no, i swear, this blog ain't dead..

I have never been one to be very introspective. I recognize the importance of sitting down for a moment, with whatever beverage you feel like drinking at that same moment and just relax while watching the world go on by; assembling some thoughts while you do so, trying to find some correlation and motifs between random events and occurances. But, you cannot do that while in a foriegn country. You really cannot, this blog is a testament to that former notion.

It is always after the fact of whatever you do that you look back and expound certain moments, certain minute details that end up becoming bigger than the whole great idea to begin with.

"That is the function of memory.."

But I ramble, and this should be lighthearted.. so how about some pictures from the last time I updated.. to now.

Enjoy.

I will be honest: I am pretty pooped from this week with mid-terms and having to deal with the Italian Post Office. Maybe it is more of the latter..

Next week begins the 4 country in one week extravaganza: Belgium, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and The Netherlands. High anticipating next week.

But really, what is this blog without pictures; those Sicily pictures I should get soon hopefully. For the meantime though, I have some pictures from Monte Cassino which are fantastic..

Enjoy!

don't give me that jive.. what, non perlo inglese?

3 weeks.

It has been a while, hasn't it?

The highlights have been as followed:

The first weekend I traveled to Sicily for the festival for St. Agatha. It was an eleven hour trainride which was a lot nicer than it sounds. Although, every public transportating veichle in Italy smells like stagnant body odor and tomatoe sauce; but that is besides the point.

Speaking of which, to digress for a bit, the Met.Ro - subway of Rome - is always an experience, especially when it comes to getting to know Italians. I did not know his name, he was about a foot smaller than me and most likely twice my age. But on that faithful day in the absurdly packed Met.Ro car, I got to know the nameless Italian man very well. He knew of his expensive cologne but seemed to be oblivious to body deoderant. And then I kicked off a gypsy child who kept bumping into me.

It is an experience needless to say. I can't wait for when it gets warmer and the body odors really get to flourish.. but, back to sicily.

We arrived in Catania in Sicily and stayed in a pleasant hostel. You might think, 'Oh that movie Hostel, hostels are crazy watch your stuff blah blah blah screwdriver in the mouth.' It wasn't like that at all. Sure, at night it was cold and damp and the random Italian guy in our room smelled like wet dog and we were woken up at 6am by loud fireworks every morning, but it was a pleasant experience. Really, it was.

Catania is a gorgeous town and the people were quite friendly. The locals were wearing funny white suits to celebrate St. Agatha. It was the big deal. In Sicily, they take their ciesta very seriously. If you do not know what that is, ciesta is the time of day - around 1pm to 4pm - where Italians and most of Europe take a break from their strenuous 25 hour work week, go home have a nice lunch and nap. Now, this is huge for sicilians. So much, that I was shoved out of a store so they can close and go on ciesta.

There was candy, everywhere. You couldn't escape candy. If you like candy, you will like Sicily.

Other than that, Sicily was good (pictures will be up soon).

Between Sicily and the next excusrion, Monte Cassino, I explored Rome in my own little way. It still has been too cold to sit outside the Cafes, but I did have the opportunity to goto my first Rugby match: England v. Italy. We did not plan to go to this Rugby match. It was very spontaneous.

We arrive at Flaminio and we are observing our surroundings. We notice that english words are being said more frequently than we are accustomed to. Plus, there are beer bottles everywhere. We find out, the English Roses are playing Italy. We decide, hey, we do not have anything to do, let us follow the crowd. So we did..

We end up talking to two British dudes who present to us their theories about America. They ask us if we are familiar with Biblical scriptures, which we are somewhat. They ask as about Noah's Ark, the Ark with the animals and we respond yes, yes we know of this story. He continues to say that all the animals, had to shit on the boat and of course shit cannot stay on a boat for it smells and attracts disease. So, Noah being the smart man he is, decides to shovel the collective animal shit off the side of the boat. The resulting pile of shit would be discovered by Christopher Cololmbus in 1492 and would be called 'America.'

After this regaling of story, we arrive to the stadium and scalpers ask if we need tickets. I am intrigued, curious, so I ask,

'Cuanti per tre?' How much for three?
'Cinquentacinque per uno.' 55 for one.
'45.'
'Che?'
'45.'
'50. 50 va bene, si?'
I begin to walk away when he says.
'Ok ok, good, 45.'

And we did not have exact change so we got a further discount on the tickets. Now we figured these tickets couldn't be good. They are from scalpers after all. However, they proved to be fantastic tickets, 5 rows off the field near the center. Unfortunately, we did not have a camera on us, but we are sure to go to another game soon, actually March 18th: Italy v. Scotland.

The last major event to happen was visiting Monte Cassino. I initially did not have any interest in going, however round trip tickets were 13 euro so I said to myself.. well, I forget what I said to myself but I am sure it was along the lines of 'CHEAP!' and jumped on the train.

Cassino was a very quaint town; only about 30,000 people. We went into a Pizza place there and ordered some food from a pizza guy who was from Jersey. Jersey, and out of all places in Italy he is in Cassino.
From the town, we travled up the mountain to a monestary which according to my history buff friend was bombed repeatedly during World War II and was a battle site between the Nazis and Americans. They rebuilt the monestary three times during the course of the war and up to now.

The church was gorgeous. Gregorian chant filled the space and the sunlight spilled in from the stained glass in the front. Simply gorgeous..

