europe archive 5/21/07: I'm home!!!

Wow.

We had a good flights, minimal delays (actually ended up arriving 15 minutes early into LAX, before our rides even got there!) and a perfect last two days in Italy. We splurged and got a gondola with our friends Lori and Randal on our last night in Venice (Saturday) and split 6 ways it was only 15 euro a piece for a beautiful ride at sunset. St. Mark's Square in Venice is awesome; Randal and Jill and I split a bag of bird feed and Lori and Mel and Mo took pictures of us with pigeons all over us which I will definitely send out once they're developed. I'm still getting used to a non-Italian keyboard. It was probably the biggest culture shock of the whole trip to arrive at Atlanta's airport for our layover: not only was everything suddenly in English, but it had a twang. LA sure is cloudy. What's up with that. It was HOT in Milan and HOT in Georgia...where is my sunny California? We landed and Mo and I looked out the window in dismay and wondered what on EARTH these gray clouds were, and I hypothesized they were smog and we both looked at each other with dread. I think they're clouds, though. I have now been awake for over 24 hours...I woke up at 6 a.m. in Italy, and over there right now it is 7:42 a.m. Thank goodness for Mel and Mo's no-jet-lag pills, but that would explain the mishmash of topics in this paragraph, oui? I simultaneously want to take a bath, sleep, and run all over the neighborhood because I've been sitting for nearly that entire time and the ten jet lag pills I've taken are I think basically homeopathic caffeine pills. So anyway, I'm going to go for now.

Love to all!!! Thanks for reading.
Sara

europe archive 5/19/07: venezia, ciao ciao ciao

Okay, I'm neither greeting nor parting with Venice at the moment, but that's the song that this random guy was singing in the park during our siesta. He was quite possibly crazy, but very entertaining. His merry song went something like, "Ciao Venezia, ciao Venezia, ciao Venezia, ciao ciao ciao ciao. Ciao Venezia, Venezia, ciao ciao ciao. Venezia, ciao Venezia..." It was very funny. Jill caught a bit of it on her audio recorder:-)

...Hi everyone!!!

We are in Venice, and it without a doubt the most gorgeous city I have ever been to. Not to be confused with the prettiest city (Prague) or the most fantastic city (Paris) or the most gorgeous place (Giverny) but definitely the most gorgeous city. The canals are beautiful and it pretty much looks just like the snapshots that you always see when people get home from Venice, and now I have a bunch of those myself. I love that there are no cars. In Rome, the drivers were completely crazy and would honk at you to go quicker when you were crossing during the green walking man, so I have to say I definitely don't miss them at all, and everywhere else in Italy the mopeds are so fast and loud, and in Venice it's so much more peaceful. Mo's Rick Steves - Best of Europe mentions, "When you enter Venice, you leave your 21st century perspective behind you." It's totally true. We got into the city for our first full day here yesterday around 10 a.m. (we're staying just outside the main part of the city, so we take a shuttle bus in and out) and we were completely lost within five minutes and couldn't have cared less...all we wanted to do was wander around this beautiful city.

We did after about three hours finally find the Guggenheim (which had an AWESOME collection- I especially loved some pieces by Carra, Tamayo, and Boccioni) and then we set off in search of the beach. Except, water taxis to the beach were about 15 dollars round trip, and we didn't want to go the the beach THAT much. But, we were in need of our siesta! Which is how we found quite possibly one of the only grassy patches in Venice, and settled down for a nap that was oddly awokened by Crazy Guy's "ciao ciao ciao ciao"s.

The time until sunset was spent on a completely unsuccessful search for the Jewish Ghetto...we finally consulted a map after a couple hours of brilliant deductions like, "I see a cross. We're not there yet." Maps are fairly useless in Venice, especially ours, and both the path we'd managed to take and the location relative to us were completely ridiculous. Oh well. We closed the day with some delicious pasta and even more delicious gelato, so it was a good day.

Our last few days in Rome were wonderful as well. We spent Wednesday in the Vatican City- the pope didn't speak because he was tired from his travels, but we saw St. Peter's and the Sistene Chapel and the Vatican Museums and more nuns than Mo could count. And Thursday was spent mostly en route to Venice, seeing the Italian countryside (so pretty. Oh Italia.)

So, we have basically two days left...today we have the whole thing to spend in Venice, and tomorrow we catch a train to Milan and hopefully have our last supper at The Last Supper and then Monday, we're flying home! Wow. Crazy how seven weeks have gone...it's funny, I'm ready to be home and see people and be productive and all that stuff (though...oh Europe, you're wonderful. I will miss you so), but I wasn't expecting to stop writing these emails so soon! I feel like I'm parting with you all, which is funny because actually I'll be geographically much closer to most of you. There are probably only two of these left now: one Monday night or early Tuesday morning, assuring you all that my plane landed safely (knock on wood) and then one more after about a week with PHOTOS. Hooray!

By the way, the last place we will get to see is Atlanta, Georgia's airport during our three-ish hour layover, where we are determined to have KFC because we saw one in every single country until Italy. In Florence we met a couple from Atlanta who said that the airport did in fact have a KFC, so we should be in good shape.

Well...au revoir, auf wierderseign, ciao venezia ciao ciao ciao ciao, until next time,
much love,
Sara

europe archive 5/15/07: yay, ruins and old stuff!

Bonjorno!!!

Italy is so. amazing. Have I said that yet? There is just so much STUFF here. We put off Pompeii for a day because we ended up staying at the concert on Saturday until midnight...and whoops, our bus doesn't run after midnight! So, unable to work out the night buses, we had just over a two hour walk back to our hostel. Whoops! Luckily, we were in great moods because the band was fantastic. (haha, Italian cover bands are amazing! This one was "the Beaters"- guess which band they covered- and it totally cracked me up to hear Italian guys imitating British accents. It was so much fun.)

So, Monday we saw the Appian Way, the road that originally lead to Rome some two thousand years ago or so, and the Pantheon. It was a little bit silly because we took a detour off the Appian Way and spent about two hours just frolicking through the Italian countryside. I was a bit confused ("...guys? Isn't there like...other historical stuff we should be doing...?") but they were like, "yay, Roman fields! Let's pretend we're wearing togas" and well, when in Rome.

