Italian birthday

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On Sunday, May 17, I turned 23. Aside from being a lot less palindromical (not a real word, according to Microsoft Word’s spellchecker) than 22, 23 doesn’t feel much different. I can still drink legally, but still can’t rent a car without paying extra fees. For those of you readers still yet to reach 23, don’t fret. It’s an easy one.

That said, my birthday weekend turned out to be one of the best I’ve had ever. On Friday, Liz and I threw an epic birthday party feast in our apartment. The menu included two types of lasagne, stuffed peppers, grilled eggplants (did you know that in the United Kingdom, eggplants are called aubergines? I had no idea), and Liz’s famous bean and tomato dip. The kitchen in our apartment is, officially, the second narrowest kitchen in Lombaria, and what would be our living room is Liz’s bedroom, so the nine of us (Liz, Laura, six of our Italian friends, and I) ended up feasting in the front hallway of the apartment. A bit cozy, but delicious.

Liz preparing culinary masterpieces in the narrow kitchen.



Lasagne!


For Sunday, my actual birthday, it had been arranged that I would go to dinner and a movie in Crema with Marta, my host sister, on behalf of Loretta, Gian, and Anna, who were all previously engaged. The plan was that I would be picked up in the piazza near my apartment at 7:30pm, we would grab a quick panino, and then head off to the movies. When Marta showed up at 8:15pm, I wasn’t thrilled… nobody likes to wait alone in a piazza for 45 minutes on the night of their 23rd birthday. But even if you wanted to, it’d be impossible to ever stay mad at Marta, so I let it go. As I got in the car, though, she said we had to go back to Castelleone before going to the cinema because she’d left her driver’s license at home. I pointed out that driving back to Castellone then without a license would be just as risky as driving back to Castelleone three hours later without a license, but she insisted on going back. Again not thrilled, I agreed, and off we went.

Of course, in retrospect, I should have suspected something. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t. Thus, when I walked into the house back in Castelleone and 20 people yelled “Surprise!” as loud as they could, I was completely unprepared.

For a week, it turns out, my host mom had been rounding up everybody that I knew in northern Italy. Liz and Laura were both there. My two Middlebury friends living in Brescia, about an hour and a half train ride from Castelleone, were there. My boss and her husband were there. All the kids I went to Rome with for New Year’s were there. Loretta had even tried to involve my former soccer team from Castelleone, but was, unfortunately, unable to get through to anybody. Nonetheless, it was an amazing surprise, and an amazing birthday party. From 8:30pm until midnight we all hung around on the back terrace, eating homemade pizza, cake, and – courtesy of Anna, the younger host sis – ice cream floats.



Me, still recovering from the surprise, with Loretta and Sarah (former Midd student working in Brescia).

My sisters.

Torta.

Of course, I was honored and grateful for all of the work Loretta and crew had put into making sure I had a good Italian birthday. Naturally, I had to get them back. And nothing, I’ve learned, makes for better surprise party revenge than hot, fresh, surprise pancakes.

(Preface: When my mom came and visited in November, she brought my host family pancake mix as a gift. Since then, I’d been promising my host fam to make them all pancakes one morning, but never got around to it.)

So it came to that this past Saturday morning at 3:00am, Marta picked me up in Crema on her way back home from an evening out. Arriving at the house in Castelleone, we had to make it seem like she was alone – Loretta is an extremely light sleeper, and often wakes up when her kids/host kids get back late from nights on the town. And so, closing our car doors in the driveway, we made sure to synchronize our efforts, creating the sound of one door slamming instead of two. (Very James Bond.) Then, entering the house, Marta went through all of her normal pre-bed rituals. The plan was to wake up at 7:30am, before Gian and Loretta would be awake, and prepare a massive plate of pancakes, so that when Gian and Loretta woke up at their usual Sunday hour of 8:30am, breakfast would be waiting for them. If this plan were to work, we couldn’t sleep upstairs, because G + L would have surely woken up when they heard us stirring about in the morning. As a result, we prepared the couches in the living room and slept down there. (Although “sleep” is a strong word. “Lay quietly” might be more accurate. Foolishly playing the role of the chivalrous host brother, I had let Marta have the bigger of the two couches. Which meant that my legs spent the night hanging off the side of the couch, slowly losing circulation.)

Anyway, the plan worked perfectly, and when Gian and Loretta finally came downstairs the next morning, they found a table full of pancakes and me and Marta passed out on our couches in the living room. Shortly after, a half-asleep Anna joined us, and the five of us enjoyed a very filling surprise American breakfast in Italy. We even used the Vermont maple syrup I’d brought over in September. In the end, it was an excellent culmination of the eight months I’ve spent as a part of this wonderful Italian family.

