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.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
I'm a nerd: Part II
With my unsurmountable expertiese in Microsoft Paint, I created this as an account of my journies in the past two weeks:
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Portugese Mornings, Spanish Afternoons, and Moroccian Nights
Wow, certaintly a lot has happened since my last post. I'll try to provide a brief digest of what has happened in the past week.
Traveling to Lisbon was not too bad. Skipping the boring details, I was stuck in Munich at 10 pm until my flight that next morning at 6 to Lisbon. It was a Sunday night and so all of Munich's famous beer halls had closed early, so I uncerimoniously popped back a can of beer I had bought at a convience store at the metro station as I waited for the train to the airport. Sleeping in Munich's airport was about as uneventful as sleeping in an airport could be, I woke up at 4 am totally disoriented, and the whole flight to Lisbon is now kind of a haze.
When I arrived to Lisbon, I had only one night at the hostel booked, planning on spending one, maybe two days in Lisbon and head down south to the coast and explore southern Portugal/Spain until I had to meet Aaron, Hayley and Mariel in Madrid in three days. When I arrived, I was so exhausted from the flight and from Egypt I just decided to stay there and relax, rather than just check cities off a checklist. Best decision of my life. Lisbon may be one of my favorite eurpean cities I've visited this year. Part of it may have just been the amazing hostel I stayed at. Its called 'Traveler's House" and it is worth going to Lisbon just to stay there. They made us the best free scrambled egg breakfasts, had knit sheets, an amazing lounge with bean bag chairs (makes all the difference), a comfy TV room, and nightly activites including a pub crawl that lasted until 6 am. The city itself is amazing. Between some of the most beautiful, unique archetecture I've seen in Europe and pastry shops selling the best custard pastries EVER (fresh out of the oven with cinnamon and sugar) are old women hanging out the window yelling conversations to each other between hanging laundry amongst a labyrinth of ancient structures. The other amazing thing about the hostel was that it was perfect for me as a single traveler. Since the place only had about 40 beds and the common space was so condusive to chilling and conversation, everyone knew each other. Also rather than the wasted girls from some state school studying in Florence for the semester, my hostelmates were an interesting mix of Europeans on holiday in Lisbon for a week. I guess Lisbon is not exactly the list of the average student in Europe who has a week break off to travel. I ended up making many good friends ranging from Brits, Canadians, Austrailians, Germans, and Austrians. I spoke more German in Lisbon than some days in Innsbruck. On my last day, when I left, a group of my new friends actually walked me to the metro station. It was really sweet and sad that my time in Lisbon was over.
I took the overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid and decided to splurge on a couchette since we had such a sarcastically awesome experience in Egypt. It allowed me to randomly meet an Austrailian on month six of his year long around the world trip, something I can only dream of doing.
Madrid was lots of fun, like Lisbon I took it easy, a new travel philosopy which after trying it out in Lisbon I am really starting to enjoy. I love traveling alone since it allows one to meet new people so easily, it was nice traveling with friends again. Since the city is so much of a metropolis, we found ourselves spending most of our time in the large Retiro park, picnicing, boating, and wandering around. I overall found the city to be kind of forgettable; I enjoyed it but it seemed to me to be like any other large capital but without any specific character. After hearing of the 15 euro cover charges and 8 euro beers, we decided to opt out of trying the city's infamous clubs. But we did see an awesome Spanish cover band in the bar under our hostel.
After 2 relaxing days in Madrid, I boarded the plane for my second trip to Africa in the past week. Expecting the relentless touting and untrustworthy people I came across in Egypt, I was pleasantly suprised. When we first got here, it was a little stressful since our hostel is in the maze of the old city and small children kept trying to show us the way but we didn't have any money and didn't want to pay them so we spent most of our time swatting them away like annoying flies (who would then scream "Fuck you, sex!" at us and run away). Other than those first frantic minutes in the city, I've found the people here are always smiling, even when you decide not to go into their shop, they will smile and wish you a good day or joke with you. I still have the feeling like I am a walking wallet a little bit, but I am much more comfortable and I feel less like I am sticking out like a clown at a funeral. My favorite thing here that Egypt, in my opinion, was lacking is the food. It is unbelievable, I could just sit here and eat all day. Marrakesh is centered around a large square called "La Place" french for "the square" and there is always activity there. Marrakesh is proud of the fact that it is the largest African square. During the day its filled with snake charmers, acrobats, belly dancers, men with monkeys that will throw them on you if you get too close, musicians, and other street performers. On the outskirts are men selling nuts and dried fruit (I'm obsessed with dates now) as well as other carts selling glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice for the equivalent of 40 cents in large carts that will frantically try to get you to go buy their juice if you go within a 30 foot radius of their cart and since there are often 5 carts next to each other, it results in a quite amusing display of gestures and cat calls that we would either split up to multiple or pick our favorite performance and patron him. At, around dusk, the entire square turns into the most amazing food court ever. Entire open air restraunts are wheeled in and seem to pop up with the delicious smelling smoke that starts to rise around dusk. Between the smaller stalls selling Moroccan delacacies such as snail soup and boiled sheep head, giant displays of raw skewered chicken, beef and other meats lie atop a colorful selection of greens. Walking through the place is wonderful amusement as the waiters try everything to get you to eat there from highly amusing American and British catch phrases to tempting offers such as free mint tea (berber whiskey). Once we pick a place no sooner do we order is our food served, freshly cooked and all enfused with the wonderful rich yellow color of saffron. We feast and wobble away as our stomachs are uncomfortably full on only 5 euros. After dinner, I enjoyed walking around the square stopping at various storytellers or musicians, understanding nothing but just as amused as the locals at the crazy antics the man is performing. I also enjoy a post dinner spiced tea, so spicy with cinnamon and cloves that it hurt to swallow.
Our days here have been a mixture of wandering around lavish palaces of Marrakesh's glory days of being the capital of Morocco and their beautiful gardens, as well as walking and barganing at the many souqs here. Just steps from our very comfortable palace-turned-hostel are the many wonderful souqs, arabic for markets. They have everything here from tea to hookas to chickens to giant barrels full of colorful spices. Wandering around I was really wishing I had a lot of money, a need for half the things in the market, and room in my backpack to bring it back to IBK since I am seriously addicted to barganing. My favorite was when the guys would bargain with themselves. A great example that happened to me was that I just wanted to know the starting price for a pair of sweet linen pants an man had in his shop, here's how it went:
I was just looking at them, not even interested in buying them and the man swoops over and starts telling me about the amazing things about these pants. Not remotely interested in buying them, I ask him how much he wants for them
-300 dirham!
-okay, thanks, I'm not interested...
-Wait wait wait, 280 dirham! Special student price!
-Um, I dont even want them
-Gimme a starting price for you!
-I said I dont want them
-Just tell me how much you want for them
-Um, okay I probably wouldn't pay more than 80 for them, but I dont want them
-No no no! way too much, you need to be serious!
-Okay, bye!
-okay okay okay! 250!
-I said I dont want them!
-230!
-Look crazy man, stop bothering me with the stupid pants!
The conversation pretty much went on until finally he's bargained himself down to 100 dirham already has them wrapped up and handing them to me.
-I said I don't want them!
-Okay, 100 final price!
-No (and I walk away, after which he chases me down)
-Fine, 80!
And before I know it I have given him the money and am walking away with these pants I didnt really want in the first place. Half of me is like "shazam! I just unintentionally bargained these pants for a great price!" while the other half is kicking myself for even paying for the dumb things.
I could spend a month wandering the souqs and markets watching the people or coming across random ones such as the olive souq, where there are 10 different stands selling amazing looking olives after which I accidentally discovered that I could get about a pound of olives for the equivalent of 30 cents (wanting a small snack, I gave the man the change in my pocket and said this much worth of olives, expecting 10 or 20, he gave me a giant bag full of them). Or getting lost in the old, labyrintine, residential part of town during which the children kept following us trying to show us the right direction back. But since we didnt want to go back, we just kept ignoring them. Every dead end we hit, we would turn around and there would be one or two more in their gang, until about 10 were trying to lead us the way. Then one pushed the other one into Betsy, and it distracted them long enough for us to run away.
I am sad that I have to leave this wonderful country tomorrow, but I am excited since I have heard so many wonderful things about Barcelona, my final stop before Innsbruck. Since I have a late plane tomorrow, I think I am going to try out one of the traditional Hammams, a Moroccian bath. It involves a lot of abrasive soap and painful scrubbing but I have heard it leaves one feeling unbelievably clean and relaxed. Like an expensive spa treatment but at one tenth the price.
Time to pack it in for my final Arabian Night.
