R.O.U.S

In the book/movie Princess Bride, the auther talks about the R.O.U.S.s in the Fire Swamp...an R.O.U.S, for those of you who dont know is a Rodent of Unusual Size. Now you may be wondering why I am talking about the R.O.U.S, and here is my reason:

THE ARNO RIVER HAS THEM!!! I thought they were just beaver like rodents, I looked it up on google and concluded that they were just European beavers...but today my italian professor told us that we shouldn't go swimming in the Arno because it's dirty and that it has large rats. And, woah, are they large. The first time I saw one, a few months ago, it was almost like the size of a badger or large skunk.


R.O.U.S.s EXISIT!

The End.

SPRING BREAK!!!! - Part 2: Berlin, Germany

Wednesday 7 – Sunday 11

We flew on EasyJet (cheapest airline in Europe I think) to Berlin. During the airplane safety audiovisual/demo the airhost said “in case of a drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from above you and oxygen will be provided for free. Pull the mask towards you to start oxygen flow.” Nicole and I were amused by his free oxygen comment (I think he was also on our Berlin-Rome flight too, because he said the same thing and looked familiar).

Our flight arrived around 6pm, by the time we got to the hostel waaaay on the otherside, it was about 8pm. We just grabbed a quick dinner in the U-Bahn (subway) station before getting to the hostel. Now this hostel, it was paradise compared to Luna Park/c. The JetPak Hostel is owned by a family, Gul-noor (I think that's how her name is spelled) and her husband, Neal (I think). They were wonderful, and live on the otherside of the drive way. When we got to our room, she gave us CLEAN UNBURNED linens for our beds that had a pillow each and a duvet. She showed us around: a dining room with a guest fridge (!!), breakfast from 8-10am (which was acutally pretty good for a continental breakfast), common room with books, fooz ball table, a internet computer (free), a tv with CNN and local channels, movies, and lots of comfy things to sit on (giant beanbags, weirdo looking sofas but really comfortable). Gul-noor also said that becuase we're right in the woods and we could walk along the trails to the lakes (apparently there are lots of foresty-woodsy areas in and around Berlin). So that night we made our beds, and watched a movie then went to bed.

Thursday we woke up, dressed and what not and walked over to the Elliot Museum which exhibits the history of WW2 and Nazi Germany, etc. After that we went to the Brucke Museum and saw some expressionism art work. After that we took the bus into the city center of West Berlin which is Zoo Garten. There we went to the Berlin zoo and aquarium, we spent about 3.5 hours there! I took loads of pictures there, here's one of them:

Us and giraffes:

We had dinner at this Mexican restaurant (had a bit of a German touch to it! haha) after walking around the area window shopping. After dinner we went back to the hostel and watched "Little Miss Sunshine" and called it a night.

Two of the other guests had highly recommended doing the Berlin Free Walking Tour (work for tips). So we did that on Friday. Nicole and I had intended on doing the tour starting in the morning, but we got on the wrong bus and ended up in some random area and missed the first tour so we just walked around, had lunch to pass time until 12:30.

Our tourguide was Andrew, he's an Aussie and has been living in Berlin for 11 years. He originally moved becuase he was working for Associated Press as a journalist (he unfortunately missed the moment that Michael Jackson dangled his child off the balcony because he was busy getting coffee in Starbucks and ignored all the hulaballoo outside! He late found out what happened when his photographer told him!). The tour was amazing. It lasted about 4 hours and we walked through East Berlin starting at the Brandenburg Gate (left). (The hotel that Michael Jackson stayed in is across from the gate on the side I took the picture, just fyi).

We took a left after passing under the gate and walked along the cobblestones making where the Berlin Wall used to stand - we were heading towards the Holocaust Memorial. Along the way, we passed Tiergarten, a huge park, where in the summer people, mostly men, sunbathe nude.
Holocaust Memorial (it has a museum underneath with the history, letters writen by people sent to concentration camps, etc). It was pretty intense since mostly all the information was first hand accounts of what happened to them, so it was very personal. The memorial is different sized blocks set up in a grid formation, the ground underneath them is undulating so it's almost "hilly".


