First music post: Ciao Italia!

Ok, well I'm going to try this out anyway. Today I'd like to bring you two songs from Italy, one new and one old. I'll put them up as MP3s and you can download them for a couple weeks and then I'll take them down. If you like them, it's up to you to buy them. The first of these two songs is by Florence-based musician Alexander Robotnick, who despite being an Italian sings in French. It is possibly my favorite song of all time, and apparently the MP3 I play most out of all several thousand of them, according to iTunes. Possibly because my friends are always asking me to play it.

"Problemes d'Amour" is a classic song, and not all that obscure. It falls in the middle of the Italo-disco and Electro movements, not really fitting neatly within either genre but completely superceding both at the same time. You can find the song in remixed form on recent compilations like This Is Not the 80s and Disco Not Disco vol. 2, but the original was released in 1983, and the version appearing here, the 'Ah Ou Ah' version, dates from a year later. You'll see why it's called that as soon as you listen. The song itself is simple and funky in a Kraftwerk vein, but features the most ridiculous French vocals you have ever heard. To this day I don't know what it is that makes me love them so much. It's just that it's this Italian guy singing French really low. I can't explain it. Just listen.

"Problemes d'Amour" (Ah Ou Ah version) - Alexander Robotnick

Since we began with something old, I'd like to finish with something new. You may already know international music geek superstar Erlend Øye from his two-piece folk group Kings of Convenience, or from his excellent solo album in 2003, Unrest, or possibly even his excellent set in the DJ-Kicks series from last year. Erlend is a Norwegian wunderkind with a flair for finding breezy electropop to lend his vocals to, such as on 2001's collaboration with fellow Norwegians Royskopp on their debut album. Well, I've tracked down a bit of a hidden gem. Øye recorded a couple songs with Italian Marco Passarani for his new album Sullen Look, including this one, Criticize. The secret is that Erlend is credited under a false moniker, Orlando Occhio, or the Italian translation of Erlend Øye (Øye and Occhio both mean Eye apparently). The song itself is a bubbly Summery tune that somehow makes me feel like I'm near a runway, but also relaxing. It's great background music for transversing Switzerland by train or walking with a quick pace down the Champs Elyesees as the sun filters through green leaves across your back. At least until the old skool acid techno breakdown straight out of "More Energy" as the end of the song hits.

"Criticize" (featuring Orlando Occhio) - Marco Passarani

I had no luck locating either of these artists' recordings when I was in Italy, but you can purchase them on Boomkat here and here. If anyone knows of anyplace in the U.S. that carries these releases let me know.

We Fade to Grey

Greetings Everyone,

Well, I am back in the United States obviously. Yes, I survived the trip back, although one of my flights was cancelled and I spent the night in Detroit. I experienced my only pronounced bout of culture shock when I was at the hotel there. I decided that since the hotel restaurant was packed with people having drinks and possibly closed that I'd walk to the McDonald's I saw on the shuttle ride. It ended up taking about 15 minutes and I was amazed by the distances. Each business needed miles of lawn and parking. It was such a waste of space compared to cosy old Europe.

I had planned on immediately writing something about my experience returning, but I have been so wrapped up in my resuscitating life that I haven't had time. Thanks to the many people I saw around who said they enjoyed reading this blog, it was good to know someone was actually taking the time to read it. I know I can be pretty verbose at times.

I have done all the American things I missed since I got back. Free refills everywhere, Mexican food, drive throughs, Sheetz, oh especially Sheetz. You name it. And for the first time I took a little pleasure in the American-ness of such activities. But mostly I adapted more quickly than I anticipated. I was only in my apartment for a week before I had to leave for Charleston for a little work vacation, which is good since I don't have an actual job yet. I went to a baseball game and really appreciated it for the cheap beer and hot dog fest that it was. And last night I went to see a metal show with my friends Ryan and Jeff and played pool. I guess you can do that in France or somewhere but it feels more appropriate in Huntington, all the while drinking Budweiser, the King of Beers.™ King of beers! What a joke! But it definitely makes me appreciate some of the things we have for what they are, having been gone for a month.

But now that my holiday is over, it leads me to wonder what I will do with this blog. I think I am going to continue to use it, not as frequently (every day is a lot), but I'll post some observations on culture and design, since this is my field, and occasionally some crazy music. So if these things interest you feel free to come back. I really want to give this thing a proper facelift. If I end up working as a freelancer for a living I probably will, but if I get an agency job soon I probably won't have time. We'll see. Be sure to check back.

I Drew the Eiffel Tower upon Her Dress

It looks as though my travels are going to be ending soon. Today was the last full day I'll be in Europe, and I tried to make the most of it here in Paris. Hopfully I did everything I could, I certainly wore myself out. I still have some packing to do tonight and I want to get up early to get to De Gaulle as early as possible but I'd like to update this while it's still fresh in my mind so... looks like I'll lose out on some sleep. I need to try and sleep on the plane anyway I think.

I took 139 photos. One hundred and thirty-nine. That's all in one day! I think that's definitely the most pictures I've ever taken in my life. Now, given, some of these were shots I took multiple times that I'll only keep the best one of, but still! My plan of attack was simple. No shops would be open, no time for museums, so I would concentrate my attack on seeing landmarks and areas of town. Pretty sure I hit all the big ones, but let's see, where to start.

I woke up a little after 6am and got ready. My breakfast was the most delicious croissant I've ever tasted, from the patisserie across from the Metro. I got a daypass for the Metro and I certainly got my money's worth. Now I've been warned about pickpockets in Paris and in the Metro specifically, but maybe Sunday is their day off? I certainly didn't have a problem, and the Metro in Paris was the nicest one I've been to in my travels.

Right, so I took the subway to Place Charles de Gaulle, home of the Arc de Triomphe, one of the most recognizable Parisian landmarks. It's one of the big three - l'Arc de Triomphe, le Louvre and of course, la Tour Eiffel. Oh and Notre Dame! I don't know, it's hard to rank them, but I did them all. So back to l'Arc de Triomphe at 7:30am, Sunday morning. Desolate. If Paris had tumbleweeds, they would have been there. But beautiful. Part of why I wanted to do it was to see Paris' streets empty. One of my favorite photographers, Eugene Atget, who photographed Paris' streets and buildings almost exclusively, always awoke in the morning for this reason.

Following the Arc de Triomphe, my next goal was the Eiffel Tower. I figured if I went to the biggest tourist attractions first I'd get those out of the way before pickpockets woke up. There were still a fair number of people there at the Tour Eiffel, waiting in line to go up. I don't know how long it would have taken to wait but I kept thinking I'd need to conserve my day and not get too in depth with anything. I took some pictures, and put on a couple Eiffel-related songs ("Alec Eiffel" by the Pixies and "Burning Hearts" by My Favorite, from whence the subject for this entry came). I felt pretty inspired, I can tell you, being there, and as I made my way to the South pillar, I noticed that it had almost no line, and I saw on the sign that this was a line to ascend the steps yourself if you wanted. It wasn't even 4 Euros.

Well, I quickly decided to do it. The climb was steep and a lot of people had to stop and rest. I took a break on the first leg but I think that dance marathon the night before last did me well. There are two observation decks, and a lot of stairs between each one. I took probably 30 pictures at the Eiffel Tower alone, maybe more. It's totally different from any tower I've been on, except maybe the Eiffel Tower at King's World, which I can't remember too well anyway. Everything looks and feels like a factory. You still feel secure thanks to lots of metal fencing in between you and instant death by falling, but you can still see what it might look like to fall. The views are spectacular. My only qualm was that since it was so early in the morning it was so light in the sky that pictures were kind of hard to take well. The camera keeps either wanting things too dark or too light because the difference between the land and the sky is so great.

I took a short tour of the gardens around the tower and then plotted a course past the Paris Hilton towards the Metro. No, not that Paris Hilton. Since there wasn't much else on this side of the city, I considered going to the Corbusier Museum. Corbusier was if not the most famous modern photographer, second only to Frank Lloyd Wright, and a lot more influential in Europe. He was actually Swiss-born, but he did a lot of his best-known work here. Unfortunately for me the museum was closed anyway. Well, nothing ventured.

Next up was les Champs Elysees, the most famous street in Paris. I actually could have gone to l'Arc and taken the Champs Elysees from there, but I didn't know that I'd be going back down it this soon. So I hopped the Metro back over there and started walking. First I came to the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, or the big and little palaces. They were both very impressive, so I snapped some pictures but had to move on. This will be a theme throughout the day if you're paying attention. Next was the Place de la Concord. There they were dissembling stands of benches that I believe were used during the Tour de France. There's an obelisk here with some writing on it. I don't understand French so well and there were no signs anywhere, so I had to go back on my four years of French for help. Not much came to mind. It was neat anyway.

Then came le Jardin des Tuileries, which was sunny and beautiful and relaxing. People were reclining in the shade on metal chairs. My hunger was starting to peek out but I felt completely at ease, so I decided just to follow form and lounge on a metal chair for a little while. I read a chapter in my book, and got up completely refreshed. There was this moment when I put some music on and one of the songs from that French CD I bought in Geneva came on. It's a kitschy '60s number but it's kind of serene and happy-go-lucky. You know, the kind of song you just know will have a flute solo about a minute into the song. At that point in time everything in the world felt perfect, like a finished jigsaw puzzle. I was totally at ease, in no rush, haing a good time. It occurred to me that there are a lot of niceties about travelling alone, just because you do whatever on Earth you feel like doing.

