Czech It Out! Bavarians!

Prague is an amazing city. In a lot of ways, but in one way that stuck out to me in particular: it's Florence. Like, literally. Take Florence, construct it during the Baroque period instead of the High Renaissance, and add some latitudnal degrees, and you've got Prague. The resemblances are uncanny.

Prague is built in the hills on a beautiful, wide river. It's got beautiful bridges and spires pushing up towards the sky from everywhere around the city, and churches around every corner you come across. It also has a lot of sculpture arbitrarily stuck around the city. All of these are also characteristics of Florence.

Also, just as Florence had a historical moment where everyone who was anyone, the Real Men of Genius, were all living there. Prague had the same phenomenon, a lot later. Like, with Kafka and... well, it did have a Renaissance of it's own, with intellectuals and stuff, but I don't really care about the world post-Titian, so you'll forgive me if I ask you to Google instead of me having Google and then pretend I just whipped that info out of nowhere. But really, the cities are alike in more than just orientation.

I amused myself mostly, in my very abbreviated sojurn, by walking around Prague's Old Town, which is a beautiful example of Baroque architecture in it's most ornate and fully-developed form. I found this hilariously witty, since I, the Rome-phile, consider anything above Padua to be completely devoid of Baroque design and lacking the aesthetic to effectively pull it off. Basically, Prague blows my thought right out of the water. It is one of the most architecturally homogenous places I've ever been, though it still has room for some decidedly northern influences, too.

The entirety of the Old Town in an Unesco World Heritage Site, which means that you can basically frolick around the place and know that, even though you only have essentially twelve hours in which to explore the place, you can rest assured that it will continue to look almost exactly the same the next time you find yourself in the Czech Republic.

I amused myself by walking around during the evening I arrived, window shopping for the garnets that the Czech Republic is apparently renowned for, and discovering a lovely little treat which goes by the name of Spiced Wine. I am not a seventy year old man, and to the best of my knowledge I was born after the reign of Henry VIII, but for some reason this drink just made me really happy. I bought my first cup from a street vendor, and liked it so much that, gawl darnit, I wanted more. I figured that I deserved a nice meal, considering my frugality over the previous few weeks (subsisting on rolls pilfered from the breakfast bar in Oslo), and so I set off in search of some good Czech food.

I found a fun little tavern-type place with a promising looking menu and one of those guys standing out front who tries to seduce you into eating there. Generally, I avoid these guys, because I, like other Americans, hate to be solicited at dinner time. Which is inevitably when they call, isn't it? But this guy was sweet and gave me a cupon for 20% off the already reasonably priced menu, so I went for it.

One of the things this place did was set alcohol on fire. Professionally, and with much pomp. I didn't get any fiery alcohol, since I really enjoy my eyebrows, but I saw several groups of people get more and more ferschnockered, holding snifters literally bigger than their heads, which the skilled wait-staff continuously filled with booze, warming it over an open flame and then lighting it on fire. I was incredibly impressed, but content to just sip my mulled wine and leave the X-treme boozing to others.

I did do some (for me) X-treme eating. Now, I'm not a PETA activist by any stretch of the imagination. I am all for the ethical treatment of animals, but I also enjoy a good hunk o' cow now and again, if you get my drift. But eating a bunny... I've always drawn the line there. Chickens are dumb, I was raised in Montana, so cows have always been associated with food, and basically my favorite dinner ever is pork tenderloin, and I'm not about to give that up. I'm good with most of your normal meat products. Bologna excluded. That's not normal. But I've been telling myself in each new place I go that I should try one thing that I never have before. Be it Swedish design or herring for breakfast or inhaling putrid THC fumes... and when put next to those things, rabbit with cream sauce and potato dumplings seemed pretty safe. And depressingly enough, it was delicious. The experience of this little Czech tavern and this food was possibly one of the highlights of the trip up to this point. It was just warm and cozy, and I really enjoyed myself. Some of that was definitely the wine, but I think there was legit enjoyment there as well.

I amused myself the next day by walking around the Unesco Site, gawping. I hiked up to the cathedral, which has an astonishing view of the rest of the city, and walked around in the palace grounds for a bit. It was a surprisingly mild and sunny day, so I took advantage of it by being outside. I got attacked by pigeons when I tried to spread my infectious good will by sharing my final stale Norwegian roll with them. That's what you get for being generous.

Prague was wonderful. What little I saw of it makes me sure that I have to go back at some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. I hopped a train that afternoon and headed to Munich.

Munich was cold. Germany in general was freezing when I was there, but then again it was January, so I guess I can't blame it. I stayed at a hostel called Wombats... it's run by Aussies, and overrun by them, too. All of my roommates in the eight person dorm were Australian college students on their summer break. I laughed my ass off when I heard that. And the best part about all the Australians was the fact that the time I was in Munich happened to include Australia Day, which is, I gather, something like the 4th of July.

Imagine being in a hostel full of Australians, who are not in Australia, on Australia Day. There's a word for this: shitshow. We as Americans do the same thing: we get really excited about our national holiday and want to share our excitement with others, even when we're not in our own country. I remember being in Paris on the 4th and lighting sparklers and singing "America the Beautiful" on a bateau-mouche as we passed the mini Statue of Liberty. It was something like that, except with lots more beer and instead of 18 high school girls and two chaperones, it was something like two hundred college kids and no chaperones. Do that math.

Walking around towns cannot be well-described in words. Or at least I don't feel like putting the effort in right now. So you'll just have to go there yourself and see what I mean when I say that I think Munich is more of a summer city. It has a ton of parks, one of which, Englischer Gardens, is larger than Central Park. The Glockenspeil is very, very cool, but I think it would be cooler with a warm summer breeze blowing in your face as you gaze up at it rather than a frigid wind that makes you feel like you just swallowed a scoop of ice cream whole.

I loved walking around, don't get me wrong, but it seems to me that Munich will be much more hospitable in about two months, when it's thawed out a bit. I did eat a pretzel though, so you can relax. I've got the complex carbs under control.

I'm sleepy now. I'm going to try really hard to account for everything and everywhere here, more for my own sake than because I think you're waiting with baited breath to hear about Vienna and Budapest, but still. More soon. Sleep now.

The Belgians Share a Border With The Dutch... and the Germans, Actually.

I'm not racist against the Dutch, like Nigel Powers, but having grown up with some pseudo-French influences, I might have a little predisposition to lump the Belgians in with the North Dakotans and the Ohioans. But going to Brussels made me appreciate some of the truly wonderful things about the Belgians: waffles and chocolate.

Admission: I was only there for about three hours. Prohibitively expensive hostel prices and a lack of really important art museums, etc. meant that I didn't give Brussels the consideration it deserves. Here's my thinking on this: I speak French. Not really well, but I do. This, plus the fact that France is home to some of the most important art in the world, indicates that I'll probably be back in that part of the world before I get a chance to go back to Budapest, Prague, Tetovo... so I made a sacrifice.

It wasn't actually that big of a sacrifice, since I did achieve the one thing that people are going to ask me about when I say I visited Belgium. I ate a waffle. And it was delicious. That doesn't actually do it justice, but since they honestly can't be made as well anywhere else in the world, I'll let you go to Brussels and discover what I mean for yourself.

I mostly just bopped around the center of town with my waffle, window shopping for lace and chocolate. They're really not joking when they say that's what Belgium is known for. Of course, I was right by the beautiful, if very touristy, Grande Place, and so it's a given that most of these shops were capitalizing on the tourists walking around, exclaiming at the admittedly mind-blowing, gilt-encrusted Baroque-ish buildings of the square. It was a good way to spend a morning. And, of course, it makes me eager to go back there when I have the chance to spend more than a few hours, but in this case, Berlin awaited.

Immediate impressions of Berlin: freaking Arctic. Literally. By this point, I have pretty much been to the North Pole. I mean, I was in a place just a few days before where they had REINDEER on the menu. (Okay, so that's probably not PC at the real North Pole, but still. Stockholm and Oslo are pretty far north.) But Berlin was SO cold. At first. I got in late at night, and it was as windy as anywhere I've ever been (and I come from Great Falls) and so I wasn't particularly favorably impressed at first, thinking I might just scrap this whole part of the trip and head directly to Greece.

But when I got to the hostel, I decided I was moving in. The Grand Hostel Berlin is amazing. Like, with fluffy white duvet covers and internet in the rooms. I wanted to stay there forever.

One of the people I was sharing the room with was a guy from Melbourne, Austrailia named James. He and I got to chatting about how unfortunate it is to be an English-speaker who can't speak German when you're in Germany, but how it doesn't really matter anymore, since English is literally a global language.

A quick word on this phenomenon: I am the daughter of a language teacher. As such, I have been raised with the idea that language is the key to culture, and that culture is the key to understanding how other people operate, and if we understand how other people operate, perhaps we wouldn't blow each other up as often. And so the fact that in each new country I visit, it's not required of me to even learn the rudiments of the language because everyone I encounter speaks English better than I do is something of a mixed blessing.


The wonderful part is that it's made it possible for me to connect with a lot more people and get their opinions of the world, which is so much smaller and more closely-knit than it used to be. It's encouraging for me to talk with people from Germany, Korea, Austrailia, Brazil and find that their opinions of a lot of the most pressing issues that we as a generation are going to have to face are very comparable to mine. The fact that we all share a common language has been enormously helpful in letting me get familiar with other ways of thinking and reasoning and how people's opinions are influenced by their upbringing. That the common language happens to be my native one is just very lucky.