Traveling to Lisbon was not too bad. Skipping the boring details, I was stuck in Munich at 10 pm until my flight that next morning at 6 to Lisbon. It was a Sunday night and so all of Munich's famous beer halls had closed early, so I uncerimoniously popped back a can of beer I had bought at a convience store at the metro station as I waited for the train to the airport. Sleeping in Munich's airport was about as uneventful as sleeping in an airport could be, I woke up at 4 am totally disoriented, and the whole flight to Lisbon is now kind of a haze.
When I arrived to Lisbon, I had only one night at the hostel booked, planning on spending one, maybe two days in Lisbon and head down south to the coast and explore southern Portugal/Spain until I had to meet Aaron, Hayley and Mariel in Madrid in three days. When I arrived, I was so exhausted from the flight and from Egypt I just decided to stay there and relax, rather than just check cities off a checklist. Best decision of my life. Lisbon may be one of my favorite eurpean cities I've visited this year. Part of it may have just been the amazing hostel I stayed at. Its called 'Traveler's House" and it is worth going to Lisbon just to stay there. They made us the best free scrambled egg breakfasts, had knit sheets, an amazing lounge with bean bag chairs (makes all the difference), a comfy TV room, and nightly activites including a pub crawl that lasted until 6 am. The city itself is amazing. Between some of the most beautiful, unique archetecture I've seen in Europe and pastry shops selling the best custard pastries EVER (fresh out of the oven with cinnamon and sugar) are old women hanging out the window yelling conversations to each other between hanging laundry amongst a labyrinth of ancient structures. The other amazing thing about the hostel was that it was perfect for me as a single traveler. Since the place only had about 40 beds and the common space was so condusive to chilling and conversation, everyone knew each other. Also rather than the wasted girls from some state school studying in Florence for the semester, my hostelmates were an interesting mix of Europeans on holiday in Lisbon for a week. I guess Lisbon is not exactly the list of the average student in Europe who has a week break off to travel. I ended up making many good friends ranging from Brits, Canadians, Austrailians, Germans, and Austrians. I spoke more German in Lisbon than some days in Innsbruck. On my last day, when I left, a group of my new friends actually walked me to the metro station. It was really sweet and sad that my time in Lisbon was over.
I took the overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid and decided to splurge on a couchette since we had such a sarcastically awesome experience in Egypt. It allowed me to randomly meet an Austrailian on month six of his year long around the world trip, something I can only dream of doing.
Madrid was lots of fun, like Lisbon I took it easy, a new travel philosopy which after trying it out in Lisbon I am really starting to enjoy. I love traveling alone since it allows one to meet new people so easily, it was nice traveling with friends again. Since the city is so much of a metropolis, we found ourselves spending most of our time in the large Retiro park, picnicing, boating, and wandering around. I overall found the city to be kind of forgettable; I enjoyed it but it seemed to me to be like any other large capital but without any specific character. After hearing of the 15 euro cover charges and 8 euro beers, we decided to opt out of trying the city's infamous clubs. But we did see an awesome Spanish cover band in the bar under our hostel.
After 2 relaxing days in Madrid, I boarded the plane for my second trip to Africa in the past week. Expecting the relentless touting and untrustworthy people I came across in Egypt, I was pleasantly suprised. When we first got here, it was a little stressful since our hostel is in the maze of the old city and small children kept trying to show us the way but we didn't have any money and didn't want to pay them so we spent most of our time swatting them away like annoying flies (who would then scream "Fuck you, sex!" at us and run away). Other than those first frantic minutes in the city, I've found the people here are always smiling, even when you decide not to go into their shop, they will smile and wish you a good day or joke with you. I still have the feeling like I am a walking wallet a little bit, but I am much more comfortable and I feel less like I am sticking out like a clown at a funeral. My favorite thing here that Egypt, in my opinion, was lacking is the food. It is unbelievable, I could just sit here and eat all day. Marrakesh is centered around a large square called "La Place" french for "the square" and there is always activity there. Marrakesh is proud of the fact that it is the largest African square. During the day its filled with snake charmers, acrobats, belly dancers, men with monkeys that will throw them on you if you get too close, musicians, and other street performers. On the outskirts are men selling nuts and dried fruit (I'm obsessed with dates now) as well as other carts selling glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice for the equivalent of 40 cents in large carts that will frantically try to get you to go buy their juice if you go within a 30 foot radius of their cart and since there are often 5 carts next to each other, it results in a quite amusing display of gestures and cat calls that we would either split up to multiple or pick our favorite performance and patron him. At, around dusk, the entire square turns into the most amazing food court ever. Entire open air restraunts are wheeled in and seem to pop up with the delicious smelling smoke that starts to rise around dusk. Between the smaller stalls selling Moroccan delacacies such as snail soup and boiled sheep head, giant displays of raw skewered chicken, beef and other meats lie atop a colorful selection of greens. Walking through the place is wonderful amusement as the waiters try everything to get you to eat there from highly amusing American and British catch phrases to tempting offers such as free mint tea (berber whiskey). Once we pick a place no sooner do we order is our food served, freshly cooked and all enfused with the wonderful rich yellow color of saffron. We feast and wobble away as our stomachs are uncomfortably full on only 5 euros. After dinner, I enjoyed walking around the square stopping at various storytellers or musicians, understanding nothing but just as amused as the locals at the crazy antics the man is performing. I also enjoy a post dinner spiced tea, so spicy with cinnamon and cloves that it hurt to swallow.
Our days here have been a mixture of wandering around lavish palaces of Marrakesh's glory days of being the capital of Morocco and their beautiful gardens, as well as walking and barganing at the many souqs here. Just steps from our very comfortable palace-turned-hostel are the many wonderful souqs, arabic for markets. They have everything here from tea to hookas to chickens to giant barrels full of colorful spices. Wandering around I was really wishing I had a lot of money, a need for half the things in the market, and room in my backpack to bring it back to IBK since I am seriously addicted to barganing. My favorite was when the guys would bargain with themselves. A great example that happened to me was that I just wanted to know the starting price for a pair of sweet linen pants an man had in his shop, here's how it went:
I was just looking at them, not even interested in buying them and the man swoops over and starts telling me about the amazing things about these pants. Not remotely interested in buying them, I ask him how much he wants for them
-300 dirham!
-okay, thanks, I'm not interested...
-Wait wait wait, 280 dirham! Special student price!
-Um, I dont even want them
-Gimme a starting price for you!
-I said I dont want them
-Just tell me how much you want for them
-Um, okay I probably wouldn't pay more than 80 for them, but I dont want them
-No no no! way too much, you need to be serious!
-Okay, bye!
-okay okay okay! 250!
-I said I dont want them!
-230!
-Look crazy man, stop bothering me with the stupid pants!
The conversation pretty much went on until finally he's bargained himself down to 100 dirham already has them wrapped up and handing them to me.
-I said I don't want them!
-Okay, 100 final price!
-No (and I walk away, after which he chases me down)
-Fine, 80!
And before I know it I have given him the money and am walking away with these pants I didnt really want in the first place. Half of me is like "shazam! I just unintentionally bargained these pants for a great price!" while the other half is kicking myself for even paying for the dumb things.
I could spend a month wandering the souqs and markets watching the people or coming across random ones such as the olive souq, where there are 10 different stands selling amazing looking olives after which I accidentally discovered that I could get about a pound of olives for the equivalent of 30 cents (wanting a small snack, I gave the man the change in my pocket and said this much worth of olives, expecting 10 or 20, he gave me a giant bag full of them). Or getting lost in the old, labyrintine, residential part of town during which the children kept following us trying to show us the right direction back. But since we didnt want to go back, we just kept ignoring them. Every dead end we hit, we would turn around and there would be one or two more in their gang, until about 10 were trying to lead us the way. Then one pushed the other one into Betsy, and it distracted them long enough for us to run away.
I am sad that I have to leave this wonderful country tomorrow, but I am excited since I have heard so many wonderful things about Barcelona, my final stop before Innsbruck. Since I have a late plane tomorrow, I think I am going to try out one of the traditional Hammams, a Moroccian bath. It involves a lot of abrasive soap and painful scrubbing but I have heard it leaves one feeling unbelievably clean and relaxed. Like an expensive spa treatment but at one tenth the price.
Time to pack it in for my final Arabian Night.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
And he's off! ...again
I apologize for that post, it was kind of an unfair outlook on an interesting country. We somehow managed to get back to Cairo again even with the shady dealings of the travel agency we were dealing with. I really think its a front for some kind of mafia. Our train tickets back were actually crumbled pieces of blue paper with scribbles all over it (I dont understand how people can communicate through writing in that language) that we never actually ever had in our possession. Two other egyptians on the same 'ticket' carried it the entire time and actually moved to a different compartment than us but I think the police didnt give us any trouble since we were caucasian or something. The rest of the trip was amazing and I really enjoyed myself and am glad I went. I have some thoughts on the country in general that I would like to write down so maybe you'll see them in the future.
