This post requires a coffee break or two

Saturday morning involved an early wakeup call, because I needed to make a 8:40 AM S-bahn train and my parents had an 11:15 departure time. We ate the small breakfast that our hotel provided for us, for the nicer breakfast cost 44 euro, according to my mom. I wonder what was in this ridiculously expensive breakfast. I made the train, and after three stops and about seven hours, I was in Zurich. But bad news, kind of, in that nobody tried to stamp my passport, which is essentially why I came to Switzerland.

The map and directions I was given by the hostel website were insufficient, and coming out of the train station I was a bit lost. I must have looked awfully lost, too, because very quickly a very nice elderly man came up to me and started speaking German. Luckily, he spoke English as well, and he led me to the street where my tram was. I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. We talked: he was from Switzerland, born and raised (and still living) near the northern border with Germany. He was in town for the day, apparently alone shopping. Nice dude, though. The tram ride was exciting as well, because I was free riding in an unknown public transportation system. I could not buy the ticket to my destination because I only had a 100 Swiss franc note, and the ticket machines only take coins. Luckily, I made it safely to the hostel, where I was promptly robbed by this place. Not only was I to pay the 80 some francs I already owed, but they stuck a 6 franc per night charge on my head because I didn’t have enough stickers on my Hostelling International card. Apparently you need 5 stickers to be a “member”. Nice scam they have going here. I was left with 8 francs out of my 100. My hostel ended up being like 45 dollars a night, a total ripoff considering the place in Munich that we stayed at was probably a four-star hotel and cost 50 bucks a head. Zurich is really darned expensive.

After that experience I was not very happy with the world. I spent much of yesterday hanging out in the room, eating cashews and chocolate and watching the Tudors. I also met one of my roommates, a kid from a small town in Mexico who studied abroad in Lille (sp? Normally, I would check it myself on the internets, but, like the previous few posts, I have been writing this on Word because I don’t have wireless available, and I will upload the post when I do). He seems very, very nice. We chatted, a bunch of small talk about our study abroad experiences. I think he is traveling alone after the semester, and he seemed really lonely. That probably would have been my fate if it weren’t for Max/ my parents/ Konstantin & the Filbingers. Thank you all for that. I called it a night pretty early, perhaps around 10 PM.

I woke up at 2:30 to the most horribly odd sound. It was really loud, high pitched, and came and went every 2 seconds. It took me about a minute in my sleepy haze to realize that another one of my roommates (4 beds in this hostel) was snoring like a madman. I lack the verbal ability to convey how loud and annoying this dude’s snoring was, but it was truly unlike any snoring I have ever heard, and way, way louder. It probably kept me up for an incredibly annoying half hour, to the point where I went and got earplugs, which themselves were annoying because I sleep on my side and the pillow on the ear with the earplug in it was not the best feeling. But it was nonetheless worth it, because there was a time when he quieted down and I took the earplugs out and fell asleep. At 5 AM, however, it had resumed, it woke me back up (my Mexican roommate told me today that the snoring woke him up as well, and he agreed that it was a most unique sound and snore). I didn’t make the mistake of taking out the earplugs again.

I woke up this morning fairly early, went down and got the “complimentary” breakfast, which was, admittedly, pretty good (yogurt and good cereal, and unlimited amounts, which is unusual for hostels. Also, they had a coffee machine. Still doesn’t even begin to pay for this place). I set off to do my own little tour of town, with iPod in tow (podcasts make fine companions. Also, podcast is not in my Microsoft Word dictionary. Neither is iPod. This program is OMG sooooo 2002). I walked around for about four and a half hours, but I realized something very fast: this town shuts down on Sundays. Nearly everything was closed. I couldn’t believe it. The main shopping drag is about a mile long, but the only stores open on Sundays were McDonald’s and Starbuck’s. The stuff at the train station was open as well, but, really, that’s it. Luckily, at the train station, I was able to get something productive done today, in that I purchased my train ticket to Stuttgart for tomorrow (Monday). I paid in euro, and I bet the train station gave me a crappy rate. 1.61 franc to the euro. Was that anywhere near fair? I wish I had the internet to check. I should have done that earlier. Anyways, the ticket was a little less than 50 euro (77 francs, I think), which is all right, I guess. Anyways, I got 3.5 francs back, so I should have 11.5 francs when I leave this hostel tomorrow, because I have not spent one yet. I didn’t have the opportunity today to do so: even the grocery store down the road was closed. They take their day off more seriously than the Italians, it seems.