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In a few hours, if their navigational skills manage to defeat the insanity of Italian road signs, my parents will arrive in Crema. We’ll spend 10 days traveling around northern Italy, and then return all together to Just Outside Of Boston on June 15th.

In theory, I’ll write one last, super trite, “what did this whole experience mean to me” post, in an effort to shed some meaning on the time I’ve spent living here. Said post may not happen until after I return to Newton, though, so I thank you in advance for any patience you might be able to extend my way.


Regardless, I’ll be in the States until the end of September, and then back to Crema for another year teaching at Pacioli.

Thanks to all seven of you for reading (readership has grown since my last post), happy beginning of summer, and be well.


Nate

European Adventure: Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Barcelona, Madrid

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It was about a month ago today that I arrived in Dublin, on day four of my trip around Europe. In order to celebrate the anniversary, I figured nothing could be more fitting than completing – finally – my blog about the experience.


DUBLIN

I knew I’d arrived in Dublin when I saw the Irish-jig-dancing street sign on the side of the road (see bright orange picture way below in the previous post). Making my way to the hostel, I caught my reflection in a shop window and decided officially that my facial hair had become too much a part of my traveling identity to get rid of. Resolved to keep it until Madrid (the next time I would be in any sort of respectable social interaction), I found my hostel, dropped off my bag in the 16-person dorm – full of napping travelers who had spent the evening before draining pints of Guinness – and then headed off to a pub to indulge in a plate of fish and chips. After dinner, completely exhausted – possibly from the several days of travel I had under my belt, but more probably from the fish and chip grease struggling to digest itself under my belt – I returned to the hostel and passed out.

Only to wake up at 4:15am from the alarm of one of the other travelers. And then again at 4:20am by his companion. And then again at 4:23am by that fellow’s companion. And then once again at 4:30am from the alarm of the first bloke (a wonderful word, I've decided), who it seems had just hit snooze rather than actually getting up.

For about a half an hour, this group of four or five travelers slowly made their exit, waking up the rest of us in the process. The downside, I fear, of paying 15 euro for a room.

Despite my interrupted slumber, the day that followed was one of the more satisfying I had on the entire trip. Rather than walking around aimlessly on foot, as I’d done in Bristol and Cork, I decided to spend the extra money on a hop-on, hop-off, double-decker guided tour bus that brought me to all of the major sights in the greater Dublin area. Most of the drivers/guides were fairly low keyed, sticking to the more traditional “on your left you’ll see the Dublin Castle” script, but one of the drivers proved to have exactly the type of sense of humor that I aspire to foster within myself. Rather than hopping off at the next sight on the list, I decided to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ride with this guy for about 40 minutes, taking in both the views and the jokes. Below, his best lines:


- (As we passed an old graveyard): The crossword inventor is buried here. To find his grave, all you’ve got to do is count the tombstones… three down, four across.

- Wonderful woman, my wife. Fantastic chef, too. Only person I know who uses a smoke alarm as a cooking timer.

- What’s the definition of mixed emotions? Watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new car. (No offense to any of the mothers-in-law out there.)

- (As we passed an old bell tower): For many years, there was an old bell ringer who was exceptionally devoted to his job. Every day he would ring the bell. Poured his heart into it. One day, though, the rope broke. Not wanting to let down the people of Dublin, he climbed up into the bell and started ringing the bell with his head. After a while, he knocked himself unconscious and fell down to the floor. As the nearby people gathered around him, somebody asked, “Anybody know his name?” A fellow nearby responded, “Not sure about the name, but his face sure rings a bell…”


Brilliant.

I could have spent all day riding on that bus, but the driver had, unfortunately for me, finished his route. So I hopped off, hopped onto the next bus, and went straight to the Guinness factory for an excellent tour of the 250-year-old brewery. (Did you know that Arthur Guinness and his wife had 21 children?)

On the way back, we passed the Dublin Zoo. I didn’t get off, but I did learn the lion who roars in the beginning of the MGM films was born inside the grounds.

Monday night, I went to a performance of traditional Irish music and dance, during the course of which I decided that if my eventual marriage to the daughter of an Italian winemaker ever fails, I’ll definitely try to make something work with an Irish step dancer.


BELFAST

The next morning I boarded a bus at 6:00am and headed north to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I would spend the morning before taking a ferry to Scotland.

Unlike the other cities I stopped in, Belfast isn’t really a tourist attraction, at least in the traditional sense. You don’t walk around taking photos, ooohing and ahhing at the architecture and the museums. Rather, you hop in a “black cab” and drive around the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, learning about the history of the Troubles while seeing the various politically and religiously charged murals painted throughout the city. My driver, Fyrtle (stellar name), was a fascinating man, full of personal experiences with his country’s violent past.

