Tuesday, September 25, 2007














I had a really fun past few days in Manila. I didn't really know what to expect when I arrived. One friend who had been there last year described the city as a "shithole", but I was pleasantly surprised to find it both cosmopolitan and diverse. The section of town I stayed in was right on Manila bay, was relatively clean, and had nice restaurants and stores.





Of course, this image stood in contrast to the very visible poverty throughout-- families sleeping on the street living out of little wooden pushcarts, dirty children running around wearing only a t-shirt or sometimes nothing at all, were all too common sights.





I stayed at a hostel called Penion Nativitad, which was comfortable, sociable, and very affordable. I spent many hours sitting around the outside tables meeting amazing new people from all over the world. I met up with my old friend Emily and her husband Jon, who are Peace Corps volunteers living in the Philippines for 2 years (they've been here since May). Just by coincidence, they were pulled from their original worksite for security reasons, and are now hanging out in Manila without much to do until they are re-assigned next month (in fairness they did both have plenty of work to do also, they weren't just hanging out). The hostel was the official one that all Peace Corps volunteers use while they are in Manila, so I had the opportunity to meet and talk with lots of very cool volunteers, all with different perspectives and backgrounds. I was able to have lots of my questions answered, and it got me more excited than ever to hopefully join the Peace Corps myself sometime next year. PC volunteers are also generally fun, interesting people, so I really had a blast.





I was in Manila 4 days but didn't feel the need to rush to see every single sight in the city, and took things at a very relaxed pace. My first day I just took a walk from my hotel without any idea where I was going, and ended up wandering to a cool park in honor of the Philippines revolutionary hero. In the afternoon I got a 2 hour massage for $ 10 U.S! It was great! Another day I went with some friends I had made at the hostel to visit a few churches in the area. The churches were interesting, but just walking around the area was the most interesting part-- we wandered through a very lively market, passing colorful local vegetables and meat, among other things (It reminded me alot of the market I saw a few months ago in Huaraz, Peru). Sara also wanted to visit a historic house she read about in the Lonely Planet. I was initially a bit bored, but it turned out to be the highlight of the day when we began speaking with the lady who ran the museum, an incredible, very warm Philippino woman with a PhD in Philippino studies. She had done lots of research on Philippino culture and religion, and I had a fascinating discussion with her on Philippino spirituality and religious beliefs. a former colonial colony, the Philippines is the only predominately Catholic country in all of Asia. Nonetheless, Dr. Obusan explained to me how the country's officially catholic beliefs are really strongly fused with traditional, pre-Hispanic religious customs and traditions, including a strong dose of mysticism. What fascinated me about the discussion was how similar this all was with what I have learned about religion in Latin America, particularly the Andes, where even today Christian language and symbols are used in conjunction with much older beliefs in things like witchcraft and mysticism. I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but was fascinated to see these parallels between 2 such vastly different cultures. Moreover, as a student of Latin American studies, I have been interested to see other more general similarities between the Philippines and Latin American countries as former Spanish colonies, in such areas as architecture and even language--Tagalog, also known as Philipino, perhaps has 10% of its words borrowed from Spanish, so it's been very strange for me to listen to a completely unfamiliar language and suddenlty understand random words and phrases.





The Philippinos I have encountered have been among the friendliest, most open people I have ever come across, and I have struck up numerous conversations with people after chance encounters since I've been here. Yesterday a group of students approached and asked if we would be judges for their school dance competition, which they were just getting ready to start. Walking on the street today, I came across some people singing karaoke in their house (they had rented the machine for a birthday party--Karaoke is HUGE here), and they invited me to sing, so I sang a very embarassed off-tune rendition of "My Girl". My guidebook describes Philippino culture as "quirky". I wasn't quite sure what that meant until I was here a few days. Those are just a few examples, you'd have to see it for yourself to understand. Of course, Philippino culture is more than just quirky, and I'm seeing that it's really quite complicated. While speaking with the doctor the other day, she lamented how Philipinos strive to emulate the West, America more than anything, in nearly every way they can, and seem to not be proud of, or really to even understand, their own unique identity. When speaking with another woman about the Philippines' colonial past, why it had allowed itself to transfer from Spanish to American sovereignty without much resistance, she described what she termed as Philipino "resilience", their ability to adapt to new conditions (or new exploiters?) and still be happy. Put this way, the undeniable Philippino friendliness I have observed gives me rather mixed feelings. Nonetheless, their openness seems very genuine and has made my experiences here so far much more meaningful.




