gli ultimi giorni

Gli ultimi giorni- the last days- were so bittersweet. Mostly surreal, though. It didn't seem real! So the second my finals were over, I stepped out of the "security"-guarded doorway of the Guarini campus of JCU and didn't wave bye-bye. It was sort of raining (huge surprise..) so beneath my off-toned rainbow umbrella I slipped and sloshed through the slick, black, uneven cobblestone streets of Trastevere as the chilly rain ran down the burnt orange and brown buildings and kept everyone drinking their morning caffé indoors at Café Settimana across the narrow street from school. So instead of crossing the flooded Tevere over Ponte Garibaldi, I opted for Ponte Sisto, right across from Piazza Trilussa
Wandered through the backroads of the Jewish Ghetto, up behind a very soggy Campo de' Fiori, up Corso, through the Pantheon neighborhood.. just kind of saying bye, I guess? It felt more like a routine walk, though. Around 13,00 I went back to school so that Julianna and Mary Beth and I could go eat our way through the menú at Carlo Mento vicino a scuola. So a menu' italiano is a set four-course menu where you only get to pick between a few options for each course. Menu' typically cost between 10-15E , so for four courses......cheap. So this is what I ate: antipasto was a typical crostino with basilico and tomato. For my primo, I chose the Penne Carlo Mento, which ended up being really good. I also ended up eating about a third of Julianna's spaghetti alla carbonara (egg-cheese sauce, specialtá romana, kind of incredible when done right). My secondo was saltimbocca enveloped in pancetta [veal cutlet] and some greens, and per il dolce we all got the torta della casa, a custardy-puddingy vanilla almond tart with pinoli (pine nuts)- also really really Roman in its ingredients and flavor. So this plus vino and caffé- awesome! It didn't end there, though. Later that day I met Nathan for dinner and we went to Luzzi, my old standby FAVE. Cheap and oh so Roman, with outdoor seating even in this cold (thanks, heating lamps!)

A few days earlier I had gone to the Baths of Caracalla, which is significant because I wrote my Ancient Roma term paper on them, so I figured that I should see them at some point. They're on the south end of the city right near Circo Massimo and though they're ruins and have been stripped of all mosaics, purple/yellow Numidian/blue/green exotic marbles, some parts of it are relatively intact. So it was pretty sweet to see the structure itself.
The next day was all about exploring and wandering and just seeing what I found to say bye to. I ended up making not one, but TWO new discoveries (just in time to leave? more reason to hurry back!!!) one being a new gelateria, del Teatro, which was a little pricey but oh-so-hole in the wall with a cool selection of flavors. Pera al caramello.. tartufo..etc.. then I went to Giolitti, which after 4 months, I've realized is my Happy Place in Roma. Figures. My second discovery happened when I wandered into my favorite vintage store- usually I just look around and rummage through the packed shop-- 1970s Burberry raincoats, leather purses, dresses, shoes, belts, sunglasses, boots.. all perfectly organized but somehow there is still only room for you and the shopkeeper in the entire store. So I ended up finding the perfect pair of brown leather boots (already sort of broken in!) and knocked 20E off the starting price!

That evening was the evening of a nightwalk- MB and I stopped at each of the major tourist sites/monuments one last time. The funny part about the tourist traps is that italiani hang out there, too. They're not Mona Lisas that only tourists parade past- they're living, breathing piazze and fountains where people hang out and meet friends.

Saturday, our last day, brought shopping and lots of gelato- and the Vatican Christmas tree lighting ceremony. This year's tree is a realllllllllly tall Austrian fir donated by some diocese-equivalent in southern Austria, and after the Vaticano is done with it, it'll be made into furniture and children's toys. It's lit, now, though, and on Christmas eve they uncovered the nativity scene that sits in front of it in the middle of piazza san Pietro. That night, a group of us went to piazza san Pietro and just stared up at the starry sky (in what other city in the world do you get stars???!) and soaked in Roma. Roma nostra. What an incredible place. It begs to be returned to--- and I'm guaranteed to now:

Austria: no kangaroos

After much procrastination and no updating on it... Thanksgiving weekend was Austrian!

Jessie and I took an overnighter to Innsbruck on Wednesday, milking our loong weekend. Innsbruck is STUNNING. The Alps there have to be the 100% best I've seen so far. It's kind of funny-- I've seen the Alps 5 or 6 times this semester, yet it NEVER gets old. They are so beautiful. Stepping on the platform and seeing these bright blue, spiky white-covered peaks (especially snowy because, hi, Austria is cold and snowy) was nothing short of surreal. Ethereal beauty. Somehow the spiky peaks stretched on into the horizon and honestly, I felt like I had stepped into a Christmas card. On the way to Innsbruck we had looked out the window and seen a thick blanket of SNOW covering the ground, but breathing the icy air and seeing those gorgeous Alps made it so much more real. I fell in love with Innsbruck on first sight, which had only happened with Italia and Ukraina so far in my life. Stunning.

After a brief stint in Innsbruck, we took a train to Salzburg, which is a few hours away. That train ride was mostly filled with frantic picture-taking and extreme (probably extremely annoying) enthusiasm from my end. I can't even imagine what the commuters on the train thought of me and my huge camera snapping away from inside the train. I couldn't help it! Austria is just that gorgeous. And snowy. That was a first.

We arrived in Salzburg on Thanksgiving, settled into our hostel and decided that we were starving, so we set out to find a café or something. Instead we found an open-air market (so typical of Europe) and Jessie bought real apfelstrudel and I got this incredible bananoshoken kuchen thing.. basically a chocolate cake topped with a thick banana cream and then a layer of chocolate. Sooooooo good. Instead of going on a touristy Sound of Music tour that would have cost us 40 euros eaach, we decided to go see the Mozart house, which is the very house in which Wolfgang Amadeus composed and lived as a child and into his early adulthood. The house is really cool because it's a museum with lots of listening exhibits, so you listen to a lot of beautiful arrangements of Mozart's countless works. Very cool. Salzburg is a very charming city- the river cuts through it and it's just very picturesque and clean. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. While we were visiting Mirabell Palace (where Mozart played) we saw signs for a private concert happening that evening and decided to spend money on a concert we couldn't really afford or dress appropriately for. The concert was some lady in her 30s on the violin. Apparently she's first chair in the national orchestra, no big. Needless to say, Mirabell Palace is possibly the best place to experience something like a private violin concert accompanied by a pianist who wasn't so bad herself. It was awesome. Went back totally thrilled (and freeeeeezing). Earlier we had eaten Thanksgiving dinner at an Austrian restaurant-- bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes...