Well, I got to the Louvre after my little walk, and it, like just about everything, was gorgeous. Now, I comitted some kind of tourist sin by touring the grounds of the Louvre but not going in. Yeah I know. The thing is I knew it would take me all day in there and I needed all day for other things. I did vow to come back though, and spend more than a day so I could do things like go to the Louvre.

I crossed the Seine and I was, according to signs, now on the famed Rive Gauche, the Left Bank. To be honest I don't know where that starts and stops, but the section I was in was pretty stuff. Lots of antique shops and realtors, nothing fancy and artsy. I was in Saint Germain and near le Quartier Latin. I should have done more research but I remembered hearing about le Quartier Latin and it looked like it would be East Village-y, so that had been one of my goals.

I don't know where one neighborhood begins and the other ends, but I started seeing cafes so I decided it was time to eat. I settled on Leon, a Belgian restaurant, in fact I think a chain around here. Their specialty is mussels, and at first that's what I was going to get. Mussels and some gaufres (aka waffles). But as I looked over the descriptions I decided instead to get Encroite (sp?), which is a cut of steak with, I think, Bearnais sauce on the side. I wasn't so keen on the sauce but the steak was awesome. I was completely full and content and ready to make the most of the rest of the day.

As I delved deeper into the Quartier Latin, I started to see signs of life in the shops. Yes, although just about everywhere closes on Sundays, some shops open for a few hours after lunch and before dinner. I managed to hit three used CD/vinyl places that were right in a row. Unfortunately I didn't find much of excitement. I was feeling pretty beat though, so I decided to go back to the hotel for a bit and take a little rest since I'd been up so long already. On the way over I found a couple more shops open and got a couple more things, but that was pretty much it for shopping in Paris.

After my break at the hotel it was around 5pm. I wanted to do two more things before anything else, go to the Ile de la Cite and Notre-Dame, and see the Centre Pompidou. While at the hotel I checked and noted the Centre was actually open until late that evening. Imagine my surprise! I went to the Ile de la Cite, which I think is a really well-preserved area on this island in the middle of the Seine. Unfortunately there was no way to find out since it's walled in. They probably open it to the public, but not on Sunday nights. Notre-Dame is nearby though, so of course I had to check it out. The bells were tolling as I approached and it made for a very fitting introduction to the structure. I've gotten a bit numb to all these cathedrals but this one still managed to impress me.

So now I had only the Centre Pompidou, which is a crazy structure housing Paris' modern art museum. Outside it kind of looks like a weird water processing plant. I got a ticket, which wasn't too bad, and started checking out the exhibits. There was an exhibition on a Modernist French architect which was so-so, an exhibit on modern African art which was mixed, and the permanent exhibition. Their collection is impressive. Name a modern artist and they had a piece represented. Picasso, Dali, Magritte, Warhol, and on and on. Everyone but the Impressionists pretty much. Still, the disappoining bit is that none of the pieces by anyone well-known impressed me much. They are all minor works and me-too purchases by the museum with a couple exceptions. One being Dali's Guillame Tell, which I was able to appreciate very much, and the other being Marcel Duchamp's famous Pissoir. Now, not to knock that artwork as a historical achievement, but it looks about the same in pictures as it does in person. Some of the works by lesser-known architects were very good, but mostly I didn't like the idea behind the exhibition, which was to try and tie in groups of artists doing vaguely similar things. Like a room of artists who had a female nude in their piece. Sorry it just didn't cut it for me. If you take them out of historical context you've got to have a pretty good excuse to tie them together in my mind.

The exhibition I'd most wanted to see, called D-Day: Today's Design (well that in French), turned out to be in a completely different part of the museum, and by the time I'd gotten to it you could no longer enter the exhibit. So I was a little bummed about that, and hungry by now. I tried finding a restaurant with French cuisine but all I could seem to find were ethnic restaurants and bars in which the only thing that was French was a Croque Monsieur, or toasted ham and cheese sandwich. Ok, I can make that at home, Paris! Dejected, I plotted out a course to the metro and tried in vain to find something on the way over, away from the touristy les Halles, the area I'd been in. Nada. So I just got some fast food and came home. Well, I was tired, and it sounded just as authentic as eating Italian in Paris.

Ok, to recap. I loved Paris. Everyone was super-nice to me here. I think the people who find the French rude don't try to speak any French to them. Think about it, how would you feel if someone came up to you at your job and started speaking in Chinese or Spanish or, imagine, French! You'd be pissed they didn't at least attempt to use the language of the country they were standing in. Plus the French have an inferiority complex being so close to England.

Honestly though, I found Paris to be the most like America of anywhere I'd been. I can see why the French are so determined to keep their culture and language intact when they are bombarded with everything American except apple pie. Levi's jeans, McDonald's (where they do serve a Royal avec Cheese), the Fantastic Four (les Quatre Fantastiques), American music (I heard "Fade to Grey" in a record store again today. They're English but still, it's close), you name it, they have it. But I think the cool thing about the French is they recontexturalize everything American they adopt.

Some people say the French hate us but they're wrong. They totally love us! They adore Jerry Lee Lewis and American funk and soul. They just like to pick and choose what they like about us, and one of the things they hate is our current foreign policy, which I would have to agree with them on anyway. They also try their damnedest to adopt American things as part of a spectrum of different foreign influences. Italian, Brazillian, African, Turkish. All these things have their place here too. They don't seem to see why we should get some special treatment.

Well, I was hoping to upload pictures tonight too but it's already almost 1am and I need to finish re-packing to make my small bag heavier and my big bag lighter so that I don't exceed any weight limits. I'll try and post an update from an airport somewhere in the world tomorrow, and I'll definitely be having something to say once I'm back about the whole experience.

Onwards to Paris

Well, I'm safely in Paris, the last leg of my journey. I'm getting some hardcore travel fatigue, and I'm alone in Paris, so I've decided to stay in the hotel tonight. More on that in a bit. But let me catch you up on Switzerland first.

So yeah, I went to this discotheque last night and it was crazy. As I said before, I had scoped out the location, so I had only to walk over there, and I did. Close to the square there was some loud, punk-sounding music going on. "That doesn't seem right..." I thought. A lot of people were milling around the square. I thought maybe it was some bizarre opener, so I went inside and looked around the area before where you pay, and sure enough, it just looked like a punk show. I thought maybe I had the days mixed up, since I'm pretty sure my phone is a day slow.

I walked over to where I had seen one of the flyers to make sure the show I was thinking of was happening on the 15th, and sure enough it was. This is weird. I walked back and checked out the club again. I was going to ask someone when I noticed a flyer with different bands listed for tonight but the same address. Aha! I went outside and looked around the side of the building and sure enough there was a separate entrance.

I went in and there weren't many people there yet, but the place looked correct. The DJ was the opening DJ and he was spinning some EBM and synthpop, and that and some of the people there reminded me of Ceremony in Pittsburgh. I went over and looked at the beer menu. There were several things listed at 3 francs, so I ordered one, a panachee. The bartender took out a smallish plastic cup, filled it about half with something from a bottle and then poured beer in the rest. It tasted delicious but kind of light. Later I ordered it again and figured it out. It was a beer and citrus water together. Very tasty but not so high on the alcohol content. I saw a guy ordering just beer so I followed suit later.

The first DJ did play some really good songs (one I had to write down the lyrics in my phone so I could try and track down) but a lot of stuff that was just hard and not so danceable, and mostly no one bothered to get up. More people started to come in and eventually the main DJ, Plastique de Reve took the stage.

Within a couple songs he was playing some really good, danceable stuff that got the first couple people on the floor. It was definitely electro, but some was harder like EBM and some was more like fashionable sounding electro but still pretty hard and house-oriented, thus, easy to danc etc. At several points in the set the DJ stopped playing records and slid into some keyboard and vocoder stuff, which was impressive and made me want to try that. At one point in time he did a fantastic rendition of the 80's new romantic hit "Fade to Grey," one of my favorite 80's singles by one of my favorite, lesser-known groups. Coincidentally I had been listening to it on the trainride to Geneva. Later I heard him play "Disco Rout" by Legowelt, a Belgian electro group I like with a harder, dancefloor-oriented sound which was pretty much in line with everything he played. Those were the only two songs in about 3 and a half hours that I recognized, but it was awesome.

At first I entertained some ideas of just being a bystander, but before long I started dancing up there with everyone else. It's definitely a late club, this Usine. At first it was pretty sparse but when I left at 3:30am the place was still completely packed. I danced from about half past midnight until then, the whole time, which is I think the longest I've ever danced for. There wasn't a whole lot of room on the dancefloor so a lot of the time I was just moving a bit, conserving energy, but there was room to dance around sometimes too. By the time I left, the floor had become a swamp of discarded beer cans and beer, and my shirt was soaked in sweat down to the last couple inches of my waist.

