italy

My thirteen weeks of travels ended with the one I'd been looking forward to most - Florence and Rome, Italy. For those of you who might not know, I took Italian for three years in high school and I don't know what did it to me, but all I wanted to do when I first found out I was coming to Europe was go to Italy. It could be something about the language or the history or just some hypnotic power that Ms. Tassi, one of my Italian teachers, had - anything's possible, although to be fair, Ms. Tassi was this short little woman with a wide face and hair constantly tucked behind her ears, and quite honestly one of the most pushoverable people I've ever known. So it probably wasn't her influence, just something about the romantic images Italy brings to mind.

It was just Greg and I on this one, on our last-ever adventure in Europe. We flew into Milan, and proceeded to fumble around with the Italian railway system for a good two hours - way to go, Italy, thanks for being expensive - before catching a delightfully comfortable train to Florence. 

Florence the city was a lot quieter and more relaxed than I'd expected. Granted, we only spent two days there and four hours of that was consumed by the enormous Uffizi gallery - which was really beautiful, by and by, and totally worth the mind-numbing two hour wait in line during which we got to watch two French teenagers attempt to eat each other's faces. But yeah, Florence was stone streets and simple buildings, and oh yes, the Duomo, an enormously puzzling structure that dazzled with color amongst the grey-and-white buildings that surrounded it. Seriously, that thing is BRIGHT - blues and oranges and glimmering marble facade, and of course the towering famous dome of orange. The Arno river weaves its way through Florence, almost lazily listing underneath a line of bridges, deep green water with birds chilling out on the surface.

One thing I observed about Italy - or Florence and Rome, at the very least -is that The Sights are sort of just plopped down in the middle of everything. Everywhere else we've been, important monuments have been sort of set away from the important stuff, surrounded by a park or a fence or something, but no, not here. You could just be walking down the street, and BAM, THERE'S THE COLISSEUM. It's a really unexpected sort of thing, and took us off guard a few times, especially in Rome.

I mean Florence was pretty cool, of course, but it was very slow, quietly paced, and entirely unlike Rome, where waves of people simply crashed on us in some places. It was sort of rainy the first few days we were there, but the very last day it was sunny and bright, puffy white clouds and sheer blue sky, and my GOD, did we walk everywhere. 

Roman streets were short and tight and windy. Our first stop was to marvel at, yes, the Colisseum, in all its ancient and overwhelming glory - tall, imposing and stony-white, crumbling and decrepit. Imagine what it would've looked like now if it hadn't been used as a stone quarry by everyone who needed building materials until they realized, "oh, hey, this thing is pretty cool looking, we should probably keep it around." 

From there, we hit the Trevi Fountain, where I think I may have seen Lizzie McGuire - but she's so busy these days, who knows? It, like the rest of Rome, was inundated with people, but we managed to look past the wishing tourists and sightseers and inspect the fountain for what it really is - a quite stunning bit of architecture, finely sculpted white marble and a sheet of water like glass pouring over everything. (Yes, I made a wish. Can't tell.)

The next day we sort of stumbled upon the Pantheon - an odd thing to see, really: a super classical looking building, absolutely Roman, all pillars and heavy stone, and that one circle of light that lit up the whole place... all adorned with statues of Christ and Mary and other Christian icons. It was a strange juxtaposition, felt forced and wrong - but the building was still insane to see.

And then - Vatican time. St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican museum, and the Sistine Chapel. Now this, my friends, was something probably not adequately describable without you being able to see it. St. Peter's was huge, overwhelmingly ornate and gold and full of light and sound. The Vatican museum was equally loud, more modern, and a veritable labrynth of white hallways and paintings, until - the Sistine Chapel, and this is where I lose my words, because that thing is so famous and so huge and so indescribably indescribable. I hate to fall back on this, but you just Need To See This, because the paintings are so detailed and bright and there's blue everywhere and it is something of a visual overload, and you feel like you could spend hours there.

We walked away dazed and confused, ate doner and gelato, and retired to a comforting hostel with music and beer and balloons and the color yellow.

Was Italy what I expected? Nah. Was it wonderful? Of course.

And that, my friends, was that.

Blog's not over yet, though, so stay tuned. :)!

barcelona

So, here's the thing about Barcelona. I didn't do much. There's not a lot to report.

Oh, sure, the city was beautiful. It was all sun and sand and orange bicycles, and long winding streets and palm trees that sprouted with leaves like pineapples, rough and splintery brown trunks. It was basking on a beach with warmed between my toes and the icy crashing of the Mediterranean sea, cool and blue and opaque. It was icy Malibu and tanned faces and sunburn and a heavy sense of relaxation and laziness settling in our chests. A fuzzy, out of control feeling of delight and no obligations and lying with the sound of waves in your ears and your friends around you and your face on a warm red towel.

Barcelona was a vacation, plain and simple. I coasted by some of The Sights on a bright rented bike, wind whipping against me; a tall, red arc of brick and a church with the ugliest, most square and unpleasant architecture that I've ever seen. Buildings warble and wave, walls smoothed round and circular, giving off the appearance of melting concrete.

Our hostel, Kabul, was bedecked with rainbow lights and red-faced people toting plastic liter cups of beer that foamed and frothed. Wooden tables with chess pieces scattered about and black and white pictures on the wall and laughter and noise. Warm breezes even at night and discussions of politics conducted over shared balconies that look over a plaza populated by waving palm trees and a bubbling fountain. 

Vacation, all I ever wanted.

One last trip to Italy - coming soon to an internet near you.

Starting to think about leaving this place is driving me mad but that's a whole other story, too.

croatia

WELL.

We are BACK from travel break number two, and was it ever a doozy. Before I get to that, though, I think you need to know where we were.

We flew into Split, Croatia, and then took a bus along a sprawling seaside road, where gray cliffs jutted out into the sea which sparkled with sunlight, then effervesced in a luminescent yellow as the sun dipped down behind the horizon, a glowing peach against the cream colored sky. Most Emerson students slipped into a doze, but some stayed awake the whole time, noses pressed against the cool glass windows of the buses, breath fogging as we longed for more of the view before the sun dipped away entirely.

We pulled into Dubrovnik at night, and we were prevented from really seeing what it looked like. We awoke to the Adriatic Sea, wide and blue, directly across the street from our hotel, flanked by palm trees, tall and green. Moreover, there was sun, sun, sun, glorious and warm, and we turned to face it like turtles, eyes closing and faces pasty white shining in the glow. Our hotel was only a twenty minute walk from the walled old city of Dubrovnik, a fortress city where we spent most of our time. 

Let me get this straight for you: the old city of Dubrovnik is absolute magic, a city forgotten by modernization and left back in the times of Narnia and fantasy. It is all smooth white stone, pale orange roof tiles, and sun that gleams and glints over everything. It is worshipped at its feet by the Adriatic sea, hugging up against the city walls in all its cerulean blue glory. The sea is covered with twinkling stars of reflected sunlight. 

We found ourselves, when not carted around for academia, licking at gelato in a rainbow of flavors and collapsing onto a pebbled beach. The ocean thuds against the shore and when the waves slide out, a rain of pebbles cascades back down, making a sound identical to that of a rainstick. We spent days positively basking in the sun, soaking up the rays usually hidden behind a curtain of grey Dutch clouds. We wandered the streets of the old city, sipping on brightly colored drinks; everyone sported red faces and huge smiles. It was magic, magic, magic and no words can truly convey the pinpricks in our chests at such a wonderful place.

