Halfling_Steve's Xanga

Gay Rights and the Stonewall Riots

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:53:57 GMT

A historical article I got in the mail: the origins of the Gay Pride Parades.
Note: not written by me. :)

While several organizations were around before 1969, the start of the movement to secure Gay civil rights is usually associated with the Stonewall riots.

All you straight folks out there have no idea of gay history. I even had a protracted argument one day, with someone who was generally well educated and aware of political reality, that there were no gay bars before the 1980s. There were. They were underground, and even maintaining a low profile was no guarantee that police wouldn't show up.

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in The Village neighborhood of New York. Since gay bars had been basically illegal before 1966, it was not uncommon for gay bars to be mafia run. Stonewall was reputed to be mafia run.

Prior to 1966 it was illegal for a bartender to serve a drink to 3 or more homosexuals. So of course, this being the 60s, a "sip in" was staged. The NY liquor board later stated that the rules never had been what the rules actually were, so gay bars started to prolfierate after 66.

The police still took delight in harassing gays, lesbians and transgendered at every turn after 66. On June 27, 1969, a Friday night, they decided to raid the Stonewall Inn. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and the following Wednesday riots were the result of that raid.

[take a look at the desperate criminals arrested by police at a 1962 Halloween Party.

New York must have been VERY safe in 1962, if this is how police were spending their time on Halloween.]

When police would raid a bar, they would arrest anyone "in clothes usually reserved for the other gender." Drag queens and lesbians in butch attire. Sometimes they would simply arrest everyone in the bar. Often they would publish the names of those arrested in the paper.

As they were forcing a lesbian into a squad car on that Friday night in June, she struggled. The crowd decided she had the right idea, and attacked. There were 400 "onlookers" and 8 police, so the police retreated and barricaded themselves in the bar. Since resisting was not to be condoned the cops grabbed the first person they could and dragged him into the bar and beat him. That person was heterosexual folk singer Dave van Ronk, who had come from a straight club down the block to see what the commotion was all about. (Van Ronk was later charged with assaulting police.) A parking meter was uprooted and turned into a battering ram. Someone tried to set fire to the bar with the police inside. Eventually more police arrived and dispersed the crowd. The two following nights, and the next Wednesday saw more of the same, and galvanized the Gay Community.

The first Gay Pride parade took place the following year, in commemoration of the riots.

Lourdes: Mary City

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:15:01 GMT

Finally, at long last, we were done with tourism and at the first major pilgrimage destination on our journey. I had been wondering the whole trip: what will it be like? This is the site of a carefully investigated and approved apparition. People regularly come here to be healed, from all around the world, and apparently it works ‘cause people still keep coming.

It was pretty darn touristy (especially after seeing Laghet).

It wasn’t a disappointing visit, there were just more materialistic trappings than I had imagined. If you take three buildings at random from a street in Lourdes, I can guarantee that one is a gift shop and another is a hotel. I guess it makes sense, though; the easiest way to make a living in that town is to serve the 5 million pilgrims that come every year. Add to that the fact that 2008 marked the 150 year anniversary of the apparition, and you’ve got even more pilgrims flooding the streets.

When we got there, the streets were virtually empty, though.

It was pretty early in the morning, AND apparently March is part of the “off-season.” Half the hotels were closed and a lot of the shops were renovating, repainting, or just boarded up. Down by the shrine, the streets looked even more deserted. To accommodate all the visitors and processions they have over the summer, the sidewalks widen down by the shrine, until they’re twice as wide as the street. Then the cars stop, and it gets even bigger. There we were, walking across giant sidewalks, luggage in tow, with no one in sight and empty gift shops lining the street.

It was a pretty surreal experience.

One of the unique elements of Lourdes was that every gift shop is named after a saint… but for no apparent reason. The Joan of Arc store has all the same merchandise as the St. Bridget store, or the store of the Sacred Heart. My guess is they use the name to pull in pilgrims that like that particular saint, and make them buy souvenirs there instead of somewhere else.

We stayed in an “apartment hotel,” which was probably the nicest lodging we had the whole trip. The best part was: it had a kitchen! We resolved to make full use of it, which led to some other adventures (but I’ll talk about them in the next post). The plan was just to drop off our luggage and go adventuring. We decided to collapse for awhile first, though. The overnight train was more exhausting than I thought it would be.

Eventually, we did get out to the shrine, and ran into the same “empty” feeling there, too. This place was obviously built to hold a lot of people, and there were hardly any around. We explored the grounds around the shrine first, and found some ‘empty’ buildings: museums (one about the shroud of Turin, one about recent healings at the shrine, stuff like that), huge meeting halls, and a bunch of chapels. Most of the chapels were closed, and the ones that were open had the Blessed Sacrament removed, just because no one would be in there.

