We’ve been in Tunisia for a few days now. First we flew north from Rome to Milan to then turn right around and fly south to Tunis. And even though it was the same plane for both flights, we get off, go through passport control then get back on the same plane. Once we arrived in Tunis, the 21 of us who have US passports got through passport control without a problem. However the one of us with a Cypriot passport did not know that his required a visa to get into the country. So after an extra hour of waiting we got on our bus that is not big enough for our group so we have to fill two seats with our luggage and pack ourselves into the rest. Finally, at 1:30 am we checked into the hotel and went right to sleep because we had a 7:30 am wakeup call..
Besides all of our craziness, I really like Tunisia as a country. I thought it might be really hot and brown but it is much cooler than Rome was and there is green grass and wild flowers everywhere. Egypt in January was much hotter than this. All of my encounters with Tunisians have been great too. From what I can tell they are a very friendly and welcoming people. The to primary languages of Tunisia are French and Arabic. Kairouan, where we spent last night, was the first city settled in Northern Africa by Muslims. It was founded by the Fatimid Dynasty in the 8th century. Then Tunisia was a French colony until the 1950s. Our first guide explained to us that everyone grows up speaking Arabic then at age 8 in school the begin learning English. At age 11 students begin English and at 16 they can choose between German and Italian. Since school is compulsory until age 16, a lot of Tunisians know English which is really nice. But it’s also been fun to use the little bit of French that I know to communicate as well.
Our second night in Tunis seemed at first like it was about to be as crazy as the first. A small group of us walked around the area of our hotel for a while. We got some really good crepes. I went with a simple chocolate and almond but some other people tried cheese and tuna and egg. The crepe woman actually just fried an egg on top of the crepe. Tunisians love to put egg and tuna on EVERYTHING.
When we were ready for dinner, we had a hard time finding a place that wasn’t Italian. There is a pretty heavy Italian influence in Tunis. We settled on a French restaurant that looked pretty good. Once everyone had decided, the waiter who already didn’t look very happy about us being there, explained in French to us that he would not allow us to order just one thing from the menu but that we would each have to get at least two. Dan Van luckily speaks French pretty well argued with him for a while and then we decided to leave. Beeston got a recommendation from a guy with a Mohawk on the side walk to go to the next block and we would find good food with better atmosphere. The man with the Mohawk was right. We found a fantastic Tunisian restaurant. The eight of us were the only non-Tunisians in there. They gave us several dips and olives to try. I got couscous with chicken and we tried a traditional dish brik which is a really thin dough filled with egg, parsley, and tuna. The brik wasn’t my favorite but the couscous was delicious. After dinner they brought us mint tea.
Last night we stayed in a five star hotel, which we haven’t done since Egypt. The hotel was called Hotel La Kasbah because it is built into an old Arab fortress, Kasbah. It was almost as good as our “authentically palatial” Egyptian hotel experience. The hotel is in Kairouan which is the fourth most holy city in Islam, behind Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. We saw the Great Mosque there this morning. It is much simpler than others we have seen, especially in Istanbul but it is very important for Muslims. Prayer in Kaiouan is projected over the PA system far more than five times per day. I’m not sure why they do it so often here but I think I heard it 6 or 7 times in the 15 hours we were there. It also was much louder than any other place we have heard it and it sounded more like someone was dying rather than praying. It was special to be woken up by it twice before 5:30 am.
One thing that seems to be pretty consistent about Tunisia and we have not seen anywhere else is the handheld bidet phenomenon. Every hotel we’ve stayed at in Italy has had a bidet. However in Tunisia every bathroom, public and private, has a hose on the wall with a knob for water. We have visited some really disgusting bathrooms and some five star ones and they all have them
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Via Croquette 4/18/07
This afternoon we finished a little early so Erika, Anna Mar and I decided to go shopping east of Rome where we thought we would be able to get a few things to update our wardrobes for the newly hot weather. None of us were exactly sure how to get here but we were ready for an adventure. We quickly figured out where to catch the right train and got on it no problem. Once we got to Lunghezza, we figured out which direction the mall was but we weren’t sure which bus to take so we let the 314 drive by while we went to ask which to take. As it turns out, the 314 was the bus we needed and to our surprise it was a 45 minute wait for the next one.