Then we walked to the Berlin wall, and along the way saw a Communist propaganda mosaic mural (6x6" tiles painted to make a whole image...so its not quite a mural but its not really a mosaic either..but kinda both i guess!) that was made during the Cold War at somepoint. Then later, in front of the building there is a photographic installation opposing the mural. The Berlin Wall acutally wasn't that exciting, especially not after seeing shops selling segments (like square inch sizes) of the wall for hefty Euro prices. There was one part of the wall that is right next to where the SS HQ used to be (it was demolished). Now on the site they're building a museum called "Topography of Terror"...there is also a temporary one, in the excavated prison cells right under the wall until the big one is built. Unfortunately it was all in German (with a few random English comments) so I could really only look at pictures.





The Wall:
So on the otherside of this segment of wall is the site of the former SS HQ.

We walked some more, stopping at Checkpoint Charlie then taking a break at a cafe before moving further. We walked to the square where the book burning took place. There's a monument (don't know if that's the right word or not) in the ground. As you walk on the cobbles there is a portion missing where it's replaced by glass, and when you look in, you see a white room with empty shelves - the books having been burned. Apparently, that glass has to be replaced about every two months becuase it gets so scratched and worn that people can't see into the library! This area that we were in is heavily influenced by Classical Greek and Roman architecture and art, so a lot of the buildings are made in that same style with large domes, columns etc...they're all Neoclassical! :D

This is a picture of the French Calvinist church; across from it is the Lutheran church and in between the two on the left of the picture stands the French Opera (which at somepoint burned down or something becuase the special effects department got over enthusiastic and their fire kind of got out of control).












We ended the tour at Musuem Island, where the Pergamom, Old National Gallery and many others are located. We could see the TV tower from where we sat on (I think) the Old National Gallery steps. The TV tower, from what i remember, is important cause that's how East Berliners got news and information, but specifically cause they were able to access West Berlin TV as well (on the sly). Andrew told us how the news got out that East Berliners could cross the wall, it was REALLY interesting, especially since he was so enthusiastic about it!

Bascially, long story short, the Mayor (if i remember correctly, some position like that) was given a huge stack of new immigration policies by his secretary literally minutes before a press conference about the polices, so he didnt have time really to prepare himself. And in the conference he tried being as vague as he could or avoided getting into fine details about allowing East Berliners to go west, but eventually some reporter asked when the policies would be in effect and a number of times the mayor dude avoided the question or beat around the bush but eventually says "...i guess now?" And at that point there were soooo many questions being thrown at him, and outside, all those East Berliners were passing along the news and were running to the wall, but the guards had no idea what was going on or what was on the news. There was a lot of back and forth of relaying messages between authorities and people etc, eventually the guards questioned whether they were the authority or the people, and decided to let the people go. All of a sudden people were climbing over and West Berlin was rather overwhelmed. But then the West Berliners, later in the evening, wondered where all the East Berliners were...they weren't in the street....they had gone to the cinemas to watch Dirty Dancing - they had seen commericals on it through their blackmarket-West Berlin TV. So that was the first thing they really did when they crossed, watched Dirty Dancing.

After the tour, Nicole and I went to have dinner at a southern German cafe called Black Forest Den, which had AMAZING food, i highly recommend it. We headed back to the hostel after dinner.

Saturday morning we walked the trails in the woods around our hostel, walked part way around a lake - it was fun! The rest of Saturday was a more detailed version of the tour, we went back to the places and went to the museums and what not, and spent more time in the sites.














We went to the Pergamom Museum and saw:
The Alter of Zeus:
(my bad photo composite of i think the east frieze)
The Gates of Ishtar:

and much more!!!! :D

SPRING BREAK!!!! - Part 1: Paris, France

Saturday 3 – Wednesday 7

On Friday March 2, Nicole and I took a train to Rome, spent a night in a camping hostel (there were areas for tents, areas for trailer homes, rooms made in mobile homes (we stayed in one of those) and bungalows). At 3:30am we went to Rome Ciampino Airport and took a flight to Paris…or so we thought.