The next day we explored more of Salzburg, climbed to a lookout point of the city (conveniently located just near the abbey where the Sound of Music nuns actually lived!!) and I photographed a stunning overlook of Salzburg and the surrounding Alps. There aren't even words. Caught a train to Vienna, which again was an incredibly scenic ride-- snow and hills and Alps and sheep and houses and more houses and fields.. overall I'd say it was a little less hilly and Alp-y than the ride from Innsbruck to Salzburg, but duh- look at a topographical map and you shall see your answer pretty easily. It's northeastern end of the Alps' range.
So we got to Vienna. This was a few action-packed days. We saw so much! Most importantly, however, we partook in the (horribly expensive but worth it) Viennese café culture. The Viennese have always been very big on sitting in a gilded, mirrored, ornate café for hours on end with their coffee and a newspaper. In fact, people have been known to write entire books in these cafés, and entire pieces of music. Just like that. No big. A lot of them are pretty historic and um, GORGEOUS, too. With the most fabulous cakes and pastries you have ever seen in your life, except for maybe those in France. The first thing we did in Vienna was walk down their main street (bundled up, whoa) and find Demel, a really really famous café/pasticceria known for their cakes. YESSSSSSSS. So we devoured this chocolate mousse layer cake, which was actually one of the richest things I've ever eaten. This mousse wasn't your typical American mousse. It was pretty dense for a mousse and you could practically taste the chocolate dust melting in your mouth through the fluffy heavy cream-- it was also relatively solid for a mousse. Very, very, very rich- and I almost didn't finish mine (anyone who knows my eating habits should be impressed). We walked around a lot, saw the Christmas lights, found the main Christkindlemarket, and just fell in love with romantic Wien.

The next morning we woke up and headed toward Haus der Musik, a music museum! It was great! I composed my own Viennese waltz and Jessie conducted a virtual orchestra in a Mozart piece, and we both listened to a ton of exhibits on the physics/science aspects of sound and music and also saw exhibits/heard works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Handel... just great. It kept the Mozart theme going in our weekend. Vienna was really all about cake, coffee, Mozart, music, Alps, and.........Christkindlemarkets! Onward..

Christkindlemarket. AWESOME. Think a huuuge market with tons of booths, like hundreds, all selling ornaments, scarves, mulled wine, bier steins, statuettes, jewelery, and any Christmas-related thing you could ever imagine or want. But not tacky stuff- all handmade, gorgeous, Austrian. The colors and sounds and smells just made it the kind of place that you could hang out in for days- and we kind of did. The food was quite excellent there-- lots of sausages and apple desserts, mulled wine, punsch, popcorn, candied nuts, strange Austrian pastries, chocolate-covered bananas, strawberries, cookies, etc etc etc.. anything excellent and tasty and probably terrible for you. YAY! I ended up buying a few presents and eating a lot of food there. And photographing it to death!

SUNDAY- sooooooo we were in Vienna, right? Mmm.. what else is in Vienna other than Mozart and cake and markets? Oh, right- the VIENNA BOYS CHOIR. We found out that they sing at this one mass at the Hofburg Palace on Sundays, ended up going, and experienced the wonder that is this small choir of perfect-sounding voices. Somehow I never realized that little boys' voices were so pure and gorgeous, but yea. It was really cool! And they were all so cute. We kind of explored, walked around, ate the rest of the day... and then hopped on our overnighter back to Roma... I shared my carrozza with a family of 5 from Bologna- they were really sweet and we talked for a long time about Italia and the semester and Roma and all kinds of stuff. Their kids were great- Elena, Andrea, and Gaia- and the parents so nice. It was nice not to end this trip with sketchball creepsters :)

over 100 years

That's what il Corriere della Sera (the main italian newspaper) says, anyway. It's been over 100 years since the Tevere flooded this much. One Roman woman exclaimed yesterday that she'd lived in Roma for over 60 years and had never seen anything like it! So there you go. Today they had cranes and rescue boats in the river, and unsurprisingly, gli italiani were gawking like I've never seen people gawk before. Hilarious. LOOK HOW HIGH IT IS!!! This is crazy.
This city holds such a charm- it's so disorganized and old and layered. It's chaotic and people make their own rules, but at the same time they defer to anyone wearing a uniform (be it a caribiniero or a maid) and care very much about tradition and decorum. No one would dare step out of the house in anything less than their very best clothes, and their world is about appreciating beauty-- art, ancient remains of their golden ages of the Republic and the Empire, really excellent boots, girls in their 20s, the dark brown foam that sits atop un caffé at their favorite bar (mine is Sant'Eustachio) and the pleasure that is sitting at dinner for 4-5 hours starting at 8pm with friends. Romans are 100% crazy and out of their minds, but there is something about the city, the people that inhabit it. The fact that it's a city that doesn't take itself too seriously. They would never identify themselves as italiani- they are romani, just as the people of the north are milanesi, di Milano, or fiorentini, di Firenze. So on that note of total sap/me pretending to be a travel writer, I give you a picture of the Flavian Amphitheater [Colosseo, Colosseum], because I haven't given you nearly enough yet..

so.... Roma is flooding

Like, seriously. The Tevere (Tiber) is way high, and I hear that parts of Trastevere are under water. A barco (tourism boat) totally broke away from its dock near Ponte Cavour and flowed with the rushing waters left behind by the nearly-incessant winter rainy season thanks to the Mediterranean. This barco ended up smashed against Ponte Sant'Angelo. Like so:



I'm not sure when the Tevere last flooded like this. Most likely it was a very, very long time ago-- I say this partly because of the fascination of the locals. ALL day there were hoards of italiani with their chic little high-tech telefonini (of course they had cameras in them, duh) snapping away and creating photographic evidence of this CRAZY event. It was nothing short of hilarious. I love italiani- such a strange breed, but ever so endearing. The river is flooding! The river is flooding! Text Giuseppe! Call Gaia! Tell Francesca! Che peccato, ma eccolo! Interessante, fantastico, che spettacolo! Oh, Rome..

Recently lots has been going on in light of finals and whatnot. But that stuff is boring-- the important thing is that JCU is a thing of the past (good.). But this past Sunday before finals Msgr. Wells, my theology professor//Vatican big shot (perhaps the first American pope?) took our class and the arkies (so about 60ish people, give or take) on the traditional pilgrimage 7-church walk. The list-

• San Pietro in Vaticano
• San Paolo fuori le mura
• San Giovanni in Laterano
• Santa Maria Maggiore
• Santa Croce in Gerusalemme
• San Lorenzo fuori le Mura
• Santuario della Madonna del Divino Amore

So we hit all those churches (walking) plus two more. If you are at all familiar with Roma, you'll notice that San Paolo fuori le mura-- St. Paul's outside the walls [Roman CITY walls]-- and San Pietro are very far apart from one another. We started the day at 7 am in St. Peters (the only people there, yay ND) and headed from there to Santa Maria Maggiore, then to San Paolo [pictured], then along Via Appia outside the city to San Lorenzo and Santuario della Madonna, then to San Giovanni in Laterano, then across the street to Santa Croce. Whew. 12+ miles of walking. We were on our feet from about 7 am until 4pm. It was pretty cool, though, because all that walking led to a number of really great conversations, plus the weather was wonderful (no rain !!!) and the skies that Roman blue. We stopped for lunch and to hang out somewhere on Via Appia, which is just Lazio paradise-- cyprus trees and grass and old hunks of rock everywhere. Overall a great day, one during which tons of awesome talks were talked and pictures taken. One of my faves-- I love walking, and I especially love walking around Roma, quite possibly one of the most gorgeous and colorful places in the world.

