It was surprisingly difficult to get to a computer for any extended period of time for the last week or so of my travels. Unfortunately, I don't really feel like going into extended detail about all the cities I've been to at the moment, so I'll just say that Europe is great. In a lot of respects its a lot better than America. But America is home. And home is where I must stay.
Speaking of which, after living the restless jet-setting Euro-American lifestyle for about four months, I have to say that my little home town of Chappaqua NY seems all the more an unfortunate fleck on the North American continent. There's one main street with low-slung pizza shops and ever-opening, ever-closing knick-knackeries, and outside of that are several characterless McMansions. There's a good high school, a few decent franchise places within driving distance, and (thank fucking GOD) a very good art-house movie theater within a five-minute drive. Your average upper-middle-class American suburb, essentially. But God dammit, the place is so boring I feel like tearing my eyes out of their sockets, and I've only been here two days. It's probably reverse culture shock, and I may get over it in a matter of time...but there's still something in my little suburb that smells of lifelessness and death. I hope to come to Skidmore very, very soon, because all the middle-aged women barking nasally into their cell phones is slowly driving me mad. How you gonna keep 'em back in the gated housing development after they seen Par-ee? (I didn't see Par-ee, but you get the idea)
Monday, 23 April 2007
Thursday, 5 April 2007
Back-track, then front-track
My girlfriend got upset that I didn´t mention her trip in my blog. Since she´s probably the only one that checks it on a regular basis, I should mention it: Becky came over. We went to London and saw a bunch of museums that had all their key exhibits closed. We saw a Kylie Minogue exhibit, and it was very gay. Then we spent a day or two in Oxford again, and she left.
ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!?!?!
Seriously, though, it was nice having her. Thank you very much, Becky, for spending the extraordinary amount of money to come see me in England. It was very much appreciated. So was the sex. That was also appreciated.
Anyway, back to now. Barcelona: it is a huge city. David, Morgan, and David´s sister Rachel all took a tour of the place together. We were only staying a total of four nights and three days, so the prospect of doing everything there was to do was virtually impossible. Unfortunately, since it´s such a huge city we were also kind of overwhelmed as to what would be a cool thing to do. We were trying to see a little too much in a small period of time, I think. So we ended up kind of exhausted after the first few days. Then it started to rain. Since Barcelona is a big coastal town, and therefore most of the fun activities require sun, our options were severely limited. We went to a number of museums, saw an orchestra play at a really ornate but very cool music hall, saw a few Antoni Gaudi buildings. (If you don´t know who that is, Google image search him. He is an insane architect. INSANE.) It was far from the "Oh my God, it was so amaaaaziiiiing" experience that everyone describes. Then again, I don´t really like the whole nightlife scene that everyone says is so great there. Maybe I should go again when it´s sunny. And when I´m more willing to hit up da cluuub. Which will be never.
Now to Valencia. It is really nice here. Our hostel in Barcelona was filled with obnoxious douches. The staff was cold and unfriendly. Here, there´s funky art on the walls, a nice common area, a kitchen, and even really good music in the lounge. The city itself is really nice, too. We took the whole place at a lot more relaxed pace then we did Barcelona, and that really helped. The town is really beautiful, in that old, crumbling Spanish kind of way. We´ve been just wandering into museums and cool looking buildings, having security guards speak something to us in Spanish, and then moseying on in, totally unaware of what we´re doing, which is actually a really great way of touring around. Everything is a surprise. Like a museum in a church. And an art gallery that houses seventeenth-century Spanish floats. And paella is delicious. It was invented here, for those of you who don´t know.
Anyway, I´m off to Madrid. Bye de bye.
ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!?!?!
Seriously, though, it was nice having her. Thank you very much, Becky, for spending the extraordinary amount of money to come see me in England. It was very much appreciated. So was the sex. That was also appreciated.
