He Does Exist.

Well this is slightly overdue (OK, maybe a little bit more than slightly), but here's the post for my trip through Italia. Probably missing a few details, so maybe I'll go back over it later on and add in some other details, but for now, enjoy:

TUESDAY

                My flight and ride to Bologna’s main station are all kind of a blur, seeing how I got roughly 3 hours of on and off sleep on the lovely hard ground of Madrid’s airport. I pretty much passed out on almost the entire plane ride. When I got into Bologna, I had some time to kill so I walked around for about an hour, hour and a half, and then went back to the station, and pretty much passed out again on my ride to Florence.

                When I got into Florence, I really didn’t have much of a clue where I was going to be meeting Aly. I had a small map of the surrounding area of where our hotel was and then two words written next to it, BUS 20. So, I found bus 20, right by the station, kind of hoped it was going in the right direction, and wound up at the plaza right down the street from our hotel ten minutes later. Met up with Aly shortly after, we checked into the hotel (which was pretty nice for the price we paid), and then we went off through the city, checking out a few museums and such. Unfortunately, none of them really allowed pictures to be taken, and so I really don’t have many pictures of the place.

WEDNESDAY

I’ve been to several cities across Europe – through buses, planes, trains – and I’ve had a ticket every time I’ve been on whatever mode of transportation. I always found it odd that people don’t actually check tickets half the time, especially as every time I’ve been on the bus there’s never really been some way of showing that I’ve paid. Of course, there’s always been that mysterious legend of some form of transportation authority that comes around to check tickets, but I’ve yet to see him.

Until today.

He DOES exist.

And as luck would have it, I didn’t have a ticket on me, and neither did Aly. What happened was, we got pushed into the center of the bus, and while waiting for the chance to make it to the front of the bus again to buy a ticket, the “ticket inspector” started making his way up from the front of the bus, with his partner making the way up from the back. I realized what he was doing about 2 seconds before he got to us and when he asked for our tickets I was trying to say that we still hadn’t had the chance to buy them, however he kindly replied that we can’t buy them now, it’s too late, and he has to fine them. Before I could spit out even two words, he told us that “this was his job,” and then kept talking or cutting me off so I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. My thoughts then ranged from, “well he can’t make me pay this ticket” to “I wonder if at the next stop I can drop him to the floor and me and Aly can just run for it,” and a few things in between.  In the end, we had the choice, 50 euro at the spot, 55 euro in 5 days, or 95 euro after two months. We didn’t have enough cash on us at the moment so we had to wait, and well again I couldn’t even try to tell the guy that we weren’t going to be here because he wouldn’t shut the hell up. But, luckily our train the next day to Venice is stopping in Florence, and we’ll have some time to find the place and argue about it, because I am not paying a 50-55 euro fine for this load of bull.

                The first hotel dude was a douche. Apparently I’m trying to sneak an extra person into my room at 2 in the afternoon and then never leave. This would maybe make more sense if it was a – later in the day and b – if a room for two people was cheaper than a room for one person (because, well, it’s not).The lady at the ticket desk was a douche.

THURSDAY

So remember when I said we were stopping in Florence and would have the chance to argue this ticket… oh wait, we can’t, because it’s apparently a national Italian holiday and so the place to pay the fine is closed. While my address in the US is on my fine, I don’t think they actually have any way of finding me and making me pay for this BS. Plus, the entire ticket is in Italian, so I have no idea what we’re even supposed to do. Worst case scenario, the fine goes up to 240 euro and if they stop me at the border the next time I go back in like 10+ years when I can actually afford something like that, I’ll pay for it then when I have a job and can afford it.

What’s even better? The train that we had originally booked seems to have completely disappeared. We left Siena early and had come to the station because there were several trains leaving before ours, and we had an open ticket. But apparently our open ticket was for one of the (now nonexistent) trains that make several other stops along the way, as opposed to the two stops our current train makes. What does that mean? It means an extra 18 euro to be paid in addition to the ticket we already bought.

Last night we went out to eat at this one really good place that Aly’s friend’s roommate had suggested. It was really good, and they had their own little special sauce for stuff. Towards the end of our dinner, the one waitress lady came over and placed two bottles of liquor and three shot glasses on the table and said it was a gift from the house, the one was amaretto and the other was this licorice-flavored stuff, can’t recall the name. But anyway, we had no idea what the right way drink this was. Do we mix it? Do we take two separate shots? Who knew, so we took a guess and decided to do a shot of half and half. It was half decent so we figured it must have been the right thing to do, right? Wrong. Apparently, Italians sip at both of them casually, and separately, not take a shot of them mixed together. Double fail.

We got into Venice several hours earlier than what was planned a couple months ago, and you know what, it was definitely worth it. Thursday night we just walked around a bunch, got some food, and went back to the hostel to try and figure out a plan of action for the following day. Well, Aly was more the one figuring out the plan of action, whilst I threw in an opinion every now and then, whether she had asked for it or not, hahah.

FRIDAY

                Several museums – well, three of them I think, and a bunch of churches, which Venice is full of. The one museum was a contemporary art one which was pretty neat because I got to see a couple pieces by people we were learning about in my art history class. Later that night we walked around a bunch and we bought 2 liters of regional wine for a little over 4 euro from a guy who pretty much makes it in his bathtub – it’s delicious. “Vamos a ver” seemed to be one of the catch-phrases of the weekend.

