Art and Indigestion
It's been a long couple of days full of traveling and various adventures. For starters, Tommy and I visited Venice and saw the main attraction: the church that was filmed as the outside of the Venice library in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade! I knew it as soon as I saw it. Tommy and I stopped in the square there to have a bite to eat, and I prayed we would see Indy come climbing out of the sewer, but to no avail. I also helped a German woman translate the word "ham" while she was trying to decide which pizza to get her daughter! Hooray for multi-linguality (-lingualism?). That was followed by a quest for St. Mark's Square, a lot of pigeon chasing, ooh-ing and aah-ing, and picture taking.
We got in line to go to the top of the tower at St. Mark's and my ears perked up as the sound of German reached them. I could hear the middle-aged couple behind us speaking in German and spent the remainder of the time in the line debating with myself over whether or not to strike up a conversation. I finally got up the nerve as we were getting in the elevator. As it turned out, they were from Dresden, and we talked about that city and Vienna and how funny the Viennese accent is (they even laughed at my impression of it)! It was a major victory to chalk up on my German-learning fuselage. Funny how much German I managed to speak while in Italy...
Tommy and I proceeded to be appropriately awed by the beauty of the Venice sunset and then to try and take a shortcut back to the train station, ultimately getting lost in the dark, labyrinthine alleyways and canals of the city. We did manage to orient ourselves, occident ourselves, and find our way back (with only a little loss of sanity). We ate at a traditional trattoria, slept soundly, and headed out the next day on an 8-hour train ride through the countryside of nothern Italy and southern Austria (southern Austrian was SPECTACUlAR). I discovered that I really love travelling by train and getting to see all the hamlets, castles, and fortresses that dot the contryside. We even rode through patches of serious falling snow. A few times we were right in the middle of a mini-blizzard and then we would go through a tunnel in a mountainside and emerge a minute later on the other side, blizzard-free. It was wild. I also met and chatted with a Viennese woman headed back home with her daughter. As it turns out, she worked for a film company and had visited New Jersey to film a WWII movie called "Daughters of Vienna" or "Daughters of Austria." More Deutsch success!
Back in Vienna for two days, I got an opportunity to see a traveling friend from back home, recieve my long lost luggage, get a haircut (thank God), meet Michael at the airport, and show him around the city. Michael, Tommy, and I mustered out around four in the morning to get to the airport for our flight at 6:40. The only complication was that I had woken up at around two with a bad stomach ache, which I managed to ignore in order to get back to sleep and which was mildly subdued when we woke up. However, by the time we reached the airport, I felt like udder bilge-water or something else appropriately nasty. I ended up yarking in the WC at the airport, on the tarmac in front of the plane, and, halfway into the flight, in the toilet on the plane. Nothing like following up a week of traveling with a cold with some stomach virus.
The good news was that I manged to stomach some quiche once we got to Paris, and after a long wait in the cafe below our hostel and a good three hour nap (for all of us; we were all exhausted) I felt good enough to visit the Eifel Tower at night, take a few damn beautiful photos if I do say so myself, and miss Megan something fierce.
Today, I felt better, though still not 100%. It rained for a good portion of the day but, as the apparently say, "If the sun shines in Paris, it's shining everywhere." Rain and shaky stomach were not enough to get in our way, however. Tommy, Michael and I saw the Louvre, including Mrs. Mona Lisa, if only from something of a distance due to the vast gaggle of folks crowded around the suprisingly tiny thing. We also saw Notre Dame and failed to find the tomb of Napoleon. We were successful in getting our shoes wet, too. But our spirits were never dampened and we shal march on, somehow. What an interesting vacation this is turning out to be...
We got in line to go to the top of the tower at St. Mark's and my ears perked up as the sound of German reached them. I could hear the middle-aged couple behind us speaking in German and spent the remainder of the time in the line debating with myself over whether or not to strike up a conversation. I finally got up the nerve as we were getting in the elevator. As it turned out, they were from Dresden, and we talked about that city and Vienna and how funny the Viennese accent is (they even laughed at my impression of it)! It was a major victory to chalk up on my German-learning fuselage. Funny how much German I managed to speak while in Italy...
Tommy and I proceeded to be appropriately awed by the beauty of the Venice sunset and then to try and take a shortcut back to the train station, ultimately getting lost in the dark, labyrinthine alleyways and canals of the city. We did manage to orient ourselves, occident ourselves, and find our way back (with only a little loss of sanity). We ate at a traditional trattoria, slept soundly, and headed out the next day on an 8-hour train ride through the countryside of nothern Italy and southern Austria (southern Austrian was SPECTACUlAR). I discovered that I really love travelling by train and getting to see all the hamlets, castles, and fortresses that dot the contryside. We even rode through patches of serious falling snow. A few times we were right in the middle of a mini-blizzard and then we would go through a tunnel in a mountainside and emerge a minute later on the other side, blizzard-free. It was wild. I also met and chatted with a Viennese woman headed back home with her daughter. As it turns out, she worked for a film company and had visited New Jersey to film a WWII movie called "Daughters of Vienna" or "Daughters of Austria." More Deutsch success!
Back in Vienna for two days, I got an opportunity to see a traveling friend from back home, recieve my long lost luggage, get a haircut (thank God), meet Michael at the airport, and show him around the city. Michael, Tommy, and I mustered out around four in the morning to get to the airport for our flight at 6:40. The only complication was that I had woken up at around two with a bad stomach ache, which I managed to ignore in order to get back to sleep and which was mildly subdued when we woke up. However, by the time we reached the airport, I felt like udder bilge-water or something else appropriately nasty. I ended up yarking in the WC at the airport, on the tarmac in front of the plane, and, halfway into the flight, in the toilet on the plane. Nothing like following up a week of traveling with a cold with some stomach virus.
The good news was that I manged to stomach some quiche once we got to Paris, and after a long wait in the cafe below our hostel and a good three hour nap (for all of us; we were all exhausted) I felt good enough to visit the Eifel Tower at night, take a few damn beautiful photos if I do say so myself, and miss Megan something fierce.
Today, I felt better, though still not 100%. It rained for a good portion of the day but, as the apparently say, "If the sun shines in Paris, it's shining everywhere." Rain and shaky stomach were not enough to get in our way, however. Tommy, Michael and I saw the Louvre, including Mrs. Mona Lisa, if only from something of a distance due to the vast gaggle of folks crowded around the suprisingly tiny thing. We also saw Notre Dame and failed to find the tomb of Napoleon. We were successful in getting our shoes wet, too. But our spirits were never dampened and we shal march on, somehow. What an interesting vacation this is turning out to be...
posted by Rob at 11:20 PM
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