Adventures of a Wrong Fairy

I drove cross country then moved to Milan for grad school so I figured I should make a blog

[wrongfairy]

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is perhaps my favorite holiday. When I think about it I can literally taste the foods that take center stage on that special Thursday. However, because Thanksgiving is an American holiday (let's ignore the Canadian version for now) we had our regular Thursday school schedule. That plus the fact that we don't have an oven really put a damper on the celebration. We knew that there wasn't enough time to make a special meal, but that there was a way to make the day different-special: a trip to good old Mickey D's. I must admit that I since moving to Europe I have eaten more McDonalds in the last month than in the entire year before I moved. It is a little counter-intuitive, I know, but sometimes it is just easier and faster to eat somewhere that you have some knowledge of. (Other times it is best to eat somewhere you know nothing about.)

My Thanksgiving feast consisted of a Big Mac meal. I know that you are extremely, droolingly jealous just thing about my luke warm, overly-processed, highly fatty food. I know I was(n't).

If this picture is considered any kind of food porn, then I think it's the kind that just makes you uncomfortable and self-loathing.

  So fast-forward to the Friday after actual Thanksgiving.

Hard to believe, but McDonalds' mall Thanksgiving just wasn't enough for me. I needed to cook something. The urge to create was just as strong as the urge to eat delicious seasonal food. A semi-fruitful trip to Coop and we had that ingredients for a bare-bones thanksgiving dinner.

  Turkey breast fillets? check. Potatoes? check. Green beans? check. Cranberry jelly? check-ish. Stuffing fixins? check.

  The cranberry jelly was an pleasant surprise. Obviously there wasn't an aisle filled with a sea of OceanSpray cans; our jelly was found with all the other regular jellies that you would put on your breakfast toast. Green beans were easy: frozen section. The turkey (tacchino in Italian) was only available in smaller cuts, but since we are sans oven that was fortuitous.

On Saturday, with all the ingredients in place that trick was to cook all of these things on 4 burners, with 2 pans, 2 small pots, a microwave, and no veggie peeler. To deal with the potatoes I turned to the age-old technique of a "potato party", which consists of me asking my roommates (who have very limited knife skills) to help peel potatoes at the peril of their fingers. Several finger cramps and, thankfully, no bloodshed later, the potatoes were boiling away on the stovetop. So far. So good.

Stuffing was a little trickier, but not by much. To be honest the hardest part was that I couldn't be lazy and buy stock at the supermarket. I ended up making my own with what looked like if you reattached a flat chicken wing to a drumstick chicken wing. They had skin, meat, and bones. Plus they were the cheapest cut of chicken at the store. Add some water, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, salt, and pepper and I had the makings of some mighty fine stock. The stuffing was essentially mushy warm bread-pudding like stuff, but it sure tasted exactly like the Thanksgiving stuffing of home, minus the crust from baking it. I attribute the success of the stuffing to the sage (salvia in Italian) we were able to locate after scouring the store spice racks. Of all the feast foods, this was my favorite.

The green beans were heated. Turkey breasts sizzling in the frying pan. I put Sam in charge of mashing the potatoes with a whisk, because we do not have a masher. The food was doing well so far, but there was a problem of space. One aspect of the space problem is that our kitchen is tiny. It has almost no counter space. The other aspect is that we only have two "large" pots and at this point the stock occupied one and the potatoes occupied the other. This left only our small pot for the gravy making and no whisk for making the roux. As it turned out this was fine. The potatoes were soon mashed enough and the small pot served well in the gravy-making.

Gravy was another issue because we didn't have and pan drippings, which usually form the basis of the delicious meal-topper. Thankfully the stock solved this problem. The chicken I used had skin on it, which means loads of flavor, but also higher fat content. After a night of sitting in the refrigerator the fat had floated to the top of the pot and congealed, making it easy to scoop off and put in the gravy. I did supplement the fat supply with butter, but who doesn't love butter? The stock was also added to the gravy and it actually turned out really well. The photos below shoe the congealed fat and the finished product. I think it looks pretty good considering the cooking and logistics challenges.

Chicken Fat

Dinner was a success, but the fate of dessert was not so certain. Thanksgiving dessert means something baked; it means an oven; it means pie. No oven meant getting creative. The result was a cream cheese and Greek yogurt no-bake cheese cake sweetened with honey and flavored with orange zest. Obviously it had a cookie crust, and although I don't think graham crackers exist here, there are plenty of other crumbly cookies to choose from. The other dessert was an attempt to incorporate apples into the celebration. Apples are a must for fall fests, but I wanted to do something more special than apple sauce for our taste-of-home celebration. The result was a franken-cake. I cooked some apple slices in some butter, cinnamon, and sugar, then cooled them. The next day I made another cookie crumb crust. Then I melted a bunch of caramel candies in a sauce pan and poured it over the apples that rested on the crust. If there were actually a recipe for this the last line would read, "pop it into the freezer and hope for the best." I added too much water to the caramels so they didn't set up as nicely as I had hoped, but the result was undeniably delicious.

All in all, I would say Thanksgiving was a resounding success and definitely a spirit-lifter. For a family that doesn't take the holidays too seriously, it was surprisingly hard on me to not be with them (and the lovely Burhans clan) on that special Thursday. Food is a wonderful community builder and it was one of the first times our apartment family (as I have come to call us) worked together on a project that didn't involve dealing with Italian bureaucracy. The best part, though, came the next day: leftovers. 

[wrongfairy]

One Month Reflections

Here are a few things I have been musing about. it's kind of stream of consciousness, but that's good if you want to let people into your head-space. 

I have found myself saying to the people back home that, "I hate Milan", "I would rather be anywhere but here", "It's not a friendly city". That last one may be true, but the greater truth is that 1) I have only been here a month and about a week of that has been spent on trips, 2 )I don't speak Italian, so of course everything is harder, especially social interactions, and 3) It's not the city I'm upset with, it's our advisor and the foreign office at school.