Not that the walk was an entire waste. The city is beautiful. There is a huge lake which channels into a river that cuts through town, and on all sides off in the distance, but not too far, there are mountains, some of which are snow-covered. The first thing I thought when I was able to get a good view of it was: “well, I found the place that Tim has always been looking for”. Water, mountains, sailing, snow. I think that’s the checklist for Tim Tim.

I got back around 2, and I have spent the rest of the day in the hostel. It rained this afternoon, apparently, so I guess I didn’t miss much. I blew through 8 episodes of the Tudors in the last two days, and it was fairly entertaining. Still, I would have rather been elsewhere. I am only in Zurich because I want the people to stamp my passport, because my visa expires and I needed to leave the Schengen area, which Switzerland is not part of. My roommate, however, said they did not stamp his passport coming from Stuttgart, so I may be up a creek without a paddle. I guess during my days in Rome I will need to go to the US embassy and see if I need to do anything, because I do not want to be stuck not being able to travel in Italy for 10 years or whatever the punishment is for overstaying the visa, which I have not done. But my passport says I have. Arg, darn you people at Notre Dame for screwing this up.

The last event of note here so far is that my two new roommates for the night showed up around 7:45 PM, and are in the room now. They are speaking Italian, but they look sketchy. One has dreadlocks and they both reek of cigarettes. I fear for my laptop. If you see this post, however, it is all good, because that means the laptop made it to Konstantin’s house safe and sound.


UPDATE: Monday afternoon. So the computer did make it to Stuttgart safe and sound. Hooray. I arrived into the Stuttgart train station at noon, and Konstantin was walking up to my track just as I was walking off. Good timing, especially because my cell phone has run out of money and I really didn’t want to buy a whole 25 euro worth of calls just to contact him there at the train station, especially because I had made it this entire semester on one 25 euro recharge of the celly. We rode the S-bahn and the bus back to his house, which was maybe 20 minutes of public transpo from the main train station. It is a very nice house, about as close to American suburban living that you can find in Europe. I met Konstantin’s siblings (one older sister, one younger brother), and they seem like good people as well. Mr. and Mrs. Filbinger are vacationing in Austria for the New Year, so I will meet them on Thursday. Konstantin’s sister, Katharina, cooked some cheese ravioli for lunch. I then took a badly-needed shower and Konstantin, Kornelius (the brother), and I watched two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which Konstantin practically has memorized. I’m guessing the Friedman family is responsible for that; I can’t imagine he picked up the Larry David love in Germany. I’d only seen parts of a few episodes, so it was new to me. Funny stuff.

After that, I hopped on the internet for awhile. I have to use their computer downstairs, because the wireless appears to be complicated. No big deal. Only becomes a big deal when I zone out catching up on my blogs and I’ve been on their computer for 45 minutes, not realizing it. Whoops.

UPDATE NUMERO DUE (Night of Jan. 4): Wow, a ton of good things happened between the last two updates. Main good thing #1: there was absolutely zero awkwardness or anything else that could have gone poorly in Stuttgart. Konstantin and his family were excellent, excellent hosts and we had a great time together. That night, Konstantin took me over to dinner with one of his friends who also studies law, but is currently studying in Geneva. We had a grand old time, mainly because this friend “loves to cook” and was clearly loaded. We had perhaps the classiest New Years celebration ever with beautiful classical music from some expensive looking sound system in the background as we talked with this friend and three others who came over an exceptionally prepared home meal of some type of German cuisine. Memory fails as to what exactly it was. But it was good. All spoke really good English, so it was very pleasant for me and I had some nice conversations about the German economy and touring America. One kid studied abroad as a high schooler in Indianapolis, so he knew all about Notre Dame. Yay for that. There were also libations involved, seeing as this was New Years Eve and all, but the great news about these specific libations is that they were 1) good 2) expensive and 3) free for me. A beautiful combination. The best part of the night, however, were the fireworks that Germans shoot off at midnight to celebrate the New Year. They put our Independence Day celebrations to shame.

