Final Thoughts

Well, this is it. After this post, I hope to never blog again for the rest of my life.

I'll start off with the really important stuff: the final McDonald's review. The following is a list of the countries in which I ate at McDonald's, in order from best McDonald's to worst. Criteria weighed included speed and efficiency of service, perceived quality of ingredients, price, and overall impression and presentation. Feel free to ask if you're wondering about any specific details (although you probably aren't and probably think I'm nuts for going to McDonald's so much while traveling around Europe).

1. Hungary

2. Austria

3. Germany

4. France

5. Monaco

6. Czech Republic

7. Turkey

8. Switzerland

9. Italy

10. London

11. Dublin

You'll note that Slovakia and Vatican City are both absent from the list. The former is absent because I was in the country for about two hours and was too busy drinking 1 euro pints to care about McDonald's. The latter is absent because it doesn't have a McDonald's.

So, you may be wanting to ask the typical dichotomous question: is Europe better than America?The answer, in my opinion, is no. In some ways it certainly is, but in many ways it's definitely not. Neither place is better than the other - each is just different according to the priorities and customs of the people who live there. Maybe we work too hard. Maybe they don't work hard enough. Maybe we have the right priorities, maybe they do. Maybe some people have particular tastes that make one place much more appealing than the other. I think that there is merit in both ways of living. Maybe I don't have particularly strong "values" or whatever, but I tend to think that results are what matter, and from what I can tell, it seems like both the American and the European ways of life tend to produce pretty great results in the end.

It's nice to be back in America and be able to embrace my roots once again. Ironically, I thought I'd be embracing my roots by traveling around Europe to the places where my grandparents are from, but along the way I realized just how American I am and just how fine I am with that fact. America certainly isn't perfect (and neither is Europe), but it's my home, and it's my duty to make it a better place, not to abandon it because of its imperfections.

On a sappier note: traveling is fun, but in the end, places are just places. It's people that really matter.

In a sense, I became a different person while I was abroad. I was more open-minded and less resistant to change and strange ideas. I did some things that were out of character, at least at the time. I pushed the envelope. And in the end, I think that my personality really benefited from it, and my experiences have helped shape new and more enlightened perspectives. So, finally and most importantly, I learned that Europe isn't really a place. It's a state of mind.

With that, I would like to thank you one final time for your attention and for putting up with my self-indulgent crap, and bid you "auf Wiedersehen!"

Penultimate Travels

This post will cover my last official stint of traveling in Europe. I'm really about ready to be done with this whole blogging thing, so excuse how sloppy this entry may turn out to be.

My two week journey started with a visit to Paris. I stayed with my cousin Daniel, who is the son of my grandmother's cousin, or something like that. I think that's right. My great-great grandfather is his great-grandfather. Anyway, the point is that we're related, and he was nice enough to put me up for the weekend in his apartment (flat? I guess this is still Europe) in downtown Paris. The room in which I was staying had a balcony with this view of the Eiffel Tower:

No zoom was used in the taking of this picture

Daniel and me on his other balcony

I started off my first day (Friday, May 14) with a visit to Les Invalides, a former hospital for soldiers which is now the premiere French military history museum. It was an interesting contrast to the Imperial War Museum in London, if for no other reason than the subtle wording of some of the exhibits. In London, the language of the exhibits was very smug, and even in displays that described some sort of military defeat, the language used still implied a sort of "oh, don't worry, wait until the next exhibit and you'll see how sweet we are" attitude. In Les Invalides, the exhibits describing defeats (which were the majority) used language with more of a "well, we tried really hard, and we just got screwed, but please give us some credit" attitude, and the exhibits regarding victories were more like "OMG FINALLY WE WON ONE!!!!!" Also amusing was the group of teenage Germans that I decided to follow through the museum so that I could observe their reactions. At the beginning, they were really excited and kept laughing at the exhibits. By the time we got to about 1944, they were so disgruntled and moving so quickly that I couldn't keep up with them anymore. I thought about America and giggled on the inside.

What else was cool about Paris? Well, meeting up with Meaghan and Sarah certainly was. Being with them saved me from having to be TOTALLY alone in the most romantic city in the world (which Paris really is, by the way). We did a lot of stereotypically touristy things, like museums and restaurants and more museums and, finally, the Eiffel Tower. Here are some pictures to prove it:

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral

Montmartre

Jazz hands outside the Moulin Rouge

Smile, Mona!