We debated while we were waiting if we should just get back on the train since we were supposed to be back for a birthday dinner celebration at 7 but the right bus finally came so we decided to go. Even though we were on the right bus, it never actually stopped at the Roma Est mall and we drove right by it. For miles driving away we saw “Roma Est Arividerci” (sp?) signs.
Luckily though we found new quicker way back to the city by taking another bus and then the metro. It was pretty exciting to know that we could figure out how to get where we needed to go from a random town outside of the city. And we made it back in time for dinner.
We debated while we were waiting if we should just get back on the train since we were supposed to be back for a birthday dinner celebration at 7 but the right bus finally came so we decided to go. Even though we were on the right bus, it never actually stopped at the Roma Est mall and we drove right by it. For miles driving away we saw “Roma Est Arividerci” (sp?) signs.
Luckily though we found new quicker way back to the city by taking another bus and then the metro. It was pretty exciting to know that we could figure out how to get where we needed to go from a random town outside of the city. And we made it back in time for dinner.
"Be careful not to fall off, but no one really cares anyway"
So I’m pretty far behind on updating my blog. My friend Rosemary, who is tudyign abroad in Paris this semester met me in Rome last week for her Spring Break. I’m pretty sure that things could not have worked out better because she got to spend the week with us in Sorrento and come to all of our sites with us. It was wonderful for me to get to spend so much time with her and have her experience my crazy life that I’ve had for the last three months. Plus, she blended in so well with our group. I think everyone enjoyed having a new face because otherwise we only see each other ALL THE TIME.
Buona Pasqua 4/8/07
On Easter morning we all got up early. Most of the group was wanting to go to St. Peter’s Square for the Pope’s service. We took the metro down to the Vatican and arrived around 8. I was expecting the square to be packed and us to have to stand in a crowd for two hours until the service started and then as long as the service took. When we got there though, most of the chairs they had set up were still empty, so I figured they were for important people and we wouldn’t be able to get in. there were several checkpoints we had to cross to get to the various sections of seating. Security was minimal at the Vatican. Each one when went through, I was sure we were going to be turned away. But the guards kept letting us through. By the time we stopped we were in the very first section of seating; the next closest section to action was the stage where the pope sat.
We had a few hours to wait before the service started so we watched St. Peter’s fill up with people. Twenty minutes after we arrived, the entire square behind us had filled. There were people from all over the world there. Everyone brought flags of their countries and they were waving them all high. It seemed more like the world cup then the Catholic Church’s most important service of the year. There were lots of South American flags- Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil. I saw a Lebanese flag, there were a bunch of Ukrainians, next to them people from Germany and people from Luxembourg. There was also an American family with three daughters who brought their priest with them. There were also lots flags from the region in Germany where Benedicto is from.
I didn’t really expect the pope to do much, just to wave from the window. But he lead the entire service for two hours. There was a large choir and readings in Italian, French, Spanish and English. The pope spoke in Latin and Italian. At the end of the service he spoke for about twenty minutes with a prayer in Italian. I could understand the gist of it because words like “terrismo” and “Darfur” translate pretty easily. He prayed for all the regions of the world in trouble. And at the very end, the best part of the entire service, Benedicto said “Happy Easter” in probably 30 different languages. It was incredible because everyone cheered with their flags whenever he spoke in their country’s language. Apparently Korean sounds funny to everyone in the world because when he read that the Koreans cheered and everyone else laughed. Whenever he would pause for a little while, everyone waved their flags higher and a lot of people shouted the “Benedicto” cheer. There is a cheer for the pope!!
Easter service at the Vatican has been my favorite experience so far on this trip even though I did really miss Easter at home.
