Path to Obesity in Rome

I have been in Roma for almost a week now (tomorrow it will be). Sometimes it seems like time is flying by, while at other times it seems like I've been here for at least a few weeks. Not sure if that is a good thing or not. Hmm. To start off, I'll give you a fun fact. Amor= to love and Roma spelled backwards.

Slowly, I'm learning to live the "Roman lifestyle". That involves making almost daily trips to the grocery store, shopping at the open air market, Campo di Fiori, having pizza for lunch, eating gelato, taking the side streets to studio instead of the main ones, loving the heat, walking everywhere...etc. Ha, just realized the first 4 things I mention involve food. Typical me; food is always on my mind. :-) Guess I'll talk about that first then!

Almost every day for lunch Katie and I have ate at the local pizza stands that are around. We've been trying various ones so we can find our favorite. We've been eating out for lunch because the price to prepare a sandwich or whatever on our own is about the same as getting pizza. Depending on the stand, sometimes it is cheaper. For lunch last Friday we treated ourselves nicely by going to a Chinese restaurant that one of our instructors pointed out to us. It tasted sooo good and pretty cheap! The entrees were less than 5 Euro, but the fried rice was just over 5 Euro. Obviously, next time we'll skip the fried rice. I've very thankful to know that I won't have any Chinese withdrawals here in Rome. I am trying to find a good sushi place and edamame, but haven't had any luck with finding edamame or been daring enough to try the sushi here. Not sure how I'll survive without edamame.

The easiest and cheapest thing to do for dinner is pasta. Thank goodness I love pasta; however, I am concerned that I might grow tired of it at some point. We'll see. A bag of pasta will give Katie and I two meals each to eat and only costs 40 Euro cents. We've been having various sauces with the pasta; tonight's was pesto! It is my goal by the end to know about 10 different pasta sauces to use. Thus far we've either bought them or made super simple sauces of our own. We'll have to get courageous soon. I'm thinking a homemade alfredo sauce will be next since only red sauce is sold in the stores, and I'm usually a white sauce eater. Other than pasta, we had one meal of sausage and tomato and another of mini-hamburgers (minus the bun). The rest equals pasta!

I can't forget to mention dessert aka gelato! Sooo tasty! I'm very proud to say that I've only bought gelato from the vendors twice. But Katie and I bought a carton of it, so I've been have a shot glass full every night. This carton of gelato that we bought from the supermarket costs about the same as one small serving from a vendor (2 Euro), so we figured why not-- at least we're being cost effective, forget the waistline. We did make a rule on Saturday that for every ISU football game, we have to go get a serving of raspberry and mango gelato (red and gold) from a vendor to show our support for the team. Sounds like a great rule, doesn't it?

Not to worry, Katie and I have been getting our servings of fruits and veggies, too. On Saturday, we went to Campo di Fiori for the first time. Campo di Fiori is one of the most famous open air markets in Rome. Tourists flock it every day, even on Sundays when the market isn't operating. We quickly discovered that all the produce was MUCH cheaper here than in the grocery stores. We bought lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, apples, bananas, peaches, and dried fruit, and spent about 11 Euro on the produce (minus the dried fruit). Today we made a return visit to restock. I bought about 15 Roma tomatoes for 1,90 Euro. The dried fruit is expensive here, but tastes so good! I ended up spending 8 Euro today just on dried fruit. Yikes! I divided up my dried fruit into 3 containers in hope that I can make it last longer than my last batch did. We're lucky to have Campo di Fiori just a ten minute walk away from our apartment, and it is on our route for our daily walk to class, so I can easily grab something for breakfast.

We've been going to various places for cheese and some meat-- still trying to figure out the best deals and offerings. There's so much cheese here that it is hard to know where to begin! Bread has been a little difficult to find. Good cheap bread, that is. We might have finally found the spot to go to today but it is across the river (a long walk from our apartment).