On the Eiffel

After Paris was the group trip to Hungary. Our first day there was marked by hangovers (due to the 5 AM train ride and the logic of just staying up and going out all night beforehand) and really awful weather. Day two was much cooler - we went to a random small town in northern Hungary on the Slovakian border, and since we had some time to kill, we crossed the bridge into Slovakia, where beer costs 1 euro for half a liter. Truly the land of milk and honey. I may or may not have drank too much beer before getting on the bus and subsequently peed in an abandoned Soviet swimming pool as soon as we got off. This may or may not be a picture of said pool:

The night concluded with a home cooked Hungarian meal and some Hungarian dancing, which was a lot of fun. The next day involved another stupidly long bus trip to another little town (Pecs, so not that little, and also one of the European Capitals of Culture in 2010) and some marginal weather, but it concluded with an awesome party at the university where we were staying, much of which I don't remember thanks to this guy:

Purchased as a salute to our Commander-in-Chief, the work "Barack" in Hungarian actually means "peach", the particular fruit from which this bottle of Palinka was distilled.

On the last day we went to an excellent museum called the House of Terror and also explored Budapest. It was fun. There are more pictures on Facebook.

After Hungary we made our way to Prague by way of Vienna, and as soon as we got there, we went straight to the fabled five-story club, the largest of its kind in Central Europe. It was awesome. The next day, Jonathan and I took a long walking tour of the city and then joined John Greil in the old town square to watch the International Hockey Championship Game between the Czech Republic and the highly favored Russian team, which went into the game with a 27-game winning streak. The Czechs won 2-1 in an amazing upset which sent the whole city into a frenzy. Despite the short description, Prague was honestly some of the most fun I had in Europe.

Amazing

After Prague came a couple of days in Vienna, which involved a relaxing tour of Schönbrunn Gardens, a night at the Vienna Opera House, and a day of walking around near the Hofburg and eating at Cafe Sacher. See Facebook for more pics, but here's just one of them:

Coming soon will be my wrap-up post, in which I'll share final thoughts about the overall experience!

Rock Me Amadeus

Holy crap. Where was I?

Right, so after two weeks of actually having to do "school" and neglecting my blog so that I could do exciting things to make up for having to do "school," I find myself bored enough once again to sit down and tell y'all what happened.

I guess I technically never finished blogging my spring break. Well, after departing Nice and arriving in Geneva, Jonathan and I hopped trains across Switzerland to get back to Innsbruck. Our itinerary got fouled up from the beginning when the first train we were supposed to take was either incredibly delayed or just never showed up because of the ongoing French strike. Instead of just sitting there and taking it, we decided to fly by the seats of our pants and just hop the first train to Zurich. So we did. We accidentally sat in first class, which was great until the conductor found us and ordered us to move. When we got to Zurich, there was another train leaving in 30 seconds for another town even closer to Austria, so we hopped on that one. We repeated this process of not really having a plan and just running from one train to barely catch the next one until we found ourselves in Feldkirch, Austria, where we finally got stuck with an hour layover. We used the hour to explore a bit and to get dinner at an Imbiss close to the train station, where I ordered THE BEST KEBAP I've ever eaten. Yes, for the record, the best kebaps are served by authentic Turkish immigrants in Feldkirch, Austria, near the train station. The restaurant randomly had American flags plastered all over the outside, too, which made no sense and thus made me incredibly happy.

On Saturday (this would be April 10, for all of you who are taking notes), I went to visit my (then) new friend Michele in Salzburg, which is truly a city fit for a king. We had a lovely day doing a lot of stereotypical Salzburg stuff. I still haven't seen The Sound of Music. If you really want to know more about what I saw in Salzburg, watch this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_3Ogv-bjO4

Salzburg: a fascinating town...

...where fascinating people live fascinating lives.

After a week of the usual, our friends from Salzburg came to visit Innsbruck, and we all had a great Saturday hiking up the Nordkette, cooking Mexican food, and doing other stuff. Lizzie was supposed to come to Innsbruck too, but there was an angry volcano in Iceland that prevented her from doing so. What the hell, Iceland.

On April 23, I hopped a train to Neckarsulm, Germany to visit my extended family, none of whom I had ever met before. I sat in first class again (accidentally) and got kicked out, as usual. Meeting my relatives was a bit challenging at first, since German was spoken exclusively. I can honestly say that, by the time I had to leave on Sunday, my German had actually improved considerably. All of that improvement is gone now, but whatever.