We got in at 5 am in Munich yesterday and I've had about 30 hours to recoup until now I leave for a huge 2 week trip to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. I have an early flight from Munich tomorrow so I need to take the train in a few minutes and am going to spend an interesting night at the airport. www.sleepinginairports.net says its a pretty decent airport to sleep in, so that should be good.
I'm excited for this trip because much of it is going to be alone. I'll keep you updated as I go and as I find internet. I get back to IBK on March first.
Adios!
We got in at 5 am in Munich yesterday and I've had about 30 hours to recoup until now I leave for a huge 2 week trip to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. I have an early flight from Munich tomorrow so I need to take the train in a few minutes and am going to spend an interesting night at the airport. www.sleepinginairports.net says its a pretty decent airport to sleep in, so that should be good.
I'm excited for this trip because much of it is going to be alone. I'll keep you updated as I go and as I find internet. I get back to IBK on March first.
Adios!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Egyptian Mistakes
I am sitting here in a tiny interntet cafe in the middle of Luxor, southern Egypt. Outside there is an endless chorus of car horns due to a mixture of the Egyptian's already high propensity to honking horns and a local wedding that is occuring this evening. What can I say about my experience here in the past 3 days that would not bore you in its length?
We arrived to our hostel in Cairo at 2am after a long day of traveling. Outside, there was a military officer with an AK47 hiding behind a bulletproof panel. The entry way to the building was a tiny alley, covered in dirt with old plastic bags and other assorted trash in small piles against the wall. We stepped up into the lobby of this almost derelect building and entered an elevator that has been miraculously working since the 1800s; a cage on a string. As we ascended the building we could see the years of age as the concrete was severely cracked and there was plaster chipped out of the walls and trash strewn about. "what have we gotten ourselves into for the next four days?" I asked myself. However when we arrived onto our floor, turned the corner, we entered into an oasis within this building of comfortable furniture, friendly lighting, and comfortable beds.
I really wanted to head down to Luxor at some point during our trip (an 8 hour train ride from Cairo). This is where the Valley of the kings is and some of Egypt's really cool temples lie. By the time I had everyone convinced, we found it nearly impossible to get any of the night trains from Cairo while we were there both because Egypt's train system is unbelievably difficult and we were told that they were all sold out. It looked like we were going to have to spend all 4 days in Cairo. When we arrived at our hostel at 2am, the man there said he could get us tickets down to Luxor no problem because he has "connections." Also for a relatively good price (considering the fact that we didnt speak a word of Arabic and it would lead to less stress to us) he said he could also hook us up with a driver and an english speaking guide for a day in Cairo (to show us the pyramids) and in Luxor. I was wary of this since one thing I had read in my tour book was "Do NOT book travel arrangements through your hotel, we cannot emphasize this enough." If only we had listened... In our exhaustion and naivette, we signed on for everything.
After an amazing night's sleep, we got up to meet our driver and tour guide. It started out being really awesome. They were able to drive us around and see the smaller pyramids (step, hanging, and red) pyramids at which some of the 'nicer' kids in our group, okay mostly Christian, got swindeled into riding donkeys and camels at unbelievably steep prices. These guys are professionals at even forcing tourists to take a picture of them after which you're obligated to give them something (and they will yell at you if its not enough). I started getting a little wary when they took us to a carpet school to see how egyptian carpets are made. It was actually kind of interesting but I felt it was wasting good pyramid seeing time. I also was waiting for them to take us to the back room so we could unload our wallets on them for some carpets. They did and they were very good salesmen. I refused to purchase anything, but it was really annoying because as I waited for the rest of the kids in our group to finalize their purchases, other salesmen kept coming up to me trying to get me to buy something. It was like being in the market but in a closed room so I couldn't walk away or be rude. One guy was trying to show me that their carpets are fireproof as he lit his lighter on it, then quickly smudged his finger over with his finger as the pungent smell of burning wool wafted into the air. Then they distracted us by taking a group picture as out of the corner of my eye, I could see our tour guide collecting her commission.
When we went to the Pyramids at Giza, she took us to a stable so we could see them on a camel ride. It was definately something on my list but due to our horrible group haggling skills (Christian's niceness) and the fact that the Pyramids themselves were closing and camels at this point were our only option, we ended up paying what I later red at least 3x as much as we should've. Albeit a tad uncomfortable when they ran, and once I got over the sinking sensation that I had just been swindled out of my mind, the ride was really fun and awesome as we got to see the Pyramids at sunset and actually go up to and touch some of them.
That night, a man from our hostel escorted us to the train station and gave us our 'tickets.' They were small pieces of cardboard with arabic writing on one side and "Cairo-Luxor" printed on the other; there was nothing official about them. Well they ended up passing and we got on the train for a very long night. We had no beds, just the ancient train chairs and the jerky rocking to lull us into a wakeful sleep. Arriving in Luxor, we were bombarded with hotel touts and taxi drivers, that were begging us to come along with them. We managed to find our contact in the chaos but it was difficult (as he was one of the sleeziest men I have ever come across). Without telling us what we were doing, he popped us into a van and we went to meet our tour guide. They took us to valley of the kings and a combination of all the tourists also there and him rushing us through a few tombs (amazing - wouldve liked to spend more time there) I felt like I was on a tourist conver belt: get off the bus enter the ever moving que of tourists through the sight, get back on and repeat. He said we had a lot to do so we raced out of the valley (with some new random tourists, half arabic speaking, we seemed to pick up in the valley). And he takes us to an alabaster factory. We were all sick of the whole thing and it felt like a waste of time and as soon as they were done with their lame demonstration, the 6 of us waited outside for the other randos to finalize their purchases. We were tired, we weren't doing what we wanted to do at our pace, and nobody was telling us anything as to what we were doing next. I felt like I was seeing Egypt through a window. At this point we decided to ditch the losers and asked him to just drop us off at our hotel before he could take us to a horrible and expensive restraunt with bus boys wearing king tut headdresses.
Once we broke free, it was as if an immense weight had lifted off, we could relax and do what we wanted, it was amazing. The rest of the day we walked around the city, enjoying saying 'no' to the street hawkers (Me: "Oh crap, this buggy driver is following us" Hayley: "Good! Waste his time!"), watched the sunset on the nile, and enjoyed the mystical Luxor temple in its nighttime dramatic lighting.
Aaron, Mariel, and Hayley left that night (more shady dealings with train tickets and meeting the proper people) because they wanted to spend more time in Cairo, but Christian, Anthony and I stayed behind for one more relaxing day here. After an amazing nights sleep, we lazily got up and spent most of the day at Karmak temple, one of the largest temple ruins in Egypt and we walked around the city, enjoying ourselves. I was really enjoying Egypt all day today; we had thought that having someone else worry about transportation and touring, it would give us less stress but it was quite the opposite, no one was hurring us along so that they get us to a Papyrus factory and collect our commission.
We jump on the long trainride back to Cairo tonight, spend all day there, probably visiting the Egyptian Museum and walking around downtown, then take a late night out of Cairo back to Munich. Its going to be a long, long next two days.
I apologize for this post if I seemed a little negative, but I just needed to vent my frustrations, even though they were all our own fault. I am having an amazing time here, and it will be sad to leave tomorrow evening.
Oh and Happy Valentines day everyone!
We arrived to our hostel in Cairo at 2am after a long day of traveling. Outside, there was a military officer with an AK47 hiding behind a bulletproof panel. The entry way to the building was a tiny alley, covered in dirt with old plastic bags and other assorted trash in small piles against the wall. We stepped up into the lobby of this almost derelect building and entered an elevator that has been miraculously working since the 1800s; a cage on a string. As we ascended the building we could see the years of age as the concrete was severely cracked and there was plaster chipped out of the walls and trash strewn about. "what have we gotten ourselves into for the next four days?" I asked myself. However when we arrived onto our floor, turned the corner, we entered into an oasis within this building of comfortable furniture, friendly lighting, and comfortable beds.
I really wanted to head down to Luxor at some point during our trip (an 8 hour train ride from Cairo). This is where the Valley of the kings is and some of Egypt's really cool temples lie. By the time I had everyone convinced, we found it nearly impossible to get any of the night trains from Cairo while we were there both because Egypt's train system is unbelievably difficult and we were told that they were all sold out. It looked like we were going to have to spend all 4 days in Cairo. When we arrived at our hostel at 2am, the man there said he could get us tickets down to Luxor no problem because he has "connections." Also for a relatively good price (considering the fact that we didnt speak a word of Arabic and it would lead to less stress to us) he said he could also hook us up with a driver and an english speaking guide for a day in Cairo (to show us the pyramids) and in Luxor. I was wary of this since one thing I had read in my tour book was "Do NOT book travel arrangements through your hotel, we cannot emphasize this enough." If only we had listened... In our exhaustion and naivette, we signed on for everything.
