Wow, that was quick, I just had a whirlwind tour of some of the old Yugoslavic nations (thanfully without any landmines) and have already started to settle in here in northwestern Germany.
As I stated below, I am still in love with Slovenia and espeically its tiny capital Ljuibjana. If Disneyland decided to squeeze in their own repilca of Salzburg between the Matterhorn and It's a Small World, something resembling Ljuibjana would come out. Between the quaint castle on the hill and the way the tiny little river lazily wanders through the small canal between colorful markets and classical buildings there is a feel that just makes one want to stay there forever. Maybe next time since we had to hopon a train to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia after being there for only 24 hours.
When we arrived in Zagreb, we followed the suprisingly complicated directions to the hostel that used three different modes of transportation as well as took one hour to get there from the train station. HostelWorld definately said that it had a good location. HostelWorld lied. It was definately in the 'burbs, a good 45 minute walk from the center. When we finally arrived, we found ourselves in front of an appartment complex over which the door someone had written "Hostel Carpe Diem" in spray paint on a board. It was about the feel and size of if someone had taken their TC appartment (or choose random college appartment complex) and had put 4 bunk beds over their room. We were kind of baffled why it got such good reviews on the internet, maybe because others had the same/similar experiences as to what happened next. After getting settled, we ask the guy at the desk a good place to eat, but in the process he invites us to a birthday party they are having in the basement. At the sound of free food, we go downstairs, and discover a group of older twentysomething Croatians sitting around a table, creaking with the weight of numerous unmarked bottles filled with alcohols a variety of different colors. It was not the birthday of a felow hosteler but of a friend of the owners and they were using the hostel common room as their prepatory room slash hashish hot box before going out. Though we could barely understand what they were saying in their thick accents, they started shoving all these different drinks in our hands. I got halfway through a glass of something sickeningly sweet when someone said it was a special liquor made from mistletoe berries "You know, like what you kiss under at Christmas!" ... I asked him if he was sure since the boy scout running around in my head reminded me that mistletoe ironically is a very toxic plant. He said yes and in the end it seemed okay since I did wake up the next morning with full feeling in all of my limbs. After a few drinks on an empty stomach we finally get up and ask the guy to point us to how to walk to the center of town. He pulls out one of those maps hostels always have to give out they get from the TIs and circles where we were on the map. It was somewhere in the margin between the title and the edge of the page. I felt like I was in the middle of a Kevin Nealon bit. We then stumbled out of the hostel and by this time the the grappa had almost completed its task in dissolving all rational thought. We manage to wander to somewhere that was on the map and make it into town, but the whole time I was freaking out that I would have to make myself drunk to find my way back again (this came from one time when I helped my roommate study for his psycology final freshman year). Since the interesting part of this story has long gone, I'll just say that we found the center of town, ate, sobered up, attempted to have a St. Patty's day* Guinness at a bar named and inspired after "Tolken" and found it closed and so settled on a place called 'Oliver Twist' (England was closer to Ireland than we were and at the moment it was as close to an irish pub we could find), and we managed to find our way back (sober!) just as the birthday party left to go out.
*Note it was the first St. Patty's day of the year since Pope Benedict kindly granted us two this year
Impressions of Zagreb: a suprisingly nice, clean capital of what was once a war torn country only 15 years ago. The nightlife there is incredible since theres such a large student population. Like any city it was nice to walk around for a few hours and get the feel for it but there is really not much to do there otherwise. An example is that Ivan Mestrovic's house was a highlight of the visit. He is the famous Croatian sculptor who sculpted all the statues (of actual people) around ND campus, including the much disputed over First down or We're #1 Moses and the well-loved Pieta in the Basilica. The ND tour guide in me got really excited about that museum.
Next we hopped on a flight over to the Pearl of the Adriatic, Dubrovnik. The city was breathtakingly beautiful and really is like a foritfied fairy tale village floating on the electric blue waters of the Dalmation Coast. Like with any other medieval village, it is really fun to wander the streets and imagine the city 700 years ago without all of the kitch tourist shops or scaffolding. But this gets old after about a half a day. Though the sun did shine in the two days we were there, it was not quite warm enough to go swimming or really lay out in the sun, but we did spend most of the time sitting in cafes sipping pivo (beer) and taking lazy sun-naps on the rocks between the large sun-bleached city walls and the Adriadic. It seems like the perfect place to be as a destination for a week where you could just unwind and relax and which was not too condusive to our style of travel at the moment (4 cities in 5 days). Oh and the weather did not keep me from swimming in the Adriadic. No warnings that I'll get sick from the cold from the mother of the family running our hostel would stop me, and I did take a chilly dip in the calm waters just before the sun set on our second and final evening there.