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I flew this morning from Manila to Busuanga, a relatively small island south of Manila not too far from Borneo. I flew on a tiny prop plane and it was quite and adventurous flight, flying over Luzon's green mountains followed by the South China sea. As we approached the island, my jaw dropped and my body shook with excitement as I looked down at the blue water and coral-fringed beaches surrounding a lush, mountaineous jungle landscape. From what I've read, this island is supposed to be one of the jewels of the Philippines, an unspoilt adventure sports paradise, but I've only been here for a few hours. My plan is to stay here at least a month in the town of Coron, and to get my training as a SCUBA divemaster, which would then qualify me to work and get paid to lead dives, rather than continuing to pay for this very expensive sport. I've spoken with a local dive shop who will give me the training for a very good price, and best of all I'll get to dive all I want during the training-- the area supposedly has some of the world's best wreck diving on a fleet of Japanese ships that were sunk here in a surprise attack on one day during WWII in 1944.





I plan to dive a few days before comitting to anything, so today while I was walking around, I was faced with the decision of whether I really want to invest an entire month of my time here. I've realized that the town is not a "tropical paradise" in the traditional sense of the word, and has a few disadvantages. First, there is no beach. There is waterfront, but is mostly covered by mangrove trees, and houses and docks are all built on stilts far out over the water (actually a really cool feature in and of itself, but not a beach) Second, the water here is not the perfectly clear blue you would picture of the South Pacific. The town is located within a sort of river-like tidal archipelago, so when you look out, instead of seeing a blue horizon you see sort of dark turqoise water, and the green siloutte of nearby Coron island, a very dramatic and impressive limestone island rising from the water 2 km from shore. The downside is that visibility on dives here is pretty unimpressive, averaging only about 8 meters (25 feet). So while not what most tourists look for in a tropical destination, this fact leads to some advantages. First, the town seems to have an incredibly energetic and local feel to it, and is not just another tourist beach crowded with foreigners. I walked around town today and passed by the elementary school, where countless smiling children in uniforms were just coming out, stopping to buy candy on their way. Many smiled and said hello, a few were even brave enough to ask my name. I didn't see another foreigner the entire time I was walking. At lunch I met a teacher at the local university and had another fascinating discussion about him and his family. Everyone here seems very genuinely friendly, I really like it already. But I guess the biggest test will come tomorrow when I finally get to see for myself how the diving that I've been waiting so long for really is...

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
































LIVING THROUGH A TYPHOON; THE WORLD'S TALLEST BUILDING; SEVERE JETLAG; AND SNAKEBLOOD. There are but a few of the memories I will take with me from my time in Taiwan.



After having a very nice farewell barbeque at my dad's house with several of my family members I hadn't had a chance to see yet, I drove to JFK airport with my dad for my red-eye flight to Taiwan. It was the longest flight I ever did in one stretch, over 18 hours of travelling including a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. I left late Friday night and didn't in to Taiwan until 6 a.m. Sunday morning, and it was eternal darkness that entire time since we were flying on the opposite side of the sun. Somehow I completely lost the entire day of Saturday, September 15th, 2007 from my life. I still haven't figured out how that happened.




When I arrived at the Amigo hostel in Taiwan (7 dollars a night, as normal the cheapest I could find, with roaches crawling on the floor and smelling like mildew; I only saw 1 or 2 other guests the whole time I was here), I planned to take a 1 hour nap but ended up sleeping for 3-- in hindsight a big mistake. Feeling a bit groggy but pretty good, I was off to explore a new city, armed with the list of things to see I had been given by my friend Jennie Chung from Hopkins, who is originally from Taiwan.