Ro in Rome
The day after Easter, Rosemary got to Rome after 18 hours on an overnight train from Paris. We went and checked into her hostel, which is really close to our hotel in Rome before going on the fastest tour of Rome in history. Since we were leaving the next day for Sorrento, we had a lot to see in one afternoon. We jumped on the metro and went to the Colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the Imperial Fora, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the Vatican. The St. Peter’s were still set up for the Easter service; it was cool to see all the chairs without anyone in them. That night Rosemary met the whole group over Indian food for Erika’s birthday.
On Tuesday, we took the train to Sorrento in southern Italy. Rosemary got to stay in a triple with Nicole and I for all six of our nights there and she went to all of our sites with us all week. Her enthusiasm for it was a little greater than ours most of the time because she hasn’t been doing it everyday for three months. From Sorrento, we took the train every morning up the Bay of Naples to see Pompeii, Herculaneum, Naples Museum, Paestum. I had my two reports, which I had to prepare over Christmas break, back to back in Pompeii and Naples Museum. My site report was on a Pompeian villa with first Pompeian style paintings. Laney’s handout art project went well. Everyone enjoyed it! The next day I did my paper presentation on Eros (sexuality). I presented right after our appointment in the Secret Room of the museum where all of the finds from various brothels are displayed. I practiced it on the train on the way to Naples and the man next to me definitely spoke English because he looked very uncomfortable as I talked.
After the museum in Naples, a few of us decided to go get pizza because Naples is the home of pizza (which I didn’t know). We walked around for a while and ran into one that looked like a hole in the wall but it was called Il Presidente and had an American flag on the sign. Usually that’s a major deterrent but it still looked good. As it turns out though, they changed the name after Bill Clinton visited and the basement was packed with Italians getting lunch. We were the only English speakers in there and the pizza was AMAZING!
4/15/07
The fifteenth was out last scheduled free day until France which worked our perfectly because it was also Rosemary’s 21st birthday. We had mimosas with blood orange juice in the morning then we took the ferry to Capri for the day. The island was beautiful even thought it was pretty crowded. Ro, Anne, Jess B, Scott and I got tickets for the Blue Grotto. We got on a boat with a Japanese tour group. Outside the grotto, we had to get into smaller boats to go inside. All five of us went in one boat so the girls had to squish together on one end. Going in we had to duck as low as we could because the boat just barely fit under the entrance. That part was a little frightening! But inside the grotto was absolutely beautiful. The light next to the water was such a bright blue. The tour guide tried to entertain us with singing but that didn’t detract too much from the experience.
We spent the rest of the afternoon between the beach where we had a picnic and the upper town which was full of designer shops. That really wasn’t our scene so we got some gelato and headed back down.
4/16/07
On Monday, we got the devastating news about Tech. It was Rosemary’s last night with us in Rome. Vincoli told us when he saw it flashed on the Italian news. I didn’t think that I would ever be reading about Blacksburg, Va in a European newspaper but the story covered the front pages of Roman newspapers for two days. Ro reported that the same was true in Dublin papers as well.
Buona Pasqua 4/8/07
On Easter morning we all got up early. Most of the group was wanting to go to St. Peter’s Square for the Pope’s service. We took the metro down to the Vatican and arrived around 8. I was expecting the square to be packed and us to have to stand in a crowd for two hours until the service started and then as long as the service took. When we got there though, most of the chairs they had set up were still empty, so I figured they were for important people and we wouldn’t be able to get in. there were several checkpoints we had to cross to get to the various sections of seating. Security was minimal at the Vatican. Each one when went through, I was sure we were going to be turned away. But the guards kept letting us through. By the time we stopped we were in the very first section of seating; the next closest section to action was the stage where the pope sat.
