On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Blast from the Past: EUROPE TRIP 2007

In my effort to complete all the tasks on the inappropriately titled “Things to do before I leave London” list I made some time ago, I will now be blogging about ALL of my Europe trip but only with highlights and impressions, because as time wears on I fear I have too much going on to write individually on each place. Let’s see where this takes us…

Munich

Our next stop after Berlin was Munich. It is a beautiful city with a remarkable history, which is preserved through the massive rebuilding project following the war. Interestingly, most of the buildings in the city are no more than 60 years old, though they look to be hundreds of years old. This is a major contrast to Berlin, which rebuilt its entire city with new buildings, which given the Brutalist architectural period was a mistake in some cases, but exciting in others. In Munich we had an amazing walking tour with Ozzy, the self-proclaimed only black man in Munich. He may have been right. As you can imagine you have to be exuberant to be the only anything in a city, and exuberant Ozzy was. Interesting to not that our tour guide in Berlin was an Aussie, and in Munich we got an Ozzy. Laugh, it’s hilarious. Some highlights from Munich:

• The Augustiner Brau, where our waiter insisted on calling us his “brothers from another mother” and gave us all “American Hi-Fives” for attempting to pronounce the names of German food. It was delicious.
• The delicious sausages “mit Brochen,” which are basically meat, bread, and mustard. What else is there?
• The Olympic park and BMW museum, where Brandon, Becky, Eddie and I acted like kids again – chasing swans, jumping on trampolines and running in the grass.

Salzburg

We might have picked the most beautiful day ever to visit Salzburg, which was lucky since we were only going to be there for that one day. We (or at least Becky and I) took full advantage of our time, stopping for lunch at a lovely sandwich stop (The Sandwich Corner), seeing the Residenzplatz and its famed fountain, hitting the seriously high-fashion shopping streets, seeing Mozart’s birthplace, getting ice cream, and taking the fast fortress funicular full force to the top of a hill where we could see all of Salzburg and the beautiful Austrian mountains in the distance. At this point we met up with Brandon and Eddie to have an Italian dinner… I guess to prepare for Italy the next day? Anyway the local Salzburgian cuisine did not look all that appetizing. After dinner Becky and I stopped in for crepes at cute shop on the way back to the hostel. We (Becky, me and another American couple that had the same crepes idea) stayed until close, or perhaps past close as we watched the owner come out and start counting the day’s earnings on the table perhaps trying to give us a hint. I think the entire day in Austria was a highlight of the whole trip, so I will leave out the bullet list this time.

Venice

In London shortly after our trip around Europe, I was watching the British comedian Al Murray talking about Venice. He said, only in Italy would they take a flooded city that smells like crap and call it beautiful. I found it even funnier after having been to Venice. Granted, it is beautiful, the architecture is as it was hundreds of years ago, and the canals and complete lack of motor vehicles is charming, but overall I found it to be overrated. Most of our days were spent shoulder to shoulder with other tourists, completely lost in a maze of unmarked streets. To be honest, though, it wasn’t being lost that got to me. I think that often the best way to see a city is to get lost in it, but there seemed to be literally nowhere we could go that wasn’t packed full of people. Regardless of the crowds and tourist trap feel, there were definitely highlights:

• Making sandwiches in the Piazza San Marco and listening to free live music provided by a restaurant close by.
• Seeing the architecture I had been reading about for around a year in all its Italian Gothic glory.
• The campground we stayed in, Alba d’Oro (Golden Sunset), was awesome. The people were so much more relaxed than in the city, and they had their own bar and grocery store, neither of which featured the ridiculous markup we found on “The Island.”

Florence

Florence, on the other hand, was beautiful. I could not have been happier. It was the Italy I had expected to see. Rolling hills, relaxed attitude, and delicious food. We saw the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, Boboli Gardens, and the most delicious kebabs of our lives. One good story is that when we arrived at our hostel, we stood in front of the door labeled “95″ for several minutes wondering if we had the address completely wrong, because the building looked more like an office building than any hostel we had seen. Finally we rang the doorbell and the door buzzed open. We entered into a giant marble room with a huge staircase and hear from above, “Hello?” “Is this the “Hostel Santa Croce?” “Yes, up here.” We proceeded up the stairs and entered into what appeared to be this man’s apartment. His computer was all set up in the corner, where he was clearly webcam-chatting with hot Italian babes. We realized that what was billed as a hostel was in reality this guy’s guest apartment. But it was also probably the nicest place we stayed. It had three beds downstairs, two in a loft upstairs, a balcony, a TV, a refrigerator, and board games! Highlights:

• Sunset from the Piazza Michelangelo, which has amazing views of the city.
• Sunset the next day on the river, lighting up the Ponte Vecchio from behind (and at the same time listening to an unwitting Italian get accosted by three very Southern women… “Do ya’ll have MySpace?”)
• Florence’s best Pub Crawl, which visited 4 pubs and then dropped us off at a club to dance the night away. These pub crawls are really made by the people who are on them, and we had a great group so it was a fun time.
• The best kebab ever made. After a long walk back from the club we stopped in for a kebab (kebab shops are everywhere all across Europe, by the way). It was delicious, and I think the key were the french fries added in with the usual meat, yogurt sauce, tomatoes and lettuce. Amazing.

