Where should i start? So much to write about... Although i had been to this continent three times and have lived in Prague for three months, i was not really self-conscious in my earlier trips (my first time here in second grade i logged over 50 hours on my gameboy- Pokemon was cool then...) and now after this trip i feel much more cultured and even jealous of the Europeans, who have inherited such rich and fascinating culture, history, and romance... My five weeks in Western Europe visiting six countries have been simply amazing and too short, and despite the killer prices and getting valuables stolen in a squatter in Amsterdam, i'm in love with Europe and will probably be back soon.
ITALY
I started my trip in Rome with my family, making a round the globe journey from New Zealand via Hong Kong and London. And the first thing that struck me in Rome was what a small and young world i had been living in. In Christchurch (the second biggest city in NZ) there is a cathedral in the center of the city which is the city's most famous landmark and Seoul also has a landmark cathedral while Exeter has few tiny (but cosy) churches. But in Rome, there are cathedrals that are a lot bigger than the one in NZ and Korea every block. And visiting the Vatican City was simply jaw dropping... After getting over the initial unease at the godly wealth of the church (the argument i heard was that grand magnificent catherals instill sense of awe for common people and great paintings serve educational purpose as most of the people were illiterate), i really felt overwhelmed and in awe by the grandeur of the church. (Just how rich are these guys?) i think churches and religious groups should have to report financial statements just like the NGOs and private companies- i mean the religious leaders should lead the way on financial transparency no?)
But the highlight of the Vatican tour was meeting the geniuses- mainly Da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. Da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man who dabbled in everything and was brilliant at everything, while Raphael was a cunning playboy who knew how to win the pope and other powerful aristocrats' favor but died of STDs in his thirties (but a briliant painter nonetheless), and Michelangelo was a lonely old man whose specialty was sculputures but could paint damn good too (btw, i think Sculpture may be one of the highest echelons of art- it's so much like the act of God's creation that one is breathing life into a rock- and his Pieta is...(undescribable)). Dante or Goethe or some poetic guy said one cannot know what a man is capable of achieving until you visit the Sistine Chapel, which is a masterpiece of Michelangelo with two large paintings on the ceiling and on the wall (the most famous one perhaps being Adam doing the ET thing with God), and i certainly developed reverence for this great painter who devoted 14 years of his life and a lot of his health (he became quite crippled and blind after working in an uncomfortable position with toxic chemicals for so long) to create this masterpiece. Your neck becomes quite sore after you stare at the ceiling though... And one depressing thing about some of the Christian symbolisms in the Renaissance paintings- St. Paul's symbol is a knife as he had his head beheaded, and St. someone's symbol is arrows as he died from being shot with arrows so these poor guys always appear in painting with weapons with which they were killed... :(
(Btw, St Paul's Cathedral was sort of disappointing compared to St. Peter's... Paul was probably just as important for the spreading of Christianity as Peter was (and Karen Armstrong even argues that St. Paul founded Christianity not Jesus) and i don't think he's getting enough credit for his work... but then there's a passage in the Bible in which Jesus says to Peter upon your rock or tomb i'll build my kingdom or something so that may be why...)
I also had a chance to see the Pope on a Sunday briefly, as he showed himself out of a window up high on one of the buildigns to a mass of crowd packed in the St. Peter's Square. I felt like the Pope was like the biggest rock star ever, as he gave a brief prayer (i didn't get blessed btw... blessings are apparently another time) and was met with thunderous applause and cheer from the crowd. And although i attended a little quieter service inside St. Peter's afterwards, it was very hard to concentrate on the service when you had such fancy gleaming decorations all around you and tourists move around so much. But visiting the Vatican was certainly a testament to how much power the Church holds across the globe.
And for the record, i ran around a country (Vatican) under 20 minutes and got a stamp from the Vatican for my letter (oops i forgot to get my passport stamped- i don't know if i can)- and maybe i should have tried one year of Latin i've learned but didn't get to boast my Latin skills... :)
I also visited the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Catacombs, the Pantheon and many beautiful squares in Rome, as well as Pompeii and briefly Sorento but don't have much to comment about these touristy places...(actually unfortunately don't remember much as i'm writing a month and half later... :(
Outside of Rome, i visited Assisi to get away from the city- and it was a nice break staying overnight at a monastery on top of a beautiful hill where the medieval village was very well preserved. I felt like I could meditate, pray and read the Bible all day in this lovely little village. And St. Francesco, the star of the town and founder of the Franciscan Order, is super cool also- he received Jesus' bloodmark signs on his body and could talk to the birds.