SATURDAY

                Currently sitting in the airport, and going to make what will probably be failed attempt to sleep for a little bit. Of all nights to not get any sleep, it probably should not be the one two days before you have two of your biggest finals. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware that the airport was going to be this small, and so I’ve already began to finish off the rest of that wine I bought, which means the motivation for studying has already begun to slip away. I’m trying to decide when I want to try and sleep – now, or on the plane, or on the train. Or do I want to sleep on the plane and on the train? Although if I’m going to sleep on the train I might as well just take the bus home from the airport. Whatever the case may be, I’m going to need to significantly increase my caffeine intake tomorrow in order to make sure I get everything done. Scheduling two finals the day right after a long weekend is poor planning on our program’s side. Hey, don’t look at me that way, I know what you’re thinking… but come on, you can’t give someone a chance at a 5-day weekend in Europe and not expect them to travel.

                Venice is known for their glass – and as such, had some pretty awesome stuff around. What did that mean? It means I thought that I was almost done with all my gift shopping for people back home – apparently I wasn’t. But some of this stuff was too good to pass up and so, what the hell, right? Of course, seeing how I only used my backpack to bring what I needed on this lovely little excursion, I’m currently still trying to figure out how I’m going to fit everything in there tomorrow. Only time will tell I suppose. Also, glass objects do not make good pillows, so there goes the usefulness of my schoolbag.

                Also sitting closer to the door of this place was probably not the best idea, fuck. But there really aren’t any other options. Well, I’m pretty sure there aren’t, unless there’s some super secret doorway built by previous people who can’t afford a hotel the night before they fly out on a budget airline located in Bumblefuck, [Insert country of your choice here]. This is probably going to be an epic fail, but while I can still kind of feel the wine, I’m gonna try and get some sleep. Maybe I’ll just work the next couple of days off a series of naps and study sessions, maybe two hours and two hours? Three hours and three hours? Only one way to find out…

 SUNDAY

                Well as it turns out I was able to get around 1.5-2ish hours of uninterrupted sleep, only to pass out again for about another hour-ish, and then we were all woken up by the cleaning crew at about 330 in the morning. I say “we all” because they were so kind enough as to honk their little horn things and then drive around squeaking whatever the hell device was in contact with the floor. My flight wasn’t until 840 so clearly I had a good 4 hours to kill before I had to make sure everything was checked in, so I studied a bit, got a little something to eat, washed it down with a red bull, tried to take another nap, studied a bit more, than finally decided to check in. Actually I think that nap part was before the food and red-bull part. I was trying to time the crash just right so I’d be on the plane, and I think I nailed the timing on that pretty well. I pretty much passed out for most of my two hour flight and then made my way to the train station where, you guessed it, I got to wait 2 hours for the next train and so had more time to STUDY. WOOHOO! The past 12 hours of my life are actually kind of a blur to me, and I’m at this awkward level of being a little too comfortable with the fact I have two big finals tomorrow (probably due to the fact I’m still in vacation mode and too tired from traveling to care). Clearly I have my priorities straight as I sit here typing this up on my train ride back to Salamanca, however I guess you could call this more of a brief study break.  

“Quieres chupita?”

Well, here we are. Sitting in a 24 café in Madrid’s airport, eating an overpriced “tarta de fresa” and washing it down with an equally overpriced, moderately mediocre beer, waiting until I’m tired enough to find a corner and try and sleep through the surrounding ambient sounds of weary travelers, janitors,  security, and the loudspeaker with the British accent. My flight to Italy leaves at 645 in the morning, and I’ll have taken my first steps to my last rendezvous through Europe. Also, today was my lst day of classes, boo-yah.

Also I hope I didn’t just get played by some guy pretending to be Irish, from Cork. Probably should’ve asked him what part seeing how I was just there but his accent was good enough. Although either way, it’s only 2.50, which is in fact the right price for the subway, and his hand did look pretty busted up, so consider it my good deed for the day. Frankly I hate feeling like I have to be overly suspicious of everyone anyway, so I think I’d rather get played and not know it than tell him I don’t have anything then sit there and wonder if he actually needed the help. Of course, for future travels, I probably won’t be wearing a shirt that screams an allegiance to a certain country – aka this Ireland jersey I’m currently wearing.

But anyway, here’s a little bit of a recap on the past week, as it was actually moderately eventuful(ish).

Monday, lunch started and proceeded as it normally does on Mondays. However, today was Maria’s birthday, and so she had went out and bought this nice little cake-thing. My roommate from Holland and myself got nice giant slabs of it on a plate, which was awesome for the first 5 minutes because it was delicious. Unfortunately, we both got about half way through it and looked at each other with eyes that said, “This cake is delicious but extremely heavy and we’ve just gone from enjoying it to yet another mission to put down more food than should be humanly possible in Spain.” And I know what you’re thinking, but yes, you can get that much information out of a look. Anyway, as we’re working through the next quarter of this delicious piece of work, Maria promptly asks me, “Quieres chupita?” (You want a shot?) “Un chupita? De…qué…?” “Pues, no estoy exactamente seguro.” (Well, I’m not exactly sure.) Of course, my immediate reaction to this was, why not, she hasn’t managed to kill us yet in over these past few months. Anyway, it was pretty much straight moonshine that had then been put in a bottle full of grapes, so the alcohol could develop its own distinct flavor while the grapes soaked up alcohol, making them just as strong as the shots. How do I know this last bit of information you ask? Because after doing not one, but two shots, she pulls out four grapes, throws them on my plate, and tells me to try them.  Was doing shots with my 67 year old host mom on her 68^th birthday something I had planned on doing when I came to Spain? Not at all, but so happy I can add that one to the list.