After an amazing night's sleep, we got up to meet our driver and tour guide. It started out being really awesome. They were able to drive us around and see the smaller pyramids (step, hanging, and red) pyramids at which some of the 'nicer' kids in our group, okay mostly Christian, got swindeled into riding donkeys and camels at unbelievably steep prices. These guys are professionals at even forcing tourists to take a picture of them after which you're obligated to give them something (and they will yell at you if its not enough). I started getting a little wary when they took us to a carpet school to see how egyptian carpets are made. It was actually kind of interesting but I felt it was wasting good pyramid seeing time. I also was waiting for them to take us to the back room so we could unload our wallets on them for some carpets. They did and they were very good salesmen. I refused to purchase anything, but it was really annoying because as I waited for the rest of the kids in our group to finalize their purchases, other salesmen kept coming up to me trying to get me to buy something. It was like being in the market but in a closed room so I couldn't walk away or be rude. One guy was trying to show me that their carpets are fireproof as he lit his lighter on it, then quickly smudged his finger over with his finger as the pungent smell of burning wool wafted into the air. Then they distracted us by taking a group picture as out of the corner of my eye, I could see our tour guide collecting her commission.
When we went to the Pyramids at Giza, she took us to a stable so we could see them on a camel ride. It was definately something on my list but due to our horrible group haggling skills (Christian's niceness) and the fact that the Pyramids themselves were closing and camels at this point were our only option, we ended up paying what I later red at least 3x as much as we should've. Albeit a tad uncomfortable when they ran, and once I got over the sinking sensation that I had just been swindled out of my mind, the ride was really fun and awesome as we got to see the Pyramids at sunset and actually go up to and touch some of them.
That night, a man from our hostel escorted us to the train station and gave us our 'tickets.' They were small pieces of cardboard with arabic writing on one side and "Cairo-Luxor" printed on the other; there was nothing official about them. Well they ended up passing and we got on the train for a very long night. We had no beds, just the ancient train chairs and the jerky rocking to lull us into a wakeful sleep. Arriving in Luxor, we were bombarded with hotel touts and taxi drivers, that were begging us to come along with them. We managed to find our contact in the chaos but it was difficult (as he was one of the sleeziest men I have ever come across). Without telling us what we were doing, he popped us into a van and we went to meet our tour guide. They took us to valley of the kings and a combination of all the tourists also there and him rushing us through a few tombs (amazing - wouldve liked to spend more time there) I felt like I was on a tourist conver belt: get off the bus enter the ever moving que of tourists through the sight, get back on and repeat. He said we had a lot to do so we raced out of the valley (with some new random tourists, half arabic speaking, we seemed to pick up in the valley). And he takes us to an alabaster factory. We were all sick of the whole thing and it felt like a waste of time and as soon as they were done with their lame demonstration, the 6 of us waited outside for the other randos to finalize their purchases. We were tired, we weren't doing what we wanted to do at our pace, and nobody was telling us anything as to what we were doing next. I felt like I was seeing Egypt through a window. At this point we decided to ditch the losers and asked him to just drop us off at our hotel before he could take us to a horrible and expensive restraunt with bus boys wearing king tut headdresses.
Once we broke free, it was as if an immense weight had lifted off, we could relax and do what we wanted, it was amazing. The rest of the day we walked around the city, enjoying saying 'no' to the street hawkers (Me: "Oh crap, this buggy driver is following us" Hayley: "Good! Waste his time!"), watched the sunset on the nile, and enjoyed the mystical Luxor temple in its nighttime dramatic lighting.
Aaron, Mariel, and Hayley left that night (more shady dealings with train tickets and meeting the proper people) because they wanted to spend more time in Cairo, but Christian, Anthony and I stayed behind for one more relaxing day here. After an amazing nights sleep, we lazily got up and spent most of the day at Karmak temple, one of the largest temple ruins in Egypt and we walked around the city, enjoying ourselves. I was really enjoying Egypt all day today; we had thought that having someone else worry about transportation and touring, it would give us less stress but it was quite the opposite, no one was hurring us along so that they get us to a Papyrus factory and collect our commission.
We jump on the long trainride back to Cairo tonight, spend all day there, probably visiting the Egyptian Museum and walking around downtown, then take a late night out of Cairo back to Munich. Its going to be a long, long next two days.
I apologize for this post if I seemed a little negative, but I just needed to vent my frustrations, even though they were all our own fault. I am having an amazing time here, and it will be sad to leave tomorrow evening.
Oh and Happy Valentines day everyone!
Monday, February 11, 2008
Egypt
I have safely arrived in Africa! Its about 3 am and we are getting up early tomorrow to tour the great Pyramids in Giza. It is such a cool feeling to be here. Maybe its the massive amounts of smog, but there was definately a different feeling in the air I could sense the moment I got off the plane. We've been here for 2 hours and already we've been attacked by hotel peddlers, gotten stuck in the sketchiest elevator in existence, gotten locked in the hostel bathroom (during which an amusing conversation taken out of context about how to use the key to get out of the bathroom took place), and nearly died on the white knuckle race on the drive from the airport to our hostel.
It's been already an amazing introduction to this interesting country.
It's been already an amazing introduction to this interesting country.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
France in my Pants
So I am a huge nerd and created this handy little map with my excellent skills in Microsoft Paint:
I'm really sorry about that one...
As you can see by the handy route key, after sadly saying goodbye to all of my friends in London (I miss them much already and they had better come visit me here at some point...), I took the Chunnel to meet Christian (from the IBK program too) in Paris. The whole chunnel experience was interesting but stressful since I almost missed the train due to a series of events including confused clerks at British Grocery stores and half of London's Underground Lines deciding not to work Monday morning. The whole process was like getting on an airplane, but in a train station, including seperate terminals and people checking tickets before you get on, I was overall disoriented by the whole process. The ride itself was quick and easy and I didnt realize we had even gone under the channel until I looked outside and everything was in French.
In Paris, I met Christian at our budget hotel in Montmartre, the old hangout of the Bohemians in the last turn of the century, known for the Moulin Rouge and sketch artists that will hunt you down and attack you with their rediculous requests to draw you:
"profile?"
"no"
"Portrait?"
"no, go away"
"Characature?"
"No. Please stop bothering me"
"Sketch?"
"Look! Someone else in desperate need of a rediculous Paris souvineer!"
After walking the 10 miles between every major landmark in the city: Notre Dame, Louvre, Arch de Triumph, we ended at the Eiffel Tower, to witness it's hourly ten minute "sparkle," a pretty spectacualr remnant of that giant Y2K thing everyone made a big deal about 8 years ago.
Christian and I decided that the McDonald's corporation deliberately funded these in order to subliminally encourage Parisians and tourists to frequent their locations at every hour since we both randomly had a craving for some McFastfood for the first time in a long time. Since we weren't in Rome, we didn't feel obligated to do as the Parisians did and succumbed to what in retrospect is one of the cheapest meals one could get in the city of lights. We then retreated back to the hotel to share a rediculously tiny "two person" bed.
The next morning, we conqured Versailles, as the French Revolutionists did 200 years ago 
and we got a fairly good impression of the wonderful Train-station-turned-art-museum, Orsay. In the evening we met up with my friend, Alicia, for dinner. She is an ND student I know from band who is studying for the year in Paris. She unfortunately had finals that week but she made it out to see us.
On Wednesday, we hit a lot including the correctly pronnounced ND cathedrial:
At the end of the day, we had done so much I went a little "In-Seine"
I'm really sorry about that one...
Thursday, Christian and I split ways as he went north up to Bruges, and I started the land treck back home to Innsbruck. My goal for the evening was Strasbourg, a cute canal city on the French/German border. On the way I stopped in Nancy for a few hours for the sole reason that I heard they had a good Art Neuvo Museum there. The museum ended up being like 4 rooms in an old house full of cool looking furniture but it kind of wasn't worth the trouble and I was the only person in the museum and there was a highly unnecessary number of museum docents that would awkwarly stare at me the entire time. The redeeming quality of Nancy though was that there was a free zoo in the park with goats, rabbits, ducks, and, what? monkeys? Plus the place was overrun by a large number of peacocks that were no doubt scheming on taking over the world, starting with the rabbit/ginuea pig pen:
Strasbourg was a really cool town; half-timbered houses lining canals, with a skeletony gothic cathedral domineering the entire city. 
Its also a university town which gave it a refreshing lively feel. It was a great town to just wander around in; I rented a bike for half a day and enjoyed just riding around. Strasbourg was also interesting for me because it was the first time I had ever traveled alone. It was kind of daunting but at the same time allowed for more people to approach you and meet you. For example the random spanish lady I met in the cathedral who didnt speak a word of english or german and somehow managed to communicate with me. She apparently lived in the area and offered to buy me a cup of tea. A little skeptical, I accepted her request but it was strange since we really had limited means of communication. I think she thought I was married because of a ring on my hand. I also think she invited me to her house at one point, but I awkwarly told her I had to meet some friends soon or something. I wonder what wouldve happened if I had taken her up on her offer, she was nice but from her mismatched and dirty clothes she seemed a little strange to me. 