I travelled on Taipei's wonderfully efficient, equally wonderfully cheap, subway. I had read that Taipei was one of the most crowded cities in the world, but from my experience it was any more crowded than New York. My first stop was Ximen, a trendy district compared to Times Square. As soon as I walked out of the subway station I was drawn to the noises of a parade which was coincidentally passing by at that moment. People were carrying an enormous chines dragon suspended from poles, and a man was doing flips, kicks, and other gracefull martial art moves in front of them, with accompanying grunts and shouts. I watched for a few moments while it passed by, then walked around some, looking around at all the different shops and bright signs with all types of chinese characters written. It was a bit of a cross between New York's Times Square and Chinatown-- upscale and trendy stores but with an obviously a Chinese feel.




From there I wandered to Longshan Temple, which Jennie had recommended. I admired the temple's beautiful architecture, dragons adorning the roof, and countless statues everywhere. I watched, and smelled, with pleasure as people lit incense in the enormous incense holder, and did a series of short prayer bows. But what really made the experience memorable is when more and more people began chanting in unison. I had no idea what they were saying, but it was very beautiful, and even had different harmony.




From there, I just wandered for a while, taking in the city's streets filled with people, cars, and probably tens of thousands of motorbikes zipping around--they were one of the environmental hazards new arrivals had to be particularly weary of. When crossing one street I saw a strangely beautiful view of the sun sinking towards the horizon through the extraordinarily dense smog. I had no idea that would be the one and only time I would see the sun the whole time I was in Taiwan.




That night I went to one of Taipei's famous night markets. One of the chronic problems I had in Taiwan was that it is one of the lesser English-friendly places I've travelled to. Fortunately, most of the Taiwanese people I encountered more than compensated for their lack of English with their exceptional friendliness and genuine desire to help me, so one more than one occassion, just getting to where I wanted to go was half the adventure. My destination was a place called Snake Alley which, as the name suggests, has live snakes, but rather than pet shops, they are found in restaurants. While I felt rather guilty watching, even more so since typhoonI knew that this was all just a spectacle for tourists, I could not take my eyes away when I saw 4 huge snakes suspended by their necks like a noose on ropes from an open restaurant front. It took me a moment to realize from their slowly squirming bodies that they were still alive. I stared in morbid fascination for a few moments, and was about to move on when I saw a man approach the snakes from inside the restaurant. He shouted something in Chinese to the effect of "BOO" to a women who was staring obliviously at the snakes, and she jumped back, startled. The man laughed. He then proceded to take out a small pair of scissors, which he casually thrust into the belly of one of the snakes and slowly worked his way up.




Let's pause for a moment. I remember reading about how they would throw people to the lions in the Roman colliseum a few weeks ago, and thinking, "how could people enjoy watching such brutality?" I know that it was the exact same gut instinct that made me and everyone else eerily fascinated by the spectacle, but I just could not draw my eyes away. And I'll bet you're curious too. If not, you can skip the next 2 paragraphs.




The snake writhed its tail and its mouth opened a tad, in obvious agony. After slitting the entire belly open, the main picked up a pitcher from the table, placed it under the snake, and lifted the tail while blood poured down into the pitcher. He held it there until the steady flow of blood slowed to a trickle. One by one, he did the same thing to each snake in turn. I wondered whether they could see anything from their positions and if they knew what was coming. What was really disturbing was noticing that, even several minutes after having been drained of their blood, the snakes' bodies were still moving. Two of them had their tails tightly wrapped around each other, blood dripping slowly down their soft white undersides. After getting a pitcher of blood, the man made another incision into each snake, closer to the tail, and cut out what I think was probably their gall bladders, which he cut open and squeezed another milky juice from into another container.