I tried to talk to one guy I thought was speaking English but when he responded to me I couldn't hear what he was saying and I think it might have been Dutch or German. He definitely wasn't Swiss, but most of those in attendance were, I think. I danced with one girl up by the front for a bit, and I swear as I was leaving this guy tried to get me to give him a high five, but I would have felt really dumb if he hadn't been so I pretended not to notice, and he looked slightly offended.

I walked home and I was worried about getting mugged but Geneva is pretty safe so I was fine. Most of the streets I took were large and well-lit, and it was only about a 10 minute walk away. When I got home I was so gross and sweaty I decided to take a shower at around 4am before bed. I got up at about 8 to get ready for checkout at 10am.

I packed my bags and put them into day lockers. The best train I could take was at about 1pm and would get me into Paris before 5pm, but I had to be careful because the front office was closed from noon to one so I had to get my bags before noon. Having only about an hour and a half I really didn't have time to do much. I started walking towards the Jet d'Eau, a giant water stream hundreds of feet up in the air that's one of the main tourist attractions here. It's impressive, going way over houses, but i just don't understand the point. It's kind of like the European version of the Greatest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.

I needed to eat, so I only had a little while to go around. I still had a little over 110 Francs, and although I wanted to save some of the bills, I wanted to use most of it up since it was money spent already. I got a postcard and found myself a Swiss Army Knife. I had already gotten some at a good price at the hotel lounge but I hadn't found one for myself until then. Good, good, there went about 20 francs. I tried unsuccessfully to find the travel section in the bookstore I had been to the other day.

As I was walking to the Jet, I found some t-shirts to get and with lunch that pretty well was the money I needed to spend. I had lunch at Burger King because I wanted something substantial and fast, and in this case also cheap. I figured I'd get plenty of croissants and gaufres in Paris anyway.

I got back to the hotel and began moving my bags to the train station, about a five minute walk away. Let me tell you, my bags have gotten so heavy that I had to stop about every 100 feet and take a break. Man are they heavy. I finally got to the station and went to purchase a ticket. Lucky me, my train was sold out. Great. The next one left close to 5pm. I got a ticket and checked out the locker situation at the train station, finding that they were all too small for my huge bags. Not wanting to drag my bags back to the hostel, I decided just to kill time at the train station. I found a seat near customs and read for about 3 hours.

I caught the train with no further hiccups. Paris has 4 or 5 train stations, and luckily the one that Swiss trains go into is also the closest to my hotel. I took a taxi, which was only 10 Euros. I had been expecting to pay the 40 Euros it will cost to go to Charles de Gaulle airport. I arrived here exhausted at 9pm.

The hotel is one step up from a hostel. There is no air conditioning, but there is a TV. There's a lift (elevator) but it's broken, so I had to lug my stuff up two sets of stairs. There's a computer with internet that's very cheap (4 Euros for usage from noon to midnight) but you have to wait your turn on it and it's in the lobby. I'm typing this on my computer and will burn everything to disk so I don't have to use everyone's internet time typing and so I don't have to use the crazy French keyboard it has.

I grabbed a bite to eat - McDonald's since I'm too tired to want to deal with ordering food at any restaurant I don't know so well and since mostly all there is near here is Turkish, Chinese and butchers. Interestingly the McDonald's here has free ketchup I think, unlike anywhere else I've been.

It occurred to me earlier that all of the shopping I would like to do is pretty much shot since tomorrow is a Sunday and apparently everything in Paris does close on Sundays. Just about. So it looks like I'll be doing some sightseeing, which is fine since there are a billion things to see in Paris and I'm positive I won't see all of them.

Like I said before, I'm mostly just ready to go home. I want to speak to people in English and have them understand me etc. But I am in Paris for a whole day so I will try and make the most of it. At first I wanted to get up very early and tour the city at first light, like the Parisian photographer Eugene Atget, a favorite of mine. I can't decide if that's the plan or not yet, it somewhat depends on the time the Metro opens. I think at least I'll be on it as soon as it starts running.

I'll probably get some internet time tomorrow evening, or at the very least at one of the airports during a layover. It's really crazy to think I'll be home soon, and I'm really looking forward to getting my life back in order and sorting through everything I've learned, bought and discovered and integrating it into my life.

Allo, Suisse!

Greetings All,

My only evening in Switzerland is drawing to a close but so much happened today it seems like it will be tough telling it without writing a novella. Following my previous post this afternoon, I descended into the central area of Geneva, which I presume to be the central shopping district.

My first goal was the record store I mentioned, Mental Groove Records, but I'm looking for a number of things. The first thing I noticed is that prices here are ridiculously high. I don't know what the Swiss are thinking. Actually, I think what it is is that U.S. banking policy has been to devalue the U.S. dollar against other currencies, thus making American exports cheaper and imports pricier. The result is that the U.S. economy does well but the forlorn traveller such as myself faces steep exchange rates.

Another disappointing aspect to Geneva in addition to the prices was the sheer number of tourist shops selling Swiss watches, knives and T-shirts etc. I am not exaggerating when I say there are more here per square mile than in Times Square in NYC. In fact it reminds me a bit of that. High prices, lots of tourist-themed shops. Not as many tourists though, thankfully.

Geneva is a strikingly international city. I have seen representatives of every race milling about, and I think that there is no such thing as a Swiss restaurant in Geneva. They're all Italian, French, Chinese, Indian, Thai, American, Mexican etc. And they're all expensive. Anyway, I made my way to the record store, but despite the fact that it was 4:30pm and it opened at 3pm, the owner had stepped out until 5:30. Thus, I had an hour to kill milling about.

I walked all around and went into a number of shops. The only reasonably priced thing I found was in the English section of a bookstore in which I found an English-French dictionary. I did figure out that the value of the dollar against the franc is higher than I thought, such that four dollars U.S. gets you five francs. Still didn't make anything much cheaper though.

Finally I got into the record store and it was suitably cool. Most of it was newer vinyl but they had a nicely stocked section of newish electronic CDs and a really bizarre assortment of used LPs. Mostly old trance and acid techno, which brought me back to 1993 and the days I used to listen to that kind of music exclusively. But nothing worth purchasing there. I did decide to buy two CDs. One was a really bizarre mix of cheeky French music by Mr. Flash that I had heard a cut from on the internet, and the other a really strange collection of 'Afro-disco.' I can't tell if it's all new, all old, or even a lot of old African disco newly remixed. Needless to say, it's both bizarre and awesome. You haven't lived until you've heard African chanting through a vocoder. The store had CD players for you to listen to stuff otherwise I might not have been so adventurous but thank goodness it did.

I took my findings back to the hotel and felt tired. I took a brief nap and considered my options. Earlier I had discovered an interesting-looking Indian/Sri Lankan restaurant that was fairly reasonable, and I had also discovered a Burger King. I also had found the name and address of the club in town that has the kind of music I'm into and I found out two electro artists would be performing or DJing tonight, and one of them, Plastique de Reve, I'd heard before. What to do? Be adventurous or get fast food and spend the night on the internet in the hostel? After all, I am all alone.

Well, I decided to be adventurous. I left the hotel and first walked over to the club, which is named l'Usine / the Zoo. Seemed an easy enough place to find in a safe part of town. Then I went back to the other bank of the Rhone River and found the Sri Lankan restaurant. I saved a menu card so I can actually remember everything I ate, but let me just say it may have been the best meal of the trip. Yes it was Indian, but like no other Indian food I've ever had in my life, and it ended up being about the same price as my lunch. I guess it doesn't seem so expensive if the food is kickass.

I ordered a beef curry in a brown sauce which came with some some kind of wafer, curried lentils and rice on the side. I also ordered some samosas and two different sauces. The samosas were very small but delicious, kind of like Thai Samosas. One dipping sauce was tomato and cinnamon, so it had the odd sensation of tasting like half apple butter-half salsa, but all delicious. The other sauce was sort of like the syrup from sno-cones, only onion-flavored and hotter than anything you've had before in your life. The curried beef was supposed to be spicy but it wasn't really that bad. It was quite tasty and soft enough to cut with the wooden fork and spoon that I was served. Luckily the lentils (which reminded me of Ethiopean lentil dishes) took the edge off the heat, but after I finished the beef I poured the hot sauce on some remaining rice and it was so hot even I couldn't handle it.

I read for a little while and then came back here. The club doesn't open until 11pm so I thought I'd use this time to update the ol' weblog and maybe do a little getting ready to go. I'm going to be safe and leave my wallet at home, taking just a little cash and my driver's license and room key with me. That way, worst case scenario I'll just be out some francs, not any credit cards or bank cards. Well, wish me luck. I'll probably be updating this thing very regularly in the next three days since I don't actually have any English conversations and this is a bit like calling everyone and saying hello.

Geneve for a Day

Bonjour,

It's taking me a lot of effort to get used to saying things in French instead of in Italian. I keep saying grazie instead of merci beaucoup. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it while I'm in Switzerland, the French themselves won't be as nice I have a feeling.

I did intend to write another entry last night but our internet went haywire at the hotel as it so often does despite the exorbitant cost. Honestly though, not so much to say. During early evening I did some last minute shopping. I finally found some shoes I like, after days of searching, and on sale quite low at that. Then I came home and made dinner - a pasta with tomato sauce and spicy pancetta. Unfortunately the tomato sauce I bought at the store was just that - tomatoes and nothing else. So the sauce was pretty bland and I didn't eat much of it.