On the way back to Innsbruck from Strasbourg, I had a layover in Stuttgart for a few hours. It was really a nice city in my opinion: perfect mix of old and new. There were some old classical buildings sprinkled among modern ones so that it didnt have the stuffy museumness of some older cities but it still had a little charm. Plus everyone was walking around and the city was abound with street performers, young kids, old couples, and lovers, all walking down the same main street.
Now I'm back in Innsbruck for a few days before heading off to Egypt on Monday.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
A Banger in the Mouth
I'm really sad to leave London tomorrow, its been amazing to catch up with everyone and just hang out like last year, but in one of the world's largest cities.
On Friday, after running into the wonderfully free National Gallery to visit a Caravaggio painting I did a report on in Art History this semester, K. Swiss and I wandered east to the Tower of London. We spent the rest of the day just kind of walking around markets and the river and parks, basically the free stuff. That evening four of us attempted to get the supposedly cheap student tickets sold an hour before performances for 'Billy Elliot, the Musical!' They weren't as cheap as we were expecting but it was worth it since it was such a fun show. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the show stopping, finger snapping, rockin' show I would expect to come from Sir Elton John (i.e. Aida & Lion King) since the story has its depressing aspects. Otherwise the music was good and the lead kid was an amazing dancer (as well as actor, singer, and person with the ability to speak in the difficult northern English accent). After going to the show, we all decided that after seeing what this kid could do, we have had nothing accomplished in our life.
The next morning, we ran off to Notting Hill to relive our favorite moments from the Hugh Grant movie as well as Bednobs and Broomsticks in Portebello Road. We were able to find the Travel Bookstore, and ran inside all excited until we were forced to leave after the woman at the desk realized we weren't actually going to buy anything. We unfortunately were not able to find the second half of a spell book I had used to start a home witching course amongst the antique gazelle magnifying glasses and "The Ladies Guide to Household Life." When we were tired of the crouds, I convinced Jillian to come with me to see if we could get cheap tickets to a matinee of "We Will Rock You," the Queen musical since I am a closet Queen fan. I will admit that I had a really good time, although the cultured side of me was looking at how idiotic the entire premise was. It was essentually a really good Queen coverband with excellent singers and good visuals all barely held together with strange dialouge that was mostly blatant British sexual innuendos. I didn't really realize how hilariously rediculous the story was until we tried explaining it to others after we got back. "Galileo Figero" is a rebel bohemian in a futuristic Orwellian society run by "The Killer Queen" and he must free the world with rock music by finding a guitar the band, Queen, had hid in a rock 300 years prior, all while having a budding relationship with his fellow bohemian girlfriend, "Saramouche." It was amusing just watching how they would try to force the songs onto us: Galileo complaining about how restricting the society is, then looking off into space as a key-note rings and he starts to belt "I want to break freee!" On a side note, "Lord of the Rings, the Musical!" is playing here, but unfortunately I heard it is both really expensive and really long and boring. That evening, we sat around and it strangely felt like I was back in Zahm as people were just wandering in and out of rooms, especially when a group of boys in the room next door came into the room because there was a small cooking fire in their flat and someone freaked out with the fire extinguisher until there was a rather pleasant layer of choking dust settled over everthing. The evening ended in a failed attempt to go to a pub with supposedly cheap drinks but there was a long line to get in and we weren't privy to waiting.
Today was really fun. We started at the east end where Jack the Ripper did his ripping. This is also were Brick Road is, the center of Hugonaut, Jewish, and Bangledeshian cultures, incuding a multitude of funky markets, the best I've seen in Europe so far. After a delicious lunch of curry in one of the famous indian restraunts there, we headed off to Kings Cross Station to visit probably the one real Harry Potter setting...okay, well the only HP setting that Muggles can actually visit. On the way, we obviously had to stop in the Angel Tube station since Laura informed us it was home to the world's longest escalator. It was quite impressive. Then on to platform 9 3/4. We had lots of fun running back and fourth between the barrier there with our carts, but it was kind of unexciting as the Hogwarts Express had left months ago. We ended the afternoon with a nice and free organ concert in Wesminster Abbey which also gave me a free view into the abbey itself. Tonight I think is going to be an early one as I have fairly early train train to catch through the Chunnel to Paris tomorrow morning.
On Friday, after running into the wonderfully free National Gallery to visit a Caravaggio painting I did a report on in Art History this semester, K. Swiss and I wandered east to the Tower of London. We spent the rest of the day just kind of walking around markets and the river and parks, basically the free stuff. That evening four of us attempted to get the supposedly cheap student tickets sold an hour before performances for 'Billy Elliot, the Musical!' They weren't as cheap as we were expecting but it was worth it since it was such a fun show. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the show stopping, finger snapping, rockin' show I would expect to come from Sir Elton John (i.e. Aida & Lion King) since the story has its depressing aspects. Otherwise the music was good and the lead kid was an amazing dancer (as well as actor, singer, and person with the ability to speak in the difficult northern English accent). After going to the show, we all decided that after seeing what this kid could do, we have had nothing accomplished in our life.
The next morning, we ran off to Notting Hill to relive our favorite moments from the Hugh Grant movie as well as Bednobs and Broomsticks in Portebello Road. We were able to find the Travel Bookstore, and ran inside all excited until we were forced to leave after the woman at the desk realized we weren't actually going to buy anything. We unfortunately were not able to find the second half of a spell book I had used to start a home witching course amongst the antique gazelle magnifying glasses and "The Ladies Guide to Household Life." When we were tired of the crouds, I convinced Jillian to come with me to see if we could get cheap tickets to a matinee of "We Will Rock You," the Queen musical since I am a closet Queen fan. I will admit that I had a really good time, although the cultured side of me was looking at how idiotic the entire premise was. It was essentually a really good Queen coverband with excellent singers and good visuals all barely held together with strange dialouge that was mostly blatant British sexual innuendos. I didn't really realize how hilariously rediculous the story was until we tried explaining it to others after we got back. "Galileo Figero" is a rebel bohemian in a futuristic Orwellian society run by "The Killer Queen" and he must free the world with rock music by finding a guitar the band, Queen, had hid in a rock 300 years prior, all while having a budding relationship with his fellow bohemian girlfriend, "Saramouche." It was amusing just watching how they would try to force the songs onto us: Galileo complaining about how restricting the society is, then looking off into space as a key-note rings and he starts to belt "I want to break freee!" On a side note, "Lord of the Rings, the Musical!" is playing here, but unfortunately I heard it is both really expensive and really long and boring. That evening, we sat around and it strangely felt like I was back in Zahm as people were just wandering in and out of rooms, especially when a group of boys in the room next door came into the room because there was a small cooking fire in their flat and someone freaked out with the fire extinguisher until there was a rather pleasant layer of choking dust settled over everthing. The evening ended in a failed attempt to go to a pub with supposedly cheap drinks but there was a long line to get in and we weren't privy to waiting.
Today was really fun. We started at the east end where Jack the Ripper did his ripping. This is also were Brick Road is, the center of Hugonaut, Jewish, and Bangledeshian cultures, incuding a multitude of funky markets, the best I've seen in Europe so far. After a delicious lunch of curry in one of the famous indian restraunts there, we headed off to Kings Cross Station to visit probably the one real Harry Potter setting...okay, well the only HP setting that Muggles can actually visit. On the way, we obviously had to stop in the Angel Tube station since Laura informed us it was home to the world's longest escalator. It was quite impressive. Then on to platform 9 3/4. We had lots of fun running back and fourth between the barrier there with our carts, but it was kind of unexciting as the Hogwarts Express had left months ago. We ended the afternoon with a nice and free organ concert in Wesminster Abbey which also gave me a free view into the abbey itself. Tonight I think is going to be an early one as I have fairly early train train to catch through the Chunnel to Paris tomorrow morning.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Londoning
Yay, I am in London! I ran to the airport, an hour or two after my last Theo final. During my really painless flight from the IBK airport to Gatwick (which cost less than the transportation from the airport to the city), I could barely contain myself, I was just so excited to see all my friends here.
When I arrived, it was like a mini reunion with all of my friends, some of which I hadn't seen since last June. After seeing everyone and getting settled in my old roommate's flat where I am staying, we went out to experience a little bit of British nightlife.
First we went to a small corner pub and had a couple of beers, catching up with a couple friends, then they took me to O'neil's irish pub which is supposedly THE place to go on Thursday nights. I was expecting a quaint little pub with some drink special that night. It was in fact a huge dance bar with a cover band. Apparently on Thursday nights, all 130 of the ND Londoners congrigate there and kind of take over the bar. I felt like I was in America, aside from the creepy old british men dance-attacking the girls from behind, to which they would run to me or some other ND guy and pretend to be their girlfriend. I think I had about 5 different girlfriends last night.
