An American in Rome

Well, I've finally made it to Rome. After two and a half weeks of running around Europe like crazy, I'm situated in the Trastevere region. It's quite nice to relax after such a hectic schedule. I'm still in need of a decent grocery store and new batteries for my camera, but besides that all is well. I start class tomorrow afternoon; my books still haven't shown up through the mail yet. Soon I hope. For the next couple of posts I'll be pretty much quoting the little bit of journaling I did on the road. There were two times I actually got the opportunity to write my thoughts down: the train to Barcelona, and an early night before an early wakeup in Barcelona. I'm sorry if it sounds stilted or trite, I've been pretty tired for the whole trip. I'll try to chop it up into segments concerning each country we stayed in:

Wow, this trip has gone by pretty darn fast. It's amazing to think about ll we've seen and done. The thing that blows my mind the most is how language works in Europe. America is completely "English-only" in the vast majority of places. Here, everyone from the hot dog and doner vendor to the museum attendant to the train station worker speaks multiple languages. I've seen one guy speak English, German, Italian, and Spanish all within a five minute time span. How fortunate they are to live in a society that forces you to challenge your mind linguistically every single day.

Today we were pretty lucky. After waiting in line for an hour, we bought tickets to Barcelona after the train was supposed to leave. It was ten minutes late, so we hopped on with little time to spare. Apparently the French train workers are on strike, so getting out of France to Spain was a pain. On our way in, we had to wait for about an hour in Monaco for no apparent reason, and getting out wasn't much faster.We're now on our way via Marseilles and Montpellier.

London was a brilliant city. I really enjoyed it. The parks were gorgeous. My favorite was Hyde Park, but those surrounding Buckingham Palace were nice as well. We watched the changing of the guard outside the palace; that was terribly boring. To think that the UK spends that much money on soldiers and spectacle just to bring in more tourist dollars. I guess if it's economically feasibile, it makes sense from a business point of view, but for me it really sends the wrong message. London seems to want to be recognzed for the power of its hierarchy and military (proponents would call it tradition and history). I just think there are so many better ways to be spending that sort of money. But then again, America spend the great plurality of its budget on the military. Maybe both should realize better priorities.

Besides that, London is a place I could live easily. Even though everything was really expensive, the pubs were fun and inviting. They had that historical appeal as well as good food and beer. The fish and chips portions were huge at both places we went. Table service was much less in your face in some places and non-existent in others. The Underground was efficient and quite useful, even though the station nearest to our hostel is closed until Oct. 2009. It was a bit of a walk, but good exercise. It got us good and tired for bed.