We kicked off the weekend by driving past the houses where my maternal grandparents grew up - right down the street from each other. After that we went out to a local brewery where I sampled some of the local beer. Only later did I properly realize that more people actually prefer wine in that region, which at first seemed rather anti-German to me, but after I tasted the wine, I changed my mind, because it was really good. On Saturday morning I went to the pool (baths, I guess) with my cousin Diana and my other cousin, Philipp. Yes, Philipp and I have the same namesake. There were two Philip(p)s and two Wolfgangs, so learning names was incredibly easy.

L-R: Eberhard, Wolfgang, Wolfgang, Philipp, Philip (Me), Marion, Angelika

Saturday evening/night involved driving to another town to hear a concert in which Diana's boyfriend Dominik was performing. He plays the trumpet. So does Philipp. I was in good company. Anyway, the evening involved a trip across German wine country in a VW convertible in 70 degree weather and Germans playing a hilarious rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. I took some videos which I would upload if my internet would cooperate.

After the concert, we went to a party in a fire station. Imagine, if you will, three old dudes DJing and mixing up some classic German music, a bunch of other old people dancing on tables, and a bunch of young people standing around drinking and laughing at the old people. In a fire station. It was awesome.

On Sunday, Wolfgang and I went to the motorcycle museum in town. We rode his motorcycle to get there. Afterward, we cruised through the countryside for a couple of hours. We eventually arrived at a small mountain where a biker convention of sorts was happening. Apparently it happens every Sunday. So yeah, I got to see some crazy German bikers up close.

I am exactly this cool

So, after a lovely weekend with my family, I came back and took midterms for a week. A slight reprieve was had in the hike up to Höttinger Alm that a few of the guys decided to take on Thursday afternoon. I ordered some Speckknödel and Kraut at the Alm. And a beer, of course, because a beer is exactly what a body needs after a long hike up a mountain. A beer is also what a body doesn't need right before a dangerous run back down that mountain. I like to live on the edge, though.

What a view

The highlight of the weekend (May 1st now...moving right along!) was Gauderfest in Zell am Zillertal. Imagine, if you can, a day of drinking awesome beer, eating awesome food, watching a sheep judging contest, dancing on tables, watching Alpine wrestling, drinking more awesome beer, singing and continuing to dance on tables, and drinking more awesome beer. That was Gauderfest. Man, the German-speaking world knows how to party.

Wouldn't you?

This picture really sums up the atmosphere

This past weekend I was in Bologna visiting Maria Sengenberger. We had a great time, despite some logistical difficulties involving the city of Modena. Italian public transit is never particularly reliable, but Modena really is a special case. I would talk more about it, but that would just make me angry and would also ruin the inside joke that Maria and I have.

We visited Maranello on Saturday to see the Ferrari museum, which was honestly rather disappointing. It was really small and didn't have all that many cars or displays. There's nothing else to do in Maranello except see Ferraris, so we were done there after about an hour and a half, but still ended up waiting for an hour to catch the bus to MODENA so that we could get back to Bologna.

Like I said, we were bored waiting for the bus, so I decided to see if I could break the speed limit. I couldn't. I wasn't wearing my running shoes.

The nightlife in Bologna is fantastic. The city is home to the oldest university in the western world, and all of the students hit the streets every night because no one really ever has homework. Maria and I bought some wine at an outdoor market, had a fantastic dinner at a classic Bolognese restaurant, and then sat on some steps in a piazza and drank the wine and just took in the atmosphere.

Maria and me standing next to the best fountain EVER

Well, I guess that's it! I'll be going to Paris for four days on Thursday, followed by a week-long excursion to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. My life certainly isn't getting any worse. Thanks to everyone I mentioned in this post for showing me such a good time!

Nice People on the French Riviera

The French Riviera is exactly as beautiful and romantic as you would imagine or as you've been told by anyone who's ever been there. I'll spare any more flowery language and get down to business. In addition, any puns involving the word "nice" from this point on are still both intentional and obnoxious.

The hostel that we chose, Villa St. Exupery, is the nicest hostel in Europe. Nice rooms, nice showers, free towels, and one euro beer and cookies in the bar / common room. If you're ever going to Nice and want a nice place to stay, stay there.

To be perfectly honest, we didn't do a whole lot on the first day. After blitzing through all of the main tourist attractions in the two former capitals of the Roman Empire, we kind of just felt like taking it easy for a day. So we went to the (pebble) beach with our new Australian friend Prema and just sat around until lunch, at which point we bought some bread, cheese, olives, and apples from an outdoor market, and then took it all back to the beach and ate it.