In other news: I found another GREAT gelateria today. Gelateria del Teatro on via dei Coronari, near Navona. Also, I was introduced by Nathan to the best coffee in all of Roma, quite conveniently located near the arkie studio. And the Pantheon. Definitely the best coffee I've ever had in my entire life- including that of Vienna and Ljubljana. In addition, be prepared for the Eurotrash wardrobe that is coming home with me. Trends I've noticed over the past 4 months a Roma:
1) really really REALLY tight pants on both guys and girls
2) man purses (bonus points for Louis Vuitton)
3) Dolce&Gabbana everything
4) colored tights
5) fur
6) boots of all sizes, shapes, colors, materials-- just NO stilettos ( the cobblestones limit that one)


Oh, yea- and one more interesting thing going on. CHRISTMAS STUFF. Here is the Vatican getting ready for Christmas:
A presto! Un bacio~ K

gelato

Two really excellent gelato combinations:

(1) arancia//mirtillo//yogurt [orange, blueberry, yogurt] Somehow orange and blueberry are actually a really really really amazing (yes, unexpected) combo. Excellent.

(2) gianduia//fondente//ciocc. bianco [chocolate-hazelnut, dark chocolate, white chocolate] I guess this one isn't too creative, but still- the flavors si sposano bene.


Finals are stupid.

Austrian Tour 2008

..was really fun! update soon. Coffee, cake, Mozart, and Sacher. !!!

parlami d'amore (di Roma)

Sono innamorata di Roma. Like, hardcore. I just bought the most GORGEOUS pair of flat black suede boots, knee high. I LOVE THEM. A LOT. They're GORGEOUS. Aaaaand on this rainy Friday morning in Roma, Jessie and I were boot shopping on via Candia and the shopkeeper asked us se siete spagnoli. Abbiamo risposto noo, siamo degli Stati Uniti, ma studiamo qui a Roma. To which she asked aaahh! Studiate all'Erasmus, alla Sapienza? And then asked if we were staying for the whole year. My heart literally dropped and a little sad, no, torniamo agli Stati Uniti fra una settimana... AHH. WHY.

I love Roma, I love it. I love Roma.

howwwwwwwwww

..is this semester already ending?! I can't believe it. Today was my last day of classes-- and haha, I managed to sleep through la storia della civiltá ovestile. Italiano was so sad- I love my pffssa, Ada. She brought panettone (a traditional milanese Christmas bread, think a better version of fruitcake) and a traditional winter cake from Verona. Then we just talked for an hour- about languages, about Napoli and Gomorra. That class was sometimes a pain because of the work and the frustration involved in being in a class with 4 native speakers and feeling stupid, but now I realize how much it helped my lingua italiana. Solid :) Pathways came and went and though that class is full of heavy, thick Roman Catholic theology, I will def miss Msgr. Wells, the coolest English Secretary of State the Vatican has ever seen.

After class it was sunny and the sky was a perfect blue (I looooooove Roman weather), and though it was a little chilly, I set off to do what I usually do when I'm within 25 walking minutes from my favorite place. I went to Giolitti. Today was a cioccolato bianco/caffé/gianduia day. Then I walked through the back streets of the city center, just totally content that I knew where I was and know Roma.. walked up toward p. del Popolo.. over into Prati.. down via Cola di Rienzo.. and did it. I did it. I got my second gelato of the hour at Pellacheria- biscottino/bacio/cioccolato-canella. I know I'm a fat American, you don't have to tell me. Anyway, for a long time I window shopped and boot hunted down via Cola di Rienzo. It's north of the Vatican in the neighborhood Prati, which is much less touristy than other parts of the city. It's also very pretty- tree-lined, tall-ish Renaissance apartment buildings, flat paving stones instead of cobblestones. If I could pick anywhere in Roma to live it would definitely be in Prati, probably on this street.
The sun set, the twinkling lights appeared, and thus began my boot hunt. And I found some, at this small store called Danielle. The two pairs that I am going to go back and buy tomorrow are flat suede slouch boots, in black and brown. I am also looking for brown leather boots. Oh, yea- and when I was walking down via Cola di Rienzo I saw a stand selling some scarves for 1,50E and so I bought myself 2 summer scarves in a grayish blue and a buttery yellow. Then I went into my favorite specialty foods store (higher end without being ridic priced, with lots of regional cibo italiano) and bought some presents- balsamico, pesto, cioccolato. Whatevs. Mmmm good day. And now begins the finals studying.... BLAAHHH.

late-night lasagna, timtams, pear juice, and paper-writing

First off, it's 1,30 my time and my apartment is finally quiet and peaceful- I'm sitting at our dining room table not quite sleepy but entirely aware of the fact that I have class in 8 hours. Anyway. Today was a really interesting day and I don't blame you if you don't read all of this. It's kind of for my own reference, too. But feel free to read on as part of your finals procrastination ;)

So today started out chilly and cloudy, pretty typical for a Roman November day. Class all day, test in italiano about various literary terms and stuff.. fun. Last night I finished my second-to-last final paper in italiano, which was a composition about this dramatic love affair in which a guy named Claudio has his heart ripped apart by his ragazza, Elena. I was inspired to use Elena because it's the name of a girl I met on the train back from Vienna this past weekend. Anyway, class was normal, got pizza bufala from Pizza Pazza, the tavola calda near school on piazza Trilussa.

Then I went boot hunting. No luck, but definitely made the sweep up via Arenula, toward Corso, up Corso, down the street parallel to Corso, down via dei Condotti (hahahah like I can afford anything on that street- it's the Michigan Ave/5th Ave of Roma).. I am currently on this special quest to find flat suede slouch boots in both black and brown. And I would also like a nice pair of brown leather boots, also flat, with some wear and not too equestrian-looking. Challenge. The nice part about this time of year is that it gets dark at like 16,30 every day, so by the time I really got into my boot hunt, the Christmas lights strung like clotheslines from building to building were twinkling and all was gorgeous in my beautiful city. I will post pictures later- they're still on my fotocamera. I found 2 exceptional things on my wander today:

1) the dry cleaning store that the Vatican uses to get the Swiss Guard uniforms cleaned- OMG
2) Giolitti, not so much by accident. Today was a mela verde/visciola/riso day. Mmmmm. And yea, the skinnier dark-haired scooper with the most formal uniform did comment on the fact that I come to Giolitti a lot. And he asked me why I was alone as he handed me my LARGE cone of HEAPING incredible gelato. I love being a girl here.