Some of the things I learned from and about Fyrtle:

- He was born in 1967, two years before the official start of the Troubles in 1969. As he put it, “Growing up, the Troubles were all I knew.”

- Although Catholic, he’s married to a Protestant woman – something that happens rarely in Belfast. He said that when people refer to his marriage as “mixed,” he’ll respond proudly, “yep, it’s mixed: me wife’s a woman, I’m a man.”

- Only about 4,000 people died during the Troubles, yet everybody in Belfast knew personally somebody who was killed by the violence.

- Today, over 90% of Belfast’s neighborhoods – and, in turn, schools – are segregated



My ride with Fyrtle lasted for about an hour and a half, and it was the most engaging hour and a half of my 11 days of travel. Having spent considerable time in Israel, Fyrtle spent much of the ride drawing comparisons between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Northern Ireland conflict. In his eyes, the Palestinians were like the Catholics, and Hamas similar to the IRA. He was a rational man, and refused to justify terrorism, but did insist people need to be careful when judging the actions of groups like Hamas and the IRA. As he put it, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

As I learned from Fyrtle, the Troubles came to what many people consider an “end” in 1998, with the Belfast Agreement, which, among many things, returned self-government to Northern Ireland, and stated that if a majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens ever votes for Northern Ireland’s complete independence from Great Britain, said independence shall be granted. Right now, the majority in Northern Ireland is still Protestant, but Fyrtle pointed out that the Catholic Church’s position on birth control is only helping the Catholics' situation, because Catholic families – who refuse to use contraceptives – continue to have many more children than Protestant families. Fyrtle believes that as a result, the Catholic population will continue to grow at a much faster rate than that of the Protestants, increasing Northern Ireland’s chances of one day gaining complete independence.

GLASGOW

My ride with Fyrtle ended at Belfast’s ferry docks, where I bid Fyrtle farewell, then boarded a ferry to Scotland. Although tempted by Space Chimps, the onboard movie, I opted to read my book instead.

Arriving on the western coast of Scotland, I took a lovely train ride north to Glasgow (pronounced Glaws-go, NOT Glass-gow, as I quickly learned). The Hogwarts Express scenes in the Harry Potter movies were filmed in Scotland, and it was easy to see why. Once in Glasgow, I sent some Scottish kilt postcards to my family, then spent the night couchsurfing once again, this time with a wonderfully hospitable Glaswegian family, the members of which are actually coming to Newton this summer (a trip they planned long before ever meeting me). Small world indeed.

With only a morning in Glasgow before my flight to Barcelona, I didn’t have time to see much, so I went back to my wander-around-aimlessly tactic. The only real highlight was the Necropolis (see picture, below), which looked more like a giant game of chess than a graveyard.


BARCELONA

Barcelona, I’ve decided, is probably the coolest city I’ve ever been to. Other competitors would have to be Rome, Asheville, NC, Guilin, China (unreal rivers and mountains) and Ripton, VT (just kidding). Rather than taking another tour bus around, I rented a bike from one of the waiters at my hostel and explored the city by wheel. An excellent choice, despite the 10-minute onslaught of hail. Sights included several Gaudì buildings, a Picasso museum, a contemporary art museum (much cooler than the art, I thought, were the skateboarders outside), the F.C. Barcelona stadium, the beach, the Olympic park (Barcelona hosted in the summer of 1992), and the tourist-packed Rambla, a street where you can buy anything. Literally, anything: aside from the expected souvenir vendors, the street is also full of drug dealers and prostitutes. (Don't worry. I purchased nothing.)


Rather than trying to do the city justice with words, I’ll let the photos do the blogging for me.



Perhaps my favorite photo in Barcelona. This sign was posted on the outside of a fountain, near the coast. Apparently it's not okay to swim, but it is recommended that you yield to high-jumpers as they get hit by lightning bolts.




Sailboats, and the approaching storm.




Great day for a sail?




Definitely not a great day for a sail.






Until I was able to find shelter, the hail made for an interesting bike ride.

Art inside the MACBA.

Skateboarder and pedestrian.

Naked turtle riding.

MADRID

At the end of my second day in Barcelona, I took a 10-hour-long overnight train ride west, to Madrid. Entering my six-person bunkroom on the train, it was reassuring to smell that I wasn’t the only traveler who hadn’t showered in several days. Snuggling into my pillow (a couple cotton T-shirts stuffed into a sweatshirt), I managed to sleep well enough, and arrived in Madrid early on the morning of day nine to meet up with my friend Mike from Middlebury, also working as an English language assistant.

By day, we mostly just walked around, stopping only in the Reina Sofia museum, where you can see, among many other fantastic exhibits, Picasso’s Guernica. By night, we went out for tapas and then met up with Mike’s extremely fun, and extremely international group of friends. Represented countries included the U.S., Spain, Italy, Ireland, Bulgaria, and several other places in both Europe and Latin America. Hanging out was how I imagine it must be at a United Nations summit after-party.

