Photos from the land of the Bratwurst

Thank goodness for my Italian cinema class, or I would never have had enough time to upload all of these pictures on the school's extraordinarily slow server. Here is a (more or less) chronological presentation of my German adventure.

This is me in front of the smallest airport in the world, a.k.a. Rome Ciampino airport, at about 6:30 a.m. Friday morning. It was quite a trek to get there, but when you only get about two hours of sleep, everything is far more exciting than it should be.

We flew on a ryanair flight, which was my first small european airline. It was a little sketchy, because for some reason, people weren't allowed to sit in rows three or four ... they said it was for safety reasons, which was a tad disconcerting

But we made it to Germany, and immediately embarked on our search for David Hasselhoff. If he's not in Germany, where would he be??

A cool church we found on our hunt ...

A delicious bratwurst lunch for just 1,50 euro on the side of the street. YUM.

When we got lost that night trying to find a restaurant for dinner, we stumbled upon this giant, brightly-lit EU sign in the middle of a park. Apparently Germany is very happy to be a part of the union.

Me and my buddy, Frankfurt.

This was the most amazing place I've ever been -- a gummy bear store, with more gummies than you could possibly imagine. I bought a bag of sours and a bag of regular gummy bears, and now, three days later, they're all gone. I almost bought this gargantuan red gummy bear (I swear it weighed a pound) for Liam, but I was afraid it would go stale by the time he would get it. I also would have mailed it to him if it hadn't weighed a pound ... seriously, it was amazing

We took a train to Mainz (pronounced mines), a small town outside of Frankfurt, because someone said it was cool. They were wrong. But we thought David Hasselhoff might be there, so we walked around a while, anyway. Turns out he wasn't there. We left immediately.

This is the mall in Frankfurt. It's so weird, because it's all built up. It's about 100 feet across, but seven stories tall, with a million escalators in the middle. Strange!

In a train station on our five-hour trek back to the Hahn airport. It was very easy to get to Frankfurt, but very difficult to get back!

The only American flag I've seen anywhere in Europe ... on a giant dancing hotdog ... in the airport ... in Hahn, Germany. You can tell that Europeans (especially Germans) respect Americans enormously...

That's all there is for now. This week I am just going to school and still recovering from all the weekend's Apfelwein. Friday, I'm off to France for Versailles, Paris and who knows what else?

Arrivederci!

Woo ist David Hasselhoff?

My last weekend was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. After a ridiculously early morning commute to the airport outside of town and a somewhat sketchy Ryanair flight, I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, (and by in, I mean technically 70 km west of the town) with no place to stay and really no idea what there even is to do in Frankfurt.

Turns out, there's not too much. But after finding a hostel (and a new half-German half-Italian friend -- and unofficial tour guide), I saw the sights, did some shopping and drank far too much Apfelwein (apparently what Frankfurt is known for).

I also discovered, with my extremely limited German vocabulary, that people will be much nicer to you if you just try... no matter how you butcher it. Luckily, one of my roommates here in Rome spent six years in Germany, so she recorded some phrases on my personal recorder, which basically saved my life. My German for the weekend included:

*Woo ist ... toiletten/hostel/David Hasslehoff (Where is the bathroom/ the hostel/ David Hasselhoff?)
*Ine grosist bier (I would like your largest beer)
*Entschuldigung Sie (Excuse me)
*Danke shon (Thank you very much ... but FYI, they don't think it's as funny as you do to sing the Wayne Newton song)

I don't have much time to post all my pictures, but here are a few to get by until I can get them up after (or during?) class tomorrow:

This is me break dancing in front of old-town Frankfurt. The arc in the background used to be a gate that closed off the city. And of course, by break dancing, I mean that I tried to a cartwheel and I just looked like an idiot. :o)

Here's me and my grosist bier. I got a hefeweizen in honor of Kim ... :o)

This is me in front of the capitol building in Frankfurt. That's the EU flag, Germany flag and Frankfurt flag, left to right.

This is Frankfurt's financial district as viewed from the top of its mall (which was the most bizarre place I have ever seen). Apparently, Frankfurt is the second largest financial hub in Europe, behind London.

This is Frankfurt at night from across the river Main (pronounced mine), where our hostel was located.

Finally!

So I have been in Rome for nearly two weeks now, so I'm thinking it's about time for a post. The internet situation is really weird here, because the connection at school is very slow and I don't think I am going to get Internet at home (it would apparently be slower than at school). So, sorry, but this is the best I can do.

I haven't taken a lot of pictures here, but here are a few from my first weekend in the city:

This is me atop the Vittorio Emmanuele building.

Here is an anti-Vatican march. It was really interesting -- there were hundreds of people marching to separate church and state. Even though the vatican is technically its own country within Rome, there is a lot of political involvement there ...

La Fontana di Trevi. I already threw in a euro, which means I'll return to Rome someday. :o)

The Roman Forum. The column behind my right arm is where they beheaded Cicero.

Il Coloseo!

That's all I have time to post for now. I'll be honest -- I'm in class, and it's about to end. I have a bunch more pictures (including from my trip to the hill behind Trastevere and my excursion to see the Pope!) from the last week and a half to post. So I'll try to do that ... sometime.