The truth is I actually like our neighborhood. It’s full of old people. Most of our neighbors are over 60. It's great: there is no pressure to be cool. The neighborhood is called Bicocca, but we sometimes refer to it as Boca, because of the demographics. There is an Aldi's-like grocery store a five minute walk from our apartment. A mall is ten minutes by foot. And a new subway line (the Lilac Line) has just reached into the neighborhood. When it is open, it is fantastic, but sometimes it is closed without warning. The neighborhood consists almost exclusively of apartment high rises. They all look about the same. The heights and colors vary slightly. Sometimes the apartments have balconies, more often they do not.

The Bicocca campus is about a 20 minute walk from the apartment, which is very close considering some of our classmates ride a train for twice as long to get there. When walking to school you have to vigilant of puddles. There are some big ones out there, especially in the rainy autumn and winter. The fog is far more prevalent than the rain. It took me a week before I realized your could see mountains (foothills) from our living room window.

We have not been downtown much yet. We went once about two weeks ago but had to turn around immediately because Sam's phone had been picked from her purse. Almost comically (if it weren't so panicked) we were ambushed by three African men trying to "give" us bracelets. The actual closing-in of the bracelet-men and the rising fear about the missing phone amplified each other nicely.

The other downtown excursion was when I convinced my roommates to go to the free aquarium with me. I had read the Trip Advisor reviews and knew that it was small and not super exciting, they had not. Regardless, it was free and it was an excuse to get into the center of the city. The aquarium is attached to a beautiful park with a sports field and what looks like a mini Brandenburg Gate.

While in the park I experienced what must be the biggest culture shock for me: public displays of affection (PDA). Or as it would be more appropriately named: public soft-core. People really go at it. No park bench is safe. At first I thought this activity was limited to airports and train stations where the impending sorrow of separation often drives people to temporarily forget themselves in love (or lust). I walked to the grocery store the other day at about 6pm and saw two teens locked in a passionate knot on a bus stop bench. When I passed them they looked at me like I was the one who shouldn't have been there. Perhaps this is why the morning after pill is legal in one of the most Catholic countries in the world.

So problem one has been partially addressed. I don't know the city well yet. I'm trying to know it better and part of that includes getting better at the Italian language, which leads us to problem 2.

I have Rosetta Stone and I have an intro Pimsleur CD, but I also have American roommates and a healthy dose of procrastination mixed with denial. So even with all these resources I am still at pre-beginner stage. Mostly I depend on cognates with both English and French. I have also found that my fondness for crosswords has come in handy. Let me explain. In crossword puzzles you are often given a clue where the answer is an imperfect synonym. You sometimes have to think in kooky ways to discover the connection. This sort of thinking frustrates my mother endlessly when we do crosswords, but it helps me when I hear a word that is like an English word and when taken in the situational context can be sussed out. This process is, however, far too involved for regular use. Often it takes until you get home to have that "Eureka!" moment.

Putting yourself out there can be tiring, even for someone who likes to talk to strangers as much as I do. The language barrier almost sapped me of my stranger-curiosity. Almost. I think it is being suppressed, but as time rolls forward the curiosity is starting to get restless and looking for a way out. This is also fueled by the realization that if I do not start either speaking some Italian or finding activities with people who speak at least some English I will be talking almost exclusively with the same two people for the next seven months. While I like my roommates, I think I would go mad not talking to anyone else. It also turns out that my roommates are both very shy people, so when I do put myself out there socially I get little back-up in the form of help carrying the conversation. The conversation ain't my brother, but he is heavy and some help would be appreciated.

That being said they are excellent allies in terms of navigating the school and the Italian bureaucracy. They had to go through the whole process of applying for the documents so you could apply for residency before I got here. And they had to do it through trial and error, in another language, with only incorrect information from the university's foreign office. That is an experience I do not envy. I got the cliff notes version, thankfully.

That is also only one example of how I think the university has failed us. The foreign office is the same one that did not respond to my emails about how to enroll for over a month this past spring. The same one that bounced me from person to person saying that they couldn't help. The same office that almost couldn't be bothered to send my paperwork to the Italian Consulate in NYC so that I could apply for my visa. The original woman we were told to contact is supposedly housed in the foreign office. I have yet to hear anything from here, nor have I ever seen her in the office. After being bounced around the foreign office staff again we were assigned to someone for good. He was in the office during his office hours. Sometimes. He once rescheduled a meeting with me because he had "and emergency tennis match". Never mind that none of us were actually enrolled in the school yet. (We have finally been officially enrolled, btw)

The other failure is on the part of our advisor. He is also never in his office. When Sam and Mike first arrived he emailed them that he would be out of the country for at least two weeks, so he was no help upon their arrival. Whenever we ask a question he looks at us like we are idiots. He didn’t believe us that the foreign office was giving us the run around until he tried to call them while we were in his office. After trying everyone in the foreign office and none of them being there he finally got an inkling of what we were dealing with there.

I also find it odd that he didn’t ask one of his students or really any student to show us around campus. If anything this would make his already easy job easier. I'm pretty sure UB and Michigan Tech assign a sort of student ambassador to the INVOGE student. I think that would be logical, but apparently I live in a world devoid of logic, thank goodness I'm not taking math here, 2+2 may actually equal 5. Luckily Sam met an Italian student who was at Michigan Tech last year at a field course in France in October. Her name is Val. She is very sweet and very willing to help us with any questions. The only problem is she live an hour and a half away by train (not subway train, but a real choo-choo train) so she is only on campus a few days a month, if that.

In the months to come I am sure that I will come to feel a fondness for Milan. I feel like this is an arranged marriage where you learn to love each other only after you spend enough time together for a sort of respect and appreciation to develop. Milan and I need to learn how to work together, to figure out how to complement each other, and to finally cultivate that affection I know is possible. Whenever I am discouraged, I remind myself that I have only been here for a month. I have barely scratched the surface. While many things are different, I am more often amazed at how similar people are wherever you go. There are the young and the old. The punks and the chic crowd. The city folk and the country folk. Those trying to make name for themselves in the big city and those just trying to make it through the day. Everyone has to run to catch the subway sometimes, no matter how glamorous their shoes are.

[wrongfairy]

First week

Since everything was closed from Friday until Monday due to the All Saints Holiday that follows Halloween we had nothing (nothing) to do over the weekend. We did play cards on Friday night before Jack and Sara left. Even a trip to the mall on Sunday only killed a couple of hours and the modem we bought there that was supposed to be our savior is still not working (Monday 8:18 pm).

