Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Another night.

Dec. 20, 2009

New York Erin with red hair was a gem. One of those quick-wit types who wears fur coats and bulky vintage rings and doesn’t give a shit about what you think of her cigarette addiction. We sat at the Violon Dingue bar, our group of friends downstairs, and talked about law school, unofficial “man friends,” and absinthe binges. I flirted with the Irish/Berkeley, CA/NY/French bartender who gave us each four complimentary drinks, probably because we were there for so long. We laughed the hands right off the clock and she told me everything was going to be alright.

We made our way to the lower level after trying to ignore the cross-eyed man who sat closer to us than we would have liked. I didn’t buy anything. I sat with a business man and boasted about my brother’s artistic talent and how he’s going to be famous one day. The business man gave me his information and then rattled off inspiring life quotes in two different languages, like he’s done it all before.

"It's you that's important, not what you have." His words hung in the air, dripping with cliche. I wrote it in my notepad, the one I take with me everywhere.

"Come on, you're twenty. Anything's possible."

I liked that one.

The friend group parted ways by 5:15am and I said goodbye to the business man. Red-haired Erin and I meandered in the street and caught rain on our taste buds. Then I said goodbye to her, too. I would never see her again. I didn’t have money for a cab so I walked home.

Atelier de l'artiste, Rue de Rivoli

Dec. 22, 2009

“L’artiste n’est jamais pauvre”

The artist is never poor.












Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The beginning of a love affair (with gelato)

Lesson #13: Always be the first to act. Also, you need to live in Florence.

I single-handedly organized a week-long trip to Italy with a group of friends for fall break. I mean, sorry to toot my own horn for a minute, but it was a pretty incredible trip (minus a few minor setbacks, like the dangers of long island ice tea and being indefinitely banned from a hostel after the humiliation of getting caught sneaking one extra person into our room, etc.). I ate enough pizzas over the course of the vacation to…well, I don’t even really want to think about that. New Year’s resolution: DIET.

Here is a sparknote’s list of the highlights:

PISA -

Leaning tower (equipped with the ultimate tourist picture)



Cemetery (where members of the Medicci family were/are buried)

Gelato

FLORENCE –

Ponte Vecchio




Strolling through the Bobili gardens







Galleria Uffizi – “Birth of Venus”

Duomo (the 13th century Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the historical center of Florence, known for its impressive architecture and elaborate facade. I was too broke to climb to the top, though)





Academia - Michelangelo’s “David” (illegaly snuck a picture)

Secret bakery and an impromptu slumber party…at Danny Kahle’s host mother’s house?




Gelato (I learned what real gelato is here, thanks to GROM)



Champagne at sunset on the top steps of Piazzale Michelangelo






(*Note - this makes the list of top 5 abroad moments, trailing just behind riding bikes in Amsterdam and climbing the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night with Anton, followed by the above secret bakery/slumber party and the last three hours of the Oktoberfest weekend huddled at a table outside Hofbrau with the Maples crew + Michaela).

ROME –

Throwing a coin into the Trevi fountain (Alex, get ready for half of your gift :)



Spanish steps and the Berlin wall exposition

St. Peter’s Basilica

Vatican and the Sistine Chapel (where a guard caught Divya sneaking a picture of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” on the ceiling, which was breathtaking, I might add)



Pantheon (where I listened to a beautiful choir and learned the history behind the red, green, and white of Margherita pizza)

Coliseum and the Ancient city (one word: awesome)




Did I mention gelato?

Etching smiles into tombstones




Exerpts from personal journal entries/ramblings


Oct. 1, 2009

I sat on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg to watch leaves fall. An old, crippled man shuffled towards the end of the gravel path and a mother helped her new baby with his first steps

A joy of life renewed

...


Do you paddle past an eddy,
Pull through a lull? Why not
Pull in the paddles, spin,
Stretch your arms wide
And touch the edges of this moment?
-Kay Satre



Oct. 26, 2009

Extreme tension
Surging through my wrists
Grinding behind my eyes
Clenching between my teeth
Carving out the insides
Of my mouth


But my heart is beating



Nov. 1, 2009


Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your life waiting



Nov. 6, 2009

Tell me, baby
Are you still on the stoop
Watching the windows close?