At 3:30am on Sunday morning, April 19 -- after two days and a night in Madrid -- I took a cab from Mike’s apartment to the Madrid airport, boarded my third plane in 11 days, and headed back to Italy. By early afternoon I was back in my apartment, napping soundly in my bed.


All in all, it was an extraordinary experience. Definitely refreshing to be able to get outside of Italy for a bit and see some of the old continent.


My plans for the next three weeks: relax in Crema as much as possible while enjoying the arrival of Italian summer. Then, in come my parents, and off we’ll go on an epic, northern Italian adventure, before returning together to the States on June 15th. Just over a month away.



If you’ve made it all the way through this post, I commend you for you dedication, and thank you for your time.


Hope all’s well,



Nate

Photos, in reverse: Madrid, Barcelona, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin

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When Blogger adds photos, it adds them to the top of the post. Not to the bottom, which would make sense. Usually, I load my pics in reverse order, thwarting Blogger's attempts to make extra work for me, but today I totally forgot.

If the Internet weren't working so slowly, I would reload them in the proper, chronological order. But it is. And I don't feel like sitting at school for another hour when I could be at home eating the tuna-bean-pasta that I'm about to make.

Thus, I'll leave the post as is.

(My humblest apologies.)



Tapas.



The grandest post office I've ever seen.


Crazy statue


After over a year without letting my stash go free, I had to see what it would look like.
Now I know. It still looks really creepy.


Dawn and a backpacker at the train station in Madrid.


Skateboarder in Barcelona.


Anybody who's seen the picture of my dad that sits in the front hallway of our house can understand my oppressive feelings of beard-growing indaqequacy.


Gaudì's La Sagrada Familia.


People refer to it as the world's most visisted construction site.


Ominous.

Barcelona beachfront.

Another Gaudì masterpiece.

A house I walked by my first night in Barcelona. It might be Gaudì, though I'm unsure.

The Necropolis, a graveyard that overlooks the city of Glasgow.

The peace wall that seperates Catholic neighborhoods and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast.

Bobby Sands -- the first hunger striker to die in Catholic protests of 1981.

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Mural addressed to Obama.

The dry dock in Belast where the Titanic was built.

Step dancers in Dublin.

Original sketch of the famous Guinness ad.

Advertising exhibit in the Guinness Storehouse museum.

Guinness's water.

Sounded scrumptuous, but I didn't have time to stop and try.

Molly Malone, aka "The Tart with the Cart." The most photographed statue in Dublin.

Church and a glorious Irish sunset.

Downtown.

I knew I had arrived in Dublin when I saw that the figures in the construction signs seemed to be Irish-jigging as the worked.

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It was over a week ago that I said I would post again "tomorrow." I realize, of course, that I haven't lived up to the promise.

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These past few days, however -- for a variety of reasons, including quiz writing, quiz grading, research about possible grad schools, Teach for America inquiries, and beyond -- have left me restless and unable -- unwanting, perhaps -- to focus on a new post.

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Today, this continues to be true. But in an effort to tide you (my three loyal readers) over until I finally get my act together, I'll put up the some more of my favorite photos from my trip.

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Enjoy,

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Nate

European Adventure: Bristol and Cork

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After any extraordinary travel experience, it would be easy – but terribly trite – to begin discussion of it with the following sentence:

“It was all just so incredible. I don’t know where to begin.”

If I wrote that, you'd think, “Oh no. Watch out. Another young blogger just went on another European tour and wants to tell us about the beauty and fascination of the sights, the friendliness of the people, the efficiency of the public transportation, and the tastiness of the food.”

Not wanting to elicit the above reaction, I will begin my post, officially, like this:

“It was all just so incredible. I really, really, really don’t know where to begin.”

In my mind, the “reallys” render the thought original. Hopefully you agree.


Weak prefaces aside, I'll do my best to tell you about the 11 most satisfying and exciting days I’ve had in a long time. Perhaps ever. If, at any point, my ramblings tend towards hackneyed, I apologize… but it’s all in my effort to write genuinely about the trip. For, the sights really were beautiful and fascinating. The people really were friendly. The public transportation really was efficient. And the food – though not always the healthiest (see my breakfast sandwich in Cork) – really was tasty.

BRISTOL

On Wednesday, April 8, I touched down in Bristol, England at exactly 11:30pm, Greenwich Mean Time. For those of you who’ve flown RyanAir recently, you’ll know how exciting it is to touch down on time. This little victory trumpet sounds over the loudspeakers and a movie-phone-esque voice tells you that you’ve just taken part in yet another on time flight from RyanAir! Over 90% of RyanAir flights arrive on time… the best in all of European airlines!!

