3-31-06

It's Friday, and I have class. Normally I'm out skipping across Italy right now, but I have class. Oh well, tomorrow I'll be taking a day trip to Assisi, so I can do my skipping there.
Episode 5 is now up, so enjoy. I should have more coming soonish.
Ok, I have class, as I stated earlier, so I'm off!


3-30-06

Dracula was awesome! I could only understand about 15% of what was being sung, but it was great. It was basically Dracula meets Cirque du Soleil meets Phantom of the Opera meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You think I'm kidding?
Yes, last night was a good night. The weather was excellent, none of us had to bother bringing extra coats or jackets. The theater was quite a ways away from our neighborhood in Trastevere and there wasn't a bus that would get us all the way up there, so, we had to walk to the Vatican (40 minutes) and get on a bus there. But, here's what the Vatican looked like when we got there.

Cool, huh? Anyway, we got on the bus near the Vatican and took it up to Tor di Quinto, but Tor di Quinto is a really long road and the theater didn't have an actual number on the address, so we had no idea which direction to go once we got off of the bus. Luckily, some friendly locals helped us out and we managed to find the Gran Teatro about 15 minutes before showtime (we left 2 hours early).
After the show we attempted to find the bus stop to get back to the Vatican, but it was after midnight and the night buses go to different places and not very often. So, we hailed a cab and just took that all the way back to Trastevere.
Today is shaping up to be a good day as well. I woke up feeling great, my cold seems to have lifted. The weather is wonderful, clear skies, cool breeze, perfect day for eating gelato while sitting on the fountain at Santa Maria. And, tonight, one of my roommates is making me spaghetti carbonara. I figured out how to make some delicious Choco Crack Bars (chocolate rice krispie treats with peanut butter) and my roommates are so enamoured with them that they are paying me in food to keep a steady supply.
Ok, I'm going to go out and enjoy the weather before the Roman gods decide to bring the cold back. But, here are two more photos from last night.

3-29-06

Oh man, March is drawing to a close. I can’t wait for classes to be over, but I don’t want to leave here yet. There’s still so much I haven’t seen. I’m definitely going to have to come back out to Europe at some point. Maybe I’ll try that whole backpacking thing. Or, I might be able to attend that film composer workshop in Edinburgh, Scotland and then I could just take an extra week or two to do some traveling. Who knows!
Tonight, I am going to see Dracula the Rock Opera. I actually convinced one of my roommates to go with me (I played the pity factor up quite a bit). And, of course, since she’s going, now everyone wants to go see it too. When Sammy wants to go see a rock opera about Dracula everybody says that it sounds too weird and it’s in Italian and they have midterms the next day. But when somebody else decides to go, all of a sudden it’s the hottest ticket since CATS! Whatever, at least I get to see it.
Ok, I’ve got to get to statistics to turn in my portion of our project that I stayed up until the early hours of the morning working on.


3-28-06

Ok, apparently this last Sunday was “Daylight Savings Time and Don’t Tell Sammy Day” over here in Europe. I walked into my statistics class yesterday an hour late. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a plane, train or automobile to catch on Sunday or I would have missed it. I don’t understand why the Europeans “spring forward” a week before the Americas, you would think that it would happen at the same time. Whatever the reasoning, it would have been nice if someone would have said something!
Today will be an exciting day of research for my statistics project. We are doing a project on the success of books being turned into movies. It sounds like more fun than it actually is.
Oh, and I'm sick again! This better be the last time, I used up the last of my NyQuil last night. I will be taking it easy this weekend, I have no major plans as of yet. I will be taking a day trip to either Assisi or Siena on Saturday, I haven't decided which. Sunday I will probably just hang out in Rome, the weather seems to be improving a bit.
I would say more, but the cold medicine buzz has already made this post a bit scattered. So, I'll save the more interesting stuff for when I have better diction. Happy Tuesday!


3-27-06

WARNING! The following post is a culmination of a weeks worth of hip-happenings and, therefore, is very long. So, unplug your phone, go to the bathroom and grab yourself a snack, I don’t want you getting up in the middle of my story.