The first place that we found real activity was at the reconciliation building. It was three stories tall, and its sole function was to house confessionals. Probably 30 people could receive the sacrament at the same time, and it was still in use during the off-season. That struck me as amazing.

Tasha: As a contrast to this, my home church just built their first confessional. The church has been around for almost 30 years. Think about that for a bit.

Steve: As we got closer to the heart of the place, we saw more life. The church itself was huge. It had a colonnade around the courtyard, a lot like St. Peter’s (it even had statues of the saints around the top, although a lot fewer than there are at the basilica). On the ground level is a cathedral dedicated to the Rosary, and that was full of tourists. Around the inside are 15 arches, each with a domed ceiling piece and an altar; each one dedicated to a different decade of the Rosary. The wall above each altar is a particular scene from the life of Christ, surrounded by the Old Testament prophesies, symbolism, and foreshadowings that apply to it. Each one was a pile of theology, painted purely in pictures. The most interesting part was how recent it was. None of it was more than 150 years old. Huge contrast to Rome, where a church from the 13^th century isn’t out of the ordinary. Most of the artwork here was finished around 1907.

Above the cathedral was the main basilica, but there was a crypt for perpetual adoration in between them. Now take a second to count: that’s three churches, stacked literally on top of each other. Then if you go around the churches, you see the mountain they are built into. In the side of that mountain is the grotto where the Blessed Mother actually appeared. That makes four churches, all in one spot, in an almost vertical line. That’s something you don’t see every day.

The crypt was beautiful. It was low, long and covered in gold. Right inside the door was a huge statue of St. Peter in a fancy chair. The toes on his leading foot were worn so far down that the brass was gone, and you could see layers of plaster underneath. So many pilgrims had gone past, and kissed his toes, or just reached up to touch them, it had worn straight through the metal.

To top off the tour, the highest basilica was much older. It was built to imitate the renaissance style, which is very restrained and austere. Compared to the churches below, it was very plain on the inside, but walking up to it, the buttresses and spires were really amazing. They were in the spirit of renovation too, and were actually replacing some of the huge stones in one of the towers with a huge crane. It had to be huge, to reach up that high.

This post has gotten pretty long, eh? I’ll cut it off here, and tell you more about our personal adventures in the next post.

Marian Influence

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:36:50 GMT

In our original plan, we were going to make a day trip out to the shrine of LaSalette on our way through eastern France. It was one of the places in Europe (along with Fatima and Lourdes) where Mary had appeared to children and spoken with them. All of them were in the past 200 years, too, so it’s been heavily documented and investigated.

After mass in Nice, we flagged down the priest to see if he knew a good way to get out to the shrine. He didn’t know English, but he knew enough to introduce us to a young couple that did. They thought it was pretty cool that we turned our spring break into a pilgrimage, but told us that getting out to LaSalette before we left on Friday was impossible. If we had a car, it would be a 4-5 hour drive; by bus, it was 6-8. “But” they said, “if you want to visit a shrine to Our Lady, you should go out to Laghet. That’s where people in Nice go when they want to ask Mary to pray for them.” The wife scribbled some bus routes on the back of a receipt, and then they were gone.

Well, we had already explored a lot of Nice, and the beach was a little bit on the cold and windy side, so it was set as the official adventure for the following day.

The story is: the chapel of Laghet was built sometime between 1200 and 1500 AD in the mountains of southeast France. It was used mostly as a shelter by local shepherds until the early 1600s, when a nobleman from a nearby town visited the sanctuary. He was saddened by how much it had fallen into disrepair, and paid from his own money to have it restored. He also had a Parisian artist carve a statue of Mary to place in the church, and then (inexplicably) miracles started happening. When the local faithful started praying at the shrine, a boy was healed of leprosy, a prisoner of war was set free, a girl was cured of possession... From that point on, it became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for the local people. (This was as much detail as we could get translated on the story.)

It had such a completely local feel. Everyone there was French, spoke only French, and the flyers they gave out were in French, Italian or Spanish (so it seemed like pilgrims came from only as far as the bordering countries). It made a really interesting contrast to the other major global destinations we visited later (Lourdes and Fatima), but don’t let me get ahead of myself here.

To get out to the shrine, we hopped a bus that took us out of the city and wound its way up the mountainside. Nestled in the where the air was clear and sharp was a tiny church (the sanctuary was maybe 50 ft square) with a cloister (hallway) wrapped around it. Around the cloister were statues of heavy-duty prayer warrior saints: St. Anthony, Padre Pio, the Little Flower, St. Rita, the Cure of Ars… but the most amazing thing about the place was the paintings.