My Italy trip concluded in Florence & Pisa- a scenic Renaissance town boating a grand Domed Cathedral with the biggest fresco in the world and the Uffizi Museum. Although Renaissance art is incredible, my only thing against it is that as the subject matter shifts from religious didactic scenes to classical scenes, normal people who are not very well-versed in the classics (like me) start to not understand the paintings but art back then was a priviledge of the rich and i guess if they want to be elitist, can't do anything about that.. :) i should also mention that these Italian art survived and remained in Florence thanks to wisdom of a wise woman of the once mighty Medici family. When Florence was invaded by the Austrians, she donated all the great art the Medici family owned with the condition that the artworks remain in Florence... :)
Although i do not remember much of touristy spots, i do remember meeting some great Romans (modern ones). I went to my first house party in Europe in Rome and drank not cheap beer but Shanglia (spelling? - mix of wine and fruits), and i also learned to greet with European kisses (i like kissing so totally approve of this custom- a little different in each European country though some are two and others three). I also walked around a cool hang out area in Rome (i love European cafe areas with narrow streets at night- so romantic.. :) and visited a Caesar museum (there are a ton of museums in Rome) with my archeology couchsurfing host.
My mom, my brother and I had a little family trip for the first time in a few years and although there were some little conflicts amongst generally good time, arguments are how love is displayed in my family so it was all cool.
SPAIN
Barcelona was a cool funky place where i met more geniuses and my favorite couchsurfing host Hanna. The first genius i met here was Gaudi, a crazy dude who lived in the early 20th century and designed some wacky colorful undulating buildings (he was workaholic and didn't even marry to focus on his work). Sangria Famila (excuse my spelling), which is being built for over a century and is still being built, may be the most famous of his work, but his other works such as Park Goel and other houses he designed were also amazing. I love how the two biggest inspirations for his work were his Catholic faith and nature (well... a guy from Barcelona i met at the squatter in Amsterdam told me drugs also played a big role in his innovative design but yeah so much great came out of alcohol and drugs and maybe great architecture needs a little bit of smoking as well...:). Park Goel has unforgetable houses that seem to be the model for the chocolate and snack houses from the story of Handel and Gretel (excuse my spelling again), and one of his villas has alien like structures on top that was also quite memorable. (Of course the inside and outsides of Sangria Familia is the best...- inside he tried to build a forest.. just google image it..:)
Other geniuses i ran into into were Pablo Piccaso (i went to the Piccaso museum)- and it was really cool to see some of his not-so-famous paintings from his youth and his evolution as an artist- i saw a painting from when he was fourteen and boy he is a genius... i'd like to see more of how his cubism technique came about but there was a gap of 10 years between his blue period and cubism period in the museum unfortunately- the emergence of cubism was not very thoroughly explained... and i also went to free Richard something exhibition and he's the guy who designed the Pompidou Center (amazing building with the brilliant idea of showing the insides of the building outside) as well as parts of Heathrow Airport and many many other things (he also has an ongoing project in Korea)- Architecture is so so so cool.. :)
Hanna & Rulfo (her dog) were quite lovely... i got sick of staying at Korean hostels which gave me two Korean meals a day so i couchsearched and found Hanna (or she found me). She lived in the heart of Barcelona close to Las Rambla (a really cool street with the pedestrian paths in the middle and cars going on the side- i appreciated being considered more important than cars.. :) and i had wonderful time with her & Marley (another Canadian couchsurfer who spent few days with us) cooking pizza, Spanish tortilla, going to a Spanish market, a naked beach (unfortunately the only person naked were old couple and really old man playing with himself), flamenco show (i love flamenco- so much passion & energy- i love guitar & i love tap dancing so it's perfect for me), and exploring other parts of Barcelona. I also enjoyed going for runs on the beach with Rulfo and hopefully i'll have a dog to run with again soon- or maybe i'll start dog-work-out business. (When i went to Zoe's i'd find out not all dogs like to run though... )
Thanks to Josh, i went to go watch FC Barcelona play and they are unbeatable... they played Malaga which is a pretty good team and crushed them 6-0 ( i think it was like 5-0 by half time...) Henry-Eto-Messi attacking line is simply marvelous (probably one of the best strikers from each continent) and Messi really does play with a lot of style- sort of like Maradona. But i also felt a little sorry for Malaga who had no chance against the superstars... sports is a big part of the morale for many people and i don't know- people in the urban areas tend to be richer and if these rich soccer clubs (i.e Chelsea, Real Madrid, AC/Inter Milan, Man Utd, Arsenal, Barca the list goes on) in cities keep beating small clubs not by hard work but simply by purchasing expensive super stars, is it really fair sportsmanship? :(
Lastly, Spanish Paella is delicious (esp. eaten at Spanish dinner time of 10, 11pm) and i did do siesta s few times and that is a quite good idea as well.. :) Too bad the world does not have time for siestas any more...