That Wednesday night we had some big group meeting and then a few of us went to this one place because they have a Pong tournament every Wednesday night and between traveling and all the work we’ve had I wasn’t able to make it there to check it out yet. Seeing how the 10 of us that showed up there were the first ones, and the only ones, there for over an hour or two, it was basically like, “go to the bar and play pong amongst yourselves until more people show up and we can start the competition but here have a free shot and here have a free beer in the meantime” night, which was a pretty good call. Bar owner was really nice and spoke a good bit of English, and had brought out the tables for us to practice/screw around with while we waited for other people to show up. Long story short, only four of us ending up staying since we didn’t start playing till a while later, and neither of our two teams won that lovely 100 euro prize. Thursday night a bunch of us went out, we weren’t planning on going out crazy that night since it was our friend’s 21^st the next night; however, that plan may have ended kind of quickly when I got home at 530 that morning. You’d think that was pretty late, however when my host mom asked me what time I got home that morning, she replied with, “Oh, well that’s not that late.” Fail. Still hadn’t been able to make her proud at that point, so Friday when we all went out for dinner and then out after for our friend’s 21^st, I had the mindset that maybe I would just finally say “fuck it” and try walking in sometime after 6 to see if I could win the long-desired approval of Maria. Well, the next day at lunch, when she asked me if I got back late and I casually mentioned not too late and that I had just got in a little after 6:30, I finally got the long-awaited for, “muy bien, hijo!” Hell yeah.

Of course, that night I was planning on just kind of hanging out and getting some work done since I had a bunch to finish before leaving for this trip; however that sort of changed when I was persuaded to once again go out, “for a little.” Obviously this was not the case when I got home at a little after 4 in the morning. It was well worth it though, as when we stopped for food after chilling in the bar, by friend Meghan was approached by not one, but two, creepy Spanish speaking men trying to get her number. The first one was basically a Spanish version of Fabio, with long flowing golden locks of hair, only he was from Argentina, was probably about 30-40 years old, and had pure yellow teeth. Well, after he left the first time, he came back in again. He just wanted to double check to see if we knew where we were going yet. We were sure that we didn’t know, and that we’d call him when we knew. Afterwards, we started talking with another four guys. The one took an immediate interest in Meghan, go figure. We sat there and talked with them, since it was kind of humorous and a chance to practice Spanish. Well, at first I thought the one guy was hitting on me when he said something along the lines of, “look at you with these two girls, aren’t they lucky to have a big strong guy around with them.” But then briefly after that, the focus quickly turned on Meghan when the one guy moved closer to her and started talking with her. Kaya and myself were both sitting right next to each other, probably with the same look of, “watch yourself” in our eyes, which is when the guy turned to us and asked if we were a couple. Laughing, we both said no. Of course, Meghan had to chime in and agree with the guy and said that she could totally see where he was coming from. Bad move on her part, because a couple minutes later when the guy was saying the two of them should get married, Katya and I immediately chimed in and said that we could TOTALLY see it happening and that we’d be there at the wedding when it happened. The look of “save me” in Meghan’s eyes were only met with looks of, “should’ve thought about that before you agreed with him earlier,” looks in ours. There was this guy Ángel in the group of them who you could tell was the quiet guy, but whenever he did say something it was usually to shoot down one of the other guys so it was actually really funny. They tried sharing their beer a few times with me, and then laughed and said “it’s only beer” when I said I was alright, probably assuming I wasn’t taking it out of fear there was something else in there. At one point, the one guy talking to Meghan began to ask Katya for “permission.” Both of us being very confused as to what kind of “permission” he was asking for, several times through the laughter Katya was asking him, permission for what!? While we weren’t exactly sure what to make of this and while Meghan say there and asked why she couldn’t make the decision of whether or not he should get “permission,” one of the other guys decided to explain to me exactly what that meant. Apparently it’s custom that if the person you’re talking to is with a couple of other people, you ask one of the friend’s for permission to continue to hang out with that person that night, which is considered polite because the person you were talking to was out with their friends in the first place, and it would apparently be rude to just sweep them away like that. While we would have loved to jokingly give Meghan over to this, late 20 early 30 something year old man, we decided against it seeing how it was actually getting pretty late, and so we said we had to go and headed home. Meghan didn’t leave empty handed though, she pulled two numbers that night. She just makes them guys in the late-night fast-food joints go wild.

Sometimes It's the Little Victories that Mean the Most

So, here we are. In two days under three weeks from today, I will be home. These next couple of weeks will naturally fly by in the blink of an eye, seeing how this upcoming week is my last full week of class, followed by class the Monday next, followed by a 5-6 day trip to Italy, followed by finals the day after I get back, followed by my flight home that Friday. So yeah, the next few weeks are going to fly by.