Every wall of the cloister was covered with rows and rows of paintings, some of them very rough, all of them very simple and humble. Apparently, the way that you pray at the shrine of Laghet is to bring a painting of the tragedy that occurred, and leave it there for the Blessed Mother. There were pictures of deathbeds, falls from buildings, wounded children, carriage accidents (the shrine has been around for quite some time), and there was even a painting from 1790 of a ship lost at sea. Everywhere you looked, there was a human tragedy with real people, faces you could recognize, and they had all been brought out to the mountains to entrust to Our Lady. Almost all of them had the Madonna of Laghet up in the corner praying, or watching, or receiving a dying child into her arms from heaven. It was really beautiful.

As if that wasn’t moving enough, there was a crypt below the church that they just opened in the past few decades. We went down to see what it held, and found the recent petitions. The walls had huge corkboards, where people had pinned up photos, poems, and prayers, there were candles burning in every corner, and one wall had a row of crutches that had been left behind by people who apparently didn’t need them anymore. I wanted so bad to leave a picture of Arif there, but there was no way to make that happen. We were able to spend a lot of time there praying, and attended mass before heading back to Nice.

The whole layover in Nice was a really refreshing breather. We never got out to LaSalette, instead we had it replaced by a place that was more ancient, more reverent, and really seemed more miraculous. One way or another, I was pretty thrilled with how well our trip was going, and we boarded our first overnight train to bring us to Lourdes.

Take a Breather

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:38:54 GMT

We had set a pretty detailed plan before leaving, and it packed a lot into the first few days of our break.

Rome was a weeklong whirlwind already, and even though we had two days in Venice and two in Milan, it still felt like we were rushing (notice: a pun could be made here about being American, not Russian). As we were coming in to Nice, that feeling changed.

I had never heard of it, but apparently Nice is a pretty famous European beach town. It's right on the shores of the Mediterranean, and is full of tourists from around the EU, especially during the summer. That made finding lodging easy, because of just how many little hotels there were to support the summer crowds. Since we showed up in the off season, plenty of rooms were empty, and some places were willing to drop their prices in order to get our business.

We did a bit of looking, and found a couple really nice places that would give us a room for inside our budget. We ended up settling on the one that wasn’t across from a sex shop (there were actually a lot of these in France, I was highly disappointed). The guy at the desk was named ‘Bader’ (bah-der), and was super nice. We came in later on with chicken from the grocery store, and just so we didn’t have to eat it cold, he let use the staff microwave in the hotel employee’s break room to warm it up. Great hospitality.

Since we were stuck here for the next couple days, we rescheduled our hotel in Lourdes, and canceled the one in Barcelona. A lot like what I did as a producer for the school, I had prepared a logistics document for our trip with all the information we could possibly need, and it really paid off. It was a little sad that we wouldn’t be able to see Barcelona, but since we were in a French beach town instead of a Spanish beach town, it wasn’t too disappointing overall.

It was an interesting city. The center of town was very much designed for people to congregate, there were huge, stone-paved streets set aside purely for pedestrians, gardens, and in the town square, there was a set of 8 huge columns in the middle of the street, with sculptures of naked men in athletic poses, which lit up at night and changed colors. I don’t know what they represented, but they were kinda cool to look at. It was either really classy or just kinda funky. I never really decided which…

We walked around the city a lot. Walking to the beach, then to the grocery store, then back to the beach for a picnic… we also collected some ‘souvenir water.’

It’s somewhat of a peculiar habit, but a few years ago I started collecting water from far off, adventury places. We have some friends that live on an island off the coast of Alabama, and on one visit, we found an old bottle washed up on the beach with its cover completely intact. I used it to gather some ocean water from the Gulf of Mexico, and then put it on the shelf of my library when I got home. After that a friend brought me back some water from Hawaii, my sister got me some in Canada on her honeymoon, and the collection has continued to grow. I like having it because of how unique it is, easy to tell stories about, and you can also get it at a fairly low cost.

Of course, with all the fantastic places we were going on this trip, I HAD to get water from some key spots in Europe. The trick was getting it into containers that were small enough to be easily transportable, and wouldn’t make our luggage impossible to check at the airport. In Venice, we emptied a little bottle of mouthwash to get water from the canals, and I had also filled a water bottle at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. When we finished our picnic on the shores of the Mediterranean, we had an empty jelly jar. It was small, it was round enough to be quaint (kinda a pot-bellied little thing), so into the surf we go, and came out with the jar of water, and some pebbles and sea glass to sit in the bottom. Looking at these three containers of water, it was decided that the Trevi bottle was far too big. Luckily, a couple of the stores we had visited sold these teeny little wine bottles for really cheap, so the Trevi water was relocated to a much classier container.

We had also found a church in our explorations, so in the evening we wandered down that way and ended up at mass for the feast of St. Joseph.

