6/06

Leaving Bulgaria today. We stayed at a friend from AU's place. Hristo is from Sohpia and kindly let us sleep in a spare room he had in his apartment. While here we ate great Bulgarian cheese, got rained upon several times, and visited the beautiful Rila Monestary in the mountains.
Bulgaria was nice and relaxing, but now off to Berlin. We are flying Alitalia from Sophia to Milan to Berlin, so let us hope that they are not late, as we have only a short amount of time for our connecting flight in Milan.

03/6

Overnight trains are very interesting. Especially when a border crossing and irate passport control officers are added into the mix.
The train left Istanbul bound for Sophia, Bulgaria, a 13 hour journey, at 10 pm. Anne, Vanessa, and I were in a sleeper car just for us for only 47 TYL per ticket, much cheaper than $260 USD flights to Sophia. The train rocked, was amazingly hot, and filled with people who smoked at the drop of a hat, but it got us to were we needed to be roughly on time, and I even managed to sleep for 5 hours or so.
One quick reason to love Sophia is that dinner last night, for 4 people with starter plates, totaled about $25 USD. Sometimes I love exchange rates.

31/5

Turkey is a lot of fun, but very very hot. The Hagia Sophia is beautiful, if in need of a great deal of work on the plaster/ mosaics on the ceilings and halls. The Blue Mosque, right next to my hostel, is nice as well, if a bit obstructed by hanging lights that stand about 8 feet above the floor. The Blue Mosque, being the preeminent mosque in Turkey, also boasts the finest Imam for the call to prayer in all of Turkey. His voice is very impressive, but it is hard to apprechiate at 4:30 in the morning. For the 4:30 in the afternoon call to prayer, we were ontop of the Galata tower. From the top, you are able to hear all the mosques in Istanbul sound the call at the same time, so its like a wave of sound across the city. Very impressive.
Quick aside. In Newsweek, I saw a small info box saying that the US leads the world in civilian arsenal, with 90 guns per 100 civilians. The next closest was Yemen, with 61 guns per 100. Never in my life have I seen so many handguns for sale on the streets as I have in Istanbul. I have seen no less than 20 shops selling handguns. shotguns, rifles, and knives, proudly displayed in the windows. A bit disconcerting.

31/5

back to Santorini.
Yay for ATVs, even if they only go uphill at 15 kph. The hot springs were great, though we had to swim through very cold wate in order to get there. Pirates of the Carribean 3 was a lot of fun, and the first cinema movie I have seen in English in 6 months. The flight to Turkey was in a small prop plane whose wing was only a few feet aove my head, a bit of an odd experience.
Turkey is already given props because they use a real stamp when you enter the country, nlike the EU wussy stamps, though they lost points for calling out morning prayers on loud speakers at 4:30am. My hostel is about 2 minutes from the Blue Mosque, so it was quite loud. Off to the Hagia Sofia and the Spice Market today.

29/5

So, Madrid and Santorini down, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Germany to go.
Madrid was a lot of fun. I ate some form of roasted chicken and paella (spl) everyday, which didn't get old, and also had the pleasure of drinking some Sangria that tasted exactly like Fruit Punch HI-C. Break out the surfboards. Word to the wise...Spanish beer is terrible.

Athens came next. While you don't want to spend more than 2 days in the city, it is now not nearly as dirty as I was expecting. The Olympics and the UEFA Final really spurred them into a cleaning frenzy, and the city was also a welcome relief for my wallet after Rome. The Acropolis is nice, but the best part of the city had to be the 30,000+ (and i am not exaggerating that number) of ticketless Liverpool fans who were in town for the Championship game between Liverpool and Milan. They were loud, drunk, drunk and amazingly entertaining, so hats off to the red machine for having amusing fans.

Santorini is beyond beautiful. Spent 5 days of nothing more exciting than swimming in the Med. and driving an ATV. I took a boat tour around the island and to the volcano, and part of the trip is a visit to the magma heated hot springs. Little do you know that to get to the hot springs. edit for later.