I also had a wry conversation with a nice italiano about the incessant winter rains in Roma. Ogni giorno devo portare l'ombrellone quando esco! After a few hours of walking I headed back to Trastevere, where the Christmas lights dance above the cobblestones and light up the backstreets of Old Rome. Pizza Pazza happened again (gli zucchini con some rando cream/cheesy sauce) and then I made my way to school again to watch Gomorra, a film one of my professoresse made us go see. Which leads me to another point..

Gomorra is a film made up of six short episodes with six main characters-- all revolving around the four-sided criminality between the port of Naples, Scampia, Castelvolturno and Terzigno. It's based on the book written by an Italian writer, who was placed under a death sentence by the Camorra clan he exposed. Mafiosi at their cruelest, meanest, most desperate and malicious. It was really dark and good, I guess, but definitely unsettling and upsetting. It's real. And after seeing it, I'm not sure I can ever return to Napoli or Campagna.. it was a dealbreaker. Very intense film-- it took on the form of a documentary moreso than a film with a plotline. Also, it showed the Camorra at all of its stages: a young boy longing to be a part of it, young men gunned down, a middle-aged man wheeling and dealing for thousands of Euros, old men relaying messages and delivering orders. Opposing sides constantly "at war" with one another. Dark and true. It added a whole new dimension to this semester. I mean, I obviously KNEW that the Camorra was still active and still ruthless in Campagna (anyone who really knows anything about Italia knows that much).... but the fact that it was so real and so..accurate kind of made me think and brought me back down to earth. Italia isn't Disneyland. It's a real country with real problems. Food for thought. If you're interested in gangster movies or modern Italian clture, definitely see Gomorra.

Anyway, time to work on a history paper. Ciaociao a tutti! Un bacio~

hava nageela

I need to start writing about the different neighborhoods in Roma. There aren't too many-- Trastevere, Centro Storico, Prati, the Jewish Ghetto, Vaticano, North Rome, Quirinale/East Rome, San Giovanni, and Termini are a good representation. Today I'm going to talk about the Jewish Ghetto and Trastevere.

Trastevere.
School's here, so I've gotten to know it just by default. I've never hardcore explored Trastevere, but somehow I feel like I know a good deal about its old-Rome streets. Trastevere is colorful- its buildings are stuccoed orange, brown, yellow, muted pinks, dark reds... none of the buildings match perfectly, but somehow they all work together-- just like how they're strung together by clotheslines of aprons, towels, clothes, and rugs any day of the week. The cobblestones seem most uneven in this area of the city, which is in SW Roma just across the river (get it? tra-Tevere?) from the Jewish Ghetto. This is the place you'll find little white-haired Italian ladies doing their fruit shopping in the morning near s. Maria in Trastevere and its piazza, but by night all the trattorie, osterie, and ristoranti are lit up with their sparkly Christmas lights and chattering fills the narrow, zigzaggy streets and wide, open piazze. The fountains even come alive at night. It's fascinating, because Trastevere is sleepy and somewhat quiet and totally quaint and cute and aaaaawwww, ROMAAA by day, but once the sun sets, it is the place to eat and linger for hours and the place for young ragazzi to hit the chicest bars in the city and mingle. Trastevere is gorgeous- that's really all there is to say. No monuments- only a few really significant but often-overlooked churches. The most important church here is Chiesa di santa Maria in Trastevere, which was the first church in Roma and the very first church ever dedicated to Mary. It's very, very old, and it has the longest consistent run of charity to the poor in the whole city-- over 1600 years' to be exact. Its facade is covered in gold mosaics and sits on the main piazza in the neighborhood, piazza di santa Maria in Trastevere (clever naming). Not much English is spoken here, and the food really is good. The best pizza in Rome is located here at la Scaletta........

Jewish Ghetto.
When you walk through the cobblestoned streets, the buildings aren't stone or columned like in some other parts of the city. They're mostly muddled browns and mustardy yellows, muted earth tones. There's not too much to see here in terms of over-touristed sites. It was where the Jews were placed during the world wars (hence ghetto with jewish in front of it), and there's still a large population of Jews that still live there, work there, and go to school there today. When walking down Via Arenula from Largo Argentina, all you have to do is duck into one of the alleyways to your left and you're there.. you'll know you've reached your destination when you spot a few men here and there... ok, everywhere.. wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls. There's a grade school on the main street of the Ghetto (via del Portico d'Ottavia), which is also lined with Kosher bakeries and restaurants (Il Portico has the best pasta cream sauces in all of Rome but also happens to charge a HIGH servizio- service fee). This is also home to
Pasticceria Ebraico Boccione, the unmarked, tiny, family-run corner bakery that only makes 8ish items....including my fave, the torta di ricotta e cioccolato. SO GOOD AAAAHH. There's a huge synagogue practically across the street from an ancient pagan temple, so that's fun too. The Ghetto is mostly just a really nice, residential place to stroll and eat good food. Since there's nothing huge to see there, it's not touristy and is just Romans. Jewish Romans... and those clever enough to discover what amazing offerings it brings to Roma.

Ljubljana = Lyubov

Slovenia is the most underrated country in Europe.

Picture this- a country with the Julian Alps, perfect turquoise Alpine lakes with clear water to the bottom, castles perched on jagged cliffs, east-meets-west sort of Austrian, sort of Croatian, sort of Polish/Czech architecture, a language that uses the Latin alphabet but is totally Slavic in roots, and a coffee culture that resembles that of Austria but is as cheap as Ukraina. Slovenia embodies the idea of east-meets-west and it pulls it off so naturally and beautifully. It didn't feel weird or awkward that half of all Slovene words I heard in Ljubljana (which means beloved city, by the way) were exactly the same as their Ukie counterparts but the other half sounded almost Germanic or Italian. People are friendly, but not creepily so like in Italia. The youth is cool, sort of grunge, but there's no graffitti or rowdiness everywhere. It's gorgeous and there is a tourist office and a lot of English-speakers, but there were almost no tourists. It was so COOL. Oh, yea- and cold. We saw ice on the ground, which was a daunting reminder of returning to the Midwest just in time for my favorite season ............ winter. But we're not going to talk about that right now..

