May Break III: Don't Panic

I recently finished reading a fine series of books written by a brilliant man named Douglas Adams. In this series, a small, black device plays a semi-trivial role; the device is called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and on its cover is inscribed "Don't Panic."

Don't Panic. Maybe that should have been the theme for Pug, Tymona, and my return trip from Greece. The story begins as we get off of a plane that flew from Athens to Stockholm. The next leg of our trip had us getting on a plane that flew from a different airport in Stockholm to Brussels, Belgium, and we had three hours to find this airport. But, as some travels go, things didn't work out as perfectly as we had hoped. In reality, the first airport in Stockholm was not in Stockholm at all. Oh, and neither was the second. We asked two ladies at information about how we could go about getting from Airport A to Airport B — I will continue to refer to them without names because, well, I don't know the names — and she told us that a bus goes between the two, looked at our itinerary, and decided we wouldn't make it. She then proceded to not help us at all. Well, we went about catching a train to Stockholm, which seemed like a better idea than sulking in Airport A about how we would never get home. Once in Stockholm, we asked a few people there about buses and trains that would go to Airport B. The next bus to leave for the airport would leave in an hour or so, but would get us to the airport slightly late. We tried the train station, and the train there would also be just a tad too late. Alright, time for plan, um, something. We had to take a taxi.

Our taxi driver seemed to be quite the incredible type of guy. He kindly told us how much it would cost to get to the airport, and told us it would be a fixed price. He looked at the itinerary, and contrary to certain other people in Sweden, assured us that he could get us to where we wanted to be at least forty-five minutes before our plane left. Okay, that sounded great, but we had no local money. So he even did this for us: he brought us to the ATM in his taxi. Wonderful. The rest of the, oh, hour-or-so long trip I spent listening to oldies Amerian music on the radio and hearing this jolly man chatter about all sorts of random things. Well don't you know it, he even got us to the airport on time!

Fast forward.Now we are in Brussels, Belgium. Getting to the nearest run-down, hardly safe train station turned out to be a bit of a challenge, but we made it, and we eventually arrived in Antwerp, Belgium. However, most trains only travel from 6am to midnight, and it was about midnight — we knew this in advance, but thought we would at least be in the Netherlands before we had to spend the night somewhere — so we were stuck in Antwerp for the night. We found some nice chairs in the train station and started to dose off when some friendly guards came and told us the station was closing, but would open again at 5am. Oh, just great, now we were in Antwerp with no place to sleep. Hostels, hotels, camp sites? Bah, don't need 'em is what I say. So, we started doing the most unsafe thing we could think of, we started roaming the streets, turning around whenever a street looked like it had too many strip-joints or bars for our liking, and eventually coming across an all night fry shop. Perfect, kindof. So, to avoid loittering, I purchased a family size box of fries at around 1am, and we took a seat. Thankfully, they were playing a DVD of Live8, which I don't really know what that is, but it had English music, good enough for me. And we sat, and sat, and ate our fries, and sat. About half way through the fries, Pug decided to patronize — the good way — the owners again by purchasing a few Cokes. That bought us a half an hour more or so, right? Later, another Coke, an ice cream, and it was suddenly 3:15am. We suspected the owners liked us, but we still didn't feel right staying there all night, so we headed off to roam again.

We ended up on a few benches near a big statue. We plopped down, thinking it was a fairly public area, somewhat highly visible, and if the police decided to drop on by and tell us we couldn't stay there, we could play stupid and move somewhere else. A few cops drove by, but none never stopped to tell us to leave; some of the locals weren't so kind. So, here was probably the craziest encounter: it is four in the morning, we were sitting in the middle of a foreign city, and a motorcycle, with no light on, rides up, and stops near us. One guy jumps off the back of the bike and says, um, something. I never know what they say. Usual bit about only knowing English, and he says, "You guys want some Ecstacy?" Of course, I laughed, he smiled, and then he jumped on the bike and rode off again, thankfully without incident. Other than that guy, it was mostly just homeless people wanting money that I was unwilling to give them; most would just walk away upon realizing that I only spoke Spanish, a ploy that probably wouldn't work in places like, um, Spain.

The sun would inevitably rise again, and as it did after we were already on a train back to home. Ah Hattem, it is so good to be home again. I can only imagine the feeling will be ten times better next weekend.

May Break II: The Hellenic Half

A long time ago, well before the invention of trains and airplains, well before the invention of digital cameras and memory cards, well before the invention of the internet and blogging, there lived a man. This man, Homer was his name, liked to sit by the sea and write poems that he concocted with his vibrant imagination. Years later, some of his descendants misinterpreted his fables as history and decided to build temples to the likes of Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, and Nike. Many, many years after that, a young man named Bryan - that's me - visited the land of Homer and his descendents.