22/05

So my end of the semester odyssey has begun!
My travels will take me to Spain, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, and then back to the States.
I am currently in Athens, after spending 4 days in Madrid, Spain.
While in Madrid I: Rowed around in a rowboat, visited the Prado, ate a whole roasted chicken, ate some paella (spl), saw flamenco dancing, and drank a weird concoction that spouted from a dispenser in the ceiling of a bar called "The Cave", stalagtites and all.
So far in Athens I have been to the Pireaus and the Acropolis, and have eaten 3 gyros since I arrived yesterday. Leaving for Santorini on Thursday.
Updates will be sporatic depending on how often I can get to a computer with internet and no new pics will be posted until I return home on the 14th of June.

18/4

3 papers down, 3 more to go. Today I also get to work on my cover letter for intern applications. I originally planned on applying at Sen Menedez's and Lautenberg's offices, but earlier this morning, Ben sent me a new idea. Interning with the House Ways and Means Committee. That would be a switch of chambers and would rock. Now I just need to find out what they require for an intern application.

2/4

Holy week has decended on Rome...time for a a few million more people to show up.
Spring break photos added to the picture site

28/03

Day 1: Arrived in Marseilles airport ahead of schedule, around 10am. This was not really good news for me as Vanessa and Anne weren’t getting in until 6 pm, Marseilles was a 10 Euro bus ride away, and the hotel was not only booked in Vanessa’s name, but I had no idea where it was. Thus started my wonderful day in the Marseilles airport, and was I ever grateful that I had a book with me. 8 hours, and 800 pages later, Vanessa and Anne’s plane arrived right on schedule from Amsterdam, they being the only two college kids on break who would go to Amsterdam for Anne Frank and Van Gogh rather than drugs and prostitutes. We head into town, find the address and go to our hotel, only to find the front desk closed with no way to get our keys. The emergency number posted only resulted in an answering machine. We go find another hotel where the extremely nice and helpful (and French too) receptionist calls our hotel for us, talks to the people who decided to pick up this time and gets us the combo to the safe with our keys. Finally in our room, Vanessa and I go on a search for food and find a place that will allow us to get take-out, but take-out on the dinner plates they usually serve on. The guy even gives us a bottle opener for the water we ordered. Dinner was Italian pasta while watching a weird French show that put naked people in public places to see others’ reactions. Fun stuff.

Day 2: Off to Nice on the train. It was about a 2.5 hour trip to Nice from Marseilles, a time even the vaunted TGV didn’t cut down on. The TGV had a run time of 2h34min to Nice, the regional was 2h40min and was half the cost. Regional here we come. While on the train, we watched this little girl running around on the platform, making weird faces. She saw us watching and proceeded to stick her tongue out at us, flicked us off, throw a rock at our window, and then run off once more. She was very entertaining. Once in Nice, past the sex shops directly across from St. Charles Gare (the train station), we find the hotel easily, drop our stuff, and hit the seaside. We walked all over the city, picked up Candace, ate some Cuban food, and went to bed.

Day 3: Off to Monaco. Monaco is a 20 minute train ride from Nice and is 3 Euros round trip. Hard to beat a price like that so off to Monaco we went. We arrived in time to see the changing of the guard in front of the Palace, which, I’m sorry to say, has nothing on the pomp and circumstance of the Buckingham Palace guard changing. After the switch, we grabbed lunch at a place that advertised having sausage. Thinking I would be getting some good sausage, I ordered it, only to have 2 skinny hotdogs w/out a bun being brought to me. Very disappointing. Walked around the rest of Monaco, which didn’t take too long and headed back to Nice for dinner. We went to a kebab place just off Promenade de Anglais. It was amazing. A full plate of greasy meat strips, lettuce and tomato with tzasaki (spelled it way off) sauce and a beer. Best meal of the trip so far.

Day 4: Back to Marseilles. We go back to Marseilles and try with no luck to find an English cinema. After this failure we grab dinner at a little restaurant were our food adventures begin. Looking at the chef’s recommendations, my French fails me and I order what I think to be a beef and chicken meat pie. It wasn’t. What I got instead was a plate of raw meat with a raw egg on top. This was very shocking and when I finally was able to explain to the waiter that this wasn’t what I thought I had ordered and could they please take it back and cook it for me, my table had ran through a little French and a lot of English, Italian, and Spanish getting the concept across. The chef got his revenge however by cooking the meat for me and then pouring the raw egg on top of it. Besides the egg, the meat was great, and had a great spice to it.