The Pantheon was SO COOL. It was really pretty on the inside, which surprised me a bit- the marble was all painted, and we got to see Raphael's grave, which was really pretty and had a little sculpture of one dove carrying another. We had a really excellent lunch and siesta on the steps, by the way. Siestas are big in Rome, which is pretty fantastic.

Tuesday we finally went to Pompeii! It was so amazing. I didn't realize how much was available for us to see...it really is an entire city. You could see pots and mosaic tilings and astonishingly well preserved fresco paintings and in the Villa of Mysteries we got to see a couple of those fossilized people you always here about. From there we dashed off to catch a train to Herculaneum, because last entry was at 6 p.m. and it wasn't at all hard to spend from noon until 5 seeing as much of Pompeii as we could. We made it to Herculaneum just before 6, and it was much more doable in a short time (much smaller, a town rather than a city), which was a relief. It was so cool to peer out the windows and imagine that you were living in 79 a.d. and looking out from your kitchen and suddenly seeing a flood of people running through the streets. We went on quite a quest for the fossilized rolls we'd heard about (it was like a checklist all day, running around- "okay, houses. We need pots. Oh, some pots! Okay, where's the brothel? oh, that is a LONG line. Okay, peek over the heads, we see inside the brothel. Check. Okay, Villa of Mysteries, where's that famous fresco?" So in Herculaneum we were looking for toast.) We had nearly given up, since it was getting close to closing, but then I spotted some guys with name tags (tour guides?) hanging around, so I asked if they spoke English ("a little") and then tried to explain what we were looking for.

It was a bit hard to figure out with the language barrier, but it seemed that the man helping us was actually an archaeologist, or at least someone who really knew his way around, and he was able to show us all the areas that were supposed to be closed off! It was SO COOL. There was a priest (I think) lying in a bed, fossilized, without any glass covering him or anything. It was so cool! There was a wine jug that had been lava-fied and absurdly well preserved fresco paintings where if you covered one eye, they looked three dimensional, and he showed us to touch the marble floors, which were still perfectly smooth. So, so neat. I am so glad we were able to go.

That's pretty much it. It looks like we're staying at a campsite in Venice (we're heading there Thursday), which makes us absolutely delighted.

Love you all bunches,
Sara

europe archive 5/12/07

Hey everyone!!!!

Rome is completely awesome. Today we got to see the ancient Roman ruins!!! They were so, so cool. I love all the fountains here...nothing like a chance for free water! (You all take it for granted in the States, I bet!) We got really lucky and today was "Family Day" in Rome (I'm not sure how often this exists here) and we got to see all the ruins for free. I'm trying to think of more intelligent things to say about them, but yeah. Pretty much just totally rad. I took twice as many pictures today than I have on any other day this entire trip (the total was about sixty) and I'm sure when I get them developed it will be like, "This is... an ancient building. Mighta been a courthouse or something. And this...this is a ruin. It was...a fountain. Don't quote me on that. Oh, this was that house for virgins! Oh wait, no, that was what we thought it was, but then we figured out that it was actually THIS." Very silly. Oh, although I will recognize at least the three or four pictures of us at that stadium where the chariot races were. There are several pretty ridiculous, potentially blackmailish pictures of us pretending to be horses and chariot riders racing.

We had lunch at a park on a hill and there were just the tops of ruins sticking out the top, and it was interesting to watch the little Italian kids playing on them. I mean, that was probably someone's roof or something once. Just think, a thousand years from now, some futuristic children might be playing on your chimney.

It's been a busy couple of days since I last wrote. Yesterday we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa! Very exciting. It leans. It is groovy. It's not quite as tall as I was expecting it to be... probably about ten stories? But it totally leans, probably about ten degrees. We just had lunch in front of it, on an intended three hour stopover from Florence to Rome. Although, the train that was supposed to leave from Pisa at 3 didn't actually leave until nearly 6! We were so perplexed as to what could possibly delay a train so much. We learned when it arrived that someone had committed suicide on the tracks. Whoa. Yes, that would do it. It's so mind boggling, all the things happening in the world at the same time.

Our last day in Florence, Thursday, was really awesome, by the way. We got to see the Uffizi Gallery, which has joined the Louvre and the National Gallery as my favorite museums in the entire world. It was so amazing. I wrote down about forty works in my journal that I just loved, but I kind of forget which is which so I need to look them up. There was this really awesome statue that featured ...some dude... saving his two children from a snake. Really cool. Ever since seeing Winged Victory in Paris I've had such an appreciation for sculptures. They also had the Birth of Venus and that other one by the same artist whose name I can't spell (Botticelli?) about the passage of spring. We had gelato from Cafe Corona one last time and had a quite excellent dinner (I had spaghetti carbonara, which has been pretty much my standard. So yummy!)

That's got the big things covered, I think. Tomorrow we're going to see Pompeii! So exciting. We have plans to see the Vatican City on Wednesday, and I hope the Pope is back by then because he usually speaks on Wednesdays, but we saw something on the news in the metro station about how he's out of the country right now. That would be a bummer to miss him! I'm going to probably have very patchy Internet access here in Rome...the hostel charges 5 euro an hour for internet, which is ridiculous and I'm definitely not going to use it at all. I'm at a cafe right now that charges only 1 euro an hour, but it's rather far from our hostel so we'll see. That means I'm going to start writing back to your emails while I'm here, but after this we're headed to a local concert so I probably will only have time to send a few. Sorry! I fully intend to write back to everyone once I have more time online (...which might not be until I'm home a week from Monday. But I will definitely write back!!!)

Also, Mel and Mo's parents brought us magazines when they visited, and Knut the polar bear was on the cover of People! What on earth. Is he big in the States now?

Love to all,
Sara

europe archive 5/9/07: under the tuscan sun. I think. Right?

haha. I suppose I could look it up. But I am so, so, so tired! I just wanted to write and say Florence is amazing. We/I have


Tuesday:
-gotten to see Stephanie some more!
-seen the Duomo and climbed the tower for the view of Florence (thats a lotta steps by the way)
-eaten gelato at Cafe Corona, recommended by Quinn as the best gelato in Italy. holy guacamole. It is so amazing. I can't even explain. I didn't even think I LIKED gelato. I have no idea what the name of the flavor I got was but I think it had pound cake mixed in.
-eaten pizza. Mmm.
-siesta'd. Sleepy times.
-climbed up this big hill thing to visit the San Miniato church. We learned from Let's Go Europe! (On a Budget) that the monks there chant at 5, so that's when we went. It was so unexpectedly soothing and awesome. Best part: Mo's phone went off (whoops) and then I saw one of the chanting monks, ever so discreetly, pull his cell phone out of his pocket, turn it off, and put it back in. So fantastic.
-watched the sunset from this other part of the hill. It was so pretty. Very Tuscan. If my pictures don't come out I know Mel and Jill's did.
-ate fettuccine alfredo! yum.