                So the week I got home from Ireland, I had yet another big paper due for that Thursday. Well, that was until Monday in class she told us we could send it in to her that Friday. Needless to say, having planned on starting that paper that night, I immediately lost all motivation, and therefore chose to start it the following day. Of course, this was fine, because I successfully completed and sent in my 10 page paper on the influence of the medieval-gothic style of architecture in the historical period of the works of Antoni Gaudi (which, funnily enough, it just took me 3 minutes to remember how to spell architecture in English, because it took me two minutes to realize why arquitectura kept coming up with a squiggly red line underneath it. That would be Spanish. Whoops). I rewarded myself my choosing to go out Friday night for a little bit for the first time in a while (in Salamanca…). I’d call it a successful night, up about to the point where I almost knocked out the guy in the Kebab place at 4 in the morning for not giving me my food and then telling me to speak to him in English because my Spanish wasn’t that great. This was mainly caused by the fact that I was a little flustered because he thought he already gave me my food, and then as we started arguing I started getting a little aggravated and well at that point I couldn’t think clearly enough and started tripping over words. And well after he said that to me, in his perfected English accent, and by that I mean I could neither fully understand him nor fully hear him because he knew less English than I knew Spanish, the prick, and so I ended up slightly pissed off and ended up arguing with him in a combination of English and Spanish. Hey, he wants me to speak to him in English, I’ll give him some English alright. After he finally gives me MY kebab, he proceeds to ask me for more money, and which point I kindly replied that I already paid for it when I first ordered, and he could go fuck off, which he would have understood in the first place if he wasn’t such an ass and would’ve let me finished my initial sentence in Spanish when I was calmly trying to tell him he never gave me my food. Don’t tell me my Spanish isn’t good when I can hardly understand you in English.

                This probably wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t been getting increasingly frustrated lately with trying to speak. I can read, write, and watch an entire movie in my cine class and understand just about everything, but when it comes to talking I’ve found that the more I seem to learn, the more crap gets all crazy in my head, and the stutter I have has reverted back to as bad as it was when I was in gradeschool almost.  Although as I was realizing this I also came to realize that sometimes it’s really just that I talk. Spanish is a really fluid language and the problem is when I talk a little faster the next thing I know my head is five steps ahead of the rest of me and not only do I forget what I just said, I forget what I was going to say and my train of thought just dies on me. In English this is “ok” because, well, I’m not being judged on my ability to talk and so it’s become something I just sort of came to live with and not think about I guess. But here in Spain, any stutter, stammer, pause in thought, confused look on my face, etc., all give the inclination that I don’t know the language that well. So all this in Spanish has made me more aware of how I actually talk in English as well, which again just makes things more complicated. And of course the fact that now I’m overly conscious about the way I’m trying to talk just makes it worse, because the more I think about what I need to say the more I can’t spit the words out when I need to say it – which leads to some frustration, which leads to more stammering. You’d think after 20 years of that crap someone would be almost unaffected by it. So, needless to say, when the guy in the place decided to tell me that my Spanish wasn’t good, I almost reached across the counter and knocked him out. Lucky for him though, hunger > anger, so he was spared for the sake of finally getting my damn food.

                Of course after this night, I woke up late the next day, had lunch, and then hung around the rest of the night because I had to get up the next day to actually work on things, since I had yet another big paper due for Thursday. All of these papers wouldn’t have been as bad, you see, if we weren’t also getting pounds of other work at the same time. And at least half of this work was just work for the sake of giving work, which just made it 100x worse. So, needless to say, the entire group of us was kind of a little aggravated with our program the past couple of weeks for planning things kind of poorly. We had almost nothing to do the first month and a half and then all of a sudden we’ve got 3942804983 million things to do. This obviously inhibits our ability to go out and do other things, like, I don’t know, learn more Spanish through experience. They encourage us to go out and do this or that, but there’s not really much time to if we’re all busy doing all the stuff we have to do for our classes. Needless to say, all this work, combined with frustration, combined with all the talk about Thanksgiving, but just about all of us in a little bit of a fight with Spain.

                This also made me a little bit more nervous for the presentation I had to give in my one USAL class, where my two friends and I are the only non-Spanish students. And again, while for any person it’s completely acceptable and OK to be a little nervous for something like that, I can’t, because as soon as I get nervous the stutter almost comes in full-blown. To combat that as much as I could I decided to do my presentation on the topic I did for my art history class, since after writing ten pages on it I knew I could talk about it pretty confidently. I also hopped on the chance to go first.

                The funny thing is, I was less nervous giving this presentation than I was when I had to give on in my IES class with my fellow classmates from the US. Why? Maybe because a part of me knew I wasn’t actually being graded on how well I could speak Spanish, just on my ability to give a presentation. What’s the best way to combat a weakness? – Make it a strength. Over the years I’ve found that I’m actually come to be one of the calmer people in regards to giving presentations, because, well, I had to be. My professor in my drawing class is also, well, great. My two friends and I are the first three students in our program to actually take classes in the Fine Arts faculty, and that always leads to some doubt about it because our program usually pushes us towards classes with professors who have dealt with foreigners before. So, we were sort of the three pioneers in this, building the first bridge between the two. We probably ended up getting really lucky with our professor, because he’s been awesome. Usually in class when we’re all drawing he’ll come over and ask us how his “three Americans” are doing (Y como estan mis americanos hoy?) So, needless to say, before the presentation he comes over to me, tells me to take my time, relax, and don’t think about it. I started off by just lightening the air a bit by telling everyone to please feel free to ask me to repeat anything if they don’t understand me. And from that point on, I just gave my presentation, like I would any other presentation.