The most notable place to find remnants of the great Greek empire is on top of the famed Acropolis. So of course, Pug, Tymona, and I started our sightseeing there. Atop the Acropolis, which is a big stone mesa, stand three temples. The largest is known as the Parthenon, another was built for the gods Athena and Nike, and a third built for Athena and Poseidon. It is amazing how people who lived before the invention of cranes and steel could manage to build such mammoth buildings out of huge slabs of marble, but somehow the Ancient Greeks did it, and I applaud them for that. It is amazing how people who lived after the invention of cranes and steel could manage to put up scaffolding everwhere around such remarkable tourist sites, but the Modern Greeks did it, and I loath them for that. But in all respect to the Modern Greeks, they do it so they can further restore the structures, so I guess it is alright. Maybe my children will get a chance to take a good picture someday.

At this point, it was time to go to a place where there wasn't so much scaffolding, and the Temple of Zeus was a logical choice. Not much of this building remains in tact, supposedly because the scaffolding has not had a chance to repair it yet, but what does remain lets the mind easily imagine what the structure would have been like during it's prime. And my mind did a pretty good job of recreating the structure, I think, because I was impressed, again.

Pause. I decided a break in the story was necessary to point out an important fact: there were about 1/10^th of the amount of people in Athens as there were in Rome, which was a blessing in itself.

Resume. After a couple goes at ancient structure, the team decided to seek something a little more modern, so we headed off to the Greek Parliment Building. On the way though, we had the chance to walk through the National Garden, which was really nice. According to the guidebook, which I actually read for this trip, the beauty of the gardens is not in its colorful flowers, but in its shades of green. That is not an exact quote, unless I suddenly developed photographic memory. Anyway, I can vouch that the guidebook was right on this one, and the garden, made up mostly of just trees, was incredibly beautiful.

The Parliment Buildings has some guards in front of it who wear funny little pomb-pombs atop the toes of their shoes, and every half hour or so they walk around raising their feet really high and doing all sorts of funny looking maneuvors. I have yet to determine the point of this excercise, but I should say that it did make the guards look absolutely ridiculous, which is great for tourists.

Museums are pretty good for tourists to look at as well, and we saw a few interesting ones which were mostly filled with statues and carvings. The Ancient Greeks had some carving skills. I'll leave it at that.

Ancient Greeks have carving skills; Modern Greeks have cooking skills. We went out to eat at an out of the way diner one night, and the food tickled my taste buds in the way I hoped it would. This was a great relief from the incessant bread and chocolate spread diet that pervaded the rest of the trip. Bread and chocolate spread is cheap, but I'm pretty sure a whole week living off of it made me sick.

This adventure finishes with some trouble involving attempts to get home, but I think that story is best left for another blog entry.

May Break I: Florence, Rome, and Vatican City twice

Recently, everybody on N-Spice decided to leave the Netherlands for over a week. This, of course, caused all classes during that week to be unattended, so the N-Spice organizers decided to declare the week "May Break." I'm not sure if I'm completely accurate on the causal relationships of all of the facts, but I'm pretty sure that those are correct.

Well, a little faction comprised of Dustin, Pug, Tymona, and I decided we would go to Italy and Greece for our May Break. But, since a week is a long time to cover in one blog, this entry will only cover the Italian portion of the trip.

Our first stop was Florence for a day. We arrived on a sleeper train early in the morning, and had to cover a lot of ground before we left for Rome at five in the evening. So, we did. The most notable thing about Florence is the original Statue of David, carved by none other than Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. It tops the replica that is located in near down town Sioux Falls in a few respects: it isn't in Sioux Falls, it was created by Michelangelo, and it is made of marble. Also in Florence I experienced my first taste of truly athentic Italian pizza, which was splendid.