Last night I hung out with my friends from our program, some for the last time ever, some for the last time until I get back to Morgantown. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to Jessie and Brittany, but oh well. Some of them had projects due today so they were furiously working on drawings. Thank goodness I wasn't in that boat.

This morning I woke up early, and finally scooted myself out of bed sometime well before 7am. 6am? Thereabouts. The train I was hoping to take left at 8:25am so I had to get out of the hotel early. I made pretty good time but for some reason I was thinking I was running behind and even though I'd budgeted half an hour to wait for the taxi, I thought I was going to be half an hour late. Luckily I had just gotten my times mixed up and I found the train with few problems.

The train ride to Geneve rivalled any I have been on thus far. First we rode through the Italian Alps, craggy mountains covered in crumbling stone houses. And I mean literally crumbling. They seem to belong in the rock geography of the region. Before we crossed into Switzerland, just outside of the town of Brig, we had three different police officers, one with a handgun at his side, check passports and so on.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention. In Milan they had a series of about 100 arrests following the London bombing, though they admitted most of them were for other crimes such as drug peddling. Rumor has it that there were people arrested with intent to put a bomb on Milan's public transportation system. When I first heard this I was glad I was going to Switzerland and France. But now I am inclined to think that it was just a rumor, since none of the major news sites have even mentioned it.

Anyway, once through security we passed through Brig, a town on the Swiss border, and the differences were immediately noticeable. The mountains get steadily higher and the buildings began to look less run down and more like, of course, traditional Swiss structures. Interspersed with the chalets was the occasional sleek modernist structure, and as we got closer to Geneve these became more common.

I slept a lot of the way, since I hadn't had much sleep and my compartment was shared with an older, graying Italian couple who I couldn't see bothering with petty thievery. But I woke up close to Lausanne. Lausanne is a largish community across Lake Geneva from Geneve itself. I'm not sure of the differences exactly but it was gorgeous. Terraced gardens swung up the hill, full of green crops. I saw for the first time houses somewhat similar to ours in America, with little yards on little inclines, and I had a deep-seated feeling of homesickness. Luckily for me I'll be home in about three days.

Lake Geneva itself is stunning. There was a hazy mist on the water such that the distant peaks of mountain seemed the same blue as the water, and the fuzzy shorelines all disappeared. The effect was that the lake and the mountains were of the same material, a giant protrusion which went outward and then upward, like the wing of a glider. Small sailboats flitted across the otherwise languid surface.

Here I made a small mistake. The announcer had mentioned two stops in Geneva - Geneve and Geneve-Aeroport. I figured it was best to get off at just Geneva, but when we got to the first of the two, I saw signs saying Geneve-Aeroport. I assumed this was the Aeroport, since the station was smallish, and continued on to what was, in fact, Geneve-Aeroport.

Luckily the airport is only about 10 minutes away. I got some money changed, and then found an American Express stand so I got some travellers' checks cashed as well. Swiss francs are the most beautiful money I have ever seen. I just want to keep them all. Five dollars is roughly equal to 6 francs. I'll have to take some pictures later.

I got a cab into town, and the cabbie was a nice guy who had gone to Cornell in the states bizarrely enough. Apparently Swiss cabs are privately owned and a lot nicer, and more expensive than their American counterparts. He exlained the tram system to me and chit-chatted as he drove me to my hostel. Final bill - 31 francs. Yikes. Expensive mistake.

I checked into the hostel but I can't get into my room until 3pm...which it is by now but I paid for an hour of time here at their internet cafe so I'm going to be in here a bit. I left my bags and found a small place to eat. Now, I don't know anything about Swiss cuisine, but this place was all Italian food excepting some salads, steaks and fish. The prices were very high, so I got a standard cheaper dish, spaghetti arrabiatta. Here in Switzerland they make it as spicy as hot Indian food is, which was nice. The sauce is nothing like Italian sauce, more of a spicy tomato broth than anything else, but the meal was quite good and in all honesty nothing like the pasta I'd had in Italy. I had planned on trying to find something more authentic for dinner, but at those prices I may just get a quick bite here and save up for a good meal in Paris. It was 20 francs (a litte more than $16) for a Coke and pasta, and this was just a little cafe.

So now here I am in the internet cafe. I found a record store I want to go to which Miss Kittin worked at before she became mildly famous. She DJed last night in Bern, Switzerland, and tonight is spinning at a big festival in Amsterdam, where my friend Jessie is going. But I digress. The store seems to be in the main area of town so once I check into the hotel and maybe grab some groceries I'll go in and do some shopping and sightseeing. It's possible I might pick up some flyers or ask at the store and try to find a club to go to tonight, but I'm on my own so I'm not sure about it. If I don't go, you might see me online tonight, since this internet cafe in the hostel is open until nearly 2am. Until then.

Hostels and Classes

Well, today is my last day of class. Ever. Assuming I don't hit any snags applying for graduation, but let's just assume I don't. I just got finished critiquing my magazine spread with my professor Alessandra and Giuseppe from Domus magazine, and his comments were really insightful. I wish I had a Pocket Giuseppe™ to lug around with me and ask "What do you think of this?" and he would respond, in Italian: "You killed the photo here." But yeah, I wish the class were more of this, doing work, getting it analyzed by professionals with amazing credentials, using the analysis to make improvements not only on the design but on the way I approach design. Too bad we only get it at the end.

I've booked myself rooms in two hostels for the next three nights. Tonight I'm sleeping my last night in the Hotel Arcobalena here in Milan. Tomorrow I'll be at the City Hotel Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland, which was very highly recommended on Hostelz.com. Then Saturday and Sunday nights I'll be staying at the Hotel Armstrong in Paris, which got a pretty good rating on Hostels.com. Please note, Hostels.com and Hostelz.com are totally different. Don't ask me why.

I was pretty concerned about going to Paris. Paris is a big tourist-filled city, and therefore a big pickpocket-filled city. And I have a laptop with me, not to mention a crapload of luggage since I was here a month. After talking with my dad about it, I decided to splurge and get private rooms instead of staying in dormitory style housing. In a perfect world, dorm style hostels are so cheap and usually no problem, but having to drag my Powerbook with me to avoid having it stolen from my room is a pretty unexciting prospect. And then worrying that someone might steal my bag complete with Powerbook, etc. I will have my camera and my wallet on me when I'm out and about, but they're a lot easier and cheaper to deal with.

I'm really excited about visiting Geneva and Paris. I feel I have gotten a lot of time here in Italy, but I really haven't seen anything of European culture outside of the Mediterranean. Given, I'm going to miss out on a bunch of places no matter what I do, but I am excited to see how the Swiss and the French live, and to try and dust off my French skills a bit. Goodness knows they could use some help. Geneva is on the French border so hopefully a lot of French is spoken there. Visiting Paris I think becomes mandatory once you've taken a few French classes. My mental itenerary includes the obligatory Tour Eiffel, Centre Pompidou, probably l'Arc de Triomphe and le Jardin de Tuilleries. I'm sure I butchered the spelling of that. Oh well. More tonight...or for you guys this afternoon.

Post Birthday Festivities

Well, yesterday was my birthday, and my friends here in Italy did right by me. People asked me what I'd like to do, so I organized a trip to a Tex-Mex restaurant here and then found a bar for some of us to go to later. We had BJ from Taiwan, Diego from Columbia, Paolo from Michigan, Melissa from California, Brittany from Florida, Nicole from Philly, and Louisa, Farai, Courtney, Sarah, Lindsey F., Lindsey Z., Gina, Ashley and myself from WVU. We had quite a bit of trouble getting everyone together, but we made it to the restaurant and to my surprise easily got two tables big enough for all.

Dinner was delicious. Brittany and I split fajitas, and they're a lot like ours in the U.S. but the salsa is a little different. Now, in Italy, they bring your dishes as they come out of the kitchen, not all at the same time. No one else got fajitas, and we had to wait so long for them that every single person in our groups had finished their food and one table had paid already and most of them were about to leave. Pretty ridiculous. We also had a major mosquito problem since the place was right next to a canal. I'd say all of us got about five bites apiece, even though I, for example, was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans.

My friends all turned a postcard into a birthday card, since Hallmark shops are a little hard to come by here, and to top it off they even paid for my meal. Are my Morgantown friends listening? A bunch of people went home to keep working on their class projects but a group of about half of us went to a bar I'd learned about. Lindsey Zanardelli's mom has been visiting and she met us at the restaurant and walked to the bar with us.

Now, I have known about this bar since before I came. I did some research and it looked like my kind of bar. Of course, I wasn't sure if it would be anyone else's kind of bar so I wasn't planning on going, until I decided well, it's my birthday, they can get one drink even if they don't like it much. But the thing is everyone loved the place beyond any expectations I had, myself included.

Rocket is not far from our hotel and right next to a tram station that goes to our hotel. So points right there. The decor is modern and really cool looking, so much so that my friends, fashion and interior design students, took pictures of every little decor element before even getting their drinks. There's a medium sized bar room and behind the bar the biggest array of liquor I have ever seen. Some steps lead down to a spacious lounge area with nice chairs, a small elevated dancefloor and a big DJ booth.