At 12:00am I boarded an airport shuttle to downtown Bristol, and at 12:30am I found myself wandering around the quays, a bit aimlessly, looking for a street name that appeared somewhere on the Google map I had printed out back at school several hours earlier. (I had a copy of Let’s Go Europe with me, but Bristol doesn’t make it into the pages.)

At 12:45am I figured out where I was, and by 1:00am I was at my hotel, checking in. For the rest of the trip I would stay at either hostels or apartments, but for that first night, I had been unable to find an open hostel with a 24-hour reception. I could have slept at the airport, but doing so doesn’t always bode well for the quality of sleep, and given that I would spend the next night trying to sleep on the deck of a ferry bobbing across the Irish Sea, I wanted to make sure that I had a solid bed that first night so as not to start my journey with two straight days of inadequate rest.

And thus, I stayed at a hotel in Bristol, slept soundly, woke up nice and late the next morning, ate an enormous hotel breakfast (while also packing for later an even more enormous lunch of bread, jam, and hardboiled eggs… if any of you happens to work for Hotel Ibis, do thank Mr. Ibis for the complimentary meal), and then headed out to explore the town.

Bristol, although not often high on the traveler’s list of British cities to see, turned out to be well worth the visit. The first major sight I saw was the S.S. Great Britain, which was constructed between 1839 and 1843 in a dry dock in Bristol, and had, for many years, the honor of being the biggest ship in the world. Since its first voyage in 1843, it has traveled 32 times around the world via Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, docked at more than 15 international ports, and covered a million nautical miles. In the late 1930s, after many years of use only as a floating storehouse, it was officially deemed no longer seaworthy and scuttled in the Falkland Islands. It sat there for over 30 years, until a restoration team in 1970 patched up its holes and sailed it back to Bristol, where it was turned into the excellent and informative museum that I visited two Wednesdays ago.


Murals near the S.S. Great Britain.



The ship itself.

A plastic captain, talking to his plastic first mate.

The second item that left an impression was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which connects the Clifton neighborhood of Bristol to the town of North Somerset across the Avon Gorge. Begun in 1831 and then delayed because of riots in the town, construction wasn’t completed until 1864 (just 33 years later... sounds a bit like the Big Dig). Despite the setbacks, the bridge was still considered an engineering marvel upon its completion. Ever since, it has been the symbol of Bristol.

Clifton Suspension Bridge.

View from the other side.

Ridiculous British yield sign.

After visiting the bridge, I headed back into downtown Bristol in pursuit of a meal and a lager before having to catch a bus to the southwestern coast of Wales at 8:30pm. The first pub I found had a good menu and looked nice and British, so I stepped inside and walked up the stairs into the lounge. Entering the pub area, though, nobody seemed to notice me. There was a bartender behind the bar, and a waiter on the floor, but neither of them acknowledged what I considered to be my fairly noticeable presence, given the large backpack. I looked for a sign that might tell me to please, seat myself, but found none. After a few minutes of standing there awkwardly, looking lost, I decided that I wasn’t feeling this place, and turned to walk down the stairs and head out. The floor was a bit wet, though, and my backpack a bit heavy – a dangerous combination, which caused me, at the top of the stairs, to slip more forcefully than I’ve ever slipped in my entire life. My legs flew out from under me, my backpack yanked me backwards, and I fell down the two stairs in front of me so hard that I literally – yes, literally – kicked the front door open with the bottom of my feet.

If I had been frustrated with the lack of attention the people in the bar had been giving me two minutes earlier, I was easily making up for it now. Everybody’s head turned to see a confused and pride-wounded backpacker pick himself up, assure the room that he was okay, and then sprint out the door to escape further humiliation.

Not a good start, I thought. Fortunately, the kicking-the-pub-door-open incident would be the low point of my trip.

Continuing on my way, I found a sandwich shop, took an exquisite-looking vegetable wrap to go, ate it while walking, and then parked myself in a pub right next to the bus station. There, I met a nice – albeit quite drunk – British chap named Robert, who told me that he found my backpack very attractive and then sat down across from me to tell me about his favorite types of women.

I nodded politely for a while, laughing at him on the inside the entire time, then excused myself to go catch my bus. Before exiting, I decided to use the bathroom. Following signs, I headed into a hallway in the back of the pub, opened the door that said “toilet” on it, walked through, and found myself outside the pub in a back alleyway.

Feeling foolish and taken advantage of, I decided to hold it until I got to the bus station, and went on my way.

CORK

After a bus to Wales, a ferry across the Irish sea (which arrived five hours late due to generator problems), and then two buses across southeast Ireland, I finally arrived in Cork on the afternoon of Good Friday.

My sleeping quarters on the ferry.

Sunrise from the deck.