When it was time to leave, we missed the last bus down the mountain. So, what do we do, eh? We go up to a Carabineri, which is the street police force in Italy, and ask when the next bus is. He tells us, last bus has left. He continues, I could call up a couple squad cars to drive you guys down, but I do not want to do that (typical upstanding Carabineri). We points to some people near their car and asks (orders) them to take us down the mountain. Essentially, we hitchhiked back down Monte Cassino.

Other than all that, Roma has been good. This weekend I will be in foggy London town to see the other Cosgrove in Europe and Mr. Jason Eng who is studying at CUNY London.

I should have pictures up ASAP, ASAP. Unforunately they will not be my own until I work out my package malfunction. This package malfunction is brought to us by the Italian post office, who suck. Awesomely. How do they keep my package in Milon when it says ROME on the address?

Until then, until then, arrivederci, arrivederla, ciao, buon giorno,

Chris

i have a bunch of pictures of rome (enjoy)

545

that is the number of steps it took to get to the top of St. Peter's Basillica.

the pictures speak for themselves

walking to class.. oh look, the vatican walls..

where i am in rome is where queens is in new york city. it is out of the way from what you would call the "center of rome" or manhattan where all the areas that evoke images of rome would be. spanish steps, pantheon, colliseum, all that stuff.

however, i did get to see the spanish steps, pantheon and treve fountain the other day and they were fantastic. it is like people thousands of years ago with nothing to do though to themselves, "well, i am bored, i think i will build something magnificant today and in the future when people walk by my creation they will say to themselves, wow, that is impressive!"

needless to say, they were on point.

we also saw the changing of the guards at the italian government building. it was a lot of pomp and cirumstance. they need to make up for the poor showing in actually battles i suppose.

ZING!

i would love to post pictures but a las, my digital camera is still pooping out so this is just a text entry. other than the touristy sites i have frequented the open air market they have in my neighborhood. it feels like nyc in the late 1800s with all the shops open. whatever food you need, you can get and it is much cheaper than the supermercado. five apples, 1 euro, good price.

of course, my mime has improved but the italian is running along with it. you truly learn a language more when you practice it in a country that only speaks that language.

as of now, it is only functional italian. i did ask my art professor how to say something that expresses immense displeasure towards an object or person, essentially how to curse. i don't think she was ready for such a question, but it is absolutely necessary especially with the way italians drive. makes some drivers in new york look like 80 year old woman behind the wheel.

other than that, getting use to the european ciestra [sic] which is during the day around 1pm to 4pm where most shops and stores close to go home and have lunch and nap. that would be nice to have back in america.

that is all for now, again, hopefully pictures start popping up soon; i have to see if i can get all the ones some of the other people took when we went into the center of rome.

arrivederci, hugs n kisses,

cos

from astute germans to crazy driving italians: my journey to rome

i forgot that change set off the metal detector.

the beginning of my journey involved me being thoroughly searched for any type of contraband or bombs or anything. my parents in the distance looked over in concern but i was able to flash them my, "hey, it's ok! i'm studying abroad in rome and even though i am being thoroughly bodily checked by a big, burly aiport security guard, it is awesome!" smile. i don't remember the guard being big, burly.. but it adds to the statement i guess.

i had a choice when choosing flights. either take british airlines on a flight with some people also going to rome from stj or save 300 dollars and go on a spirit journey. if you know me well, at all, the latter was the immediate choice.

i flew over using Lufthansa. it is run by ze germans and i must say, they run a fine airline. the first flight over from JFK to frankfurt was an alright flight though i had a combined sleep time of 1 1/2 hours.

not that it wasn't comfortable just it is unsettling to be able to look at a tv monitor and it shows where you are on the trip and your speed and altitude and distance away. for some odd reason it creeped me out.

the second part of the trip was lovely since the fliht was only half booked. i do not think i ever felt any greater sense of joy when i had a seat open next to me. it really was that fantastic.

the frankfurt airport which was where i had my lay-over before the rome flight had a goofy set up. initially, i thought i was leaving the airport for i had them check my passport and stamp it. i was wrong; but initially i thought i was screwed because i had to go through airport security again, which was funny because i was asked to have one of my bags checked. the security guard was infactuated by my game boy advance and binoculars which snap on. i never seen a happy or at least amused german up to this point of the trip.

but it seems like if you need to get to any other section of the airport i had to go through security. need to use the ATM? security check. want some food? security check. i wasn't annoyed, in fact i became a pro at the procedure.

i arrive at the fucimino international airport, collect my luggage and head outside to get a taxi. the taxis are quite nice and on the trip to my apartments i experienced italian driving. i'm surprised we didn't get into at least 7 accidents. i was amused though that in the right hand-lane in america you usually just go around the slowpoke but in italy, they get out of the way. also, i did not see a blinker used once. the flashers though were used a lot more.


i managed to take a couple photos of so you can see what the apartment is like:





i would take more but i have the worst digital camera known to man. "card error" how the hell does that happen? i say that has been the only problem so far on this journey; electronic items. the voltage convertor i purchased is only 50 watts, and 50 watts does not charge a laptop. i've been doing this entry on 5 percent battery since the charger manages to keep the battery steady. hopefully both situations are rectified soon.

other than that, this blog should be updated regularly on my hijinks and other shenanigans rome-related. arrivederci!