Alright! Log, star date 03.16.06. I had my usual morning class at JCU. It was another cold, cloudy, rainy day in Rome. I returned to my apartment to pack and attempt to eat as many perishable food items as I could. Later that afternoon I took a train to the airport to catch my flight to Zurich, Switzerland. Upon my arrival in Zurich I had to track down Niko, who was going to pick me up from the airport. It’s a good thing I remembered what he looked like because he didn’t recognize me. I guess I probably should have told him that I got my hair cut off and dyed red and black. Anyway, he took me back to his place where I met his roommates and then passed out on an air mattress.
The next morning I hopped on a train to Lucern to see what was there. It was a very nice little town with some cool features. There are two covered, wooden bridges with little paintings under the roof that depict... um... some story... about death... I don’t know any German, I’m sorry! The city also has two very big and ornate churches. Oh, and there’s a giant lion carved into the side of a cliff. It’s a memorial for all of the Swiss soldiers that died trying to protect the French king during the revolution. I don’t think my pictures accurately show the scale of it, it really is huge.
On Saturday Niko took me around Zurich. We saw the lake which was swarming with ducks and swans. We climbed up the bell tower of one church to see the view and we sat quietly in another church so that we could hear a tour guide that we didn’t pay for.
The next morning I was supposed to catch a train to Munich, but I was feeling none too good. My stomach was all twisted up and painful. Unfortunately, here in Europe, the only places to get medicine are at the pharmacies, which are all closed on Sundays. So, Niko wound up having to take me to a Swiss hospital just so I could get some stuff to ease my stomach. That little trip ended up being about three hours and I don’t know how much it might end up costing me when I get back home.
I caught a later train that afternoon and arrived in Munich about 5:30pm. It was already too dark for me to do much sight seeing and I was so tired from the morning’s ordeal that I just went to bed and slept for 12 hours.
On Monday I set out to explore Munich. I went into all of the big churches, saw the Olympic stadium and tower, went to a palace and walked down the big shopping district. All of the museums were closed on Monday and I had no real interest in visiting all of the beer gardens, so I just went back to the hostel.
At the hostel I met some very nice people and we all decided to go out and get a bite to eat. We went to this authentic/touristy place where I had some amazing pork roast and potato dumplings. I tried their wheat beer, which was the best beer I had ever tasted, but I still didn’t like it.
Tuesday morning I woke up way too early. The people who were sharing my room had all of their belongings in separate plastic bags packed in their suitcases and I think they were cataloguing them or something. I don’t know what they were doing, but I awoke to the sound of loud rustling bags for a full half hour. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep after they left because my train was leaving in two hours.
So, I left Munich on a train bound for Vienna, Austria around 9:30am. I didn’t eat any breakfast that morning because my stomach was still a little sensitive and I didn’t want to aggravate it before my 4 hour train ride. But, about 11, I was starving. So, I decided to check out the dining car.
I had never actually eaten in a dining car before. The trains in Italy have more of a snack bar car where there are a few tables but most people just take their cold sandwich and drink back to their seats. This train, however, had an actual restaurant with tables and menus and a waiter. I ordered a cheese omelet and ate it while watching the Alps fade into the background.
I arrived in Vienna around 1:30pm, checked into my hostel and immediately set out to see what there was to see. It was very fortunate that I actually bought a subway pass. They rarely ever check to see if you have one, but as soon as I arrived at Stephensplatz there were dozens of police making sure everyone had the right tickets. There are some pretty severe penalties if you are caught freeloading on public transportation.
So, I saw St. Stephens, which was huge. Unfortunately it was too dark inside the church so most of my pictures didn’t turn out. I went up the bell tower and took some good pictures of the view though. After the church I followed the crowds around to the Hofburg Palace and the famous Viennese Opera House. Then it was getting dark so I had to return to the hostel. The Wombat’s in Vienna was a great hostel, it was just in a very questionable neighborhood