The guilty part is: given the respect that both of my parents have for other cultures, and the mentality that they've raised me with that going to another culture means accepting the differences of that culture, language included, means that I feel really awful when I have to speak English when that is not the native language. Growing up in Bush2 Amuhrica, as a Democrat, I've grown used to thinking that the rest of the world thinks that we are a bunch of loud, violent, inconsiderate cowboys who want everyone else to do what we say is right to make it easier for us. From what I've encountered in some places here, it's not really that far off the mark. Or maybe I'm hypersensitive to Ugly Amuhricans. I don't know. But the fact remains that I feel like I'm playing into this stereotype every time I have to ask something in English.

My solution: British accent. I'm really quite pahssable aht tawking with a British accent, and since hanging out with James for pretty much the entyah toyme Oy was een Buhleen, I'm pretty good at Austrailian, too. I figure the Aussies and the Brits can afford to look culturally insensitive more than we can, at the moment. And so I never use an American accent when necessity dictates I have to speak English.

It really is quite amazing that essentially the whole world speaks English, though. I mean, most of the people I encounter are in the service industry, and so it's basically a necessity, but I'm beginning to get the impression that English is really the language in which the world is conducted. And that is giving me this whole new interpretation of America's place in the world, and Great Britain's place before us. To be so powerful that the whole world basically defers to your language as the one in which business is done... that's an awful lot of responsibility. I don't think we, the civilians living our private lives in the States, have any conception of just how influential we have been politically in the last century. Like, really. That might sound arrogant, but the fact that I can go up to basically anyone on the street and say (in my Brit or Aussie accent, of course) something in English, and they will answer me in English says a whole lot about the state of the world today. It also indicates just how careful we should be with the power it connotes. Or connoted. I think the United States of America is in a weird position globally right now.

Anyway. Berlin. It's... functional. Well, if you think about it, the whole city was bombed the crap out of less than a century ago, and so obviously there are not a whole bevy of pretty old buildings the like of which I have become accustomed to. It's a very modern city, and it's huge. I'm fairly used to cities where you can walk from place to place without feeling like you're Forrest Gump (he ran, but you get my point), but let me just say that it's totally plausible for Berlin to have been divided into East and West little more than twenty years ago. There's certainly enough room.

My favorite residual little quirk from before the wall fell happens to be East Berlin's jaunty little traffic guys. They're hilarious... Google image them right now. I'll wait.

Aren't they funny? And they're also really handy, for when you are walking around, in orienting yourself with the past, as to what side of the wall you would have been on if you were there in 1988. I mean, if you're an American, you would be on the West side, or you would be dead, but the thought remains the same.

That was really the most striking thing about Berlin: the immediacy of it's history. I mean, each and every place I've been to has some big historical significance, and you've heard me rhapsodize about Rome and how replete with world-changing history it is, but Berlin changed the world while people I know were alive. I mean, I guess if I'm feeling crazy I could say that I spiritually know Michelangelo or something weird like that. But, I actually know people who are now and were then functionally alive when Germany brought the world to its knees. Walking past the Brandenburg Tor and the Reichstag brings to mind haunting, frightening images of Nazi soldiers goosestepping, of Hitler orating, his creepy side part sticking to his head with fervent persperation... it's all very real. And it all happened a very short while ago.

Berlin isn't a place that dwells on the past, though. Sure, the reminders are all around, even in the absence of something. In areas where there are large swaths of new-looking buildings, you know that a bomb was dropped. The lack of the wall has its own substance, consisting of plaques and flowers and memorials and curious people gazing from one side of an invisible void or the other.

But Berlin is a thoroughly modern, incredibly cosmopolitan city with a huge population of really diverse people. James and I had dinner at an Indian restaurant that was literally some of the best food I've had in a good long while. We walked through the museum island, where the natural history, fine art, history of Germany and other museums are located. It was a fun way to spend the day, especially with a new friend with whom I shared a language but absolutely not a culture. I forgot how revelatory asking questions of someone can be. Did you know Austrailians, as a people, hate Dr. Pepper? Neither did I.

From Berlin I headed to Prague, then Munich, Vienna and Budapest. Tomorrow I'm off to Beograd, from where I will head to Macedonia to visit my cousins Connor and Kacey, who are in the Peace Corps. Excited! I can't believe how fast the days are going; it seems completely improbable that I will be back in the States in less than a month. I'm just trying to soak it all up as much as I can until then. I guess, in a sense, going back to the States after all this time and all these new perspectives will be an adventure all it's own. Onward! More soon.

Melancholy Danes and Gomorroah

Hamlet really had nothing to whine about. Denmark is awesome. Well, I only saw Copenhagen, but if that city is any indication of the rest of the country, I see absolutely no reason to drown oneself in a stream or poison one's brother in the ear (as creative as that is... you go, Claudius!) or, you know... stab people who are hiding behind drapes. I just didn't see the provocation for that. Like, there are literally 7-Elevens on every street corner. Go get a Slurpee, Hamlet! That always cheers me up!

You might have heard about Copenhagen lately, because the President went there for a summit on climate change. And wherever the President goes, the news media follows with a cheesy slogan/spin. Hopenhagen? Ring a bell? Yeah.

My initial reaction upon getting into the city was "holy neon, Batman! They call this energy efficiency?!?!". It was pretty late at night, and the entirety of the town center was lit up with advertisements for Carlsberg (Probably the Best Beer... probably the best slogan ever) and T-Mobile and everything else you could think of. Diapers included. And so, you see, my initial reaction was that Copenhagen is a big old hypocrite. Big neon sign for disposable diapers? And you call yourselves green. Shame.

But when I woke up in the morning (after having spent the night with both my hat and gloves on in the sweltering dorm room for fear of bed bugs... this hostel was very sketch. I was glad I only stayed one night), I found myself warming to Copenhagen, and not in a global manner, either. The city is really clean, and it was the first place I had been thus far that did not make me look like I'd been wading in a river from the knees down. Oslo, Stockholm, take note please. This is how you shovel a sidewalk.

And Copenhagen really would stop if the sidewalks were slushy... or rather, if the bike lanes were. I can literally say that I had, up to this point, never seen that many bicycles in one place. They're EVERYWHERE. You have more liklihood of being hit by a bicycle in Copenhagen than you do of being hit by a car, because they outnumber cars probably 4:1. But don't let this go to your head and think you can just walk out into a bike lane all willy-nilly. Remember Pierre Curie? Yeah... nobody does. Marie gets all the press in that marriage, but he did do something pretty revolutionary in his own right: he was the first guy in Paris to die after getting hit by a bike. It happens. It almost happened to me on numerous occasions on this day. Be careful.

I amused myself for quite awhile in the morning by merely walking from one weird-ass spire to another. These are about as prolific as the bikes in Copenhagen, and much more entertaining to one who has been hanging out in the city of domes, but not spires, for a long time. I think there's some sort of meridian that marks where churches stop being topped with domes and start having really fun spires. I don't know where it is, but it's between Berlin and Copenhagen, anyway. The spires in Copenhagen are so random as to be a little confusing. I think, not having had a whole lot (read: no) experience with Russian architecture, that I wouldn't be wrong in saying that these were very Russian-inspired structires, with piles of balls and ice-cream swirls and dragon tails... I had a heck of a time just laughing at each one as I came upon it.

I also went to the Danish National Gallery, which was FREE and really fun. My favorite part was the modern-art (gasp! Maggie liked a modern installation?!?!?) show that had been set up by foud different artists as part of the climate-change conference. Two were films, one was a giant series of bio-domes, and one was sculpture. Reading the artist's abstracts sure made them easier to understand, and I agreed with a lot of the themes they were working with. Plus, one of the videos was visually just stunning. I think I watched it four times.

As for Danish food: 7-Eleven seems to be the national emblem. I come from a state where we don't have those stores, and I've only ever been in one once in Vegas at one in the morning. A Slurpee is welcome when it's still 100 degrees out in the middle of the night, but not when it's 20 degrees at noon. I don't get it. Also, I'm not a big breakfast food person, so I wasn't inclined to get that pastry we call a Danish, but I guess the Danish must just call a pastry... and I couldn't find any other foods that were authentically Danish. So, I went to a Chinese buffet.

WAIT! That really is authentically Danish! You would be shocked by how many times I saw the word buffet in only one day in Copenhagen. If 7-Eleven is to Eagle, then ethnic food buffet is to baseball, if we're comparing the States and Denmark. Even Let's Go Europe told me to try out a buffet. And the book don't lie.

So, full of MSG and frying oil, I happily (if a little shakily... MSG is weird that way, right?) made my way to the train station for the overnight train to Amsterdam. It actually wasn't bad. I didn't spend the money to get a bed, or even a berth, but the compartment I was in was deserted for most of the night, so I got a whole bench of seats to myself. Of course, it wasn't a full night of sleep by any stretch, since people were coming in and out all night, demanding my ticket in strange languages that I wouldn't have understood even if awake, but it wasn't a bad night. I'd do it again.

Amsterdam. (Que ominous Bob Marley-esque suspense music here). It's gorgeous. Seriously, I'm very sad that it has the reputation it does, because people should literally just go there for the buildings. You know how you want the Netherlands to look? With the water, and the tall, skinny, bright-colored houses? That's Amsterdam. It's beautiful. Just freakin' gorgeous. Google image the train station and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

But, unfortunately, Amsterdam has the reputation it does for a reason. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Red Light District. And it brought up some questions for me that I was surprised by the answers to.