                My other two friends also gave their presentations as well this past Thursday. I think the best part about all of this was what our professor came over and told us after class. He felt we all “taught the Spanish students a lesson,” because a lot of them have been “taking the presentation like a joke.” He told us (pretty much word for word, translated of course) that this obviously wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but we showed a lot of effort, that we had a lot of information, and most importantly that we showed a mastery of a language that wasn’t our first, and that he was very happy with all three of us. Needless to say, we stood there slightly glowing, speechless, and extremely happy. It was probably the first time since I’ve been here that I actually felt like I had accomplished something.

                What was even better was that after this class, we had our Thanksgiving dinner at this one restaurant that our program had set up for us. It was actually awesome, and not a letdown in the least. I was pretty surprised by this because I thought I was getting hopes up way too high. The only thing that was a little different was the pumpkin pie – it was a lot heavier in the pumpkin than it normally is in the states, but this is probably because it was more like, actually pie made from a pumpkin. So not exactly the same, but still good, and since I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was in general, I was completely content with it. So content that I had three plates of turkey and mashed potatoes and then had to help some of the girls eat their pie, after eating my own piece.

                Afterwards, a few of us went out for a little bit and chilled at a bar. I did not have to get up the next day to do anything for once, and so I slept like a baby for the first time in quite a few weeks. Also, Spain and I have repaired our relationship a bit, and I’m confident that we can get along for the next couple weeks before heading home.

                Friday night we went to see “El Gato con Botas,” aka, Puss in Boots, at the movies. It was a cute movie and really funny, and unlike typical US movies turned Spanish movies that are dubbed over, since it was animated it actually looked/sounded a lot better. Plus we understood everything which is awesome. Afterwards we grabbed tapas, and then pizza, and then headed out for a bit.

                Saturday was a late start, but I managed to be a little productive. Have the rest of my Italy trip booked, so I’m excited. I’ll actually be leaving the night before my flight since it’s at 630 in the morning, and so I’m just going to sleep in the airport to save on money. I will also have to do the same thing on the way back from Milan, so I’ll have a couple hours to check some of the city out before taking a bus to their airport and leaving the following morning. However this is good, since when trying to book a hostel in Siena I couldn’t find anything with a shared room so I had to go with a private single, which obviously costs a little bit more. That night, I wasn’t planning on doing much. A few of us went out to eat at this one Mexican restaurant for dinner, and then went to this place called Valor afterwards, which is like a place with all this types of chocolates and whatnot. And then as we were on the way to chill at this one bar afterwards, we ran into a few other friends of ours, went to a different bar, and well the night just kind of progressed from there.

                I woke up at 2:10 today after going to bed at 6:00AM, my host mom knocking on my door asking me if I was going to eat lunch. She’s so proud of me…

                I also went for a 40 min run, so go me. It’s also really foggy out and was getting dark when I went out, and I still managed to not get hit by a car. Bonus points.

“If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

                                                                                                 — Thomas Alva Edison

Video Clip of Ireland

Well, it's taken me a bit of time to have the internet functioning for me long enough to put this little video up. It's a few of the clips from Ireland thrown together, played to with a wee bit 'o Irish music.

Dia duit Éirinn!

So I was going to attempt to do some of the homework that's due tomorrow but my pen has exploded so I guess that's the universes way of telling me to start  writing this. I have a ten page paper due on Thursday that I haven't even begun to really think about yet, so this will probably actually be the only chance I even get to update you on this most wonderful of tales. Luckily the iPod is pretty much self aware at this point, because I didn't bring my laptop but can type everything up on this. Nifty, I know right? You want to know what else is nifty? My iPod somehow knew to set the clock back an hour when I got to Ireland, despite being connected to the internet or anything. Still trying to figure that one out. But anyway, on to Ireland.

It was effing amazing.

I spent the entire day on Thursday actually getting to Cork, so I'm really glad I decided to take the day off from school to get that extra day. My initial flight was late coming in so i missed the bus I was supposed to take to Cork, but i was able to use the ticket on the next bus out so no worries there. The bus itself was pretty nifty. It had free wifi on board. Some hostels that I've seen/been to don't even offer that, and fuck if I've ever seen a bus with wifi let alone FREE wifi. This was the first sign of the majesty of Ireland, and certainly not the last. Cork itself is the second largest cities in Ireland to Dublin, but by like a lot. Dublin's got about 1.5 million to Corks 500 thousand. It's a beautiful city, with a river wrapping around the center of town. Our hostel was about a five to ten min walk to the center of town, which was great for the price we paid. Speaking of the hostel, we got lucky the first night as there were no other people in the room of 10, just my friend and I. The beds were actually quite comfortable, as well as the blanket, which we didn't have to pay for as some hostels tend to get you for. Oh, and there was free Internet and light breakfast in the morning. In other words, this place was gold for what we actually paid for it.