That said, this trip was packed to the brim, positively overflowing with unfortunate events; each one was a blow to our stomachs, and it just wouldn't stop.

One. Thirteen Emerson students, walking home from the old city, were jumped by a crew of unruly and angry Croatian teens; everyone turned out just fine, for those of you who will worry, and we rallied together as a group to prevent this from ruining the magic of the city around us. Total number of hospital visits: four.

Two. One student became violently ill; "I've never seen someone throw up so painfully before," one friend professed. She was carted off to the hospital (five), and on a bus ride to Bosnia the next day, three more people had to stop to throw up.

Three. Well - we were supposed to see Bosnia, and drove for two and a half hours to reach the concrete-and-iron gate that is the Bosnian border - only to find that four students had not brought their passports. Because, you know, I rarely bring my passport with me to BOSNIA. If i were going anywhere but BOSNIA I would have brought my passport, but it's only BOSNIA so no worries. We turned around with four "rejected from Bosnia" slips to sunbathe in a random Croatian town by a murky brown river before boarding the bus back to Dubrovnik.

Four. One girl fell over. Got a concussion. Spent two days (?) in the hospital. That's six.

Five. There was a small earthquake in the middle of the night. Scary for those who did not sleep through it like yours truly, but overall harmless.

Six. Several students rented scooters to zoom all around Dubrovnik; they had a very delightful day, or so I hear - until one scooter attempted to turn and instead crashed in a shower of plastic against the side of the road. Minor injuries, but a not-so-minor bill from the scooter place. No hospital visits, though.

Seven. We went to an arboretum, which was a positive labyrinth of green and yellow and purple, flowers and trees blooming and reaching petals and leaves up to the sky, soaking in the sun as much as we were. We decided it would be a good idea to swim in the Adriatic, which looked so disarmingly inviting that we all stripped to our skivvies (yeah, I said skivvies - deal with it) and leapt into the cool embrace of the water. Problem? Well, this grotto we were swimming in was flanked by stone walls we could climb out on - resulting in several students being attacked in the feet by prickly sea urchins that were clinging to the walls. Most of the spines were removed excruciatingly by a pair of tweezers and a sewing kit, but one person's foot was punctures so badly that he was carted off to the hospital to get them removed, bringing our total up to seven.

Eight. Meanwhile, during the sea urchin attacks, a few people decided they wanted to see what was on the other side of a wall - and as such, grabbed hold of a rusty old white ladder to vault themselves over the wall. The problem there? The ladder was electrified. No further explanation needed, I think.

And nine, most academic pretenses had to be abandoned in the face of Dubrovnik's ever-closing museums; we would approach a museum or an exhibit only to find ourselves facing a closed sign. In the middle of the day. This happened about six times, and by the end of the trip, Rob Duckers and Dulcia were practically pulling their hair out, puzzled and frustrated by the lack of quality art combined with the lack of open museums -and the Duke needs all the hair he can hold onto! (love ya, Rob!)

It was the most ridiculous, painful, frightening, unifying and positively unreal trip I have ever taken.

After which time, we got to go to Barcelona.

But that's a story in and of itself.

prague

Okay, this is me getting my blog caught up.

Last weekend, we ventured eastwards on a chugging train through Germany to the Czech Republic to czech out what everyone likes so much about Prague. We boarded an overnight train, in which Gregory, Katherine, Collin and I were packed tightly into a six-bed sleeper car, the temperature gauge of which was broken. They didn't czech our passports, which I thought was kind of weird. That's only happened to me on an international train once, which doesn't really make sense to me but ah well. The sleeper car was cozy and warm and we watched the first half of a movie on Greg's laptop until we drowsily decided to rain czech the rest so we could settle down for a surprisingly comfortable sleep.

Okay, enough of the Czech puns, I'm done. I swear.

But czech this out. My neighbor Beth taught me how to spell Czechoslovakia when I was ten years old one day in her kitchen. She made chocolate ice cream milkshakes for me and my friend, and we stood there in the middle of her apartment, sunlight shining in. She was on the opposite side of the kitchen table, and she made us guess before she would tell us. I've never forgotten. Too bad it's moot.)

Prague is gorgeous; after crossing the Charles Bridge - the oldest bridge in Prague, mind you, and absolutely pouring over with tourists and kitchy shops - we clambered up a hill in the Mala Strana, or Lesser Town, which was speckled with trees that bloomed with flowers that were little explosions of pink and yellow. At the peak of the hill was an Eiffel Tower replica - no, seriously - as well as the stunningly ornate Prague castle, which is like a city in and of itself, its towering brown facade dotted with windows is only the first of many architectural marvels.

Most of our time in Prague was spent walking. Trams chugged through the city, but we stayed on the sidewalks, passing graffiti'd buildings and cheery storefronts that twinkled with glass and jewelry. The money there is relatively better on our wallets than the Euro is, so we feasted - in a sense - and the food was scrumptious. 

Unbeknownst to us, Prague likes Easter. Prague likes Easter so much that they bedeck their city in flowery colored streamers, blue and green and yellow; eggs hang from the branches of trees, and red-roofed tents sprout in town squares, peddling steaming food and desserts and trinkets. A stage was set up directly in front of an old church; one day, an Irish pop band performed - the next, there was an oyster shucking contest. All surrounded by the milling of hundreds of people, the natives babbling in Czech, a language stuffed to the brim with consonants - and tourists, chatting in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German. It was insane.

We spent half a day visiting Terezin, the concentration camp situated about forty minutes outside the city. Terezin, we learned, was not an extermination camp along the lines of Auschwitz, but rather a transit camp, from which people would be sent to camps of the former variety. It was - interesting. I felt, of course, as though I should feel something powerful or moving or harrowing or sad, but the experience for me was a very stoic, emotionless one. It snowed the day we were there, gently and quietly; it wasn't cold, just diamond dust sprinkling over the worn gravel and waving grass.

We concluded the weekend on Easter Sunday night, sitting in our hostel room with a chocolate Easter bunny, some popcorn, and a movie. It was quiet and content. Good job, Prague.

Also, unrelatedly, it should come as no surprise to any of us that I am now bottom of the barrel dipping into my savings living in a box when I get home working twenty eight hours a day can you spare some change sir I just spent a semester in Europe poor. But I'd say this is all pretty worth it, wouldn't you?

This weekend - travel break part deux. We begin with five days in Croatia and Bosnia, and then a quick jaunt to Barcelona where I will perhaps run into The Cheetah Girls (no I won't) before returning back here for two days, and then it's off to Italia.

My goodness.

See you in ten. :)

doolin, ireland & the cliffs of moher

The town of Doolin, Ireland only has one road – it’s a long road, sure, but if you start at one end and follow it all the way to the end, you’ve pretty much seen the entire town. All around, the Irish countryside is overwhelmingly green – it’s not called the Emerald Isle for nothing. Hills rise from the ground from one end of the horizon to the other, obstructing the point where the ground meets the sky, which is painted over with thick gray streaks of clouds. Light, weightless rain patters against the ground, pooling into brown puddles in places where the road dips. Houses are peppered across the landscape at irregular intervals, colored boxes that accent the environment. It is a refreshing change of pace for us, having been inundated with big cities for weeks now; there is no need here to cram five or six buildings all onto one corner so that they teeter like a colossal Jenga tower. It feels like stepping back in time compared to other parts of the world.