I am an art history major. Specifically, I study the Renaissance and the Baroque periods of art history (that's not at all specific, but... I digress). Basically, this means that I study naked people and sex. And religion. But the Renaissance and the Baroque both really liked the Greek/Roman gods, and boy, did those guys have a lot of sex. And they never wore a stitch of clothing. And so, given Zeus's promiscuity and Michelangelo's penchant for naked guys, I consider myself pretty comfortable with the ideas of nudity and human sexuality. I am. Sex is a natural occurance, and none of us would be here without it. We were all born naked. It's our natural state. Nothing wrong with either of these things.

What really bothered me as I walked through the Red Light District (in the middle of the afternoon. I was not going out there at night) was not the stores selling sex toys and lingere or the theatres advertising private cabanas (ew!). It was the prostitutes. Women standing in windows wearing only their underwear, pressing themselves against the glass and, in many cases, looking really bored. Desensitized in the extreme.

I consider myself a feminist. I thought I was of the opinion that prostitution can be empowering when it is of the woman's own choice and gone about in a healthy manner. I thought that sex has always been a commodity, and in a supply and demand society, it should perhaps have the same economic opportunities afforded to the alcohol, gambling and tobacco industries.

There is nothing empowering about what I saw in Amsterdam. It is not healthy for anyone, in any way, and reducing women's bodies to products that can be bought and sold like cigarettes is setting us back farther than anti-abortion legislation, workplace discrimination or any of the other challenges facing women in the developed world today. Prostitution can never be an empowering decision, because, even if it is an action undertaken of a woman's own volition, she is still making herself the object of a gaze that does not see her as a human being, but as a means to one's own satisfaction. Watching the dumbass young American and Austrailian guys oogling the women standing in windows like clothing mannequins gave me the heebie-jeebies, because I could also see the women, and see that they were used to this. They're used to much worse than just being leered at by young foreign guys.

I live in the 21st Century. I do. I know that my generation has a different conception of sexuality and sexual freedom than those of our elders, but I would also hope that we have a more egalitarian way of viewing the world, in which women are not inherently second-class citizens who can be objectified with impunity. I know this isn't true. Women are all-too-often reduced to a pair of breasts or a butt in the media, and so it follows, I suppose, that prostitution, which is the ultimate form of objectification and subjugation, should not be frowned upon. The fact that the Red Light District exists indicates to me that we have a long way to go before sexual equality is reached. The term "the oldest profession" indicates to me that that goal might never be achieved. As long as women minimize their worth to purely physical, to be enjoyed and approved of by men, we'll always be the weaker sex.

This is a very touchy subject for a lot of people. I don't want to sound like some man-hating, bra-burning militant. That's not how I mean this at all. I don't think that men are exclusively responsible for the sex industry, even if they are often the most prolific consumers of it. I think that there is guilt on both sides of the sex divide, and the only way to bring about any kind of meaningful change is by really examining the effects of it. I saw it in the eyes and postures of the women in the windows. Even if they chose that life, they're victims of it all the same. There's no passion there. No real emotion at all. Sex becomes merely the satisfaction of a physical need. What, then, is it that separates us from the animals?

There will never be an agreement reached on this topic, as there will never be an agreement reached on many others. You can't get everyone to look at things from your point of view, and the world would be far less interesting if they did. But it surprised me how vehemently opposite of my expectations my reaction was when confronted with the fact of prostitution, and so I'm asking you to think about it for a few minutes. Just think. Be aware.

That said, the women in windows were not the only shocking and usually illicit thing that they deal in in Amsterdam. I have never smoked pot. It's illegal in the States, and, apart of jaywalking and the odd house-party, I don't do illegal things. I was too scared to try it, even though it's legal there, but walking through the District, I didn't really get a choice. Ever heard of a contact high? I literally sat down on a bench after walking through some little side streets, and started freaking out because of how weird it felt to move my fingers. My legs felt like they were sinking into mud. I couldn't stop staring at the lights on the river.

I don't know how legit this is, but that's what I felt, and it was enough to make me sure that I will never try pot for real. It creeped me out. I really didn't like it. And the smell of that stuff... ick. So... this is a PSA from your local goody-two-shoes: pot will make you feel creepy. Don't do it. Eat french fries instead. They're delicious. And bad for you in a far less sinster and ambiguous way.

I went to the Van Gogh Museum, too. Literally, it was the most expensive museum I've ever been to. 14 euros! Vincent's museum is the proof that "if you build it, they will pay through the nose to come". I paid the 14 euros and entered, feeling all the time like I was at Disneyland, for all the crowds. Holy cow.

The irony actually depressed me a little. It was both the most expensive and most crowded museum I've been to in Europe (with the exception of the Sistine Chapel, but that's a different post), but Vincent died with basically no wider recognition. Dude shot himself in the chest in the middle of a field. You don't do that when you're happy. Selling paintings generally makes artists happy. He went from being completely unknown at the time of his death to having crowds lining up around the block to buy merchandise with his work on it. And he didn't get to see this. It's a little depressing, right?

But the museum is beautiful, and thought provoking. Actually, the entirety of Amsterdam was incredibly thought-provoking, from the angry thoughts about the women in windows to the amazed thoughts while standing in front of the Anne Frank house...

I think my favorite thoughts were still about the french fries, though.

The Nobel Laureates and the Vikings

Wouldn't that be a funny sitcom? With the scientists working for years on delicate, earth-shattering experiments, only to have their roommates the Vikings smash and pillage them while the scientists took a bathroom break. I would watch. But I'm more talking about the cities that are closely associated with each of these rather disparate groups, in particular Stockholm and Oslo, respectively.

Stockholm, Sweden. It is, until I get to Athens, the farthest east of Montana that I have ever been. Until I got to Oslo, it was the farthest north I've ever been. But cartographical dithering aside, the city is amazing. No one bothered to mention that Stockholm is built on islands, and so it was a surprise when I woke up in the morning (I got in at two in the morning and so didn't get an immediately dramatic first impression) and found that I had to use bridges in order to get anywhere else. Which was fine with me, because I am of the opinion that there is nothing more aesthetically appealing than water, even when it's frozen.

Walking around Stockholm in the early morning, when very few other people were out and there were no cars to speak of, I was struck by how absolutely silent the city seemed. It's a big place, but the snow falling softly was the only sound, or lack of it, apparent from my vantage point on a walking trail overlooking the frozen river.

It is here that I adopted my current strategy for each new city I visit: walk. A lot. I don't think that there's a better way to acquaint yourself with the dimensions and personality of a city than to walk around in it, observe the people and get your feet wet. In this case, quite literally. One thing I did notice about Scandinavia: it snows there. And for this statement being rather a 'duh' one, the cities of Stockholm and Oslo were both pretty ill-prepared when it came to clearing roads and walkways. Or maybe those Northern people have just had to suck it up... walk uphill both ways, barefoot in three feet of snow, that sort of thing. Maybe I'm a weenie. But my clothing was absolutely soaked by the end of the day.

Stockholm has the feeling of a city who knows who it is. I've noticed that there are certain places in this world which seem to be having identity crises of some description, and feel uncomfortable in their eclecticism, stylistically and culturally. Stockholm is very modern in some parts, with neon clocks and wide boulevards with Swarovski stores, etc., and in some parts reminded me very much of Trastevere, with little twisting streets that open to reveal cozy piazzas. But neither extreme feels... well... extreme. The separation of each portion of the city onto islands certainly helps in making each section feel unique, but it doesn't feel like you're commuting when you cross a bridge.

Culturally, too, it embraces its Swedish-ness while at the same time making ample room for the requisite kebab stands and crappy Chinese food places, while also reveling in some of the most interesting looking international cuisine that I've yet encountered. Obviously, I didn't partake of any of it, since I am poor, but it looked cool, and creative. Of course, Stockholm needs to be appealing to the higher-end tastes, given its notoriety as the city where certain medals and money are bestowed upon a whole bunch of people that no one has ever heard of, but who change the world in tiny and profound ways in their specific fields, and one person who the entire world knows. Inevitably, we all know who won the Nobel Peace Prize each year, but can you name the guy who won the prize in economics? Yeah, me neither.

In spite of its international reputation, Stockholm still manages to be very, very Swedish. It's in the layout of the city, in the furniture in the stores and restaurants, and in the very tall, blonde inhabitants walking around. The thing that stuck me most about the city was the truth contained in that one little phrase "Swedish design". Everything in the interiors of Stockholm looks like a Volvo. It's those curved, sleek lines folded over each other like... I don't know... bronchiole folds or something. Accordions. It's the very odd colors and the burnished metal that make you think of what the Bradys' house would look like if they lived in 2015. I'm not sure how much I like Swedish design... but they're nothing if not consistent.

There was one area in which I found Swedish design sensibilities to be most intriguing, and that was in the National Gallery in Stockholm. Not being particularly interested in museum theory, I'm probably not the best person to talk about this, but I found it very interesting to walk through the galleries and see some of the concepts at play there. One gallery in particular was comprised of marble statues placed around a fairly innocuous room, but the interesting part was the lighting. Your basic flourescent bulbs being winched up and down and dimmed and brightened, seemingly at random, to create different lighting effects on the statues. It was very interesting to watch, and raised some good questions about presentation and the ways in which it influences conception. So I have to give the Swedish credit for that.