Dipping my feet in the Mediterranean

In the afternoon we walked around for a while and decided to stop for coffee at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. We were joined by Sheng, Michele, and Colleen, three Americans (well, Sheng is technically Chinese) who are studying in Salzburg. So our new multi-ethnic group walked around for a bit more, went out to dinner at a Nice restaurant in the old city, grabbed a box of wine from a local supermarket, drank half of it on the beach, headed back to the hostel, and polished off the rest of it. Again, not exciting to talk about, but definitely one of the best days of the entire trip.

The group minus Prema, who was taking the picture, and of whom I somehow don't have any good pictures

The following morning I woke up feeling like P. Diddy and was more than ready for our day trip to Monaco. On the bus to Monaco we met a Minnesotan named Joel who is studying in Tours, so we absorbed him into our group 1. because he's cool and 2. because he can speak French. We had an hour layover in a little medieval village called Eze, where we at another Mediterranean-style lunch on the terrace atop a cactus garden that had 400 different varieties of cactus. How about that for diversity?

Monaco is, overall, simply a place for the incredibly rich to engage in obscene displays of individual wealth. We visited the prince's car collection, which cost us 3 euro to see, as I recall. It wasn't even a museum, it was just a bunch of the prince's cars sitting in a showroom. I learned an important lesson from this: if you're rich enough and lazy enough, you can make an offensive amount of money by simply charging people to stare at your expensive things.

After the car museum, we walked around the harbor for a while and stared at yachts. Again, just a ridiculous display of wealth. We were probably staring at upwards of $50 billion at certain points. It was a beautiful thing.

At nightfall we headed to the old casino. We briefly thought about going in the game room, but it would have cost 10 euro and we would have had to have had* our passports with us as well, so instead of gambling we had a 45-minute conversation with one of the greeters outside of the game room. His name was Jean-Pierre and he had a few choice words about George W. Bush and about how much better things are in Monaco/Europe, but he liked us because we were multi-lingual and relatively well-cultured. So while we failed to live up to the American stereotype, he hit the French stereotype dead on.

Outside of the casino

That's one Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes, two Porsches, a BMW, and an Audi. Not bad, really.

Here's where the story gets epic: our hostel guide told us that trains would run back to Nice until midnight. Well, the French were on strike that day (SURPRISE!!!!!), and the last bus was at 7 PM, so we were essentially completely stranded. We had two choices: take a cab that would cost about 100 euro, or walk four and a half hours back to Nice through winding mountain roads at night. We decided to walk. As we walked, we stuck our thumbs out in a halfhearted attempt to hitchhike. Frenchman after Frenchman would pass and laugh. The situation seemed hopeless. I mean, there were four of us. Who would stop and pick up four hitchhikers?

About 45 minutes into our journey, and just as we had finally exited the Monaco city/country limits, a giant black VW van passed us and then stopped. The driver leaned out and asked, in English, "Where are you going?", to which we responded, "Nice!" He said, "I take you closer." So, we decided to chance it and hop in this stranger's giant van.

This is pretty much the exact vehicle

At first we were pretty nervous about the whole situation, but as we opened the door we saw a baby seat in the back of the van, which assuaged our fears considerably because this guy was clearly a family man. Either that or he was incredibly good at kidnapping. We got in and introduced ourselves and eventually learned that our savior, Gabor Bretz, is actually a famous Hungarian opera singer who had just gotten out of rehearsal for a production of La Bohèmien at Casino Monte Carlo. He drove us almost all of the way back to Nice. He also offered to show us around Budapest when we take out class trip to Hungary in May.

An interview with Gabor:
http://kultura.hu/main.php?folderID=1085&articleID=269409&ctag=articlelist&iid=1

Gabor playing the part of Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWr9AjnzmgI&feature=related

So, sketchy decision #2 of spring break also turned out to be a resounding success. Take that, French train strike. Our incredible luck given the situation is evidence of divine intervention if I've ever seen it. Life really couldn't have been any better.

* this is one of my favorite English grammatical constructions. Note that six different words are required to form the verb.

The Pope, Ruins, Great Food, and Holy Week in Rome!

Let the title of this post be a testament to the importance of correct comma placement.

Our first day in Rome was Holy Thursday. I met up once again with Mike Carter (the magnificent etc) and we grabbed some pizza and gelato for lunch before heading out to meet the ND group for Mass. We also passed by/through the Pantheon, the Forum, and the Colosseum on the way there. No big deal.