Today:
-ate breakfast at the hostel. They include EGGS in this breakfast. How gourmet!
-saw...um...this one church. With fresco paintings. It was cool.
-ate lunch. I had salmon. Yum!
-dropped Stephanie off at the train station. So sad!!!! tears there were. She's headed for Barcelona, though. Lucky girl.
-met up with Mel and Mo's mom (M&M's parents just got in Italy and are visiting for about a day and a half) to see the Statue of David! Wow. It was big. And alarmingly perfect and intricate and detailed. Photos don't really do it any sort of justice- I finally get why it's a big deal. Also in the museum were pretty Rennaissance paintings and old musical instruments! I saw a really old oboe. Not sure how old; the display didn't say, but it had holes instead of keys and was brown.
-walked all around Florence some more
-had dinner with Mel and Mo's parents! It was fun to see them. I had spaghetti alla carbonara and then we went back to the same gelato place. You can have multiple flavors in a cup so I got banana and berry. Yum! You can tell if it's good gelato from what the banana gelato looks like...if it's a brighter yellow, it's from a mix; if it's grayish, it's made from scratch. This stuff was made from scratch and was deLICIOUS.

I am so behind in my journal (six days now! Ugh, I can't keep up!!!) so it reassures me to at least be up to date here. I have about another day of free Internet...we're training to Rome on Friday, not sure what the web situation is there. Oh, adventures.

Thanks to everyone who has been writing! It is SO AWESOME to hear from everyone at home. Hooray!

Love,
Sara

europe archive 5/7/07: firenze!!!! also, hills singing...sounds of music, perhaps

Buon giorno!!!!

(...I*m not really sure if I spelled that right. Also, on this keyboard, I did a pretty thorough search for an apostrophe and it seems none is to be found. But at least the letters are all where they belong! I keep wanting to switch the z*s and y*s since I*ve gotten used to it, though.)

I guess I should keep this brief since it*s really late here! Big thanks to everyone who has been responding to my emails....it*s so awesome to hear from home! Also, a few people have been asking- I am due home Monday, May 21st, at 7:21 p.m. at LAX. Since I know you all have horridly empty schedules without me there to occupy them, FYI, my oboe teacher Marilyn is having a recital (she and her students will be playing) the day before I get home, on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the Glendale Adventist Academy. It should be pretty rad, so if you*re in the area, go get cultured! And tell her I say hello. Although, she*s probably reading this, so maybe that*s not necessary. hmm.

Getting to the point, we are here in Florence! Italy is our last stop, so this trip feels like it*s complete now, even though there are still two weeks left. I*m very relieved that we made it in tonight- we accidentally thought one of our connections was departing at a time when it was really arriving at where we wanted to be, which we realized on the train prior- and then, we quickly found another train that would fix it, but when we arrived at the station we learned that that train doesn*t start running until June! Mon dieu. So it seemed we would either be stuck in Verona until the 7 a.m. train to Florence, or we could go on to Bologna, get in at 8:23 p.m., and wait around until 4 a.m. for the next train to Florence. Neither was a great option...we*d have preferred Verona to Bologna, but wanted to spend as little time as possible waiting around a train station and it turned out the Verona train station closed at night anyway, so we hopped on board the train to Bologna. On board, we realized there was a train departing Bologna for Florence at 8:20 p.m. A brilliantly impossible connection, but we decided to press our luck. Our train pulled in two minutes early, at 8:21. As we were pulling up, we moved to wait by the door and bolted off the second the train stopped and SPRINTED across the train station, glancing at screens for about a half a second. We ran up to what we thought was the platform. No train. We must have missed it. We ran back down to check the screen and realized the train we wanted was a) still on the screen and b) one platform over. We ran up the stairs and arrived at our platform just as the train pulled up, exactly six minutes late.

In conclusion, we are pretty much amazing.

So, we*re in Florence! We*ve met up with our friend Stephanie again, and we*ve picked up a British chap called Randall (we call him Randy, which he protested at first but now doesn*t mind so much) who is loads of fun and was a very useful lead sprinter at that train station. His itinerary largely matches ours so we*ve seen him now in Krakow, Prague, and Austria, and I think he*s sticking around until Venice. It is so pretty here. I can*t wait to try the food.

Of course, we*ve just gotten in from Salzburg, where we had less than 24 hours because we got a bit unlucky booking hostels (we*re booked for the rest of the trip now though), but we got to see Mozart*s house and the gardens where the Do-Re-Mi scenes were filmed in The Sound of Music, and the graveyard that the one they hide in at the end of the movie was modeled after. All were insanely awesome. We also got to see the castle, which is one of the largest fully preserved medieval ones. They had this really insane display of knights* armor where the armor was set up in positions like knights in battle, with probably over a hundred arrows suspended in midair with fishing thread. The arrows (and crossbows, and cannons) were aimed at a wall that had not only the door you walked into the room from (so that you were walking into all these figures set up like they were shooting at you) but also a projection on the wall with a video of lots of tourists walking around. It was VERY weird. But awesome.

We also had an informal game of "Sound of Music Bingo!" going...we saw a cat in a tree chasing a bird (whiskers on kittens), it poured the first day we were in (raindrops on roses) which resulted in snowy mountains (silver white winters that melt into spring). Not bad. We also saw three nuns. Silly times. Just thought I*d share.


Super tired, heading to bed. Love to all. Keep writing, I have free Internet until Thursday.

hugs, etc.
Sara

europe archive 5/5/07: slow down, you crazy child

happy cinco de mayo, everyone:-)

Vienna is.... what I expected, and not, at the same time. It's got all the elegance I would expect of it, yet I haven't bonded with it the way I expected to, which is odd because it does remind me a lot of the things I loved when I was little. I think the city puts me in a sort of dreamy state where I can't quite put anything I'm feeling into words properly...which will probably be quite evident in this email. So, apologies for any writing in circles!

