Breads and Circuses

Buona sera, bloggees (blogians? blogites?). I haven't posted since Paris, which seems rather ridiculous. Sorry for the delay; most of our precious internet time is spent booking last minute hostels in cities that we will be in in less than 24 hours. Hope nobody's suffered too much withdrawal :).

Well, we're in Rome. Its been quite a journey - since I last posted, we've stayed in four different cities, and waited for long periods in countless more. Italian trains make a habit, it seems, of hanging out for hours in intermediate cities (took us about 5 and a half hours to make it from Salerno to Rome (should take less than three)) for no apparent reason. I'll get over it, with time and frequent counseling.

I digress. Berlin was fantastic, and I wish I had been able to devote an entire post to it. Much less of a 'see all the sites' town than its travel predecessors in London and France, and much more of a 'hang out and have a great time in our warmingly open and welcoming city even though its only been united as long as you've been alive' city. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of sites to see - you'll understand when we can post pictures and can post the greatest picture the world has ever seen. Those of you who are well acquainted with my propensity to exaggerate should be wary not to shrug off this boast. I'm giddy just mentioning it.

I ramble. Berlin was awesome, and we had a great time. The receptionist at our hostel gave Joel and I four shots each for singing the 'Star Spangled Banner' loudly in the lobby. Need I say more?

After Berlin, we took like seventeen different trains to get to Venice, where we spent about two hours walking through the city consuming liberal amounts of cheap pizza and gelato. I wish I could eat Italian pizza every day for the rest of my life. It's as good as all you pizza lovers (which should be everybody) have ever imagined. Saint Mark's square was gorgeous, though Joel and I were quite disappointed before we turned the corner and saw the Adriatic Sea (our pre-corner conversation was something to this effect: 'This is lame... I thought it was on the water,' and 'we should walk to the water after this' and other such frustrated, incredulous lines). Luckily, we did in fact turn the corner, and did take in the sweeping vista that is the western coast of Italy and the Adriatic coast of Venice. Its fantastic, and we've got photographic evidence. You just can't see it yet.

So then we took 45 more trains to get to Florence, where we spent that night, and slept like two people who have just changed trains 62 times. Florence was gorgeous. It's in the heart of Tuscany, the central, grape growing region of Italy. It's hilly and covered in grapes, and never not sunny. We ascended the 4,000,000 stairs to the top of Brunelleschi's famous Duomo, saw the Uffizi (the oldest art museum in Italy, but actually quite disappointing beyond Botticelli's famous Birth of Venus), and walked along the Arno for a while (eating gelato), and thinking about Machiavelli. Machiavelli probably would have known to skip the Uffizi. If you find yourself alone riding in green fields with the sun in your face, do not be troubled... Just go to Santa Croce instead of the Uffizi (i'll probably be shamelessly quoting Gladiator from now on... Rome evokes countless irremovable images in my brain. Apologies (and a sharp rebuke) to anyone who has not seen this epic film. Do it.), where Machiavelli, Galileo, Michaelangelo (who's David we did see in Florence. Awesome.) and other such notables are interred. Sorry for all the sidenotes (thats the story of Florence, I guess).

After Florence, Joel and I went to Salerno, a little port town on Italy's famed Amalfi Coast. We just wanted to sit for a day or two and do nothing; a little sight-see'd out at that point. It was quite an experience, and quite unlike the more urban ones we've grown accustomed to in these past weeks. It was cloudy the first day, which awoke deep, heretofore unseen red dragons of rage in Joel and I. Actually we just ineffectually tried to swim in the ice cold, sunless Mediterranean for several hours before we unconditionally surrendered, returned home, heads hung, and ate gelato. And pizza, of course. It's the kind of thing that Calvin's dad would say 'builds character,' if that puts it in perspective.

Several hours later the sun came out :(. Don't worry, it was very sunny the next day (joel's torso can attest to that (hehe)), and we both got plenty of sun, despite abundant and repeated applications of SonnenMilch. That's right, we bought German sun tan lotion, half for its utility, and half for the name.

The trip to and from the beach was quite an experience. Salerno's primarily a port city, so we had to go up the coast a little bit to find a nice beach. The Amalfi coast is a series of huge, rocky, terraced mountains that abut the water, and the Italian traffic engineers (...) decided to cut a winding, terrifying road that's just barely not wide enough for two cars to pass each other and that is an average 100 feet (not an exaggeration, surprisingly) above rocky oblivion. Our bus was flying down this road, taking blind corners, very nearly killing bikers and us in the process. It was mortifying at first, but we gradually got used to it.

The entire nation of Italy shuts down between 1pm and 7:30, apparently. Joel and I wandered the town in hypoglycemic trances for hours, consequentially. It's rather insane, actually, when juxtaposed with the hopping nightlife that most towns exhibit. Our roommate at the hostel, however, took advantage of none of these opportunities. He had one of the most 'simple' existences I have ever encountered. We returned to the hostel three times throughout each day, and each time, invariably, our friend was pants-less and smoking. A unique individual, to say the least. He also brushed his teeth each time we returned, borrowing tooth paste (denty-freshe, or something of that nature (he gesticulated until we capitulated)) from one of us each time. Please picture this.

So we swam, laid in the sun for a while, and narrowly avoided death for a couple of days in Salerno, then got on a train that was 35 minutes late in departing and 4 hours late in arriving in Rome, and that brings us to the present (or close enough). Today we saw the Colosseum (I didn't know men could build such things), the Pantheon (which was a tad disappointing), and glanced at the Forum. The weather was crappy and there were people getting married everywhere at the Colosseum, so we're going back tomorrow for another round. Rome, like London, has glittering, ancient edifices on seemingly every corner, and it takes Joel and I quite some time to get anywhere, as we invariably stop and go in or up something and take a bunch of pictures in several different locations before we move on. That happened today at Trajan's column, Trevi's fountain, and the spanish steps, for example. Also a man tried to sell us a bow and quiver of arrows today. That is all.

Anyway, the Italian internet man upstairs is ending our interent, so I have to leave. Miss you all - three days till America! See everybody soon.

- Tom