Anyway, back to now. Barcelona: it is a huge city. David, Morgan, and David´s sister Rachel all took a tour of the place together. We were only staying a total of four nights and three days, so the prospect of doing everything there was to do was virtually impossible. Unfortunately, since it´s such a huge city we were also kind of overwhelmed as to what would be a cool thing to do. We were trying to see a little too much in a small period of time, I think. So we ended up kind of exhausted after the first few days. Then it started to rain. Since Barcelona is a big coastal town, and therefore most of the fun activities require sun, our options were severely limited. We went to a number of museums, saw an orchestra play at a really ornate but very cool music hall, saw a few Antoni Gaudi buildings. (If you don´t know who that is, Google image search him. He is an insane architect. INSANE.) It was far from the "Oh my God, it was so amaaaaziiiiing" experience that everyone describes. Then again, I don´t really like the whole nightlife scene that everyone says is so great there. Maybe I should go again when it´s sunny. And when I´m more willing to hit up da cluuub. Which will be never.
Now to Valencia. It is really nice here. Our hostel in Barcelona was filled with obnoxious douches. The staff was cold and unfriendly. Here, there´s funky art on the walls, a nice common area, a kitchen, and even really good music in the lounge. The city itself is really nice, too. We took the whole place at a lot more relaxed pace then we did Barcelona, and that really helped. The town is really beautiful, in that old, crumbling Spanish kind of way. We´ve been just wandering into museums and cool looking buildings, having security guards speak something to us in Spanish, and then moseying on in, totally unaware of what we´re doing, which is actually a really great way of touring around. Everything is a surprise. Like a museum in a church. And an art gallery that houses seventeenth-century Spanish floats. And paella is delicious. It was invented here, for those of you who don´t know.
Anyway, I´m off to Madrid. Bye de bye.
Wednesday, 4 April 2007
Travel Blog
No longer is this a regular old Oxford blog. This is now a travel blog. If you want to learn about the ins and outs of travelling about Spain, Prague, Rome, and Amsterdam for a very short while, then read on motherfucker.
I left Oxford for Bath, and stayed there about a week. That was nice. It gave me a chance to get all my affairs in order in a very small town. And it is a very small town. The only thing you can really do there is see the baths and maybe look at some nice, old architecture. I met all of David´s abroad friends, and many of them were quite nice. Then there was David himself, and he was quite nice. I watched a lot of British television and ate delicious home-cooked meals. Not much to report there.
Then I went to London for a last few days. I saw all the traditional "London" things, Westminster, Parliament, Buckingham palace. It was all whatever. I really didn´t learn anything new by seeing them in person, especially considering it was quite shitty and rainy out. I did, however, see an interesting final London show called "Attempts on her Life". It was a series of monologues about a woman named Ann, and the whole thing was staged with a lot of audio/video elements: a large screen was lowered at the beginning of the play, and most of it was recorded as a kind of film, made on stage, in addition to being a play. They even simulated cars going by, beaches, and doctors´offices on stage using a few small set-pieces, but on the screen it looked very realistic. It was interesting, but nothing mind-blowing. Worth the 10 pounds paid for the show.
I will come back later to describe Barcelona and Valencia. Let me tell you two things right off the bat: Valencia is surprisingly great, and Barcelona was surprisingly disappointing.
I left Oxford for Bath, and stayed there about a week. That was nice. It gave me a chance to get all my affairs in order in a very small town. And it is a very small town. The only thing you can really do there is see the baths and maybe look at some nice, old architecture. I met all of David´s abroad friends, and many of them were quite nice. Then there was David himself, and he was quite nice. I watched a lot of British television and ate delicious home-cooked meals. Not much to report there.
Then I went to London for a last few days. I saw all the traditional "London" things, Westminster, Parliament, Buckingham palace. It was all whatever. I really didn´t learn anything new by seeing them in person, especially considering it was quite shitty and rainy out. I did, however, see an interesting final London show called "Attempts on her Life". It was a series of monologues about a woman named Ann, and the whole thing was staged with a lot of audio/video elements: a large screen was lowered at the beginning of the play, and most of it was recorded as a kind of film, made on stage, in addition to being a play. They even simulated cars going by, beaches, and doctors´offices on stage using a few small set-pieces, but on the screen it looked very realistic. It was interesting, but nothing mind-blowing. Worth the 10 pounds paid for the show.
I will come back later to describe Barcelona and Valencia. Let me tell you two things right off the bat: Valencia is surprisingly great, and Barcelona was surprisingly disappointing.
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