Now that I've finished talking about food, the bottomless pit is hungry again... Oh, and just to put your minds at ease, I'm not busting at my seams. In fact, the scale says I've lost a pound or two which I assume is due to all the walking. Then again, it has only been one week; I might be obese by the end. :-)

Settling in Rome

Yesterday, Katie and I arrived in Rome-- two hours later than when we were supposed to. We had taken the night train from Paris to Rome. It was a pretty decent train ride, and I was able to sleep for awhile; however, it was annoying that we did not get updates as to why our train was running late. We were out of the train station within three minutes, in a taxi, and on our way to the housing office. Checking in was fairly quick and simple; we were soon at our apartment.

My apartment is nice, better than I expected. There's a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and two bedrooms for four people. Shortly after Katie and I put our stuff away and did a load of laundry, we were off to venture through the city. We wanted to find a grocery store and did, but it was a rather far distance away. Carrying the groceries home was rough. Luckily, we've now found a closer one. Before finding this one, we had been given directions to a grocery store by a guy at a local pizza stand/mini-mart. He tried to get us to get our groceries from there and even offered a discount. We told him we needed more and promised we'd be back another time for pizza.

Today we went back for that pizza we promised him, and he gave us a deal on our pizza! There were some other people in the place and he immediately turned his attention to us. Katie and I have plans to continue going to this stand every two to three days to increase this blossoming relationship. This evening we walked around our area found a mini-mart right down the street from us. We asked the guy for his recommendations on cheese, and he ended up giving us a discount, too! I sure hope my luck continues!

I'm finding in quite amazing and am in awe with all the ruins around me. It's fun just to walk and run into something famous like the Piazza Navona or the Pantheon. I haven't gone around Rome and toured like a tourist, yet. I'm pondering the idea if I even really want to. I think I might play with the idea of continuing to wander around the city to see what I find. If it gets close to the end and I haven't seen something, then I'll make an exception.

Playin' and Hangin' in Paris

Our train ride over to Paris ended up being a bit of an eventful trip. We had to switch trains in the middle and only had nine or ten minutes to do so. Doesn't seem so hard to do, right? Well, it is not as easy with a heavy load of luggage. Fortunately, we had made friends with a German who spoke English on our first train and was connecting onto the same second train. We made it to the new platform easily for the second train, but the signs were showing that the train was delayed. Our train ended up coming about 40 minutes late and we had to switch platforms. Our ticket also didn't match the train number and type of what they told was coming. Long story short, everything ended up working out smoothly thanks to our German friend! We would have been lost and quite frazzled without him.

At this point into our trip, Katie and I had almost mastered the train systems throughout Europe. We easily got onto our metro train to take us to our hostel and got off at the right stop. However, we didn't take the right exit out of the station. Once again, there were a few Parisans that were very willing to help us out. I guess it was our lucky day with obtaining help!

The hostel in Paris, St. Christopher's, was the largest we stayed in. Our room had ten people in it. Throughout the time we were there we shared the room with people from Australia, Sweden, Austria, and Taiwan. The bathrooms here ended up being my least favorite; they smelled like wet dog. And there were some minor problems throughout are time at St. Christopher's but it ended up being my favorite place to stay.

I did get a sore throat in Paris during our time there. Luckily it turned into no more than a nasty cough. Today, it's still a little sore, and I have a small cough but it is much better than it was.

Day One in Paris

We went on another "free" walking tour in hopes that we'd be able to figure out where all the tourist places were throughout the city. I didn't like our tour guide as much as the one in Munich but the tour served purposeful enough to find the attractions. After our ended Katie and I went on to get a closer look of the Eiffel Tower. The structure is massive! While we were taking photos with the Eiffel Tower, it started to rain. And it went on to rain a little every day we were in Paris. Katie and I joked the whole time though about how we could sense it was coming and were always timely in running for cover. (I like to think it's a Midwestern talent.) When I was posing for one photo with the tower, a person in a gorilla outfit decided to hop into my picture. I figured whatever, he/she can join. After Katie took the photo, they asked for money. I denied them saying that they were the one to hop into my photo. We bickered a little, and then I saw a guy selling Eiffel Tower key chains waving his finger "No." The gorilla saw this and immediately turned to fight with him; Katie and I turned and quickly walked away. This was probably the closest we came to getting mugged in Paris.