The following morning I decided to take a stroll along the Danube. It wasn’t the most scenic river I had ever seen, but it was incredibly blue, almost teal. Once I had had my fill of the Danube I set off towards the Prater. My first order of business at the Prater was the Riesenrad, the ginormous ferris wheel that’s about 215 feet high. You get to ride in these box car kind of things that swing back and forth as the passengers move from the different windows while the giant wheel lifts you higher into the Austrian sky. It was one of those experiences that you just kind of had to do in Vienna, even if you have a problem with heights and swinging box cars.
So, after my awesome morning of riding awesome amusement park awesome rides... awesome... I went back to the city center to figure out what to do with the rest of my afternoon. I decided to check out the Haus der Musik music museum because it was the only museum that sounded like something I might want to see. I expected the place to just be a bunch of pictures of composers with facts about them and maybe some of their music playing in the background. What I got was five floors of fun! It turned out to be this huge interactive musical fun house. I wrote a waltz by rolling dice, I drove a pair of eighth notes through staves on one of those racing car style video games and I conducted a virtual orchestra. I plucked, strummed, beat, stomped, sung, blasted, bowed, trilled and danced my way through floor after floor of musical wonderland. And, then I spent a lot of money in the gift shop.
That night I ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant. One might think that eating Chinese food in Austria would be really weird, but it wasn’t that strange. The only really surreal thing about the whole experience was that their was uncensored American gangsta rap playing through the speakers and all of these older Austrians singing along under their breath. So, that, on top of eating cashew chicken in Vienna, was really weird.
The next morning I got on a train for my nine hour ride back to Zurich. I somehow made the mistake of sitting in a smoking car. I had never been on a train that actually had a smoking car, so it’s not that dumb of a mistake. I sat in that closed cabin with four older gentlemen who were all smoking for about an hour. They were being so friendly and talking to me in English that I felt incredibly rude by trying to duck out. I finally got up to use the restroom and, while I was up, I found a non smoking cabin on the other end of the train that had room. So, I returned to the smoking cabin and told the nice smoking gentlemen that I had run into a friend and I was moving to a different car. They very kindly said their goodbyes as I collected my things and moved toward the back of the train.
All I wanted to do on my way to my new cabin was to sit on top of the train for about fifteen minutes and let the Austrian air purge my hair, skin and clothing from the putrid smoke that had sunk into them. I kept trying to explain to the woman sharing my new cabin that I had been in the smoking area but I didn’t like smoking, but she didn’t speak any English and I think she thought I wanted a cigarette from her.
There’s one thing I can definitely say about this trip and that is that it has made me appreciate the amount of Italian I know. I always felt so ignorant here in Italy trying to stumble my way through a conversation, but when I was up in Germany, Switzerland and Austria I didn’t even know how to say all those simple little phrases that I take for granted in Italian. Phrases like “I’m sorry”, “Where is...?”, “Do you speak English?” and “I don’t understand”. I did pick up on some key words while I was there though, I just don’t know how to spell them.
Anyway, I got back into Zurich about 6:30pm. I had dinner with Niko and packed up my stuff. The next morning I flew back into Rome. It was good to be back too. I had been gone for a full week and I missed Italy, especially Rome.
My weekend was fairly lazy. I slept in for the first time in weeks. On Friday and Saturday night I met up with two of the folks that I hung out with at the hostel in Munich who just happened to be staying in Rome for the weekend. I showed them around the non-touristy areas of Trastevere and cooked them dinner. That's just the kind of person I am!
Now, it's Monday and I'm back at JCU. The semester is halfway done and Kansas is breathing down my neck. I don't want to think about it. So, while I'm not thinking about it, you can check out all of my Spring Break photos and I would say listen to the song at your own risk.