We spent a few hectic days in Italy's capital city, Rome. The first day we were there, we discovered a little secret, that the Vatican Museum, which holds the famous Sistene Chapel, is free on the last Sunday of the month. Turns out that the people in charge of keeping the secret a secret failed miserably, because, as you can expect, there were droves of people waiting in line to get into the museum. As it turns out, the museum closed before we could even get into it, so a morning was wasted. We resolved not to waste the rest of the day, and headed over to St. Peter's Basillica, which, despite more droves of people, did not disappoint. I have previously vowed not to explain cathedrals, but I now feel the need to break my vow of silence. St. Peter's was absolutely the most amazing cathedral I have been in, which is saying quite a bit since I have been in quite a few amazing cathedrals. It was massive, and so very ornate. There were lots of statues of former popes, which surprised me a little bit, but there was also a statue of St. Peter with some lore that is unknown to me about touching the statue's feet. I looked at the feet as I passed, and they are completely worn down from so many people constantly rubbing his feet; the rest of the statue is in pristene condition but his feet are quickly becoming flat, smooth, and unlifelike. After we explored the vast expanses of the lower floor, we jumped in a line to ascend to the cuppola. That trek was also enthralling; we saw the art of the dome much closer, at which point I realized that the pictures of saints and the latin writings were not painted on the dome, but rather made out of tiny glazed tiles arranged to produce the breathtaking effect. Then, we ascended even further and were given the chance to overlook the Vatican City and a large part of Rome.

The next day was conducted in true whirlwind tourist style. Actually, at the very moment I am writing this, I can't even remember where we began. Now, which is taking place mere seconds after you read the previous sentence, but which, as I am writing this, is actually taking place after I wrote the last paragraph of this story, I still don't have a clear chronological order of the things we saw, so I'm just going to start writing things, and the reader should assume they are not in order. The most notable thing I saw in Rome is people. In fact, huge multitudes of people, more than I was able to count. People, everwhere. Our last stop was the Spanish Steps, but I never saw the Spanish Steps, I saw people sitting down on what I could only assume were steps. It was that packed. But I lied, I actually did see, and walk on, the steps. We also saw Trevi Fountain, which was an incredible work of white stone sculptures, water, and people. Oh, no, the people weren't part of the work, there were just massive amounts of people there. Okay, I'll drop the people bit, just so long as you agree to recognize that there were alot of people in Rome. Pantheon - not to be confused with the Parthenon, which will appear in the next blog entry - was one of our sites, and it was impressive, however it was closed. For some reason, May Day (May 1) is an important holiday in Rome, and I really, at this point, have no idea why, but maybe I'll learn some day. Hmm, what else? I can't believe it! It just dawned on me what we saw first, and I can't believe that I forgot it. What would you go see if you went to Rome? The Colliseum, of course, which was our first destination. Waiting in line for the Colliseum, we were approached by a man trying to get us on his tour, and we were wary, but we did finally agree, and despite my incessant feeling that we were going to get hoodwinked, it turned out to be a wonderful deal for us. An eccentric and amusing tour guide showed us around the Colliseum, and then later a kind and very knowledgable woman showed us around the Foro Romano, which doesn't mean Roman Forum, which is what I had guessed, but actually means Roman Marketplace. She included a bit about the part we were walking on was what people in the first century would have walked on. Well, inspired by that, we visited the excavation of where Peter and Paul were imprisoned. That was a very odd feeling indeed, imagining that here was the place where the Holy Spirit inspired Peter and Paul to write parts of the Bible. Incredible. I believe that this writing has hit every important event of the day, even if the events written were not laid down in proper order.

On our final day in Rome, in which Pug, Tymona, and I would leave Rome at 1:30 in the afternoon, we gave the Vatican Museum another try. This time, we learned our lesson about the lines at this place and arrived early, before the museum even opened, so we only had to stand in line for one half of one hour. There was much to see in the Vatican, and much that I didn't understand. There was an Egyptian exhibit, which I spent much of just staring and the thing people have found, amazed that things can be, um, a couple hundred times older than I am. There were other things to see, but they didn't catch my attention, because I was only waiting until the rest of my company was good and prepared to move on to the proverbial crown jewels, the Sistene Chapel (painted by the same Michelangelo that was mentioned earlier in this passage). Before getting to the chapel, a visitor must pass through long rooms painted by other painters, like Raphael. Who's that guy? Judging by my knowledge of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he must have been about as famous as Michelangelo. Well, if he wasn't, he certainly should have been, because his work was absolutely amazing; if forced to choose I might strongly consider rating the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museum higher than the Sistene Chapel, but I feel no need to make such claims. Finally, we arrived at the Sistene Chapel, which turned out to be everything people had told me: hundreds of people taking pictures from their waists because pictures are not allowed, and the occassional guard grabbing a camera, probably just for effect, knowing that he can't really do anything about it. Oh, and there's some art, too, but you have seen pictures of those before, I'm sure. Actually, it hurt the neck to look at them painted on the ceiling, so you may be better off just looking at pictures of them. Actually, I heard reports that Michelangelo's neck actually never recovered from a permenant krink in the neck from painting the Sistene for four years. There, now all of my readers think I am completely irreverant with regard to such an amazing work of art, so I'll add that I really did find it jaw-dropping.