 Much of our down time was spent in close-proximity isolation, which is a healthy skill to hone when living in close quarters with other people. It often involves headphones and bright device screens. Sometimes a book, sometimes a journal (both of which are now often electronic). I say it's healthy because I live with the only other two people in my proximity who speak English. These are basically the only two people I will easily interact with for the next couple of months. I am trying to balance getting to know them with the inevitability of becoming sick of them. The key is to pace yourself.

 When we do interact most of the conversation involves speculating what our classes, professors, and classmates will be like. Even on the way to class this morning we could not help but wonder how many people would be in our classes? Would the other students resent us for the class being in English (even though according to all the profs it is beneficial for them in the long run)? Well (some of) those questions were answered today. We found our first classroom without trouble and proceeded to sit in a room of Italian-speakers for half an hour. There were too many students for the number of seats. We grossly underestimated how many people would be in our class. (Our guess 10-15. Actual 45) Then the prof came in and in Italian ushered us to another room in the same building. Basically, I just followed the herd, tried to keep my head down, and blend in. So far so good.

When we get to the new classroom there are just enough seats (until someone shows up late and has to sit at the teachers desk). He proceeds to talk for a couple of minutes in Italian. I zone out a bit until I hear, "Americani". The prof looks around searchingly. We raise our hands. Suddenly the eyes of everyone in the room are on us. I try to focus but it's hard when so many faces are looking at you. Something about "Parli-something l'italiano? Zero l'italiano?" We respond with a meek chorus of "Zero." he then proceeds in both English and Italian a little intro about the class and then lots more Italian. Soon he is going around the room and students are saying things. We decipher that it is their name, their undergraduate school, and their area of interest. My pulse quickens as they approach me (the first American to speak!) but I manage to say the info loudly and clearly, although when I say my name everyone looks bewildered as if I had just said my name was Quack-quack Buttermilk. I guess they don't get a lot of Taylers (or german sounding last names a la Schweigel) in Milan.

The class itself sounds fun. A general course in that it hopes to bring together lots of things we have learned in other courses (sed, strat, structure, etc.) It also includes a modulus on the geology of Italy, which includes both the Apennines and the Alps so I am sure to get my fix of mountain belts! Then he goes on to explain the exam. I am still not entirely clear on all the details, but here's a stab at it. There are four parts:

A written portion with 3 or 4 questions

An oral part (not sure what will be asked)

A practical or "exercise" part

A small report on an aspect of the course that interested us

We have to schedule the exam some time after the conclusion of the course, which will end sometime in January or early February. This is earlier than other 1st semester courses because for November we are doing 4 hours of class on Tuesdays instead of 2. This means about a week of class will be cut off at the end without actually losing those classroom hours. This means lots of breaks in that 4 hours. This also means my classmates will come back from those breaks wreaking of cigarettes.

_________________________________________________________

The doorways to every building are always crowded with herds of smokers. Walking down the street people always have cigarettes in their hands. Besides the itty-bitty cars that is the most shocking thing I have seen. (oh yeah, and the rampant PDA) When we exited the geology building today I took a breath inside and held it until I had cleared the doors. All this is made funnier by the recent email I got from UB saying that people are smoking too close to the doors. People at Bicocca are practically inside when the smoke. There are so many of them that there is a visible cloud. I think all the smoke somehow has been contributing to the almost daily fog and rain here in Milan. There is so much smoke I think it really could impact climate. Those cigarettes produce a lot of heat. Thankfully none of my roommates smoke so the apartment is a haven of clear air.

But back to classes. The second class is taught by our advisor/liaison Prof Tibaldi. I was excited about his class from the description and from the paper of his that Caco had given me last year about deformation of a volcano. Firstly, he was 15 minutes late (which may be on purpose because technically there is no break between class blocks, but he has a reputation for being less than reliable schedule-wise). The opening of the class seems cool: earthquakes, and active tectonics in the first modulus, volcano-tectonics in the second modulus. All focusing on applications in the field.

Then he loses me and starts talking about risk assessment and the definition of a hazard and how you calculate the expected damage here or there and how the houses are closer together in England than in the jungle in Brazil so that affects the risk assessment. Blah, blah, blah. It just does not interest me. The engineers seem slightly more engaged. I am hoping that the class becomes more about tectonics and less about risk assessment, but our unofficial motto here is "If you hope for something, expect it not to work out." (I am also hoping that we can change our motto soon!) The other strange thing about this class is the exam. The way Tibaldi explained it the exam, for the whole semester, consists of three questions to be answered in 30 minutes. I think the other motto should be "Italy, where exams are wacky" maybe that one needs some work...

 ______________________________________________________

I think the Italian students see us at non-human or maybe as figments of their imagination; if they ignore us we will just go away. Or maybe they are just busy doing other things. We are barely acknowledged, but you sense that some students are not happy the courses are in English. Partially, in English. All their questions are asked and answered in Italian in our Sed Basins class then we get a brief explanation, as if its an afterthought. (After to talking to some students though it is clear they know that being able to discuss geology in English is a valuable skill and that it is good to practice even if it is hard.)

Life consists of thinking about what to eat, walking the same half-hour route to school four days a week, trying to stay awake until a reasonable hour, and silence, lots of silence. It is remarkable normal (probably the strangest thing) but that everyone outside speaks a different language. I will be talking to the same people for the next 8 months. I think today, only about two weeks in, this is really hitting me. It's probably because most people seem to socialize while smoking outside and I just cannot stand the smoke. I could always start smoking a la Rachael on Friends.

It's two weeks in and I already feel trapped, isolated, crowded, and somewhat unhappy. I can feel the urge to run away creeping into my mind. It abuts the thought that this is not what you are supposed to be doing when you go to Europe when you are young. This is too close to regular, everyday life. It is definitely not a Lifetime movie (thank goodness! [Amanda Knox]). This is very different from how I felt travelling to, visiting, and right after Berlin. My conclusion, then, is that touring Europe as a student is very different than living here. Maybe that does not hold for study abroad programs where you have at least a half dozen other people to hang out with, live with, have class with, but for INVOGE it is certainly true. 