The main attractions of the town itself are the Three Pubs of Doolin. (There are actually four, but nobody talks about that last one.) There are two – McDermott’s and McGann’s – at one end of the road, and one at the other end by the name of O’Connor’s. Ask anyone you know if they’ve heard of Doolin (though chances are they probably haven’t) and if they have, they’ll probably have heard of it for its pubs, or at least for the music you find within them. Doolin is, after all, the traditional music capital of Ireland, and each night, a different motley crew of middle aged to older men and women settles down at each of the three pubs and plays music that leaps and skips through the wooden confines of the room. It all sort of sounds the same at first – a high pitched tin flute twitters and toots, while the fiddle provides a rural-sounding backbone to it all. Any sort of combination of instruments is allowed here – we saw a woman with a soccer mom haircut twanging away at a banjo, and next to her, a man with a curling white beard plays a long black traditional flute. The music they make together, though, is bright and infectious; it makes you want to get up and jig – not dance, mind you: jig.

Fun tangential fact: George Bernard Shaw, though he was from Dublin by birth, was known as a frequent visitor to Doolin – it is hard to picture him as anything but a stuffy sort of gentleman, sitting in the back corner of a pub with a quill pen and a blank book, penning Arms and the Man or some other literary masterpiece or what have you. It is altogether more likely that Shaw, given his stance that “a drunken man is happier than a sober one," - direct quote - would be sitting at the bar with an empty pint or two sitting in front of him, a sloppy drunken smile on his face as he cheered along with the rest of the patrons for the music, but I think I’d rather stick to my fantasy that he was above that sort of thing, thank you.

The reason we  came to Doolin, of course, is not the pubs, no matter how attractive they may be. We came to see The Cliffs of Moher. Seventh wonder of the world. (I made that up. But they very well could be.)

The cliffs themselves are a good six mile trek from Doolin, along the southernmost section of a well-traveled road called The Burren Way – the definite article is a new addition; up until a few decades ago, it was just Burren. Perhaps the fact that it’s now a The says something about its increasing popularity. Either way, this snakelike road leads travelers through an expanse of wide green hills, just like you'd picture Irish coutryside; they are speckled with yellow flowers and zig-zagging stone walls, many of which have tumbled down into ruin. Littered stones stick up from the ground, and it looks as though the earth is attempting to reclaim them by reaching up digits of dirt and tugging hard. 

The end of the path is marked by a small car park and stone archway through which visitors pass; there is no entrance fee to the cliffs for those who arrive on foot – if you drive in, you have to pay eight Euro for your entire car, which seems like a relatively small fee, considering the thirty-two million Euro that went into creating an environmentally sound visitors center, built directly into the side of a nearby hill. 

The cliffs themselves are absolutely massive, huge stone slabs that have settled firmly along Ireland’s southwest coast. They rise an unbelievable three hundred and ninety four feet from sea level to the cliff’s edge. Their stone faces have grown over with green moss that cascades like an emerald waterfall down into the ocean below. The sea sparkles and sways, the color of a warm, melted cerulean crayon. The ocean is remarkably clear, and even without any sun, it shines a brilliant hue. The water is a solid mass of blue, except for where it froths in white as it laps against the bottom of the cliffs, right where they hit the ocean. Channels cut through the base of the cliffs, three hundred million years ancient, vivid rivers vanishing back into the dark recesses of the cliff.

There are paths that wind up and down the cliffs, stone and brick paths carved into stairs and viewing platforms, complete with telescopes that talk to you if you insert a quarter. The paved path stops, but a muddy path pressed down by shoes at boots stretches far beyond a “Please Do Not Go Beyond This Point” sign . Everyone seems to ignore this, using the sign as a handhold to move past it, even though to move past this sign is to move past areas that are boarded off by large slabs of stone that act as fences, keeping visitors well back from the edge. The illegal footsteps of the million people who’ve visited this area in the last year along have patted down a well-worn muddy path that weaves by the cliffs themselves; in many places, the paths wander right past the edge. With all due respect to Robert Frost, forget “taking the road less traveled;” if a lot of people have been using these roads, it probably means there’s something good to see along the way.

We moved down past the sign, just a bit farther, and reached the tip of a cliff from which you can see the rest of them – they spread wide like the folds in a paper fan, and the ocean is simply everywhere. Standing there on the cliffs, you feel flight – they are old and creaky, and signs posted everywhere indicate that they could crumble at any moment – but they still evoke flight, no matter how deeply set into the ocean they are. The cliffs are that tall, that imposing, that awe-inspiring that it feels like you are about to sprout wings and coast down the face of the cliffs to the shining ocean below.

I could have stayed all day; we only had a few hours. Our shoes and pant legs were slick with mud, telltale marks of how close we came to a slippery, glory-filled demise. Forget Dublin - for all it's history, I have never seen such a charmless place - Doolin, my friends, is where it's at.

Next up: Praha. Prahabably tomorrow.

:)

berlin

So, I knew I was going to Berlin with my mother and aunt, which, naturally, meant it was going to be very cheap. This was exciting. I was also, however, traveling by myself for the first time. I saw nothing wrong with this, but in retrospect I probably should have expected some crazy antics to go down on the way there.

Well.

Apparently, people from the Netherlands do not take many trains to Germany. They take so few trains, in fact, that SOMEONE high up in the Netherlands rail administration was sitting in his office one day, and thought, "Gee, let's only run trains to Berlin from the Netherlands every four hours!" and all of his cronies applauded and so it was.

This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the Netherlands train website neglects to inform you of a few things. One, by saying "you have five minutes to switch trains," the website actually means, "your train will be late and pull into the station exactly thirty seconds before the train to Germany leaves." Two, just because the train has the word "reserveren" next to it, it does NOT mean that you should stop and ask someone if you need a reservation to get on the train because if you do stop, the conductor will say "no, but you should get on because the train is leaving," and you will turn to get onto the train but the door will slam in your face, the conductor will smirk at you, and the train will pull off into the great white frontier, leaving you slackjawed at platform number two, wondering what the HELL just happened.

So there I was, standing on a train platform in Deventer, the Netherlands, backpack slung over my shoulder, with four hours to kill before my next train pulled in. It figures.

Deventer, as I found out, is a small town, but the streets weave in and out of each other like some ridiculous crochet peice, and finding a computer on which you can email your poor little mother to tell her you'll be four hours late is nigh impossible. It's almost old hat by now to see streets paved with cobblestone instead of pavement, and canals everywhere you look. There were banks everywhere, with huge glass windows that revealed everything that was going on within them - as though I really want to see what's going on inside a bank - as well as were adorable little storefronts peddling jewelry, which dangled and glinted in the sun and small cafes that I passed by longingly, but set my face straight once I saw their menus. Nowhere was there an internet cafe. I began to wonder if this place had internet at all - and then I found, of all things, a Mac Store. IT FIGURES. I sent my email - and started wandering.

Four hours later, I caught my train. Five hours later, I chugged into Berlin and started walking. Forty five minutes later, I got to Bonnie's hotel. Forty seven minutes later, I had a drink in my hand and all was well.

Berlin is such a city, and it seems as though it's awake twenty four seven; it's bigger than Paris, brighter in places than New York, and louder than anywhere I've been. Towering modern architecture meant that we saw stone buildings with pillars crammed up near boxy buildings that gleam with silver and gold plates, and buildings with all clear windows. It would have been a jarring sort of thing, if not for its prevalence in the city. Everything - and I mean everything, from the buildings to the trees to the construction equipment - was decked out in twinkling white lights, so that the entire city was made up of little glowing stars at night. Some buildings had spotlights in front of them, illuminating their faces with bright blue or red. The city was so thoroughly modern that it's hard to tell what makes it stand out from everywhere else I've been, but it did - you can see the sheer size of the city in the crowds of people that bustle from one side of a street to the other, hear it in the honking of car horns (more here than anywhere else I've been), smell it in the exhaust, and just feel it, the city pressing down on you - not on the brink of collapse, but holding you, pinning you tightly.