We then took a bus to Split, 4 hours up the Dalmation coast (I dont know if the dogs have anything to do with the area but I think Roger meant something different than a giant place in England to house 101 dalmations when he suggested moving to a "dalmation plantation." To me a house on the Cratian coast sounds much more pleasant.) The bus ride was our only option (no trains) but was really neat. We stayed on the winding coast the entire time which lead to 4 hours of amazing views and nasuea.
Split was really neat since its basically an old roman palace complex that people just kind of moved into and made into a small village 500 years after the guy who built it died. Because the original building is so incorporated with the later medieval village, it is now one of the best preserved roman ruins. Since it was raining and the nightlife lacking, we decided to see 10,00 B.C. (only thing playing) in english with Croatian subtitles. All I have to say about it was that I got $4 of entertainment out of it but at the same time I was cringing from all of the canned dialouge, anachronisms, and geographical errors the film had. In the end, the movie gets two thumbs down but two thumbs way way up for Croatian theater.
After a few hours in Split, I flew off to Cologne or Köln, to meet my German relatives. I had met them 3 years ago and in a sense since that trip inspired me to take German, they are the reason why I am here today. But this is the end of the first part of my Spring Break adventures. Tune in next time for part two - Die verrückte Verwandten
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Fanging the March an and arrival in Ljubljana
So I still find it a little sad that I am currently sitting in the Slovenian capital and I am in a city whose name I am still unable to pronounce. Ljubljana (Note: NOT pronnounced "Lu-did-your-mama-") has been just charming, but more on that later.
What has happened since I was stuck in Munich trying after a two week excursion to desperately seek a nights sleep in my own bed. Well after spending a rather expensive time at the internet cafe, I jumped on my train (earliest to IBK) in a fairly empty compartment 10 minutes before the train was supposed to leave. Immediately the train is filled with rather, colorful characters, and a very large woman in fishnet tights, a jean shirt, colorful sweater, and pleather leopard skin jacket squeezes in on my right as a skinny man with hair the same shade of red as his blindingly bright crimson leather pants slithers in on my left. Well we sat there watching the sign outside the window showing how late the train was going to leave "5 Minuten verspaetet...15 Minuten verspaetet..." Note that during this time, the woman got up and went to the bathroom and after about 15 minutes a very large, old, sweaty man, wearing the same clothing as this woman came back with a wig and make-up in a bag, sat in her place and took her luggage as his own. After about 70 verspaeteted minutes, the train finally jerks forward and we were on our long and slow way back to Tirol.
I got back on saturday, the 1st of march, and even though we did not have class until the 10th, I was very busy.
On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, we went to a Hauptschule, the austrian equivalent of a middle school, and helped out for half the day in their english classes. This was an amazingly good time. I was assigned about 6 13 year old boys and we spent the three days, making paper airplanes, making them "American" cuisine, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (which recieved a suprisingly high reception), teaching them nation ball, among other activities. I'm not really sure how much english they learned since the teachers didnt really tell us how advanced they were and never really gave us a lesson plan, but it was really interesting for once being on the other side of the classroom. Learning a language, you realize how much you take for granted your own language is, and how millions of people all over the world are struggling on how to conjugate the past tense passive plural 1st person version of the verb "to be" while I can immediately conjure up "I was being" in seconds. On the other hand, I suppose I did devote the first 4 years of my life to the subject. On one rather humorours note, another group in our classroom found my name rather humorous after I wrote it on the chalkboard so that my group could remember it. Mary, who was the group leader of these hooligans, would tell me every day of the shenanigans they would get into over my name. Like when they needed to come up with a group name, they begged her to be my name, and whenever I left the room, they would jump up to the chalkboard and start writing it all over. At one point I cornered one of the little buggers, and asked him what he found so humorous. He said in a very good young Terminator accent: "It ees like a leetle parrwot dat lives in a haowse und ees wery silly!" Well I have always known that the word "Vogel" is always associated with craziness in German, an insult is calling someone a Vogelkompf (bird-head), and saying someone's screw is loose is "He has a bird." But I guess I'm now proud of the fact that my name has become a legend in this Austrian middle school.
