea what kind of trouble I was about to be in.

As the couple got up from the table, I crossed their path to start the bussing process. I smiled at the gentleman and he nodded back saying,

"Enjoy Montpelier." I was confused for a second and he looked at me and then saw Sam emerge from the kitchen. He had confused the two of us and as he realized his mistake I tried to alleviate any awkwardness.

"Oh yeah well Sam and I are friends, I am actually from Vermont too."

"Oh excellent, my wife and I were just telling him how much we love Vermont."

"Yeah it's a great state." I didn't like having this conversation in the middle of the restaurant. I had a rag in my hand and was sort of leaning on a booth which was uncomfortable and since there were so few people there at the time, I felt like everyone was watching me.

"So what year are you?" He asked me. I couldn't decide if I should tell him where I actually went to school, but I decided to just answer the question and let him make the next move.

"Oh I'm going to be a junior," I said, not revealing where I was going to be a junior.

"And what are you studying?"

"Political Science," I replied.

"Wow, you know I used to work with the head of that department here. Tell me, who's your favorite professor?" Shit. I had been worried about a moment like this. I had even made Sam tell me the name of a good Polysci professor here so I would be prepared, but under the intense stare of this old man I couldn't come up with the name.

"Oh gee I couldn't pick a favorite, their all good." Stupid, he could see right through me.

"Oh come on, name me your favorite."

"No I couldn't." I said, trying to make a move toward the table that I had to attend to.

"Just name me two or three then, two or three that you like." Is this guy serious?

"I really can't it depends on the subject matter and everything and I just, I guess I just like them all."

"Oh alright," he said, clearly disappointed that I seemed to be holding back.

"Well tell me this then," he said shooting his index finger up into the air.

"This past year we had a couple of student speakers at graduation. Isn't that something?"

"Yeah that's great," I responded with a nod and a weak smile.

"And next year, we'd love to get a female. Do you know any Political Science majors that are female and would be a good graduation speaker?" I feel like somebody sent this guy in here just to fuck with me.

"Ummm, I don't know, there's a lot of talented people." I said as I see the other host start bussing their table, destroying my escape plan.

"Yeah but who stands out to you?"

"Oh I'm not really sure."

"Go ahead. Name me two or three that stand out to you."

"Really Sir, I would ask the professors, they would know a lot better than I would. I hope you enjoyed your meal, but I really have to get back to work."

"Oh ok," the man said sounding extremely hurt. He took one last puzzled look at me before joining his wife by the door and leaving the restaurant.

I breathed a sigh of relief and began wiping down another table with my rag that had dried up since being in my hand for so long. I wiped some sweat off my forehead and decided that I would not be pretending anymore, at least for a few days.

Why Blog?

2008-07-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

As I begin what I think will be the most exciting, adventurous, thought-provoking, potentially dangerous time of my life, I have a feeling there are a few people out there who are interested in what I am up to. Maybe only my parents and my friend Brett will read this blog...

That's ok.

Simply writing down what happens over the next year will help me make sense of what I'm doing and might help me determine what I want to be when I grow up, if that ever happens.

So at about 3 a.m. this morning, after drinking a few too many beers, playing a couple games of Bags (or "Cornhole" as it's called in North Carolina, which sounds to me more like a third grade comeback than a game involving bean bags) and eating about a hundred pistachios in an apartment I've never been to before, it occurred to me. I need to do something significant today.

I've made good on that pledge, waking up promptly at 4:30pm to begin my new, productive life...and above are the first fruits of that intense labor.