Now came the really shocking part. With the 4 snakes still hanging there, pretty dead looking at this point, the man put on a wireless headset microphone, poured the pitchers of snake blood and who knows what else into over-sized shot glasses which he placed onto a tray, and came out into the crowd shouting in Chinese, obviously inviting people to try some. To my horror a man raised his hand and went inside the restaurant where he was served his drinks. More glasses were pourded, and one by one people began to take seats inside. I ate Guinea pig in Peru a few months ago, and decided to draw the line there, and left.




I went to bed around 10 P.M., woke up shortly after midnight. and couldn't get back to sleep the entire night. I've never crossed 12 time zones in one shot before, and didn't know how my body would react. I just layed on the paper thin matress the whole night, listening to the buzz of the fan and sweating slightly. When morning finally came, it was raining steadily. I had planned a full itinerary for the day, but given my exhaustion and the weather, I didn't know how it was going to work out. I decided to spend the morning at the Naitonal Palace museum, which I had found out the day before houses the world's oldest and most extensive collection of Chinese art. To me, the museum's history was as interesting as its contents. In the first half of the 20th century, following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the years of fighting between the Communists and the KMT, the works were taken from their original home in the forbidden city of Beijing and shuffled from city to city for years. When the KMT retreated to Taiwan, they took the art with them, and it's been here ever since. China obviously wants the works back, and this is yet another thing Taiwan and mainland China fight about, but Taiwan points out that if the communist forces had obtained them during the revolution, they likely would have destroyed them as relics of the country's burgeious past. I did my best to appreciate the impressive 8,000 years worth of Chinese art, despite my now growing exhaustion.




After leaving the museum, I was frustrated to see that rather than stopping as I had hoped, the rain had only gotten worse. Moreover, I was really tired at this point, and the thought of doing anything that involved more walking was utterly unappealing. I knew I couldn't go to sleep until at least 9, unless I wanted the same thing as last night to happen again, so I decided to go see a movie to stay awake and kill time. I took the subway back to Ximen, where I had seen a theather the day before, and wandered around until I found one.




After the movie got out the rain hadn't let up one bit, and I was sort of a walking zombie at this point. I was in a big city, all by myself, exhasted with nothing to do. I was feeling pretty bad, even depressed. As I walked down the street, trying not to get completely soaked, angry and fearful thoughts went through my mind: "Why did I spend all the money I saved the whole year for THIS??? What's the point? Do I really want to be in Asia by myself for the next 2 months?" It was a long afternoon, but somehow I managed to stay awake until 9, and had a much better night sleep.




I woke up to find it still raining. Frustrated, I grabbed a book and decided to have a slow, relaxing breakfast at McDonalds. I won't deny that I often indulge in McDonalds while travelling for a few simple reasons--It is comfort food, and I know exactly what I'm getting (which was often not the case in Taiwan); I have yet to find a McDonalds where someone doesn't speak at least basic English, and if all else fails, you can always just point to what you want on the menu. Plus the McDonalds in other countries are often alot more luxurious and comfortable than in the U.S.--people often go there to sit, read, and work-- and I discovered at this one, rather than giving you dirty looks for hanging around, they actually had someone who came around to refill your coffee!




I began to read "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson, a book about a man who hiked the Appalachian trail, and his numerous adventures and misadventures. My mom had given it to me as a present years ago, and I just happened to grab it from my bookshelf before heading out. It was absolutely the perfect book at the perfect time. I lauged at loud reading it in the McDonalds, and probably got more than one strange look. I couldn't help but laugh at how much I related with this guy's adventures on the opposite side of the world. (It also had a strong dose of good old fashioned American sarcasm, something I don't think they've herad of here in Taiwan, and even if they have I'd have no way of knowing it) When Bryson described all the dangers he worried about, bears, snakes, freak lightning bolts, etc, I thought back to how only the night before I had seen news reports about a particularly bad plane crash in Phuket, Thailand killing 89 people, caused by the same bad weather I was now experiencing, and raising concerns about the safety of discount airlines in Asia (just before seeing the story I had been on the websites of several discount airlines seeing how much it would cost for me to fly from Manila) Last week, a series of violent earthquakes shook Indonesia, causing panicked people to flee fearing another tsunamai. A story on CNN featured an interview with a scientist who feared that an even bigger one, perhaps a rare magnitude 9, was due any day now, "sooner rather than later" in the words of the reporter (I'll be ok since I'm going to the Philippines, not Indonesia, right?)