The days after that until classes started on Monday, I traded off skiing and sleeping. I also tried cross country skiing with my host mom and found it rather fun.
Monday, March 10th, our classes for the spring semester started. This sesmester I am taking: German, Physcoanalysis, Economics of the EU, History of the Hapsburg Empire, and Philosophy of Austrian Philosophers. I have only had a week of the courses and will give my impressions of each after I get a better feel for them.
So after a rather short week of classes, Austria got tired of school and work and decided to give us two weeks off for easter break. Hours after our Economics course ended, Aaron, Kevin, and I jumped on a train to Slovenia to begin an unfortunately short trip of the Adriadic coast. We will be traveling down Croatian coast over the next five days. On Wednesday, I found a flight up to Northern Germany to meet the original German silly house-parrots and I will be traveling around Aachen, Cologne, and Cobenrode where the family name was founded. After easter with the family, I will then jump on a train to Belgium to meet some friends as we hit Brugges, Amsterdam and whatever we find inbetween.
Ljubljana seems so surreal to me. I feel like I am in Disneyland or something. Everything is so clean, quaint, and laid-back. Hovering above the city is an interestingly lit bright blue castle guarding the small city, as asthetic art neuvo buildings dance with one another down the quaint pedestrian streets. The city breathes with groups of young students strolling the streets and a small river silently runs underneith it all. I have been here only for a few hours, enough time to wander around the small center of town, get a buzz of Slovenian beer, and step on a disturbinly squishy toad (it lived) and I have already fallen in love with Slovenia. In retrospect, I wish I had a car and a week to explore this tiny country. Unfortunately tomorrow, we must take the train over to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, after a long day of Ljubljanaian sightseeing.
What has happened since I was stuck in Munich trying after a two week excursion to desperately seek a nights sleep in my own bed. Well after spending a rather expensive time at the internet cafe, I jumped on my train (earliest to IBK) in a fairly empty compartment 10 minutes before the train was supposed to leave. Immediately the train is filled with rather, colorful characters, and a very large woman in fishnet tights, a jean shirt, colorful sweater, and pleather leopard skin jacket squeezes in on my right as a skinny man with hair the same shade of red as his blindingly bright crimson leather pants slithers in on my left. Well we sat there watching the sign outside the window showing how late the train was going to leave "5 Minuten verspaetet...15 Minuten verspaetet..." Note that during this time, the woman got up and went to the bathroom and after about 15 minutes a very large, old, sweaty man, wearing the same clothing as this woman came back with a wig and make-up in a bag, sat in her place and took her luggage as his own. After about 70 verspaeteted minutes, the train finally jerks forward and we were on our long and slow way back to Tirol.
I got back on saturday, the 1st of march, and even though we did not have class until the 10th, I was very busy.
On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, we went to a Hauptschule, the austrian equivalent of a middle school, and helped out for half the day in their english classes. This was an amazingly good time. I was assigned about 6 13 year old boys and we spent the three days, making paper airplanes, making them "American" cuisine, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (which recieved a suprisingly high reception), teaching them nation ball, among other activities. I'm not really sure how much english they learned since the teachers didnt really tell us how advanced they were and never really gave us a lesson plan, but it was really interesting for once being on the other side of the classroom. Learning a language, you realize how much you take for granted your own language is, and how millions of people all over the world are struggling on how to conjugate the past tense passive plural 1st person version of the verb "to be" while I can immediately conjure up "I was being" in seconds. On the other hand, I suppose I did devote the first 4 years of my life to the subject. On one rather humorours note, another group in our classroom found my name rather humorous after I wrote it on the chalkboard so that my group could remember it. Mary, who was the group leader of these hooligans, would tell me every day of the shenanigans they would get into over my name. Like when they needed to come up with a group name, they begged her to be my name, and whenever I left the room, they would jump up to the chalkboard and start writing it all over. At one point I cornered one of the little buggers, and asked him what he found so humorous. He said in a very good young Terminator accent: "It ees like a leetle parrwot dat lives in a haowse und ees wery silly!" Well I have always known that the word "Vogel" is always associated with craziness in German, an insult is calling someone a Vogelkompf (bird-head), and saying someone's screw is loose is "He has a bird." But I guess I'm now proud of the fact that my name has become a legend in this Austrian middle school.