We planned to go out to a club that night, but everyone ended up crashing between 2 and 4 AM (me towards the 2 side. I slept on a white leather couch downstairs, where the party was). I woke up around 7:45, and after waking up Konstantin we took public transpo back to the Filbinger house. Konstantin had only really gotten about 3 hours of sleep, so he took a nap while I caught up on the Internet. Then I was like “hey, I’m tired” and I ended up sleeping 3 hours in the afternoon. That evening we had a great time. Konstantin and his younger brother Kornelius (who was very personable and a great host, like all the Filbingers) took me out to the US Army base in Stuttgart, which is central command for US forces in Europe and is located about 15 minutes from their house. We then headed back for a night of playing cards with the Filbinger children. We played this game called Johnny Controletti, which is a type of liar’s poker I suppose, and then I taught Kornelius and Konstantin gin rummy. Katharina came in (the parents did not come back until yesterday afternoon), and Konstantin and Kornelius made me teach them all euchre, which I had mentioned earlier. I thought it was going to be a colossal failure, considering euchre has a bunch of weird rules and the language barrier was working against me. Turns out, they all picked up the game really, really quickly. Probably two open hands, and we were good to go. Two games in, they even got all the right plays, more or less. I was thoroughly impressed.

The next morning I woke up well before Konstantin and Kornelius, and I hung out online and said goodbye to their sister who was leaving for Austria to go skiing. Eventually they got up, made me some food, and Konstantin and I then took a very long walk to the TV tower that overlooks Stuttgart. We went up the tower, and I got to see Stuttgart from the highest point around. It is a very pretty city, but it was cold up there. We then walked to the center city, got a coffee, and headed back to the house from there. We meant to go out with Konstantin’s buddies, but something didn’t work out, and Konstantin, Kornelius, and I ended up playing cards all night.

The next day... I don’t really recall what all we did. This was yesterday. Yikes. Here’s what I remember: we hung out throughout most of the day at the house, playing cards and whatnot. Ahh, yes, we watched more Curb Your Enthusiasm as well. We ended up watching the entire first season over the course of the stay. We went out to the mall near their house and got some famous sausage that is apparently a tradition for Dave to eat when he’s in Stuttgart. Then the Filbinger parents showed up, back from their trip to Switzerland. They were also very nice. We had an interesting meal with this odd machine where we took squares of cheese and put veggies and meat on them and melted the cheese in the machine and then poured the melted cheese over potatoes. It was kind of a fondue-type meal. Fun times. Then Konstantin took me out to meet some of his friends. We met up downtown, and then we went out to a brewery where we got a few pitchers of beer and Konstantin caught up with his buddies. They seemed like good people. After that, we headed back to the Filbinger compound and the two brothers and I played Johnny Controletti and gin rummy and war, another brilliant American card game. Cross-cultural interchange: it’s funtastic!

This morning I was in the house until 2 PM. More cards, etc. At 2, I said goodbye to Mrs. Filbinger, who made a very filling lunch as a sendoff. I had already said my goodbyes to Mr. Filbinger when he took off to work. Multiple hugs were involved. Either I made quite the impression or Mr. Filbinger loves hugs. Either way is cool. Konstantin drove me over to the airport with his brother in tow, and we had a bunch of manhugs and I was off to Milan. My flight was a little jump over Switzerland, taking only forty minutes. The airport was about an hour bus ride outside the city, and after that I walked to Hotel San Tomaso. After I checked in, I went out to go see the Duomo, which I did. Pretty church, etc. Also got me some gelato. Welcome back to Italy, Jamie.