Later Thursday night I met up with my friend who's studying in Cork and we walked around a bit while waiting for another friend of mine to show up in Cork. After he got there, we stopped in a bar for a little, and then headed home, because I was on 3.5 hours of sleep from the night before due to the fact I had so much work due on Thursday that I had to get done and the next morning we had to get up around 7.

Cork at night.

View from hostel window.

Friday morning was an early one, but I was surprisingly awake for it. We got picked up for a day tour at our hostel around 815 or so and we were off to the Cliffs of Moher, as well as a few other places. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, but seriously this day trip was absolutely amazing. It was raining at first in the morning when we woke up, but it cleared up as the day went on and was absolutely perfect by the time we got to the Cliffs. I really can't put into words how awesome it was, and well not even the pictures can fully capture it, so you'll just have to make your way there yourself someday. I'll map out what our tour was like with some pictures and explanations below.

St. Jame's Castle in Limerick on the River Shanon

Cliffs of Moher

Castle on the Cliffs

Another shot of the Cliffs of Moher

My continuation of the series that I like to call, "Drinking Things on top of Things"

It just so happened they were selling Mead in the gift shop, so what better thing to drink than a little bit of Irish Mead while standing on top of the Cliffs of Moher?

Finally found some apple cider. Thank you Ireland.

Double rainbow that decided to pop up right after lunch in the town of Doolin.

The lunar landscape of the Burren. It's the only place on Earth where Arctic, Alpine and Mediterranean flowers grow side by side.

On the coast at the lunar landscape of the Burren, where the two rainbows were still extremely prominent.

Another shot at the lunar landscape of Burren.

 One of the most famous stone age burial sites in Ireland, the Poulnabrone Dolmen.

A shot of some of the surroundings at the Poulnabrone Dolmen.

Bunratty Castle

When we got back that night, we discovered we weren't exactly as lucky to have the entire room to ourselves again. But what was prob the worst part - they were French, everyone's favorite type of people. Actually, these people weren't that bad, actually pretty nice, as we we're not expecting too much seeing both of our experiences with the French haven't resulted in much friendliness. But anyway, that night we walked around a bit, and actually walked out into the residential areas which was pretty cool. That night we passed the time enjoying the glorious Irish stout while in the oldest and longest running pub in all of Ireland. It's older than our country. Boom, how's that America?

The next day we slept in till about 930 when we both sort of randomly woke up. I was kind of expecting to be passed out for a bit longer. We walked around Cork for what seemed like a while looking for gift shops and whatnot, but when we realize it was only a little after one and we had been around everything twice and had stopped in an old Irish church, we decided to think of something else to do. So, taking out the map I had of the surrounding area, I noticed that Blarney was actually not too far outside of Cork. And there's a bus that runs there. So boom, impromptu trip to Blarney to see the castle and the stone. Nothing like a random decision to casually knock off something that apparently the discovery channel has on its list of 99 things to do before you die - kissing the Blarney stone. The castle itself was really cool as well, and had a lot of other places to check out on the grounds, including an old witch's cave and stuff, which was kind of neat cause we got to that stuff as the sun started going down, so we got to be in the woods, a little after dusk, checking out the witch's stone, witch's den, druid's cave, and a couple other very folklore-ish things.

On top of the castle of Blarney with my dearest sister.

Blarney Castle

We finished up the night back in Cork relaxing a bit in a cozy little pub.

On a few side notes, the Irish are incredibly friendly people. I don't know if it just seemed like that because people can tend to be a little colder in Spain, mainly just because of their culture, but almost everyone there in Ireland was incredibly warm and friendly. Also, they're pretty laid back, and you sort of need to make sure you're not in a rush to get anywhere because of the slight transition you go through from normal time to Irish time. 

In other news, I had a bunch of work due last Thursday, including a ten page paper. I'm so lucky as to have yet another ten pager due this Thursday for my art history class, woohoo.

My host mom still continues to say some of the most hysterical things imaginable coming from a woman in her mid-60s. I keep saying that we need to start writing them down so maybe I'll eventually start doing that and I can just list a bunch of the things that have come out of her mouth.

It was nice to casually be able to walk through the airport to my gate seeing how we were a couple hours early and it was pretty quick to get through everything. I won't be able to say the same after we land as I have to move very quickly to make the train back to Salamanca that I have a ticket for. Not exactly sure if it's exchangeable. I don't see why it shouldn't be but frankly I don't want to be stuck waiting in the train station an extra couple of hours.

Well apparently my luck ran out when I left Ireland. I did not make it to my scheduled train and the lady at the desk told me I could not still use my ticket, although I don't think she fully understood what I was trying to tell her or she thought I didn't know what I was talking about. So right now I'm deciding if I just want to get on the train and pretend I thought I bought a ticket for that train or just ask the conductor if I can get on with my perfectly good ticket that hasn't been used yet. When I was in Ireland the ticket I had for the return back to the airport in Dublin was an open ticket. This again shows the superior thinking of the country.