For now, my plans for the next few days include a wine tasting tomorrow night, then very early Friday I head off to Frankfurt, Germany, for three days. Whooooo....

Arrivederci!

Il mio aparamento a Roma

Ciao amici! Well, I've finally made it. I arrived in Roma last Thursday, took a taxi to my new beautiful apartment and things have been great ever since. Rome is amazing, and I'd love to post a thousand beautiful pictures, but the internet connection here at school is being stubborn today. So here's what I managed, some pictures of my lovely new Roman apartment, just minutes walking from the Pantheon.

I share the apartment with seven other girls from the program, and most of them are great. We've spent the last couple of nights cooking each other dinner (even I cooked!), wandering around the city and eating plenty of gelato ... luckily, there's a gelato shop with more than 50 flavors right around the corner.

Here is my itty bitty shower. At least I haven't flooded it ... yet ...

This is my bathroom. It's cold, but it's spacious ... for an Italian apartment.

This is one of my lovely roommates, Sandra, in her's and Kristi's bedroom. My bedroom is very similar, but the curtains are red. The beds in all the rooms are ridiculously tiny. But if you comment to an Italian about the size of anything (beds, showers, whatever), they will, in true Italian style, tell you that it's because Italians aren't as fat as Americans. That was the first lesson I really learned here ... there's no political correctness in Italy. They say things straight up, so if you don't want to know what they're really thinking ... don't ask.

This is our living room, complete with TV (but no English channels) and two tables for eating and working. That's my roomie Sarah on the couch, reading a trashy romance novel.

And this is the view from my window. If you take the first right there and walk straight for three minutes, you hit the Pantheon, which I'll try to post pictures of later ... if this Internet thing ever gets worked out.

That's all I think I can manage for now. But I'll hopefully be able to post plenty of pictures soon of Rome, hands-down the best city in the world.

Carnivale a Venezia

I spent the last three days in Venice for Carnivale season, and even though it rained the entire time, I can honestly say that I've never had more fun in my entire life. From seeing an Italian ska band to riding in a gondola, and meeting gypsy accordion players to wearing a cape and playing with a plastic sword, this entire weekend was incredible.

I don't have all of the pictures here, but this is a start. Most of the fun at-night pictures are on other peoples' cameras, so I'll post some when I can get them e-mailed to me.

Anyway, this is how Carnivale went down:

We got to Venice after a 4-hour bus ride and a 30-minute boat ride. It was rainy and freeeeeezing! I think it was under 30 degrees the whole weekend. But once we got there, checked into our hotel (a nunnery), broke away from the tour of church after church after church (pretty, but once you see 100, you've seen them all) ... Anyway, after all that, we, of course, got lost. But we found a carousel and some candied peanuts, and we didn't even care that we had no idea where we were.

Here's me on the carousel. My roommate, Sarah, who is also from ASU, is behind me there. She'll also be one of my seven roommates once we get to Roma.

Here's me and Annaliss, another of my future Roman roommates, at dinner. We ate at a place called Ae'Oche, which means goose. This was the place mat. We thought it was funny. Despite the humor, I had the best pizza I've ever eaten in my life - pizza with eggs and asparagus. DELICIOUS.

There are several pictures missing here in my chronology of my trip to Venice. I apparently took NO pictures from Friday night, but in a rundown, a group of us were heading to la Piazza San Marco, where there's a large church and the Doges Palace, but we never made it. Along the way we found a live ska band playing (in italian) in a piazza, and it was a blast. We hung around, met the band (and my future husband, Domenico, the trombone player) and bought some CDs. All in all, a great night. Unfortunately, our 1 a.m. curfew in the nunnery called us home before Domenico and I could elope. Oh well.

(update: in the meantime, here is a picture of Domenico off the band's web site:)

This is a picture from Saturday morning of me with some Carnivale folk outside the Doges palace. We never made it inside, because ...

We got our faces painted. Much more my type of art, anyway. ;o) This is me with the clown who painted my face.

Here's a closeup of my face. The clown was excited that the purple matched my hat, and the gold matched my hair. Fun.

After some shopping (btw, I'm broke now. Wire me some money?), a group of us took a gondola ride. This was one of the best experiences of my life. We got to see some parts of Venice that we wouldn't otherwise, and our rower was really awesome. Although, he wouldn't sing for us ... Sad!

But he did teach Annaliss how to row the gondola.

The best part of the weekend? CAPES. Sarah and I bought our Carnivale capes, which keep you surprisingly warm. Which was good, since we were outside watching acrobats, dancing, getting lost, being led back by a gypsy accordion procession and talking the nuns into letting us back inside well past curfew ... I again, somehow, took NO pictures of that night, but I know for a fact that Annalis did, so I'll post those when I can.

Here's me, way too bright (and too early) on Sunday morning at the Guggenheim museum.

Here's me and Sarah on the Accademia bridge over the grand canal, before boarding our boat and bus back to Firenze.

What's next: We're in Florence for the next few days, finals for our intensive language classes are on Wednesday, and Thursday, we're off to Roma!! I can't wait, but I do think I will miss Florence. I ended up liking it much more than I thought, but it will be good to be able to stop living out of a suitcase and to have an apartment with internet access 24/7. Until then ... Arrivederci!