Being here is such a different mentality than Innsbruck. They seem to go out almost every night, they travel every spare weekend that they have, they need to walk two and a half miles to class one way, its really interesting to see how much of a different experience studying here would be.
I'm not really sure what I am going to do until I meet Christian in Paris on Monday. Hopefully a show or two, maybe visiting the Caravaggio painting I did a report on this semester in the National Gallery, a swing club. I honestly dont care what I do here, as long as I am just hanging out with everyone.
When I arrived, it was like a mini reunion with all of my friends, some of which I hadn't seen since last June. After seeing everyone and getting settled in my old roommate's flat where I am staying, we went out to experience a little bit of British nightlife.
First we went to a small corner pub and had a couple of beers, catching up with a couple friends, then they took me to O'neil's irish pub which is supposedly THE place to go on Thursday nights. I was expecting a quaint little pub with some drink special that night. It was in fact a huge dance bar with a cover band. Apparently on Thursday nights, all 130 of the ND Londoners congrigate there and kind of take over the bar. I felt like I was in America, aside from the creepy old british men dance-attacking the girls from behind, to which they would run to me or some other ND guy and pretend to be their girlfriend. I think I had about 5 different girlfriends last night.
Being here is such a different mentality than Innsbruck. They seem to go out almost every night, they travel every spare weekend that they have, they need to walk two and a half miles to class one way, its really interesting to see how much of a different experience studying here would be.
I'm not really sure what I am going to do until I meet Christian in Paris on Monday. Hopefully a show or two, maybe visiting the Caravaggio painting I did a report on this semester in the National Gallery, a swing club. I honestly dont care what I do here, as long as I am just hanging out with everyone.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Old Ladies with Beer, oh and finals
The last couple of times I have gone to Spar or Hofer or any of our supermarkets, there has always been this unbelievably slow old lady in front of me. Amongst the normal old lady things they buy, tea, jam, and crumpets, there is usually one or two large cans of beer thrown in. It always throws me off but then I remember, "Oh yeah, I'm in Austria."
So finals are finally over! After my last one today I suppressed the urge to jump up in an explosion of papers and start singing a very specifically choriographed song with my classmates we had been practicing for the past two months, "What time is it? February!" They were a little stressful since its almost impossible to study in this country. For example on Saturday I got a call from my Host Mom and they invited me to go skiing. Can't pass that up can I? It was one of the better decisions I've made, it was such a beautiful day and I probably would've sat around thinking about studying and not getting anything accomplished. It was fun except for the part where I was trying to impress my family and their friends with my ever increasing skiing abilities and I wiped out for the first time in like 2 months in front of all these cool Austrians.
The finals themselves couldve been a lot worse, and I really lucked out. Beforehand when studying, the Austrians would freak out when I told them I had 5 tests in one week, apparently IF they had a finals they were spread out over a one month period in January.
Saturday evening was also the UniBall, the largest social event of the year. Faschings time as I may have mentioned before is the time of balls and the University hosted one the last weekend of the semester. We (the ND kids) had a little pre-party before the dance here in Roessl and everyone was all nicely dressed up. Then we all walked over to the ball together as a group. The ball itself was so fun, there were about 3 giant ballrooms, and a couple other places to dance, each with a different style of music and each with a live band. There was one playing with an orchestra playing the waltz and classical dances. When we walked in, and you saw all these people dancing around, it looked like you were walking into some cheezy Rogers and Hammerstein musical, everyone knew exactly how to waltz and everyone was gracefully spinning and whatnot in their coattails, long gowns and gloves. A couple of us tried to join in and we found two things: 1. Nobody really knows how to waltz; 2. Its really easy to pretend to know what you are doing. In the crowd of waltzers we got stepped on, jabbed and someone was always crashing in you. It felt like I was in the middle of a fist fight, I didnt know waltzing was so intense, there is so much dirty underhandedness that goes on within the dance floor. There was another room with a blues/swing band. None of the Austrians know how to swing dance and just tried to awkwardly waltz to the music. I definately impressed some when we started to Lindy Hop. There was another room with a rock cover band as well as a few discos. The ball went on till 6am but I left around three because I was dead tired from skiing that day, and I was thinking about all the studying I needed to get done in the next week.
I leave in a few hours for London to visit many friends and I am extremely excited, I cannot wait. Then I take the Chunnel to Paris to meet Christian for a few days then train back to IBK maybe stopping a night in Strassbourg. Ill post my overall travel plans after this.
Ciao!
So finals are finally over! After my last one today I suppressed the urge to jump up in an explosion of papers and start singing a very specifically choriographed song with my classmates we had been practicing for the past two months, "What time is it? February!" They were a little stressful since its almost impossible to study in this country. For example on Saturday I got a call from my Host Mom and they invited me to go skiing. Can't pass that up can I? It was one of the better decisions I've made, it was such a beautiful day and I probably would've sat around thinking about studying and not getting anything accomplished. It was fun except for the part where I was trying to impress my family and their friends with my ever increasing skiing abilities and I wiped out for the first time in like 2 months in front of all these cool Austrians.
The finals themselves couldve been a lot worse, and I really lucked out. Beforehand when studying, the Austrians would freak out when I told them I had 5 tests in one week, apparently IF they had a finals they were spread out over a one month period in January.
Saturday evening was also the UniBall, the largest social event of the year. Faschings time as I may have mentioned before is the time of balls and the University hosted one the last weekend of the semester. We (the ND kids) had a little pre-party before the dance here in Roessl and everyone was all nicely dressed up. Then we all walked over to the ball together as a group. The ball itself was so fun, there were about 3 giant ballrooms, and a couple other places to dance, each with a different style of music and each with a live band. There was one playing with an orchestra playing the waltz and classical dances. When we walked in, and you saw all these people dancing around, it looked like you were walking into some cheezy Rogers and Hammerstein musical, everyone knew exactly how to waltz and everyone was gracefully spinning and whatnot in their coattails, long gowns and gloves. A couple of us tried to join in and we found two things: 1. Nobody really knows how to waltz; 2. Its really easy to pretend to know what you are doing. In the crowd of waltzers we got stepped on, jabbed and someone was always crashing in you. It felt like I was in the middle of a fist fight, I didnt know waltzing was so intense, there is so much dirty underhandedness that goes on within the dance floor. There was another room with a blues/swing band. None of the Austrians know how to swing dance and just tried to awkwardly waltz to the music. I definately impressed some when we started to Lindy Hop. There was another room with a rock cover band as well as a few discos. The ball went on till 6am but I left around three because I was dead tired from skiing that day, and I was thinking about all the studying I needed to get done in the next week.
I leave in a few hours for London to visit many friends and I am extremely excited, I cannot wait. Then I take the Chunnel to Paris to meet Christian for a few days then train back to IBK maybe stopping a night in Strassbourg. Ill post my overall travel plans after this.
Ciao!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Good day
I woke up, it had snowed all night, and it was clear and sunny. I donned my ski pants and jacket and took my skis and boots with me to class. At half past noon, class ended, I grabbed a sandwhich and apple at Spar and jumped on the bus. In the hour, I was on the slopes. It was amazingly clear, still, and sunny with a fresh batch of snow. I was almost alone on the mountain. After two and a half hours of amazing skiing, I jumped back on the bus, got back to the dorm, took a shower, got dressed and met everyone for Gemeinsammenesessen (weekly dinner with the Gürtlers in the historic center of town). I've decided to not do any work the rest of the night and get to bed early. Tomorrow begins the studying for finals.
And just for fun, and because it's kind of appropriate, I thought I'd include the following. Listen for the noises he makes when he goes off the ski jump, its the Fasching noises from last night.
And just for fun, and because it's kind of appropriate, I thought I'd include the following. Listen for the noises he makes when he goes off the ski jump, its the Fasching noises from last night.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Fertility Slaps
So after a long Monday night writing a long German paper for Poly Sci and a Theo paper fittingly about hell, I really wanted to get some sleep today. Tuesdays are my weekly dinner with my Gastfamilie so I was planning on having a quiet, short evening with them before heading back to Roessl, watching a movie and sleeping, little did I know that by the end of the night, I would have some fertility slapped in me.
I apologize for that last sentence, just read the rest of the post and it'll make more sense (hopefully).
Everything was going to plan, we had a nice meal of Kaesespatzle, a kind of Tirolean macoroni and cheese and we started watching a slalom ski race on TV. I kind of am obsessed with the sport now. I'm only mentioning this because we humorously discovered that there was some DJ playing songs when each racer went that correlated to their country of origin (sort of). I noticed this first with a Japanese skiier, they were playing "Kung Fu Fighting" when he went. Then we realized it wasn't a coincidence when ABBA started playing to the background of the Sweedish skier to go next. Then a crappy Italian pop song for the Suedtiroler skiier and so on. After discussing the political correctness of this DJ who had too much time on his hands, my Gastmutter randomly mentioned that she heard of a Faschings event going on in a small town 15 minutes away. We decided to check it out reguardless of my exhaustion, I can sleep when I'm older.