The journey across Sweden to Norway looked exactly like you want that journey to look. Huge expanses of white, white openness punctuated occassionally by dark black forests of pine trees. I really enjoy it when things look like they're supposed to, so it made me happy to just gaze out the window and think about what it would be like to live here. The answer I came up with: cold and dark. I don't know if I'd be willing to trade the sun for beautiful alpine landscapes and the opportunity to ski anywhere I needed to go. I really like the sun.

Oslo is totally different from Stockholm. Stockholm feels big, even if it's quiet, whereas Oslo is very loud and small. It's situated beside a fjord (!) and feels a little bit like Chicago in that respect. But it's still very different from a lot of other cities I've been to, especially lately. I walked around a lot here, too, and discovered a surprising difference that raised my eyebrows, even considering my background.

There are houses in Oslo. Like, single-family dwellings with yards that aren't attached to other people's houses. They have play sets and garages and mailboxes on the street. I can honestly say that I haven't seen that since I left the States. Most of the places I've been have been cities, which typically connotes apartment-style living. I literally just skipped (or sloshed, since Oslo and Stockholm seem to have the same sidewalk cleaning regimen) around, creepily looking into people's windows and remembering what it must be like to be able to sing show tunes as loud as you want while doing the dishes and not have your neighbors bang on the windows and tell you to shut the heck up. In Italian. So you might say Oslo, while being so very far away from home, also brought me a bit closer to the style of living that I grew up with than I have been in quite some time. Excluding the time we spent on the Burren. But I don't count that, because it felt to surreal to be at all mundane.

I initially intended to spend only one night in Oslo, at this hostel right on the main shopping street which is run by the Norwegian military. Up to that point, I had always expected hostels to be a little sketchy... the kind of places where it might not be a bad idea to wear shoes at all times. Even in bed. This place, however, was palatial. I got a shower in the room that I got to myself, since most people don't choose to visit Norway in January. I took full advantage of this shower. Showers are awesome. They're another thing that you should really feel grateful for when you have unhindered access to a clean one.

I say that I only planned to spend one night in Oslo, planning on taking the ferry to Denmark the next night. Well, my travel un-luck, which has been relatively dormant for quite awhile, reared its head this time. The ferry was in dock, only for that night. So I decided that it would just be easier to spend one more night at the hostel (I wasn't at all sad about this) and get the train the next day. So that is what I did. Oslo was an excellent experience, as was Stockholm, and they're two of those places that it's always kinda fun to say that you've been. Norway and Sweden are a long way away from everything else, and so having experienced them struck me as something I needed to do when the opportunity presented itself.

An observation: money is weird. Geography is weird, too. And when they merge, it's altogether catastrophic. At least for me. But remember how I've said before that I plan on looking like a complete idiot at least three times a day? Well, in Italy, where I had, by the end, gotten a fairly good handle on what to expect from life, that number went down to maybe once a day. There were a few times where I made it safely back to my apartment for the night without having embarassed myself for a full sixteen hours. Well, put me in a country where I don't even know what alphabet they're using, and add money that makes no sense to anyone raised in sane places where you don't spend 300 something for a hamburger, that number goes up astronomically. I've pretty much moved to doofus-ville.

Kroners would be fine with me. If they weren't different in each country. Sweden uses currency called the kroner. Norway uses currency called the kroner. Was it so weird to think that they'd be the same? They're not. The girl at the hostel didn't even know what the Swedish money was when I handed it to her. Stockholm is four hours away! It only makes me even more convinced (from a purely lazy standpoint, not an economic one) that the entire world should be on the Euro. When countries which lie about an afternoon's leisurely drive (by Montana standards) apart are using the same name for their totally different currency, it makes things difficult. It makes me look like an idiot. And life would be so much easier if I didn't have to starve myself for two days because I was sure as hell not going to spend 200 kroner for a sandwich. On second thought... maybe we should all use the kroner. It would sure cut down on our need for gym memberships.

Coming next week (or whenever I get around to it): Nothing is rotten, as far as I can tell, in the state of Denmark, but there's a pretty rotten smell coming out of the coffee shops in Amsterdam.

Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number Four, Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last ones you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense...

Approximately twelve years ago, my mother brought home a book which, I am by turns proud and embrarassed to say, was perhaps the single greatest turning point in my life thus far. It literally changed everything about the way I see the world and how I react to it. Really. You can ask anyone who has had a conversation lasting more than ten minutes with me. I grew up with the characters it introduced me to, facing the same quirks and challenges of adolescense right along with them. They comforted me when I thought the world sucked. When they overcame insurmountable obstacles and came out on the other side, they gave me courage to do the same with my comparably less earth-shattering difficulties.

I think you know which book I'm talking about: Hollywood Wives. Of course.

No. Harry Potter. Parts 1-7. Duh. And good portions of these books, and some of the most iconic and suspenseful ones, take place in venues like Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road and King's Cross Station. Do you know what all those places have in common? They're all in London. Which happens to be where Lane is studying right now, and where I happened to visit her about two weeks ago. It was a memorable visit filled with excitement and wonder, and made me think that London is definitely somewhere near the top of the list of cities (legit, cosmopolitan cities, of which Rome doesn't really count, since it's more of a state of mind...) in which I can see myself living.

Lane attends the London School of Economics (insert impressed whistles here), and lives in (get this!) a dorm with a lot of other college students from different schools in London. A dorm. Which is something that I've not experienced in its most basic form for a good long while now. Corbin lives in apartment-style dorms, I lived in an apartment... I haven't actually spent a significant amount of time in an actual dorm room since Ellen and I moved out freshman year. I loved it. It was like having a sleepover. Also, Lane has her own bathroom, and access to laundry, so that made it even better!

It was awesome to see Lane. After having pretty much stayed in Rome while I was living there and let my friends come to me and be given the Grand Tour of my city, I've really been enjoying being shown around their cities by some of my friends. Corb's tour of Dublin left nothing to be desired, and being shown around London (which is a large and very intimidating city, despite the fact that they ostensibly speak English there) by someone who has been living there was definitely a plus.

London is huge. Like, literally, I'm pretty sure the entire island that we call Great Britain is actually taken up by this city. And the annoying thing about it is, London likes to pretend that it's a whole bunch of little cities. Or towns. All mushed together. They all have different names and, from what I gather, different trash men and perhaps even different currencies. There's one that the Queen isn't allowed to enter (or something odd like that), and they're all really confusing. It's a good thing that the maps of London are so comprehensive, since it's just about as nonsensical in its layout as Rome is, otherwise everyone would be walking around, with their British accents saying "Sorry, terribly sorry to trouble you old chap, but do you possibly know where I live? Ah, quite alright, quite alright. No, I'm afraid I don't know where you live, either. Ah, well. Stiff upper lip and all that, what?". But the maps are good, so no worries.

And the confusion is kind of endearing... it's like London is trying really hard to be this hip, worldy city, but it can't really escape the fact that it's been around since the 1200s and earlier. It wants to be as well-laid-out as New York or Chicago, but it just... can't. But you still have to respect it for trying.

I have the luxury of visiting people who know me really well. Lane and I have essentially lived together in pretty close proximity for two years, and so she's aware of my penchant for staring at art and ignoring the rest of the world. She's also quite well-acquainted with my Potter-centric universe, and actually participates herself, albeit perhaps on a healthier level of dedication. She and I also share a liking for fanciness on occassion, and singing at extremely inappropriate times. She, being the wonderful friend that she is, managed to synthesize all of these things into what was, for me, the perfect first taste of London.

1) My penchant for staring at art: CITIES OF THE WORLD, TAKE NOTE!!!!! The British Museums, at least those owned by the state, are FREE. And let me tell you, they're most likely better than yours, so take a leaf out of their book and share the wealth, why don't you? Literally, I could have spent hours more than I did in the National Gallery. And I spent around 7 hours in the National Gallery. The British Museum is one of those places that is just hazy with the clouds of controversy surrounding it, but hell. I got to see the Rosetta stone and the Parthenon, and I didn't have to travel to Greece or Egypt to do it. Who cares if they stole them? Well, a lot of people do, but at least the British aren't really profitting outright from their thievery by making the Greeks and Egyptians pay to come see these things. Free is my favorite price to pay to see art. I went to the Tate Britain as well, and hung out with my newly-found favorite 19th century school, the Pre-Raphaelites. I creeped around at the Courtauld, trying to imagine myself as a student there. I could definitely do it. Especially if there's an ice rink in the courtyard all year round.

2) My probably unhealthy obsession with an allegedy fictional world: When she had class and so couldn't squire me around all day, Lane handed me a map, pointed out Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross, and set me loose on an unsuspecting city. So, obviously, I put on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on my iPod and set to work strolling up and down Tottenham Court looking for the coffee shop where Harry, Ron and Hermione dueled Rowell and Dolohov, and Charing Cross, where I stood staring at book stores and music stores, or, more specifically, the join between them, willing myself to see The Leaky Cauldron. When she didn't have class, Lane and I made the pilgrimage that I've been wanting to make since I was eleven years old, to King's Cross Station and Platform 9 3/4. The Muggle one (which is, depressingly enough, the only one I could find, despite running into a few different walls) is kind of lame... it's a sign on a brick wall, and there's a trolly stuck half way through the wall. You can push on the trolly and hope Hogwarts has a grad school... but alas. No cigar. (By the way, if there's a team of highly trained psychologists waiting for me with a straight-jacket when I get off the plane back in the States, I'll consider that situation normal. I know I sound insane, but the things I love, I love completely.) Even if I actually do have to resign myself to the fact that I'm probably not just a late bloomer and am, in fact, a Muggle... I'm still glad that I got to see these places. I couldn't have gone to London without visiting them.