I bought a train ticket to Marseille. I had no plans to take anyone with me, or to meet anyone there. I traveled to southern France alone to breath in the salty air of the sea and taste the colors of the sunset in blissful solitude. The strange place that welcomed me sat beside me by the harbor without asking any questions.

I made a friend with a gentleman named Paul, a native New Zealander, but who grew up in London. His accent was spectacular. His words lingered between us and I grabbed them with my fingertips. We laughed about how dirty Marseille was as we followed the boats at the dock.


“Did you know this is one of the oldest cities in France?” He offered.

“How exactly do you determine the age of a city?” I asked.

He shrugged. I didn’t press him. We continued walking.



Later we drank coffee and listened to rap and played poker.






Nov. 6-8, 2009

...And now, writing this, I’m on a train to Barcelona with an empty seat next to mine and a bag of trailmix and applesauce at my shoeless feet. The window reveals boundless miles of compacted red rooftops punctuating rolling, quiet hills. A disgruntled infant kicks my backrest, screaming for his mother. I’ve showed my passport more times than I should have, and I don’t entirely know how to get where I am going when I arrive. But I watched the seaside pass, finding nothing wrong with this moment.







Maybe we could forget everything and
You could come and steal me
And we could freeze time

Though you’re far away from me now
There’s something you should know:
My hands have not forgotten yours

Sunday, December 20, 2009

If only Adam was here.

Mid October, and I found a way to ace nearly all of my midterms. So, I thought it would be appropriate to embark on an hors Paris exploration. You know, set my feet out into the real world a bit.

Now, admittedly, my entire European travel agenda was not a product of extensive thought or planning. I had originally anticipated visiting as many countries as time and money allowed for, but what countries I actually ended up visiting were chosen at pure random (except for Munich; Oktoberfest was a given). Imagine spinning a globe blindfolded and materializing a decision with the stroke of an index finger-- my first finger landed on what would prove to be one of the best places in the world. What other way to start off my Euroventures than by officially transcending adolescence on an overnight party bus to Amsterdam? I understand why one would ask such a question, because really, there is no other way.

Destination #1 : The Netherlands

Or Holland. Or Nederland.

In French, the name is none of these--a fact that would've proven helpful during my 3-hour online search for a bus ticket.

WHERE THE HELL IS THIS COUNTRY? I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GONNA...

*Note to self, cursing at a computer screen makes the computer less likely to want to help you buy a bus ticket to a name-less country.

The French name, that was so kindly introduced to me by Frederic during a family dinner, is translated as Pays-Bas, which means literally “the country below.”

COUNTRY BELOW WHAT? GERMANY? DENMARK? THIS IS BULL...

What I learned later is that the country is situated significantly below sea level (think the bowl that is New Orleans), so they had to build a barricade of dams around the city (amsterDAM, originally Amstellerdam, indicative of the city’s origin: a dam in the river of Amstel). Hence, the canals.

Pays-Bas kindly and eagerly welcomed about 20 IES Paris American students over Halloween weekend--a weekend that, by the end, made every one of these 20 IES Paris American students boast about future plans to live there permanently. I shared a part in this consensus--it really was and still is the most beautiful, charming, and friendliest place on the planet.



But as I said, upon my decision to travel to this country in the first place, I had no idea what I was doing. Well, I did have an idea. An idea that is shared by probably the majority of people who have not been to Pays-Bas: legal and excessive pot-smoking. And stripper girls. This, of course, was not the motivating factor to venture north. The pictures on the tourist website just looked cool.

Amsterdam, Euroventure #1:

After a tumultuous bus ride, during which one of our girl friends nearly escaped aggravated assault by a large Arab man, and someone (Dru Attkinson) projectile vomitted on the stairs and almost got our entire group thrown off the bus and possibly into jail, we arrived safely in Amsterdam at around 6am. It was still dark outside.

While the other students huddled in the train station, floundering in a haze of confusion, sleep deprivation, and possible intoxication, I began my Amsterdam adventure, packet of guides, tickets, maps, and paperwork in hand. And yet, despite my mountainous progress in map-reading, Bridget and I absolutely could not find the hostel for the life of us. (But if you, dear reader, can navigate your way through a foreign country following a map with no street names, my hat is off to you.)

So we stopped for coffee. The barista was from San Diego. Go figure. His coworker unloaded boxes and smiled at us.