It is so pretty here, even though it poured today. We've gotten to see two palaces, though I'm blanking on names at the moment. One had a really awesome labyrinth that we played Sardines in, and the most awesomely creative playground ever- the coolest thing was this giant bird you could sit in, but to go up and sit in it you had to climb a rope ladder about seven feet up. The trick of it was that the rope ladder made the bird move as if it were flying, so once you were up there people could make you bob up and down and swing from side to side. There was also a fountain with all sorts of ways to squirt water at people, a xylophone that used a Japanese scale, and a four person teeter totter-ish thing that amused us.

The other palace (the Hapsburg Palace, I think?) had all sorts of gorgeous dining things and paintings and dresses and old calligraphy things. An aside- the calligraphy pens in the gift store there were AMAZING. You could get them in any color and with any sort of nib you might want, and you could buy the wax for sealing envelopes and a huge array of... those things I'm blanking on the name for, that you use to make the wax have a shape and design. I feel like Kimberly or Marilyn will know that one. Google is no help. Anyway, I can't even explain how difficult it was for me to not just splurge, but the cheapest set was $50 and I guess this trip has given me -some- common sense. *sigh* I'll get one, one day! And I'll write you all letters with it when I do. ...*anyway*, the palace was cool. The weirdest thing about it was there was this one room that I guess the empress Elisabeth liked to use to exercise, so there were random bars and rings that could be used for exercises. I guess it would be a bit cold a lot of the year to do that sort of thing outdoors, but it was just weird to see the red carpets, gold trim on the walls, chandeliers, and wooden exercise bars.

We've also seen a really awesome church...St. Stephen's maybe, or something similar to that? A lot of the stained glass windows were blown out in World War II so the replacement ones aren't as pretty, but the architecture is so intricate and beautifully done. What really made that particular church interesting, though, was in the crypts you can see the bones of people who died during the Plague. Pretty morbid, huh? We thought it was insanely cool.

We saw an opera as well, Daphne by Strauß (I can do the double s on this keyboard without alt codes or anything- nifty!) and the music was phenomenal. I have never seen bass players' fingers move so quickly; it was insane. Seeing the opera in Vienna is pretty brilliant, by the way- you can get standing room tickets (about 300 go on sale nearly every night) an hour and a half before showtime for less than $5. We were packed like sardines but it was totally awesome.

Okay, I've been away for over a month now, and I do want to try to keep up with everyone, so I scrolled through all your names and thought of what I wanted to hear about in your lives, and wrote few general questions that everyone is welcome to answer; though of course if you're too busy I understand. I just love getting to hear from everyone! So, you can answer all of these, or just a few you that interest you, whichever you prefer. (If it's my turn to write you back...I've read your email, but it's probably now lost in my inbox so if you want to get a new chain going, go ahead and respond to this. I'm doing the best I can, sorry!)

-What is the funnest/most exciting thing you have done recently? Tell me about it.
-How is your family/significant other doing doing? Anything new to report?
-How are you?
-Who have you gotten to see recently? What did you do or talk about when you saw them?
-What are you looking forward to?
-What are you working on right now? (This could mean a project, a show, a musical piece, a new book, etc.)
-Tell me something you've realized or noticed recently?
-Anything else on your mind, or that you want to share?


loads of love,
Sara

europe archive 5/3/07: so much to do, and only so many hours in a day

Hey everyone!!!!

We got into Vienna late last night and it´s super pretty here, though a bit colder than it has been. I´m so excited that we´re finally here because we´ve spent the past two days almost entirely on trains. Very scenic trains, mind you, but trains nonetheless. We caught a 6 a.m. train out of Nice on Tuesday with three stopovers on the way to the Black Forest in Germany, since apparently getting from Nice to Freiburg is rather complicated for them being only about a country apart. It was actually really nice that we had to take such an early morning train because it meant we got to watch the sunrise along the Mediterranean Sea, and the south of France was really just made to bathe in sunlight, I think. It was so pretty to watch the world slowly turn from silvery blues to color.

The Black Forest turned out to be AWESOME, so I´m so glad we went. We got in around 6:30 p.m. and dropped our stuff off at the Black Forest Hostel, then set off on a hike up through the Black Forest at sunset. I can totally see how those woods inspired all those fairy tales (Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.)- they´re so dense and the roads are all windy (...did I spell that right? I mean "windy" with a long i sound) and perhaps it´s all the stories, but they just had this very spooky feel to them as little critters made bushes bristle as they ran through them. There was a full moon out as well, which was perfect.

We made it back down the hill just as it started to get pretty dark, so we set off to wander the town a bit. We found some really amazing ice cream (I had this strawberry and vanilla creation with real strawberries and syrups on a cone). Then, we stumbled upon a huge thing with loads of people wearing white helmets. At first it looked like some sort of organization, but then we realized it was actually a parade/rally sort of thing, because there were TONS of other people, and all the white helmets were police dudes. Fireworks started going off and there was music and people dancing along the street in the parade and it was crazy! We watched for a few minutes, trying to interpret what it was all about from the array of banners, flags, and jarbled megaphone announcements in German. Medical benefits? Peace? Finding no certain answer, we shrugged and darted through the police line in to join the parade, and danced through the streets of Freiburg along with the drum line and a bunch of people wearing everything from clown wigs to hippie gear to cheerleading outfits.

The train to Vienna the next morning had only one stopover (wow!) and we got to go through the Swiss Alps, which were beautiful. We are getting good use out of our travel Parchesi set, and I´m reading a book called Lamb ("the gospel according to Jesus´ childhood friend, Biff") which is really funny and I highly recommend it.

Guess that´s it for now, so--

Loads of love to all,
Sara

europe archive 4/30/07: bonsoir!

Hey everyone!!!

We are in France and it is amazing. I am trying to adapt to the keyboard but it is even crazier than the German ones- a's instead of q's, m's next to the l's and the comma/question mark where the m's should be, w's and z's switched, and not one punctuation mark where it belongs. I'm pretty impressed with how well I'm doing so far :-)

Anyway, we basically had one full day in Paris (arrived late Friday, left midday Sunday) and our one day back in Paris was just long enough to remind me of how very much I love Croque Monsieur (the french version of grilled cheese, basically) because it is ridiculously fantastic, and we got to go in the Opera house (it was closed last time we were there) and see an extra cathedral we hadn't seen before (the one King Louis IX built to hold the crown of thorns; it's about 80 percent stained glass windows) and we spent some time at Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter which were just as lovely as we'd left them. It really only takes one bite of the food in Paris to make the entire city seem like a paradise.