3-22-06

It's been a very good day. I went to the Prater this morning and rode some rides, that was quite enjoyable. After lunch I went to the "Haus Der Musik" music museum. That was awesome! I think I spent a good two hours there playing around with all of the cool musical stuff. And, what did I tell you, I spent a lot of money here. Some of the money went to ticket prices and food and such, but I'm coming home with lots of music notation apparel.
Ok, I've got a 9 hour train ride ahead of me tomorrow, yay!


3-21-06

Ok, now I'm in Vienna, Austria. I got in about 1:30 this afternoon and I've been walking all over the place since then (it's currently 8). I've only been here for half a day and I already know that I'm going to be spending a lot of money here. Why is that, you may ask? Well, it's because everything here has music notation on it! I lost my treble clef necklace while I was at the Olympics and I've been noticing the loss ever since. So, I need some sort of musical bling-bling to get me by until I can find a replacement.
Tomorrow I will be taking a much needed break from churches and museums and going up to the Prater to ride some rides. I think that will be what the Germans call "orsm" (pronounced "awesome").
Oh, by the way, I tried the best beer in the world last night... and I still didn't like it. This proves once and for all that I just don't like beer. So, sorry Germany, Ireland and Australia, but your drink of choice is not for me.


3-20-06

Greetings from Germany! I am sitting in the Wombat City Hostel in Munich right now. I´ve been out walking around the city since about 8 this morning and I am very tired and hungry. I had hoped to make it out to Neuschwanstein Castle this afternoon, but it looks like I won´t have the time. So, I´ll be going to a palace just outside the city instead. I still have not tried German beer here in Munich, I really didn´t feel up to it last night, so, perhaps tonight. My hostel has a pub downstairs and I get one free drink, it all depends on how my stomach is feeling.
Ok, since I´m out in the Germanic countries I put up a song from a German band. I´ve actually had the song up before, but it´s so good!


3-16-06

Hey out there all you cats and kittens... out there... You have waited patiently and Sammy has delivered! That’s right, there is now actual video proof that I am, in fact, in Italy and not just uploading pictures from other sites on the web. The first four short video episodes of my experiences in Italy are now available for your viewing pleasure. This will hopefully make up for next week when I probably will not have the time or internet resources to post updates and photos.
Yes, in less than 12 hours I will be in Zurich, Switzerland where I will be staying with good old Niko Kühner and his German roommates for the weekend. I had the good fortune to meet Niko in highschool while he was staying with my friend Jeremy from Through a Glass Productions as part of the Lawrence, Kansas sister city exchange program with Eutin, Germany. I’m very excited to see him again and to meet his incredibly hospitable roommates (they are moving themselves around just so I can have a bedroom to myself for the three nights that I will be there). On Friday I will be taking a day trip down to Lucern, Switzerland by myself and on Saturday I will be touring Zurich with Niko. Sunday, I will head up to Munich, Germany for two days and from there I will take a train to Vienna, Austria for another two days. After that, I will go back to Zurich for one final night with Niko and then fly back to Rome the following morning.
As I said, I don’t know if I will have much in the way of internet access during my travels, so, enjoy my video essays and I’ll definitely be back on Monday the 27.


3-15-06

So tired... this school takes so much out of you. I’ve had three papers to do this week and I had three mid terms in one day last week. I’ll have next week off for Spring Break, but when I get back I have a statistics project to turn in and an oral presentation for my Shakespeare class. How am I supposed to go out and experience Rome if I’m constantly stuck in my apartment doing schoolwork? When I get back to the States I’m seriously going to take a whole week off to just sleep because I’m certainly not getting much out here.
I would like to say more... but I’m so tired. My morning caffè has not taken it’s full effect yet, as delicious as it was. Um... yeah... my brain just isn’t going to function properly right now. So, here’s a picture of the first thing I saw at the train station in Verona this last weekend.

3-14-06

There’s really no point in having class this week. We had midterms last week so we’re starting new material in all of my classes. But, Spring Break starts at the end of this week, so everything we’re discussing right now we’re just going to have to review when we get back.
Yes, I’m two days away from my trip up to Switzerland, Germany and Austria. I love it here in Italy, but I’m excited to see a little bit of some other European countries. Granted, I was already in Switzerland for what some call skiing and what I call falling down a mountain, but it was a ski resort town geared specifically toward tourists, so I didn’t get to really experience much of the true Swiss culture.
I found out yesterday that the weather back home turned disastrous over the weekend. It was like a tornado hit the town, which wouldn’t have been impossible, it is in Kansas after all, but no tornadoes were involved. You can see some of the destruction in the local paper or you can go over to the Through a Glass website and check out their video footage. I called my friend Jeremy at Through a Glass last night (Italy time) to make sure that he and his roommates were still alive. I’m happy to report that they are all fine. My family is apparently fine as well. So, that’s good.
The weather everywhere seems to be rather insane. This has been the coldest and wettest winter Rome has had in 150 years. It was beautifully sunny while I was way up north in Venice this past weekend, but it was snowing very heavily on the day I left (there were 4 inches in Padova). In Florence it started hailing on Saturday. And, the whole south of Italy was undergoing unseasonable thunderstorms. I don’t know what’s going on with the world... but I have a feeling that we humans are to blame. I’m not talking about just those of us who are alive right now, but the human race as a whole.
So, I know it’s not Earth Day, but go out and pick up a piece of trash, recycle a can or skip driving when you can walk today. It’s not going to change the weather for the day, but you can feel like you’ve done something good for the Earth without being a hippy.