After the Eiffel Tower we went and walked to the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc de Triomphe is in the middle of a massive roundabout that doesn't have any traffic lanes, signals, etc. in it, and it is VERY busy. The officials don't want to ruin the look of the star pattern the lanes have, I guess. Katie and I had no idea of how we were going to get onto this "island" but we were determined. Unintelligably, we ran across the lanes dodging motorcycles racing through the roundabout. Once we were on the island we realized that there was an underground passage to get onto it. We had a good laugh at ourselves, and it made for a memorable moment as we saw our life flash before our eyes.

In the evening we spent our time updating our blogs, Facebook, and chatting with friends/family... That is up until some drunk neighbors decided to walk the hostel's terrace and climb into our room through the window. Quickly, a drunk conversion began and an Italian-Asian picked me to be his new object of affection. He was funny and made the night very comical! These neighbors invited us over for drinks (2 windows down on the terrace) so Katie and I joined them. Besides the Italian-Asian, there were two Canadians, Tanya and Natalie, and another American that we got to know. We moved our gathering to the downstairs bar and met three gals from Poland. The Italian-Asian continued to pursue me down there along with one of these Polish girls (even though she was a lesbian, and her girlfriend was there.) As funny as this night was, the Italian-Asian did not remember me at all the next day, which we all found to be shocking. And yes, I was a little broken-hearted.

Day Two in Paris

I was very excited for day two in Paris because we had Versailles on our agenda! Katie and I saved a few Euros by doing this on our own versus through a tour group. We stopped at the Versailles tourist office instead of at the palace to buy our tickets. While in line, there were two ladies trying to figure out what pass to buy, and they thought the ones being offered were the wrong ones. I quickly informed them that indeed, these were the ones that they wanted, but these ones cost a mere 2 Euro difference from the ones being offered at the palace. They would spend a little more money, but save LOTS of time waiting in line. Needless to say, they were very thankful for my advice, and we started up a conversation. I found out that they were from a town north of Chicago and told them that I knew a lot of people in the Chicago area. We went on to discover that they've seen and know about my boyfriend's family's landscaping business. Small world!

The Palace of Versailles was very royal looking, obviously. Gold was everywhere and all of the ceilings were painted. As beautiful as the interior was, I didn't get to enjoy them as much as I would have liked because the whole time it felt like I was being herded through rooms, and there just was never an open area to sit or stand for a while. The rooms also began to feel very repetitive. I did really enjoy seeing the Hall of Mirrors and the Queen's quarters.

Katie and I went to Versailles on a special day where they were going to turn on the water for all of the fountains in the gardens for a certain period of time. We had some time to kill before this began so we went on a hunt to find the place where Marie Antoinette would stay and hide from people. This place, the Petit Trianon, is quite a distance away from the palace and is rather small. I thought it was pretty cool that Marie Antoinette had her initials placed in the Grand Staircase's railing.

The Gardens of Versailles were AMAZING! Definitely worth going on a day when they have the fountains going. There are numerous little gardens that make up the whole thing and each one of these gardens has some type of large sculpture piece or fountain in it. Unforunately, my camera had died by this time, so I'm going to have to steal pictures from Katie's camera. As we walked, Katie and I joked about how certain gardens would be a nice place to get married or proposed to. Ironically, on our way out we saw a bride and groom, along with a large group, going into the gardens (I assume). Made the idea become a little more realistic in my eyes for, of course, whenever that time comes.