Sunday we took a train to Nice in the south of France and it was the most beautiful train ride I've taken in my entire life. Cannes was especially gorgeous to go through; it looked very much like Greece actually, except more colorful. Nice turned out to be kind of the French version of Venice beach, which was a bit funny. The food is super yummy even if
I can't find Croque Monsieur or Madame anywhere. *tear*

We've been spending our time in France as leisurely as possible because this past week and a half has been incredibly whirlwind and busy- four countries in I think a total of eight days! So today was spent at the beach instead of at museums and it was just delightful....and it was so fun; afterwards we climbed tons of steps up a hill (Castle Hill?) and it started to drizzle and by the top it was POURING, except it was a wonderful warm Mediterranean rain and we were all laughing and soaking wet as we slipped and slided in flip flops all the way back to the hostel.

Anyone following along with the itinerary might notice it's changed a bit- things were getting very rushed so we've been taking our time getting from Paris to Vienna and are landing there May 2nd, then doing Salzburg and landing in Florence on the 7th, then doing Rome, Venice, and Milan in that order.

I've really been enjoying the variety of walk/don't walk lights in all these countries, by the way; perhaps because in the US you never see a red standing man representing "don't walk!" In Paris the figures were tall and lanky but here they look more like the little yellow AOL dudes, except in red and green. My favorites were in Berlin because they wore hats. They kind of looked like they were smoking pipes as well but maybe I just associate that sort of hat with smoking a pipe.

Love you all bunches and bunches,
Sara

europe archive 4/26/07: "and real Dutch people, they come from somewhere near the Netherlands, right?"

("Don't be silly. The Netherlands are like this imaginary place where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell come from.")

Hello everyone!!!

Amsterdam has been pretty whirlwind, as we really only got a day and a half here. Though that's pretty much enough to see what it's all about, I think. It has the look of a European town, with old buildings and cobblestones, the relaxed feel of Hawaii or Jamaica, with the activity of the Moulin Rouge by night. The food and weather are great and we've been able to fit in most of our "must see" things- a couple parks and museums and Anne Frank and Rembrandt's houses- and we just have the Van Gogh museum left for this morning before catching a train to Paris for the weekend. Oh, Paris. It'll be nice to be somewhere familiar. Although it's been pretty useful how everyone in Amsterdam speaks English.

Off for another busy day. Hope everyone is doing well!

Love,
Sara

europe archive 4/23/07: Praha!

is so, so pretty.

It's kind of like what Disneyland tries to be, or straight out of Ever After, or any other sort of fairy tale. Mel and Mo keep talking about architecture things that I'm not terribly familiar with since I haven't taken Art History yet (...music majors have a hard time fitting such things in their schedules?) but basically there's a bunch bunch bunch of architecture styles and around every corner is something totally different. The astronomical clock thing in Old Town Square is gorgeous, and also kind of the apostles version of the clock outside "It's a Small World," fitting with the whole Disneyland thing. It's very fun to watch it strike at the hour (in addition to the apostles going in a circle, Death turns the hour glass and pulls a string, then the apostles come out one by one and a rooster crows), and also fun to just watch the huge crowd that gathers when it strikes the hour. The giant metronome is not terribly exciting comparatively for being another city landmark; it ticks once a half hour I think and it kinda just looks like a crane. Oh well. The city as a whole is still made of fantastic-ness.

Today we went and saw the castle and the little street that Franz Kafka used to live on. The four of us have a mutual distaste for Kafka, so we mostly just perused gift stores for a little bug type souveneir, which would have amused us greatly. We didn't find one, though. Sigh. We also went on the paddle boats in the river under
St. Charles' bridge. Mo and Jill paddled, and Mel and I were lazy. Groovy times.

We also saw a play last night, Pygmalion (by George Bernard Shaw, the play that My Fair Lady was based on). It was especially interesting because it was in Czech, and also because I have never actually seen My Fair Lady so I was pretty lost until Jill filled me in at intermission. It was very funny, though. The scenes with pronounciation were hysterical, possibly moreso because of the language thing, actually;-)

Not surprisingly, the four of us sound very silly attempting the Czech language, though our attempts amuse us greatly. Today on the paddle boats we had several forceful conversations consisting of the only words we knew: "hello," "yes" "no" and "thank you" Czech as well as Polish. Although, I'm still mixing up "thank you" in both of these languages (they are pretty similar) so there was some gibberish mixed in as well.

Aside from the architecture, the greatest thing in Prague is probably the food. The Czech put cheese on pretty much everything. There's this thing called Fried Cheese- it's something else in Czech, of course, but I can't remember the words for anything in this language, much less spell them- and you can buy it on all the street vendors for about a dollar. Win. It's basically a mozzerella cheese stick, but shaped like a hamburger patty, on a hamburger bun with mayonaise and ketchup. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten in my entire life and I'm completely baffled by the lack of it in the US. If I had any interest in business I would go straight home and open up a fast food chain exclusively devoted to this thing. Seriously.
We've had two each so far and if weren't for the total lack of nutritional value I would probably eat them every meal until our train tomorrow night.

Guess that's it for now- we're heading to dinner, so I probably won't get to write personal emails for a day or two depending, but the next hostel has free internet as well, so, hooray! I'm loving it. Tomorrow we are catching an evening train to Amsterdam for Jill's birthday on Wednesday:-D I am wary of the train after the fiasco that was our last one, but as all the other train rides have been lovely
and everyone seems to be in good health now and we're definitely shelling out the money for beds, it *should* be okay. I hope.

Love you all bunches and bunches,
Sara

europe archive 4/20/07: krakow!

I would begin by saying hello in Polish, but I really can't begin to spell any of the words here. So, hallo again!

We are on our third day in Krakow and I absolutely adore it. ('Three days,' you say? 'I thought you were only going to be there for two.' Yeah, yeah, we missed our morning train to Prague by about a minute and a half. Bye bye train. But it's okay because by taking a night train tonight we'll save money on a hostel anyway. Plus, Krakow turned out to be awesome. So we can pretend like it was all intentional.)

