Kappa Sigma Does Bologna

As I mentioned in my previous post, Anton, Jamie and are all in the Kappa Sigma Fraternity at Northeastern, and Kappa Sigma was founded at the University of Bologna in the year 1400. So while Venice is an obvious travel destination for students studying in Italy, Bologna had special importance to the three of us.


The day after our Venetian excursion ended, the three of us made our way to Bologna, for one of the most fun weekends of my entire time abroad.  As it turn out, several monuments in Bologna that are important to Kappa Sigma are also major tourist attractions on their own, so we set out to see those. First was the Torre Degli Asinelli, which is one of two towers left in Bologna. Apparently, there were dozens of towers in Bologna at one point, but all except two have been destroyed throughout history. Here it is (on the right):

I had heard rumors of the letters Kappa and Sigma being carved into the tower, and since you are allowed to go inside of the tower and climb to the top, we were able to see some actual carvings. It was very cool.


In addition to the tower, we explored the city, using the University of Bologna and our hostel as end points. Bologna overall is a fairly big city with a good deal of public transportation, though we were content to walk. It also is very modern, with lots of tall buildings; very different from Rome which looks ancient and has buildings that are no more than five stories high. 


After a long day of sightseeing we were hungry for dinner, and we went to an awesome restaurant recommend by a friend. It was off the beaten path, down some dark forsaken alley, but it was true Bologna style Italian food, and likely not seen by many tourists. We paid about $50 per person, but we were continuously brought a generous array of food including authentic Bologna from Bologna, a giant wheel of cheese, and other foods I have never had before and can't remember the name of. Wine was also included in the $50, so I think it was a great deal, and it was really fun to have an authentic Italian meal outside of Rome to see how the styles differ.


Finally, I don't usually speak too much about night life in my blog, but it really stood out in Bologna. After dinner, we were eager to find the good spots to hang out at night. We ended up in an alley right by our hostel, (win), and discovered that Bologna is open till about 4 am, same as Rome. There are club promoters hanging outside handing out tickets and club passes, and everyone just hangs out in the small alleyway. it does seem like there are a lot of young people, I mean high school young, who go out at night, but it seems like they all know how to have a good time. It wasn't until we saw a group of people trying to light their friend on fire that we decided to call it a night and move to a new place. 


Bologna was a great city overall, I got to travel to the birthplace of Kappa Sigma with some great friends, meet some really interesting people, and eat some great food. One last entry to go!

Venice is Sinking

So the weekend after trip to Florence, my friends Anton and Jamie, and I went on another Italian excursion, this time to Venice and Bologna. I should mention that Anton had just finished studying in South Africa, and he came to visit Jamie and I in Rome before heading back to the States. 

We first went to Venice, and I'm just going to start with a picture, because it's an incredibly beautiful city and my description won't do it justice:

That image is of the Grand Canal, and yes Venice is completely full of canals and Venetians can use them as a form of public transportation. It is very expensive to take a boat taxi though, so most people just walk everywhere. There isn’t a whole lot for a tourist to do in Venice, and there isn’t as much history as in a city like Rome, so my friends and I were content to just explore on foot. On the first night we ended up doing a lap of the entire city, mostly because we were looking for a good bar to hang out at. We were somewhat successful, but during the night it began to rain, a lot. Of course, since we were walking around with no real direction, we got lost in Venice in the pouring rain. We spent awhile running around in the pitch-black night asking for directions, all while getting drenched to the bone. (Venice closes early, we learned). We finally found a nice Italian girl who happened to speak English, and she walked us most of the way back to our hostel, where we eagerly dried off and went to bed. All in all, we spent several hours in the rain, and I maintain that is one of the more fun and interesting nights I’ve had.

If you thought our water troubles ended there you would be wrong. If you don’t know, having canals running through a city makes it very prone to flooding, and when we awoke the next morning, we discovered over a foot of water in the lobby of our hostel! The hostel manager had warned us that flooding may occur but it’s such a regular occurrence in Venice that most citizens have learned to live with it. For us American students however, a foot of water in a hotel lobby is not a normal sight.