Mrs. Zanardelli got the first round, and I decided to order something unusual so I got a hot mojito, which was rum, mint leaves (right in the drink!), a lemon and an Earl Grey tea bag and some piping hot water. Maybe not the best choice given the weather but I thought it was damn good. Kind of like drinking some mint gum with a hint of alcohol. One of the bartenders was telling Brittany it was very American of me to get the hot drink on a hot day, but when she pointed out that they still drink capuccino on hot days he didn't have a response. But generally the bartenders - one girl and one boy, were super nice.

We adjourned to the lounge and the DJ was spinning some glammy britpop, so I went up and asked if they could play some T. Rex and they were all too happy to oblige. After a bit they played this crazy cover of "Yellow Submarine" in Italian and some of what I assume is Italian psychedelia and the occasional Beatles tune. Later they played the Killers, the Bravery and Dogs Die in Hot Cars and some dancepunk stuff I didn't know off the top of my head. Actually the DJs were pretty fun, but no one was really dancing so we didn't.

I bought a beer of my own, which everyone chided me for since they didn't want me paying for drinks on my birthday. But it was a hugish pint glass full of some Scottish ale I forget the name of, for 6 euros, which for Milan isn't bad at all. Some of the girls were drinking Budweiser which may have been cheaper. It started getting more crowded with various Italian subtypes - some goths, a guy who looked like a '70s film mogul, etc. We met some Canadians who were there but eventually we decided to head back to the hotel. I should mention that Lindsey's mom didn't let anyone to buy their own drinks until she went home, which was amazingly nice.

Most of us went to my room in the hotel since I don't have a roomate. We called some of our friends as we had agreed to do but they were all sleepy or in bed. We opened some sparkling white wine (they drink it in place of champagne here) and had a few beers and some red wine as well before everyone went home. All in alll, one of the best birthdays I've had since I can remember.

Today we had a teacher named Giuseppe who worked at Domus magazine with a graphic designer who went on to join Pentagram Publishing, which is the most well-respected design firms in the world, hands down. Domus is a very established, very old architecture etc. magazine in English and Italian. We got some interesting insight into the world of magazines, and we were all supposed to get our works critiqued, but it's quarter til five and they're still on the first guy's project, and they've been there since 4pm, so it doesn't look like I'll be getting any feedback. Oh well. I'm going to figure out the hostel situation for Switzerland. Ciao.

Everyday Italia

Today I did a little bit of shopping. Milan has a two-week sale at the end of Summer and we are here during the middle of it. Problem is I didn't care to fight the crowds at the beginning of it so a lot of stores are picked over. A lot of places have 30-70% off, which is pretty impressive. I guess this is the time when they try and clear their merchandise out before the new Fall line in September.

I checked out Diesel's 'flagship' store here, which is apparently smaller than the one in Florence. Diesel is actually an Italian company, I discovered, although they have some offices in the U.S. A lot of stuff was gone but I did find a cool denim sportcoat. I went over to H&M which, even though they have some in America, are nowhere near me, and this one had a huge sale going on. A lot of stuff in my size was gone but I still managed to get a couple of great button down shirts that fit perfectly.

Then I went into a store that was the Italian equivalent of Sam Goody. I've been trying to track down some Italian music while I'm here, but I have yet to find any places that deal in old vinyl, but I still managed to find an album by a group I like. I have some time tomorrow so I plan on hitting one more independent looking record store I saw on the tram as well as the other Diesel store, which will hopefully be better stocked. But by then all the shops were closing so I hurried home.

I'm trying to decide now what to do about my final itinerary for this weekend. My basic plan is to take a train to Geneva and on Saturday take a train to Paris and spend time there until my flight leaves Monday afternoon. I need to figure out the transit times to get a good idea, and figure out what hostels I can stay at. The big issue is whether to leave Milan Thursday after class or Friday morning. Friday morning will cut into my Switzerland time, but it seems like there are lots of loose ends to tie up here. I'll know tonight.

Since this is sort of the calm before the storm, I thought I'd try and take a little time describing the differences I've observed between Italy and the U.S. in the last few weeks. It seems easier to do that within the context of my average day, of which today was certainly one. My morning routine is pretty ordinary. My class is at 10am so usually if I leave our hotel by 9:30 I'm fine getting there on time. When I have gotten breakfast out, it's usually a brioche. Brioches are a lot like a croissant, only more sugary, and often with fillings. Marmalade and cream are two standard ones, of which I like marmalade.

I walk over to the newsstand across the train tracks and buy a train ticket. The subway here doesn't go to a lot of locations so the train fills in most of these gaps, with a few odd buses here and there. I guess it's inaccurate to call it a train. Let's call it a tram. It's a lot like the trolleys we used to have in American cities, and still do in cities like Toronto and I imagine all over Europe as well. There are tracks embedded in the streets for the tram, and it just goes along with traffic like a bus. I guess the advantage over buses is it runs on electricity and doesn't produce smog. Some of the trams, the older ones, are a lot like buses, but a few nicer ones are like a nicer, cleaner subway.

There is a tram, the 3, which goes all the way to my school. There's a nice automated screen that tells you how many minutes away the next tram is, which is awesome, although some of the stops don't work. Some people take the 15 to the subway, but I've tried that and it's more of a hassle and not any faster. The 3 goes all the way to the Duomo in the center of the city if I want, but I get off after about 10 minutes or so and walk a few blocks to school. One other uniquely Italian aspect to these trams - the tickets. You buy a ticket which can be used at any time. There are several entrances and by each, in the bus, is a place to stamp the time on the tickets. You're supposed to do this, and if you don't you can get a 25-50 Euro fine. But...no one really does. Except some old ladies. When in Rome, do as the Romans. Sometimes I stamp and sometimes I don't and basically ride for free. These are some of the inefficiencies of Italy, and there are many.

Once at school we're in class from 10am until 1pm, and then have an hour off for lunch. At that time almost always my friends Lindsey Z. and Jessie and I will go to lunch, sometimes with other international students from our class, usually Carlos, from Columbia, and B.J. from Taiwan. We like this one Chinese restaurant, but today we tried a new place our friends and Jason Hooper recommended, Da Willy Pizza. It was actually quite a hit, so we'll probably go back. I usually get a pasta dish and sometimes fries. Pasta toppings include pesto, and various combinations of sauces including tomatoes, mushrooms, cream, prosciutto, pancetta, salsicia, seafood, but never ground beef like our meat sauces in the U.S. There's no lasagna and usually not any stuffed pasta, but the noodles can take just about any form.

There's also pizzas and calzones. Lindsey and Jessie get one or the other sometimes. You've got your standard margherita - pomodoro sauce and mozzarella. Pomodoro is a thinner, oilier sauce than marinara, but usually tastier and it always sticks to the pasta perfectly. There's also usually risotto, or rice dishes, as well as bruschetta and some appetizers and some seafood and usually one beefsteak. I'm sure the dishes in the South can be very different but Tuscan food was very similar to this. Cinqueterran food was more heavy on the seafood, but also it was pretty touristy so I imagine they ate a lot of other things too. My usual lunch there was something I don't know the name of that was basically a big square ciabatta bread with tomatoes and sometimes other things baked in and then served cold. Decent, filling and cheap. I have a feeling a lot of our Italian food in the U.S. is entirely indigenous to the U.S., and the rest of it only found in the South of Italy.

We go back to school by 2pm and have three more hours of class. At 5pm we can do whatever. I used to use the free internet at school for most of it but the shops all close between 7pm and 8pm so I eventually broke down and started buying the internet at the hotel, expensive though it may be. There's a lot of traffic between 5 and 7pm, but not as bad as rush hour since some people go home and some shop, and those working in the shops don't get out until 7pm. Grocery stores and tabacchi stay open until 9pm. Tabacchi are a lot like the bodegas in New York, except a lot of them serve gelato (ice cream), beer and soft drinks and maybe a little food as well. You can buy some convenience items (the name comes from tobacco) and be on your way. They occupy the same spot in Italian culture as convenience stores, but they're nothing like Sheetz or 7-11.

A lot of restaurants serve lunch as their main meal, since for most Italians I am told lunch is the biggest meal. They close between 7 and 9 like other stores. I think all bars serve food. They usually open around 6pm and serve an aperitivo, basically a buffet of cold finger foods that is free if you buy a drink. I'm not so big on the aperitivos but maybe I've just been going to the wrong bars. Some bars, like the Tex-Mex place we're going tomorrow, open their grill for dinner at 8pm, and I think all restaurants pause from about 3pm to 6pm or later. Most Italians take their meals later than we do, usually in the 8pm to 10pm range. Most restaurants close precisely at 10pm, or at least their grill does and they continue to serve drinks.

Another interesting distinction is the cars here. As I've mentioned, the public transportation is quite good here. Still, there are lots of cars. Now, the cars here are quite different from the ones we have. Let's start at the lowest level. First, you will see the occasional bicyclist out on the streets. Nothing unusual here. Then we have scooters, or what I call mopeds. Vespa is the best known of these brands, but there's also Piaggio and a host of other kinds including some foreign makes. Scooters differ from motorcycles in that you sit down like in a car, not like on a motorycle, which is comparatively like riding a horse. They don't go that fast, but I'm sure for here it's enough. Occasionally you'll see one with a cockpit, which is just weird.