3-13-06

I have returned from my weekend in Venezia. What can I say about the city but, to steal a line from Indiana Jones, “Ah, Venice”. There’s no real way to describe it other than that, but I suppose I should try, considering you’ve gone to the trouble of checking my website. So, sit back, relax, and I will tell you the tale of my trip to Venice.

Thursday
I finished with my morning class, went back to the apartment, ate lunch and then left for the station at noon. One of the buses that stops right outside of my apartment goes to the Termini train station and it’s usually about a 25 minute ride. On this particular day the route took an hour and I was sprinting (yes, sprinting) to the track just in time to see my train pulling away. Aggravated and out of breath I went to an electronic ticket booth in an attempt to find another train to take me to Venice. I wound up purchasing tickets for a train to Bologna and then a train from there to Venice. I waited around Termini for the Bologna train which was scheduled to leave at 1:30 but did not actually arrive until 1:55. When we actually made it to Bologna I was late for my connecting train and had to wait around for an hour for the next train. I made the next train easily enough, but once we made it to Padova the train went on strike. Luckily, not all of the trains were striking and I managed to hop onto yet another train about 45 minutes later. I almost made the mistake of getting off at the wrong station, since Venice has two, one for the mainland and one for the island. All I saw was the sign for “Venice” and I was so happy to have finally made it that I just jumped off the train at the first stop. Luckily, I realized my mistake and jumped back onto the train just as the doors were closing. Fifteen minutes later, around 9:30, I was in Venice. I picked up some salami and cheese from the cafe at the station and then found my hostel. I passed out shortly thereafter.

Friday
In the morning I woke up to cloudy skies and cold, misty rain. I pulled on as many layers as I could and set out on my way to St. Mark’s Square. I knew that there were going to be a lot of canals, a lot of masquerade masks and, in hindsight, I should have put two and two together, you know, Venice... Venetian glass... but even if I had made that connection it would not have prepared me for what I was about to encounter. First off, there are no streets in Venice, it is a just a maze of bridges and skinny alleyways occasionally emptying out into enormous plazas and marketplaces. There are no cars, vespas or buses, just seas of pedestrians trying to find their way through the twisted corridors. Maps and street signs will do you no good there, your best bet is to just follow the crowds and look for the occasional arrows that point you in the general direction of the Rialto bridge, the train station or St. Mark’s.
Immediately upon rounding my first corner across the Grand Canal I was blinded by glassworks in all shapes, sizes and colors. Everywhere you turn there are glass sculptures, trinkets, wine glasses and goblets, jewelry, ornaments, chandeliers and chess pieces. They are all very brightly colored and practically every store has them. Where there weren’t any glass objects there were masks. The masks in Venice are indescribable. Most are individually hand made and each one is different. After being dazzled by the craftsmanship I set out on a quest to find a specific mask, my “Angel of Music”.
Ok, to clarify, the “Angel of Music” is a reference from musical The Phantom of the Opera (the stage show and not the depressingly bad movie rendition). The Phantom was supposed to be Christine’s “Angel of Music”. He was a guide and guardian, he composed the music of the night and he was a psychopathic killer. Needless to say, I really liked the Phantom. Anyway, I was not actually looking for the famous Phantom mask, I was just looking for a particular mask to represent my own “Angel of Music”. And, no, in case you were wondering, I was not looking for a Danny Elfman mask... although that would be cool...
After wandering around the labyrinth of Venice for an entire day I finally found the exact mask I was looking for, and it wasn’t cheap either. But, it spoke to me! He said ”Devi comprarmi, Sammy, perchè ti voglio bene e comporremo la bella musica insieme.” Well, of course the mask didn’t actually talk, I would have jumped in the nearest canal and swam back to the mainland had that happened, but you get the idea. So, I bought it. I would have taken a picture of it for you all, but the store wrapped it up really well and I think it would be safer to leave it wrapped for transporting it back to the States. But, here’s what it looks like right now.