Day 5: Walkabout. We spent the next day walking all through Marseilles, of which there is a great deal to walk through. We couldn’t go out to the Castle D’If, made famous by The Count of Monte Cristo, so instead we got crepes and panini on the quay (For some reason the Southern French seem obsessed with Italian. It was a struggle to find places that weren’t Italian restaurants). After walking about, we headed to our room to grab our bags and go to the airport. Our flight was the next morning, but it was so early so to make getting to the airport very difficult and checkout impossible. So we, and most of our flight, instead grabbed benches at the airport. It was a very sleepless night that I only survived by buying Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in a bookstore that had about 10 English language books, most of them being by Clive Cluster. The flight the next morning was a bit delayed because a steward needed to be called in to cover for a sick call, but we arrived on time and took a cab back to Trastevere, our little corner of Rome.

14/3

Today was a classic Roman day.
Woke up and waited for the bus to take me to the Vatican...and waited...and waited.
Toured around the Vatican museum with a friend of Anne's, and the guy at the ticket desk was so bored out of his mind that he didn't care we were obviously not Italian or EU students, so we got a 5 Euro break on ticket prices.
Walked around the museum, lots of old stuff including the restored Sistine Chapel, which is still great.
Tried to go home, got stuck in traffic because a tour buss couldn't manage the turn.
A big traffic jam developed with lots of angry gestures and horn honking.
the driver of the bus and 3 people stuck in the traffic jam got out of their vehicles, looked at the bus, looked at the car, picked up the car, got back in their cars and drove off.
Thank God for Italians, little cars, and no alarm systems.

5/3

The Chinese restaurant down the street from me is great. Not only do Chinese people eat there (a good indication of the quality of the food), but its also dirt cheap. Dumplings are 1 euro for 2, big spring rolls are 1 euro each, and the main dishes are between 4 to 6 Euro. Very cheap and mouth watering. What was weird about it was ordering Chinese food in Italian. Zuppa di won ton, riso bianco, e pollo con veruti mista just sounds weird. The food was great, but a huge damper was that sesame chicken and general tso’s chicken doesn’t exist in Italian Chinese food. Disappointing.

27/2

So today I ran into my first crazy Italian person on the Tram.

The tram was very crowded, as is usual on a weekday morning. I step on the tram, and take my place near the center pole. A woman accidently steps on another woman's foot, about 2 feet from me. The one whose foot was stepped on, rather than shrugging off an accident that happens in a crowded place, started screaming at the woman about her foot. This continued and then just became a constant scream of "Basta! Basta! Basta!" very loudly, very close

Everyone on the tram made a circle of open air around this woman, as big a one as possible, which wasn't so big. I, and about 5 other people got off the tram at the next stop. However, once more people came on, I heard the tram pull away, with the screaming beginning anew.

Not a good experience, but considering how open a tram system it is, this being the first experience in two months is pretty small.

In case I haven't said before, my roommate Time is a snorer, but only when he's on his back. When he is though...sawing is not strong enough of a noise ;) It was bad enough that Saturday night, I actually grabbed my mattress off my bed, carried it to the living room, and slept in their. Unfortunately, this drastic measure didn't occur to me until like 4 in the morning, so Sunday was one long day.

20/2

Its been a bit since I've posted, but oh well. This past weekend, I was feeling a bit lacking in American things, so I went over to Hard Rock cafe. On the way to this bastion of American food, I had to go by the Treve fountain, the Pantheon, and the Spanish Steps. I felt ancient rome shunning me the whole way.

At Hard Rock, I dove into potato skins, a hickory BBQ bacon cheeseburger, and a kronnenbourg, as I don't really drink bud at home anyway. The burger was amazing, with sauce dripping everywhere, all over my hands and plate (and a bit of my face). My table went through 2 (small) bottles of Heinz while there, as ketchup is not an Italian thing, with Italians preferring mayonaisse on their burgers.

The best part of the whole experience was the music. Blasting such favorites like Spin Doctors, CCR, and Arethra Franklin, you knew where you were.

All in all, good times, if a just a little expensive (11 Euro burger for instance). Next time I go out though is to China Garden, a place by me with 4 Euro dishes and eggrolls at a Euro a pop.

12/2

So back from Florence, and David is a rip off.

