This whole melamine in the milk scandal in China makes me think of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. What a haunting work! There is a moment in the book when the main character is contemplating the state of the company “town” (it was actually a section of Chicago) in which they lived. The stores in their neighborhood were owned by the company as well, and he was trying to reconcile himself with purchasing the milk that had a “blueish tinge” to it for his new baby boy. He knew that they were adding something to the milk to cut their costs, but he couldn’t complain without fear of losing the job he desperately needed, and they didn’t pay him enough to buy it anywhere else.
Is this book the modern day reality of life in China? Is there no accountability? Or is the situation so bad for the milk farmers too that they feel in order to survive they simply have to make the milk go farther and are compelled to disregard the risk? I just can’t believe that it would be the farmers, and not the distribution companies that would be able to dilute the milk on such a large scale. Corporate greed sucks. That’s the end all truth of modern society.
One of these days I’m going to start writing again… Forget it- I’ll just write already.
As you can see, Jon and I have returned from our travels. Sorry the writing fizzled out there towards the ends- we were trying to soak up our last few days and couldn’t be bothered to sit in a computer lab. Let’s see if I can sum it up…
We headed back to Paris where we collected our giant backpacks which we had locked up in lockers at the Paris train station before leaving for London, and then Brussels. That was probably the smartest thing we did on our entire trip! The next time I take a trip like this I think I’ll try to have a central home base where we can re-charge, re-pack, and rest in between forays to different locales. It’s a lot easier traveling around with just a weekender bag if you can.
We then headed to a hotel to round out our last two days in Europe. We did a lot of just hanging out in cafes and browsing through the neighborhood… but the one “site” we did manage to squeeze in was a trip to Paris’ Catacombs. That was pretty amazing. Back in the Times of Yore, they didn’t have preserving methods for bodies before burial. People in the neighborhood started getting so sick from all the diseases developing in the decaying bodies from the nearby cemetary that the government undertook a massive dig of the corpses. They placed these remains in the maze of underground tunnels that exist underneath the streets and parks of Paris. Now you can walk through some of these tunnels. There are bones and skulls piled neatly on top of each other from floor to ceiling. It is very surreal. Jane’s Addiction used a photo of the scene for their compilation album, “Up From the Catacombs”.
The weirdest part of it all though were the other people down there who kept posing with the bones and smiling… probably in the same way they had posed in front of the Eiffel Tower earlier in the day. I wanted to shake them and say, “THESE WERE PEOPLE! WE ARE IN A MASS GRAVE!”. I didn’t feel like it was an appropriate place to ham it up for the camera. People become so desensitized… I feel like they weren’t even thinking about the horror and reality of it all.
So then we flew back to the States. It’s crazy how quickly these things can all seem like a dream. It was such an amazing trip. Someday I’ll go through all of our pictures and try to organize them in some sort of reasonable fashion. It’s such an endeavor though…
About a week after we returned, we hopped back on a plane and headed to NYC for Jon’s medical school graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden. He graduated with Highest Honors! That was pretty awesome. My mom came, and Jon’s mom, sister and brother. Jon’s mom took us all out to eat at this amazing restaurant called Per Se to celebrate. And Jon, my mom, and I went to see Wicked on Broadway, which was a lot of fun. I feel like it was my mom’s first vacation. We traveled a ton when we were kids but she always had some sort of conference to go to as well. So mostly it was just me, my sister and my dad doing all the fun stuff.
Now we have moved yet again. I think that marks 6 states in two years. Sheesh. But we’re actually staying put here for awhile. I’m finally getting my act together for grad school… and I’ll start taking classes at George Washington this Fall. Jon has started his residency and seems to be liking it pretty well, although the hours are taking some getting used to. We have a big yard with a privacy fence and we’ve finally been able to install a doggie door which has been our “dream” for years. It’s the small things, man.
We had a return flight to Paris from London. It was decided though that since we had already spent a few days in Paris, and it had been very hot and very expensive, we would head up to Brussels, Belgium for a couple days instead. I have a cousin who lives in Sweden and he had recommended that we visit Brussels while we were in the area. By this point we were such train traveling savants that another two hour trip seemed like a cakewalk.
Unfortunately, we found out too late that on the day that we had to return to Paris, in order to fly home the following morning, the Belgium transit system would be on strike in its entirety! So we ended up having to cut our stay in Brussels short by one day which meant that we really only had an afternoon to check it out. That’s not nearly enough time to properly explore a beautiful city like Brussels, but it was enough time to drink several beers and sample chocolates from various suppliers…. And really… if we had had another day, wouldn’t it have just been spent drinking more beers and eating more chocolates anyway? Let’s be honest.