I tell ya, French is such a cool language. They use a lot of sounds and mouth-shapes that Americans never even dream of! The prayers of the mass sounded so strange, I almost burst into a laugh at the beginning of mass. I definitely would like to learn French at some point, just so I can have an excuse to say words like that.

Geneva, Genova...

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:05:38 GMT

It's just one letter difference, couldn't cause too much trouble, right?

We woke up early to catch the commuter train out of Milan. The newly discovered limitations on our Eurail passes meant normally one free train in the morning, and one in the evening. Unfortunately, we took a little too long on breakfast, and made it to the station just barely under the wire for our 8:30 train to Genova.

When we ordered our Eurail passes, they sent us a timetable book, so we could plan our trip in advance. It was published at the beginning of the year, though, so we were warned that all the times might not be accurate.

When we got to the platform, it said 8:35 to Geneve. *Sigh of relief* we're not late, they just changed the train schedule. Spelling seemed to change quite a bit too: what we know as Florence is spelled 'Firenze' in Italian, and Venice turns into 'Venezia.' We were getting used to the fact that if our timetable book says one thing, the train station will probably say something different.

So out of Milan we go. Annie digs into second breakfast, and Tasha and I settle into our book. Enter the conductor. This is where we discovered that Geneva is different from Genova, no matter what language you're speaking.

Apparently, Genova is just a stop on a train going to another town (even though the timetable book said it terminated in Genova), so we completely missed the train we were supposed to get on. Instead, we were on a high speed (and high cost) train to Geneva, Switzerland.

The conductor was really nice about it, though. She let us off at the next stop (without having to pay for our mistake), and gave us the times and trains that we would need to get where we were going.

The stop in the north of Italy turned out really cool though, because while we were waiting for our train back to Milan, we hit a Basilica of the Assumption, which was really beautiful, and gave us a reminder that we had someone watching out for us.

Once we got back to Milan and took our seats on the right train, we lost our tickets.

Nothing huge. We had set them down on the seat, and the lady across from us picked them up, thinking they were hers. It ended up being a really good thing, though because as she gave them back, she asked if we had validated them (in Italian). It took us awhile to overcome language barriers, but found out that whenever you buy a ticket, you need to feed it into a machine at the beginning of the platform before the train leaves, or else you get a fine when they punch it on the train. I got a chance to run full-tilt down the length of the platform, in order to get them stamped, and we learned yet another valuable lesson about the Europe train system.

This post has been very much about our learning curve. You don't use trains like this very often in the US, and we discovered the system isn't quite self-explanatory. Now, don't tell any concerned mothers that may (or may not) be reading this, but the last part of our train learning curve caused a pretty radical change of plans for the next leg of our journey.

Free or not, there turned out to be only one train that went from our area to Lourdes. It left from Nice, France at 10 am on Thursday. The problem was, the earliest we could get there from Milan was 10:45. We had a reservation on Wednesday night in Avignon, but getting from there to Nice proved even more difficult (which was pretty weird, because of how much closer they are together).

To catch our train, we decided to cancel our hotel in Avignon (we wouldn't be able to use it anyway), and just stay the night in the Nice train station. Annie's comment on it was “What's a trip to Europe without spending a night in a station?” It couldn't be that bad, my sister stayed on a bench in a German station on her way back from World Youth Day in Cologne, and on his Europe trip, my older brother actually spent a couple nights in trees after getting locked out of his hostel. Besides, everything we saw said the town was really Nice.

So, apparently the Blessed Mother had different plans (does she count as a concerned mother?)

We got to Nice without any further complications. To avoid any more complications, we decided to buy our tickets to Lourdes right away (and validate them), so that we would be sure that all the connections would work. It was Wednesday afternoon, and the guy at the counter tells us that tomorrow there would be a nationwide strike by all train and bus workers, so we wouldn't be able to get out of Nice until Friday night.

With two and a half days to stay, we definitely needed lodging, so we struck out across the town to find a plan B.

Quick Requiem

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:38:35 GMT

Let me set the scene for this:

We had just come to Portugal, the last new country on our trip. In the next couple days, we had three long, boring plane rides that I was really looking forward to because I could use them to catch up on my blog. The laptop/phone battery was dying, so we pulled out the handy-dandy converter plug while waiting in the Fatima train station.. and it hasn't started since.

I'm we pumped the wrong voltage into it, and the phone fried.

It didn't charge in any of the stops since then, and now we're back on US soil, and it's still not working. I was hoping that I could retrieve some of the posts that I'd been working on but hadn't posted, but to no avail. They were saved to the phone hard drive, and that can't be accessed without power.

Long story short: it'll take me a bit to catch back up.