3) Our shared penchant for fanciness: Lane and I are both big proponents of getting dressed up and going out to fancy meals (on a college student budget, this generally means the OP, but once we went to FoodDance), and so we decided to have afternoon tea at the National Gallery. This involved mint tea, legit crustless finger sandwiches, about 8 billion different tarts and a delicious scone apiece. Lane tried to save her scone for later by encasing the jam in a fairly impressive architectural construction of Devonshire cream, but, alas... it failed. And her bag paid the price later. While she was buttering it, though, we had a good laugh about how much she looked like Tegan preparing to eat a bagel. I can't wait until we're all together again.

4) Singing at inappropriate times: I'm often inclined to sing along when I'm at the theater and watching a musical. In most situations, this is frowned upon, and most companions are generally at least confused, if not outright mortified. Good thing that Lane and I, who both tend to sing along even when it's not kosher to do so, went to Mamma Mia! in the West End. At the end of that show, they tell you to stand up, dance around and sing along to "Waterloo". We did this with gusto. And continued the celebration all the way back to her dorm. We looked drunk, I'm pretty sure, walking down the street singing Abba at the top of our lungs, but we were stone cold sober. Unless happy is a drug now.

We also went out for dinner with Craig, another of the guys from K who is studying at LSE. It was refreshing to be with people who know what FAB, SIP and the Crime of the Big Red Bench are, and to giggle about the name of the street where we ate... Goodge Street. Go ahead. You know you want to laugh at that. It's funny! Goodge. Also, Steak and Ale Pie is delicious. I used to make fun of the British for having crappy, flavorless food. No more. Yum!

It was very hard to leave Lane at the station as I boarded the train that took me to Gatwick for my flight to Stockholm. I think it's because that was the very end of my safety net, and I was from then on, until February, on my own. Totally and completely. The prospect felt strangely daunting. Also, that was the last time I'll see Lane until at least July... which is a long time. Perhaps the longest I'll have gone without seeing one of my four roommates since I got to K. Weird. But thank goodness for Skype, right?

London was wonderful, and while I'm sure I'll be back there many times, I couldn't have asked for a better first impression. Thanks to Lane and Craig and Erin, Harry, Ron, Hermione... and everyone else (real and imagined) who made the time so much fun. Cheerio for now, London! On to see Alfred Nobel and the Vikings!

Green: The Blood of Angry Men, Orange: The Blood of...Other Angry Men...

Not to make light of the Troubles. Far from it. Going to Belfast was one of the most revelatory and enlightening experiences of this trip thus far. And that includes the city of Amsterdam. But more on both of these things later.

We left off where Maribeth, Scott and Kealey set off to make the epic journey back to the States, arguably made even more epic lately thanks to Mr. Exploding Depends. Some people just want to make life harder for everyone. I wished them luck. But there were other things to contemplate, as well.

When you were a little kid, did you play make-believe with your friends? Were there very involved games with costumes and dialogue and plot twists galore? I did. Of course. I still do, actually, but mostly it's by myself and in the privacy of my own room, where there's no chance that I'm going to be overheard and institutionalized. But I digress. Never, even in my dizziest daydreams and games of make-believe would I have imagined that Ryan, Corbin, Teague and I would be in Ireland by ourselves, just the four of us. I mean, it's been just the four of us plenty of times before... essentially, that's how we grew up (family vacation-wise, anyway), but we've always been on a continent that begins with North and ends with America.

To be in Europe with these three boys brought about another of those crazy moments where I was stuck between the "you'll remember this for the rest of your life" feeling and the "duh we're in Ireland, what's the big deal?" feeling. It was very natural that we should be able to do this, but at the same time... who ever believes something like that is going to happen? And over your birthday, no less! That's right folks, I am officially never going to be too young to drink ever again. Of course, the effect was a little anti-climactic, having been able to drink legally for quite a while now, but we nevertheless made it fun. And I have to admire all three of the boys for putting up with me in an art museum as part of the celebration... that's love right there.

For the sake of everyone's sanity, I'll leave the birthday recap to this: art, prison (historical, not actual), burgers, beer, baby Guiness, WE GOT THE WINE! and some very awkward pictures. Also, Purple Rain at McTurcals Pub. Yummy. And that's all I'm saying.

The fact that we had no real plan going into this week of freedom didn't actually end up being a bad thing. We were going to, for instance, take a tour to Tara, New Grange and the Boyne (I have faith in nothing since the Boyne), but the Big Freeze won out yet again. So, we went to Howth instead. Howth is a fishing village north of Dublin, where we interacted with a lot of wildlife. When I say wildlife, I mean a seal that Teague and I both felt looks a lot like our dog, Sadie, two dogs whom we dubbed Winston and Churchill (they ate my sandwich. It's okay. I gave it to them), and three lobster tails named 3.49 euros each. See what happens when you leave four college kids alone to choose their own diet? They upgrade to lobster. It's a funny old world, ain't it?

Since none of us felt much like going out that night, we needed to find something to entertain ourselves. Solution: cut Corbin's hair. I know that there are probably some of you reading this who don't understand how very earth-shattering this decision was, but Corbin's hair was longer and, annoyingly, much better than even mine. And I love my hair. So cutting it and donating it certainly made some person very happy. Good for you, Corb.

The best result of this little activity was Krissy's reaction when she joined us the next day. Well, it has to be said that Corbin went about it in a very funny way: disguising his lack of ponytail with both a hat and a hood until he presented Krissy with a "Christmas present"... two big hanks of hair. It's always fun to be in on a joke before it happens. Me being in on things happens so infrequently that I relish each time it does. But this little hair-capade was not the most memorable part of the week, by far. That afternoon, with Krissy now making the battle of the sexes a little more even, we headed to Belfast.

A word quickly on money: Ryan disagrees with me on this, but I am fervently in favor of the entire world being on the Euro. It just makes a lot of sense. You can tell which coin is which, the money is easily distinguishable based on size and color, and if we were all on the Euro, there would be no exchange rate kicking my ass at every opportunity. The British Sterling Pound makes no sense at all. The 5 cent coin is as big as my head, and the pound coin really does weigh one pound. It was very disconcerting to go from the rationality and sense of the Euro to hexagonal coins. And so there's my two cents (not tuppence, because British money is nonsense) on the subject.

We stayed at a place called Paddy's Palace. If that name makes you want to vomit a little, join the club. But you haven't heard the really awesome part of this hostel. With two nights, you got a free tour up to Derry and the Giant's Causeway. FREE. Well... with the price of the bed. It was still a good deal. The night life in Belfast is, understandably, a little lacking. When you've spent time in pubs in Doolin and Dublin, renowned for their music (and their subsequent appeal to tourists), Belfast, with its surly bartenders who won't serve you if you're in possession of two X chromosomes, is a little disappointing. So, that first night, we went to Avatar. Now, I'm not going to bore you with my rapturous account of this outing right now (including the FREE 3D... they didn't charge you extra for the glasses!) but GO see this movie (in 3D. Don't bother if it's not in 3D) right now. I'll wait.

You back? Mind blown? Want to move to Pandora? Great. Moving on.

The trip to the Giant's Causeway and Derry was memorable, to say the least. Any time that you go to the Giant's Causeway is going to be memorable, because it's one of those places that makes you wonder how the world came to be. It makes you all at once believe fervently in science and know deep down that it really was a giant in Scotland who built the thing, wanting to come over to Ireland and kick Finn MacCool's (Anglicized spelling) ass. It's a place so improbable that it makes even the most improbable explanations for it seem possible, if not likely.

It was a beautiful, clear day by the time we got to the Causeway, and we enjoyed a rare glimpse of the Scottish coast, only a few miles away. Apparently it is rarely clear enough to see it, but we did. It was treacherously icy and probably really dangerous to be crawling all over it like we did, scrambling go get into a timed picture, but what's life worth if you're not going to take it into your own hands once in awhile? In any case, it's a place that makes you really stop and appreciate how cool the planet we live on really is.

It was not, however, beautiful and clear when we left Belfast in the morning, or when we got to Derry. On the contrary, Derry (hah. That rhymes.) was freakin' freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth. It was so cold, and foggier than I thought it was possible for a place to be. This was a little sad, considering the whole reason the Paddy Wagon (gag if you will, but it was fun!) tour stops in Derry is so you can walk along the walls and see the murals from during the Troubles. We could make out some things, but I was under the impression that what turned out to be a guy's shirt on one of the murals was a white jack o' latern... so it didn't quite have the emotional impact that it might have if there hadn't been a bank of clouds between me and the murals.

The boys did find a lovely international lunch at Subway, however, and I got over my point-blank dislike of the place through the introduction of a concept called Sweet Onion Chicken Teryaki. Sometimes it takes Europe to give you a new perspective on things.

The next morning, before leaving for Dublin again, where we would shortly have to say goodbye to Ryan and Teague, we did the one thing that you're absolutely supposed to do when you're in Belfast. It's called a Black Taxi Tour, and it takes you through the history of the Troubles and some of the most turbulent areas of violence. What was so jarring for me was to see all the evidence of continuing violence around the city.