Colosseum with part of the Forum in the background

We found Courtney and Maria outside of St. John Lateran - you know, the Cathedral of the Church of Rome, seat of the Bishop of Rome, and principle mother church of the Catholic faith. Again, no big deal. Also not a big deal was the fact that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI was celebrating Mass that evening. While uncomfortable at the time due to the fact that I was standing on a marble floor for two hours with little to no view of the action, it was still pretty awesome.

Yes, I took a picture during Mass. Don't judge. Jesus wouldn't judge. Plus, everyone else was doing it too. It was a circus in there. Not very solemn.

After Mass we went out to an Italian restaurant called Tony's. I would make a joke here, but I feel like it would be superfluous.

Getting back to the villa that night was an adventure because, despite his claims to the contrary, Mike had no idea how the bus system in Rome worked. I think maybe part of the reason for his confusion was that the Roman public transit system doesn't really "work" at all. Mike does know how Italian works, though, and was able to ask some Italian construction workers and a police officer how to find the correct bus stop. None of these people had any idea either. We found the correct stop eventually, and to be fair, the bus did take me pretty much straight to the villa. I hope that this section doesn't offend Mike, but if it does, it means he's been reading my blog, so I win either way.

The National Monument at night

Good Friday was as its name implies. I met up with Mike in the morning and we saw some obelisks and a few churches. We also walked by the famous Trevi Fountain, which may have been nice if it hadn't been swarming with tourists. The same was true of the Spanish steps.

The highlight of Good Friday was the complete absence of a line outside of the entrance to the Vatican Museum when Courtney, Lizzie, Mike and I got there at 16:00. Instead of waking up the following morning to join the 90-person Notre Dame herd on their scheduled guided tour, we decided to pay a little bit less, skip the wait, skip getting up at 6:00 AM, and just go on our own. The museum itself is incredible. One could easily spend an entire day there. We only spent about two hours, but we got to see most of the major stuff, including the Sistine Chapel, inside which I took an illegal picture that I'm not going to publish on the internet for fear of divine or papal retribution.

On Friday night we went to Stations of the Cross outside of the Colosseum. Once again, the Pope was in charge. Most of the ceremony was in Italian, but the Our Father was said in Latin, so I was actually able to use something that I learned in high school for once. There was a rather loud group of Germans near us in the crowd, and I reveled in being able to understand a lot of what they were saying. I didn't speak to them in German, though, because that would have destroyed my ability to conduct linguistic espionage.

Note the Austrian flag in the lower right corner. Represent.

Saturday was another beautiful day, and we took advantage of the weather by cutting lines in the Vatican and climbing to the top of the Cupola. Pictures will almost do it justice:

St. Peter's

Taken with my own camera

With Courtney & Lizzie

After fighting our way back through the herd of Catholic pilgrims and Asian tourists ("Take a picture with me in front of the cute Jesus thingy!" *flashes peace sign*) we made our way to the Circus Maximus, where I challenged Mike to a race, which I won with ease. Yes, that is correct: I have won a race in the Circus Maximus.

No chance

After forgetting to feed Mike to the lions, we made our way to the Forum. Once again, pictures will suffice:

Part of Augustus' House

Prime real estate

That night we went out to dinner for the second time at Tony's. Excellent once again.

Easter Sunday rolled along and the rain rolled in. Despite the fact that we all had SEATS during Easter Sunday Mass with the Pope in the Vatican, we were nonetheless rather cold and wet and miserable throughout. It was still really cool to be there, and now I can check it off of my list of things to do before I die. My favorite part of the Mass was when the Pope tried to bless everyone with holy water as it was pouring rain outside.

BENEDICTVS

We went inside the Colosseum later that day. In an attempt to salvage what was left of his honor, Mike tried to best me in gladiatorial combat. After an early mistake that gave Mike a 1-0 advantage, I was distracted by having to apologize to a passing tourist for accidentally striking her with my umbrella, which allowed Mike to land the death blow.

That night we went out to a nice restaurant for an Easter dinner. The food was great, the wine was above average, and our waiter was totally hammered. He kept spilling drinks on the table and flirting with Courtney, and after we were done he swung a chair up and rambled at us for a couple minutes about some other restaurant that he works at and about how much he likes Radiohead. It was amazing.

We were supposed to leave at 13:30 on Monday, but Blu-Express went ahead and moved the flight to 19:30 again. I checked this time, though, so I was able to use the extra time to see a little bit more of Rome. Lizzie, Mike and I went to a castle, which was pretty cool. I may have done some other stuff too, but at this point I'm getting pretty tired of writing about what happened in Rome, so I'm just going to bring this post to an end.

Ciao!