Fasching is the strange season that begins on November 11, (11-11) and extends until Lent. It is known as being the 'ball season' where various clubs and organizations throughout Austria host large black and white dances. I am going to the UniBall this Saturday, the largest University social event of the year. Another thing about Fasching is that there is a kind of traditional ceremony that the rural places still carry out. I am not really sure exactly what everything means but I think the general idea is to drive out winter and bring in the summer. You know, like any other pagan ritual. It involves men dressing in Lederhosen and elaborite masks, and what else, alcohol.
I had no idea what exactly we were going to, I'm not even sure my mother did, she just kind of read about it in the newspaper that morning. Well we arrive at this Gasthaus, a kind of traditional restraunt and apparently you needed tickets to get in and they were sold out, but they suggested we just stand at the doorway and look in the dining room as it all happens. So we each got a beer and waited for the festivites to begin. The room itself reminded me of a camp dining hall: a large wooden room with long tables, decorated very flamboyantly with colorful streamers and giant masks. Well, I guess we were standing in the kind of prep room before the 'performers' did their thing so a strange crowd of about 25 young men all arrived in strange costumes. They were wearing an assortment of clothing and the costumes included: disturbingly short lederhosen, colorful shag (think: gay chewbacca), suit with colorful pom poms glued all over, women's dresses, and a few suits with thousands of tiny pieces of wood hanging off that resemble those paint stirrers that hardware stores throw handfulls of at you whenever you approach the paint section. Right before they went on, they all put on these very interesting masks. Most were simply wooden carvings of a man's face with a kind of dirty porn star moustache with any assortment of decorations around it. These were both subtle and extreme. One had a 4 foot tall headdress kind of thing with mirrors, feathers, and sequins that he seemed to steal from an Elton John concert.
The festivities began when a masked man started playing an accordian and one by one each of the characters came out dancing and interacting with the crowd. First, these men dressed as hags went out and brushed people with their brooms. Then the men with the lederhosen ran out and started doing the traditional Tirolean dance called the Schuehplattler which is German for absolutely hilarious. It involves a lot of slapping, jumping, and high kicking to rhythms. If you ever stop laughing at them you would realize its a pretty complicated, rhythmic dance. Then the paint stirrer boys ran into the crowd with a twisting jerking dance that really made their outfits loud. Many of them were making the screaming noise that goofy would always make in cartoons when he would be falling or something, its really quite difficult to describe, a kind of high pitched "aaaaaaah hooo hoooie." But it wonder if Goofy was inspired from Tirolean Fasching ceremonies. This went on for some time and the men would go amongst the tables, reach into their costumes, pull out a flask, and offer some schnapps to the ladies. They would also give everyone a hefty slap which my gastmutter called a "Fruchtbarschlag" or a fertility slap. This went on for some time until the performers got tired, took of their masks and half their costumes, grabbed ein Bier and joined the party.
Apparently every town has their own traditions with the holiday, and every town has their own troupe of young men who do their own Faschings dance celebration. This night apparently 4 different towns were sending their dancers. I would have loved to stay and watch the next three towns' perfomances, but we didn't have anywhere to sit and I was already dog tired from the lack of sleep from the night before and the party went on till at least midnight so we decided to leave after this small but delicious taste of Tirolean tradition. When we went outside, it had started to snow for the first time since the new year. Looks like they need to work on their winter-driving out skills.
I apologize for that last sentence, just read the rest of the post and it'll make more sense (hopefully).
Everything was going to plan, we had a nice meal of Kaesespatzle, a kind of Tirolean macoroni and cheese and we started watching a slalom ski race on TV. I kind of am obsessed with the sport now. I'm only mentioning this because we humorously discovered that there was some DJ playing songs when each racer went that correlated to their country of origin (sort of). I noticed this first with a Japanese skiier, they were playing "Kung Fu Fighting" when he went. Then we realized it wasn't a coincidence when ABBA started playing to the background of the Sweedish skier to go next. Then a crappy Italian pop song for the Suedtiroler skiier and so on. After discussing the political correctness of this DJ who had too much time on his hands, my Gastmutter randomly mentioned that she heard of a Faschings event going on in a small town 15 minutes away. We decided to check it out reguardless of my exhaustion, I can sleep when I'm older.
Fasching is the strange season that begins on November 11, (11-11) and extends until Lent. It is known as being the 'ball season' where various clubs and organizations throughout Austria host large black and white dances. I am going to the UniBall this Saturday, the largest University social event of the year. Another thing about Fasching is that there is a kind of traditional ceremony that the rural places still carry out. I am not really sure exactly what everything means but I think the general idea is to drive out winter and bring in the summer. You know, like any other pagan ritual. It involves men dressing in Lederhosen and elaborite masks, and what else, alcohol.
I had no idea what exactly we were going to, I'm not even sure my mother did, she just kind of read about it in the newspaper that morning. Well we arrive at this Gasthaus, a kind of traditional restraunt and apparently you needed tickets to get in and they were sold out, but they suggested we just stand at the doorway and look in the dining room as it all happens. So we each got a beer and waited for the festivites to begin. The room itself reminded me of a camp dining hall: a large wooden room with long tables, decorated very flamboyantly with colorful streamers and giant masks. Well, I guess we were standing in the kind of prep room before the 'performers' did their thing so a strange crowd of about 25 young men all arrived in strange costumes. They were wearing an assortment of clothing and the costumes included: disturbingly short lederhosen, colorful shag (think: gay chewbacca), suit with colorful pom poms glued all over, women's dresses, and a few suits with thousands of tiny pieces of wood hanging off that resemble those paint stirrers that hardware stores throw handfulls of at you whenever you approach the paint section. Right before they went on, they all put on these very interesting masks. Most were simply wooden carvings of a man's face with a kind of dirty porn star moustache with any assortment of decorations around it. These were both subtle and extreme. One had a 4 foot tall headdress kind of thing with mirrors, feathers, and sequins that he seemed to steal from an Elton John concert.
The festivities began when a masked man started playing an accordian and one by one each of the characters came out dancing and interacting with the crowd. First, these men dressed as hags went out and brushed people with their brooms. Then the men with the lederhosen ran out and started doing the traditional Tirolean dance called the Schuehplattler which is German for absolutely hilarious. It involves a lot of slapping, jumping, and high kicking to rhythms. If you ever stop laughing at them you would realize its a pretty complicated, rhythmic dance. Then the paint stirrer boys ran into the crowd with a twisting jerking dance that really made their outfits loud. Many of them were making the screaming noise that goofy would always make in cartoons when he would be falling or something, its really quite difficult to describe, a kind of high pitched "aaaaaaah hooo hoooie." But it wonder if Goofy was inspired from Tirolean Fasching ceremonies. This went on for some time and the men would go amongst the tables, reach into their costumes, pull out a flask, and offer some schnapps to the ladies. They would also give everyone a hefty slap which my gastmutter called a "Fruchtbarschlag" or a fertility slap. This went on for some time until the performers got tired, took of their masks and half their costumes, grabbed ein Bier and joined the party.
Apparently every town has their own traditions with the holiday, and every town has their own troupe of young men who do their own Faschings dance celebration. This night apparently 4 different towns were sending their dancers. I would have loved to stay and watch the next three towns' perfomances, but we didn't have anywhere to sit and I was already dog tired from the lack of sleep from the night before and the party went on till at least midnight so we decided to leave after this small but delicious taste of Tirolean tradition. When we went outside, it had started to snow for the first time since the new year. Looks like they need to work on their winter-driving out skills.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Austrian Sporting Events
Real short, I feel real good about February, I have finally finished purchasing all of my transportation connections.
I'll post later exactly where I am going to be and when.
Friday afternoon, Mariel tells me that there is an Innsbruck CouchSurfing meeting that we could go to. CouchSurfing is a social networking website that we just joined where you can connect with people in other cities and stay with them (i.e. surf their couch) for free. It sounds sketchy but they have pretty decent ways of checking up on people. I am planning on trying this out in Portugal so I thought it would be fun to check out this meeting. Well we arrive and apparenly it was an Innsbruck ExPat (Ex-Patriots) club group that some lady advertized on the CouchSurfing site. We didnt really quite read the invite right. It was not quite what I was expecting, but we were kind of socially obligated to stay and talk to some other fellow Americans/Italians/Irish/Australians. It was quite a unique group of people from folk songwriters to freelance band photographers and the whole time I kept asking myself how the heck I got myself into this crazy situation. They were unbelievably nice and they kept talking about meeting up in the future for parties and such but if I didn't have: 13 other native speakers from ND to be friends with, an obligation to leave the country in 5 months, a Gastfamilie, a decent grasp of the German Language, and a life, I may consider to spend more time with these people.