It's a city so full of history - the wall (you all know which one, I daresay) stands like a crumbling behemoth, tired and in ruins, coated with layers upon layers of withering, fading graffiti. We went to a museum and as tiring as it was to read lines and lines of text, it was a very cool museum; half Berlin Wall history, half nonviolent protest history. The walls were waxy white, but had been lovingly decorated with plaques and photos and newspaper clippings in an extremely endearing way.

Berlin's Jewish Museum was such an experience - the architecture needs to be experienced to be fully comprehended, so I'll settle for saying that it was an altogether educational, moving experience. There is one part of the museum where you are asked to walk across a floor covered in thick metal slabs carved into shouting faces; their mouths are wide open, wailing, and with each step, the noise is loud and echoes like screams up and down the walls. It is absolutely bone-chilling. I don't know that I can adequately relay the experience, so I'll trust that someday, you'll visit the museum so you can see what I'm talking about.

Overall, this weekend was one of relaxation - I spent two and a half days with my mother and aunt; we did a lot of walking, took in some sights, and I paid for one thing - my mother's souvenirs at the Jewish Museum. I ate like a king - well, okay, a plate full of meat and a steak at the cafe in Well isn't exactly eating like a king, and the king's mother probably does not pay for the king's food, but STILL. Good eats.

Next up: Ireland, days before St. Patrick's day - all right.
This weekend: Prague. Let's see if I can catch my blog up before then, hm?

paris

Ah, Paris. City of love.

Is it the city of love? I don't actually know. I may have made that up.

Either way - after Dublin, we cruised our way into Paris, and oh, was it wonderful. The city is huge, sprawling, like a picnic blanket draped over a rocky terrain; viewed from above, it is a checkerboard of black and grey. Our first night there, the city is hugged by a tight gray mist, cramping but cool. Our hotel (not a hostel this trip - we went up one step to a one star hotel. very classy.) clings to the base of Montmartre, a huge hill that rises up out of the flat buildings and winding streets. Endless stone steps clamber up; we climb like mountaineers. I huff and puff by the end, hunched over and clinging to my knees. It is at this point that I realize I should work out more.

A towering white basilica by the name of Sacre Couer tops the hill, guarded by two green statues of horsemen. Three enormous domes protrude from the ceiling, tiled in the same white stone that the rest of the basilica is construced from. At night, tourists and locals alike blend on the steps, sipping wine and eating bread; two children fight with wooden swords, jumping and swinging, an adventure of imagination set against the Parisian skyline. Paris lays down in front of us, wide open and lit up. The Eiffel Tower shines like a beacon in the distance, blue light knifing its way through the mist from the very top.

We retire to our hotel with its fading pink and yellow wallpaper and crumbly brown carpet. The windows peer down upon a busy street, cars zipping by. Buildings light up with neon, and we clutch glasses of cheap, delicious wine and lean over the railing, breathing in cool air and exhaling our breath into spirals.

Our first real day in Paris is a whirlwind of The Sights, capital T, capital S. We begin the day on the Paris Metro, loud and rumbly. We embark on a walking tour of Paris beginning at the Bastille Monument, a tall phallic stone tower that gleams with a golden statue on top; we realize that nothing of the Bastille itself remains on this spot, the only record being this towering thin pole.

"Sorry guys," Katherine says, "Guess it's not here anymore."

We wind through Paris, two baguettes sticking out of Greg's black backpack providing sustinence throughout the day. We keep a bottle green canal to our right most of the time, its sparkling water glistening in the early morning sun.

Destination One: Notre Dame. As in, Hunchback of. I was getting Disney flashbacks the entire time, picturing emerald-clad deformed gentlemen swinging from bell ropes and singing "I Want" ballads.

The ceilings of Notre Dame, inside and out, are positively gravity defying. Stone vaults so impossibly high, and I try to picture people in the Middle Ages carving and creating, and I can't do it. Everything is so perfectly supported, and it is all smooth like glass, even though it's hard and heavy stone. Windows that evoke rainbows and flowers are everywhere; I count fifty before I stop, realizing how futile that effort is.

People, tourists, whatever they are, mill around us. Nine out of ten hold cameras up to the ceiling, despite numerous NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs. Flashes keep going off, illuminating dark corners and making it all look so fake. I don't understand this. A picture cannot capture the immense glory of this place. Notre Dame catches your breah, takes hold of it, and twists it right around. The atmosphere should be serene, but buzzing cameras bring it down. They can try to capture the preciseness of it all, the exactitude of placement. I fixate on the windows with petals of every color, blinking wide and facing the sun. It is stunning.

We move outside and begin our trek across the city. Next stop - the one and only.

That's right, boys and girls. The Eiffel Tower.

Mind you, to get there, we have to pretty much walk across the entire city. That tower is such a tease, because it's so enormous that you can see it from so far away - I'm almost there, you think, when you see it prodding up over the horizon.

No. You're not. It's just really big.

We wander and wind, our feet aching the whole time, but then there it is, a monumental digit scraping away clouds from the blue skies above. It is better in person than in any picture I've ever seen; more solid and real. It has a lace-like quality to it, crossing iron beams forming an intricate pattern of x's and spirals and arches that the eye can't quite fully grasp. Four solid pillars slam into the ground, supporting the obelisk that is the central tower. It is all the same color - they paint it every ten years, someone tells me - a mustardy sort of brown that is most clear when the sun hits the tower in just the right way. It is a soothing, calm and pleasant color.

We climb the stairs halfway up. There are informative placards every few hundred stairs, but we plow on by. I wonder if anyone really stops to read those things. The journey up is almost as harrowing as the journey accross the city to get here, but finally we reach the midway point, where a steadfast elevator pulls us the rest of the way up.

I have realized, being here, that I really like views from high places. Standing on top of the tower, I feel effortless, wind whipping around my head. The view is magnificent, of course, but there's something more than that that keeps me up here. Being so high up on such a creation feels powerful somehow,

French people aren't as bad as pop culture portrays them, at least at first - we run across a language barrier or five, but beyond that, people tend to be rather genial and helpful. But then, I suppose there are stereotypes for a reason, I note, as a family jostles by us, not even looking where they're going. The road around the Arc De Triomphe seems to personify the French - it is a circle of death, with an absurd seventeen roads converging into one roundabout (or so I hear). Pedestrians like us are resigned to crossing through a dank gray underground tunnel, which seems unfair for some reason.

The Arc itself is - well, an Arc. At this point in the day, we are all tired and want to retire for dinner and some more wine. But Napoleon's monument is certainly impressive, adorned with sculpture and inscriptions of France's great victories, now buried in the past behind stereotypes of those damn defeatable French. It figures.

The next day is dominated by the Louvre, which I find myself without words to adequately describe. It is a labyrinth - I half expect a minotaur to plow by. It is a child's maze, each hallway leading into four more hallways, half of which have stairs attached. Every room is ornate - gold doorframes and sculpted wood carvings in every wall and paintings on the ceiling of angels with speckled wings and massive yellow halos.

(The Mona Lisa is quite a letdown, by and by - the crowd around it is so massive that it is about the size of a postage stamp from where we stand, and honestly - I don't get the big fascination with that painting. Thanks a lot, Dan Brown.)