Fortunately, the water soon subsided and we were able to go outside and begin another day of exploring. We quickly discovered that Venetians put raised walkways in the city in order to make it easier to walk around, as portions of the streets can still be flooded long after the major floodwaters have subsided. Again, it’s just a normal occurrence and most think nothing of the walkways at all as they traverse through the city. While walking through the city, besides marveling at the leftover floodwater, we went to visit St. Marks Square, (yes that’s the English translation a main attraction of the city. It’s basically a huge piazza with a Church at one end, and it looks really cool when it’s flooded, check it out:

In addition to the square, we saw the Rialto Bridge, which is the largest and most famous bridge in Venice. As you can guess there are lots of bridges to get over the canals, but this one is clearly the largest and most extravagant. Here it is:

 Overall, Venice was a great place to visit. While there isn’t a huge array of things for a group of college students to do, it was interesting to see how a group of Italians who are so different from Romans go about their daily lives. Most people are kind and helpful, let’s face it, to them, an American tourist is a welcome site compared to several feet of floodwater. The city itself is the most unique I’ve seen, and it has a charm unmatched by any other city that I visited. I recommend it to anyone traveling through Italy, even if you can only be there for a day. That’s all for this post. Next stop. Bologna!

Finally Made It To Florence

Next stop on my tour of Italy? Florence! Every single person I talked to before traveling to Italy told me I had to go to Florence. They said I should go to Rome too, but I already had that covered.

We gave Florence a full two days, as we wanted to see as much as possible, and my friend Seth would never let me live it down if I didn’t spend at least one weekend there. We stayed with some friends who also go to Northeastern, which was very kind of them, and the first thing I noticed was their apartment. It was much larger than my Roman apartment, with a full living room and enormous kitchen, clean white walls, and an overall well-kept feel. Not that I’m complaining about my accommodations from AUR, but it was interesting to see what $20,000 gets you in other study abroad programs.

Another difference between Florence and Rome is the size of the city. Florence is completely walkable, much more akin to the size of Boston. In fact, I never took any form of public transportation while there. The streets are also smaller and more suited to walking than some of the busier areas of Rome, where taxis and scooters nearly kill pedestrians on a daily basis. I wish I had some pictures to show you, but on our main day of sightseeing in Florence, I forgot my camera in the apartment! I know I’m a terrible person, you’ll just have to settle for the dozens of Facebook albums worth of photos.

Anyway, after taking in the overall feel of the city, we were taken to see a bunch of the sites by our gracious hosts. We went of course to the Duomo of Florence. (Duomo simply means church, interestingly enough and there are famous churches called “The Duomo” in several Italian cities. Still, it is absolutely enormous, I would venture to say larger than the Castle in Prague. Walking around the Duomo it is hard to tell where one part of it ends and the other begins.  It’s so big that it contains the largest brick dome ever constructed. I don’t know how many brick domes there are in existence, but trust me, this thing is huge.

After the Duomo we went to the next big tourist attraction, the statue of David by Michelangelo. It is much larger than the Michelangelo sculpted by Bernini, which is currently in Rome, and it features Michelangelo in the contra pposta pose, (go Art of Rome class,) which just means he is standing up with his weight on one foot. You’re not supposed to take pictures of the statue, so I don’t have any to show you once again. Well, I might, but I don’t want to incriminate myself. After the sightseeing, we were quite tired and we wanted a real Italian meal to top off the day. We all settled on a hold in the wall restaurant and I ended up having an absolutely delicious beef dish. I wish I could remember what it was called, but it was incredibly tender and juicy, unlike any beef I have ever had in the states. I was very satisfied.

Of course, I didn’t just walk around Florence looking at statues of biblical figures. I also went shopping for leather. Our hosts were all girls studying in Florence, so they wanted to go shopping a bit more than I did, but I still had a good time. The leather markets are right in the center of the city and seem to extend for miles in each direction. They are kind of like the souvenir shops of other cities. Each small hut sells basically the same thing, and people come and heckle you to buy. I didn’t actually buy any leather products, but I did buy a scarf for my sister. As was expected, the leather was cheaper than in the states, but still not cheap enough for me to buy a leather jacket, not really my style.

Anyway, that sums up Florence. It’s a really great city and I hope to go back one day, but I think I’ll still always have a special place in my heart for Rome.

Tuscany. Whoa.

While fall break was a lot of fun, the adventures were far from over. A few weeks after returning from 8 countries in 12 days, I started to concentrate on traveling all around Italy.

First stop? Tuscany for my first real wine tasting. (Well second if you count the one in Capri). This was a school-run trip so I was with most of my friends from school, and we traveled together to an authentic Italian vineyard way up in the mountains of Tuscany. Seriously, I never would have made it to this remote location without the school planning this trip. Also, this particular vineyard was run completely by women. Apparently men have dominated the winemaking industry in the past; women have only recently been gaining the trust and respect of wine connoisseurs, so an all-women vineyard is a significant achievement.