Today, Saturday, Mariel and I awoke before the sun to drag ourselves to the train station and go to Kitzbühel to see the world famous Hahnekamm Ski World Cup race. Kitzbühel is essentually where I was all of Christmas break and it was awesome to see this race on the mountain I had been skiing on just a month ago.
As a side note, on the way there, we had a layover in the small town of Woergl, and on a whim (and since I am terrified of the IBK train station ticket office and the beast that roams there) I decided to try to get another Interrail pass for my February travels. And I tried to keep my cool amongst my excitement when I was able to get it no problem.
Anyways, this event is probably Austria's biggest sporting event of the year. Austria really has nothing going for it with sports other than skiing. Their Fußball team is horrible and only reason why they are playing in the world championship this summer is because there will be a few games in Innsbruck. This event (the Saturday race) is the worlds longest and most difficult downhill ski run. There is a point where there is an 85% grade and even the snow grooming machines can't make it up so they call in the Austrian army early in the morning to march around and pack down the snow. In living here for the past 5 months, it seems that the Austrian army's most important jobs include cleaning up the Pope-trash in Vienna, parading in order to groom snow, and wearing red berets.
After sitting on an hour train ride packed with people and watching all the Austrians down beer and schnapps all before 10am, and making friends with an Australian snowboarder named Luke living/bartending in London for the year, we finally arrived and joined the mayhem. Austrians were running around everywhere, waving the flag, blowing airhorns, ect. I all thought that they had lipstick kiss marks on their faces but on closer look, it was just the red, white, red stripes of the Austrian flag painted on their cheeks. Mariel and I made our way up to the end of the run to stake out a spot for the race in two hours. As we slipped and slid in the snow our way to the stadium/holding area for people, the stumble drunk Austrians were easily passing us with their geneticly inherited Tirolean snow-legs. We found a good spot between the finish line and where the skiiers stop and celebrate about two hours before the race and made an Austrian friend who was telling us all about the sport and the racers (very helpful since mariel and I were fairly lost). The event itself was extremely similar to any other sporting event, including a pregame show with parachuters, hang gliders, cameramen amonst the crowd, and cheerleaders "the Alpine Angels," commercial breaks between races, and music to pump up the crowd (their 'Jock Jams' are a pleasant blend of polka and yodeling). The race was suprisingly exciting, we could watch the racers on a big screen then see them come around the corner at the top of the mountain and watch them finish the last fourth of the course as they raced against the best time. The only racer I knew was Bode Miller who the Austrians all love but the Americans all hate which which resulted in a confusing number of American flags in the crowd (carried by Austrian Bode supporters).
Unfortunately we witnessed a really bad fall. Scott McCartney, the first American skiier, and second of the day, wiped out really bad right at the end of the race resulting in them stopping the race for a half hour as they airlifted him out. It was really disturbing. As he was coming down, the announcer announced that it was his birthday today and before he finished, he got the entire crowd to start singing "Happy Birthday to you" as he came close. He got a little too much air from a ledge and lost control (it seemed as if he was distracted from the singing) and well you can see the rest here:
He stopped sliding right in front of where we were standing and the whole crowd went silent as he started convulsing with shock. I was almost sure he was dead or paralyzed but apparently it was just severe head trauma. He is doing alright now at the Innsbruck Clinic. Some birthday...
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/skiing/news/story?id=3204103
It was kind of a buzz-kill for the crowd but they livened up after they announced he was conscious, and the energy returned.
After the race, we decided we were exhausted after getting up so early and standing all day and decided to head back rather than wait for the fireworks display that evening. Before heading back to Innsbruck, Mariel and I walked around the city to check out the party of wasted Austrians dancing around and belting the words to "I'm Walking on Sunshine." And then we joined the crowd as we tried to set the Guinness record for how many drunk Austrians we could fit on the train in the short 50 min ride back to Innsbruck.
I'll post later exactly where I am going to be and when.
Friday afternoon, Mariel tells me that there is an Innsbruck CouchSurfing meeting that we could go to. CouchSurfing is a social networking website that we just joined where you can connect with people in other cities and stay with them (i.e. surf their couch) for free. It sounds sketchy but they have pretty decent ways of checking up on people. I am planning on trying this out in Portugal so I thought it would be fun to check out this meeting. Well we arrive and apparenly it was an Innsbruck ExPat (Ex-Patriots) club group that some lady advertized on the CouchSurfing site. We didnt really quite read the invite right. It was not quite what I was expecting, but we were kind of socially obligated to stay and talk to some other fellow Americans/Italians/Irish/Australians. It was quite a unique group of people from folk songwriters to freelance band photographers and the whole time I kept asking myself how the heck I got myself into this crazy situation. They were unbelievably nice and they kept talking about meeting up in the future for parties and such but if I didn't have: 13 other native speakers from ND to be friends with, an obligation to leave the country in 5 months, a Gastfamilie, a decent grasp of the German Language, and a life, I may consider to spend more time with these people.
Today, Saturday, Mariel and I awoke before the sun to drag ourselves to the train station and go to Kitzbühel to see the world famous Hahnekamm Ski World Cup race. Kitzbühel is essentually where I was all of Christmas break and it was awesome to see this race on the mountain I had been skiing on just a month ago.
As a side note, on the way there, we had a layover in the small town of Woergl, and on a whim (and since I am terrified of the IBK train station ticket office and the beast that roams there) I decided to try to get another Interrail pass for my February travels. And I tried to keep my cool amongst my excitement when I was able to get it no problem.
Anyways, this event is probably Austria's biggest sporting event of the year. Austria really has nothing going for it with sports other than skiing. Their Fußball team is horrible and only reason why they are playing in the world championship this summer is because there will be a few games in Innsbruck. This event (the Saturday race) is the worlds longest and most difficult downhill ski run. There is a point where there is an 85% grade and even the snow grooming machines can't make it up so they call in the Austrian army early in the morning to march around and pack down the snow. In living here for the past 5 months, it seems that the Austrian army's most important jobs include cleaning up the Pope-trash in Vienna, parading in order to groom snow, and wearing red berets.
After sitting on an hour train ride packed with people and watching all the Austrians down beer and schnapps all before 10am, and making friends with an Australian snowboarder named Luke living/bartending in London for the year, we finally arrived and joined the mayhem. Austrians were running around everywhere, waving the flag, blowing airhorns, ect. I all thought that they had lipstick kiss marks on their faces but on closer look, it was just the red, white, red stripes of the Austrian flag painted on their cheeks. Mariel and I made our way up to the end of the run to stake out a spot for the race in two hours. As we slipped and slid in the snow our way to the stadium/holding area for people, the stumble drunk Austrians were easily passing us with their geneticly inherited Tirolean snow-legs. We found a good spot between the finish line and where the skiiers stop and celebrate about two hours before the race and made an Austrian friend who was telling us all about the sport and the racers (very helpful since mariel and I were fairly lost). The event itself was extremely similar to any other sporting event, including a pregame show with parachuters, hang gliders, cameramen amonst the crowd, and cheerleaders "the Alpine Angels," commercial breaks between races, and music to pump up the crowd (their 'Jock Jams' are a pleasant blend of polka and yodeling). The race was suprisingly exciting, we could watch the racers on a big screen then see them come around the corner at the top of the mountain and watch them finish the last fourth of the course as they raced against the best time. The only racer I knew was Bode Miller who the Austrians all love but the Americans all hate which which resulted in a confusing number of American flags in the crowd (carried by Austrian Bode supporters).
Unfortunately we witnessed a really bad fall. Scott McCartney, the first American skiier, and second of the day, wiped out really bad right at the end of the race resulting in them stopping the race for a half hour as they airlifted him out. It was really disturbing. As he was coming down, the announcer announced that it was his birthday today and before he finished, he got the entire crowd to start singing "Happy Birthday to you" as he came close. He got a little too much air from a ledge and lost control (it seemed as if he was distracted from the singing) and well you can see the rest here:
He stopped sliding right in front of where we were standing and the whole crowd went silent as he started convulsing with shock. I was almost sure he was dead or paralyzed but apparently it was just severe head trauma. He is doing alright now at the Innsbruck Clinic. Some birthday...
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/skiing/news/story?id=3204103
It was kind of a buzz-kill for the crowd but they livened up after they announced he was conscious, and the energy returned.
After the race, we decided we were exhausted after getting up so early and standing all day and decided to head back rather than wait for the fireworks display that evening. Before heading back to Innsbruck, Mariel and I walked around the city to check out the party of wasted Austrians dancing around and belting the words to "I'm Walking on Sunshine." And then we joined the crowd as we tried to set the Guinness record for how many drunk Austrians we could fit on the train in the short 50 min ride back to Innsbruck.
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