We pass by the inverted glass pyramid - I know people objected to the modern architecture smack dab in the middle of the courtyard of this ancient palace, but I like it. It glows with the sunlight and has a sort of quiet majesty to it. A little boy walks by, pauses. He can't be more than three. He reaches up, straining his arms to reach the point, but it evades him. He lets his arm fall and stares up at it, eyes sparkling and curious.

"Whoa," I hear him mutter.

That pretty much sums up the entire experience.

Paris draws to a close as we board a high speed train, green and brown whistling by the windows. It is a long way home; my eyes waver and shut. I doze for a lot of the trip.

In retrospect, I've realized that I wrote this one in present tense for some reason. I don't know, mixing things up a little bit, I guess.

Next blog: Berlin. This weekend: Back to Ireland.

Luck of the Irish. Allll right.

london & dublin

HELLO. IS ANYONE STILL OUT THERE READING MY BLOG?

I hope so. 

Let's talk about London. My biggest exposure to London prior to this mainly involved the Friends season 4 finale, The One With Ross's Wedding, as well as reading Harry Potter. (And let's face it, the odds of me finding The Leaky Cauldron were slim to none. London's a big city and I don't have a wand. SO ANYWAY.) Beyond that, I didn't know what to expect.

We flew in on the bumpiest Ryanair flight I've taken yet - and that's saying something. It felt like were were flying in the rattle of a very energetic and colossal baby. But we made it, and coasted through back streets past billboards and storefronts until we pulled up in front of the County Hotel. If you've been to the castle before, you know the deal with this hotel. The lobby is sparsely furnished, with crumbly wooden tables and padded chairs; the concierge desk is large, wide and unfriendly - which nine times out of ten could also go for the concierge sitting behind the desk. The rooms, for their part, are tiny and cramped like shoeboxes, brown bunk beds that are about as tall as I am. There's no bathroom attached to your room, just a sink that sticks haphazardly out of the wall; you have to turn the handle four, five times before a feeble stream of water will trickle out. One late night, a fire alarm rang through the halls at four AM - eighty bleary-eyed, VERY unhappy Emerson students crowded together on the sidewalk outside the hotel, puffing anger in our breaths.

The streets of London are both familiar - bright lights, loud noise and brick sidewalks - and unfamiliar - bright red double-decker buses teeter along on their four wheels, and they look do delicately balanced on the road that half the time, I expect them to tip and tumble like toddlers taking their first steps. People kept comparing London to New York or Boston, and I disagree. It's certainly not New York - the buildings are too small, the lights aren't as glaring, and the streets wind and coil. It has Bostonlike qualities, to be sure, but there are too many people, too much happening, and it is just so uniquely London - so old and new at the same time, a city of white stone, so much brighter than Boston, the buildings firm and strong.

We were led on tour after tour after tour in London. Big Ben clambers into the sky and glimmers like gold during the day, bathed in the sun. Trafalgar Square, made of endless white stone, features fountains with statues of stone and bronze that spew water like geysers. The fountains sparkle, the water a crisp and serene blue; white patches glow on the top of the water as evidence of the sun that glows overhead. The entire square seems to glow with an ethereal light, the stones themselves shining bright. Westminster Abbey - sprawling stone floors and soaring vaulted ceilings, with windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, shards of rainbow glass fitted together to create a dazzling display illuminated from the outside in. It was loud in there, surprisingly loud; everyone talks at full volume, and their voices clamber and bounce like restless children through the halls and paths of the Abbey. Tower of London - stone towers connected with winding white paths, the crown jewels sparkling behind thick glass, a field populated by cackling ravens with clipped wings and bills like knives.

I spent time in more museums than I can count over this break; British Museum, National Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum - all in London.  One thing I notice - they all smell the same: old and musty, like a book with yellowing pages. I think my favorite museum was the British Museum: cascading tile floors, with an ocean of a ceiling made up of interlocking white triangles. The artifacts found in these museums are insane - ancient jewels and jars, statues older than the city they live in. I feel like it's redundant to say everything, but the sheer amount of beauty sculpted in white marble still blows me away.

Katherine and I went to see Billy Elliot the Musical one night in London; it was hands down the most wonderful show I have seen in a very long time. I'm by no means a good theater critic, but god, almost everything about Billy Elliot was absolutely astounding - the music, the dancing - I was left with chills and a permanent slackjaw. So beautiful. Wow.

We went to Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford upon Avon, and it was a refreshingly quaint little town, bathed by the sun with buildings of white and brown wood. Shakespeare's garden was very nice, with a gnarled and knotted tree at the center, grown from a cutting of Shakespeare's tree. A calm brown canal slithered around the town, with boats floating on the surface that functioned as ice cream stands and restaurants.

The next stop after Emerson released us was Dublin - it was unimpressively dank, to be honest. Very urban, very modern, very dirty. Trash was scattered on the sidewalks, and the entire city smelled of car exhaust and bacon. One long canal filled with brown water that sluggishly lurked through the city - a chair and an old shopping cart stuck sorely out of the water like miniature Titanics sinking into the murk. Gray clouds smeared themselves across the sky almost the entire time we were there, allowing almost no light to shine through except at the horizon, where a few strings occasionally peered through, feeble and small.

In Dublin, we met up with a girl from Chicago named Brittany who was bright and cheery to match her bright complexion and shiny blonde hair, with a twang to her speech. She was traveling on her own, and joined our group for the two nights we spent in Dublin. We went to the Jameson Distillery and sampled whiskey at eleven in the morning; we stopped by the Guinness Storehouse - the rest of our time was spent wandering through Dublin's winding streets and hopping from pub to pub. The pubs were wonderful, even if the city itself was dank -

stretching wooden floors and walls and ceilings, all of it illuminated by bright lights. There was music in every pub, high-pitched and cheerful, infectious; it put us all in good moods.

The thing about both England and Ireland is this - they speak English. I should have no problem understanding them when they speak.

Yeah. Right.

A combination of different inflection, different accents, and different speeds makes the language I allegedly am fluent in sound like a foreign tongue. It is only when someone articulates that I can understand them if they're simply in passing. If they talk directly to me, so long as they don't speak at the speed of light, I understand them.

We thankfully didn't spend a long time in Dublin - we flew out after two nights. We'd barely gotten into the air, when an announcement crackled into our ears:

"We apologize for any inconvenience, but we've got a warning light on in here, so we've been asked to return to Dublin so we can check this out - we'll alert you when we're about to land."

PERFECT. About five minutes later...

"Folks, the warning light has gone off, but we're still going to 

We rolled to a stop back in the Dublin airport, and had to switch airplanes after about ten minutes on the ground - we trudged from one blue tube to another, the Ryanair airplanes crunched, looking like midget planes in comparison to full-sized airplanes that land and launch around them.

I love flying - especially the first few minutes, right after you've launched into the air. The ground lies down beneath, green and patchy; you can gape at the view for just a moment, before it's gone, washed away by a white blanket that obscures the windows entirely, and you feel yourself moving up, up, up, and the plane bursts like a volcano out of the clouds and you find yourself above them. They spread out in all directions, father than the eye can see - like any classic depiction of heaven. The only things missing are winged babies and gold halos. The sky is blue again, and more clouds hover far from you, just out of reach. Peer down through a break in the clouds, and the ground is so far away - a deep ocean of white, not blue, and it's a long way down. The sun is nothing but a hazy yellow blur, and you feel like Icarus - don't want to get too close. 