Growing up in Bush-era Amuhrica, I've grown used to thinking of war zones as places which inevitably have a lot of sand. Seeing a city which is clearly Western, with people who speak English as a first language and to whom I bear a striking physical resemblance (in general terms... I don't think I particularly look like an IRA operative) that has been so obviously influenced by a very violent not-at-all-distant past and present was very eye-opening to me. Devastating, senseless bloodshed knows no geographical bounds, I suppose. The tour was extremely worth the money, and gives you the opportunity to see parts of Belfast that you wouldn't really be able to see otherwise. It's a must for anyone looking to broaden their conception of the world and become more aware of the devastating things that people do to each other, and not only people in distant parts of the world.

It was also very strange to go to certain places and be hyper-aware of the fact that, conceivably, my religion and religious background could get me in really big trouble. I never felt at all unsafe, but the simple possibility that there might be people around who might want to hurt me because of a few differences in creed (and, of course, a lot of political and economic oppression) made me really think about what it must mean to live in constant fear for your safety and the safety of those you love because of something as trivial (and, frustratingly, as all-important) as whether or not the Pope can make mistakes. He can. I've heard him. Can we all be friends now?

I don't mean to trivialize the intense beliefs and convictions on both sides that lamentably brought about the Troubles. It just really brought the senselessness of war and the stupid reasons we trump up for killing each other home for me. It made me sad, but I think it also has made me more resolved to be as tolerant as I can for other people's differences. Except Rush Limbaugh. He can burn in the deepest pit of Hell.

Back in Dublin, where being a Catholic is sort of like being a homo sapien... we hung out and watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Sometimes, that's what you need to do. Having Ryan and Teague in Ireland and getting to travel around with them, Corb and Krissy was truly a dream that I never thought would come true. It was a little odd to think that we're old enough to do that... it makes Real Life seem ominously close, but at the same time it's a memory-filled week that I'll never forget. So, thanks to everyone who made that adventure possible!

My sojurn in Ireland ended not long after Ryan, Teague and Krissy left for their respective homes (Krissy's being much closer than Ryan and Teague's. This is why study abroad is so nice sometimes). Corb and I hung out, I walked around Dublin by myself a bit, and we went out with some of Corb's Trinity/ND friends. I can totally see living in Dublin. It's really an incredible town and I wish I had more time to get to know it. Well, there's a whole life ahead for that, I guess. And I don't think Dublin would be conducive to the same mushy style that my writing exhibits when I talk about Rome, so it would probably be good for my range to spend more time there. There's my reason, and I'm sticking to it.

I'm making it a point to stay in places with Internet access now, so the blog should be getting updated fairly frequently. I've got plenty to document, from London to Copenhagen to Prague and all the places in between. Stay tuned!

More Tales of Big Adventure from the Land of the Little People

So last time we discussed the merits of having a pseudo-local tour guide, Oprah solving your problems… or the unlikeliness of that happening, and bacon sandwiches as a diplomatic tactic. We also touched briefly on The Big Freeze and how infinitely amusing this label should be to anyone who has actually experienced the phenomenon more commonly referred to as winter, but also how, paradoxically, the snow that would only allow for, in Montana or Michigan, maybe waking up a few minutes earlier to wipe off the windshield of your car, makes the entirety of this island (including the intrepid Montanans, who might have been a little cocky) stop. Point blank. Well, now we’ve got another basically two weeks to cover in Ireland… and of course, this could get very long if I’m allowed to go off on a tangent. But honestly, the impressions that I got from this trip were so many and varied that the write-up is going to be tangential any way you slice it.

The house in Doolin was not actually in Doolin, but up on what is called The Burren, a huge slab of limestone upon which grow the most beautiful, unlikely flowers… but not in a foot of snow. The Burren was beautiful in the winter weather, and even more beautiful once the seemingly omni-present fog and freezing rain lifted after two days and Lo! there was the ocean, not two miles away. It’s one of those windswept sort of places where you can practically hear the wind whistling even when it’s still, and where, when it is windy, you’ve pretty much got no choice but to hunker down, because there just ain’t nowhere to hide. The house itself was luxurious by my current standards, which consider a shower in which shoes aren’t even necessary as a precaution to be some sort of unthinkable extravagance. It had beds with heating pads, a kitchen, a shower with no shoes necessary and (get ready for this) a microwave, a washer AND a dryer.

I know that those of you who are currently reading this blog in your kitchen (barefoot) making Easy Mac while you wait for your jeans to come out of the dryer won’t appreciate the epic-ness of this, but you must consider something: Europe is an incredibly high-tech place in certain areas, but, at least in Italy, a dryer is something that only the weak (the incredibly wealthy weak) possess and the strong scoff at. A microwave just takes up space on your counter, because you’re not eating anything microwavable, because they don’t sell that short of nonsense in Italy. The point is that these were two appliances that I had not seen in four months. The smell of clothes right out of the dryer is something that everyone should stop to appreciate whenever they come across it. There’s simply nothing like putting on something straight out of the dryer. Respect it. Love it.

Long story short, Doolin was an excellent place from which to explore the west of Ireland. It was nice to have a home base to go back to each night, from Galway, Limerick, the Cliffs of Mohr, Connemara, the Aran Islands… we certainly got a lot done! Go to Galway, if you ever get a chance. It’s a beautiful city, and there’s something there called a Galway Hooker that seemed particularly to pique my brother’s interests. But that’s also where the Clauddagh ring was ostensibly invented, and where there are allegedly a lot of black haired, blue eyed sirens who ask men to dance and then make them travel all over the world. Just get within a three hour radius of Galway and this reference will become clear. Go to the Cliffs of Mohr one, because they’re the freakin’ Cliffs of Mohr, and two, because that’s where they filmed The Cave for The Half Blood Prince. I know. I saw it. I freaked out and tried to get down there. I was restrained. Some people don’t want me to have any fun. Or to join the wizarding community to which I truly belong. Go to Limerick because there’s a really good place from which to watch the sunset, right along the Shannon. There’s a stone block to sit on and everything. Curious? Ask Scott the next time you see him. Go to Connemara because it’ll remind you a little of what the Montana Hi-Line might be like (this in reference to town size and the saltiness of certain local characters) if it were on the sea coast and in possession of any legitimate elevation.

And for Bob’s sake, go to the Aran Islands because I have simply never been to a more bewitchingly magical place in my whole life than Inis Mor. Part of the appeal for me was certainly the remoteness. Looking back on it now, when I’ve been out of Ireland and traveling for about two weeks, it appeals to me even more because I’ve been mostly in cities (this was true when I was in Italy, too), and I’m a girl who grew up under the Big Sky (proper noun), and so am, if not distrustful of big cities, then at least more cautious in them than I am when in small towns. There are just different sets of behavior for each of these places, and I was so happy to just walk around and feel the cold air on my face and look out over spectacular vistas and climb treacherous paths to beautiful things… it felt almost like being back in Montana. Except with ocean. And Dara.

Dara Molloy (yes, another maybe-relative) is a small, neat man, probably in his middle-50s, with a very well-kept white beard and a tam. He carries himself as if he is much taller than he is, looks you straight in the eye when talking to you, and seems to radiate this sense of purpose and serenity that is instantly attractive. It makes you notice him. Or it made me notice him. He was dressed in woolens the day that we met him, and looked very much the weathered islander… until, upon offering to take us on a tour of his adopted homeland (he’s originally from Dublin), he whipped out an iPhone and began speaking in rapid Gaelic to his favorite bus driver, Oliver. I don’t know what caught me more by surprise: the fact that this character out of The Playboy of the Western World should have an iPhone when I do not, or that he spoke Irish so rapidly, so nonchalantly, as if it were nothing at all. Not some huge revelation or great endeavor to safe a dying language, but just business as usual. I was immediately enchanted by the sensory overload that the smells, the sights and the sounds of this little island, and I think I had a goofy grin on my face as I gazed rapturously from one beautiful, historical, cultural site to another all day.

On an island that is 11 miles long and about three miles wide (I think… don’t quote me) at its widest, it is absolutely astounding how many of these historical and cultural sites exist. Beautiful doesn’t even begin to cover the isolation, the desolate limestone criss-crossed everywhere by stone walls, some without gates, which separate one man’s property from another’s, that comprise Inis Mor. For some reason, after days and days of, if not outright cruel, then at least very cloudy weather, the sun burst forth upon the limestone (it’s said geologically that Inis Mor and the other islands were once connected to the Burren), making it hard to look at it, and you could see for what seemed like ever from Dun Aengus, the crowning archaeological glory of the little place, which Dara told us about with professorial while at the same time encouraging us to hang over the ledge (a 300 foot drop) to take pictures. Oops. Sorry, Mom.

We ate lunch at a little café with Dara. We all had Guinness stew, which, after a morning of very cold ferry rides and windy cliff-tops was a very welcome warming sensation indeed. Dara knew everyone in the café and everyone knew him, and they were all speaking Irish to each other. It’s amazing how used you can get, in a little under two weeks, to being in a country where you understand everything again, and so hearing a different language spoken all around you is once again a weird sensation.

When he was speaking English, Dara proved to be a wonderful conversationalist. He’s a fascinating man with an amazing life story (for more on which I’ll direct you to his book, The Globalization of God). Suffice it to say that he retains enough of his ecclesiastical demeanor, even after leaving the priesthood and beginning a family, to make you really want to talk to him. And the encouraging thing is, it felt like he was really listening to what you had to say and recognizing the value in it. Sometimes, with people you’re only just meeting, and especially when you’re much younger than they are, conversation can seem more like the recitation of resumes in order to impress, but Dara gave the impression of really listening with the expectation of getting to know you. It’s no wonder that he works with young people.