UPDATE # 3. READ THIS UPDATE IF YOU READ NO OTHERS. THIS IS HILARIOUS: So last night (today is now Saturday the 5th), while I was updating #2, this old, 50something woman who was rooming with me in the hostel (along with a nice Australian girl) was going off on her “life experiences”. She seemed very nice at first, asked me (Mr. Economics Major) to explain why there is unemployment, and reassured me that I would have no problems with my visa expiring. Well, anyways, the first life experience she told me about that got my attention was her nonchalant mentioning that she documented torture in the US Army in prison camps in Iraq. Whoa. Nothing little about that, so I was impressed. She talked about how she was in the CIA, which is why she was able to do so. Just as that story was winding down (and I was buying every word at the time, because she did seem very knowledgeable and coherent), she drops that the CIA and Irish spies tortured her in Ireland. WWWHHHHHAAAAA? So her story was that the Irish tortured her, and when asked to describe said torture she was like “Oh, you probably don’t want to hear about this” as if she wasn’t begging us to ask. She was like “you know, prodding, electrical shocks, those kinds of things”. By this point, I have realized that this lady is kooky (the only thing that bothers me about saying that she was totally off her rocker is that the woman knew all of her shit down cold; she knew the names of CIA directors, Bush family history, Spanish-American War history, random shit that I knew was at least historically correct). After mentioning that the CIA was training suicide bombers to prolong the Iraq War, she gave us a history lesson on the CIA, saying that the CIA was based off of the Skull and Bones society at Yale (“a complete death cult”) who are hooked on power and do things outside the interests of the American people, and she gives a history of all these people who were involved with the Skull and Bones, and there were “secret” members as well, like Bill Clinton. By this point I am doing all I can not to laugh like crazy at this woman, for I don’t want her to hate me. Then, after blaming the CIA for prolonging the Iraq War, she casually brings up 9/11. At the end of this conversation, she then goes “oh, sorry to be such a bummer, but the CIA was responsible for 9/11” and then goes on to give the same old bullshit about a controlled explosion and plane fuel not being able to melt steel, etc.

At this point I am dying inside, because half of me wants to beat the living shit out of this woman, because there is really nothing more insulting to the victims of 9/11 then saying that the American government was responsible to the attacks, half of me wants to laugh at this woman for being ridiculous, and the third half of me wants to cry because such a clearly intelligent woman was so deluded.

But wait, there’s more. So, after the 9/11 diatribe she then goes on to talk about how the CIA (which did not officially exist until after WW2, so I suppose this was the Skull and Bones/ New Order) was responsible for the Spanish-American War and the prolonging of Vietnam. Whatever. Then she talks about this thing called MK Ultra, a program of children where the CIA tortured children and made split personalities in order to create these superchildren with the ability to foresee the future (I can’t remember what she called it. I was some dolled up term where people could predict “with 80 percent certainty” things like what was behind closed doors, etc). According to her, she was a member of MK Ultra because Daddy was a military intelligence officer. This gives her multiple personalities. She talked about some missions for the CIA that she ran to Russia, and when we asked her if she spoke Russian, she said “well, that is one of my other personalities, which I have suppressed, thankfully”. Also, since she knew how to foretell the future, the KGB obviously wanted a piece of that, so she was abducted 2x by Russian intelligence, once escaped, and the other got part of a personnel swap. Quite a busy life this lady lived, apparently. Oh, and she was a doctor, too. And she’s living in Milan because the court there put out arrest warrants on the Americans who extradited a terrorist suspect to Syria to be tortured, because she was tortured and afraid it will happen once more (again, she is right on the news facts, which may be the thing that bothers me the most about this lady. If she was totally nuts, I’d feel much more secure. Other than when I was sleeping last night).

So, yeah. Before we go to bed, she warns me that she “might” snore, so she apologized in advance. That was an understatement; I couldn’t sleep too well. She sure did not sleep like somebody who had been tortured before, though; she slept like a baby.

This morning I caught an early train to Florence, because I felt I was done with Milan. I got in at about midday, went to the hostel which is close to the train station, and went from there to explore the city. I saw some old sites, reminisced about the previous trip to Italy (good times, good times), and I went to the Uffizi Gallery. I took a long time in there, because the art is so good. Me likey the Renaissance art. From there I walked around a bit, walked past Santa Maria Novella because we talked about it’s architecture so much in my art history class in Rome, and went back to the hostel. A good day so far, and I haven’t even had my gelato yet. Gotta go do that now.

UPDATE # whatever: I did not get gelato yesterday. I ended up getting a calzone, which was an excellent decision. I did not have nearly as memorable experience with my roommates last night as I did in Milan. Nothing notable. This morning I got up, walked around in a rainy Florentine Sunday morning, and decided to go to Rome earlier than previously expected. Good call. I am safely into Rome with high speed internets. And I can post this. If you read all of this in one sitting, wow. Good on you.