 ________________________________________________________

Stir crazy, we decide to go downtown on our Wednesday off, but this doesn't happen until 2:30 (sleeping is is precious). We have been in search of a frisbee for weeks. There is a sports store called Decathlon that we see signs for near us, but in actuality is several kilometers away. Instead we decide to hit up the one that is smack dab in the middle of the city. This requires 3 trains, but we accomplish it easily. We pop up downtown, not too far from the Duomo (which I have yet to see) and see a beautiful fountain and a regal-looking stone building. However, as soon as we reach the fountain we are swarmed by men trying to sell us bracelet's. The are persistent and target me first. While I am trying to get them to go away (and failing) Sam realizes her phone is missing. She frantically tries to think of where she could have lost it. I immediately think it was stolen but keep that thought to myself because somehow it is more terrible than the phone simply being lost.  Sam yells at the street peddler to go away and he finally does, just as another approaches Mike. This new one is less persistent, or maybe he can feel the tension around us and wants no part of it. We pow-wow briefly and then get right back on the train. We retrace our movements but go just one stop further, putting us closer to the mall and the Wind store (aka the phone company) . Both attendants are occupied when we get there. All of us arms crossed and feet tapping.

Somehow despite the tragedy of a lost phone the day reinvigorated me. I laughed and shared things with my roommates today that were completely new. We saw one of us in crisis and banded together. It is nice to know that we look out for each other, that we are a team together amidst but not opposed to the Italian world around us. I may be slightly unhappy with Milan so far and it may have stolen my friend's phone but I now know that the people I live with are definitely my allies, that we have similar goals for this program, and that I genuinely like them.

[wrongfairy]

Photos from Varenna. The fog made everything seem really lush and tropical despite the cold; the multitude of palm trees didn't hurt either. 

[wrongfairy]

Week Before Classes

I very easily call where I am staying "home" if it feels comfortable, no matter how much time I spend there.

  It's easier/more pleasant to be a tourist than it is to move somewhere and live there. Easier in part because the expectations are lower

A lot of the process of travelling is waiting. Waiting punctuated by intense bursts of activity. Berlin taught me that those bursts are what make it worthwhile . The waiting is probably better that the alternative: missing your train/bus/plane. Because you will get lost. You will get confused and if you schedule things too tightly you will miss your connection.

  I was sitting in my kitchen in Milan when I heard Lou Reed died.

    Monday was an incredibly lazy day. I like to think I was still catching up on sleep from pre-Berlin. Basically slept until 10, stayed in bed until noon. Went to Panetto for an early dinner. No one speaks English there, but the food is worth the pantomime routine. Sam and I explored Parco Nord, which starts about a block north from our apartment and seems to go on forever. It was so nice just to get out of the apartment and be in green space. Green space is rare here; I even miss the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street. And I'm totally spoiled by living near a park and a bunch of parkways.

There were about a dozen older men playing bocce ball and many people out for a bike or a stroll. Sam showed me the excellent sledding hill near the entrance of the park (if we ever get any snow. SPOILER: we don't get any snow). We walked over a large highway. I saw some more cranes (not nearly as many as in Berlin though). Our walk ended up lasting over 45 minutes. It was refreshing, cleansing, and a good way to work of the giant piece of margherita pizza we ate for dinner. It never ceases to amaze me how good a walk in a park can make you feel. Ciao!

  Tuesday involved diving head-first into Italian bureaucracy. I got my Codice Fiscale at tax office (like getting your social security number at a place about a intuitive and efficient as the DMV), met with Prof Tibaldi, bought student health insurance, got my residency kit and filled it out. All before 11:30, which is when I first really left my bed yesterday. Got to peak into Tibaldi's lab. There were lots of very cool rock samples, some with a neat foliation.

Time here is funny but its not the time change. I think it is due to two things: 1) That businesses are only open in the morning. As I mentioned earlier, we were done with all of our stuff before noon and after that there was basically no where else to go, except grocery shopping. 2) There is not much for us to do. Yet. We have bureaucratic errands to run for residency and enrollment, but those can only be done in the morning. This leaves a strange period of time when many businesses are closed and any activity you should want to do usually costs money or involves a long train trip. We broke up this empty time on Tuesday by going to Dico, the grocery store a block or so away.

Wednesday was important because I finally found real milk! At the COOP in the refrigerated section. They only come in small sizes but that’s okay. I probably will finish drinking the one I have tomorrow morning which is good because the expiration dates are much sooner than those in the US.

Sam and I made beans and rice on Tuesday nght, which was decent. On Wednesday we added chicken to it and it became fabulous! Totally worth having to remove all the "extra" blood vessels and the breast bone that is just not there in the US.

On Halloween (Thursday) we went to cold and foggy, but still extremely beautiful Lake Como (actually the town of Varenna) on basically the day before everything closes (and many businesses were already closed for the off-season. The sights were beautiful but there was little to do other than walk through a garden and eat lunch/dessert. The sun started to come out about and hour before we left. There were two hilarious old me on the platform who were freaking out about how to get all their bags on the train before it pulled away from the station. The train was very crowded. Luckily Sam and I found seats together (maybe the last pair on the train).  The views from the train are spectacular. And while the lakes are what people come for, I think the mountains really steal the show. The way the seemingly just jut up out of the earth and how to this day with all of our technology these mountains are still an enormous challenge and one that many do not even attempt to take on. (What I mean by that is the villages are still very small, under-developed compared to the flatter surrounding areas.) When we get home we veg-out and clean because Sara, Mike, and Jack were returning Friday.

Lesson learned this week: Boy do you get spoiled living in a country in which you speak the language. Even confusing things are easier. Like picking a phone and internet plan, for example. I can barely do that in English and I had to figure it out in Italian. 

[wrongfairy]

Berlin

Something I failed to write before is that on our first metro trip Sam mentioned that our other roommate Mike was travelling right now with his girlfriend, Sara, and her brother, Jack. They were heading to Berlin for the weekend and we could go meet up with them if we wanted. Obviously the answer was yes! Berlin was up very high on my list of places to visit and the thought of being able to check it off so soon was too tempting. We booked flights for 6:40 on Friday morning. The only problem with this flight plan is that no public transportation runs when we wanted to leave for the airport. It stopped too early and started too late. No matter how we looked at it (metro, bus, tram) there was no way to get us there on time. So we made the tough decision to take the midnight bus to the statione centrale (the train station) and then the airport shuttle bus or a train from there. This plan would get us to the airport five hours before our flight.