The vessel, heading from Ireland back to Wales.

After a brief exploration of downtown Cork, I met up with my host for the next two evenings, who I had found on this “Couchsurfing” website I’d been hearing a lot about for the months leading up to my trip. Couchsurfing, if you haven’t heard of it, is a sort of traveler networking website that lets you get in touch with people that have couches, or beds, or air mattresses, or floors, on which you can spend a few nights – or weeks, or months – while visiting a city. Before just showing up on their doorstep, you have to send potential hosts a message and then get invited to stay; it’s not just a free, blind hostel service. Everybody has a profile with pictures of themselves and personal information, so you can do a bit – or a lot, if you want – of screening before agreeing to host -- or be hosted by -- somebody.

Anyway, I’d found a young French woman named Audrey who had a place for me to crash, and so for my two nights in Cork, I did precisely that. And it was wonderful. The first night – it being Good Friday – all of the pubs in Ireland were closed. So, after walking around the city for a bit, Audrey, her friend Pierre (also French -- both of them worked for Apple’s European headquarters, which I learned is located in Cork), two German travelers that I’d met earlier that day on the ferry, and I went back to the apartment. It was one of those classic meet-other-international-travelers-and-learn-all-about-their-countries experiences you hear about when people go and travel alone in Europe. We were a strange group. Two French. Two Germans. An American. All talking together as if we were old friends, despite being complete strangers just a day before. I loved it.

Germans, French, and an American in Ireland.

The next day I explored Cork, visiting a bunch of different cathedrals and monuments before settling down for an afternoon in the Butter Museum. Butter, it turns out, is one of Ireland’s most important products. Kerrygold, the most famous brand, is exported all over the world.

View of Cork by morning.


Hillbilly's Fried Chicken Express. Serving "American fried chicken" all day long. This is what they think of our cuisine.

My breakfast sandwich. Fried tomatoes on top of friend sausages and fried bacon. With relish. And a potato chip salad on the side. Delightful way to kick off your day.

Another view of Cork.

The legend of the "milch" cow.

That evening, I cooked dinner for Audrey and Pierre to thank them for hosting me, and then we went out pub hopping in downtown Cork, which turns out to have a vibrant night life. The highlight of the evening was drinking my first ever Guinness on Irish soil (it’s true that it tastes better over there) as a local folk band played Irish fiddle music around the very same table where I was sitting. A stereotypical – in the best of ways – Irish experience.

Front row seats for the Irish folk band.

Couchsurfing hostee and hosts.

The following day I woke up late, then took a bus north. Rather than letting this post get even longer, though, I'll conclude it here. Tune in tomorrow for Dublin and beyond.

Until next time,



Nate

My epic European adventure

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Tomorrow evening, I’m flying from Bergamo, Italy to Bristol, England. After a night and a day in Bristol – if all goes as planned* – I’ll travel to the following places.

1.) Bristol to Pembroke Dock, Wales (bus)
2.) Pembroke Dock to Rosslare Harbour, Republic of Ireland (ferry)
3.) Rosslare Harbour to Cork (bus)
4.) Cork to Limerick, Kilkenny, or Blarney (bus or train, yet to be decided)
5.) Limerick, Kilkenny, or Blarney to Dublin (ditto)
6.) Dublin to Belfast, North Ireland (bus)
7.) Belfast to Stranraer, Scotland (ferry)
8.) Stranraer to Glasgow (bus)
9.) Glasgow to Barcelona, Spain (plane)
10.) Barcelona to Madrid (overnight train, with bunkbeds!)
11.) Madrid to Bergamo, Italy (plane)
12.) Bergamo to Crema (Razor scooter)

My journey, in theory, will last from Wednesday, April 8 to Sunday, April 19. In all: five countries, three planes, two ferries, one Guinness Factory tour, and more buses, trains, tourist information centers, supermarkets, and awesome accents than I plan to count.

I can’t wait.

*Note: In Italian, you don’t “knock on wood.” Instead, you “touch iron.” When such “touch iron” situations come up, many Italian males like to reach for their groin, in an effort to suggest that the “contents” of said region resemble a piece of iron.

Know, therefore, that immediately after writing that sentence (“if all goes as planned”), I touched iron, just to be safe.


The only major hiccup I’ve encountered – touch iron – came today, when I received an email from the fine folks at the Bank of America security center alerting me to suspicious account activity. Moments later, reviewing my balance, I couldn’t blame them, as my card had been used to purchase planes, trains, buses, and ferries across five countries (and in three languages).

The email instructed me to call some number with an 877 area code. Not wanting to spend my time and calling card money waiting on hold, I decided to see if I could resolve the issue using the wonderfully convenient Bank of America online chat feature. (For those of you Bank of America customers reading this right now, know that online, you can chat instantly with a customer service representative. It’s amazing. The minutes, perhaps hours, that you would normally spend calling customer service are transformed into a four minute – and, mind you, very pleasant – instant messaging dialogue. I’ve used it three times in the last month, and recommend it highly.)