It’s a wonderful statue and is a real masterpiece. The other few statues in the Accademia are also Michelangelo works, his unfinished sculptures, and are also great to look at.
The problem is that entrance to the museum is 6.50 Euro, and beyond David and the unfinished ones, that’s all there is to see.

This is a tough comparison when seen against the Uffizi museum, which costs 6 Euro and is jammed pack with art. I spent 4 hours walking around the Uffizi and still missed some famous works. I spent an hour in the Accademia, and that was only because I refused to leave after 20 minutes.

After leaving the Accademia, I went to the Duomo, and climbed all 436 steps (I didn’t count, it was posted next to the signs that said people with heart disease shouldn’t climb it) to see the view over all of Forenzi. The climb was a claustrophobics worst nightmare, with people going both directions in spaces narrow enough to barely fit one person with broad shoulders. The ceilings were also barely 6 feet high. It was quite the tight fit.

When going down the stairs, I did however have the opportunity to show off my amazing Italian skills. “Scusi!” I said as I bolted down the stairs. “Gratzie!”
“No worries” he said next to me.
“Thanks!”, I shot back, at which his amazed girlfriend said,
“Oh my God, he spoke English!”
I take it they were having a rough day trying to communicate with Italians in the city.

All in all the trip was a good one, and 30 Euro for a round trip on a decent train was much better than 80 Euro both ways on Eurostar. I’ll save 50 Euro and have my travel take 4 hours more total any day.

8/2

I might have mentioned this snack earlier, but in Italia, a popular one is something called a souppli (spl is off). It's a ball of rice, cheese, and tomato sauce that is fried and eaten like a zeppoli. They also have a potato version called croquette. A place down the road from school has wonderful soupplis and croquettes and a souppli, along with a bottle of water served as my breakfast this morning. As good as it was, I think I earned the shop keepers eternal ire by paying for my 1.80 souppli and water with a 50 euro bill. Don't blame me, blame the atm machines for not giving out 20 Euro bills more frequently.

5/2 continued

After making this post I went to the Vatican with Anne and Vanessa. I'll be slowly posting the pictures, as posting pictures takes a good amount of time. Highlights of the vsit include going past John Paul's Tomb (no pictures allowed), seeing the Pieta (behind bulletproof glass), and going to mass at St. Peter's Basilica.

It was all amazing beautiful, but no trip to the Sistine chapel this time around. I have 4 months or so to hit that one up, so never fear.

5/2

So tonight is the Super Bowl, and I fully intend to be a loud obnoxious American, drinking beer and yelling at the tv mounted on the wall of the Irish pub I'm going to. The game will start at around 12:30 pm, so tonight is going to be a very late night, with classes the next day. It will be rough, but completely worth it to see the amazing commercials, as you all know I don't watch the superbowl for the football.

With that said, it's time for "Daaaaaaa Bearssssss" http://youtube.com/watch?v=51dFVbeO4H8


I predict the bears will win because (and this is a quote from someone I know) "A bear could totally eat a horse in a fight".

2/2

A few nights ago, the Model UN club at school hosted a student vs. professor trivial persuit game. The game itself was uninteresting, with the professors winning 161-153, after the tie breaking challenge of constructing a vehicle to safely cradle an egg being dropped from a 3 meter height.

What was interesting was that following the game and a raffle, at which I didn't win anything, one of the professors got up with his band and performed. They were a Rush cover band and were very good. Following the mini concert (where the drummer was away from his girlfriend on their 10 year anniversary), the professor, members of the MUN club, and I went to a local bar and sat outside for several hours, talking and drinking a few beers.

Drinking with a professor after watching them perform on stage is not something that you can really get in the states, though you could get at least part of it before they raised the drinkning age to 21, and I am told by reliable sources that this sort of thing still happens in Canada.

A weird, but fun thing to do on a Wednesday night.

28/1

So yesterday I took a trip to designer outlets in Tuscani in an effort to find a watch and to possible get some nice clothes really cheap. The clothes was a big issue as I brought very little to wear with me. I have to was my laundry every week, or else suffer wet clothes due to the slow drying time of hanging your wash off a balcony. Europeans don't believe in dryers. These store were about 40-80% discount, so I had some hopes as to what I might be able to find. Anne, Vanessa, and Kate Lucaks also went on this trip.