Despite all that, the book was just what I needed to get back into an adventurous spirit. Thanks again for the gift mom, about 4 years later. After reading for 2 hours, and having 3 refills of coffee, I decided it was time to go. I got up, went to the closest 7-11 (yes, Taiwan has probably the highest density of 7-11s of anywhere I've ever seen) where I invested in a stylish poncho, and was off.




OK, I'm sitting here writing in my hostel, and I just realized that I have a flight to the Philippines to catch in a few hours, so I'm going to have to wrap this up. I spent the day up in Danshui, where the Danshui river meets the ocean. I had come to find out that the rain was actually a Typhoon passing over the island--mainland China later evacuated 2 million people because of flooding( http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-china-typhoon.html ), and saw huge waves and high winds. While normally a very popular touristy place, mostly everything was closed. Nonetheless, I had a great time walking around in my poncho. I had a delicious lunch of pork dumplings, spicy tofu soup, and soybean mild. That evening, still raining, I went to another night market.




Yesterday I took a day trip to Yingae, a city about half an hour from Taipei which is famous for producing pottery. I walked around to some cheap-o souveneir places and also some very nice galleries with high end ceramics, visited to city's pottery museum, which was quite obviously its pride and joy. As enthusiastic as they were about their ceramics, it just didn't do it for me.
In the afternoon I headed over to the Taipei 101, the world's tallest building at over half a kilometer high. I shelled out for the overpriced ticket to visit the observation deck. It had stopped raining for the most part, and while still a bit foggy it was still an impressive view. The low clouds cutting across the green, subtropical forrested mountainsides surrounding the city were particularly beautiful. I stayed a few hours until it was dark, and watched as the city lit up. I had some yummy spicy Singapore style chicken curry soup in the food court downstairs, and headed back to my hostel.




I think that's about all I wanted to write about my time here. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I'm going to miss my flight if I don't get moving. I apologize for any grammar, spelling, or other mistakes, I'm just going to have to post this without even reading it over.

Thursday, September 13, 2007






























(Pictures: (1,3,4-Florence; 2-Pisa; 5-9-Rome; 10-14 Venice; 15,16-Amsterdam. Video is footage from my first session in Peru, shot and edited by Alex Gorosh)

As the elevator doors closed, I gave one final goodbye wave to my family. Descending to the ground floor of the Copenhagen Hilton hotel on my way to the airport, I knew I was once again on my own. It was an exciting feeling after my recent group traveling, first with my family on the cruise, and before that in Peru. Traveling alone is a different experience—while on the cruise I was very passive and, quite frankly, lazy, I now realized that from here on out, nothing would happen without me making it. Traveling alone is liberating, infinitely freer, but with the corollary loneliness and other difficulties that goes with it. The feelings of excited anticipation that come whenever I visit a new country grew as I crossed over Germany, then the Alps, and finally descended into Italy.

I spent the next 2 weeks in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and one of the world centers of Art, where my primary objective was to learn Italian, or at least as much as I could in 2 short weeks. I had spent some time on the cruise researching different language institutes in Florence, and had chosen a school called Il Instituto David, located near the city center. I spent 4 hours each morning in group classes, 1 hour each afternoon in a private lesson, and a couple hours most nights studying. Part of my decision to settle down in Florence for 2 weeks rather than travel the entire time was my desire to have a daily routine, free from the stress and hassles of constantly moving from place to place. In my opinion, this also gives a deeper understanding of the people and culture than is possible when you’re constantly moving.