The days after that until classes started on Monday, I traded off skiing and sleeping. I also tried cross country skiing with my host mom and found it rather fun.
Monday, March 10th, our classes for the spring semester started. This sesmester I am taking: German, Physcoanalysis, Economics of the EU, History of the Hapsburg Empire, and Philosophy of Austrian Philosophers. I have only had a week of the courses and will give my impressions of each after I get a better feel for them.
So after a rather short week of classes, Austria got tired of school and work and decided to give us two weeks off for easter break. Hours after our Economics course ended, Aaron, Kevin, and I jumped on a train to Slovenia to begin an unfortunately short trip of the Adriadic coast. We will be traveling down Croatian coast over the next five days. On Wednesday, I found a flight up to Northern Germany to meet the original German silly house-parrots and I will be traveling around Aachen, Cologne, and Cobenrode where the family name was founded. After easter with the family, I will then jump on a train to Belgium to meet some friends as we hit Brugges, Amsterdam and whatever we find inbetween.
Ljubljana seems so surreal to me. I feel like I am in Disneyland or something. Everything is so clean, quaint, and laid-back. Hovering above the city is an interestingly lit bright blue castle guarding the small city, as asthetic art neuvo buildings dance with one another down the quaint pedestrian streets. The city breathes with groups of young students strolling the streets and a small river silently runs underneith it all. I have been here only for a few hours, enough time to wander around the small center of town, get a buzz of Slovenian beer, and step on a disturbinly squishy toad (it lived) and I have already fallen in love with Slovenia. In retrospect, I wish I had a car and a week to explore this tiny country. Unfortunately tomorrow, we must take the train over to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, after a long day of Ljubljanaian sightseeing.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Most Relaxing Day Ever
I am currently in Munich awaiting a train that'll take me back to Innsbruck. It's been exactly two weeks since I left on a Sunday night and I am really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.
My final day in Marrakesh was amazing. I slept in a little, and had a nice breakfast on the beautiful rooftop terrace feeling like Indiana Jones looking over a 1940s Cairo. Then I wandered the souqs for a few hours, snacking on orange juice and the cheap dates and nuts all around. During this time, I stumbled across a very small local looking barbershop. Since our hostel had a lack of hot water making it almost impossible to shave, I was already looking pretty grizzly so I wandered in and asked (or pantamimed) for a shave. The man was a professional; it was my first straight razor shave and by far the closest shave I've ever had. Afterward, I momentarily mistook it for a baby's bottom. Soon it was time for my hammam.
In a culture where running water is not common in households, the Moroccians rely on large bathhouses or Hammams to get a weekly cleaning. I would have preferred to go to one of the ones the locals use to really get a sense of it but I didn't want to go alone and no one in the hostel was willing to go so I chose to go to one of the little more 'expensive' places that cater to foreigners a little more and lead them through the whole process. I soon learned that a traditional hammam involves a very steamy room where one sits, and applies this oily buttery substance to soften up their skin. Then you find a friend (or in my case, the lady working the place) to get some abrasive black soap and a glove that seemed and felt like it was covered in steel wool. You can imagine what came next and through the winces, I could see small pieces of my skin falling to the ground. After a quick rinse or bucketfull of hot water in the face, it was all over and I was left in an invigorating feeling of tingly cleanness. I decided to slurge a few Dirhams and paid for a short relaxing half hour massage afterwards. It being my first full body massage, it was relaxing once I got over the awkwardness. When I left the place, I was in such a hypnotic state, I could barely muster up the energy to get my oily self back to the hostel.
At the hostel, I enjoyed a wonderfully filling 5 course lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon sipping mint tea while lounging in the sun on the terrace like a pampered poodle.
I took an evening flight back to Madrid, spent a sleepless night worrying that I would miss my early train the next morning. Ironically I think the only time I did get sleep, was in the 15 minutes after my alarm was supposed to go off. Needless to say, I made it to the train station in time for my short high speed train to Barcelona.