We arrived on Wednesday morning after taking a night train from Berlin. Night trains are totally rad. It's funny though, the people who come through the trains to check tickets and passports nearly give us heart attacks. On the train from Hamburg to Berlin we had a burly German woman barge in, and on the last train we had some train-men-dudes burst through the door around midnight when we went over the border. haha. Nothing like a good start to get the adrenaline going. (As a side note, every time we get on a train we talk about how we feel like we are in Harry Potter. The day trains feel like the Hogwarts Express because of the compartments, and the night trains feel like the Knight Bus because of the beds. So fun. Yeah, we're nerds.)

Anyway, Krakow turned out to be very pretty. We spent the first day exploring the castle and the church around the corner from the hostel. According to legend, a dragon ate a goat at the castle's dungeon and then drank itself to death, or something similarly exciting, so we took touristy pictures with the dragon statue. I had a kind of neat moment walking around the crypt of the church. There was this tiny stained window at the top corner of this one room, so that a bit of light came in, and I was like, "Wow, back in California, I had no idea that there was a little tiny stained glass window in the basement of a pretty church in Krakow. And now I do know." And...you all do too, now. I'm not sure why that struck me so but I thought I'd share.

Our second day here, yesterday, was a big day. We visited the Auschwitz concentration camp. I'm not sure I really want to go into detail on what it was like- you all can certainly read about it yourself but I'm not sure if anything will quite explain it. I had read about it myself and been to the Museum of Tolerance and read Elie Weisel's memoir Night and it still caught me off guard. Honestly, it was just very intense.

It makes you wonder, really, how something like that could happen. There are a thousand explanations, of course- ignorance, hate, apathy, doing horrible things because you somehow feel you're doing something right- but it's just so hard to grasp.

Well, I gotta go...the hostel has communist internet, by which I mean we all get a half hour free and but can't buy extra time, so now I've got this big lineup behind me for their half hour of free Internet time. Talk to you all soon!

Love,
Sara

P.S. Someone please forward this to Jimmy and Nancy Follmer, since I haven't had a chance to fix their email address in my mailing list yet. Thank you!

europe archive 4/16/07: streets of berlin, I must leave you soon...

(oh, will you forget me? Was I ever really here?)

Hey everyone!

Berlin is shaping up- we've had two really incredible days here since I last wrote. Yesterdaz we saw the Berlin Philharmonic!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Please multiply number of exclamation points by a much larger number.) They were PHENOMENAL. We went to see if we could get rush tickets, and they were sold out so we waited around for cancellations and got incredibly lucky with tickets for only 20 euros each. Plus, I ended up in the front row of the lowest tier of side balconies, in the seat closest to the orchestra, meaning I could literally (and did, a bit) read the music Brahm's 1st Symphony over the shoulders of the 2nd violins- I was about five feet from them. I think the only seat in the entire house that might have been better than mine was the one exactly on the opposite side of the room where the guy sitting there could read over the shoulders of the 1st violins. But then, I think the bases may have given him a less clear view of the oboists. Soo...yeah. Wow. There aren't really any words, but watching them is like this amazing sea of motion; even the wind players are incredibly physically expressive with their instruments. The string players breathed as if they were wind players themselves and at the end of really intense phrases I could hear them all breathe in at the same time. So. Crazy.

Otherwise...today we went to the Bahnhof Zoo. They have a baby polar bear there, Knut, who's literally a celebrity here in Berlin and he's in all the newspapers and people line up to have pictures taken with him, so we went to see him and he wasn't there today! It was very sad. But we saw lots of monkeys and penguins.

We also went to a church called Kaiser-Wilhein-Gedächtniskirche (nope, no clue how to pronounce it) which was bombed during World War II and left that way to show the effects of bombing. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around it, I think partially because we hadn't planned on going, we just ended up finding it and having lunch on the steps.

This evening we went to the East Side Gallery, which is basically the longest still-standing section of the Berlin Wall, covered in murals which are now becoming covered by grafitti. We walked along the entire thing ( 1.3 km) at sunset. The artwork was so moving and had all sorts of things about peace and freedom. One of my favorites was a black and white painting with two hands pushing up a foot, lifting someone else over the wall.

Tomorrow is our last day here, and then we catch a night train to Krakow, Poland, where I hear the hostel has free internet! Hooray!

Until next time,
Sara

europe archive 4/14/07: Berlin, babz

Guten tag!

The kezboards are still switching zs and ys, so bear with me.

We are now in Berlin, and all is groovz. Berlin is a weird citz. I'm not sure if I like it much but it is cool to be here nonetheless. Jill summed it up nicelz: "I feel like I'm in 1984." Me: "The book or the year?" Jill: "Yes." We are stazing in East Berlin, verz near the border, and it does feel like a time warp. Cool, though, I suppose.

Todaz has been prettz light so far. We mainlz just explored a bit and saw the museum about the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie (which was REALLZ cool.) We're stazing with some friends, Daniel and Julien, who we met through a project called Couch Surfing ( couchsurfing.com) and they are fantastic hosts. Julien is French and made us a fantastic dinner when we arrived last night. It's quite amusing all the French and Italian food we've had already on this trip, since we haven't even been to either place zet.

Internet time is still limited since the computer apartment is on the fritz, so, until next time--

much love,
Sara

europe archive 4/12/07: safely in Hamburg

Just wanted to let you all know:-)

Not much new to report at this point...tonight will be a quieter night in at the hostel (which has very nice, sunny dorms, though no private bathrooms in this one.) Hamburg is sunny and fairly warm during the day, though quite cold at night and in general filled with strange smells. I'm honestly not sure how trusting I am of German food at this point- we were warned by a few people before we came not to eat any meat if we didn't know exactly what it was!

Germany is also funny because Germans in general seem to wish to console us about being silly Americans by giving us odd candies. In the few hours we've been here so far I've received a weird flavored jolly rancher sort of treat from the airport bus driver and also a sort of cherry flavored hard candy melted into a sea shell by the restaurant owner where we ate dinner.

We did have a bit of adventure when we arrived. Jill (who has taken three years of high school in German so can at least ask people, in German, if they speak English) asked the airport dude how we should get to Hamburg, and it was like a frenzy! "Come, come, you must catch this bus or you will have to stay the night here! We must make the bus turn around and come back to get you!" It was craziness. And THEN we didn't even catch that bus, since we hadn't had a chance to go to an ATM so we didn't have enough for all four fares. Weirdly though, there was another bus leaving in a half hour. So I'm still a bit lost as to what the whole fuss was about. It's quite funny being somewhere where you don't speak the language.