Anyway, here are the highlights of my chat:


Ashleigh: Hello! Thank you for being valued Bank of America Customer. My name is Ashleigh. How may I assist you today with your personal accounts?
You: Hello, Ashleigh. I wanted to confirm a purchase that I just made online with my CampusEdge checking card
Ashleigh: Yes, how are you doing?
You: Shortly after making the purchase, I received an email about potentially suspicious account activity. Which I totally understand, because I was buying a train ticket in Spain.
You: The email told me to call a phone number to confirm the purchase.
Ashleigh: That is correct.
You: But the problem is that I'm in Italy. Thus, calling home is really expensive.
Ashleigh: To begin with, may I have your complete name as it appears on your statement?
You: Nathan J Randall
Ashleigh: Thank you, Nathan. I would request you not to worry! I will provide you the toll free number, will that be fine for you?
You: The thing is, calling such numbers from international phones still costs money, as far as I know.
You: I could be wrong.
Ashleigh: Yes, you are wrong.
Ashleigh: I apologize to mention that.
You: No, it's okay.
Ashleigh: Thank you for your kind understanding.
You: I appreciate your honesty.
Ashleigh: Thank you for your appreciation!
You: It's a pleasure.
Ashleigh: Nathan, I will be happy to assist you as best I can from our side. Could you please confirm the last four digits of your account?
You: 1234

Note: for those of you hoping to rob me of my money and identity, know that I just changed that number to a fictitious one.
Or did I…

Ashleigh: Thank you for the information.
You: You're welcome.
Ashleigh: I see that the transaction is pending to your account and might clear by tomorrow.
You: Indeed.
Ashleigh: I would like to inform you that you can contact us from Italy using the following steps:
You: Okay.

Note: Here, Ashleigh very kindly gave me a list of numbers I could call.

You: Thanks for your help, Ashleigh.
You: And have an excellent day.
Ashleigh: You are more than welcome!
Ashleigh: Thank you for your appreciation!
Ashleigh: I wish your issue would be resolved as soon as possible!
Ashleigh: It was a pleasure assisting you today.
Ashleigh: Enjoy the rest of your day! To close this chat session, click the "Close" button in the upper right corner of this chat window.
Ashleigh: Bye and take care! Your compliments are our Bonus!


Taking Ashleigh’s advice, I called a toll free 800 number, only to be asked to enter the 877 number that the suspicious account activity email had initially given me. When I entered the 877 number, however, I was told that I would be charged the International Direct Dialing Fee, and to hang up immediately if said International Direct Dialing Fee did not tickle my economic fancy. Summary: I was right! The toll free number, when dialed abroad, was not, in fact, toll free!

It may be that my four-year-old and hand-me-down Italian cellphone just couldn’t deal with the technological effort necessary to connect me to the supposedly free international operator back in the States, but – given that I was leaving in 48 hours – I didn’t have time to waste. Therefore, I called in the muscle. A.k.a. my mother. Who, doing as she always does, managed to sort everything out for me within the hour.


And so, all that sit between now and Wednesday night’s departure are two hours of natural science lectures here at Pacioli, three hours of private lessons outside of school, and final packing preparations.


Again, I can’t wait.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how the adventures turn out.

For now, be well, and touch iron. If not for your own safety, then for mine.


Best,

Nate

Meical Giordant

As an extra credit question on the Forms of State quiz that I just gave to my second year students, I included the following picture, and asked the kids to guess the identity of the African American man in the center.




Their responses included:

1.) Martin Luther King
2.) Nelson Mandela
3.) Michael Jordan
4.) Meical Giordant (no joke)
5.) Barack Obama
6.) Barack Obama, IT'S A NEW DAY!
7.) Barack Obama, YES WE CAN!

European Field Trip!

d
Prague

At 5:00am last Monday, 8 Pacioli teachers, 120 fifth-year students, Laura, and I rolled out of the school’s parking lot in three packed buses. 14 hours, six rest areas, and three countries later, we found ourselves in Prague, where we stayed until the early hours of Friday morning.


Sunset o'er a German McDonalds.
dd

The trip, though organized by the school, had no formal academic purpose. During the day we would sightsee, but the students weren’t responsible for any of the information they learned. Which meant that many of them spent the hours sightseeing either chatting with their friends or plugged into their IPods. At night, it became clear what the fieldtrip’s real scope was: hanging out.

Said hangout spots included:

1.) The hotel basement, where there was a small bar, billiards, foosball, and three bowling lanes.