Oh, and Spanish is gonna be JY's fourth language and i've started taking lessons on my i-pod- no offence but it may not sound as mellifluous and sing-songy as Italian and as posh as French but it has its own thing and i love the idea of covering a sexy European country plus an entire continent with just one language (well mius Brazil but then plus Mexico so that makes a continent- and Portguese is similar enough) and they have lot of political/ economic/ enviornmental problems so maybe i can do some good there- i should visit my Korean- peace-corp-ing cousin in Peru soon... and even just in the US Hispanics are just getting bigger and bigger so doing some Spanish wouldn[t hurt... also definitely wanna see more of Spain - i was fascinated to learn that even within Spain there are few differnet languages (Barcelona for example speaks Catalan) and i wanna go south to see Spain's Islamic heritage and the Alambra Palace (excuse my spelling)- it comes up in one of my faovrite classical guitar songs i played :) Also yet to check out bull fighting although i don't know i thought i love animals but sometimes i feel a little bloodthirsty- and i love cultures and this is definitely a big part of Spanish culture.. i don't know how to reconcile my creative and destructive impulses within me as i was very happy destorying forest of weed with my spade this morning (in a kibbutz in Israel right now but more on this later...)
ENGLAND
My trip in England started in Oxford, where i had a few friends from Exeter and also family friends such as Dr Kang who was doing his research on Oriental Medical history and Prof Shu- a mecical anthropologist who stayed at my house last summer as she was doing research in Korea. (unfortunately i was in the US... :( )As it was spring break at Oxford, I did not get to meet Prof Shu and the two Exonians but i had great time staying with Dr Kang, who showed me around Oxford's numerous colleges.
The sense of history and tradition at the place was quite astounding- to see a college that was founded in the 12th cenutry- And it was really amazing to hear about how the superstars of the Western World- the Clintons and Mr Blair to more old school Mr Locke and many many others- spent their time here... And Dr. Kang told me about running into Richard Dawkins at a supermarket and meeting with Jared Diamond and other intellectual stars (when i was there his daughter went to meet with one of the most famous picture book writers in the English speaking world) so it seems like it's a pretty big intellectual feast there...
I also visited the meeting places of the 'Inklings' - Lewis and Tolkien's favorite pub "Eagle and Child" and it was entertaining to learn that they had met there every Tuesday MORNING to discuss their writings and drink beer. Pretty intense people drinking in the morning... but then Dr Kang said some of his professors even offer drinks in class so i guess drinking's pretty norm for the Brits. (He explained that back in the old days professors were not allowed to get married as being a professor was a sacred calling like being a priest so the only friend they had might have been alcohol...) i also heard many interesting things about Oxford such as the tutorial system and the college system and he told me some interesting things about the North Koreans living in Japan still without basic human rights and stories of his friend professor who decided to go into Iraq just to see what a war is like first hand among many other things.. (for Koreans he's friends with Choate Hong btw- we had an interesting convo about him as well... :)
Then i moved to London where i stayed at Zoe's cosy house near the Regent's Park (beautiful park to run in), and London may just as well be one of the most exciting cosmopolitan cities in the world. There was just so much culture there including top-notch art galleries and musuems (which are free! :), good theater- i went to a 10 pound Ibsen play which was quite excellent i thought (Zoe didn't agree...guess my tastes arent that refined but perhaps it's better this way... :), and although i didn't get a chance to check them out, i'm sure London has amazing nigth life and music scene as well.
I met Zoe at the Britsih Museum and although i could feel the power of the bygone British Empire, it was also a little depressing to see all the national munuments (probably) stolen from their original homes. The Greeks want their Pantheon back and the Egyptians want their Rosetta Stone back, but no chance the Brits are giving up all they've pillaged and accumulated over the years. The argument is that it's better for all the treasures of the world to be at one place because these monuments advertise their home nations but i don't know- that kind of seems like Brits' excuse... and the Korean Hall was interesting but not exactly exciting... (thought the Japanese and the Chinese did much better job- ok maybe there comes my 'Korea-is-the-most- boring-country-in East Asia-complex again, but i guess i should be proud of the fact that Koreans have our own space unlike Africans who are just clumped together as 'Africa' and many other nations who don't have their own home in this museum.