Ljubljana. It's in Slovenia. Who goes there? Seriously. Jessie and I booked our train, which leaves and arrives in Slovenia once a day at the most obscure time ever. Per esempio, we departed Roma Termini at 3:00 pm on Thursday and arrived in Venezia (Venice) at 8:30 pm. Well, after an hour layover in Venezia, we caught a train that was Budapest-bound that happened to pass through Ljubljana at...2 am. Ok. So we saw Slovenia for the first time at the most rando time possible. First impressions: wow, this place is quiet. And dead. Even for 2 in the morning. We found our hostel, Hostel Celica- which was voted best hostel in the world 5 years in a row. It's a converted prison.. actually really cool. You have the option to stay in an actual prison cell, with bars on the door and everything!! Haha.. sounds sketch, but we paid less there than we have anywhere else, got a really nice free breakfast, and had comfier beds than here in great old Club Medag.

Friday. Cloudy. We walked around the city, which, by the way, is not very big at all for being a capital city. There's a castle on the side of a mountain (the Julian Alps), several churches, a river, dozens of cafés, a dragon bridge (dragon = the city's symbol, it's everywhere), and plenty of stores. Namely, H&M. Now- some background. Roma lacks H&M. Actually I lied. There is one- however, it is 2 bus rides and a metro stop away from anywhere in the city center. Quindi inaccessible.. so lucky for me, not so lucky for the credit card, there is an H&M right on the main piazza of Ljubljana. We spent a lot of time in there. But don't worry! We did see the city. There's a huge open-air market and a street on which vendors only sell flowers.. there are vendors selling honey, wooden crafty things, and painted plates. I made friends with the honey vendor man, who randomly pulled out a plastic shot glass and poured me some golden liquid- "med"... which was exactly what I thought it was-- honey liquor. POTENT. We sort of communicated using Ukie and Slovenian- most of the words were kind of similar, so we both knew what the other was saying. We ate burek. A lot of burek. It's cheap and a specialty of that corner of the world.. think meat and/or cheese-filled strudel cooked/fried in a ton of butter and grease. Mmmmmmmm. The city is just gorgeous.. look at my pictures to get a slightly better idea, but basically it's pastel-colored, a mix between eastern and western Europe architecturally. We went to a really cute place for dinner (white tablecloths! cheap! yesssss!) and I got a Slovene specialty, think cottage cheese-filled ravioli except chopped in half on the diagonal, all covered in a mushroom cream sauce. AND as a starter I ordered mushroom soup in a BREAD BOWL. That's right. Totally legit traditional Slovene food. A BREAD BOWL. And we got coffee (and sat DOWN for freeeeee) 3 times. Like Viennese café culture mixed with Roman coffee mixed with eastern European cheap.

Saturday. Daytrip to Bled. What's in Bled, you ask? Lake Bled is in Bled. And it's beautiful. I had seen pictures of it, and Let's Go! Europe had a whole page on it, and it's only an hour bus ride from the city, so why not? We took the bus through the most gorgeous mountains EVER, the Julian Alps-- totally snow-covered because of how cold it's been lately-- and pulled into Bled. So... there's a lake. It's really, really BIG, and in the summertime it's apparently a resort town..but in the winter it is a ghost town. Jessie and I walked around the whole lake, which took us a solid 2 hours to do. It wasn't boring, though, because the landscape kept changing. First it starts off as a cute town, then it turns into a slight uphill incline with views of the huge lake and the island with a church on it. You keep walking, and you hit these docks, where there were tons of waterfowl squawking and hanging out.. and you see how huge the lake is. Keep walking, and OH HEY- there are HUGE mountains behind you that you couldn't see for the first half of the walk! Go around the bend, see tons of pine trees climbing up the mountains, and get closer to the island with the church on it. Talk about panoramas. Stunning. Eventually we got hot chocolate at the one lakeside café (we sat inside. it was snowing.) and took in the view. Bused home, ate more burek, sat in a rando basement of a rando building talking because it was SO COLD, and drank coffee at a few more cafés. Excellent conversation.

buon viaggio!

I CAN'T WAIT TO GO TO LJUBLJANA. AND BLED. AND SALZBURG. AND VIENNA.
If you google image Ljubljana, you find a land that looks a little bit more like a magical fairy tale than Bavaria or Switzerland did. It's crazy, and I can't wait to photograph the hell out of it. Lake Bled looks incredible. Slovenia isn't on the Euro. It is going to be stunning, beautiful. And I can't wait. Gorges, castles, turquoise lakes, mountains, canals. YES.

Roman life has been nice lately- sort of filled with papers and homework, but mostly filled with wandering, eating, visiting with MICHELLE who came to Roma this past weekend!! and topping my gelato record. But perhaps I should backtrack and update on my trip to London, the past week a Roma, and other fun things.

36 hours in London: Caroline and I got on our RyanAir flight to London in the afternoon of my 21st birthday, ready to be in London, see our friends, and celebrate properly! So we get to London, take the [way freaking overpriced] Tube to wherever the ND flats are located, and realize.... oh, crap. We lost the paper with the Kamen House codes on it. And no one knows exactly when we're showing up .................crap. haha. So we sit outside on the curb, very frustrated and amused (HUNGRY) until her boyfriend happens to randomly pop outside to see if we're there [much happiness]. Finally we get inside, I see some friends, get some food [BEST chicken caesar wrap I've ever eaten in my life ever, probably because I was starving], and a big group goes out to O'Neill's. It was a nice 21st :) not too crazy, but fun. I slept on Flat 13's couch [WAY more comfy than Medag's beds..........] and saw London that Friday. Nice city, reminded me a lot of ..a European America. Weird comparison, I know. It just did. Oh yea, and everyone had crazy accents. It was honestly the weirdest feeling in the world to be in an English-speaking country again- I haven't been in one since I left home!

I'd been sick-ish since Paris, and by London I'd say that I was mostly over it, but 2 days after having gotten back from London, I came down with an excellent cough/fever combo. Fun. So I was feeling icky all week, hoping that by Friday night it would all fade in time for Michelle's Roma trip. On Friday I went shopping at the san Giovanni market near Via Appia//south Roma, went back to San Giovanni in Laterano, and visited the Galleria Corsini, an old cardinal palazzo-turned museum. Then my apartment-mate Jacqueline's parents took us out to dinner at what happens to be one of my two favorite restaurants in alllllll of Roma- Piacere Molise, on via Candia. I ordered a new kind of pasta, which ended up being sort of like a thicker fettucine, sort of square-ish in form, which had gambieri, zucchini, pancetta, some kind of wine sauce, and tomatoes in it. AMAZING. I think it was one of the best plates of pasta I've had in Roma. EVER. We also had this incredible secondo, a layered eggplant/cheese/pepper/tomato dish. Really good. So after this affair, I metro-ed over to Termini to meet Michelle. We did a night walk in Roma and soon after, I experienced the most harrowing night bus episode of my life, which I do not care to ever repeat. Little pretend-Italian me, piazza Venezia, night bus 4, 18, 5, 7, 8.... not 6..., sketchball creeps, 3 am. I lived. N6 arrived an hour behind schedule. But I'm alive. We had a lovely weekend, ate SO MUCH. I topped my gelato record and ate THREE coni in a span of like 12 hours- one from Della Palma, one from Giolitti, one from Old Bridge. I still need to try Fiocco di Neve and that little one next door to the Pantheon. Some exciting stuff happened last night and today, but I'll save that for another post. Ciao a tutti!

forse che si fa quello che si puo'

More reasons I love Roma:

1) free concert in celebration of Italian veterans and Andrea Bocelli's 50th birthday in Piazza del Popolo Sunday night. Thousands of people, Italian flags, glitter, disco lights, and ANDREA BOCELLI singing his operatic heart out. We sat on the back wall of the piazza, equivalent to the back row, and it was just so cool. Roman night, Romans, Roman concert. Beautiful.