I could rhapsodize for another four pages about Inis Mor and Dara and how desperately I want to go back, and the immediate plans to appeal to K to let me do my SIP there… but I’ll shut up. If you really need to hear more about this particular subject, it’ll probably be enough to just say the words Aran Islands when I next see you, and then sit back and enjoy the show.

We took final leave of Sean on Inis Mor, where he was planning to stay and talk more with Dara. I was jealous, but if my plan works the way I want it to, that won’t be the last time I see him. I think that I’m not out of line when I say that this trip was absolutely one of the most memorable of my life, and what made it so awesome were primarily the people that we met. A lot of those connections, including the ones with royalty, the ones that give me an excuse to write the word ‘chieftainess’ and the ones with magical islands with seals and cliffs and history, would not have happened without his willingness to get in touch with people. So, to Sean, from the bottom of my heart: thank you so much for the unforgettable connections. But onward.

Now Sean-less, the Johnson, and Teague and I (creepers on a family vacation) started southward, toward Cork. The entirety of Ireland is really more beautiful than you imagine when you’re sitting around thinking about it, mostly because it’s real. The vistas and the ruins and the sheep are all there, but they are tempered with gas stations and highways and people. And the people are awesome. We visited a town called Cobh, right outside of Cork, which was beautiful and from where the Corbett side of our family seems to have left Ireland on the boats. Well, the name Corbett was more present in the landscape than it had been in any other place we’d been, anyway.

There was one thing along our route which we were anxious to see, simply because it is what it is: the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle. I honestly don’t know why it’s such a big deal (since I still haven’t seen it), but for some reason you’re supposed to go kiss the Blarney Stone if you’re ever even in spitting distance of Ireland, so that’s what we were going to do.

Remember that Big Freeze we were mocking earlier? Well, we were thwarted once again by the Irish weather. The Big Freeze had, at that point (in our Montana opinion, anyway) dissipated beyond the point of legitimate threat. Well, that was not the case in Blarney. It rained, then froze, then rained and froze again before we got to the castle, and as we made our way across the increasingly treacherous parking lot, they closed the castle for fear of law suits. It was probably a good move, but disappointing nonetheless.

We did find Blarney Woolen Mills that day, and spent a few hours frolicking amongst the framed Irish Blessings and Waterford Crystal before heading to Kilkenny and a hostel to spend the night. This being a Sunday night, there wasn’t much open in the way of food. We had to resort to a little (read: kinda sketch) counter place called Uncle Sam’s, with a pizza place next to it. And here, a quite unexpected thing happened.

Some of our party ordered what was purported to be “Real Italian Pizza”. It even had the right names, like funghi and quatro stagione… but when it came, it looked like your average, not-terribly-good American pizza. Round, too much tomato sauce, too many toppings… I don’t know why, but it set me off. I couldn’t stop crying for a good forty minutes. I probably looked like a crazy person. It was probably tasty pizza, but the discrepancy between it and what I know to be possible brought about a wave of Rome-sickness that just about knocked me over. I basically took it easy for the rest of the night after that, grappling with what I’m sure will only become more persistent culture shock when I get properly back into one culture.

The next morning was an infinitely more successful culinary outing. If you’ve never heard of something called The Full Irish… well… here’s how I’ll explain it. Take the Atkins Diet and multiply by four. Add tea, a tomato boiled to within an inch of its life, and a ton of toast, and you’ve basically got the Full Irish. I loved the sausages, the rashers and the white pudding, but couldn’t get past the “blood” part in the blood pudding enough to enjoy it. The fried egg and baked beans further ensured that I am no longer protein deficient, even after four months of basically nothing but pasta.

This was the last day of Maribeth, Scott and Kealey’s trip. I honestly can’t thank my godparents enough for allowing me to hang out with them on this amazing, memorable adventure. I admit to a certain amount of loneliness and homesickness that crops up from time to time throughout this experience, but having them there was enough of a taste of home to make me forget that from time to time and totally immerse myself in the experience. Thanks for everything, godparents! Love ya! (And Kea, you’re an excellent bed partner and Glee DJ. Thanks!)

This is getting stupidly long again, so I’m going to keep you in suspense about the hi-jinks that the boys and I got up to after we were free of adult supervision and at liberty to roam where we pleased. Give me a few days… I’m getting way behind in this thing, mostly because I’m moving from place to place so fast right now, but I’ll try to update as soon as I can!

...Are Potatoes Roots?

I'm a dispossessed Irish princess. But of course, you already knew I was royalty. It's pretty obvious.

This is just one of the many, many incredible things I had confirmed when I finally, after nearly 21 years of waiting, made it back to the land of my mother's fathers. Ireland. And Jaysus, was it an eventful three weeks.

I left Rome with a pit in my stomach, which then evaporated when I got to Florence, but then returned when I went back to Rome and realized that it was the last time I'd be back there until February. It's odd how attached you get. Anywho, after taking a header when rushing to get the Terravision shuttle to Ciampino and subsequently making friends with some Belgians and speaking French and English the entire VERY STRESSFUL bus ride when I didn't think I would make it to the plane on time, only to get there and find out that everything was being delayed because the Europeans are pansies and won't fly in little snow flurries. So, I didn't get to Dublin until about 2 in the morning. If you're ever in an Italian airport and they're threatening not to let you fly out until the next morning if you don't get off the ground by midnight and it's quarter 'til, make sure you're on a plane full of Irishmen. They're not shy about yelling if it gets the doors closed faster. What an adventure.

Got to Dublin, saw this guy walking along beside the taxi as it pulled up to the gates of Trinity College... pretty standard-looking Irish guy with a tam on, hands in his pockets... it was Ryan. The first thing that I noticed when I got to Ireland (besides the obvious point that people were once again speaking a language I understand, with much better accents than you generally find in Michigan or Montana, however) was that I looked like everyone else. This was an incredibly disorienting thing, after four months among the swarthy, slender Italians... I don't look like them, as much as I tried to pose. But I got to Dublin, and there are pasty, blue-eyed, dark-haired, big-boned people all over the place. It's no wonder I thought Ryan was just a random Irish creeper as he walked along next to the cab... we do look incredibly Irish.

It was so awesome to see Corbin and Ryan. It honestly didn't seem weird at all that we should be hanging out in Dublin. I know I've said it before, but that's been one of the strangest things about this whole Euro-adventure: I really do feel like it's not that big a deal that I'm here. Well, I oscilate between being abnormally, hyper-aware of where I am and the implications thereof, and living life with the nonchalance of one who really wants the whole world to be her oyster. The point is: it felt very natural to be there with them.

Maribeth, Scott and Kealey arrived the next day, and we all set out to explore Dublin. I cannot stress enough how beneficial it is to see a city for the first time with someone who really knows it. It may sound weird to say, but sometimes I think it's better not to do it the first time with a local/native, but someone who has recently moved there. Corbin knew all the cool local spots (MacTurcal's Pub, for instance, and a magical substance called Purple Rain...), but he was also aware of the fact that, with only a few days in a place, you kinda do need to do the tourist stuff. That's why it's tourist stuff, right? Because you're only there for a little while. My point is: Corbin was still excited enough about showing us around this city he's been discovering that he was full of information, but he knew enough about it to weed out the unnecessary, too. I feel like I was effective at doing this when people visited me in Rome, and seeing Corb in action makes me think it must be a study-abroad thing.

Dublin is so different from other cities in Europe. It feels a lot smaller than most, for one, and that's probably because it is. But it's also a completely different fusion of the old and the new than you find in cities like Rome, where the old is omni-present and totally its own thing, or like Paris, where the old has been given a spit-and-polish and made to look classy and completely up-to-date. Dublin wants you to know that it's been around for awhile, but not in an in-your-face kind of way. It's more matter-of-fact about its history, and focuses particularly on its Irish-ness. The most notable element of this is the bi-lingual signs. I don't speak a lick of Irish, but it was still fun to see the two different languages on basically every sign. It's an encouraging sign that, even in our increasingly globalized world, we're not forgetting the importance of preserving our heritages.

It was wonderful to spend Christmas with the Johnsons. I was sad that my family couldn't be there, but honestly, Maribeth and Scott have been like other parents to me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and I don't remember a time when Ryan and Corbin and Kealey weren't like other siblings that I fought with less. So, if I couldn't have my own parents and siblings come for Christmas, I couldn't have asked for anything closer. We spent Christmas in a little cottage south of Dublin, near a town called Wicklow. It was fun, once we got it warmed up, and we went hiking on Christmas Day in the Wicklow Mountains. While we were up there, it started snowing. Now, for a girl who has spent pretty respectable portions of her life wishing she lived in Narnia and went to school at Hogwarts, the aesthetic was nothing short of perfect. The consequence that we were all soaking wet at the end of the day (eastern Irish snow has little staying power, and tends to turn into slush mid-air. The west is a different story). Corbin knew a lot about the area, and we got to visit an old monastic city that has been preserved. It was so cool to see this reminder of all the things that have gone on on this tiny little island.

The Irish are big on heritage. That's awesome, because post-colonialist diaspora is alive and well all over the world, and I, though from an extremely well-assimilated family who are American, have had my moments of really wanting a solid grounding in where we come from, more than just the hazy idea of Ireland.