The airport, for some reason considered a Paris airport, is about 1.5 hours away from Paris, so we had to take a bus. After much hullabaloo to find a metro station near where the bus dropped us, we got on, took a metro to our quite-in-the-center-of-city hostel, which we soon discovered was quite-horribly-dilapidated.

Now, bear with me becuase the next few paragraphs will be about this hostel - it was a rather entertaining experience in that weird-once-in-a-life-time sort of way (and I get enjoyment out of describing it!). Luna Park (or is it Luna Parc? WHO KNOWS!? We saw Parc on the sign board outside, and Park on all their online stuff and Park on the payment receipt!). Anyway, we check in by 12ish and are exhausted and super hungry. We go up the rickety “spiral” stairs to the 3^rd floor, passing doors labeled “WC” shoved into the corners in the stairwell (there was barely room to stand in the WC). After having struggled with the keys and the door, we manage to get into our room that was to be our humble abode for the next 4 nights. Man, was it humble.

Humble is almost an understatement. The carpet was brown and therefore inevitably looked crusty; the bedspread had multiple burn holes that made it look almost as crispy and holey as papad (for you non-Indians, papad is that circular flat crispy peppery stuff served at Indian restaurants, it’s usually given when you’ve been seated). The pillow, if one can even call it that, was, what I think, lump(s) of rags (or old pillows?) rolled into the top end of the bedsheet thus forced to be in that position only (unless you had the guts to undo the pillow-packaging to be able to move it as you pleased). It also had a faint smell of cigarette smoke – delicious. (Note: it’s a double bed, so Nicole and I are sharing this rag-roll-pillow because there was only one and it didn’t even go from one end to the other of the bed). On a positive note, the sheets smelled washed, like bleach, BUT (there’s always a but) they were so worn out that we could see the blue and white mattress through the thinness. Having said all this, it should come as no surprise to you that we covered our respective pillow area with a t-shirt before putting our heads down on it and that we slept with socks on to really minimize our contact with the bed and its wonders.

Onwards to the rest of the room; we had a small table and a chair in the far corner near the window with a deep red, also burned, curtain. We also had decrepit free-standing wood closet that was near the foot of the bed to the right. Now, what we didn’t notice at first entering the room is that on the other side of the closet, there was a wall segment that didn’t go up to the ceiling and stuck out about 2 feet. Behind this wall was a sink, mirror and… a bidet. A bidet!!!!!! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Did they think that we would go to the bathroom, and then come running back to the room with our pants at our ankles to use it?!?!

Moving past the horrors of our room, we quickly freshened up and went to a nearby bar/café for lunch. We both ordered potato omelets, juice, and bread. We were so incredibly happy that our meal didn’t involve olive oil, salt-less bread, mozzarella, or pasta. After having eaten, we went back to the hostel, got some things sorted out, and headed out to explore the streets of Paris.

We walked around our neighborhood while making our way over to Notre Dame. Along our walk, we got hungry again andbought crepes (mine was
caramel filled and Nicole’s with chestnut cream/paste) – they were awesome.
Being Saturday afternoon, Notre Dame was swarming with tourists but the lines moved fast and smoothly. It was incredible. The rose windows inside, and all the other stained glass was quite amazing.

There was this HUGE chandelier about 15 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall (so it seemed to me) that was on display on the floor back behind the alter. It used to be lit up for special occasions and such but I don’t think they use it anymore.

We also saw this tomb that had a sculpture on top depicting the deceased sitting up and coming out of the coffin. Nicole and I thought we could climb up to the towers but the lines were long and slow moving, so we decided we might come back some other time. We wandered about some more, had dinner and called it a night around 9pm, exhausted from being up since 3:30am.

