Monday, April 27, 2009

X Marks the Spot, Last Post

Hans Christian Andersen put an X in his diary on all of the days he masturbated.

With that, I think I'm done writing in the blog. It gets tiresome after a while putting what's going on in your life into words. My schedule for the next few months:

April 29th- Athens
May 4th- Copenhagen, Andrew Bird
May 17th- New Jersey
May 23rd- Haverford, where I'll be doing math research
August 1st- Done at Haverford for the summer, hopefully road trip or such
Late August- Haverford, for my senior year. Lloyd 70s.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Dublin: Adversity and Challenge

Last weekend Tiffany, Roger and myself took a trip to Dublin. The theme of the trip was Adversity and Challenge, and alternatively titled, Adversity, Challenge and Bottle Urination.

When Tiffany and myself got off the plane, at about 23:00 (Roger was already there on a different flight), we went to get some Euros at the ATM, and the machine ate Tiffany's only debit or credit card. She was told to immediately cancel her card as she wouldn't be getting it back. I was certainly not going to use the ATM after that, so we were left only with the 10 Euro I had left over from spring break to get to center city. The bus was 12 and we convinced currency exchange to give us two Euro.

We meet Roger at the hotel, but the term "the hotel" is a tricky one. The plan was: Roger booked a single in a decent hotel and then we would all sleep there and split the cost. We go up to the room, figure out sleeping arrangements and then a knock on the door. A hotel employee knows what we are doing and tells us we must leave. We have no cash and it's midnight on a Friday night in Dublin. Eventually it works out that Roger gives us money and we find a cheap enough hostel (15 Euro a night). Although the bathrooms were disgusting andmy comforter smelled intensely of human sweat and I had to use my jacket as a pillow and the obese man sleeping under Tiffany's bunk continually snored and farted during the night, it was a place to stay. The next day we exhausted Roger's Euros and the currency exchange places were closed so Roger couldn't exchange his Danish kroner. It all worked out, as we found a hostel that accepted cards. However, this hostel was connected with a hotel, and combined they only had one public bathroom. During the night this was locked and my pea-sized bladder mixed with the numerous ciders we tried out didn't mix well. Not once, not twice, but three times that night I was forced to find a creative place to put my urine. The first was a stone decoration in the hotel. The second was a found beer bottle. The third was a bottle of cider. Success.

On Sunday, Roger and Tiff decided we should go to Glendalough, a mountain-like area. We went on a 10 km hike, with a 250 m climb. Which was exercising, considering I had all of my belongings on my back, but well worth it. However, on the bus ride home, adversity struck again in its old guise of the need to urinate. We weren't close to Dublin and I had to burst so Roger chugged my water for me and I steadily deposited my wasteful liquid into the water bottle. Roger tried to look out the window holding in his laughter and trying to not make it painfully obvious what was going on. He reported that the people behind me awoke and immediately figured out what was going on and looked horrified.

Also, I'll be at the Haverford apartments this summer doing math research, staying with Mr. Ralston and Mr. Kaszubski; for those interested.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Europe

So, these past three weeks was greater than I could have ever imagined, probably the greatest three weeks of my life. There are so many things I want to recall, and try to make humor out of, and try to explain, but I'm just going to give something of a synopsis of the trip. I went from Copenhagen to London, Oxford, London, Rome, Florence, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Hilversum (technically), Amsterdam, Paris, Cologne and then back to Copenhagen today.

London - I went to London with my program which was a two-sided coin. It was a positive because experiences like seeing Chicago, eating at great restaurants and travel was all paid for. Bad because there was limited freedom and it felt too much like a school trip. All in all London was a great place. Upon first arriving I noticed how cheap I thought things were which made me realize how absurdly expensive Copenhagen is. Seeing Josh again also sent a chill through my body. When we met up, I couldn't help but throw the bags I had in my hand upon running to him. One of these bags had a friend's new "Mind the Gap" mug in it. Apparently I'm bad with reunions because when I saw Rosie I ran up to the door that separated us and for humor purposes hit my face against the window and split my lip and made my teeth hurt.

Oxford - Beautiful, bleh. Beautiful campuses, bleh. I couldn't see living in Oxford for an extended period of time without becoming a lifelong premature ejaculator.

Rome - Seeing Christian made Rome great, and the hours spent in his kitchen having long meals and drinking wine and making his roommate uncomfortable really made me miss Haverford in an unexpected way. I had a lot of fun in Rome, but as a city I couldn't help but dislike it. Half of it was cheap tourism and the other half was a gaggle of self-involved Romans.

I'm sorry I can't do this post anymore this way, it's too boring. For me, for you and I feel like I'm cheapening each city.

On my last day in Cologne I sat in a park on what seemed like Cologne's first spring day and rated each of the big 8 places we went: London, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Florence on 7 categories, the first two worth double. I then summed up the totals. Here it is:

Best Time (2x):
Vienna
Amsterdam
Rome
London
Prague
Paris
Berlin
Florence

Livable (2x):
Vienna
Berlin
Amsterdam
London
Paris
Prague
Florence
Rome

Girls Attractiveness (and similarly probably Guy Attractiveness as well):
Paris
Berlin
Vienna
Rome
Amsterdam
London
Florence
Every Other City to Ever Exist
Prague

Least Touristy (avoidance of the bad type of tourism):
Vienna
Berlin
Paris
London
Amsterdam
Florence
Prague
Rome

Affordable:
Prague
Berlin
Vienna
Rome
Amsterdam
Florence
London
Paris
(Copenhagen)

Public Transport (ease AND accessbility):
Vienna
London
Paris
Prague
Berlin
Amsterdam
Rome
Florence

X-Factor (warm feelings, etc.):
Vienna
Amsterdam
Paris
Berlin
London
Rome
Florence
Prague

TOTALS:
Vienna - 68
Berlin - 48
Amsterdam - 48
Paris - 41
London - 41
Prague - 31
Rome - 30
Florence - 17

I can't emphasize how much I loved Vienna. This is unexpected because that was the city myself and Josh were looking forward to the least I suspect. Also, the night before arriving on the night train, our cabin door became stuck and I was forced to urinate in a plastic water bottle, which is a bad omen if I've ever pissed one. Our hostel was terrific, we were able to attend an Esperanto museum, we lounged in grass enclosed by buildings built for gods, we stumbled into an indie rock performance and there stumbled into Makki (a member of an Austrian duo called Makki Und Frau Herz, which I ask you please check out on mysapce), we lounged on the Danube river and saw the river on rented motorbikes, we accidently ended up in the strip club district and came across windowed women luring us in or lazily texting while they were being paid to lure me and Josh in, went to an incredible market, went to the Opera, came across a Greco-Austrian hotel clerk in a hotel that we needed to use for watering closet purposes who was the sweetest, most charming girl two guys in Vienna could ever ask for (except for her tragically unfortunate taste in music), went out with said sweetheart and had drinks actually bought for us, had late night kebabs, begged on the street and had schnitzel. and falafel and some disarming piece of shrimp thing that Josh regrettably purchased for 1.75 euros after successfully sharing a lunch for 1.50. Whatever, you try to make one of your best life experiences funny or interesting when really you just want to keep it to yourself and overtime extrapolate and expand and emphasize until maybe it doesn't resemble what exactly you experienced but exactly what you needed to experience.