It'll just mean getting them up here before the first wave of homework hits next week. The last post brought us up to right about the halfway point, I bet we can do it no problem. Heck, we just took on Europe. :)

Milan: Capitol of Fashion

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:29:48 GMT

Our next stop was the mecca of industry in Italy, and the fountain from which a great deal of the world's "high fashion" springs forth.

What the heck was I doing there? Good question. :)

We were passing through, and wanted to see what Milan could offer. One of the other JP splinter groups was there on the same day, so we arranged to meet up and, together, take the city by storm.

Neil, Jake and Connors had been our adventure buddies pretty much the whole time so far. Most of our meals in Ireland were bought by this group and cooked together, family-style. It was good to see them again.

Tasha: so good in fact, Neil ran down the main thoroughfare with open arms to scoop all of us up in a massive hug.

I was excited to see Milian because this city was where my great grandmother was born. I was sad though because we didn't get to see all that much of the city. In retrospect, there wasn't much to see. There were all kinds of skyscrapers, .50 euro McDonalds hamburgers, kabab (or kabap) shops everywhere (6 in a row on one street), and a streetmarket where Steve bought some shiny pants for 1 euro (ask him about them some time...).

When we were in Madrid later on, I was talking to yet another Australian hostel-mate who compared Milian to a large, ugly, yet vital organ. It needs to be there, but nobody really wants to look at. (I immediately thought of a liver.) This was seriously the best way to describe it.

Steve: In reality, our time in Milan was split pretty evenly between three activities: 1- hanging out in hotel rooms, 2- tromping across the city to see DaVinci's Last Supper, 3- waiting in the train station.

The tentative plan we made before leaving Rome was to try arriving within the hour of 1:00 PM, and then meet in one of the corners of the station (that way, there are only 4 places to look for each other). This was before we found out about the limitations on our Eurail passes.

To get free rides from Venice to Milan we ended up having to get up at 4:30, and ride the first waterbus out towards the train station. That didn't bother me At All, because that let us see dawn over Venice, from a boat on a canal. I was even more thrilled :D

So that got us into Milan at about 9:00, so the first half of that day in town was spent napping in our hotel room (see category 1 above). The majority of the afternoon was spent waiting for the guys at the train station (see category 3).

With one notable exception. Our Venice hostel only took cash, which completely drained our supply of euros. We coasted into Milan with no more than 13 E between the three of us. So, while the girls napped and showered and such, I went off, armed with a city map, in search of a bank.

I found one pretty quickly (it's a big city, just like any you find in the US, including the smog), but apparently they don't do cash advances from a Visa.

This could be a major problem, because nobody brought a debit card (first, because someone told us it was a bad idea; second, if we did, no one's bank accounts would have enough in them to actually make it worth having). Apparently, you can use your visa in an ATM, but it requires a PIN number for the card, that they have to mail to you.

But, there was a glimmer of hope.

The Italian bank teller (who looked oddly like Albert Einstien) was able to communicate to me that "Deutch Bank" could work with my visa, and I'd I walked far enough down Calle Buenos Aires, I would find it.

So off I go.

I found a different brand of bank along the way, and stopped in to see if they could surpass their competitors in customer service.

Banks in Europe are interesting for two reasons: 1- you walk in and take a number. Then you wait for them to call your number. Just like in their delis, their busier bakeries, and government buildings. It works well, it's just different than what i'm used to. 2- they have airlocks. They really do! It's pretty darn cool, and I think it's part of discouraging bank robberies.

You press a button on the outside of the building, and a door opens into a littled chamber. It only has room for one person. Maybe a mother and a child, if the kid was real skinny. Then you step in and the door closes behind you. Once it's all the way shut a voice speaks in Italian, and then a door on the other side opens, then you can walk into the bank. It's pretty cool, kinda like a mini-amusement park. :D

Anyway, the second bank did have someone who spoke my language, but they couldn't do visa. The lady (who did Not look like Einstien) did give me an address for Deutch Bank (which was Not on Buenos Aires) and so off I went again.

I made it to the bank, through all the red tape a.nd paperwork, and back to the hotel, cash in hand, just in time to miss the girls. They went to the station to meet the guys.

We eventually found each other at the station, but we never found the guys. We got there at just after 1, and waited in front of every train that passed through Florence, and every train from Venice (in case they were there, and were waiting for us to come in on the Venice train). No luck. We stayed until about 3:15, and finally gave up hope. We had the address for their hotel (i had actually passed it on my bank quest), so we tromped over there and left a message for Mr. Watson at the front desk of his hotel, and went back to take more naps (category 1).

Ironically enough, they got in at 3:30, and spent an hour waiting for us at the station.