The time i was in London happened to coincide with the G-20 conference, and i basically took a 'financial tour' of London visiting the RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), Canary Wharf, and the London Stock exchange to check out the protests, giant monopolgy game and a massive ice cube but unfortunately, i somehowed missed all the protests and the only one i ended up going to was the biggest one in front of the RBS. I got there around 11:45am, and although it was festive mood and fun for the first hour, the police penned in the protesters in the square and that became not so fun as i had to go to the bathroom and there wasn't one and i was thirsty but there were no shops to buy water from. The protesters started to get angry too and some threw bottles and food at the police- i really don't understand why the police would lock people in like this- peaceful people who would otherwise just stay at the protest for an hour or so and then go home are caged in which just makes them bored and angry. Maybe the police thinks that once you lock up people, they will not come to more protests in the future but as citizens in a democratic society i thought we had rights to protest... it was also striking to see an effigy of a banker hung on a tree and it was a little scary as i'm going to a big finance school (although i'm not that interested in finance). And i also wondered about the efficacy of these protests- although it's nice that these causes get some media attention, do the people in power actually care? i don't know if there is any other better way but thought protests may not be the most effective way to do things... plus although most people seemed pretty chill and hippie (the group was a mix of anti- (excessive & greedy) capitalists, environmentalists and anti-nuclear ists), some were just angry people (perhaps they have been treated unjustly and have rights to be angry) and when one is in state of anger it is difficult to think rationally and resolve the problem. i also saw the V (V for Vendetta) and some anarchists but disappointingly nothing was set on fire -but more on anarchists under the Netherlands section.
There was also the Oxford-Cambridge crew race in London when i was there and Zoe and i met Robert (Canadian 08) to go see the race. There was a lot of hype before and during the race and although it was nice to see Robert, the race itself wasn't that cool but i'm also not a rower so may be a little biased... it was funny to see how none of the athletes were undergrads and many were MBA students who had been recruited from an ivy in the US. (In the US undergrad sports are big with NCAA but in the UK it seemed like grad students are bigger part of sports scene). I got to watch the very beginning of the race along the Thames (well, not really as there was a barrier of people in front of me) but this was the first crew race i watched in my life and i guess it's a pretty good one. Also seems a little elitists that the river is closed for only the boats of two universities to compete and wondered if Ox-bridge has this many graduates as there were apparently 250,000 people watching the race.
And the Kew Garden- probably one of the most important botanical gardens in the world- was good too despite the fact that it was a little before the full bloom season- gardening is Brits' favorite past time and Kew certainly does have a really interesting collection. And they are engaged in a project that tries to preserve seeds of all the endangered plants around the world so yeah! (hmm, come to think about it maybe i should preserve my sperms and perhaps somebody in the future would want some of my genes... anyways, yeah i wonder if they collect genes and sperms/eggs for endangered animals and if bringing back animals from DNA will be possible some time soon...(don't remember Jurassic Park exactly) And also funny that the symbol of the Kew Garden is a Chinese pagoda...
Other touristy things i did include going to the London Tower where the tour guide talked a lot about executions, and reproduced version of Shakespeare's Globe (funny an American started a fund-raising campagin for this), St. Paul's Cathedral & Westminster Abbey (went inside neither places though bc they made me pay and after the Vatican's St Peter's, Florence's Duoma and the Sangria Familia (and Notre Dame later), i didn't feel a need to see more Cathedrals, and also saw the London Eye and the Buckingham Palace from the outside- oh, and did i mention the Tate modern and National Gallery- i love art and can look at them all day... :) i also visited the Sherlock Holmes museum and wanted to go to the Freud and Benjamin Franklin museums as well (founder of my uni yeah!) but didn't have time so maybe next time.. :)
And another thanks to Zoe and her family although she's probably not gonna read this- i visited during a busy time for her when she had only a week off between just having finished her teaching English course and preparing to go to the US and plan the rest of her gap year and she had other stuff during the week such as meeting with friends and giving a presentation at her school but she was still a great host (she certainly seemed a lot better than she did in China...) She also made me some pancakes, salad and pies (for my birthday) all of which i love so it was all good.. and her parents were super generous too. Also interesting for me to see how her parents were more involved in the kids' lives than my parents were- don't know if this is good or bad as i know my parents love me very dearly, but my parents and i grew up in very different environments so it is what is is i guess... :)
Lastly, Zoe and i watched 'Vicki and Christina in Barcelona' and loved that movie for many many reasons... :)
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