So from our unproductive day Thursday we just stayed awake until it was time to catch the bus. When we reach train station there are no trains running to Malpensa, but there are busses. We buy our tickets hop on the bus and are on our way no more than five minutes after boarding. We reach the airport at 1:15. Everything is closed. There are people an luggage strewn across chairs and the floor. Only five and a half hours until our flight!

After wandering the terminal searching for any signs of life we park ourselves in the dining area of a closed café and hunker down for the long wait. Slowly the airport became more active. The sun started its journey upward. And the check-in counters opened. We had our tickets on my phone and no luggage to check so at 430 we passed through security and headed to the terminal. Only two hours until our flight! Our gate was deserted. We were the only people there for about 45 minutes.

Starving, we selected appropriate carbohydrates to allow us to power through the day. (Crackers and a tart-like dessert) By the time our flight was boarding we had been up for 22 hours. Fatigue was staring to set in. Boarding took forever because everyone had to stuff their trolleys (rolley luggage) into the overhead bins. We were in an emergency exit row so even our soft backpacks had to be put up in the bins in order to keep the aisle clear. It was stupid. Sam and I tried to sleep on the 2 hour flight. We succeeded in keeping our eyes closed most of the time, but no real rest was achieved. It was like fever sleep. You go in and out of half-consciousness, wake forgetting where you are, and right when you start getting a grip on things you go under again. The flight seemed long and stuffy. My ears were constantly popping. I think the flight wouldn't have so been bad if we had been better rested. When the plane mercifully landed we had been awake for over 24 hours and we were just beginning our day.

 (there was going to be a picture of me bouncing on the fun Berlin playground/art piece but Sam's phone got stolen before she sent me the photo)

Berlin was cold Friday morning. You could see your breath. The contrast of the hot airless plane and the sharp cold air invigorated me. It reminded me that I was somewhere new and that adventure was ahead. We marched down a semi-sheltered corridor to the train station near Schoenefeld. For some reason it took us a while to figure out what train we wanted so we missed the first one and had to wait 20 minutes on the train before it departed for Alexanderplatz. We had some time to kill before Mike, Sara, and Jack arrived so we headed to Dunkin Donuts for a breakfast sandwich, donut, and wifi so we could tell Sara where to meet us. Two out of three ain't bad. Wifi was finally found at Starbucks (of course). We found a fantastic time-user-upper in the form of a minimalist playground. There were trampolines set into the ground and what looked like spinning tops in addition to a (insert name of spinning playground toy). Basically I spun on one of the top for about ten minutes. Let's just say it altered my perspective for a bit.

When we met up with our fellow travelers we headed to the apartment we were renting. It was adorable. All decorated in bright yellow, orange, and leaf green. It had a great view right onto Heinrich-Heine Straße. Like Milan, there are a lot of boxy apartment buildings, but somehow those in Berlin seem more cheerful despite their rigid communist history. The fact that it was not gray and foggy in Berlin may have had a lot to do with my perception of things. After a bathroom break for all and a quick brush of the teeth we are off again to the Brandenburg Tor (Gate) where our Free Tour meets (not free so much as pay what you want). There is a station one minute from the apartment so we take the train back to Alexanderplatz (basically everywhere we went somehow got routed through Alexanderplatz. The TV Tower is also a great landmark when walking the streets). We have the names of the metro lines we need but get confused as to which of the three levels the trains leave from. Needless to say we just miss one and reach the Tor later than the tour start time (2pm).

Never fear! The tours were just getting organized when we got there. Tickets acquired, we waited for our numbers to be called.

  In the background to the left of the fountain picture you can see a building with a copper roof. This is the hotel Adlon. If that sounds at all familiar to you it is likely because this is the hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby over the balcony to show the hoards of press below. Jacko is wacko indeed.

Our tour guide is Rob Shaw, a redhead from Manchester who dreams of writing a great novel based in Berlin, the city he has come to love.

He is charismatic, knowledgeable, and easily able to connect individually with almost everyone on the tour. Despite the sometimes heavy history of Berlin he keeps things upbeat and even manages a few jokes at the Nazis' expense (mostly about the strange mingling of Nazi homophobia and nude males in Nazi art). We see sights including the holocaust victims memorial, the current home of the German IRS, which used to be Ministry of Aviation or Reichsluftfahrtministerium, the parking lot and playground that are now above Hitler's bunker, part of the Berlin wall, some beautiful cathedrals and places of learning (including one designed by Frederich the Great).

I also took so many pictures of cranes. The city was buzzing with energy and activity. It seemed that there was always something new being built, but the new always had to defer to the old. I wanted to capture this contrast of old and new, but they rather turned out as crappy cell phone pictures on a gray day. Oh well. Hopefully this explanation will lend them some beauty/importance/credence/gravitas. We ended on museum island on the steps of one of the museums (of course) where we were regaled with the story of how a terrible press conference lead to the fall of the Berlin wall.

  (I had songs from LA Woman stuck in my head during the tour for some reason)

Afterwards our group headed to a restaurant recommended by our guide for a bite and a beer. Rob, and some others from the tour went too. It was nice still having a guide around to ask about what we should do tomorrow morning. We all got Berlin (or at least German) beers. Proust! I ordered a delicious omlette with the most scrumptious potatoes in it and a pilsner that seems to be the Labatt's of Germany.  

Walked home along the river. It was beautiful but sort of creepy because we were the only people around. After being in a busy city all day the ghost-town atmosphere was disconcerting. We saw swans on the river! Went to the grocery near the apartment and bought beer, chocolate and gum. More pilsner for me. Basically then hung out and gorged on wifi at the apartment and drank beer. Sam got a beer that was half lemonade. It was so sweet; even more so than the shandys in the US. They had one with grapefruit too but I didn't buy it. I consider this an excuse to come back to Berlin.