Oh well. We met up that night, went searching for dinner, got it at a grocery store, for all 6 of us, for the whopping price of 11 Euros and 59 cents, and spent the rest of the evening in their hotel room, talking and laughing until we cried. Matthew Connors generated a whole page worth of amusing quotes, dutifully recorded in Tasha's journal.

Sometime, when I get back, ask me about my "arctic instinct."
Or send me an email about it :)

The next day, their train left in the early afternoon, but we had just enough time in the morning to dash out (a couple miles) to the church where The Last Supper was painted. It was a long haul, but we got kebabs along the way (delicious), and arrived just before the church opened.

We never saw the painting, though.

It had been removed from the church and locked in a nearby museum, where they could charge admission. Matt was really upset by that, and the attitude it represented, and on top of that, we were out of time before we figured it out.

So we left without seeing it. We walked the guys back, and saw them off at the train station (category 3), then went back to our hotel.

Venice 2: hostels and churches

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:25:08 GMT

Tasha was actually pretty scared about our hostel.

It was an understandable reaction. The week before, we had to run up to Dublin early and stay in a hostel so we could catch our flight to Rome. It was definitely a hostile environment.

It was in a terrible part of town, and they put me on a completely different floor than the girls. At one point, we ducked down into the kitchen area to eat together, and this guy came up to us, as friendly as possible, and told us his life story. He was a Czeck immigrant to the US, joined the marines, his drill sergeants were racist... At the same time, he was oddly interested in all the fine details of our travel arrangements. He then told us a completely different life story, and tried to get more information on exactly where and when we'd be traveling. It was enough to give the girls the willies, so we cut out of the conversation as soon as possible, and changed our travel plans after that.

It was just a bad experience. We ended up being able to switch things around so that I was across the room from the girls (they packed 8-12 beds for both males and females into a normal sized hotel room), but no one got much sleep. We tucked all our valuables into the pockets of my coat, and I wrapped it around my pillow so no one could take it without definitely waking me up in the process. We left as early the next morning as we could. No one wanted to hang around.

So, I was really hoping that was an anomaly as hostels go.

Tasha: it didn't help much that the route to our Venice hostel took us down streets that were too narrow to be considered alleys in America. It was only 9:30 but there didn't seem to be a soul in sight. The streets became darker and when we got to the hostel, and the outside was an instant replay of the one in Dublin... Except this one was completely dark, and no one was there to open the door.

Steve: Apparently, the hostel we had reservations at had closed, and was sending their customers to a hotel around the corner. A note on the sign gave us a new address, which brought us to a single big wooden door with a brass knob right in the middle. Inside the door was a stone staircase that curved upwards, very well lit and clean (it was just a little steep). Up the stairs and around the corner, the stairs were covered with a red carpet. At the next turn, a mirror with a golden frame hung on the wall. The farther up we went, the ritzier it looked. At the top was a young man behind a desk with a slightly bored look on his face.

Tasha: It was such a radical change from our previous experience! Steve got bonus points for picking out a great place to stay.

Steve: Apparently Venice is such a tourist-driven town that when the shops close at 10, pretty much all the sidewalks roll up (which is a funny concept, because Venice is all sidewalks! are almost no roads :D )

The bored guy was really nice. He pointed out where we were on a city map, and where the two or three bars on the island were, just in case we wanted to go out. He assured us that the price wouldn't change from what we were quoted on the website, and that he would put the three of us together in a 4 bed room, so we'd only have one stranger around us while we were sleeping.

That one person turned out to be the nicest person in the world! She was an Australian vegetarian in her early 20s, who had decided to see the world. She had saved up her money and struck out across the south of Asia with her boyfriend, traveling by train and staying in hostels. She made it all the way to Holland (halfway around the world) before she ran out of money. Apparently she also lost her traveling buddy there too.

In Holland, she got a job in an Irish pub, because it was the only place where she didn't have to speak Dutch. There's a 'globalized' picture for you: an Australian girl, working at an Irish pub, in Holland.

She had some interesting perspectives about religion, and a lot of questions. Tasha and Annie conked out pretty early, but we ended up in a conversation that lasted pretty late into the night.

Basically, her biggest beef with religion was her vegetarianism.

She didn't see the use of established religion (an increasingly common point of view), and had a negative view of it already from her mother (apparently a Jehovah's Witness) but she said her main conflict was the fact that the commandments say "thou shalt not kill," but christians still condone eating meat. She had met a goat in Holland, and he had so much personality that she believed he had as much right to live as any human being. She also had a couple cats that would carry on conversations with her. Since the church didn't protect innocent beings like that, she couldn't be a part of it.

That was an objection I hadn't heard of before. It was interesting to encounter it.

Back to Venice, though.

It was, despite all my romantic babblings, a tourist town. You still find the same basic things: street vendors, overpriced restaurants, and crowds. We were there on Sunday, though, which meant smaller crowds and the added adventure of finding mass.