Speaking of which, starting now with the language change random letters and symbols on the keyboard are switched (y's and z's, for instance, and a "#" where the " ' " should be, and no "at" szmbol at all... and thez#re quite a nuisance to change because the backspace is shifted as well, so I think on such kezboards I will saz that all z#s are y#s and vice versa. Unless that is far too confusing to read, but reallz I think it could add comedic flair, right?

Anzwaz, tomorrow will be our first daz using a Eurail pass, and we're off to Berlin! Woot!

Until then, love and hugs,
Sara

europe archive 4/11/07: dublin dublin

Hey everyone!

Dublin is so beautiful, and after that first freezing morning when we arrived it actually warmed up quite a bit. Yaaay! ("Yaaay!" is a quote from some Avenue Q characters, the Bad Idea Bears, that they say following all their cheerful suggestions. It's become a running joke here since we saw it.)

The trip has been feeling more whirlwind, since we basically have had three very busy days here and are off to Hamburg, Germany tomorrow morning. We've seen Trinity College and the library there (so. awesome.) and the National Gallery and the National History Museum (bog men!) We also went yesterday to see the Christ Church Cathedral, which was built in 1030ish and has really cool stuff like the embalmed heart of an archbishop from about 1200 years ago (it is believed that you can pray to it and it will cause miracles- one woman told Mel it had saved her mother's life) and a cat and rat from the 1800s which became mummified when one chased the other into the pipes of the organ. Crazy! We also went today to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was beautiful and there was a choir singing there. Everyone here is so friendly, and the accents are loads of fun.

Guess that's it for now, as I don't have much time. Until next time, take care!

Love,
Sara

europe archive 4/9/07: dublin!

G'day all:-)

Dublin...is cold. And rainy. But beautiful! We arrived this morning at about 7, and buses were running slow because of the holiday so we didn't even get into the city until nearly 10, buuuut we are here now. We spent the day wandering about Dublin- we mainly saw Trinity College and found a couple nice cafes and planned our itinerary for the next few days (yay, castles and old churches and art museums.)

Easter in London was lovely, by the way- we spent the morning going on slides at the Tate Modern, which were SO FUN. The artist's explanation of them was really cool too- the idea is that you see the work from the inside and out, and it creates this feeling of excitement, and he liked to think of what the world would be like if we all went down a slide every day. (It'd be pretty groovy. Especially these slides. They were huge.) Later in the day we found Platform 9 and 3/4 (for all you Harry Potter geeks) and went to music services at Westminster Abbey. Those were lovely! There was such a pretty organ piece (Fantasie Aria by Philip Moore) and the soprano was fantastic. And, for anyone else going to Europe on a budget, going to church services is an excellent way to see the inside of these great churches for free;-)

Hope everyone had a magnificent holiday!

Love,
Sara

europe archive 4/7/07: last update from England

hellooooooo!

Not much new except for England's freakishly lovely weather for this time of year. We spent yesterday in London- visiting the Globe theatre in the morning and the Museum of Natural History in the afternoon. I'd been to the Globe before but it was so nice to visit it again; it really makes you feel like you've gone back in time...I'll send some pictures when I get a chance, but there are wood pillars painted to look like marble and thatched roofs and beautiful paintings on the ceilings, and when you're standing in the groundling section you can put your elbows right on the stage. I hope someday I get to go when it's actually in season:-p (it only runs from May to September since it's an outdoor theatre.)

The Museum of Natural History turned out to be pretty fun (there are loads of stuffed animals on display, and when you walk in there's this big dinosaur skeleton in this church-like room). We were very entertained by all the different displays with buttons to push and things.

For dinner it was a trip down memory lane and we found the Mediterranean restaurant we'd eaten at on Bayswater the last time we were in London. Tres exciting! We had fish and chips- yum:-) Then we headed across town to a theatre that was showing a dark comedy that sounded interesting, but it turned out to be closed for Good Friday. Whoops! So, we went to Covent Garden to hang out; which is just this street area with a carousel and street musicians and shopping. But totally by chance, we stumbled upon the theatre Avenue Q was playing at, and on an whim went inside to check prices. It turned out that since we were students, we could get half off tickets for best seats, which translated to 25 pounds (about 45 dollars) for the third row. OMG. It was completely fantastic and worth every penny.

Today was a quiet day in Sutton- we did laundry and went with Tilly to the park and rolled down the hill and went on the swings. We took the Huttons out for dinner as a thank you for letting us stay with them, and the whole evening was so much fun. They've been just wonderful to stay with so it was great to have a last night out with them.

So tonight we are packing, and tomorrow (Easter Sunday) will be our last day in London- we're catching the last train around 11:00 p.m. to the Luton airport, and spending the night there for our VERY early flight on Monday to Ireland. Woohoo! And fortunately, March has just passed, so it's not peak season there anymore. But the hostel we're staying at won't have free Internet access, so I expect my email checking/sending will be patchier at least until we arrive in Berlin around the 14th (we have something like four days in Ireland and a day in Hamburg in between).

I hope you all have a FANTASTIC Easter- have fun, find eggs, hang out with family, and eat GOOD food. Mmm, honey baked ham. hehe.

Loads of love to all,
Sara

europe archive 4/5/07: hello again

Hey everyone!

Just a quick update, but with pictures! [blog edit: some pictures now interspersed with other entries.] Hopefully they aren't too bad to download; I'm not sure how to downsize them on this computer.


In the past few days we've been to Stonehenge (I'm in front of the rocks in one picture), Bath (to see the Ancient Roman baths- such a pretty city), spent a day in London at the Tate Modern, Harrod's (an expensive department store), and Abbey Road (there's a picture of us crossing it!), and today we spent the day out in Guildford where Mel and Mo had college interviews and we all hung out with Seong (who some of you know as Tevye from CV's production of Fiddler on the Roof.) We had lunch at a pretty park in town and hung out at the neighborhood castle, which was small but right out of a fairy tale.










Hope everyone is doing well! Sorry for any delay in writing back to personal emails, but it's wonderful hearing from you all so please keep me posted on how you're doing!

loads of love,
Sara

europe archive 4/2/07: castles, abbeys, and carbohydrates

Hello all!