2.) The main hotel bar, where there were a bunch of tables and a big screen TV (on which we watched many an hour of Champions League soccer).

3.) The hotel lobby, where there were couches, ashtrays, and an inexhaustible cloud of cigarette smoke. (The percentage of Italian teenagers that smoke is shockingly high. In my suburban public high school back in the States – maybe not the most representative of places, but the only reference point I have – no more than 5% of high school seniors smoked between classes at school. In Italy, I’d put that number above 50%... with the percentage of students that smoke socially even higher.)

4.) Hotel rooms. Many of the students would buy beer during the day to be used later on that night.

The fascinating thing about this whole process, for me, was that the teachers had no problems with any of these activities, and often went so far as to participate in them. Students and teachers could often be found drinking at the same table, or bumming cigarettes off each other, or bashing each other about soccer loyalties. The teachers had no problems hanging out in the presence of their students, and the students had no problems acting like fools in the presence of their teachers.

The lack of formality in these relationships is, I think, a beautiful thing. It would have been awesome in high school to have been able to share a beer with my English teacher, or watch a baseball game in a bar with my guidance counselor. And maybe, had my friends and I been used to seeing our teachers out on the weekends, we wouldn’t have done some of the often rather stupid things that we ended up doing. Although Italian students do drink, the general drinking culture is far less binge-oriented than it does back in the States. Yes, some Italian kids drink too much. And no, not all American kids like getting hammered. But the generalizations aren’t so far off.

At this point, were the drinking age in the States lower, I think the ensuing damage would outweigh any possible positivity. (See LOCO PARENTS: A CASE FOR THE OVERHAUL OF SOCIAL-HOST LIABILITY IN FLORIDA by Samuel Randall, for further thoughts.) Nonetheless, the experience made me reflect about about American drinking culture.

John McCardell’s mission aside…

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent seeing various old stuff in Prague, most of which was beautiful, but didn’t really compare to the old stuff I had seen in Rome in December. The one sight that did stand out for me was an ancient cemetery in the city’s Jewish Quarter. Here, there were graves from as far back as the 1400s.

The ancient cemetery in Prague's Jewish quarter.


Then on Thursday, we drove about an hour and a half outside Prague to Terezin, an old fortress/prison, which was used by the Gestapo as a concentration camp during World War II. For me it was sobering – but meaningful – finally to be able to see some of the things in person that I’ve read about, and seen movies about, so many times before.


Terezin.

As my mother informed me, pre-WWII Prague had a thriving Jewish community, but today, all you can find there are cemeteries and abandoned synagogues. A sad – but accurate – description of Judaism in the city today.


Cotton Eyed Giuseppe

Throughout the trip, several of the students had been begging the teachers to take them out to a dance club in Prague. The logistics with the buses and the teacher supervision ratios (one teacher to every 15 students) didn’t work out, though, so in an effort to make it up to the students, the teachers decided on Thursday night to bring a dance club, of sorts, to the hotel.

Expectations leading into the night were surprisingly high, but the infamous “hotel discoteca” ended up being nothing more than an empty banquet room and an IPod plugged into some low quality speakers. When I got there, the students were having a fairly miserable time, and many of them were getting ready to leave to go drink in their rooms. One of the teachers who had helped organize the event, seeing me, crossed the dance floor and pleaded with me to do my best to get the students to start dancing. For a moment – taking in the scene – I considered telling her that the situation was beyond salvation. But then I thought better of it. After all, was I not from Newton, Massachusetts? Had I not been to over 50 Bat and Bar Mitzvah parties over the course of my seventh and eighth grade years?

Snapping into action – and doing my best to remember everything that I’d learned from Siagel Productions – I did what any well-trained Bar Mitzvah party frequenter would do: I began to teach the nearest group of girls the Cotton Eyed Joe dance. Miraculously – they loved it. Intrigued, another group of girls came over to our side of the banquet hall. They too, it turned out, wanted to learn the dance. And so I taught it to them. And get this – they loved it too! Next, two of the teachers came over. Yes, teachers. 45 year olds, at that. They wanted to learn it. And then some of the guys. And then a bunch more of the girls. (The music, mind you, was always trashy European techno… but as long as there was a 4/4 beat, it worked fine.)

By the end of the hour, I had taught over 40 people how to dance the Cotton Eyed Joe. And although we were never able to get everybody doing it at the same time, at one point we had about 15 of us doing the dance together, perfectly in sync, as a group of 20 or so watched on. And it was, without exaggeration, the greatest teaching moment of my six months here in Italy.



When I got back to Crema on Friday evening, I found glorious spring weather awaiting me. Therefore, at this time I must leave you to head out on a jog around the city.


Sunset on the ride home.



Hopefully you’re all enjoying similarly glorious springtime weather back in the states. Until next time, be well,


Best,


Nate