2) torta di ricotta e cioccolato from the nameless Kosher corner bakery in the Jewish Ghetto. I think it really is my favorite single thing I've ever eaten.. and I have about 30 favorite foods and top food experiences including but not limited to the gnocchi in Sulmona, gelato a Napoli, carrot cake at that one bakery in the States, white hot chocolate at Civilization near the ukie muzej, etc, etc, etc. It's like a well-done white cake, except less cakey and a little bit more like a cookie, sort of, filled with tons of ricotta and melty chocolate-- like a cannoli filling, really. The best cannoli filling I've ever tasted. YUMMM.

home sweet Roma

Diakuyu to everyone for the birthday wishes! Every single "mnohaya lita!" made me smile and miss everyone even more! I love you all.

Caroline and I went to London to celebrate my 21st birthday and to visit our ND friends who are studying in London. I'll update on that one later- it was lots of fun and so, so nice to see some familiar faces and some of my best friends.. who I hadn't seen in 6 months! London is a great city, too. But coming back to Roma... that is the point of this post.

I always feel it, but I felt it most strongly this weekend. Traveling and discovering new cities is glorious and I always love it. All of our travels so far have been so different but incredible. Visiting towns and regions within Italia is awesome because even though the regional differences are so pronounced, there are always uniting factors/common themes/threads linking foods/customs/the language. Going international, you lose some of those things and the trips become more defined from one another- the vibe I got from Svizzera was that the Swiss are efficient, economical, practical, sleek, refined, and happen to live in one of the most gorgeous places in the world. In Paris I felt like the French were very refined, somewhat snooty, all about appreciating food and beauty, sophisticated, and just COOL by nature. The Germans are really fun. They are incredibly friendly, hospitable, enjoy life, love children, love their bier, and are very youth-oriented. They seem the happiest. London is so modern. I feel like they're not stuck in any past-- I did spend only 36 hours there, but it seemed the most "western" to me. Almost American in feel, maybe a little more quaint and European (duh, I know- but that's the only way to describe it haha). ANYWAY. Italiani.

Whenever I come back to Roma, I always call it home. And it's quirky- it's wild, totally full of attitude, a little dirty, loud, Eurotrashy, crazy, unpredictable, and old. It's layered with history and with italiani who think the world revolves around them. It's dramatic and always a spectacle. It always makes me laugh-- you can be walking around on any average day and see 10 things that will make you kind of laugh and say, "oh ROME.." you're ridic. But I've come to love this city so much, to appreciate it for what it is. I've gotten past that initial fantasy Roma that most guidebooks try to sell.. that of raven-haired people, cyprus trees, sunsets, pasta, romantic strolls along peaceful cobblestoned sidewalks, strolling violinists, and Lizzie McGuire Movie-esque adventures with hot Italian ragazzi on motorini. Italia is sexy. It's sultry. It's hectic, probably overtouristed, way too dramatic sometimes, random as hell with its public transportation strikes and protests.. but so, so endearing. People here love to be Italian. Everything is a spectacle and italiani take the time to live. Four-hour lunch breaks during which businessmen, students, and shopkeepers alike stroll along the cobblestone streets at the slowest pace IMAGINABLE-- hardly walking, mostly just casually putting one foot in front of the other gradually as they have conversations with their colleagues. Sloooowww walks late at night. Shoes and sunglasses, scarves and tight jeans. Where the Parisians enjoy their food, where the Germans love their children, where the Swiss have their clean efficiency, the Romans know how to hang out. They hang out in their gorgeous city and exude a kind of confidence I haven't found anywhere. They are the greatest, they are the chicest, they are so very fabulously Italian. With every cigarette puff, with every sisisisisisi, with every last stream of rapidfire music-language, and with every single cIAooo I fall way more in love with bella Roma.

Gut Bier!

I came to Munchen knowing..8 words of German.

1) gut
2) bier
3) ja
4) nien
5) danke scheun
6) guten tag

Gut and Bier ended up being the most helpful.


Caroline, Jessie, and I (after having been home in Roma for all of 3.5 days) hopped onto our overnight train to Munich on Thursday totally pumped for some meat, beer, and pretty city-seeing. Check, CHECK, check. I LOOOOVE MUNCHEN, and all of Germany for that matter.

So we roll into Munich at 6,30 on Friday morning and decide that we are going to milk our Eurails and go to Fussen to see King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle! If you are not aware, this castle in Bavaria was THE inspiration for Cinderella's castle in Disney World. Ohhhh YEA. So we spent Halloween training through Bavaria early in the morning, during which tons of thick forests, spiky white snowcapped mountains, rolling fields of grass, and bright yellow and orange fall leaves appeared from the fog. Stunning. So then we got to Fussen, the town where the castle is located, and we were kind of shocked. It looked fake. Disney World fake. Except it was legit, totally REAL. Nothing fake about it... straight out of a fairy tale. I kept looking around, half-expecting to see some prince on a white horse gallop past us up to the castle.. or for dwarves to peek through the trees at us, or for a princess to be locked in the tall, tall, taaaaaallllll tower that topped the castle on the side of that mountain. So cool. It looked like Happy Valley or some crazy made-up storybook land. Every little girl's dream is to be a princess.. and I totally felt like I had stepped into a fairy tale. So I was a princess for Halloween this year :)

We stayed for a few hours and trained back to Munchen in time to walk around a bit and find dinner. We wandered (with our hostel's map and recommendation) toward a restaurant that they said was off the beaten tourist track called Augustiner Brau Stuben. OMG. So there are 6 kinds of German beer, and sub-beers under the 6 main beers' umbrellas. Augustiner is one of the 6, so by the name we could tell that that was the house specialty. We go inside this place and it is PACKED. With GERMANS. It was soo loud and boisterous and completely chaotic with waiters and waitresses wearing Bavarian clothes juggling liter steins of bier as they weaved through wooden tables and benches full of 15-20 people each. The food smelled incredible and we were shooed toward the bar by a large German woman.. so the 3 of us are standing there and somehow end up with half-liters of a light wheat beer in front of us. YESSS. And it was so good, and so smooth, and delightful. Finally another large German woman communicates to us that we should follow her so we can sit down and eat! We follow, pick up the menu.. everything is in German... so we point to rando things on the menu and ask the friendly white-haired man sitting next to us if this is "GUT??" or if that is "GUT??" and somehow end up with the most amazing food in the world in front of us. Sauerkraut, 3 kinds of meat/wursts, potatoes, grease, yesssssss. All with bier (gut bier- at this point I'm on my second 0.5L) and brezen (soft prezels). :D

That night was slightly fuzzy but so so so so so so SOO much fun. The bier hall was just so fun and friendly and loud and happy. And delicious. And it ended up being very cheap. SUCCESS.


