Window Men

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

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.

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!

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....

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...

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

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.