We slept late on Sunday morning (it was much needed), and toured Venice in the afternoon. Our map had all the churches in town clearly marked, and like every other ancient Italian town, there was one on almost every corner, all super ancient. The closest one had a 6:30 mass time posted on the door, so that was our target. When we got there, it was locked up tight.

Not to worry, there were three more within a couple blocks' distance. At least one of them would have an evening mass, right?

Over the next 15 minutes, we went to 8 other churches, all the size of small cathedrals, and some within spitting distance of each other. All of them were straight up closed. Some didn't even have signs posted anywhere on the building. Basically, 9 cathedrals had been boarded up from disuse.

We did find mass at St. Marco's Basilica. It was beautiful: an especially ancient church, built before the discoveries that made spacious gothic designs possible, so the way it's massive dome was supported was by arches, stacked on top of arches, with more arches on top. Every arch had a saint or an angel painted on the bottom, so they looked like they were peeking out at you from everywhere you looked, and whatever wasn't a picture of a saint was pure gold mosaic tiles. The whole ceiling was gold, the marble on the bottom was a dark, rich brown, and the altar was surrounded with beautiful wooden statues. It was an amazing place to go to mass, we weren't expecting to go there, but we walked in the door literally two minutes before it started. God wanted us there :)

We ended up with a really cool souvenir from our time in Venice: the "Jade blanket."

I know, it sounds like an item from a video game (like "plus 2 coolness, plus 3 warmth," but really it's just a red airline blanket that our Australian roommate didn't have room for anymore, so she passed it on to us. Extra blankets are alllllways useful.

That, and always knowing where your towel is.

Untold Joy from a 'Waterbus'

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:45:52 GMT

Then we went to Venice.

This was one of the major high points on the trip for me. I've always dreamed of being in Venice. For spring break a couple years ago, we went to Mexico City, and got to tour a canal town. My favorite part of the whole experience was how similar it was to what I had seen about Venice. The gondolas, the gondoliers, the quaint little bridges... I couldn't wait to see the real thing.

First we had to get there, though.

On the train from Florence to Venice, we learned something very important about our Eurail passes: they're not blank-check tickets.

When we got them, it said "global pass: unlimited train travel for three weeks, across 17 countries." That might make one think one could ride on the major trains in all those countries for free, since one already paid for the "global" ticket, but apparently the opposite is true. The free trains are the tiny ones, the inter-city transport, and the overnighters. The main lines between major cities cost up to 15 Euros a head, or 23 if you weren't aware of that and had to buy your tickets on the train... :)

So, that means planning the rest of our travel more carefully, waking up early to get the early commuter trains, and going through more small stations. That's all. Maybe we should read more fine print before heading off on adventures...

Taking the small trains, it was nighttime when we got to Venice. It was beautiful! I tell ya, Venice is a city that knows how to light things up at night!

To get to our hostel, the directions said that we had to take the waterbus #1. We took a waterbus!! The girls laughed at me, 'cause of how excited I was to board it. I could hardly keep from jumping up and down. THEN, we got to sit in a special section on the back of the boat, where the seats are outside, and right next to the gunwhales (sides of the ship), looking out at the water!!

Tasha: so when Steve told us about the waterbus, the first thing that came to mind was something from the magic school bus. Ya know, like a bus that'll turn amphibian... Then I though more about it and figured it would be like the "chunnel" (the underground tunnel that runs across the English Channel). Don't let Steve fool you though... It was just a large bargesque boat that was driven ('piloted,' I suppose) just as roughly as any other city bus.

I guess I've deglamorized it enough... ;) the bus itself was pretty cool, I mean what other time can you worry about getting wet or sinking while on a public transport?

The train station was cool because it opened straight to the waterfront where you had your choice of waterbuses and of boat taxis as well as being picked up by more civilian craft. Honestly with as many vespas as we've seen in Europe I was surprised not to see sea-doos.

Another thing Steve loved I'm sure is the fact our hostel was almost completely at the other end of the bus line. It was a good thirty mins of Steve jumping in his seat talking about how its just like a bus but in water. Every stop was "special" because the boat didn't parallel park. Instead it moved sideways until it hit the dock. Then to leave, it scraped its side moving the floating dock/busstop back toward shore and went on its way.

So Steve was beaming about this boat so much... When he tells a childhood story that he's really excited about he'll have a lispy little boy voice... This voice was a constant on our boat ride. We made sure he got to sit dead center in the back, right in front of the Venitian flag. I guess listening to him babble on in nautical terms is my repayment for a similar action at an airshow with him this past October.