I really liked the city of Barcelona and would love to go back there at some point. Unfortunately after traveling almost straight for a month, I was ready to be back in my own bed. Also, unlike Lisbon, I was unable to meet any people at the hostel with whom to travel the city so I was alone most of the time. I take that back, I did meet people but it was only last night, the night before I left. It was nice since I had so much freedom and could do so much, but I missed having someone to talk to or to hand the camera to when I see a rediculous photo opportunity (as opposed to the pair of giggling Japanese tourist girls). I did have a lot of fun just randomly sitting places and people watching. I thought the city was beautiful and I think Gaudi is a genius.
The hostel (called Mambo Tango) I stayed at was also really cool but I have been so spoiled by the Traveler's house in Lisbon, that nothing can compete. They also had activities every evening and one of them was watching 'Motorcycle Diaries' which the hostel had said embodies their philosophy. I thought it was really good and felt stupid when I didn't realize it was a semi biographical film about Che Guevara until the very end. The name of the hostel 'Mambo Tango' actually is a refrence to the film and that lead me to wonder if the hostel was run by a bunch of commies. Well at least they had toilet paper.
My final day in Marrakesh was amazing. I slept in a little, and had a nice breakfast on the beautiful rooftop terrace feeling like Indiana Jones looking over a 1940s Cairo. Then I wandered the souqs for a few hours, snacking on orange juice and the cheap dates and nuts all around. During this time, I stumbled across a very small local looking barbershop. Since our hostel had a lack of hot water making it almost impossible to shave, I was already looking pretty grizzly so I wandered in and asked (or pantamimed) for a shave. The man was a professional; it was my first straight razor shave and by far the closest shave I've ever had. Afterward, I momentarily mistook it for a baby's bottom. Soon it was time for my hammam.
In a culture where running water is not common in households, the Moroccians rely on large bathhouses or Hammams to get a weekly cleaning. I would have preferred to go to one of the ones the locals use to really get a sense of it but I didn't want to go alone and no one in the hostel was willing to go so I chose to go to one of the little more 'expensive' places that cater to foreigners a little more and lead them through the whole process. I soon learned that a traditional hammam involves a very steamy room where one sits, and applies this oily buttery substance to soften up their skin. Then you find a friend (or in my case, the lady working the place) to get some abrasive black soap and a glove that seemed and felt like it was covered in steel wool. You can imagine what came next and through the winces, I could see small pieces of my skin falling to the ground. After a quick rinse or bucketfull of hot water in the face, it was all over and I was left in an invigorating feeling of tingly cleanness. I decided to slurge a few Dirhams and paid for a short relaxing half hour massage afterwards. It being my first full body massage, it was relaxing once I got over the awkwardness. When I left the place, I was in such a hypnotic state, I could barely muster up the energy to get my oily self back to the hostel.
At the hostel, I enjoyed a wonderfully filling 5 course lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon sipping mint tea while lounging in the sun on the terrace like a pampered poodle.
I took an evening flight back to Madrid, spent a sleepless night worrying that I would miss my early train the next morning. Ironically I think the only time I did get sleep, was in the 15 minutes after my alarm was supposed to go off. Needless to say, I made it to the train station in time for my short high speed train to Barcelona.
I really liked the city of Barcelona and would love to go back there at some point. Unfortunately after traveling almost straight for a month, I was ready to be back in my own bed. Also, unlike Lisbon, I was unable to meet any people at the hostel with whom to travel the city so I was alone most of the time. I take that back, I did meet people but it was only last night, the night before I left. It was nice since I had so much freedom and could do so much, but I missed having someone to talk to or to hand the camera to when I see a rediculous photo opportunity (as opposed to the pair of giggling Japanese tourist girls). I did have a lot of fun just randomly sitting places and people watching. I thought the city was beautiful and I think Gaudi is a genius.
The hostel (called Mambo Tango) I stayed at was also really cool but I have been so spoiled by the Traveler's house in Lisbon, that nothing can compete. They also had activities every evening and one of them was watching 'Motorcycle Diaries' which the hostel had said embodies their philosophy. I thought it was really good and felt stupid when I didn't realize it was a semi biographical film about Che Guevara until the very end. The name of the hostel 'Mambo Tango' actually is a refrence to the film and that lead me to wonder if the hostel was run by a bunch of commies. Well at least they had toilet paper.
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