As I had anticipated, I got a sort of condensed version of the experience of learning a foreign language; the countless daily struggles, frustrations, and rewards of learning and understanding another language, a completely different system of communicating. To me learning a new language is like learning a new way of thinking, in a sense a different way of seeing the world. It brings such pleasure to be able to converse with someone in a foreigh language, to establish a relationship with someone who otherwise would have been completely closed to you. Even speaking Italian with someone who speaks English (as I found many Italians did), it is empowering to be able to communicate on their terms, rather than demanding they conform to your needs, as we Americans tend to do. Of course, along with the satisfaction that success brings comes the painful frustration of the entire process. Feeling like a complete idiot again when you are unable to communicate even basic things, like a child when you don’t understand something and need it to be repeated slowly several times using simple words.

I really shouldn’t complain though. My Spanish gave me an enormous head-start. From the very first day I was speaking in sentences and could understand quite a lot, and I was very motivated to learn as much as I could in the short time I was there.

I had decided to live with a host family, an experience I have wonderful memories from while studying in Mexico and Argentina in college. As was the case in both of my previous home-stay experiences, I was again placed in the house of a single older woman. I’ve realized that many women in this situation choose to have foreign students live with them, both for the extra income it brings in, as well as for the company it provides (my Argentine mother, Muchy, who I still keep in touch with regularly, has perfected this art and now manages a fairly busy house with students from all around the world coming and going)

The decision turned out to be a good one, despite some unexpected bumps early on. While Theresa eventually showed herself to be a kind woman, she was certainly quite rigid and had more than a few prejudices, which she was unafraid to vocalize. I would sit at the table every morning and evening listening to her express her opinions. She had been a child during the Mussolini era, and while she acknowledged him as a dictator, she also spoke very highly of him. “Under Mussolini, everyone had their place in society… There was no argument… Don’t talk to me about ‘liberty’… Everyone knew the rules, and things worked… Look at all the problems we have today…” Of course I wouldn’t understand every word, but the multitude of Spanish cognates, combined with her dramatic hand and facial gestures were always enough to give me an understanding of what she was talking about. Usually I would nod while trying not to laugh, especially during the many times she would speak of the superiority of the Italian language (she didn’t speak any other languages herself, of course). Every so often, however, she’d say something completely offensive even to me, such as when she declared matter-of-factly that all the problems and sicknesses in Africa were the result of their “immorality”, which she then proceeded to attribute to their lack of religion.

While it certainly would have been easy to dismiss her as a crazy old lady, I tried instead to realize that her values and beliefs are the result of her life experiences, just as mine and everyone’s are. While I see many of my peers believe they know everything and dismiss their parents’ and grandparents’ generations as ignorant and old-fashioned, I tried to understand and learn as much as I could from this woman who had lived much longer than I had and experienced things I can only read about in history books. Moreover, I tried to use her beliefs and prejudices as a model by which to identify and analyze my own prejudices (Disclaimer: this is not at all a defense of fascism or any of the other things she said).

Whatever else the experience was, it was certainly an excellent opportunity for me to practice my Italian, and even though Theresa liked to talk more than she liked to listen, I did my best with my basically kindergarten vocabulary to express my opinions, whenever I could get a word in. This created for some rather comical (if frustrating) moments, but definitely pushed me to improve my conversational Italian skills.

I made friends with the other students at the school, and went out a few nights a week. The other students were mostly Europeans, although there were also lots of Japanese people. I also befriended a strong-headed, somewhat aristocratic South African girl, who told me all about her family farm outside of Johannesburg, complete with lions, giraffe, zebra, and even a 12 foot pet python which lived in her room.

The two things I liked least about Florence were the innumerable tourists crammed between the walls of its narrow streets, and the prices, which gave me the constant feeling of hemorrhaging my money—I could never stop thinking about how much I could buy in South America for what I spent on a tiny slice of pizza in Florence. I did discover that one of the few affordable things was cheap wine in supermarkets (as low as 1 Euro a bottle!), so rather than going to ridiculously expensive bars I would always try to convince my friends to enjoy sitting with me on one of Florence’s many bridges over the Arne, or in one of its numerous plazas, enjoying wine and the spectacular views, open air, relative privacy, and perhaps best of all, an affordable evening for a budget traveler like me! Some of my best memories from Florence are the evenings sitting over the Arne with my friends from class, with a million dollar view of the Ponte Vechio and Renaissance marble statues on both sides, opening the bottle with my Swiss army knife and drinking the horrible red wine straight from the bottle.