I think when I last wrote I said we were choosing between day trips to Windsor Castle and London. It has been two days and we've done both! We went to Windsor Castle first, on Sunday. It was so fun and pretty! It was a bit silly getting there- we first got on the correct line going the wrong direction (whoops!) But we arrived successfully, and had potatoes (each of us got a different topping- mine was tuna) before heading over to the castle. It was an exciting time to be there because the Queen considers it her home, so she was spending four weeks there for Easter. That meant that her flag, the Queen Standard, was flying- when she leaves, Tony the Flagman will change it to the Union Jack.

In the castle, the best things were definitely Queen Mary's Dollhouse (which has real paintings by famous artists and a working piano) and the seals and swords and armour of the Knights of the Garter. It's also always neat seeing 17th century graffiti;-)

Today we went to London and saw Westminster Abbey and had lunch in Trafalgar Square before heading over to the National Gallery. We'd intended to visit both that museum and the Tate Britain, but being the art geeks we are we ended up spending nearly five full hours wandering just the National Gallery. I'm so glad we did because really it's a toss up between that and the Louvre for my favorite museums in the world (so far!). My absolute favorite things I saw on this trip were:

Leonardo da Vinci- The Virgin of the Rocks
Peter Paul Rubens- Samson and Delilah
Delaroche- The Execution of Lady Grey
Claude Lorrain- Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba
Renoir- The Umbrellas

We have also been making audio tours of places we can't take photos in using Jill's recorder. These tours provide commentary from the Quad on very important features such as a sword with a disco ball attached to the end in Windsor Castle and the painting titled "A Very Grotesque Old Woman" in the National Gallery (which is really exactly what it sounds like.) On a similarly entertaining note, we have been very amused by the train and tube stops here. Some favorites so far have been Twickenham Station and Tooting Broadway. Yup, we are mature grown-ups.

Must be off to bed- big day tomorrow visiting Bath and Stonehenge! Hope everyone is well.

Love to all,
Sara

europe archive 3/31/07: london, baby!

Hey everyone!

We've safely arrived in England and made it to Surrey to stay with Mel and Mo's cousins, who are all wonderful.

The airports and flights and customs went quite well. I made a friend, Melissa from Hawaii, who accompanied me on a quest for a travel pillow prior to boarding the first flight- which I promptly left in the waiting area and had to ask the flight attendent for permission to run back off the plane and get it. Whoops! But it all worked out fine, fortunately, and I didn't lost my tickets or my passport or anything at all (yet!). The flights themselves were alright, with some very exciting turbulence and some pretty terrible food, but I got a window seat on both, and Mel, Mo, Jill and I all got seats together on the second.

My favorite moment so far was a few minutes after landing, walking through the terminal, when we passed some construction workers and Jill whispered what we were all thinking: "You guys...everyone's speaking in British accents!"

Today will be a light day, since we are all a bit jet-lagged (hard to say how badly yet...it's nearly noon here, so *hopefully* we will be able to stay up until at least 8 or so, if we're lucky.) Everyone's taking showers, then we're having lunch at the house, then we're taking a walk and going out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. Tomorrow we're going either to Windsor Castle or London- we haven't decided for sure yet but it's just so cool to say:-D

Hope everyone is doing well back home!

Love to all,
Sara

europe archive 3/30/07: leaving on a jet plane

Hey everyone!

My flight leaves in...four hours, so I'm leaving for the airport at 5. I'm packed and ready, I think. Hopefully I will be able to sleep to minimize jet lag.

Attached is a picture of my new pink highlights- with thanks to Aunt Joanne and Uncle Dean, and photo courtesy of Julie:-) Gotta carpe the diem, you know!

love to all,
Sara

europe archive 3/25/07: bonjour and things

Hi everyone!

If you're reading this, you are currently on a mailing list for the
group emails I'm going to be sending out from Europe. If you don't
want to be on this list or want a different address added to the list
instead, or if you know the email of someone else who might want to be
on here, etc., please write back and let me know!

(...specifically, I need current email addresses for Michael and Theo
Fram, Melissa Hayden, Londyn Thomas, Eddie Corcoran, Sam Toia, and
Betsy Klein)

As most of you know, I will be leaving for Europe for seven weeks with
friends Mel, Mo, and Jill a.k.a. "The Quad" on Friday morning. The
schedule (subject to mild changes) is:

LAX to JFK (Delta flight DL 0148) at 8:00 a.m. on Friday, March 30th
(arrive 4:19 p.m.)
JFK to London Gatwick, UK (Delta flight DL 0001) at 7:45 p.m., arrive
8:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 31st.

3/31-4/9: Great Britain, including London, Stonehenge, Guildford, and
Carshalton where we will be staying with Mo and Mel's cousins.

4/9-4/12: Ireland, mainly Dublin.

4/12-4/17: Germany, Hamburg and Berlin.

4/17-4/19: Poland, setting up camp in Krakow and visiting Auschwitz.

4/19-4/24: Czech Republic, mainly visiting Prague where our friend
Stephanie Brooks is on exchange.

4/24-4/26: The Netherlands- Amsterdam, for Jill's birthday!

4/26-4/28: France, relaxing in Paris (where the Quad first traveled together.)

4/28: Possible overnight stay in Germany (Freiburg im Breisgau), en
route to Austria.

4/29-5/4: Austria- Vienna and Salzburg.

5/4-5/21: Italy- many days, many cities: Venice, Rome, Florence,
possibly Modena/Pompei/Trieste, and Milan.

Milan, Italy (MXP) to Atlanta, Georgia (ATL) on Monday, May 21st
(Delta flight DL 0075) at 11:00 a.m., arrive 3:35 p.m.
ATL to LAX same day, same flight at 5:30 p.m. and arrive home at 7:21
p.m., terrifically jetlagged, at terminal 5.

Hooray!

During this period, I expect that email will be the best way to reach
me (based on previous travels, I'll probably be able to check it about
twice a week), though if there is an emergency you can contact my
momma, Stephanie, at (818) 541-0233 since I will be keeping her
updated with various contact numbers.

Also, group emails will be sent either specifically from me via this
email address, or from the Quad as a whole via
le.quad.goes.to.europe@gmail.com, so don't be confused if that changes
back and forth:-)

Love to all,
Sara