We rolled to a smooth stop in Paris - but that's a blog for a little bit later.

I don't know if it's at all interesting, but my first assignment for my ridiculous Travel Writing class was to combine word and image in some way, so I went and made a website from which a lot of this blog was ripped directly. You can see it here if you're at all interested, but the words might be similar to you, and if you've seen my facebook, so are the pictures. But consider it a preview for the Paris blog, if anything. Yeah. ANYWAY.

We're swathed in midterms here at the castle, and next weekend I'm off to Germany to meet up with the one and only Bonnie - should be interesting.

For the record - unlike Mallory, I did not discover famous ancestry in London - but the trip is young.

:)

amsterdam

Amsterdam has a reputation. We all know this. We have all heard of the Dam.

To emphasize, this is what happened when I would tell people I was coming to The Netherlands to study.

Brian: I'm going to The Netherlands.

Stoner Kid from High School at a Party: Where?

Brian: The Netherlands. Like.. Holland.

SKFHSAAP: Where?

Brian: ...Amsterdam.

SKFHSATP: All riiiiiight.

Brian: I'm going to The Netherlands.

A Friend of my Mother's: Where?

Brian: Kind of near Amsterdam.

AFOMM: [eyes widen] Oh. Well, you be careful.

And then when I got back...

Bonnie: So did you go to Amsterdam?

Brian: Yeah, it was great.

Bonnie: So... did you get stoned?

THAT'S MY MOTHER TALKING TO ME. COME ON, GUYS.

But I hit the streets of the Dam this weekend, and let me say it both defied and lived up to my expectations. First of all, when I pictured Amsterdam, I pictured something like New York, large and loud and with noise everywhere - tall buildings and bright lights and, let's face it, sex drugs and more sex.

Well - remember how I said Maastricht was like a blend of modern and antique, separated by a large bridge? Amsterdam was like that - bricks, bricks, bricks everywhere. The streets themselves were paved with warm rust-colored brick, and the buildings were all old and some of them crumbly, stone facades and tiny cramped gray sidewalks. It was surprisingly familiar at this point, speckled and dotted with churches decorated with puffy blue-and-red orbs of concrete, Corinthian pillars framing the windows, and with belltowers rising above us, shining gold gilt highlights on doorframes and corners. Canals criss-crossed the city, deep brown waters churning sluggishly by. 

At the same time, Amsterdam was the first city that really sounded like a city, even if when you looked at it, it didn't quite mesh with the sound. Car horns honked, crowds of people chattered like parrots roosting in trees, talking nonsensically and at an impressively loud volume. Trams of blue and white chug on lines through the streets, such new creations slithering through the brick. At night, the bricks and stones were illuminated by flashing rainbows of neon yellow, green, red. The city was like antiquity gone modern, without losing any of its antique charm.  

Collin said it best when he postulated that "Amsterdam is like Bruges's grandson. You know, it's thirteen and has all the genetics but already has all these tattoos and peircings, and they have to see each other at family reunions but, you know, it's awkward."

We arrived on Friday, and spent the first half of the day with Rob Duckers at a museum containing a replica of the gorgeous Arena Chapel in Padua. The walls are quite literally covered in art, scenes from the life of Mary and Jesus in large blocks, beautiful and tragic stories splayed out in crude but evolving art, bright colors, bordered by overwhelming cobalt blue. 

After the sun went down, a red moon had rose heavily over Amsterdam, the infamously named Red Light District glowing with buzzing crimson bulbs of all shapes and sizes. We went to the Moulin Rouge - a sex show. The front of the building featured neon red outlines of very buxom young ladies in all sorts of poses; we went through the door, black plastic tokens to be exchanged for drinks pressed into our hands. We had to clamber up a tight staircase to make it into the showroom, small stage surrounded by benches that were reminiscent of pews in a church gone horribly degenerate.

Act one: a woman danced around with a candle in certain places. Act two: a woman wrote on a man, a marker clenched in her nether region - impeccable handwriting. Act three: four members of the audience invited on stage - including our own Allie and Rachel - to dance with the performer, and then eat a banana off of her body. ("It was a really good banana," one of them said afterwards.) Act four: a man in a monk's robe gets up on stage - so does the scantily clad performer. One thing leads to another and they have sex for fifteen minutes, and then get up and leave the room to scattered applause. All this amongst bright strobe lights and deep fog. Wow.

The Red Light District, let me tell you. It was such a.. strange experience, because there were the sex workers, separated from me only by a window of glass. Their expressions were of desire, longing, even happiness, but it must have been a mask. They were bathed in the dim red light that hung above their doors. Crowds of onlookers gathered at a safe distance, chattering in languages other than Dutch: English, French, German. It was a bizarre human zoo, and it made me feel mildly uncomfortable, a knot of dehumanization growing and tugging at my insides. 

Incidentally, we had a sex worker come into one of our classes last week and talk about how it's NOT ALL BAD for sex workers, prostitutes, whatever you call them. Some of them choose it as a line of work. Some of them ENJOY the work, for that matter. 

It was still very strange.

The next day, on an educational note, we hit up the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh museum. The former was... an experience. Small, cramped, with crumbling red and yellow wallpaper. I don't know what I can say about it that hasn't been said a million times before, and more eloquently to boot. Anne Frank has become such a martyr, such a face for the millions, and being there, in the place she lived for two years, was strange, suffocating but relieving.

The Van Gogh Museum was art. Lots of it. My favorite things were the scribbles, immaculate doodles on letters and menus, pencil lines over and over creating things far more beautiful than I could ever possibly do. Such talent. You get close to a painting, and it's small dabs of color, messy little lines that, when you step back and take in the whole canvas, are insane blends of color and texture, portraits and landscapes. I never feel as though I can entirely appreciate art. But here, I came pretty close.

That night was bar-hopping, glowing green shots and sweet yellow drinks, ice clacking against the glasses, big smiles and loud laughter and hot, hot pizza and french fries late at night. It is a thudding in my head, a street populated by sex shops with instruments in the windows I couldn't possibly imagine being used by anyone, and when I try to picture it, I feel phantom pain for the people who stick those things ANYWHERE on their body. It is clamoring down dark alleys and bright streets and phallic monuments and dark canals lit by buzzing fireflies of streetlights.

"Dear Amsterdam," Greg said. "STOP IT."

Nice summary.

(Also, for any of you who may care, the above was said specifically in reference to the large population of attractive women who take to the streets of Amsterdam in comparison to the other towns in the Netherlands. Fun fact.)

This weekend is our first travel break: London, Dublin and Paris. When she went to London and Paris in Baby-Sitter's Club Super Special #15: Baby-Sitters European Vacation, Mallory Pike discovered she was related to Shakespeare. What mysteries await me? Time will tell.

brugge

Imagine for me, if you will, the quaintest city you can. What does it look like? Probably lots of brick, right? Maybe you've got some canals, music in the air, grey cobblestones, and old buildings that reach lazily up into the sky.

Now take that image, add french fries, waffles, and the best beer in the world (literally), and you've got Bruges, Belgium. 

That's where I spent my first weekend here in Europe.

Mornings in the Netherlands start really late. At 7:30 am in Boston, for instance, the sun is clear overhead, bringing light to anyone who wants or needs to be awake to go to work, go for a run, head to class, whatever. In Well, however, 7:30 am is nowhere near light. The moon still hangs in the sky, hazy and white, and there is still a smattering of stars on the blue velvet sky of the early morning. You can imagine, then, how disorienting it is to be standing at a bus stop, waiting for your ride to the train station, when the moon is still firmly glowing up above you.