On our second night, we took part in a pub crawl with the hostel mates we met the night before. The pub crawl was part of the tour company that we had used for our first day's tour. As our IDs were being checked in the beginning we were shocked to learn that our Italian-Asian friend was only 17! Drinking age is 18 in Paris, so he couldn't go but was so confused as to why he couldnt' come. Throughout the night we went to 5 different bars and at each one for every drink we bought, we'd get a shot! No worries, I didn't drink at every one. I met another person from Chicago. His little brother is a junior at Iowa State and is in Pi Kappa Alpha, which is the fraternity that my sorority was paired with for Greek Week this past spring. Once again, SMALL WORLD! At the second bar I met a couple from Finland. I also met two guys from California; one had just graduated from law school, so we had a nice time chit-chatting about that. The two had a nice system going on how to memorize names; one would write all the name in a little notebook and so when the other ended to know a name, the notebook would just get whipped out. I was "Kelly from Nebraska". A big group of us ended up leaving the last bar early (drinks were 15 Euros!) and headed back to our hostel to continue the night. Katie got slammed by the metro train's doors on the way back and another person in the group danced with a homeless man on the train. As you might have guessed, it was a good night!

Day Three in Paris

Churches were on the agenda for day three. The first one we went to was Sacre Coeur. This church was built on the largest hill overlooking Paris and was exhausting to get up to it. It takes commitment to get up to the top and attend church there. A cool fact about this church is that the stone it is made out of allows it to wash itself. Therefore the exterior of the church has never been cleaned, but yet it still looks as good as new! When we got inside, we discovered that mass was going on; it was a Catholic mass. Yet, even though mass was going on, they allow toursits to walk around the perimeters of the interior. It was rather cool to tour a church as mass was going on. However, at the same time, I felt like it was disrespectful, and that I shouldn't be in there.

The next church we went to was Notre Dame. It, too, had mass going on but it ended as we were in there. Such tall ceilings and pretty stained glass windows! Definitely worth seeing-- no wonder it is a tourist attraction! As we were sitting in a garden behind Notre Dame, Katie overheard two people talking about Sainte Chappelle. Katie really wanted to see it, so we asked for directions and were off to find it. We did find it and had to stand in a security line for about 20 minutes. This church was part of a former palace but now the whole area is a governmental. We had to pay 5 Euros to see the church, which is currently under restoration. The appeal of Sainte Chappelle is its large stained glass windows. My mouth dropped as we first walked in; it was beautiful!

Katie and I had McDonalds for dinner; I had more success with ordering my meal this time! After dinner we joined our Canadian friends, Tanya and Natalie, in the bar. Our time in the bar quickly moved to spending time in the "Chill Out Room" in the basement of our hostel. Tayna and Natalie wanted to play flippy cup (or flip cup as they call it) and were determined to teach other countries. The game grew throughout the night and by the end we had a good 20-25 people playing; Tayna and Natalie successfully taught the others and soon flippy cup will be dominating the world! We were even able to play by countries/continents; the North Americans were on one side while the Australians were on the other. The Australians took the English to play on their side, and we divided the two Swedish girls up onto both teams. I held my own quite well, but we had one Canadian guy that just blew it for our team almost every time. Oh well; it was, by far, the best night that I've had so far on my journey! By the end we must have gone through 30-40ish bottles of beer and wine. (And the beer bottles are a lot larger than back in the US.)

Day Four in Paris

Katie and I took an overnight train to Rome from Paris, giving us an extra day to spend in Paris. However, at this point we had spent about all of our money that we had in cash, so we had to keep our plans simple. The plan was to spend the day in the Jardin des Tuileries. This is a garden in front of the Louvre. It has a nice large fountain in it and a large amount of green lounge chairs for pedestrians to move around and sit in. The plan would have been perfect if the whether had remained nice; but as our luck goes, the day was quite cold. I think we only lasted at the park for a hour to 1 1/2 hours. While we were there we did get to see a little photo shoot happen. It was cool; the photographer was going to stand in the dirty fountain water to take the picturs but it ended up being too deep to stand in with his jeans on. We spent the rest of the day looking through souvenir shops and hanging out at our hostel before we said "Au revoir!" to Paris.