I also made an effort to appreciate the artistic and cultural heritage of Florence, and visited several art galleries, including the Uffizi gallery, where I thought back to high school while looking at the Botticelli paintings I had learned about almost 10 years earlier in Western Civ class. My favorite was the Galleria dell’Accademia, where I marveled at the intricacy of Michelangelo’s David, and now understand why it is the most famous sculpture in the world. I took a day trip to Pisa and smiled at the thousands of tourists, including myself, who were all trying to take the same picture of themselves holding up the leaning tower (and I thought I was the first one to think of it!) I also spent countless hours wandering around Florence, seeing as much of it as I could.

My real day to day focus, however, was learning Italian. The effort paid off, and by the end of the 2 weeks I could communicate fairly well and have rather involved conversations, provided the person spoke clearly and relatively slowly and stayed within my very limited vocabulary.

After 2 weeks in Florence, I said goodbye to all my new friends and headed south to Rome. On the train I sat next to a nice young Italian woman who I had a very pleasant conversation with, which made me feel good about my Italian. In Rome, I spent 2 days mainly walking around, battling the overbearing heat and humidity. I visited some of the places I’ve always wanted to see—the Coliseum, Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel, and many of the countless ruins which seem to blend right into the city in many places. In this sense Rome reminded me of other cities I’ve visited such as Mexico City, Mexico; Ayuthaya, Thailand; and Cuzco, Peru, all of which are modern cities built literally right over the ruins of ancient civilizations. Nonetheless, Rome was unique, and I’m so glad I got the chance to visit. One of the things I’ll always remember about Rome are the omnipresent public fountains, which I assume are a tradition carried on from ancient times. The beautiful marble fountains are present throughout the city, spurting out a steady stream of cool water to drink and get wet in. Given my perpetual state of perspiration while in Rome, combined with my unwillingness to pay for water, the fountains likely saved my life, as I would have probably died of heat exhaustion without them.

From Rome, I took an overnight train to Venice. Always trying to save money where I can, I bought the cheapest ticket I could find. With no idea where it was, I just got on the train and sat in the first seat I could find, which turned out to be first class, and got kicked out by the angry ticket checker, who seemed annoyed with how long it took me to understand what he was saying (my poor Italian was even worse considering I was half asleep!) In hindsight, I should played a dumb American tourist who didn’t understand anything, that way maybe I could have stayed where I was. When I saw that my actual seat was crammed liked sardines into a tiny compartment with 5 other people and nowhere to put my bag, I opted to sleep out in the hallway and pulled out my sleeping bag, eye mask and ear plugs, which I had stowed for just such an occasion. Given the circumstances I guess I rested ok, but really didn’t sleep too much since I kept on getting stepped on throughout the night and was constantly worried about someone messing with my bag. It ended up being an adventure I won’t soon forget, one which continued when I was awakened from my half sleep state around 5 a.m. when someone shouted “Venezia, Santa Monica” which I thought was my station. I quickly grabbed my bag and hopped off the train only to discover after a few minutes that I had gotten off one station too early and was still on the mainland. I ended up taking a bus across the bay into Venice while it was still dark, not quite the romantic arrival I had imagined. When I arrived, rather than pay 6 Euros for the boat ferry to my hotel, I decided to venture on foot to find it. I had the name and address written down, but even when I carefully asked in my best Italian, none of the local people seemed to have any idea where it was. It ended up being on the complete other end of the island, and took about an hour to walk to. It was still before almost anyone was awake, and turned out to be a nice walk, despite the weight of my heavy backpack, through the narrow deserted streets of Venice as the sky slowly began to light up. When I arrived at my hotel it was still too early to check in, so I left my bag and walked around a bit, sitting for over an hour on the famous Rialto Bridge, one of the few large bridges that crosses the Grand canal, watching as more and more people slowly began to wake up and fill the city.