We caught the 7:33 bus from Well to Venlo, one of the two larger cities nearby. We apparently chose the bus that all the Dutch children were taking to get to school, because at every stop we rolled up to, more and more young Dutch people clambered aboard, bringing a veritable ton of hair product along with them.

It's strange, really, to be surrounded by people younger than you, all chattering animatedly in a language you don't understand. Let the sound slip out of focus, close your eyes, and it's like you're on a schoolbus at home; listen in, hone in on the words, and they're nothing you've ever heard before. This happened on the way there, and again on the train ride home - loud, unruly Dutch adolescents acting exactly like you'd expect them to, the same hearty laughter and slightly rebellious tone of voice - in a different language. Surreal.

The train ride from Venlo to Bruges was around four hours long, with four train transfers - around one every hour. Each train we took was different - the first, from Venlo to Tilburg was what I can only call Hogwarts Express style - carts of six with sliding glass doors. Our group of ten had to split into 6 and 4 - I was in the cart with four people, and two Dutch peopled joined our cart - a young Asian girl with a worn red notebook clutched in her hand, and an older woman with tight curls of gray. They kept exchanging knowing looks and smiles - whether they meant "Oh, wonderful, we're stuck with Americans," or "Oh, how precious these Americans are," we weren't sure.

The second train was yellow, bright sunny yellow. The seats were also yellow, a deeper, more mustardy yellow, sprinkled with dots of paprika and cinnamon colored fabric. The train itself was exceptionally long, a blue and yellow snake winding its way across the Netherlands, almost from one end to the other. The train started before I really realized what was happening - we'd be at a standstill for the longest time, and then a slight jerk, and we were chugging away. Each time, it was a surprise.

We pulled into Bruges at around two, and stepped immediately onto a bus that carted us closer to our hostel. We checked in, and found not a grimy, gray place, but a bright room, with walls of yellow and green, and tall, thin bunk beds with grey metal supports.

Bruges is absolutely picturesque, with architecture that echoes every picture of a medieval town I've ever seen. We spent the majority of our first day there just walking around, taking in the sights and sounds and smells. The roofs of houses are all red tile, and about half of the buildingfronts had these perpendicular stair-shaped roofs, pointing like fingers up into the sky. The streets and sidewalks blend, all paved with deep gray cobblestone, the only separation being a thin line of cement. Cars and buses and horse-drawn carriages clatter by, the air flying past. Depending where you go, the smell of food tickles and tantalizes.

The center of Bruges seemed to be the Markt, a large open plaza with a gilt bronze statue at the center. All around the square were restaurants and shops, peddling lace and french fries. The focal point of the Markt is the Belfry, a pillar of brick rising from the ground, soaring up, up, up like a colossal game of Jenga that's been rounded off. Princess turrets rise up from landings, and even further up, the tower is capped by a chess rook magnified a thousand times. Gold numbers mark the time; they illuminate at night. Bells clink and clang, deep resonating booms that parade through the Markt for several minutes. Six different flags billow in the wind on the front of the building. We climbed up to the top of the Belfry on the second day, and all of the city spread out before us, a patchwork quilt of red and black tiles, long arching gray streets, rippling canals of blue and green, and the spires of cathedrals reaching higher and higher, never reaching the immense height of the Belfry.

Each building in Bruges is different - I can't possibly tell you what they were all for. One was a gray stone castle, accented with red. One was white like pearls, decorated with golden statues of men and women, holding swords in each hand. Trees reach for each other over canals that weave through the city, empty branches like fingers extended into the air.

I expected some things when we decided we were going to Belgium. I expected waffles and chocolate. I expected expensive food, and I expected beer. What I did not expect was that they - love - french fries. They LOVE them in Bruges - there are two competing french fry carts out in front of the Belfry that have been there since the 1800s. Let me tell you - they have every right to be crazy about fries. They are crispy, crunching just slightly in your mouth. Warmth spills out of them as soon as you take a bite, fresh and just slightly salty. It is rich-tasting, most of all, and they sell an innumerable amount of sauces to go with them. Spicy, and sweet, and mayo (!) and everything you can possibly imagine. It was delightful.

There were, of course, waffles and beer and sights involved in the weekend as well. The second day we were there was the day most chock full of food and adventure. The aforementioned climb to the tower happened that day, as did our waffle tasting. Greg will tell you that the snack waffles we got for one euro at the train station exceeded the four euro waffles we sat down for in the restaurant, but I'm still undecided. The real waffle was rich, sugary, with just the right amount of crunch. Mine was drizzled with chocolate, and dusted with powdery white sugar, all atop a checkerboard of warm yellow buttery waffle. I salivate just thinking about it.

We had something of a beer-related adventure, as well. Our first night, we went to the pub in our hostel, and chose beers at random. Katherine, like the rest of us, simply selected something from the menu in hopes that she'd like it. The rest of us received our beers without hassle, but not Katherine.

"Oh," the bartender said with a smile after hearing her order. "The best beer in the world. Hold on, I need to get permission to sell this to you."

We were all dumbfounded, jaws scraping the floor as the young blonde bartender walked off. What did she MEAN, best beer in the world? She came back, shaking her head.

"Sorry," she told Katherine, "I can't sell that to you." She asked if we had a map, and we procured one for her. The bartender took a pen and marked off a place on the map, and wrote down a word on the side of the map. It's not the name of the beer, the bartender told us, but they'll know what you mean.

"You're breaking into the Belgian Beer Underground," Greg exclaimed, and we all agreed that Katherine had to go through with this. So the next night, we made our way through the streets of Bruges, and landed ourselves in front of this bar. It was altogether unremarkable, tall glass windows tinted brown, a facade of wood and brick, with candles dancing and lights swinging from the ceiling. 

"Don't bring friends," the bartender had told Katherine, "or they definitely won't serve it to you." So alone she went, the rest of us huddled together on the sidewalk, teetering slightly from the cold, waiting in anticipation to see what would happen. This is all secondhand from Katherine, mind you, but this is what happened:

Katherine approached the bar, settled in on a stool by herself. The bartender came to take her order, and she articulated the code word she'd scrawled on her hand in black ink. 

"Oh, yes," he said, "I need to check and see if I can sell that to you." An echo of the bar at the hostel. Off went the bartender, who obtained permission and emerged from the back room of the bar with an unlabeled, unmarked, brown bottle, with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about it. He popped the cap, poured some of it into a clear glass, and handed it to Katherine. She took a sip.

"Each sip was different," she told us after, smile stretching across her face and dancing in her eyes. Each of us, one at a time, went into the bar to take a sip. I can't account for multiple sips, but the one I took, for my part, tasted almost like honey with a light beer aftertaste. It tingled in my chest after I sipped it, reminding me of that one sip for several minutes after the fact. Katherine kept the bottle, and further research on what we found out was called the Trappist Westvleteren proved that it was, in fact, the best beer in the world.

Other images of Bruges blend in my mind: a hazy, yellow bar that played soft jazz music under the cacophony of voices. A tall, thin glass full of bright green cocktail that tasted of fruit. Laughter and inappropriateness, lying on the chain link fence beds in our hostel room. We went to the chocolate museum, and saw huge ornamental sculptures made entirely out of chocolate of all colors. 