On Sunday we went to the Louvre (which is free on first Sundays of each month fyi). It was crowded, but because the museum is so large that it wasn’t so bad. We spent about 3 hours in the Louvre and saw MANY MANY art pieces. I saw the Mona Lisa, which turned out to be not that exciting for me when I felt I was being herded like cows into a fenced area – they have a special roped off area for it, and everyone has to move, somehow, forward to see it, you barely have time to look and there’s a lot of shoving involved. The pushing and shoving kind of took the excitement out of seeing the famous painting. But we did see about 4 or 5 other original Da Vinci paintings, all were rather sinister and dark (mood and colours). We walked through the Egyptian, Islamic and Greek art and saw my favorite Greek sculpture from antiquity: The Winged Victory of Samothrace. (There is too much about the sculpture that I like for me to talk about it here, so Google or Wikipedia it, and please do, it’s an amazing sculpture). We also saw the Venus de Milo, and roamed the 15-18^th century French, German, and Dutch paintings.

After the Louvre, we met with Anu masi’s (my mom’s childhood friend) family friends, Terry and Yves, who live a little outside of Paris. They took us out for a snack at Angelina’s (a very very delicious café – I got white chocolate hot chocolate and a mound of spongy chocolately goodness engulfing a crispy almost coffee like chocolate center all covered in a thin layer of chocolate icing, called the “Opera”…more commonly known as cake) then we went to a concert! They took us to Temple du Foyer de l’Ame, where every month, there is a concert performed for 45 minutes to an hour played on old instruments (harpsichord, flutes, violins, etc). They played “Ich leb, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergotzen” by Johann Sebastian Bach and there was singing too by 3 men and a woman. They also combined into the JS Bach piece the “Trio Sonate en re mineur” by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, JS Bach’s son. (The first name I gave is in German, and I think the second name is in French, no translations sorry!!).

It was a great. The acoustics were great, so the whole performance was wonderful. Nicole and I were extremely glad we were able to go, especially since it’s not a touristy thing to do! (We were probably the two youngest in the audience, everyone else seemed to be above the age of 35, and by that I mean they were mostly above the age of 50).

After the concert the four of us walked around, we were actually very near the neighborhood of our hostel. Then we headed towards the Museum of Modern Art to see the monstrosity of the building (really quite ugly and out of place as you can see in the picture!). Then we went into a small church because it looked cool from the outside. After that we had dinner at a French restaurant and it was possibly one of the best meals I’ve had since I’ve been abroad. I got potted duck spring rolls with honey sauce for an appetizer and grilled sirloin steak with bleu cheese sauce for my entrée. We said our farewells after dinner then Nicole and I went back to Luna Park to pass out.

Monday morning we took the metro to the Arch of Triumph then walked over (longer than expected) to the Eiffel Tower. Not only did we see it, but we went up it…and no, we did not take the elevator. WE CLIMBED OVER 600 STEPS. (talk about out-doing a stair-master machine thing at the gym). It was a windy windy day, but the view of Paris was incredible. It was cool to see old buildings mixed with newer architecture, the more “international architecture” (high risers, etc). But the new buildings weren’t overbearing so I felt it was a good balance between old and new. After the tower we got popcorn and fries then parted ways. I went to the Picasso Museum and Nicole to the Rodin Museum. Turned out the Rodin Museum is closed on Mondays so we ended up going together on Tuesday!

View from the Eiffel Tower:

Tuesday was a rainy, cold day, so we spent most of our time indoors at the Rodin Museum, in cafes, and we went to a mall to check out the French shopping scene. After about 3 hours in a shopping center, we were tired so we went to the hostel to relax a little before heading out for dinner and a jazz club. Dinner was delicious, we found this small restaurant/bar and got grilled chicken pieces marinated in thyme with honey sauce, with lamb’s lettuce salad, and mashed potatoes. We attempted looking for a jazz bar that didn’t cost an arm and a leg but it was pointless, so we went into a “rock” bar that had a French cover band singing English songs (mostly Metallica type of music).

I’d like to mention that whenever we could, we would get crepes. It didn’t matter what time it was or even if we were that hungry, if we saw crepes that looked good we got it – we were addicted, my favorite was Nutella and Coconut flakes (I had a ham and cheese one, it wasn’t that great, was over loaded with ham and way to cheesy).

On Wednesday, a sad day for our spring break, we had our last crepes while on the train heading towards the airport to get to Berlin. We ended our Paris trip on a sweet note and were excited to eat a hearty German meal and also to see what our next hostel would be like since it only cost us 10 euros more than Luna Park/Parc.