My Three Days in Munich

I'm pretty settled into my apartment in Rome and upon arriving I quickly learned that the internet at our apartment does work. Thank goodness! Now I can finally share details about my trip to Munich, Germany.

Quickly after arriving in Munich I realized that this city would be a lot different than Zurich. Building after building. Concrete, concrete, and more concrete. It was quite dirty looking and lacking in green space. I didn't let this intial reaction deter me from having a good time, though. Our hostel, Wombat's, was situated very close to the train station; which was a very nice bonus. Unlike our previous hostel, it had bathrooms within our rooms and free wi-fi. The lockers here were also very nice and tech savvy. All you had to do was hold your key card up to them and they locked and unlocked!

On our first day in Munich we decided to participate in a "free" walking tour (the tour guide ends up getting paid through tips at the end). It was a very good tour though-- I learned a lot. Here are a few new facts I learned:

• Only 4 buildings in Munich survived from WW2 bombings; all of the rest are under 60 years old even though they look a lot older. Many of the buildings have been carefully rebuilt to look exactly like they did before the bombings.
• Munich (Bavaria) wanted to separate themselves from the rest of Germany but the meeting was interrupted by Hitler, forever changing history.
• Oktoberfest started in 1810 as a celebration in marriage of the king and queen. Today, a server at Oktoberfest can make their whole year's salary plus vacation and spending money in the 16 days of the event.
• The Hofbrahaus (one of the six main breweries in Munich) has a mural painted on their ceiling which display the Bavarian flag (white and blue). These flags are actually covering up swastikas that were placed there by the Nazi party. The Hofbrahaus is also the location of where Hitler interrupted that very important meeting of separating Bavaria from Germany.

It was very exciting to be able to see and learn a lot of history about WW2/Hitler-- walking the path of the Beer Hall Putsch was quite surreal.

In the evening we went and toured the Oktoberfest grounds. The beer gardens that they build are huge! 6.5 million servings of beer are handed out at Oktoberfest. Ironically, that's less than one beer per person in attendance (7 million people visit the festival annually).

On our second day we went to Dachau concentration camp. I was very excited for this trip and thought I'd be a little emotional about it since my Baba dealt with the camps before coming over to America. Surprisingly, I didn't really end up being so; could be, in part, due to our tour guide and that we were always on the move at the camp. He wanted to give us the perspective that Dachau is only one camp of the whole thing. A small part fo the big picture. There were actually about 2500 different camps and some people who joined the Nazi party sincerely thought they were doing the right thing. It's unfortunate that so many people lost their lives-- whatever their background is-- and that should be honored. Here are some fun facts about Dachau:

• Hugo Boss (a fashion designer) made the Nazi uniforms.
• Dachau was used as the training/role model camp for the other camps.
• The barracks went from holding 50 people to 100 people and then finally to 500 people by the war's end.
• Dachau's capacity was 6100 prisoners, but by the end there were 75,000 prisoners.

For our third and last day in Munich we went to the Olympic grounds in Munich and visited the BMW Museum and Welt. The olympics were held there back in 1972; sadly 19 Israelis were killed during it. All of the buildings were created to look like massive translucent tents. It was nice to walk around the grounds; I couldn't even begin to imagine the chaos that was there during the Olympics.

Going to the BMW Museum and Welt was the surprising highlight of my time in Munich. I wasn't aware of how much I'd actually enjoy looking at an endless number of cars and motorcycles. Every guy's fantasy right? I highly recommend visitng both if you're ever in Munich. Touring and discovering the Welt on your own is actually free, but there is a tour that they offer. Katie and I took part in the tour, which cost us 5 Euros each. The tour explained what they did in different parts of the building and wasn't really living up to its 5 Euros cost until we went "behind the scenes". There they revealed how they manage to distribute 150 cars daily to their new owners (how they're inspected, where they are held, etc.). They have this large area where they stack cars in different ports next to each other and on top of one another. It reminded me of how the doors are stored and carried around in Monsters Inc., the movie. The rest of the Welt building is meant to show off to customers the different parts BMW is making for their cars in fun interactive ways. There are arcade-like games to play, cars to sit in, materials to touch, etc-- all for free!