I think that the engine was what made the waterbus the most special... Not only did the ships "captian" drive it like a school bus, the sounds coming from the engin/transmission were something like a cross between an army of stone garden gnomes running haphazzardly and a gargoyle spitting out the water... One of the best parts of the boat ride was seeing Steve pretend to be the gargoyle.

Steve: I had a lot of fun :)

Everything in Venice was exactly like i'd imagined it, even the gondoliers: black and white striped shirts, dark pants with a colored fabric belt, and a pot belly inside the shirt. Every gondolier I saw was like that. It was magical. It cost 80 euros to ride in a gondola, though. That was definitely not magical.

The best part about the trip from the station to the hostel was that we got to see so much of the city. There are some beautiful buildings, and several ancient churches built right on the edge of the canal. Then we hit land, and got to navigate through the quaint, tiny little streets to our lodging for the night.

Skipping Forward: Adventure City!

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:44:10 GMT

So much is happening right now, I wanted to make sure and capture it for you before it escapes me.

We just left Rome. Up until now, we've been traveling as part of the school's group and on the school's time. Now myself, Tasha, and her best friend Ann Marie are striking off into the great beyond. :)

Yesterday was our last meal prepared by Roman nuns. Spring break had officially started, and there was a 9:00 train to Florence with our name on it. We would spend the day exploring Dante's city and be in Venice by the end of the night.

Our first act as independent explorers was to take the wrong bus.

Then we took the wrong trolley.

After a couple circles on the awesome public transportation system in Rome, we got to the train station and discovered how much bigger it is than a bus station. It's like a shopping mall! There's also a special amount of red tape involved in getting our Eurail passes activated. Not a real problem, though, there are plenty of trains, and we got on one by 11.

I'm really glad we got a chance to go to Florence. The atmosphere is much more laid back than Rome. It was another famous and historic Italian city, but here's an illustration of the difference in culture: 90% of the churches in Florence charge admission. Also, the shops and street vendors sell handmade belts and purses instead of rosaries and holy cards.

Funny story that connects with this: A couple days earlier, we had gone to the laundromat, and took our tour guide along, so we could show him where it was (there's something ironic in that... :D ). His laundry finished drying before he got back from dinner, and so we pulled out his clothes and folded them right along with our own. He was so thrilled when he got them back that he helped us plan the rest of the Italian branch of our adventure. Armed with that knowledge, we had a pretty good handle on what to go see.

We had 2 hours before our train left for Venice, so we toured the major churches, the gelato shops, and saw the famous "Hall of the Rennaissance" (Salon de Cinquecento.)

In art class, we learned about the difference between the emphatic Baroque style and the more restrained, serene Rennaissance. In Rome, everything is baroque (basically. If it wasn't originally, it's been restored sometime in the 18th century, so it looks baroque). In Florence, we got to see our first real Gothic cathedral. It was really amazing how much of a contrast it was to the older basilicas in Rome, decorated with the newer Baroque style.

Three major differences: 1- the outside of Florence's gothic cathedral is beautifully decorated in multiple colors of marble. We didn't see any of that in Rome. 2- inside the cathedral, there were only 4 small frescoes. In Rome, it seemed like they were trying to plaster religious art across every posible flat surface. 3- the gothic cathedral is so tall! The columns are so slender, and the ceilings are so high! After going into 23 churches in Rome, all built in or before the 14th century, you kinda get used to the proportions: the higher the ceiling, the bulkier the colums. Somehow, the gothic cathedral changed that. You walk in and your eyes are drawn up into this huge open space that extends faaar above your head, BUT THERE AREN'T 10 FT SQUARE COLUMNS HOLDING THEM UP!! It felt like a miracle.

We didn't get to see too much more in Florence. We did end up going shopping there, but it wasn't recreational spending.

Tasha brought a cavernous backpack that she got about 4 years ago. In the Dublin airport, one of the straps had broken, now the other one followed suit. It was also bursting a seam (or three). In addition to that, Annie had brought a rolling suitcase, but had taken it down enough bumpy stairs (heavy as it was), that the wheels were bent out of shape and no longer rolled. With all the running from train to train that we were already doing, we couldn't travel very long in that condition, so we found a street vendor that sold luggage. Surprisingly, we were able to grab replacements for only 23 euro dollars, total (it involved just a liiittle bit of haggling).

The only other interesting thing that happened was that I got a compliment on my hat.

I wear a black fedora whenever I travel, I call it my "adventure hat." It's a great feeling to, after a long journey, take off your hat and hang it up. Try it some time, you'll see what I mean. So here I am, walking through an incredibly fashion-conscious city in Italy, where everyone seems to be dressed up in some way or another (most of them in something "outside-the-box"). We walked up to a crosswalk, and this guy leaning up against the building says "hey, nice hat." then the light turned green and we were gone. I thought it was hilarious.