Somehow Sam and I make it through the day fine. We get fatigued and silly/giggly at points but never grumpy or catatonic. The goal is basically to keep moving because if we sit or stop we feared we would fall asleep. We ended up being awake for ~40 hours total. I got about 45 minutes of semi sleep in that time. Sam got about 30. Let me tell you, we did not want to wake up in the next morning.

But we did and headed back to Alexanderplatz to catch the view from the top of the TV Tower. The wait to go up after purchasing tickets was about an hour so we ventured to get some food. The place we picked was manned by two wacky Germans. One just kept laughing hysterically every time we did anything, especially Sara. One man got a kick out of the fact that all I wanted to eat was potatoes and sauerkraut (which were delicious). They definitely fall under the madcap German stereotype. What a hoot!

The elevator in the TV Tower moves at 6 m/s and got us up the 200 or so meters in about 40 seconds. (Before you yell at me about the math, remember that the elevator takes a few seconds to get up to speed and a few to slow down at the top.) The view was cool. There was some fog but it was far off enough as to not affect the sights too much. My favorite part was the cities listed at the different degree directions. For example, if you continue in such and such a direction you will reach Oslo. Berlin is definitely not a grid city. Streets weaved to and fro. Some buildings even matched the arc of a street. Despite this Berlin is a pretty easy city to navigate, and despite the metro map being terrible (all of the colors are muddy and look the same). After the tower we headed back to the Brandenburg Tor for our next tour.  

The Red Berlin Tour is about Berlin (and Germany) after WW2 when Berlin was split between east and west, communism and capitalism. We got to see more of the wall and the no man's land between East and West Berlin. There are two ways to see no man's land: through horizontal slits in a barrier or from a tower across the street. There was also a memorial to those who died trying to cross from East to West Berlin.

We ended our tour at the largest soviet memorial in Berlin. It was monumental. Huge bronze statue, more of a park with multiple tribute pieces than a single monument. Expansive.

The phone on my camera could't do this monument justice so here is a link to some images: https://www.google.it/search?q=Soviet+War+Memorial+(Treptower+Park)&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=FOLsUqCmMqGbyQPd74GYDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=673&bih=622

We were all dragging when the tour finished. It was not as entertaining as the one yesterday, but still good. Perhaps our tour was tainted by the presence of "Captain Russia". A Russian tourist who apparently worked giving tours back home in St. Petersburg. He talked our guide Lewis' ear off and kept interjecting with pro-USSR things. Granted the Allies were not explicit good guys in this (and our guide recognized that many liked living in East Germany) Captain Russia almost seemed like a Russian PR plant. Even if that was not the case, he was a know-it-all who seemed more interested in giving a tour than taking one.

When the tour ended we were starving and although not regional Berlin fare we set a course for Hofebrau Haus. I got a roasted half chicken with Bavarian potato salad. I ate so many potatoes in Germany! Drank beer, relaxed, reminisced about the day. It's funny I have known Sam for all of 3 days at this point and it feels like so much longer. It probably has something to do with living with these people, traveling in sometimes stressful situations with them, and them often being the only people who speak English and therefore the only people you can really talk to. Or, in Sam's case, it has only been three days but since we've been awake most of the time it counts as more time than three days usually would. They are also all very easy-going, welcoming people.

Sam got spaetzle. It was super delicious. Be jealous Dad, be very jealous. 

We basically hit hot spots in Berlin and I'm satisfied with our survey considering how short a time we were there. I definitely want to go back, at some point. 

[wrongfairy]

First Days in Milan

I arrived in Milan on Wednesday morning the day after starting my journey. I made it from Malpensa Airport to the train station where my roommate Sam had agreed to meet me and guide me home. There was one problem with this plan: I had no way of calling her. Thankfully as I wandered through the station I found a TIM store and easily purchased a SIM card with calls, SMS, and internet (data). With said SIM card and my unlocked phone I was able to contact Sam who was at the station already, but on a different floor. We met in front of the TIM store and she lead me to the metro. The route to the apartment was straightforward enough, but I had the added complication of an 80 pound suitcase. Needless to say my arms were tired the next day from manhandling the "behemoth" as I called it.

We get to the apartment which had a locked gate and locked ground floor door. We are on the 5th floor, but it may actually be the seventh considering the floors go: 0, R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… (No idea about the R floor. It seems exactly like all the other floors.) The elevator is tiny, but thank god there is an elevator! When we reach the apartment Sam wrestles the door open (explaining that you really have to put some muscle into the last turn of the key) and I am greeted by a cheerful, clean, bright space. It's all white walls and tile floors. Space is used efficiently, its much smaller than most buffalo apartments for three people, but does not seem cramped. Sam and I are sharing a room (just like freshman year all over again!) and our other roommate Mike has the bedroom/living room. Pictures to follow. From the apartment we can see the track and football field of a local sportivo and many other similar apartment buildings. I'm told that on a clear day you can see the Alps. Since it has been raining or foggy every day since I have been here I added some so you could get the effect.

My bed you will notice has a comforter on it that my roommates were nice enough to buy an extra of before I arrived. Considering I crashed about an hour and a half after settling in that comforter was a godsend. Never mind that my bed did not have sheets; sometimes sleep cannot be kept waiting. After passing out for two hours Sam and I took a trip to the mall, which is only a ten minute walk from the apartment. The goal of the trip was sheets for my bed and to get a look around the neighborhood. The store of choice is COOP. Sam explained it as the Italian Walmart; basically it has everything from eggs to bikes to clothing. I bought non-matching sheets (of course) but ones that compliment my hot pink and fuchsia comforter. For some reason I have never been able to tolerate matching sheets. 

The evening was spent unpacking and lounging. There are very specific times when you can get things done in Milan. AKA things are never open. This is not the land of open 24-hours and we-never-close.

Part of the relaxation/move-in protocol was a shower and boy oh boy did that feel good. The bathroom is nice. It contains our washer, a nice stall shower, and oh yeah a bidet! I turned it on but have yet to use it. Basically the rest of the day was uneventful.

The kitchen is nice. There is a fridge, microwave, stovetop, and dishwasher. There is not, however, an oven. Say goodbye to roasted pumpkin seeds, Thanksgiving turkey, and Christmas cookies. No oven just means we will have to be creative with our seasonal favorites.