I have to begin this post with some sad news… (Don’t get too worried- I’m using author’s license when saying “sad”).
Back in 1999 I spent a wonderful summer as a student at the University of London. To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember much about the class lessons… I think for the most part the professors were on vacation too. But what is truly worth a mention, that summer was spent forming some of the most important and strongest friendships I had in college, (and a few other not as long lasting, but nonetheless very fun friendships as well). Two of the most notable friendships that came to be during this time were with Valerie K. and Joe V.
I had known Valerie through our mutual friend Andrea for a couple of years. But it wasn’t until this trip that we became friends in our own right. Joe and I had a more unexpected start. We had a Spanish class together the previous Fall, but sat on opposite sides of the class. I honestly don’t think we said a word to each other the whole semester. The next term though, we found ourselves in the next Spanish class together as well. Out of a vague familiarity I think we unconsciously chose to sit near each other. Towards the end of the semester we starting hanging out outside of class a bit, and found out that we would both be studying abroad in London at the same time and residing in the same dorm in the Bloomsbury District.
Once in London though, Joe, myself and two other people I had known before (Greg- a friend of mine for years, and Jenn- a friend of a friend) became inseparable. We sat next to each other in the cafeteria, traveled to Amsterdam and Dusseldorf together, spent countless nights at the pub, went to a God Speed You Black Emperor show that changed my life, and yes, ate together. Our local place of choice was a falafel/kabab place right around the corner from our dorm called “Groovy Grub”.
………..
On our second day in London I dragged Jon over to my old stomping grounds in Bloomsbury. It was a textbook perfect London day- drizzling and a little cold despite the late May date. As I walked out of the Russell Square subway station, it all came back to me. The main street leading to our dorm looks the same, and different all at the same time. There seemed to be a lot more restaurants there now. I don’t remember having that many close-by options, but I was on a student budget so I might not have explored some of the restaurants. That day, I had a one track mind though- I wanted to get a falafel sandwich for lunch and I knew just the place. But alas, it wasn’t to be. As I turned the corner to go to where Groovy Grub should have been, I was greeted by a sign above the window advertising an Indian restaurant. Indian food is delicious, but I was feeling nostalgic. So, Jon and I headed to the pub across from my old dorm where Joe, Greg, Jen and I downed many pints, and ordered two more for old time’s sake. We sat there and watched a soccer match with the “lads”, had a meat pie and then continued on with our day.
(On a side note- the computer lab where I opened an e-mail account because I was having trouble opening my “pilot” MSU account abroad was still there. I remember sitting there and registering with a brand new e-mail server that I had just heard about called “hotmail”. Weird).
London was awesome, as usual. I had a bit of a culture shock though being back somewhere where everyone was speaking English… I was glad to get reintroduced to the concept before heading back to the States.
Jon and I were pretty desperate money-wise by this point so we stayed in a hostel farther out in London than I had ever been before. It was in an area called New Cross. The hostel had gotten decent reviews online when we booked it, but after staying there I feel pretty confident in saying it was the dumpiest place we stayed on our trip. Blah… Community showers are the grossest.
On our way to London we decided to fly because all the Eurail seats were booked on the Eurostar and the full price tickets were more than airfare! Well… as we were going through security they CONFISCATED MY HAIR PRODUCT!!! I almost wept. Curls+humidity+no product= a very sad, fro haired Nancy. The bottle was almost gone but… it was still heart breaking. When we arrived in London I was just going to buy some mousse 90’s style but I couldn’t find any travel bottles. So, I bought a travel size of gel. Sheesh…. gel is the grossest thing ever (after community showers)! I felt like I had a sticky helmet on my head the whole time!
In London we spent most of our time chilling out and drinking… As you do in London I suppose. We did the compulsory walk to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Parliament etc. We, of course, made a stop into delicious Wagamamma, and had Indian food twice over the weekend as well.
Jon and I planned to leave Florence last Sunday and ended up spending an excruciating day at the train station attempting to get on any train out of the city. Ir was crazy hot in Florence and super crowded and we just wanted to get the Hell out. Jon described Florence as the “worst place I have ever been.” I had visited before for a day or two and had been underwhelmed as well, but people are always talking about how amazing it is so I decided that it deserved another visit. In the end I feel that a long time ago, before it was so insanely crowded (like before cars or planes) Florence was a nice, beautiful respite. But in the present state I can honestly say that I will never go back again. There are so many beautiful places to see in Europe! The crowds in Florence are stifling!