We resumed our search, to no avail, until a large white windowless vehicle honked at us, a vehicle one might term as a “raper van.” I don’t blame the raper van man; we looked like tourists. He pulled over.

Oh, fantastic, I’m about to be kidnapped. And I didn't even get to see the stripper girls.

It was the barista’s coworker, who in fact was not the barista’s coworker, but "the delivery boy," he said through the window. He exited his vehicle and kindly turned our map rightside up, and after many English and Dutch words were butchered and battered back and forth, he invited us into his raper/delivery van to "take us directly to our destination."

Now, I suppose the “taken” theme is an inevitable reoccurence for two young, American, broke, relatively attractive females traveling Europe by foot. I discriminated between the pros and cons quickly in my head, which were evident: it was cold outside, our backpacks were as heavy as lead, and I hadn’t eaten in over 12 hours. On the flip side, I was seriously contemplating supressing my universal distrust of strangers driving large white vans because my intuition said so; there was something so honest and safe about this man. I opened the back door of the van and inspected for weapons, victims, or whatever evidence of criminality I could find. He was, in fact, a delivery boy.

We were dropped off at the hostel door step within 3 minutes.



Lesson #10: Trust Dutch delivery boys (but probably be careful trusting all white windowless van drivers, just to be safe).

Lesson #11: Actually, trust all Dutch people, especially ones who you meet at the grocery store and invite you and your friends to their house in Rotterdam and cook you a 3-course dinner.



And on a more metaphysical note, have faith in the power of your instincts.

_______


A friend recommended that I go on a bike tour in Amsterdam; I’ve always wanted to go on a bike tour. There are many reasons for this: 1) you don’t have to walk, 2) you see twice as much in half the time, 3) you get to ride bikes, 4) you get to ride bikes.

It was either that, or sit at a coffee shop and pass the time smoking weed with a bunch of Santa Clara boys, whose mission it was to become as lazy, quiet, paranoid, and unresponsive as possible--one of whom, after hearing me express my frustration with the choices of certain individuals, informed me that I am "in the wrong city, babe."

But then I remembered that I live by my own rules, and that,

It is our personal duty to actively pursue what we want in life.

Amsterdam, Euroventure #2:

Less than 24 hours into my Amsterdam journey, now 20-year old Rachel was mounted on a bright red bike, handle breaks and everything, followed by Bridget on her bright red bike, and Jamie on his bright red bike. I found a better map—a map with words—secured my backpack and camera strap, and embarked on a bike route.

You know those hand signals they teach you in driver’s ed? The one’s you never use and always forget? Well, people use them in Amsterdam because EVERYBODY rides bikes in Amsterdam. In fact, it is estimated that more people in the city ride bikes than drive cars, which I imagine does wonders to the environment, and to the collective well-being of the population.





We had a pretty good system going: I rode in front, and Bridget and Jamie followed, single-file style. At times, I would stop and ask,

"Where do you guys want to go now?" To which Bridget would respond,

"Just keep doing your thing, Rach."

So in between directing myself and two others with my right/left/stop hand signals, manning the map-navigation and street name pronunciation (like "we're gonna head straight down Klaveniersburgwal until we hit Binnengasthuisstraat), steering, breaking, and taking pictures, it is a wonder that I didn’t crash into something, or that something didn’t crash into me.



We passed bridges and museums and landmarks and windmills and I pointed to things listed in my guide book. For hours, we traced our way through the major sight-sees with the wind in our hair and air in our lungs, not paying mind to the numbness in our fingers.



It wasn’t until we wound our way around the tip of the city near Central Station and stopped to look out into the harbor that opened up to the rest of the world that I realized not only was I taking a bike tour,

I was leading one.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Footnotes

We rolled around in a sleeping bag with our shoes on
Our friends drinking whiskey beneath us in a cloud of smoke
You were afraid to say the things you wanted to say
I knew what you wanted to say

We played our guessing game, my knees bumped into yours
but you didn’t move them
You bit my lips with your teeth
under a sea of stars on a cloudless night
and I wondered if we would get married one day

Over the phone
I told you, "You’re my shining sun"
Scratched the words right into the sky with my tongue
I wasn’t old enough to drive yet

You pressed your chest against mine
in the heat of endless summers
when you'd run your fingers through my veins
and smile the way you always did

I pealed my freckles when the trees lost their leaves
in another city
where the streets don't connect

You always loved my freckles