The weather vastly improved throughout the day. I wound up going back to the hostel to peel off a few layers because the sun had come out and it had gotten too warm. While searching for my mask I visited many of the famous sights of Venice. I saw Saint Mark’s Square where people were buying birdseed just so they could be attacked by hundreds of pigeons. I went to the Rialto bridge and attempted to navigate my way through the Santa Croce district. I went into five cathedrals, each one was incredibly different and unique. And, I took a boat over to San Giorgio to climb the bell tower and see Venice at sunset. Afterward I hopped on the “acquabus” back up the Grand Canal to my hostel to rest my weary legs.

Saturday
Since I had seen all there really was to see in Venice the day before, I decided to take a side trip over to Verona. I didn’t know what was in Verona, I just decided to go on the spur of the moment. So, I got on a train and an hour and thirty minutes later I was standing outside the Porta Nuova train station in Verona. I had no map and no idea of where anything was, I just followed the crowd.
After walking for about ten minutes I came upon a giant arch stretched across the street. I walked through it and laid out in front of me was a huge, stone arena. It was completely unexpected, I mean, I was walking down this main road lined with designer stores and then there was this random amphitheater. I went inside the huge structure and climbed up all of the stands to the top, then my fear of heights combined with my fear of wasps forced me back down. So, then I went wandering through the chambers under the arena where the prisoners and animals were kept before the shows. It was all very surreal.
I continued to follow the crowds farther into the city until I came across a huge mass of people huddled around an entryway. After pushing my way through I found out that I was looking at Juliet’s balcony. Yes, the balcony that supposedly was an inspiration in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is in Verona. It’s not the most impressive thing you’ll ever see, but it was kinda neat. The crowds didn’t seem to point me in any other direction after that, so I returned to the train station and then back to Venice.

Sunday
Well, on Sunday, I woke up, went to the train station, got on the right train back to Rome and then sat on the train for about 5 hours. I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening writing a paper for my Shakespeare class. What a great way to finish the weekend.

Ok, there are pictures up from Venice and Verona, there are two songs up and Spring Break starts at the end of this week!


3-10-06

Greetings from Venice! I got in very late last night, my journey here is a story in itself, but later. I don't have much time to go into the assorted details right now, I'm about to go back out on the canals in search of my "Angel of Music"... more details on that as well. Be patient, all will be revealed in due time.


3-9-06

Apparently yesterday was International Women's Day, a holiday celebrated internationally but no one here from the States has ever heard of it. I don't know if we've just never noticed it or if it's just not celebrated in the US. But, the streets in Rome were lined with little yellow Mimosa flowers which were handed out to the women as they passed by. I wound up buying some chocolate "cake in a bag", baking it and sharing it with my female roommates. It seemed like a good excuse to eat chocolate... not that anyone really needs an excuse.
It's a cold rainy day in Rome, which seems to be the usual weather here this semester. This afternoon I will be hopping on a train to Venice where there will be a mixture of snow and rain. I'm hoping for one dry day, even if it's cold, to go on a gondola ride.
There's a musical playing in Rome right now that I desperately want to go see. It's called Dracula: The Rock Opera. It's in Italian and it's probably the only opera I have any interest in going to while I'm here. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find anyone to go with me and the theater is in an area that I would not want to be alone in after dark. So, hopefully I can convince someone to go with me.
Ok, I've got to go to class and then Venice. Ciao!


3-8-06

Oh goodie! I have three midterms back to back today! I'm so happy!
This morning I have geared myself up for my day of exams by feasting on Choco Crack... which is very appropriately named, I might add.