We had a few hours to wait before the service started so we watched St. Peter’s fill up with people. Twenty minutes after we arrived, the entire square behind us had filled. There were people from all over the world there. Everyone brought flags of their countries and they were waving them all high. It seemed more like the world cup then the Catholic Church’s most important service of the year. There were lots of South American flags- Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil. I saw a Lebanese flag, there were a bunch of Ukrainians, next to them people from Germany and people from Luxembourg. There was also an American family with three daughters who brought their priest with them. There were also lots flags from the region in Germany where Benedicto is from.
I didn’t really expect the pope to do much, just to wave from the window. But he lead the entire service for two hours. There was a large choir and readings in Italian, French, Spanish and English. The pope spoke in Latin and Italian. At the end of the service he spoke for about twenty minutes with a prayer in Italian. I could understand the gist of it because words like “terrismo” and “Darfur” translate pretty easily. He prayed for all the regions of the world in trouble. And at the very end, the best part of the entire service, Benedicto said “Happy Easter” in probably 30 different languages. It was incredible because everyone cheered with their flags whenever he spoke in their country’s language. Apparently Korean sounds funny to everyone in the world because when he read that the Koreans cheered and everyone else laughed. Whenever he would pause for a little while, everyone waved their flags higher and a lot of people shouted the “Benedicto” cheer. There is a cheer for the pope!!
Easter service at the Vatican has been my favorite experience so far on this trip even though I did really miss Easter at home.
Ro in Rome
The day after Easter, Rosemary got to Rome after 18 hours on an overnight train from Paris. We went and checked into her hostel, which is really close to our hotel in Rome before going on the fastest tour of Rome in history. Since we were leaving the next day for Sorrento, we had a lot to see in one afternoon. We jumped on the metro and went to the Colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the Imperial Fora, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the Vatican. The St. Peter’s were still set up for the Easter service; it was cool to see all the chairs without anyone in them. That night Rosemary met the whole group over Indian food for Erika’s birthday.
On Tuesday, we took the train to Sorrento in southern Italy. Rosemary got to stay in a triple with Nicole and I for all six of our nights there and she went to all of our sites with us all week. Her enthusiasm for it was a little greater than ours most of the time because she hasn’t been doing it everyday for three months. From Sorrento, we took the train every morning up the Bay of Naples to see Pompeii, Herculaneum, Naples Museum, Paestum. I had my two reports, which I had to prepare over Christmas break, back to back in Pompeii and Naples Museum. My site report was on a Pompeian villa with first Pompeian style paintings. Laney’s handout art project went well. Everyone enjoyed it! The next day I did my paper presentation on Eros (sexuality). I presented right after our appointment in the Secret Room of the museum where all of the finds from various brothels are displayed. I practiced it on the train on the way to Naples and the man next to me definitely spoke English because he looked very uncomfortable as I talked.
After the museum in Naples, a few of us decided to go get pizza because Naples is the home of pizza (which I didn’t know). We walked around for a while and ran into one that looked like a hole in the wall but it was called Il Presidente and had an American flag on the sign. Usually that’s a major deterrent but it still looked good. As it turns out though, they changed the name after Bill Clinton visited and the basement was packed with Italians getting lunch. We were the only English speakers in there and the pizza was AMAZING!
4/15/07
The fifteenth was out last scheduled free day until France which worked our perfectly because it was also Rosemary’s 21st birthday. We had mimosas with blood orange juice in the morning then we took the ferry to Capri for the day. The island was beautiful even thought it was pretty crowded. Ro, Anne, Jess B, Scott and I got tickets for the Blue Grotto. We got on a boat with a Japanese tour group. Outside the grotto, we had to get into smaller boats to go inside. All five of us went in one boat so the girls had to squish together on one end. Going in we had to duck as low as we could because the boat just barely fit under the entrance. That part was a little frightening! But inside the grotto was absolutely beautiful. The light next to the water was such a bright blue. The tour guide tried to entertain us with singing but that didn’t detract too much from the experience.
We spent the rest of the afternoon between the beach where we had a picnic and the upper town which was full of designer shops. That really wasn’t our scene so we got some gelato and headed back down.