Next step up we have your motorcycles. You've all seen these, although Italians never use Harleys or the really big highway bikes we have. Just the small, sleek ones. They outfit a lot of scooters and motorcycles with luggage compartments and windshields. You'll see women as well as men riding scooters, and people in business attire, but motorcycles are usually men and usually not as well dressed. One step above this is the Smartcars. I adore Smartcars. They're made by Smart, which is jointly owned by Mercedes (now DaimlerChrysler I've read) and Swatch, the Swiss watch company. There are tons of them here (none in Croatia though), in every color. All the ones I've seen are the same model, the 4x2. It has two seats and a little back area for storage and no front end. Basically as if someone lopped off the engine, rear seats and trunk off an American car. Smart makes bigger cars, but I have yet to see one. Supposedly they are meticulously engineered and more reliable in a wreck than a Jeep or SUV.

Next up we have compact cars, which make up I'd say 60-70% of the cars. They are all hatchbacks and almost always two-door, four seat. They actually don't look too cramped, although I've ridden in Eir-Anne's Geo Metro, and most of them are about that size, and it's not that comfy. You'll find a lot of different styles and makes. Fiat, the biggest Italian car manufacturer, is a common sight. As are French cars like Renault and Citroen. Some are really nice like the Mercedes and Alfa Romeos, but there are less of those. Fairly often I see a Ford version of this, which I've never seen in the states, and occasionally a Toyota, Kia or some Asian company, though not that often.

Next we have four-door cars. You see these routinely, although they're no more than 1 in 5 of every car. The makes are similar to the above and you've seen plenty of cars like this. Nothing on the scale of a big Cadillac or Oldsmobile. Once in a blue moon you will see a minivan or SUV, but this is very seldom. Maybe once every three days. These are likely to be American, although I have seen a Volkswagen Toureg before. And trucks. There are trucks but they are all as little as the cars. It blows my mind but I have never once seen an 18-wheeler and nothing bigger than a big Ryder truck. I wonder how they do it.

Part of the reason cars here are so small is of course gas prices. It's impossible to compare costs since they use kiloliters and kilometers instead of gallons and miles, but I'm told it's much higher, especially with taxes accounted. But the reason for all the smaller cars is also one of parking. Parking garages are very rare and street parking is at a premium. You will almost always see cars pulled up in a row entirely on the sidewalk all down one side of a street. There's almost always some car or another that is completely blocked in. How do they get out! How do they get in! It's completely a mystery. The people with Smartcars seem to be the best off.

I've included some pictures of these cars although I wanted to take more, and I might tomorrow, since this afternoon my camera batteries died and I had accidentally left my spares at home. I also took a few pictures of some ordinary Italian stuff that might be interesting, Idunno. I'm not positive I'll do much updating tomorrow since it's my birthday, but I'll at least try to write something in class since we're in the computer lab. We're working on editorial design with Alessandra, which is a lot more fun and useful, and I feel like I'm learning something. More on that later. Tomorrow all my friends and I are going to a Tex-Mex place to celebrate and then to a bar I've picked out called the Rocket. I hope they like it, but its drinks are sure to be cheaper than Old Fashion was the other night.

Cinqueterre

Hey Everybody,

Well, I'm back from Cinqueterre, Italy. Man, we had another great trip. Cinqueterre is a series of five cities along the coast of Italy, close to Genoa on the West Coast. It's very well known as a beautiful location to visit here, there are tons of students staying at hostels there. I had been thinking about going to Switzerland but pretty much all of my friends were going to Cinqueterre so I said what the hey.

We got up early Friday morning and took the train to Riomaggiore, where some of my friends had made reservations at a hostel. I hadn't found a room successfully so I was pretty worried about finding a place to stay. The views on the trainride got great as we got closer to our destination. After some confusion, we arrived in Riomaggiore, the last or first town depending on what order you go in.

Riomaggiore, like most of the towns in Cinqueterre, is a bunch of tall buildings creeping up the hillside with a rocky natural harbor and high bluffs with spectacular views. We proceeded to the office of the hostel my friends were staying at, which was called Mar-Mar. I asked about vacancies and I had no problem getting a bed in a dormitory style hostel. My friends, Luisa, Lindsey F., Melissa, Nicole, Brittany, and Lindsey Z., got two private rooms for themselves, but once I met my roomates I was actually pretty glad to have them.

There was a Korean girl who checked in when I did and she seemed very nice but we couldn't carry out much conversation. Later I met Brad, an Australian from Brisbane, Pilot, a woman from Loch Ness in Scotland, and two Canadian girls, one who was named Anna and one whose name I forgot. All were very nice and kept giving me wine and offering me food. They made meals at home and I was always invited even though I always ate out with my friends. Later I found out Anna was born in Croatia so we had plenty to talk about when we realized that. The hostel was nice although four stories up some steps, but it did have a balcony with breathtaking views of the city.

By this point in time it was afternoon, and we wanted to go to the beach. Five of us took a train to Monterosso, the last town, and walked to a beach. The beaches here were nicer than the one I'd been to in Croatia, but all in all not so impressive. The surf was pretty rough and we had some fun playing in it, then looked around a few shops. We took the train back to our town and soon reconvened for dinner, which we had with an American girl from Ohio named Sarah that we had met earlier. At dinner Luisa and I split a nice bottle of wine and when we finished eating we set out for the main bar in town, Bar Centrale.

I had bought some wine at a grocery store for 2 and 3 Euros apiece, so we went back to Nicole's room and drank some of our wine. It's amazing but wine that cheap here is quite decent. Afterwards we headed down to the bar again to check on our other friends and they shooed us off since we had our own wine with us, so we went over to the harbor and drank listening to the waves. After a while the bar closed and a bunch of people came by, so we met a number of Americans who had been living there for a while and some Italians. Eventually we went home a few at a time.

Now, there's a funny story here. I mentioned all the steps up to my hostel, and I knew there was a light on the steps but it was right next to the doorbells for all the other apartments, and it was 3am. I decided to try and just leave the light off, but after the first floor it was nearly pitch black on those steps. I felt my way up to what I think was my door, and tried to get the key into the lock. I couldn't get it to work, and after a while I discovered I'd bent the key. I think it's because European locks are upside down from American locks and I'd forgotten this, and also I couldn't see a thing. Well, I tried to bend the key back but it broke. Damn. I didn't know what to do, but after I walked around and tried to see if any of my friends were still awake, I went back up the steps. I couldn't tell for sure which apartment was ours in the dark, and I was a little drunk. I decided just to sleep for a while on the steps. Later, a really bad thunderstorm woke me up around 5am I think, and there was enough light for me to see a bit. I banged on the door a little bit, before realizing this was not my door. I walked up to my door and banged long enough that Pilot came to it to see what it was. I explained the key and sleeping in the stairwell and she was super nice. I collapsed in my bed and Brad said I was out and snoring as soon as I laid down.

The next day I had a little hangover but I got up in time to be down in the main street where I was supposed to meet some of my friends. No one else showed up so I went up to one of their rooms and only Luisa was up, so we got some breakfast and gave everyone else some sleep time. Eventually we rounded up some people and set out on a hike we had planned last night, since Cinqueterre is known for its hiking.

The hike was probably the best part of the trip. We started out in our town, Riomaggiore. In the beginning it's known as Via dell'Amore, or Lovers' Lane. The first part is easy and flat and there are so many spectacular views it's hard to describe, but I did take a ton of pictures. We passed through Manarola, the second town down the line, pretty easily, but before we could get to Corniglia, the third one, we had a huge hill to ascend. There was a set of steps to go up and man was it rough. But we made it up and then there was Corniglia, up on a giant hill. It was nice and we decided to stop at a gelateria some Americans we'd ran into had recommended. I had a Nocciola milkshake. Nocciola is hazelnut. Man was it good. I'll take our shakes over theirs but the hazelnut icecream was awesome.

Following that we headed to the fourth town, Vernazza. This part of the hike was the toughest, and I thought our one friend Lindsey would need to be carried at one point. We almost took a long steep path down to a nude beach, but we decided to continue on to Vernazza. I think the worst part was going downhill, because you don't use those muscles in your legs as much and my ankles were killing me.

But we made it to Vernazza fine and stopped for a late lunch (I had Trofie Pesto, or homemade pasta and a pesto sauce). We went to the beach at Vernazza, which was smaller but less rocky than Monterosso's beach. We got some good swimming time in and then we took the train back since we were all too tired to hike to the last town. I hear the last part was the hardest. We met up with four more of our friends who had come earlier Saturday and a couple of Americans they'd met and had dinner up the hill. The place was really nice looking and I got the same dish I'd had in Split, Croatia, but ultimately it didn't stack up to my Croatian meal. They give you everything in seafood here - heads, legs, eyes, tails, you name it. In Croatia they do this too, I just liked the food better there.

Afterwards we reconvened at Bar Centrale, and I hung out for a while with my roomates and their two friends Alex, an American from California, and Martin, a hilarious guy from Brussels, Belgium. We had a great time, and I bought Pilot and Brad a big beer to apologize for waking them up. Last call was around 2am, and everyone (about 20-30 people) walked down to the harbor and took a path down to a little alcove. It was completely dark and the ocean was loud. You could tell where people were by their talking and their cigarettes, and we stumbled out to a little rock beach somewhat illuminated by moonlight. It was just amazing, I wish I could hang out in those sorts of surroundings all the time.