Saturday was November 1. November 1 is a national/religious holiday for ALL OF EUROPE. Everything is closed on November 1. Haha. Totally neglected to note that. Oh well- Caroline and I walked around alllll of Munchen, popped into some gorgeous churches and gardens, and window shopped almost all morning and early afternoon while Jessie toured the Dachau Concentration Camp nearby. So whoever said German food is terrible has obviously NOT been to Germany. It's been one of my favorites so far. I've been sick since midway through Paris, so in the morning we went to a bakery (Muller) near our hostel for pastries and tee, and the mamdgoiehdhrys0ussss that I pointed to and got was amazing. Kind of like a streusel-frosting-cranberry danish thing. Saw the Glockenspiel, which is a very famous clocktower performance in Marienplatz during which little cuckoo-clock type figures dance around to pretty belltower chimes. And then mid-afternoon we decided that a snack was necessary, so we went to another bakery that was totally packed with people speaking (yelling) German and ordered a huge breze and a white chocolate raspberry mousse cake thing (Caroline) and a chocolate covered mousse cake looking thing (me)..... and, acclimated to the Italian concept of no free table seating EVER, took everything "to go" and snuck our way into the outdoor seating furthest away from the door.... and ate these glorious cakes with our FINGERS. So hilarious, so delicious. I bet we didn't even need to pay extra to get forks. I bet all the Germans were laughing at us, the dumb Americans. But it was so fun and I would do it ten more times. Mmmmmmmm.

That night we went to Haufbrauhaus. Umm. It's a biergarten. We ordered our 0.5L of Haufbrau and then the evening continued into
1) Americans joining us and buying us 90E of alcohol and food
2) Our table and the surrounding tables noticing that I had over half of my bier left and demanding that I chug it in a race [against some Mexican guy, for 50 Euro]... so I did, and I WON. It was epic- there were about 30-ish people [some French guys, some South Africans, a lot of Germans] screaming and cheering when I won. Peer pressure at its finest.
3) much love
4) cheese noodles, kuchensomethingsomething- very delicious
5) new friendship with 2 girls, Alana and Lizzy, who we had hung out with all evening before the biergarten. Alana is Australian and is dating a ukie guy who lives in London and Lizzy is an American au pair currently living in Switzerland.

Sunday- I found the Ukie church in Munchen and checked out their hromada. Pretty awesome. I miss my people a LOT. For the rest of Sunday we hung out with Lizzy and went to Café Trachtenvogl, which has no fewer than 35 flavors of hot chocolate. <3 mmm. I ordered the darkest dark hot chocolate on the menu... and a real chocolate chip cookie. First one since leaving the States. YUM. Then, since in Munchen all state-owned museums are 1E on Sundays, we went to the Deutsch Museum-- of science and technology!! Then we walked around Munchen, then went to dinner, where I tried a Radler, which is light bier mixed with lemonade soda....actually really good. We walked around some more, enjoyed Bavaria, sat in Marienplatz eating real German apfelstrudel at night, and then hopped on the overnight train back to Roma.

YAY GERMANY. I LOVE YOU.

Bonne Soir!!

Sono andata a Parigi lo scorso weekend. Paris- I wasn't sure what to expect on a lot of levels. Parigi.. you hear about it a lot, you hear that the French are snooty, that the food is good, and that it's gorgeous. Stereotypes are true, but in a good way for Paris. It's kind of weird- I've spent the last few weekends in countries whose languages are totally foreign to my ukie-italiano-english speaking self. Now normal people would book a train ticket, read up on the foreign city in question, learn a few key phrases, learn about local customs......... nope. Team 123 Medaglie d'Oro picks up, grabs cameras and passports and..... goes. E basta. Ecco i nostri viaggi..

PARIS: Caroline and I got on our 15-hour overnight train (don't worry, abbiamo prenotato le cuchette-hooray for beds) and woke up to rolling French countryside complete with sheep dotting the green grass, misty morning dew, cozy-looking chalets, and gorgeous scenery speeding past our window. The train ended up being not one, but 2.5 hours LATE getting to Paris-Bercy, so technically we are eligible for refunds.. but wait, it didn't drop us off at Bercy. We were dropped off at GARE DE LYON, which is the main train station in Paris. Usually not a problem, but the two of us (blonde...non-French-speaking... lost) had specific directions from Bercy, not Lyon, to our respective places to stay for the weekend. Ummm ok.. haha, so Caroline gets on the Paris metro to go to her hotel on the north end of Paris and I get on the metro in the Porte d'Orleans direcion so I could go find my friend Kolya's apartment on the south side of Paris. Ummmm ok, so at this point I'm alone on the Paris metro with a skype convo printout at my aid. Haha. Happy ending, though- I made it! Funny twist- Caroline's UK cell didn't work in France? And as I later found out, she couldn't call Kolya's? Oh, so another long story made short- didn't meet up with my ND friends that weekend because we played Life Before Cell Phones.. in Paris. But so anyway.. all day Friday Kolya and I hung out, walking around the city and going to Notre Dame, some Jardins, and Musee d'Orsay. There was an AWESOME exhibit in d'Orsay- Picasso copied this one painting by Manet like 50 times, but each time it looked completely different. Really trippy but really cool. Then that night we went out to a club for an Erasmus night and I met a bunch of his American friends studying in Paris. So fun!! Haha aand I practiced my italiano on some guys who were having none of it. LAME. All in all- awesome. On Friday I ended up finding Team ND's hotel, so we hung out for part of Friday until I went shopping with Kolya (aka I played stylist). Then we went to this ridic Halloween party that ended up being pretty short-lived but fun all the same. Saturday was San Chappelle/Jardins/walking around/rando churches/French Pantheon day. San Chappelle was stunning- walls of stained glass windows that were just too gorgeous to believe!! That was another thing I loved about Francia. They have stained glass! There is NONE in Roma. The weather all weekend was pretty chilly and gray, but France has autumn! The leaves were changing! Sweaters and jackets didn't just take up space! The city was remarkably beautiful, too. So clean and quaint- kind of like out of a movie, just better because it was REAL. Ok, so Saturday night. Kolya and I went out to dinner in the Latin quarter of Paris. We (ok, I lied. He. Because I am devoid of French speaking/reading skills) found a really pretty little bistro (a reaaaaaaaal french bistrooooo-so excited) and were there for a few hours.. I had an incredible cheese-walnut-greens salat for the entreé [appetizer in French] with really great cheese, veal with mushroom-cream sauce and pommes frites, and a "mandatory" creme bruleé. O, the French know their food. It was so memorable. And so, so good. Oh yea, and the bistro was called Le Tango du Chat :) Afterwards we went to the Eiffel Tower because I still hadn't seen it, and when we got out of the metro, I saw it! For the first time- and it was SPARKLING. This year the tower is lit up blue at night, and for the last ten minutes of every hour at night it SPARKLES. So pretty!!!!!!!! So then we just hung out for the rest of the night and eventually went to bed and daylight savings happened and I had to go to Lyon to catch the train back to Roma bright and early. Actually it wasn't even bright yet. Just early. All in all, era un weekend fantastico. It was really nice to visit a friend and just hang out and see the city as a sort-of not tourist. Oh yea, and eat croissants, eclairs, crepes, and all other French goodness that no one in the world has successfully imitated and/or perfected. Also- I am in LOVE with the way the French say bonne soir. So cheery and HAPPY- bonne SOIR!!!! Our version is the ever-sexy buona sera, which, when said correctly is definitely sexy. It was nice to hear the happy version after getting so used to the sultry version, haha.