4/16/07
On Monday, we got the devastating news about Tech. It was Rosemary’s last night with us in Rome. Vincoli told us when he saw it flashed on the Italian news. I didn’t think that I would ever be reading about Blacksburg, Va in a European newspaper but the story covered the front pages of Roman newspapers for two days. Ro reported that the same was true in Dublin papers as well.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Hotel Dei Pini 4/3/07
The name of our hotel now it Hotel of the Pini (the full translation is hotel of the Pines).
Our Sicilian hotel experience has been an interesting one so far. Our travel agent used another travel agent in Sicily to book our hotels. After the disaster with our Reggio hotel we have at least gotten to the right one on the first try since then. However, apparently Andiamo travel though thought it would be a good idea to put us in all the hotels that every other student group also uses. Furthermore it is clear that they have not sent anyone to look at these hotels since the 1970s when they probably were very nice and in a great area of town. Now they are just insanely tacky and the only thing close by is the Italian version of Wal-Mart called “CenterGross” and the supermarket called “Maxistore”.
Last night in Hotel dei Pini we were sharing a hall with Belgian high schoolers which was fun for those who spoke French on our trip. Tonight however the West Virginians moved in. They told us that tomorrow they are going to see “the ruins”. I don’t think they even know who built “the ruins” and they definitely don’t know that we have spent two and a half months seeing “the ruins” in five different countries. The group leader also told us that her only other travel experience was to the “Great China Wall”.
Our Sicilian hotel experience has been an interesting one so far. Our travel agent used another travel agent in Sicily to book our hotels. After the disaster with our Reggio hotel we have at least gotten to the right one on the first try since then. However, apparently Andiamo travel though thought it would be a good idea to put us in all the hotels that every other student group also uses. Furthermore it is clear that they have not sent anyone to look at these hotels since the 1970s when they probably were very nice and in a great area of town. Now they are just insanely tacky and the only thing close by is the Italian version of Wal-Mart called “CenterGross” and the supermarket called “Maxistore”.
Last night in Hotel dei Pini we were sharing a hall with Belgian high schoolers which was fun for those who spoke French on our trip. Tonight however the West Virginians moved in. They told us that tomorrow they are going to see “the ruins”. I don’t think they even know who built “the ruins” and they definitely don’t know that we have spent two and a half months seeing “the ruins” in five different countries. The group leader also told us that her only other travel experience was to the “Great China Wall”.
That’s a Moray 4/1/07
Today felt like we were in Italy for the first time. After our sites, most of the group took the bus back to the hotel but a few of us stayed in old Syracuse for the rest of the afternoon. We walked around the town. There was a place to climb down onto rocks in the water and then onto a beach so we all rolled our pants up and skipped rocks in the Mediterranean. We ate gelato in a piazza in the center of town by a fountain. There was a small aquarium in Syracuse with lots of tanks of tropical fish. We spent an hour walking through there. There were some pretty wild fish in there but I think the worst was the Moray eel. It was really disgusting and it swam out of its pot to see us every time we got close to it. In the evening we went out to eat. I had a great spinach and tomato calzone and ordered it in Italian. After dinner we walked back to our hotel.
That’s a Moray 4/1/07
Today felt like we were in Italy for the first time. After our sites, most of the group took the bus back to the hotel but a few of us stayed in old Syracuse for the rest of the afternoon. We walked around the town. There was a place to climb down onto rocks in the water and then onto a beach so we all rolled our pants up and skipped rocks in the Mediterranean. We ate gelato in a piazza in the center of town by a fountain. There was a small aquarium in Syracuse with lots of tanks of tropical fish. We spent an hour walking through there. There were some pretty wild fish in there but I think the worst was the Moray eel. It was really disgusting and it swam out of its pot to see us every time we got close to it. In the evening we went out to eat. I had a great spinach and tomato calzone and ordered it in Italian. After dinner we walked back to our hotel.