Today we went back to Monterosso and Brittany and Lindsey layed out while Luisa and I did some shopping. I managed to find most of the gifts I needed to find and a nice bottle of Cinqueterran white wine for myself. Then we took the train back and got home around 8pm. I've decided to buy some internet time tonight to get all this uploaded and updated. This is my last week of school and I'm a bit nervous about fitting everything in, but I'm also really excited. What I'm planning on doing is Thursday night or Friday morning taking a train to Geneva, staying there until Saturday morning, then taking a train to Paris and spending a day and a half there until my flight leaves on Monday. Our classes are wrapping up and my birthday is on Wednesday, but I'll try to keep updating everything while I still have plenty of internet access.

Weekend Approacheth

Hello,

Well, here in Italy today is the start of our weekend in approximately an hour and a half. Yesterday I went shopping by the Duomo, but didn't find so much, and then we started the weekend early by going out. We went to a nightclub that had been recommended to us called Old Fashion.

I wasn't particularly thrilled, Wednesdays they let students, or at least American students in for free, but drinks (Heineken or mixed drinks and I assume shots) are 10 Euros, or about $12. Ridiculous. We had some wine before we left but it took so long to get there my buzz was long gone, so the prospect of trying to get drunk on $12 beers did not entice me. They mostly played American music, and there were lots of Americans there as well as the Italians. The club itself was nicely laid out. Most of it was outdoors save some lounge areas, and there was a big pagoda in the middle where people were dancing, and everyone else socialized in the ring around the pagoda. I did dance a little towards the end and it was starting to get fun but then we had to go in time to catch the subways before they stop. Of course, then we found out they actually stop at 1am when we had thought it was 1:30am. We tried to find a tram home but none of the ones we needed to take were nearby, so eventually we hailed a cab which wasn't too expensive.

I finally got my photos of our packaging products onto my computer. Our packaging assignment was to create a package for an old kind of Italian coffee pot called a Caffetiera. For my design I made a hexagon shape with windows cut for the spout and handles. My friend Jessie came up with the idea of splattering coffee all over the package to decorate it with, which also gave it a nice smell reimiscent of coffee.

Today we worked on more web design. I learned a few tricks here and there but I knew most of what we learned already. For part of the class I actually led the discussion since Alessandro, our teacher, knew that I knew a lot about CSS and my English is better than his obviously. It was a little more interesting than the last class but I don't think many people got the gyst of it, it's a pretty tough subject.

I think we're going to Cinquaterra this weekend, if all the planning goes well. Cinquaterra is an area of five beachs on the coast of Italy, so it should be pretty fun if all goes well. Wish me luck.

(Brian.)

Yet more photographs

Hey all,

Not much of note today. We finished our packaging class and I have pictures of my final package which was really fun, but I need the cord to attach them so I'll wait until tomorrow to talk about it etc. The one big thing is that I just realized today that I had forgotten to upload photos from my trip to Firenze/Florence, so I am in the process of doing that now. You can go to my Flickr.com page and see them. There are 17 new ones, some of the best ones I've taken. I also organized my Flickr page into different albums, so that you can access everything easier. More tomorrow!

Another Day Packaging

Hey all,

Well, we spent another day working on packaging. Nothing that'll excite you guys to hear about. Last night we celebrated July 4th properly - with some old-fashioned American boozing. Actually some of my friends made a bunch of food but I didn't make it up to their room in time for the food, which was of course American fare. I did eat a hot dog for the occasion (I found some much better ones on my recent trip to the grocery store).

I did make it up in time to drink some wine and this kind of Lithuanian honey liquor which is amazing. I don't normally like liquor much, but it tastes delicious and when it burns it is more warm than painful, as long as you sip it slow. Our friend Gabriel, who is Columbian but whose mother is from Lithuania, brought like 3 bottles, so I'm sure I'll have some more and report the name to those who want to know.

Anyway, not much excitingness going on right now. The weekdays are kind of slow here since we stay in more in Milan - it's a lot more expensive to eat and drink outside of the hotel. I'm sure since everyone was up late last night we'll be staying in tonight. But who knows. Anyway, I'd better wrap this up and go make some dinner.

Fourth of July in Italy

Eh, it's just like any day here. Jessie, Lindsey and I went to McDonald's for lunch to celebrate, that's about it. Today we went to see a packaging studio and learned about packaging, which is pretty cool, because I never learned about it while getting my degree at all. But nothing exciting for you folks at home. I've got an extra postcard or two, so send me your address if you want one. It's crazy that Bush was in Morgantown today, I almost can't believe it, but there's a story on CNN.com about it. Wonder if it'll be on CNN World when I get back. Nothing exciting to report here, except I just discovered that Alexander Robotnick's last concert was in Zagreb 2 weeks ago. Damn you Robotnick! That would have been amazing to see but oh well. I missed the opportunity to see Kings of Convenience here last week and Kraftwerk are playing tomorrow night, but I probably won't go. The idea of going alone isn't particularly exciting, so oh well.

Here's a quick list of what I miss about America...

Peanut butter, Mexican food (Jeff, they actually spell it Messico here. Messican!), our ketchup, free drink refills, my cats, my friends' cats, my friends, my family, driving my car, having internet at home, having a working cellphone, receiving calls from people, American TV (sad but true), Morgantown beer prices, bluehole, Sheetz...ok that should cover it for now. I'm sure I'll have a big list of what I miss from here when I get home.

The other big decision coming up is where to go this weekend. There has been talk of Venice and Switzerland. I'd rather see Switzerland but Venice is nice, and I don't want to go anywhere on my lonesome. Some of my friends might go to Amsterdam after class is out, so I might see about cancelling my flight from Paris to Amsterdam, or I mght go to Paris. Idunno. Ok, time to leave the lab.

Holiday in Croatia

Well, I am back from what I expect will be one of if not the highlight of my trip to Europe. I was interested in visiting Croatia some time back because my grandmother's parents immigrated to the U.S. from Croatia, but as the date approached I became aware that Croatia's tourism industry is just now beginning to flex its muscles after a few years of rebuilding after the wars in the Balkans.

Croatia is in my opinion quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever seen. There are beaches and islands, most of which I did not get to experience sadly. There are rocky peaks. There are lush rolling hills and populated valleys. There are Roman ruins and there is architecture from every period since then. Everything is unimaginably cheap and everyone speaks English and goes out of their way to be nice.

Thursday I left class at lunchtime and had a quick bite to eat with two of my classmates (Penne Arrabiata, my favorite pasta dish here) and then took the subway to Centrale Stazione, where I caught a train to Ancona. I had to get a first class ticket since they were sold out of second class, but it wasn't too much more and the extra space and air conditioning was really nice. After about a four hour ride to Ancona, I found Claire under the departure times as we'd agreed, which was the main thing I was worried about since I never did get a working cellphone.

We didn't know where the ferries left so we caught a cab, which wasn't too bad, and purchased a ticket to Split, as we had planned to make it our first stop. We didn't have much time, so we went through customs and then asked a dock worker where the boat was. They had told us a number but none of the ferry berths were numbered so it wasn't much help. I had to show him the name of our ferry company on the tickets (Jadrolinja) and he pointed us to a ferry. We waited a bit, boarded and quickly found a couple couches that we could sleep on. A girl on the couches next to us struck up conversation. Her name was Claudia, she was from Ancona, and she went to Croatia every year for holiday. We were talking with her about Split when we realized something.

We had gotten on the wrong ferry. I guess there were two Jadrolinja ferries that left that night, and the dock worker just told us one of them. This one was going to Zadar, a smaller town on the coast a bit further North from Split. In the end this was a bit of a blessing in disguise. We had talked of going to Zagreb, Croatia's capital, largest city, and the city which my grandparents had lived in when they moved to America. We quickly adjusted our plan. We would leave Zadar as soon as possible, and take a four hour bus ride to Zagreb. We would spend the rest of the day and evening there, staying in a hostel, and the next morning we would take a 6 hour bus ride to Split, and have some time that afternoon before the ferry left split at 9pm. If we had gone into Split, I don't think we could have seen Zagreb at all.

Zadar is absolutely gorgeous. The main part of the town is on a peninsula and has some ancient walls separating it from the newer part of the city. It's immaculately clean with tiny little walkable streets and lots of little shops. Unfortunately none of the shops were open, but we did breakfast at a nice little cafe before we exited the old city in search of the bus terminal.

We had consulted the maps posted in several places around the city to find the bus terminal, and we headed into normal, residential Zadar, which is mostly run down apartment buildings and houses, with the occasional business. We were afraid we were lost, but as it turned out we just got a tiny bit off track and easily found the bus terminal. We had time to get our tickets and buy some snacks, which are pretty similar to American salty snack food, except the peanut flavored Cheetos Claire got later.