I LOVE SWITZERLAND

Ciao a tutti!

It's been awhile. The past 2 weeks have been a complete whirl- last time I updated, I was about to head off to Zurigo, and once I got back, I had threemidtermsjustlikethisohmygoshaaaaahhhh and then I immediately darted off to Parigi. Midterms were not so bad. But anyway, to the funner parts.. speaking of fun, the Euro:USD conversion rate is AMAZING in our favor.. 1.24 today. That sure beats the 1.55 that was the first month of this fall. So yeah! Switzerland.

So on Thursday evening, Jacqueline and I went to Termini with stuffed backpacks and stomachs awaiting the chocolate and cheese that is Svizzera. We hadn't ordered cuchette, beds, for this train ride. It's expensive to do that. But we ended up getting SO lucky and being the only 2 people in our 6-person carozza ....so we put down all the seats and had FREE beds. Best part- no one could open the doors to come in..mmmm so we slept very well on that overnighter. We got to Milano after like 8 hours (this train stopped a lot) and saw the early morning Milanese rays of light.. and some other stuff. Like neon palm trees. In Milano. (?) Milano is the Washington of Italia. Not the Las Vegas.

We caught our connecting train to Zurgio HB (sooo excited at this point). This train ride was the most beautiful ride EVER EVER EVER because it took us through the northern Italian Alps and into the heart of the Swiss Alps, which lie in the very center of the range. GORGEOUS. These mountains are the most beautiful in the world, I am totally convinced. Tons of sheep and goats dotted the perfect green landscape and the Italian stucco and terra cotta houses started to morph into Swiss chalets gradually. Hills rolled into spiky whitish-blue mountains and I was in HEAVEN. Look on fbook for those pictures.. Jacqueline has some I will steal. I was too busy being enthralled with the views to take good pictures (for the first time in my LIFE).

So we get to Zurigo, then we catch the train to Richterswil, where Franz lives. Franz just won Pastry Chef of the Year, and as I later find out, is the HEAD JUDGE of all those Food Network chocolate sculpture/marzipan/sugar art competitions. No big. He and I discussed chocolate extensively and he is just really cool. His family is great, too. We stayed with them in their house on LAKE ZURICH. Beautiful. Stunning. Alps are in the background, PS. He pretty much drove us around in the Alps all weekend, stopping for dessert breaks at rando cafés, church visits, dinner-buying adventures at real-life Swiss cheese shops, and a gingerbread factory. We also visited Luzern, a Swiss town that was too picturesque for words. Kinda touristy, but then again, that was after living with a real Swiss family in a residential Swiss town for a few days.
On Saturday Franz took us to Mt. Rigi. Mt. Rigi is a mountain in the Alps. Mount Rigi is very tall. We took a cable car up the mountain, which provided me with some of the most memorable and BEAUTIFUL views I've ever experienced in my life. Seriously. We stayed on top of the mountain for awhile and drank rum tea (Jacqueline and Franz) and espresso (me). The view was just so incredibly beautiful. I still can't get over it. The pictures I posted were from the cable car.. not even from the top. Gorgeous.


Franz and his wife Gaby fed us so well. There's something to be said for staying with a pastry chef when you go to Switzerland- usually it involves a pound bar of the (!!!) official best chocolate in the world (voted by the international chocolate committee-whatever it's called).. meals of the best cheeses in the entire world, sparkling sweet wines, dried meats, fruit breads, grain breads that melt in your mouth, and cherry liquor. Oh yea, and mont blancs and napoleans and other assorted pastries. You know. Go to Switzerland- if for anything, go for the views. It is truly spectacular.... mmm. And delicious. :) I've never eaten better cheese, not even here in Italia. Apparently cows are subsidized by the Swiss government better than children are. Hm....

che bello

I LOVE SWITZERLAND.

Bella Notte

Rome by night is absolutely beautiful. On Sunday I was out at dusk with my camera and took a few shots of Roma as it transformed from fiercely white marble and jagged tufa to softly glowing, silent structures standing more stately than anything ever. Gorgeous. Roma at night is absolutely breathtaking, totally different from daytime. Both are awesome and beautiful, but somehow Roma by night sparkles and glows.. totally different. Vediamo un po'


il Palatino....



piazza San Pietro, aka St. Peter's Square

Ponte Umberto..
This week is full of italiano and art histories for me because on Thursday I leave for Zurich! And then I get back Sunday night and have to be ready for 3 midterms on Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday. Then on Wednesday night I leave for Paris. AAAHH. So much to do, so much to see, and so much to do! Ciaociao-

delle cose

I live here. Wow. So here's a list of things I did this week:

Monday: went to class with a terrible hangover from a Sunday wine festival

Tuesday: got an A+ on a theology paper graded by the English-speaking secretary of state for the Vatican..... haven't seen an A+ since Walsh, haha.

Wednesday: saw the pope, booked some train tickets, studied for my first midterm

Thursday: took my history midterm (joke?), went to the Hard Rock Cafe for someone's birthday (blasphemy, but somehow that bacon cheeseburger was one of the best things I've ever eaten? probably because it wasn't a noodle)

Today: saw a LOT of Berninis and Caravaggios, hung out in the Villa Borghese gardens and was approached by an italiano creepster while reading my book.

other important events: discovery of an al forno pizzeria napoletana with really cheap really good pizza, eating of very much gelato from Millennium and Giolitti [new flavors conquered-- nocciola, crema al limone, uva-fragola, creme caramel, cocomero, millennium, biscotto]