Sam was really excited to get her picture taken.

The next morning Sam and I trekked to campus. It's about a 20 minute walk to the foreign office, a little less to reach the building that houses the geology department. The foreign office and the person tasked to handle us INVOGE students was supposed to have office hours that morning, but was not there. In fact the whole office was locked. This is (apparently) not surprising, but nonetheless disappointing. It also seems to be par for INVOGE program; no one knows how to deal with us and there is never a straight answer nor an easy solution. Since no one was in the foreign office I decided to venture to the geology department to find our advisor Alessandro Tibaldi. As you may have already guessed, he was not there. He was out in the field, so he had a real excuse for not being around. Disheartened, I walked home, if for no other reason than to see if I remembered the way. Fast forward two hours and I meet Sam back on campus. We stumble through the process of buying a sandwich and laugh about how getting things done in Milan and with Bicocca seems impossible. Sam, having been here longer, has dealt with this to a much greater extent than me and has been instrumental in helping me navigate the bureaucratic waters.

So not the most productive days, but not for a lack of trying. We return home, less than triumphant and eat some bread with delicious cherry jam and Nutella. Basically this is what we eat all the time. It's cheap, quick, and easy to have around the house. That afternoon we again laze about, because the places we could be doing things are closed. I read and doze and lament how I am becoming like my father in that I cannot seem to read without falling asleep. When we do venture out again to find food other than that mentioned above everything is closed. So we return home to our bread and jam.

This also shows the "milk" we bought. It's kind of weird. At first I thought it tasted gamey, but now seems less so. I have yet to find milk that will satisfy my cravings. For now those urges are sated with tea and croissants.

The first day and a half moved at a slow pace, which at first seemed like a disappointment, but was in retrospect probably a blessing. It allowed me to rest from travelling, get acclimated to the time change, and venture into the neighborhood in a casual manner. It also good that I rested because the pace picked up considerably in the next section.

[wrongfairy]

Last Days of the Trip

The next week of this trip sort of blurs together for me. Maybe because I had less time to write stuff down in the moment, maybe it was travel fatigue, maybe it was because we spent more than one night in a state (both Arizona and California).

At some point while in Arizona we stopped at  Petrified Forest National Park. After watching a vintage video about the park we drove around and went on select hike. Petrified wood it totally cool. I have a piece from field camp. You can still see the texture of the wood, but now it is inorganic minerals. Mind-blowing!

We again took a less conventional route through a state park to Phoenix, which involved a section where you descend thousands of feet in a very short distance. Liz tells me that the sides of the road we frequently decorated with crosses and remembrances of people who had died on the route, but I was too busy trying to wind my way down without going off the road, wreaking Liz's brakes, or getting bullied too badly by the pick-up truck behind me. We got to visit Marley in Phoenix and eat at a restaurant that looks out over the whole city. The next day Liz and I drove by the super-swanky houses on a hill in Phoenix.

Then we back-tracked up to the Grand Canyon. It was super-crowded, Liz had to park illegally, and I bought a geology-themed water bottle. The canyon itself was far more impressive than I expected even though it was a little hazy. It really is huge! When we left the canyon it was getting dark (think goodness we had already claimed our campsite at a place called Dogtown!).

Obviously we stopped at a Wendy's on the way back. It was the first food for miles once you left the park and was therefore packed; we got burgers. The temperature had dropped significantly when we arrived back at camp so we decided that in addition to our sleeping bags we would put Liz's down comforter in the tent. It was an awesome decision. We were so toasty despite it dropping to below freezing during the night. We knew it was really cold that night because the ice in my cup from Wendy's survived the night without any obvious melting.

We made a pit stop in Sedona Arizona, land of crystals and mysticism. We just walked around and got lunch. The red sandstones were incredibly beautiful. We also stopped at the top of a mountain and I bought Malachite earrings from a Native American woman. I'm a sucker for Malachite and Turquoise, especially when used in southwestern jewelry settings. There were some wicked switchbacks on the way up.

  The drive from Arizona to LA was some of the most desolate road I have ever seen. There were hardly any stops for gas, food, or restrooms. At the one bathroom stop we made the ladies' room was being cleaned and there was a line ten women long to use the single toilet on the backside of the building. When we did stop for food it was in a strip mall. Sounds unappetizing, but the food was some of the best Tex-Mex? Mexican? Southwestern? That I have ever had. Ever. And it was cheap.

 When we made it to the city limits of LA we felt relief, but it turned out we had another hour of driving to reach Marissa's house. The traffic was bad at times, but by no means the nightmare we had imagined it would be. We even used the carpool lane. We immediately we swept away to one of Marissa's friends houses. Parking is just as bad if not worse than you could imagine. I think the whole time we were in the city about a quarter of our in-car time was spent looking for parking. Then Marissa had a show, which was awesome. I had only ever seen here perform with Dave and Marissa, and HIGH DRAGS is so different. She was awesome! Then Liz and I ended up at a weird hotel party where drinks were $18 dollars a pop and everyone was dressed better than us. We both had the urge to flee and so we did. We walked for a bit and passed about 20 homeless people in sleeping bags in only two blocks. According to Liz's phone it would be a 40 minute walk back to the house. I was too sleepy and just at that moment a cab rounded the corner. Miraculously I remembered the address and had enough money to get us back.

Again here the days blend into each other somewhat. We ate sushi on the top of a "mountain" for my birthday. Later we went out and tasted some fine whiskeys and I ate (more) sushi from a food truck. The theme of LA was sushi. It was everywhere; Walgreens has a sushi bar in-store. We bought sage to "cleanse" Marissa's room aka make it smell nicer. The woman who sold it to us was very serious that after the age disposed of the bad spirits that we had to fill the space back up with good energy. Her suggestion was to run around the space singing at the top of our lungs. The sage turned out to smell like McDonalds food.

Marissa made us chai lattes with hemp milk (totally delicious) at the coffee shop where she works. Liz and I sampled happy hours and I was still buzzed when I got on the bus at 3:30 am to head to LAX. The bus ride being 45 minutes I was unfortunately sober upon arrival at the airport. I flew home through Las Vegas and played a 25 cent slot machine. Spoilers: I didn’t win anything. Then back to Buffalo and starting to work at the Museum of Science.