Finally we were able to get on a local train out of Florence and, after making three change overs on what should have been a two hour train, ended up in Venice. I had heard a lot of bad things about Venice, but I honestly liked it a lot. Maybe during the high season it is excruciating as well, I can’t say. But it was totally different from any other city we had visited and we found a really nice B and B near the heart of things so we couldn’t have been happier.
Mental note though; don’t enter St. Marks Square with anything that could be construed as food in your hand. Luckily Jon was able to shoot some footage of the reason why:
People were gleefully taking pictures with pigeons all over themselves, their children, their tables… everything. It was like the sheer numbers of pigeons flocking had made them completely forget that they are considered the rats of the sky…
From Venice we took a quick train ride to Vincenzia because Jon wanted to buy a watch to mark the occasion of him starting his residency. We ended up at this family owned machine shop run by this amazingly nice Italian couple. Jon picked out the watch that he wanted and they wrote everything up. The problem was when he took out his credit card to pay they said that they didn’t take cards because they were so small. That is weird to our American sensibilities because everyone in the States makes large purchases on their credit cards. We didn’t have much cash on us, and weren’t prepared to spend money from our trip fund on the watch anyway. Jon had been planning to pay it off over the course of some months after starting his job. So, the couple started calling everyone they knew: starting with the bank to see what could be done. In the meantime the woman gave me a necklace for free that they had machined themselves from stainless steel. From this point on you can see it in the pictures as I haven’t taken it off. They then called all of their friends who had shops to see if they could run our cards and then give them the cash. Finally they found a friend in a neighboring town who had a cash machine and was willing to do that. So the man drove us out there with our packs, we scanned Jon’s card, and then he gave us a lift to the train station! It was so nice of them!
The watch business took so long though that most of the trains out of Vincenzia were gone. So we decided to take the night train to Munich. When we got settled into our cabin the train worker came by and checked our tickets and told us that we had the cabin to ourselves. We were so excited! But then, just as we had fallen asleep we were violently awoken by someone trying to open our chain locked door. Jon opened it and this couple, who from their accents I presumed were Canadian, entered our cabin. I apologized several times for the fact that we had put our packs on the other beds explaining that we were told that we were by ourselves. They were unfazed and threw our packs into the top luggage compârtment. But then, after they were all settled, the train worker came back, looked at their tickets and told them they were in the wrong compartment! I could have slit them. After seeing that all of their luggage was put away though he didn’t make them move. I could see that Jon was seething and the next day we spent about two hours wishing seriously bad things on them. They were in 73: we were in 45. Who mixes those numbers up? Ugh.
So then in Munich, when we arrived at 6:30 AM, we started going around to find a place. After being turned down by about 5 places we decided to find a computer lab and see what we could find on there. Once at the computer lab though we found out that there was some sort of soccer match that night and literally every single hotel under 250 dollars was sold out! (On a Wednesday!). It was unreal.
So… what else was there to do? We went back to the train station and boarded a train for Innsbruck, Austria. (We have rail passes so it doesn’t cost us anything extra to take a train as long as it doesn’t require a reservation). I am sooo glad we did! Innsbruck is BREATHTAKING!!! It has been the host of two winter Olympics. The mountains literally meet the town. It was HOT though! It was weird being surrounded by snow capped mountains and walking around in flip flops. It was also weird walking around in two countries by noon…
The next afternoon we boarded the train yet again for Switzerland. For those of you who don’t know, a few years ago when I was living in Portland I put an ad up on Craig’s List for a roommate. A girl from Switzerland answered my ad and we lived together until her visa ran out and she returned to Switzerland. So, we had made plans to visit her for the weekend. She is a cardiologist and was on-call the night we came in so we just ordered a pizza and hung out in her super sweet apartment. I don’t even think the pictures can express how cool her apartment was.
The next day Christine had to work again until 5. She gave Jon and I two free tickets to go up to Mount Titlis in a neighboring town. We took the train over. Once we reached the mountain we took the world’s first revolving gondola to the top. It was spectacular! Once again it was green and lush at the bottom and snowy at the top. People were still skiing and snowboarding up there! It wasn’t that cold though at all.