I think the bus ride to Zagreb may have been my favorite part of the entire trip. Croatia has a number of different terrains inland. There are high, craggy mountains and big stretches of flat land in between, and there are rolling hills and valleys, a lot like we have in West Virginia only with slightly taller hills. Vegetation is usually not very tall, I think because the Venetians cut down almost all the trees in Croatia back in the 19th century and the trees haven't had time to grow back to their height. But everywhere is covered with leafy green foliage, interspersed with crumbling old houses and some new houses. Most are built of the Croatian equivalent of cinderblock in brick red and gray, although some are of an older, more solid make with red tile roofs like the houses in the cities all throughout the Mediterranean.

I felt a strange connection to the land, it's difficult to describe. It was an almost spiritual sensation of feeling like I had been there, and the reason that West Virginia has always seemed like home to me is because my ancestors had been born in these rolling hills halfway across the world. It was especially strong when we passed a town with a name very similar to my grandmother's, which is Rekyovich. I think the town was called Raykograd or something like that. I don't know for sure or not if any of my family was ever from that part of Croatia, since her parents lived in Zagreb when they left, but I just got this feeling like I had been in this beautiful place before.

Zagreb is as beautiful as the land around it. The oldest part of town, Kaptol, rises steeply above the city, and a river separates new and old Zagreb. The buildings are this strange collision of medieval Austro-German, Eastern Bloc and Mediterranean. You will see one house of each style all in a row, and then occasional modern glass and concrete structures. More of those in the new part of town, which we only briefly drove through. We arrived safely in the very modern looking bus terminal, which is fairly new I think. Claire had called and arranged rooms at a hostel recommended by her Lonely Planet book when we were in Zadar, and the directions they gave us worked like a charm. We asked some locals for help figuring out which way to go, but it was easy once they told us. Zagreb's main public transportation is a series of trams similar to the ones we have in Milan. We took one out to a big chocolate factory in the neighborhood of Radkovice, which is where we found our hostel.

The hostel was homey and lovely. The people who worked there were amazingly nice, and all the other people staying there were really nice. We talked for a long time to a Canadian couple who had been living in London and we visiting too. We got our beds, two bunks in a room with two other backpackers we never talked to or saw awake, and used their super cheap internet for a bit before we went into town. Another quick tram ride and we were in the main square, Trg Bana Jelacica, or Governor Jelacica Plaza, roughly translated. Ban Jelacica was a leader during the period of time Croatia was part of the Austrian empire.

We had found some free maps at the hostel with walking tours, so we embarked upon one while we looked for a place to get a bite of food. We walked up a huge hill with a train like the incline in Pittsburgh, only smaller and with lots of buildings all around it. We passed a tower built in 12- or 1300 and saw a beautiful square and walked a bit. My pictures will have to speak for themselves. Just before we got to Zagreb's big gothic cathedral, we found a place to get some food. Claire had some amazingly tasty calamari (I tried one, delicious) and I just had some salad with pancetta (bacon) and some french fries.

When we finished, they were having mass in the cathedral, so we did a little looking around for touristy shirts. I found one incredibly goofy one with a heart in place of the B in Zagreb. It was raining and we had both forgotten our umbrellas, so we found a Croatian department store and bought umbrellas before going back to the cathedral. Of course by then it had stopped raining, but anyway we went into the cathedral, which was very tall and beautiful, although I have seen a lot of cathedrals lately so I am inclined to be a bit picky. I will say its sheer size was impressive. Like the Duomo, they were doing work on the outside of it, so I mostly only took pictures inside.

Following that it was getting close to 8pm, the time when all the shops close. We walked into the lower part of the old town, and found an old record shop, where a nice Croatian guy excitedly played us records. I ended up buying two, one a compilation of Italian 80's disco and the other a Croatian synthpop record that actually sounded quite good. We stopped in a few more shops and walked around a bit longer, viewing some beautiful Baroque theaters and then decided to head back to the room to drop off our purchases before dinner ended at 10pm.

At the hostel we discovered that Croatian restaurants close EXACTLY at 10pm, and we couldn't get back downtown in time to eat. We dejectedly went downtown and ended up just going to a McDonald's. I know that sounds ridiculous! But honestly there weren't any other choices. Besides, hungry as we were I think it was the best McDonald's ever. The service was certainly the best I've had in any McDonald's, even if my vanilla shake wasn't quite as good as in American McDonald's. One thing they've got also is that McDonald's ketchup, which I normally don't like so much, is heads above the typical horribly sugary tart European ketchup. Anyway, we enjoyed our little meal, pitiful though it was.

In the hostel I had looked up a dance club for us to go to that seemed relatively similar to our tastes, or at least as close as we could manage. It ended up being pretty out of the way, and although there were a bunch of teenage looking Croatians outside, we were a bit nervous and walked by a few times before we decided to go in.

I have to say, I am really impressed at the accomplishment of our going to this dance club, called (laughably) the Boogaloo Club. It was the most authentic thing I've done yet, and I'd put money down to bet we were the only Americans, probably the only foreigners there. We didn't really talk to anyone besides the bartender, but we had some incredibly cheap drinks (30 kuna for two shots of Jagermeister, which is $5 total, 20 kuna for two Heinekens, which is $4 total, at a club) and got on the dancefloor.

Now I do have to say, the DJ was good, but Croatian kids just can't dance. Half of them do the I'm-not-sure-if-I-want-to-dance shuffle, and the of the ones who do dance, they mostly don't move their hips or feet as much as possible. Still, a few knew what was up. Claire was a little nervous so she danced pretty nondescriptly, but I must have gotten a little attention from the way I danced, as a couple Croatian dudes came over and tried to dance like I did. They were joking around but I'm pretty sure it was good-natured, since one of them smiled and said something in Croatian and I shook his hand and it wasn't a big deal. Later on a couple Croatian girls passed in front of me and said "Keep it up" playfully in English. But that was about all the interaction we had. I'll also take the opportunity here to note that Croatian women are the most beautiful I've seen. Not only are they all perfectly proportioned, but their features are so exotic and eastern looking. Maybe it's just a preference of mine, who knows.

We left around 3am and found a taxi and took it home for about two hours worth of sleep. Then we had to get to the terminal in time to catch a 7am bus to Split, which we made with no problems whatsoever, having bought our tickets the day before. The ride to split was even more beautiful, since it was the same ride plus two extra hours. I slept a lot more on the way back, but I caught a lot of the same things, like this weird Croatian equivalent of truckstop we went to both times with a bunch of stuffed hares and foxes smoking pipes. I made sure to take a picture. Once past Zadar we stopped in this beautiful little town called Knin. I couldn't get a picture of the approach, but we came down the mountain and saw it in all its red-roofed glory.

The coast near Zadar and Split has less influence of Austria and more of Italy. Split itself could be an Italian town if you added some more graffiti. It's fairly tourist-driven and we got there on Saturday, market day, so there were lots of stalls selling towels and t-shirts and the like. We didn't really have time to check them out. We went straight to the beach, since this would be our only time to do so. We got some delicious gelatos to keep from getting too hungry, and set about doing the beach thing.

The beach we went to (its name escapes me) is the one all the locals go to. It's really close - only five minutes walk from the ferries, and probably isn't the best beach nearby. The best ones usually require a ferry ride to a nearby island. This one had concrete walls like a pool for the most part, with a small patch of beach, and then a long row of bars and gelaterias. The water was really cold and very shallow. You couldn't get in much past your waist unless you went out pretty far, and there was almost no surf. It looked pretty fun to play handball in, as lots of local kids did, but since one of us had to always watch the bags we didn't get to do much swimming. But the weather was nice and we got some sun and relaxed for a bit.

After we had finished there we went back uptown to look for somewhere to eat. We looked around Diocletian's palace, which is an amazingly well preserved palace built in 306 by one of the last emperors of a united Rome, Diocletian, who was born in Dalmatia, the part of Croatia we were in. After we took some pictures we continued looking for restaurants without much luck. Finally we found a nice-looking place. Seafood in Split is way overpriced, but I managed to get some delicious seafood spaghetti for around $9, along with a $2 salad. Claire got a similarly set up risotto. Mine had this slightly creamy subtle tomato sauce, tiny shrimp, mussels and clams. Claire had some shrimp and one giant whole crayfish which she was too squeamish to break up. I don't normally even like shrimp much, and these I had to cut the legs and heads off, but they were really tasty, especially the clams, which were mostly about the size of a quarter.

We hurried back to catch our ferry, and this one had few couches to sleep on, so we had to settle for some airplane style chairs in the midst of what must have been a high school trip of Croatians watching some reunion concert very loudly on TV. We did catch a few winks, and then we were in Ancona, and a few hours' worth of sitting I was safely back in Milan. I mistakenly left my copy of Heart of Darkness somewhere, that I had been reading, but I had gotten bored with it anyway. I thought for a little while that I had left a bunch of American cash and traveller's checks at the hostel, but later I figured out I had just put them someplace else and forgotten.

All in all it was an amazing trip. I got back here before 3pm, and have plenty of time to do laundry and work out and maybe take a quick trip to the grocery store before the night is up. I talked to my classmate Nicole who said most of my friends ended up going to Switzerland instead of Rome because you couldn't get tickets due to the Live Aid concert there, and they had a lot of trouble in Switzerland and spent a ton of money. Looks like I made the right choice. I'll try to put up some photos tonight, maybe even work them into the text. We'll see...