Well that was a bust. Conductor tells me to go back up to ticket sales and I try one more time to exchange but no dice. So once again I'm out an extra 20 euro. What's even better is that the train was actually full and so now I'm stuck here for yet another hour. I would really prefer to be back in Ireland right now. So what am I going to do now? Drink the apple cider I brought back with me from Ireland, listen to music, look at the pictures from the trip, and find my happy place. I actually would not care that I was stuck here if it were not for the mound of homework I have and the extra money I just spent. I guess that's what happens when you're country's economic status is slowly plummeting - you try to nickel and dime someone at any chance that prevents itself.  But you win some, you lose some right? It's fine, I just can't spend any money now over the next few weeks in order to make sure I have enough money for Italy, which again, rationally speaking I should really have nothing to complain about. And on the positive side, I am not once again stuck overnight in Madrid in an overpriced hostel, as I will in fact make it home tonight.

All in all, my friend and I had gotten extremely lucky on this trip, as it seemed that pretty much everything worked in our favor, and every time we turned around we found ourselves facing more or less the best possible situation. Ireland rewards it's own I suppose. It also just kind of goes to show that the best way to travel is just not to have a set plan really. While the trip to the Cliffs were scheduled in advance, this was to make sure we got the most we could out of the two days. But the trip to Blarney, which was completely by chance and on a whim, ended up being almost if not just as awesome as the trip we took the previous day. This sort of reminds me about something I read about and Irishman's philosophy, which I find pretty appropriate:

In life, there are only two things to worry about... Either you are well or you are sick. 

If you are well, there is nothing to worry about, but if you are sick, there are only two things to worry about...

Either you will get well or you will die. If you get well, there is nothing to worry about,

But if you die, there are only two things to worry about... 

Either you will go to heaven or hell. If you go to heaven, there is nothing to worry about.

And if you go to hell, you’ll be so busy shaking hands with all your friends... You won’t have time to worry!

Videos of Paris

Eiffel Tower

Random band playing in the subway

Inside Versailles

Another Hall inside Versailles; Paintings of more or less all of France's most important victories in battle

Arc de Triomphe

Notre Dame during the day

Walking towards the Eiffle Tower at night

Tiny video during the boat tour

Notre Dame during the boat tour at night

Hope you enjoyed this lovely little look into Paris.

Désolé, je ne parle pas français.

“GOOD MORNING WORLD!!!” is most definitely not what came out of my mouth this morning when my alarm went off at 430 in the morning.  You think they’d make cheap flights a little more convenient, but I guess we can’t win them all can we? Anyway, my flight out of “Paris” was at 9, and I had to be at a bus station to catch a bus by 6. I say “Paris” with quotation marks because this airport is actually an hour and a half outside of Paris. Ipso facto, if I had known that beforehand I probably could have just found a slightly more expensive flight into the city itself and saved on transportation and made things a little more convenient. But again, can’t win them all. I also had to figure out how to use the Night Bus system since the metro stops around 1 and doesn’t start up again until 530 in the morning there. Well long story short, I only ended up taking one of three buses I thought I was going to have to take because by the time I got to the one transfer station it was 530 and the metro was easier to deal with. Of course, the initial bus was later than I thought it was going to be, which meant a – I could have slept in 15 minutes later and b – I wasn’t making it to the bus station at 545 like I had wanted to, or by 6 like I needed to. So as the clock slowly ticked away the minutes on my ride through the Paris metro one last time, all I could do was hope there would be other buses leaving around the time I got there for the airport. And well, there were, so thankfully we have no Germany repeats. . (The buses to the airport leave 3 hours before each flight so luckily the airport is actually fairly busy and doesn’t have like 3 flights a day.) Anyway, here I am, currently sitting on the train back to Salamanca for my last 2 hour 45 minute stretch back home, attempting to update you beautiful people on the wonders of my life over the past couple of weeks.

So basically, Paris was gorgeous. Don’t think I would ever be able to live there for an extended period of time, but definitely an awesome trip. I’m going to let the enormous amount of pictures do the talking for me, but I’ll go through an abbreviated version of the weekend.

The language barrier was interesting. The French language is completely and utterly distinctive in its manner of pronouncing things. Between Spanish and English, it wasn’t too bad when reading some things – you could get the basic idea, which was good because in some of the places we went to (like the Louvre) there was no explanation of the pieces in another language other than French, which I was a little surprised at seeing how usually at really BIG places like this, there’s at least one alternative translation. But anyway, I seemed to just fall on Spanish as my default foreign language. Whenever someone asked me something in French, my first response was always in Spanish. Which was probably better actually, because then I would just ask in Spanish if they could speak Spanish or English, since they take to that better than just assuming they should know English (as most Americans seem to assume). Also whenever trying to ask for something I would pronounce it like I would in the Spanish language, and then just result to pointing if I had to. I think I can say I successfully avoided being the typical ignorant American while we were there. It was also interesting to be somewhere again where you literally did not know any of the language initially. We ran into this family from Chile on the first night, and it was like a breath of fresh air, because we were like, WE CAN UNDERSTAND SOMEONE YESSSS.