Upon arriving at the Vineyard, I was amazed by it’s absolute beauty. It really is way up in the hills, and you could literally hear a pin drop. Compared to the hustle and bustle of Boston, it was an eerie silence. Check it out:

Once I was done taking in the beauty, the tour began. We were taken around and shown the different aspects of wine making. From the fields where the grapes are grown, to the fermentation canisters, to the storage room where the wine is aged in specific wooden barrels, we saw it all. Of course, the best part of the tour was after the tour; the wine tasting. We tasted a red and a white, (I wish I could remember the names) and were taught how to observe, smell, and taste wine properly. It is really a multi- step process, and I am still a bit skeptical that an individual can have keen enough senses to detect the subtle differences from one wine to another. Nonetheless, the people I met have dedicated their lives to wine making up in the hills of Tuscany, so I guess I will concede that those keen senses do exist.

After the tasting, I was treated to one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten. I still don’t know how the Italians make simple pasta taste so good, but they did it again here. I ate a full four-course meal with salad, carbonara pasta, chicken, wine, and even dessert. Everything was made of fresh ingredients, and handmade and/or cooked on the premises, and every flavor was better than the last. It was a far cry from chain restaurants of the U.S. If that wasn’t enough, the servers went around offering us more helpings of each course as we continued to stuff ourselves silly. When we just couldn’t eat anymore, we were allowed to walk around, and even buy some wine from the giftshop. Overall, it was an incredible trip. I learned how Italians make wine, and I ate an authentic Italian meal. The best part? I did it all in one day.

Fall Break: Vienna

What is there to say about Vienna? Besides our incessant use of the Ah-nold accent, Vienna was actually a really good time.

I didn't know this before, but there are magnificent palaces to visit in Vienna. We saw the Schönbrunn Palace, check out facebook for pictures. I don't know much about it, but I do know that it took us about 30 minutes to walk up the courtyard to get close enough to actually walk around the palace. Seriously, these palaces occupy what must be hundreds of acres of land, and it's all completely flat. Needless to say, we walked a lot.

However, I have left out my favorite part of Vienna, the ZOO! Bet my parents didn't think I'd be visiting a zoo in Vienna during my study abroad in Rome, but I did. It was on the way to the palace, and we had heard good things, so we went in. We saw elephants, tigers, lions, all kinds of monkeys, and there was even an aquarium. My favorite was the chimpanzee exhibit; they give the little guys a lot of space, and they swing around on trees like they are actually in the wild. It's fun to watch, they almost look like they are having fun even though they are trapped in a cage and will never know the true freedom of the jungle.

Anyway, that was pretty much all we did in Vienna, we were only there for a few hours on Sunday. We went our to dinner, and made it to the train station for our early evening train. I bet most people figured I would be dead tired and unable to move for days after a trip like this, but our train from Vienna to Rome was 14 hours, all of which was spent comfortable sleeping in my own bed. Ok, comfortably isn't the best word, but I sure did sleep. We made it back to Rome Monday morning and I made it to Italian with just a few minutes to spare. 

This concludes my blog posts about my fall break. I have several more things to write about, hopefully I will get to them before I come home this weekend. I know i have been slacking on my blog, but the work, (and play) has certainly picked up a great deal in the second half of the semester. If i don't get to my blog again before I come home, I'll just have to tell everyone my stories in person. Bye for now!

Fall Break: Prague

When I originally went to write this blog, the first sentence was going to be "Prague is the best city I have visited in Europe so far." However, with the last of my major trips completed, I can say without a doubt that Prague is my favorite place of any that I visited.

It's really a perfect city. It's modern, but mixed with unique architecture from various periods of history. It's also small and quaint, but not too small as to be confining, its a good size. There's also a ton of things to do, great night life, and a large Jewish population, which is cool for me. We stayed in Prague for all of Friday and Saturday, which by our method of traveling, equated to about 2 weeks so needless to say, we did a lot.

After checking into the hostel, we ventured out to explore the city. We had done extensive research for Prague, (thanks to Jordana Nahum for the help), so we knew to look for the old town square, which is something like a city center. Once there, we noticed several people staring at this old clock tower, and we had no idea why. We waited for a few more minutes, and then it came to life; a small door opened up and some figurines rolled by, some guy played a trumpet, and just like that, it was over. We later learned that the clock tower is called the astronomical clock; it tells time, shows zodiac signs, and other weird stuff, and is rated the number 2 most over-rated tourist attraction in Europe, and we saw it by accident.  (The first is the Mona Lisa.). Here it is:

 After laughing at the clock, we hung out in the market in old town square and bought some weird candy. I never eat candy, so you know I was having a good time if I ate some candy. Anyway, after that, we did some more exploring and went back to the hostel to get ready for a night out. Some friends from AUR were staying at the same hostel, and a few of them went out with us on a bar crawl. I love bar crawls, it's a great way to meet and interact with people from other cultures, and this one was no different. 