That night Christine met us in Luzern and we had dinner and some drinks. Then we took the train back to her place and crashed. We had discussed plans of going to Zurich the next day, but when we awoke to a lovely Saturday morning we all agreed that we would rather have a relaxed day at home instead. She made us an amazing breakfast with eggs, bacon, etc. and the best array of Swiss cheeses I could have imagined! Then we did some more of this and that…. Later on we all went out to buy some groceries to cook out on her amazing terrace, buy ping pong paddles to play on her complex’s custom granite ping pong tables (with forged, carved aluminum “nets”), buy our tickets for Paris, and rent some movies. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun.
The next day we had to get up super early because the only train available to Paris had been one at 6AM. Sucky. But we got to Paris early and had enough time to check into our hotel and hang out at Sacre Cour for awhile before totally crashing out for a mid-day nap. Our hotel was amazing. We had come to Paris to celebrate our first anniversary on May 12th so we definitely splurged on the hotel. It was sooo nice! The most amazing part was the balcony from our room with a panoramic view of the Paris skyline. There’s nothing like sharing a bottle of wine with your own private view of the Eiffel Tower.
The next day was our anniversary and we started out with breakfast on the balcony. We got a bit of a late start so we went to the Arc de Triumph and Notre Dame and spent some time just walking around. Later on we went to a phenomenal restaurant to celebrate.
The next day we checked out (but thankfully left our bags with the concierge), and headed to the Eiffel Tower. We had a picnic in the park and then went to get tickets. I had been up as a kid with my parents but every time I’ve been back to Paris since then the lines have serioiusly been a mile long. Yet another reason to travel in the off season- we had virtually no wait! It was so fun to go up to the top!
Okay…. Now I feel like I have been writing forever and I still have to load pictures…. Last night we headed to Reims, France in the Champagne region of France. Anyone who knows me at all knows I am a total Champagne-O so… needless to say, I have been mildly drunk through this whole synopsis… We went to the Tattinger cellars today… I have nothing to say for myself.
I may or may not have drank these bottles of champagne…
I am rapidly losing my buzz though so I’m going to try to finish this up ASAP.
I’m lazy. I feel overwhelmed by how far behind I’ve gotten… I’m in Paris right now. I am hopeful I will be able to sit and write tonight from Champagne! (Thinking of you, Binny). Keep checking!
I am in Switzerland right now visiting a friend… and I don’t have time to write right now but… I encountered this painting on the window of a kindergarten yesterday on my way up to the top of Mount Titlis. Apparently our Puritanical background even influenced our Smurf viewing… Here’s pic of Smurfette (Schlumpfine) hitting the slopes…
From Cinque Terre we headed to a quick stopover in Pisa. You have to see the Leaning Tower when you’re in Italy right? I had been years before but I had been incredibly hungover and visited during August when the temperature was in excess of 115 degrees. It was amazing how little I remembered about the actual city. I must have been a zombie the last time I came. Pisa is actually a pretty big, nice city. And they have amazing gelato… but I guess pretty much everywhere in Italy does. I’m addicted to pistachio gelato. I pretty much want to have an IV of it inserted… but not in my veins… maybe a Camelback of pistachio gelato I could wear on my back and just suck off of whenever the mood struck… Mmmm…..
From there we headed on to Florence for the weekend. Unfortunately we didn’t think about how hard it might be to find accommodations in Florence for a Friday and Saturday night. When we arrived around 10PM that night, it seemed that every reasonably priced hotel/hostel was booked full. We ended up going to a computer lab to try to book something online instead of wandering aimlessly, walking in to random hotels and wasting time. As we were checking in to get a computer the man working there said to me, “You’re not a real American”. I was a little confused, but then I realized that he was commenting on my ethnicity. So I told him that I’m Afghan and he was very pleased. Turns out he was Pakistani and started in on this whole spiel about how if we needed anything just to let him know because we are “neighbors” and being gracious hosts is very important in our cultures. We thanked him and got on the computer and booked the most affordable place we could find… which wasn’t really all that affordable at all. We ventured out to walk what, according to the booking site, should have been a .3 mile walk to the hotel. When we arrived at the location though we could find no trace of the hotel. We looked around for a minute and then raced back to the Internet spot because it was the only one open late (it was now just after 11) and the man working there had been so nice to us. When we arrived they were getting ready to close but once we told the man working there about our predicament he immediately asked for the phone number of the hotel. He called them and it turns out that the map on the booking website was completely wrong and the hotel was actually located 28Km away! I spoke to him on the phone and he seemed really nice but we had to cancel the reservation because of the mix up. So then we were left back at square one with no place to stay and it getting later and later. Knowing the situation was getting rather dire, the man working there (who we found out was named Avri) invited us to stay with him in his home! It was so nice of him that my eyes instantly welled up. We thanked him profusely and told him that we would just take a quick look to see if there was any other hotels available in town so that we didn’t have to put him out. (Not to mention the fact that were exhausted and just wanting to pass out… ). The fact that he stayed open late for us to help us and made phone calls and everything for us was so touching, and at the end he gave us his cousin’s kabob store information so that in case we had trouble we could stop by there and use their Internet all night. (Being ambiguously brown has really come in handy on this trip. The Spanish thought I was Portuguese, the Portuguese thought I was Spanish, the French thought I was Italian and the Italians think that I’m Spanish). It turned out there was a Holiday Inn available a little outside of the city center. It was an amazing gesture on his part, but seriously I have never been happier to see a Holiday Inn in my life! It was by far the most expensive place we’ve stayed, but it was a nice respite to have a room that reminded us a little more of home- big rooms, big shiny bathrooms, hot well pressurized water, cable TV… It was so nice!