My plane arrived on Friday around 1230-1245 and I met up with Shank at the airport. Almost started to worry in Madrid (and by worry, I meant I started thinking, well here's yet another race to get somewhere in time, challenge accepted) because I had 30 minutes to get through all the airport security and crap and get to my plane. I had taken the 550 train to Madrid (the first one leaving in the morning) and then the subway to the airport, and well realized when I got there it was still cutting it a little close. However I'm also starting to realize getting through everything in Europe is not nearly as much as a pain as it is in the airports in the US, so I got to my gate with 20 minutes to spare. When we got into Paris we met up with two other friends and checked in at this hotel/hostel to get our information for where we were actually staying. The hostel we booked is more like a string of random apartments in the outskirt ghettos of Paris, so we had to check in at one place and then go to our actual apartment. Needless to say, when we arrived I felt like I was back in part of Philly, and as we looked around we further realized how bad we stuck out seeing how we were the only four white kids in the area. The room wasn’t too bad; I forgot to take pictures now that I think about it. We had a little kitchen which was nice and the beds were decent so hey, no complaints for what we paid for it. Although, we were supposed to have internet as well, but after trying to get that to work and calling the main desk and getting nowhere we just kind of gave up because it was kind of useless. So during the weekend we just resorted to crashing a McDonalds to borrow their free WiFi whenever we actually needed the internet to figure something out. Also, we had a pretty good location in respect to the metro station. We only had to hop on the metro right by our place and make one transfer, maybe two pending on where we were going, and we could be right in the heart of Paris. Friday night we went out and walked around a bit, and grabbed dinner at this one place.

Saturday we hit the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tour. The Louvre is split up into three parts, and it’s freaking huge. We started out looking at almost everything in the first section, then during the second one we went to we got a little more selective, and then by section three and hour three we were basically on a mission to find the Mona Lisa and maybe one or two other things in that part. The place is large enough to make a day trip out of. Notre Dame was neat, it was free to get into that day so the line was huge and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet at that point so we were pretty content with grabbing some food and sitting outside of it instead. We spent a good 3 hours at the Eiffel Tour, 2 and half hours of that basically consisting of waiting in line to get to the top of it, but it was definitely worth it. By the time we got to the top, it had gotten dark, so we got to see the entire city lit up, which was awesome. There was also a slightly overpriced champagne stand at the top, and well I couldn’t really resist. When I was in Argentina we drank wine at the end of a hike way up in the Andes Mountains on top of part of the mountain overlooking, like, everything, so I figured I’d add champagne on top of the Eiffel Tour to my list of drinking things on top of really, really tall things. We ended the night at this really (apparently) popular steak place for dinner. They only serve one plate – steak with their signature sauce and French fries. You get two plates of that, plus the initial salad and bread. It was absolutely delicious, and completely worth it. Naturally we complemented it with their house wine and dessert. We’re not going to discuss what the bill came to, and just leave it at that was the first and the last time I’ll ever spend that much on food in one sitting. But again, so freaking worth it.

Sunday we went to Versailles and spent a decent part of the day there. I’m definitely going to let the pictures do all the talking for that one, but it was a good time and definitely worth the trip. The visit ended with a race against time to get through the giant line to buy tickets for the train and then hop on before it left at like 5. We successfully boarded at 459. Win. Later that night when we got back we ventured out to walk around a good bit more.

On Monday two of our friends left so it was just me and Shank left. We went and checked out the Père Lachaise Cemetery, which is supposed to be the prettiest/most extravagant in the world. I went to another cemetery that was modeled after it in Argentina, so I was a bit curious to see the differences between the two. Monday was also Halloween so I guess it was also most appropriate to head there that day as well, and it was actually the first time I’ve been somewhere where it really felt like fall. We walked around a bit afterwards, and at one point we walked past a bakery and did a simultaneous head spin while still walking, and naturally at that point we had to buy some sort of magical pastry item. Later on met up with a friend of ours from school who’s studying in Paris for the semester. We grabbed dinner, which was not as expensive as the other night however was still really good, and then afterwards we headed to this place to do a river tour of the city, which was really cool.

And that leaves us back at this current point, as I’m slowly starting to fall asleep from the lack of it last night.

Hopping back to last week in the days leading up to the Paris trip – I was so fortunate as to have my midterms this past week. My two longest and hardest were on Monday, and Shank came up to Salamanca to visit me last weekend from Friday to Sunday. Naturally it was a good time, and naturally I pushed most of the studying back until Sunday. However, I was a good boy and I started some Friday before he arrived. But yeah, seeing how this was one of two times all semester I really had to study, it sucked and I didn’t want to do it, but I wasn’t complaining. However as we’re getting our marks back on all of them, we’re finding that the grading was a little more specific than we had previously anticipated, which is kind of ridiculous. When you have a midterm consisting of 5 essays, in which you have to “write everything you know about [insert title of work/picture here], you just start spitting out whatever information you can remember. Unfortunately due to my low attention span I also get really bored halfway through from writing down everything I know. I think after the two midterms during my four classes on Monday, my hand was ready to fall off from writing unnecessarily large amounts of information. If you’re grading on specific things, tell us! Don’t have us fill an entire page up with one essay and then take off random points because you failed to mention this or that, but remembered to write something else down that was completely unnecessary to remember.

Anyway, I took a bunch of short little videos of different things around Paris that I’ll post after this. Sometimes they come out better than the pictures themselves, especially if you’re moving around a bit.  

Campagne, anyone?

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.”  – Pearl S. Buck