Washing Clothes in the Bidet, 3/31
Today is our third day in Italy. It’s hard to believe that’s it because of all the craziness since leaving Greece. Our last day in Greece, we arrived at the Igoumenitsa ferry dock at 3:30 pm to wait for our 11 pm ferry departure. At least that was one day that I was caught up on my reading. When the ferry docked at 6:30 (after a little confusion about the one hour time change and some people being ready to go at 4:45 in the morning), we didn’t really have any idea where the train station was or how we were all going to get there. Luckily, we weren’t too far into exploring when Jarrett realized that there was a free shuttle to take us to the downtown area, but still not especially close to the train station. So for our first morning all 22 of us were dragging our huge suitcases for blocks and blocks down the main street of Brindisi at 7 am. At the train station, I got my first Italian cappuccino out of a machine for 60 cents- it was great!
At 9 am we got on our first of four trains of the day for a total of eight more hours of travel to reach our final destination, Reggio di Calabria on the southern tip of Italy. Once in Reggio, there was no shuttle to take us to the hotel and 22 of us and our bags were not about to get on a public bus so we all piled into six very small cabs. After a tiring day, night and day I was really ready to check into our hotel but as it turned out our travel agent gave us the name of the wrong hotel so the Primavera, which is where we were, was definitely not ready to take in 21 Americans and one crazy Cypriot. So after an hour, we all got into six more cabs and drove twenty more minutes to our correct hotel.
The whole day of mayhem, while it may have been frighteningly similar to being in Egypt, was more funny than stressful. The best part though was that I got to have my first Italian grocery store experience at Di Per Di and it was great. I made my first tomato, basil and mozzerella salad of the trip for dinner.
All our time on the train also allowed everyone to start getting excited about learning Italian so everyone had their phrase books and dictionaries out. Rick Steves proved to have some interesting tips for women in his “Help for Women” section; we learned phrases like “my male/female friend has a venereal disease,” “Police, I have a communicable disease” and “sono lesbica”.
At 9 am we got on our first of four trains of the day for a total of eight more hours of travel to reach our final destination, Reggio di Calabria on the southern tip of Italy. Once in Reggio, there was no shuttle to take us to the hotel and 22 of us and our bags were not about to get on a public bus so we all piled into six very small cabs. After a tiring day, night and day I was really ready to check into our hotel but as it turned out our travel agent gave us the name of the wrong hotel so the Primavera, which is where we were, was definitely not ready to take in 21 Americans and one crazy Cypriot. So after an hour, we all got into six more cabs and drove twenty more minutes to our correct hotel.
The whole day of mayhem, while it may have been frighteningly similar to being in Egypt, was more funny than stressful. The best part though was that I got to have my first Italian grocery store experience at Di Per Di and it was great. I made my first tomato, basil and mozzerella salad of the trip for dinner.
All our time on the train also allowed everyone to start getting excited about learning Italian so everyone had their phrase books and dictionaries out. Rick Steves proved to have some interesting tips for women in his “Help for Women” section; we learned phrases like “my male/female friend has a venereal disease,” “Police, I have a communicable disease” and “sono lesbica”.
Things to miss about Greece:
1. “Scandal” ice cream from “The Daily Pleasure”
2. My office in the YoungLine (the table in the bottom of our double-decker bus)
3. Toumazou waking us up on the YoungLine’s microphone with “Hellooo, we are in Greece.”
4. Souvlaki
5. Kiosks
6. Hacksaw wielding gypsies
7. Grilled melizanes (eggplants) in Kolonaki
8. Candy shop in close proximity to the Astor
9. US consulate email warnings to stay out of Athens
10. Beeston’s appendix
2. My office in the YoungLine (the table in the bottom of our double-decker bus)
3. Toumazou waking us up on the YoungLine’s microphone with “Hellooo, we are in Greece.”
4. Souvlaki
5. Kiosks
6. Hacksaw wielding gypsies
7. Grilled melizanes (eggplants) in Kolonaki
8. Candy shop in close proximity to the Astor
9. US consulate email warnings to stay out of Athens
10. Beeston’s appendix
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