My shopping was a complete failure, having seen a total of 6 watches the entire day, all of them either monstrously big or so plain as to not justify the rediculous price tags. Anne, Vanessa, and Kate got a few small items, which put together totalled around 60 Euro or so.

This was not the case with other people on the trip. On example was a girl who dropped 700 Euro in a Burberry store, including 400 Euro on a small purse that she "had to have". Knowing that her parents would kill her for her purchases, she bought her mom a concilatory gift, a peace offering of a Gucci purse for another 400 Euro. Remember that the conversion is 1 Euro = $1.33 US, so appeasement gift was about $530, making the grand total in those two stores about $1,500. Chamberlain would be proud.

To this must be added the conversation of the mass of people behind me on the bus. Now, I may very well be a snob, but these intelligence betray by these conversations certainly soothed any worries of self worth brought on my being a thrifty person.

The conversation was littered with such things as calling a movie named Step Up a modern day Center Stage, which is itself a movie released at the most 5 years ago. Talking about how they spent 400 Euro on pot only to discover that they had actually bought a great deal of iceberg lettuce wrapped in sarran wrap, "and it wasn't even oregano or baby greens or nice leaves, it was iceberg lettuce!".

Italy and the European Union also was problematic for them, as why can't everyone just use the US dollar, why does other currency even exist, and why can't everyone in Europe just speak English. Italy is also too cold of a place, with 45-55 degree weather being too cold and a general agreement that they should have studied in Figi.

The "cold" weather would be great for skiing trips to the Alps however, as one girl had previously gone skiing "like 3 or 4 times" and as such was "an expert and totally prepared for the Alps".

The day was a failure in that I found nothing either nice or below 200 euro, and I think I may have become stupider having listened to that for 3 hours to the stores and 3 hours back from them. Call me a snob but dear god please get me a copy of the New York Times. I have a lot of damage to repair.

26/1

Potato and onion pizza is amazing...
That is all

25/1

In case anyone didn't know, college kids can be amused by the silliest things. Especially after 3 gigantic bottles of Peroni. Last night, after making a wonderful dinner of seared chicken on top of fried oninons with garlic, orgenano, and basil on top of spaghetti (made by yours truely), my apartment and assorted others played games.

We started with F&ck the Dealer, a great drinking game. For those of you who don't know, one person is the dealer. The other people have to guess the top card of the deck. They have two tries, and after the first guess, the dealer has to say higher and lower. The discarded cards are placed faceup on the table. If they get it right, the dealer drinks. If they get it wrong, the guesser drinks. Three wrong turns in a row and the dealer is switched to the right. It's great to be dealer early, because by the end, it becomes almost impossible to get the wrong answer. We somehow managed to get through 2/3 of the deck on the first dealer.

We then moved onto a variety of other strange games including one where the goal is to curse as fast a possible. It was one drunk evening, and though Italians don't make the best beer in the world, its still passible at 2 Euro for a 33 oz bottle.

I've also decided that Prego tomatoe sauce is really pretentious. I buy their product and they have the gaul to say You're welcome on the damn label. Prego sauce needs to be renamed to Gratzie sauce. Same language, and much more polite.

24/1

So the Budde clan can rejoice. I finally have a religeous figure as a teacher. Father Philip, a gray haired american priest with a masters in philiosophy is teaching me media ethics this semester. He's a funny guy from what i have seen and the class itself looks like it will be interesting. With all the priests and nuns running around this place, it only makes sense that one or two would end up in the classroom.

The rain in Rome is rather annoying. One minute nothing, the next a downpour, and the next nothing. It makes choosing what to wear and whether to bring an umbrella a bit difficut, not to mention the fact that my umbrella broke the other day. It was like $5 from costcuters, so I got what I paid for.

21/1

So it seems really weird and very anti student, but thank god for school beginning again. I felt at such loose ends this week, just waiting for school to begin. but it is nice to have some sort of schedule again. wierd.

So Roma don't really neuter their dogs or cats and strays are everwhere. they are very nice, but they deficate all over the streets. its a poop alert 24/7. The Italians need Bob Barker.