Well, all the grounding I could ever want was brought home with all the force of a frying pan full of rashers to the face on basically one day. My cousin, Sean, who is the oldest of our generation of the Molloy family, has some pretty incredible contacts that we got to take full advantage of while in Ireland. Remember what I said about that princess thing? Well, there's a castle in Birr, which is in County Offaly, which is basically in the middle of Ireland. This is O'Molloy Country. It's also, problematically, O'Carroll country. Apparently the two clans were cousins, and, being family, decided that there was no better way to spend the time before the invention of Scrabble than to feud. And not the kind with Al from Home Improvement, either. Apparently, this is the kind that gets so destructive that the English can just get right on in there and steal your castle. The thieves (not really... it's just selective memory. They're wonderful people) in question are the Earls of Roth, and yes, that's Earl, like royalty. Not Earl like My Name Is.

We (including by this point Sean, who flew in from China, and Teague, my barely younger brother) stayed a night in the Bothy, which is apparently Irish for enchanted cottage in the middle of a ridiculous woodland park. The next morning we walked up to the castle through this beautiful park, and all the while I oscilated between noting good, defensive points for when we put the castle under seige and drive the intruders of 400 years out and composing my letter to Oprah, appealing to her love of helping homeless people get their homes back... or something to that effect. Dear Oprah, I'm an upper-middle-class, liberal-arts-educated white girl with an extremely supportive family and a Golden Retriever. Can you help me get my family's castle back from the people who have owned it for almost four centuries? ... yeah. That'd go over really well.

And the thing is, we didn't end up needing to storm the castle by force. The Earl and Countess (!) let us right in, gave us tea and the grand tour of their home. This included (I shit you not) three different secret passageways, a portrait of Anne Boleyn (they're related. Distantly, but still...) and a letter from a guy named Phelam Molloy (that's an ancestor, folks) dated 1645 or some ridiculous date. It all didn't seem quite real, even while the Earl was leading us around and showing us, white-gloved, this incredibly old parchment with my middle name written on it in this incredible old calligraphy. They were really the most wonderful people, and I can't begin to express how much that experience meant to me.

But Sean hadn't finished digging up the family tree yet. Not even close. We next made our way to Tullamore, which is the home, for you whiskey fans, of something called Tullamore Dew. I, who had never tried whiskey before this day, was fairly ambivalent about the whole thing. But I have to say that it was cool that a Molloy was the original owner of the distillery, and that I now know how both Guinness and Tullamore Dew whiskey are made. It makes me feel cool. What did not make me feel cool about this visit was the tasting at the end. Though the woman who gave us the tour was originally from Michigan and her neice is the student body president at Teague's school (the little dolls from that horrible Disney attraction seem to be following me around, singing their horrible song at every opportunity), the drinks she gave us made me gag. That's because all of them were whiskey, and despite my hard-bitten, lusty Irish lass exterior, I am a total weenie when it comes to whiskey. I'm glad that I tried it that day, and I'm fairly certain it was a once in a lifetime thing in more than one way.

We continued on, stopping a little while later at the house of, get ready for this, our clan cheiftainess. Yeah. We have a cheiftainess. Her name is Frances. And she gave us bacon sandwiches and tea, forever endearing her to me. It was incredibly surreal to be sitting here in this woman's, who I don't know from Eve, house, and her telling me that I look like a Molloy. Like, there's just nothing cooler than that. She announced to her daughter, when she called, that there were eight of her cousins from Montana there at the house. Hahaha... I love how far-reaching family can go, when you have the right mindset. Frances's mindset certainly made me want to get to know her better, and hopefully return the hospitality she showed us (bacon!) when she can make it to Montana.

This all happened in one day. You must remember that. We basically went on a whirlwind tour of our family origins in the space of about 15 hours. If I had any diasporic inclinations before this trip, they've certainly been quieted now. That night was the beginning of what the Irish call "The Big Freeze", which those of you who have ever experienced a Montana or a Michigan winter will find very funny. There was quite a bit of snow on the mountain passes, and I use both the words "mountain" and "snow" ironically, but the irony was lost on the tires of both our vehicles. Apparently gravity and what the Irish call snow tires do not mix, so we took the long way round (after about an hour of fruitless pushing... thanks, Volvo) to Doolin, where our home was to be for basically the rest of the stay.

Since this post is getting extremely long, I will stop there for now. Stay tuned for tales of Doolin, Galway, Lisdoonvarna, Kilkenny, more Dublin and Belfast, as well as later stories about London, Stockholm, Oslo and the other crazy places I'm currently exploring!

I'm Falling in Love with Il Magnifico

Florence is the center of the world. Perhaps, geographically, this pronouncement is a little suspect, but art historically, at least in the Western tradition, it is the Gospel truth. It's been about a month since I was there, and I've been galivanting around Ireland with my family since (more on that later), but the experience was a pilgrimage not soon to be forgotten.

I made it to Florence from Rome in the middle of the day on Saturday, after a morning of frantically cleaning the apartment with Kelcie after our slovenly roommates left, leaving a fridge full of rotting food and full garbage cans in their wake. So, good riddance to them... I'm never going to see them again, so I don't feel bad for saying that the experience of living with them was one I am glad is over. But that's beside the point. I got to Florence, found my hostel after a little walking up and down the same street over and over before finally noticing the sign, and set out to explore the city in the late afternoon.

Ever had one of those moments where you know, categorically, that you've never been somewhere, and yet you know exactly where you're going? I guess, in this case, it's not a spooky reincarnation thing so much as a "I've basically studied this city exclusively for the last three years of my life... lots of maps involved in that" thing. But it was still a little unnerving to have the layout of a place so firmly lodged in my brain, while the on-the-ground scene was totally new.

Walking around, I was shocked by how close together everything is. Yes, that's what you hear about Florence all the time, but they also say that Rome is a very walkable city, which it is, but my hostel was literally a street away from San Lorenzo, which is a street away from the Duomo, which is only about 5 minutes from the Palazzo Vecchio, which in turn is only a hop, skip and a jump away from the Ponte Vecchio and the River Arno. You could hold your breath and walk from one famous, world-alteringly influential building/sculpture/site to another one and not even get woozy. I tried. Involuntarily, of course, because when I am confronted with things like that... which is basically the whole city of Florence, I tend to stop breathing.

I could go on rapturously about how much I loved Florence and how cool it was to see everything I've been looking at continuously for three years, but I won't. It was a lot more matter-of-fact than that. It wasn't like the first couple days in Rome, when I was wandering around, lost as the writing staff of Lost, and things like the Pantheon would just pop out at me from nowhere. The element of surprise was missing in Florence, because I know how everything in that city fits together, and where all of it is in relation to the surrounding areas.

And that was very exciting in its own right, actually. Because who doesn't like to realize that they actually do, when they're education is put into practice, know something? Sure, my education often seems sort of limited to the confines of once city, but I'm secure in that, too. Because the one city my education has equipped me very well to know things about and be able to share that knowledge is not Cut Bank, Montana. Nothing wrong with Cut Bank, you understand, but if I only knew stuff about Cut Bank, I would know decidedly less.

Florence is the cradle of the modern Western artistic aesthetic. It's the reason why a lot of Western people look at a very skillfully rendered Chinese silk-screen and not be as impressed as they are by Leonardo's Last Supper, because of the lack of Brunelleschian perspective. Sure, you can make the argument that it was the Greeks during the Golden Age of Athens who really developed the perception of conventional beauty that is still widely acknowledged, but it was the citizens of Florence (the Ninja Turtles in particular) who solidified the representational, perspectival ideal into a subconcious way of seeing that influences the way we judge all art, right up until today. They messed with our collective mind so effectively that we don't even realize, when looking at art, that we're being messed with.

And when you're walking around Florence, contemplating how this tiny little city changed the entire world, and probably gave rise to your discipline of study, you can't help but ask who is responsible. I am prone to put the blame to the Arno, since basically all of the influential players in the Renaissance (politically, literarily and artistically) came from Florence. There has to be something in the water. Galileo, Machiavelli, Dante, Donatello, Giotto, Brunneleschi, Michelangelo, Alberti, Leonardo... all of these guys were hanging out in Florence.

But if you look deeper... or maybe just more pragmatically, it's pretty clear that the Arno isn't to blame here. It's pretty, yeah. But not sentient, as far as I'm aware. There was just a very welcoming environment for innovation in Florence that allowed all these men, over the course of some years, to become what we remember them as: geniuses who changed the way we see the world. There was a particular burst of creativity and innovation at one point toward the end of the 15th century, and the blame for what we now know as the Renaissance can fall squarely on the shoulders of one man: Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" of the Medici.

With a nickname like "The Magnificent", you know this guy had to be good. He patronized Leonardo and his family fostered Michelangelo from childhood. He promoted humanism and scientific inquiry during a time when a lot of people were still rubbing bird poop into their skin to get rid of acne. He believed in the power of the human mind and free thought. He decided that it was good to be feared, great to be loved, and pretty awesome to be both. He's "The Prince".

The Florentines, up to this day, really enjoy Il Magnifico, but discreetly. He is, after all, the one who made them FLORENCE and basically invented their tourist industry. There are statues of him in a few select, highly prestigious places, but for the most part, he's part of the ether. The fact that Florentine is the language that was adopted as official upon the unification of Italy, the fact that they own more than 50% of the world's recognized artworks, and the fact that people like me will pay lots of moola to go to the Uffizi and bask in the glory of Bottecelli, del Sarto, Leonardo et al. make him the reason that Florence achieved the vaunted status it has.

So the next time you're giggling at a Dress-Me-Up-David magnet or staring at the stars with the surety that they are, in fact, stars and not fireflies stuck up in that big bluish-black thing or describing some exacting professor as being Machiavellian... thank Lorenzo. He's the man.