I spent the next 2 days in Venice much as I had spent the previous 2 days in Rome: walking around. This time, instead of ruins, the main interest were the hundreds of canals connecting the city like a giant web. While Venice was perhaps even more expensive and crowded than Florence was, I used my normal tricks to make the best of things. Perhaps my best memory of Venice was buying a cheap lunch of a baguette, salami, mozzarella, some chips and nectarines, finding a secluded back alley which led to the Grand Canal, and enjoying a peaceful lunch sitting on the water while watching the boats go by. The idea was so successful that I decided to do the same thing the next day, so I bought the exact same ingredients but this time chose a spot next to a bridge on a smaller canal where I could sit with my legs dangling over the water. As I began to cut the bread with my knife and meticulously prepare the sandwich, slicing the mozzarella, piling on salami, I didn’t even notice a man and woman watching me from an outside table of a nearby café. When I finished, the man smiled at me, nodded in approval, gave me a thumbs up and said “buon apetito!” I thanked him and enjoyed a delicious lunch.

Venice really is spectacularly beautiful, and deserves the fame it has throughout the world. It isn’t large, and you can walk around the entire perimeter of the Island in maybe an hour or two. Nonetheless, there are a myriad of narrow passageways and minor canals, and after becoming somewhat familiar with all the major sections of the city I tried to explore and find as many new places as I could. Another experience I had there which I hope not to forget was a particular bridge I came across while walking on my second day there. As I was wandering, I came across a small bridge crossing an absolutely perfect canal. It was maybe 15-20 feet across, with houses ascending straight from the water on both sides. Clothes were left out to dry on several lines, one of which crossed over the canal rather gracefully. What really made the scene perfect for me was the brilliant reflection of the water, which made a mirror image of the entire scene. I took lots of pictures of the scene, and if you turn some of the photos upside down, only a few small ripples let you distinguish which side is real and which is the reflection (hint: look carefully at the pictures I posted above).

Following my second day in Venice, I took an evening flight north to Amsterdam, where to my surprise I found even more canals (which shows how much I know about Amsterdam, Holland, and Europe in general!) I was at one of those points after a month of travel in Europe where I was running low on motivation and energy, and I also discovered that Amsterdam was even more expensive than Italy, so I spent most of my time there just relaxing. I did walk around a fair amount, but not much too much further than the central area. I did go to the Van Gogh museum, which I enjoyed very much. But for the most part, I didn’t do anything overly ambitious and spent a lot of time checking out many of the city’s wonderful coffee shops, sampling their unique varieties of coffee and snacks.

Having spent a little over a month in Europe, I flew home on September 1st, exactly one year from when I started my around the world trip last year! Needless to say, it’s been quite a year. Feeling no reason to stop now, within a few days of being home I bought a plane ticket to the Philippines for this Friday, and will stop over in Taiwan for 5 days on the way. I’m hoping to do a lot of diving while I’m there, and will hopefully become a SCUBA Divemaster in the process. My tentative plan is to come home for Thanksgiving, then spend the winter back in Steamboat, Colorado, where if things go as planned my good friend Lucas from Argentina will also be working for the season. But I’m also keeping in mind the option of staying and working as a divemaster somewhere in Asia, or possibly Australia, for the winter. Either option is good, so I’m not going to worry about it until I see how things go in the Philippines. I’m also very excited to visit my dear friend Emily, a biking buddy from my days cycling across the U.S., who recently moved to the Philippines with her husband Jon as Peace Corps volunteers. I’m sure we’ll have some good times in Manila.

I’ve spent the last 2 weeks doing the normal loop of visiting parents (had a nice late-summer tour of Coney Island and New York’s other beaches with my Dad; and I’m very impressed with my mom’s newly acquired cycling skills) and grandmothers (both were hospitalized while I was in Europe, but are now home and doing better). I also added the new variation of visiting my brother Eric up at school in Bennington, Vermont, where he just transferred to. I’ll definitely miss living with him this winter but am so happy that he’s moving forward and enjoying himself along the way.

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