The next morning we went on a walking tour and we saw a ton of the sites that Prague has to offer. We started in old town square, went to the Jewish quarter, saw the famous Charles bridge, and tons of other sights. Our tour guide gave us a great history of the city. Of course I don't remember much, except a bit about "defenestration" which apparently is the word for throwing oneself out a window in a form or protest. Google it.

After the tour, we decided to do more exploring on our own. Most people studying abroad in Europe agree that the "Prague Castle" is the thing to see, and they are right. It's absolutely enormous, there are a ton of pictures on facebook if you want to see. (I know I'm being lazy, but I'm in the computer lab and don't have access to my own pictures. The hike up to the castle is just that, a hike, and our feet were hurting my the time we made it up there. It was also pouring rain, but the grand nature of the castle was so, well, grand, that the rain didn't really take away from our day at all. On the way back down the hill from the castle, we stopped to to visit a cool museum which had old manuscripts by both Beethoven and Mozart. I don't listen to their music much, but it was cool to see original manuscripts that the famous musicians actually wrote themselves.

Finally, cold, wet, and hungry, we stopped at a restaurant for some traditional Prague food. I head heard that fried cheese sandwhiches are supposed to be the thing to eat in Prague, but unfortunately, we couldn't find anyone who would sell us one. We settled on a good place at the bottom of the hill from the castle and all ate ghoulash. Ghoulash is basically bread and meat, covered in some kind of gravy; it's good but it sits in your stomach like a loaf of soggy bread. Oh wait, it is a loaf of soggy bread by the time it get's to your stomach. Yum.

Anyway, the meal pretty much concluded our time in Prague. We did go out again that night to a fun bar with a ton of foosball tables and weird cavernous areas, but nothing too crazy. The next morning we were up bright and early to catch a train to our last stop. Vienna!

Fall Break: Berlin

After a full day in Amsterdam, we hoped on a 7pm night train to Berlin and this is when the eurail started to get tricky. Though we slept on the train, it arrived in Berlin at 4 am, and we couldn't really do anything until 9 am, when the first walking tour was scheduled to start. We hung out in the train station for awhile and I FOUND A DUNKIN DONUTS. Yea yea I'm in other countries I should experience their culture and foods; well it was 4 am and I needed a big American iced coffee to get me through the day. Anyway back to the train station; it was super modern, as is the case with most post-communist countries. However, Germany has the added benefit of being completely decimated 3 times in the past century so they really know how to make good stuff, and the train station was no different.

After doing basically nothing for awhile, we went in search of a hostel. We had a plan for Berlin, a walking tour, but other than that, we left it very open in terms of how long we would like to stay, and if we would need a hostel. We decided we did need a hostel, mostly because we couldn't sit in a train station for 4 hours, and we wanted to nap. We found one that turned our to be close to the beginning of the walking tour, and even after my huge coffee, I fell right asleep.

Finally, the walking tour began, and it was one of the best of the trip. We ended up taking a tour a bit later than 9 am, and it lasted most of the afternoon. Our first stop was the Brandenburg gate, one of the main symbols of Berlin and the last remaining gate of 18 original gates used to enter the city.

The gate was pretty neat, but we also saw the Reichstag Building, which houses the German parliament, portions of the Berlin wall, the Holocaust memorial, and even the place where Hitler supposedly killed himself. It was a full day.

My favorite site was the Holocaust memorial; favorite may be an odd choice of words, but it is definitely an interesting and very moving site to behold. The memorial is right in the center of the city, and takes up a such a huge area of space, that those walking by can't help but see it, enter it, and walk around. It is very simply, just an area large cement blocks and no names, pictures, or anything that really resembles a "memorial." The blocks become larger as you walk through toward the center of the monument, giving you a strange sense of confinement. There is much debate about what the architect intended to convey, but you can check it out for yourself:

The whole vibe of Berlin is that they are very, very sorry for the Nazi's and they want to make sure everyone knows it, hence the memorial being extremely prominent. In addition, at the spot where hitler killed himself, there is nothing but a regular old parking lot. No memorial or even recognition that he even had a bunker on that spot. They are clearly, really, really, sorry, and it shows.

After a loooooong, and at some points, rainy day of sightseeing, we settled on an authentic German restaurant for dinner. Most of us got wiener schnitzel, but I settled on something else that I can't remember; I should have gotten the schnitzel. Anyway, Berlin was a really fun city overall. The tour was excellent, and I learned a huge amount about the history and culture of Germany and Berlin. It was interesting to hear how Germany has been effected by communism and the Nazi party over the years, but is still a very wealthy and productive nation today. That's all for Berlin, onto Prague!