The museum was AMAZING! It cost us only 4 Euros to tour (student price). There are a lot of fun high-tech gadgets to play with and the rooms are very nicely dispayed. Did you know that BMW actually started by making airplane engines? It then went on to do motorcycles before it finally added cars into the mix.

In the evening on our last day we had one last thing to check-off on our Munich to-do list. That was to find the English Gardens and drink at a beer garden. Finding the English Gardens wasn't a problem because it's huge (larger than Central Park) but finding the English Wave in it was a little harder. This wave is a surf wave that surfers ride on. I don't know the logistics of it, but it was cool to see. There were about 8 surfers at the time and a lot of spectators watching them. We found a beer garden next to the Chinese Tower to have a drink at. I was going to have a 1/2 liter glass of beer but decided to splurge and get the 1 liter mug as a nice souvenir for my brother, Ryan (Sorry Kevin-- Ryan called dibs.). I managed to drink all of it in a minimal amount of time-- shocked that I was able to manage both. In the end, it was a great way to end our time in Munich!

Technical Difficulties...

My apologies for not being able to about you all about my Munich stay sooner. The internet situation at my hostel in Paris has not been ideal; therefore, I haven't had enough time to write a blog entry (I've been using the hostel's computers which cost money for the internet and have been in constant demand since their wi-fi is down). It already seems like my trip in Munich was forever ago...

I'll be sure to post a blog entry about Munich and Paris during this upcoming week!

To Zurich and Beyond

On Thursday I landed in Zurich, Switzerland. It seems like it was so long ago and is basically all a haze now. I do know that it ONLY took us four hours to find our hostel. Probably a bit too long. ;-) I was surprised with how sick I felt when we got there. But after 24 hours, everything was much better.

Katie and I spent our time in Zurich adjusting and kept things simple. We had bought a pass to use any type of transportation system in Zurich for 72 hours, so we took advantage of that. On one of our days we spent it at Lake Zurich. We relaxed near the water, took a dip in it, and took a boat tour around the lake. We also toured two churches.

On our second day we went to Uetliberg, which is the highest point overlooking Zurich. Spectacular views from up there! After that we window shopped and then went back to the lake! It was a really nice day out and on a nice day all of the locals go to spend time at the lake so we thought that we should pretend to be a local too. Even though Zurich is expensive, Katie and I managed to only spend 38 CHF each for our transportation ticket, 30 CHF together for food (grocery store food), and then about 150 CHF each for our hostel (3 nights). The hostel was by far the most expensive part.

It is sort of odd to not know what anyone is saying; however, at the same time, the majority of them know English, so they know exactly what we are saying. I'm also intrigued by how much they play American music and TV shows (at our hostel, on the train, in restaurants...). The clothing is a little more stylish than in America but I thought that it would be more different than it is.

One of the most important lessons that I have learned so far is as follows: When you order a chesseburger from McDonalds with ketchup only, you will only get ketchup with a silver of hamburger and the bun. :-) This burger of mine cost 2,50 CHF; the small fries (or frites) were 3,50 CHF. Definitely a pricey McDonalds.

I have just arrived in Munich, and it seems much different than Zurich. Concerete and large buildings everywhere. It does seem like there is a lot to do, though, so these next four days should be a great time! ....And the beer and food is super cheap. :-)

I'm having trouble uploading photos on my blog right now so that will have to wait until another time!

Ciao!
Kelly

Ciao!

I'm about to board my flight to Zurich! See ya' later USA! I'll hopefully update my blog a few times during this first 1 1/2 weeks of travel.