Also, on the tram, people peform for money, be it with an accordian, a violin, singing, etc. and today i heard three of them colaberating. It was...interesting...and it made me wince. their instruments weren't in tune anyway, and certainly not with each other. how do they expect to get tipped, unless it's a "here, take this to stop playing!"

lunch today was pasta with tomato sauce and chunks of bacon...weird, but tasty. It's dinner as well.

first weekend

so the first weekend in Rome came and went, and I did...nothing much at all. Still getting used to the language, the time zone, and my rediculously sore feet. Rome is a small city, and because of that, I'm walking all over the damn place. forget needing to exercise or watch what i eat so i don't gain 40 lbs. my hour and 1/2 of walking each day is gonna have me loose weight if i'm not careful.

as requested by mike,
eating is basically me cooking now as i did the first few days eating from restaurants and small tratorias around the city. that gets expensive though, so many trips to standa, a discount grocery, and lots of poor cooking on my part for the rest of the time i'm here. I'm getting very good at chopping up salami and mixing it with olive oil and fresh mozzerella in a bowl though. throw in some fresh basil and its a good big snack or lunch.

one class down, 4 more to go, and 2 of them later today.
Caoi

Adresses and stuff like like:

I'm living at
Via Ambrogio Traversari 72 Scala B Int 10

mailing adress is
(my name)
John Cabot University
Via della Lungara 233
00165 Rome
Italy

No packages, and nothing bigger than the standard letter size. email me about how to get me a package if you are planning on sending one. its a big more complicated a procedure.

Going to the Colluseum later today

18/1/07

Hello all. I'm still trying to get adjusted to the time differences. It's a lot of fun, being tired at 8:30 and trying to go to bed at 10, but not being able to until 4 am, because 4 am rome is 10pm in the states. grrrr. well, running on 4 hours of sleep and running in the morning should make me pass out.
Just had lunch at masse cafe, an "Indiana Jones" which was mozzerella, ham, and mushroom sandwhich. The sandwhich was a quessadilla. So i was siiting in the Trastevere section of Rome, eating a ham cheese and mushroom quessadilla. weird.
Rome is a really small city, my half hour run along the Tiber took me from the outskirts to Campo de Fiori, a good quarter or third of the city. while running, i did not get hit by a car or by a vespa, though i think that was from pure luck rather than anything else.
The Chiquita company needs to sell juice in the States, and all over. The blood orange juice is amazing.

16/1/07
My apartment is really nice. Currently I’m roomed with 2 AU kids, Aaron and Marcello. Marcello is fluent in Italian, so I can mooch off him for a bit. Campus is a 30 min walk away, not too bad, but it will suck in foul weather. I live about 200 feet above the main rode in my section of town, Trestevere.
What’s good about that is that on this street runs a tram that will turn Via de Trestevere from a 20 minute walk to a 5 minute ride, leaving a small 10 minute walk to campus from the station. One guy from AU who is living by me, Frank had ridden the tram several times the earlier day, and did as the Romans do, which basically means, walk on and sit down, ignoring the random performers on the tram (one was playing the violin today), and not paying. So armed with this knowledge, my friends Anne, Vanessa, Frank, and myself hop onto the tram and ride it to school. What we didn’t know is that you do indeed pay for a ticket, just not on the train but at a Tabacchi shop. The police will randomly sweep trams and if you don’t have a ticket or have not validated your ticket, they can fine you up to 40 Euro on the spot. So, I’m gonna get a monthly ticket for 30 Euro as soon as I can.
As far as living goes, Vanessa and Anne live together, and live a brisk 5 minute walk down the hill from me. Kate lives a block over from them, so I have three solid friends within spitting distance. Two of Vanessa and Anne’s roommates seem to be rather cliquey sorority girls, so that will be a tense living arrangement.
Lunch today consisted on mushroom and proscuito pizza and two glasses of red wine at a café by campus called La Scaletta. It was very good and the bottle, split among 4 people, was very cheap, only 10 Euros. Next time we will go with the house wine though, as we are told that they are very cheap and usually quite good.
Not much to report today. Filled out forms and got crazy tired.

Leaving

I leave for the airport in half an hour. I hope I have everything, and if i don't, I'll have 3 hours at the airport to realize it. An 8 hour flight awaits, so cross your fingers that I don't end up next to little children or annoying smelly people. Anne, Kate and I should have a good flight if we can get seated with each other, and if not, i'm sure a bit of arm twisting and smiling at the counter workers can work something out.