In an out of the way cathedral, one of many in this city, lives the Madonna and Child, one of the only Michaelangelo sculptures that has been taken outside of Italy. It is an entirely surreal experience to be standing in front of an artifact like that, smooth white marble, emotion glowing from the woman sitting there looking down at her child. Voices hush as people approach it - they stand in silence, maybe taking a picture, maybe just looking, basking in the statue that keeps its sculptors memory alive forever. The entire cathedral was like that, epic windows of stained glass with colored light, and tall wooden staircases, large crosses adorning the walls. It was like a history textbook come to life, everything dusty and old becoming real, alive in everything around me. Our breath still fogged inside the church, but heat from candles distorted the air, and it was both very cold and very warm at the same time.

In the church, in front of several statues, were altars of burning candles that visitors could light themselves for just one euro. I saw a family of three, a mother, father and child, standing in front of one of the statues - the father was explaining something in a language I couldn't identify. The parents walked off, moving to the next artifact, but the little boy paused. He couldn't have been more than seven, cropped dark hair and green sweater with sleeves just slightly too long, fringes tickling at his fingers. He lingered there for just a minute longer, still in front of the rows and rows of candles. The candlelight was reflected in his eyes, and he didn't smile, but there was something content, some deep wonder sparking inside him, lit like all the tall, white candles that melted away before his eyes. His father called to him. He wavered in place for a second, that look of curiosity still on his face, before he turned and ran to catch up to his family.

It was, without a doubt, entirely magical. 

I want to finish with something I scrawled down in my notebook at around 9 pm on our first night there:

"The only home I've ever known is miles across an ocean. Pavement of gray stone in arches, a waterfall of twinkling lights, and the streets of an unfamiliar city at night. I couldn't be happier."

thank goodness for today.

linden

Having the drinking age in The Netherlands be sixteen is cool, I guess, for a lot of reasons, not the last being that we can go to bars and hang out and have drinks and everything. We went to the Linden last night, which for those of you reading this who don't know, is one of the bars in Well. It was our first real night here, so a lot of the castle kids headed down to legally purchase some beer, wine, or other assorted drink - but as we all speak only English and quite a lot of these Dutch people speak only Dutch (go figure), it was a little difficult to order anything but 'beer' or 'wine.'

(One of the problems, incidentally, with the low drinking age, at least according to straight men like Greg, is that "you can't feel safe checking out any of the girls because they might be sixteen!")

I'll tell the truth - I don't usually like beer. The taste just doesn't appeal to me - too tart, toosomething, I'm not quite sure. I think, though, beer tastes like whatever color it is. The lighter the beer, the lighter the taste - not in terms of... heaviness, but in terms of taste. Does that make sense? A very light beer tastes yellow. I had my first really dark beer last night and OH MY GOD. It didn't taste at all like any beer I'd ever had, It was sweet, tasted browner, like iced tea. Delectable.

The bartenders were all women last night, women with crooked teeth, huge smiles, and short spiky hair. Actually, come to think of it, a lot of these Dutch people have short, spiky hair. I tell you, the amount of hair product collectively in that room could probably grease... I actually don't know. What kinds of machines need grease? Printing presses? A lot of hair gel, is the point. That whole 'hair flat but flipped up in front' that caught on in fifth grade is apparently still cool in the Netherlands, especially with young boys.

Oh, yes, that's right, there were tons of children running around the bar.

That's because the people in Well are all preparing for Carnival - yes, that Carnival. (I think.) They take these things VERY seriously. They tell us they've been rehearsing for this thing for weeks. And we saw firsthand just how intense Carnival will be.

Let me back up a little.

So, we get there, and it appears to be a very normal bar - or at least it fits my mental image of a bar. Everything is made of smooth wood; a rich, deep brown, pockmarked with spots of darker brown. There is a light haze of cigarette smoke in the air, and the lights are dim and swinging from the ceiling; a bright, jarring yellow slot machine dings in the corner. It's nice, sure, and the bartenders are pleasant.

Then a man wearing a long blonde wig, purple lipstick, and a black skirt falling just below indecent wandered out of the bathroom.

It took just a second for us to double-take.

In the Linden, there is a door marked "Toilette," and going through it leads to a short hallway; two open doors lead to bathrooms on your right. Further down the hallway is a closed door. From behind the door was a muffled thump-thump of music. Like Harry Potter drawn to the door of the Department of Mysteries, so were we drawn to this closed mystery door.

We peeped, we peeked, and I don't think I can articulate in words what was going on behind that door.

It was a thudding in our ears and children with red and black facepaint running around in blue jumpsuits. Flashing rainbow lights and men in huge costumes and towering, shimmering hats. Screaming, yelling, singing along in Dutch -  oh my lord, was it ridiculous. Every so often, someone would wander out of the super secret rehearsal, bedecked in sparkles and streamers, would yammer in Dutch for a little while, then turn back to Narnia.

We weren't allowed in. A very large Dutch woman told Greg, my roommate, that he couldn't come in.

"No," she said, "you not in here. Back to your cafe."

Greg backed off quickly, or so I hear.

Those Dutch people sure are crazy.

In the bathroom, I was spoken to twice in Dutch by middle-aged men. The first asked me a question - while I was peeing, mind you, and I know that might be TMI, but deal with it because I'm not changing it. I looked at him for a second, and then tried to say "English" in Dutch - "Engles" - and he laughed. I must have succeeded, because he switched to English for the rest of our conversation. This is how that went:

Drunk Dutch Gentleman: "Ohhh - how are you?"

Brian: "???!!!??!?"

DDG: "You sleeping?"

Brian: (attempt at casual laughter) "No, not really."

DDG: "Carnival, ehhh?" (gestures in the direction of the Narnia party)

Brian: "Yeah, it sounds like fun."

DDG: "You no have Carnival, yes?"

Brian: "No, we don't."

DDG: "Ah. You will enjoy!"

Brian: "I'm sure I will!"

He then departed the bathroom and returned to the party. I paused to regain my bearings, then returned to the rainbow-light-less part of the bar.

A second time, I walked into the bathroom and it was a little more crowded, and a balding gentleman started garbling at me in Dutch, and didn't stop. I think he might have been trying to tell me all the toilets were taken, but he just. didn't. stop. So, awkwardly, I left.

I returned to a table where several friends were deep in conversation about Carnival with a jolly Dutch man named Oro. He was wearing a pointy periwinkle blue hat sequined with darker blue sparkles and decorated with blue and white tassels. It glittered and waved whenever he moved his head. Gold and silver medals danced and clacked on the lapels of his blue suit coat. He was, as we found out, the emcee of Carnival - a very big deal.

All around Well, we've been seeing this neon bird symbol, and one of us asked Oro what the deal was. He explained that every town has its own symbol for Carnival, and Well has the bird. Oro gestured to a carved wooden bird hanging around his neck.

Curious, Collin asked what the symbol for Venlo, a nearby city, is.

"Oh," said Oro. "You know. It is... the chicken, but... not the chicken with the wings." He flapped his arms here for effect. "The chicken... with the balls," he said, struggling for the word. "The one that... that fucks the chicken," he finished, thrusting his hips.

We all stared, slackjawed, laughing, and then Collin burst out, "A rooster?!"

"Yes!" cried Oro, hitting Collin on the arm. "Rooster!"

The one that fucks the chicken.

Chicken fuckers.

I mean, seriously.

Whoa. Okay.

I start class tomorrow, which blows my mind. It feels like such a vacation here.

I think I ought to peel back and give those of you who haven't been to the castle a better visual, so we'll talk more about that in a little bit.

Meanwhile..

We've (still) got the party with us.