So, we’ve just been hanging around Florence for the weekend. It’s really nice, but the crowds can be overwhelming at times. The weather is great- it’s the hottest place we’ve been. My shoulders are actually peeling! I don’t think that’s ever happened before to me.
The craziest thing happened yesterday on the bus though. We were trying to take the bus back to our hotel so that we could drop some things off and change before going to dinner. The bus was insanely crowded and we were seriously packed in there like sardines. I had some man pressed up against me like we had been dating for years… Then at one stop these people who had been standing by the door were getting off when this rather large woman (probably in her 60’s) barreled through the crowd and shouted “GO!” and seriously shoved the other lady off the bus! Then the other lady who was probably around 40 turned around (after landing) and shoved the old lady, who in turn ran back at her with her arms flailing! Then the 40 year old’s son shoved/punched the old lady! Then everyone started yelling at each other in Italian… And the younger guy was like “Es me Mamma” and started gesturing emphatically. It was crazy!
I only have a minute but just thought I’d write a quick note to tell you that we had a fantastic time in Cinque Terre (Five Lands), Italy! There are five villages perched among the cliffs on Italy’s Northwestern side. They are about 12Km apart in total and for many years this coastal path was the only means of connection between the villages. Today there are still few cars, because accessing the towns by road remains difficult. The trails on the otherhand, have been fully discovered. I can’t imagine coming here during the summer. It must be loony toons! Since it’s still the off season though we managed to enjoy some very lovely hiking between the villages. It was absolutely spectacular! We first took the train into the third village, figuring that we could split the hike easily that way over two days. We started to become concerned about finding lodging though when we had to physically fight our way onto the train and then stand with our packs for the duration. Upon our arrival we headed to the shuttle bus stop only to find another crowd of people pushing and shoving for position. Corniglia is the name of the town and it is the village located at the highest point of the five. The train station was at sea level so no one wanted to make the trek on foot up to the village. Not wanting to fight another group though Jon and I instead opted to go up the 356 steps up to the village ourselves. Ummm…. it wasn’t exactly fun, especially with packs, but we made it and headed off to find whatever accommodations we could.
Here is where we really lucked out: Virtually everywhere was booked, but the first place we stopped I was able to speak enough of my Spanish/Italian hybrid language to have her agree to let us stay at her rental apartment for a night. We were so pleased that we wouldn’t have cared if it was a shoebox. We just wanted to get those fucking packs off by that point. When she opened the apartment doors though we were blown away! It was HUGE! Probably the size of our place in Chicago, with a kitchen, bedroom, living room and unobstructed view of the water! All for the price I paid for a Motel 6 next to a homeless park in Southern California!
Here’s the view of the sunset from our window:
After we threw down our stuff we got a quick bite to eat and then headed for the trail. It was not a trail like I had imagined- it was cleared, but cut right out of the mountain and had jagged rocks for the path. But it was absolutely beautiful! We hiked a big chunk of the trail heading North that day and then the next morning hiked the more traveled “Lover’s Walk” in the Southern portion. The Lover’s Walk part is the most famous and it was therefore much, much more crowded. It’s also a much easier, shorter hike on a paved path… It’s more like a stroll on a sidewalk that just happens to be on the edge of a mountain. There were full on tour buses pulling up and unloading people at the trailhead. I highly recommend going, but do not bother unless you are going in the low season! It was wonderful, and beautiful but it won’t hold the description of being “undiscovered” for much longer, if it even does anymore.
This Way Maybe 
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