Rome

Rome continued to restore my faith in Italy as a beautiful country. It still felt relaxed and had the beauty of Florence, but also felt a bit more like a “big city,” which I liked. There was obviously a LOT to see in Rome, and I think we did everything we wanted to do. I think this story is better told through highlights, because there are a lot:

• The Colosseum: We saw it first the night we arrived, when it was already dark, and then again when we went back for a tour, which leads me to the…
• Crazy Italian tour guide, who along with being overtly racist (“don’t be like the Japanese and just follow in a line”), and sexist (“in ancient Rome, men could sit down and women had to stand! High five!”), was also extremely loud screamed into his microphone as though we didn’t all have the little earpieces to hear what he was saying, effectively overloading the speaker and making it more effective to just turn the earpiece off and listen to him directly. Which leads me to…
• Mike the reserved British tour guide, who took our group to the gardens and ruins across from the Colosseum and continued to enforce stereotypes just as well as his ridiculous Italian counterpart, telling dry jokes that I felt I was the only one laughing at.
• The Trevi Fountain, whose beauty was probably signaled by the fact that there must have been 400 people just sitting in front of it in awe.
• The roof garden our hostel had, where we drank Italian wine and played Trivial Pursuit (English Family Edition, which proved impossible for the usual reason: too many questions about Cricket!)
• Tour of the Vatican, which we did with Mike (the British tour guide), because he did such a great job the day before. Arranging a tour of the Vatican meant we not only got the guide but we also got to jump the queue and go straight in, which despite requiring us to be there at 8:15 am was a lifesaver. Which brings me to the…
• Sistine Chapel, which really is all it is rumored to be, making it all the more disheartening when people wouldn’t abide by the constant requests for silence.
• The coffee chop around the corner where we could get a cappuccino and a pastry for 1.50 and where the beautiful Italian waitresses didn’t speak a word of English (which became the gauge for authenticity).
• The Zoo, where Brandon and I once more relived our childhood
• The Pantheon… what more can I say? It’s The Pantheon.
• The Spanish Steps, which were beautiful by any standard and overlooked all of Rome.
• The random protest/parade that Eddie, Brandon and I encountered and decided to follow along its route, disobeying all warnings that Americans studying abroad shouldn’t take part in demonstrations political or otherwise. This one appeared to be police-sanctioned and non-violent though, and anyway we couldn’t resist the giant Papier Mache whale blasting techno music and encouraging hundreds of Italians to dance ridiculously in the streets.
• The most amazing meal ever, which involved one question: “Red or White?” The rest was left up to the kitchen. We were brought courses of lentils, crisps, mozzarella, olives, salad, roast pork, cured ham, pasta, mandarin orange juice, endless bread, cheesecake, and of course pasta. All for 20 Euro. Highly recommended, and easily the best meal of the trip.

Barcelona

The final stop on our trip was Barcelona, on the coast of Spain. I had been there twice before and so was content to relax a little and see some parts of it that I hadn’t seen before. For the most part Eddie and Brandon seemed like they wanted to relax as well, so it worked out. To recap, we saw the Gaudi cathedral (La Sagrada Familia), and Parc Güell, where Gaudi lived and designed much of the ornamental architecture in the park around his house. We also went to the Barcelona Aquarium, the largest in all of Europe, and as usual relived our childhoods. Highlights:

• The Hello BCN hostel and the crazy Canadians and Australians we met there.
• Drinking Sangria in Parc Güell and looking out over the city.
• Laying out on the beach drinking Fanta on chairs you are supposed to rent, and leaving before the attendant could collect our money.
• Tapas with Amanda and her Dad, who ended up being in Barcelona at the same time as us.
• Paella Mixta near the beach with Eddie and Brandon.
• Watching a pickpocketing duo unsuccessfully try to rob Brandon on the Metro while he spun around in circles, causing them to do the same.
• Completing the circle of childhood-reliving at the Aquarium watching sharks swim overhead, taking pictures of each other on giant frogs, and generally getting more excited about sea life than any of the 3rd graders that were there with us.

And that was the trip that was Europe Trip 2007. In retrospect I think it is the kind of trip you can only do once, but you also need to do it once. When I go back to any of those places I definitely want to dedicate more time and see some off-the-beaten-path sorts of things, but for a first impression I think we hit each city for a good amount of time.  All in all I was surprised how well I dealt with living out of a backpack for three weeks and moving every few days to a totally new city sometimes with a totally new language. It, much like the entire experience of studying in London, has given me a new confidence that I can step out of my comfort zone and take on new places, which literally opens up a world of possibilities for after I graduate, which is getting closer and closer!

Exeunt. 

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