[wrongfairy]

Day 5

April 30, 2013

With probably 4 hours of sleep between the two of us, Liz and I began the process of making breakfast, packing, and breaking down camp. Like the night before, it was still windy so we had to hold down our plates and spoons and the water took forever to boil. We made a delicious tea from Liz's teabag (which is a plastic shopping bag filled with numerous varieties of tea, including other teas bags. It's very meta). As we're packing up a cleaning crew swoops in. It's actually just two guys stabbing garbage and putting it in bags. The fire pit nearest out tent is filled with beer cans. There are over a dozen and at least four brands are represented. One man half ask, half comments, "You girls have a fin weekend?", thinking the cans are ours. We laugh and explain that we've only been here one night and that some wild rock climbers must have left them there from the weekend. A ranger's SUV passes but does not stop.

When we finish packing we drive back to the giant lodge on the lake. There is a bridge that takes you to a platform that reaches out over the water. It is clear that the water level is low because there is a white bathtub ring on the otherwise pink granitic rocks. As we head west out of the park (without paying ;)) it becomes even more clear why climbers love it here. Besides its obvious beauty, there is no significant vegetation here and there are numerous sub-vertical rock faces. Lesson learned from Quartz Mountain: just because a place is beautiful doesn't mean it’s a good place to camp. On our zigzag back to the highway we drive through Sayre, a "ghost town". It was certainly deserted.

Now it was a straight shot to Albuquerque; we just needed to cross the Texas panhandle. At this point we were running parallel to Route 66 and could see it right next to the highway. This leg of the journey included the most interesting stretch of Route 66 kitschy attractions, including a ten story high white cross, and a bunch of Cadillacs half buried in the desert that had been stripped and spray painted. These touristy stops sandwiched our stop in Amarillo for a good-ole greasy burger and fries at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, I think was called the Golden Light Café, where half the patrons were wearing longhorns gear and one man used the phrase, "…rode hard and put away wet", which makes me cringe every time I hear it.

In my brief hours in Texas it did nothing to dispel my notion of it being Fox news country. Between the giant cross and  the mega churches along the highway and the sexist lunch conversation it was pretty much what I expected. (It was just as hot as I imagined as well) But Texas is a big place and I only briefly saw one small corner or a vast and varied state. It was intriguing and exotic to me and I would like to go back and see more.

Then we do a lot of driving.  This was one of the longer legs of our journey. We saw a lot of armadillos, but all of them were dead. When we make it across the NM state line we stop at the visitor's center to use the wifi and get a hotel. I get a deal on one because its undergoing renovations. We splurged ($50!) on a hotel in the hopes of recapturing the sleep we lost in Oklahoma. The room has one king sized bed (a Sleep Number!) and a nice hot shower. After showering we immediately turn to food. New Mexico's state question is "Red or green?" At first we saw this out of context and had no idea what it meant, but upon researching restaurants we discovered it refers to chili sauces. All the restaurants that have "authentic " food in Albuquerque close really early, like 8 pm early. So we frantically rush to order. The food was ready when we got to the restaurant and we had made such good time that we decided to buy a bottle of wine as well. Then we feasted and lounged, watched trashy TV, and slept so well in our gigantic bed. 

[wrongfairy]

Day 4: Race to Quartz Mountain

April 29, 2013

Day four is basically spent driving across the entire state of Oklahoma. I texted my boss on the off chance he was in OKC (he was not). The drive was uneventful. The scenery rapidly changed from mountains to flat plains and endless sky. We reach Quartz Mountain without much trouble. The park basically rises out of the ground; you could see it from miles away. The sudden high topographic relief is shocking. You don't think of mountains when you think of Oklahoma. As geologist, however, we know better. The "mountains" are actually granite plutons whose sediment cover has been eroded, leaving them naked to the world.  We arrive at the state park when the sun is low in the sky. Between that and the pink feldspar of the granite everything as a warm glow. We rounded one of the plutons and were shocked once more: a lake! We had not seen any significant water all day.

While finding the park was easy, finding a camp site was not. It was unclear where you were allowed to setup, most of the sites were for RVs, and there was no office at  which to register (at least not one that was open). The park is also empty. There are maybe two RVs and no tents in the whole place. And we drove around the whole park. At the end of the road that runs through the park there is a giant luxury lounge where they apparently hold conferences. The lodge looks over the lake. In the setting sun it is breath-taking. The manmade beauty of the lodge compliments the natural beauty of the lake. Congratulations to the architect on that one. It almost seems like we are on Mars, the landscape is so alien. The colors seem so unnatural and there is very little vegetation. While the setting sun is beautiful, it is also a reminder that we should get camp set-up.

(not my photo)

After trying all the official-looking buildings we follow the care-taker to his trailer and knock on the door. He basically told us to just set up anywhere and to find a ranger in the morning to pay. We pick a sight near the river and far from the RVs and pitch our tent as the wind begins to pick up. Then we hear a motor and some rowdy shouts. Seeing as we thought we were in the middle of nowhere we were shocked. Turns out that right across the river there is a golf course and the noise was the last golfers of the day joyriding their cart. Their shouts soon fade.

While the park is exceptionally windy it is also very hot so we decide to take the rain fly off the tent and sleep under the stars. This was our first mistake, but that comes later. The wind means that boiling water for dinner takes 45 minutes and cooking the pasta another half hour. The poor Coleman burner was working overtime. We each drink a warm shandy and settle into the tent. It is only 9 pm and neither of us are sleepy. Count this as mistake number two. To combat our restlessness we try to read, but this too is futile. It's too windy to focus on reading. When a gust hits the tent it pushed the wall almost horizontally on top of you. The wind has no discernible pattern. It attacks the tent from all sides. It is an unpredictable enemy. The wind also roars. Loudly. Loudly enough that you cannot focus on the words in your book.

With the wind thwarting our attempt to read, we go to plan two: sleep. Also an impossible task, for the same reasons reading was nixed. It was like trying to sleep in a plastic bag that was being blown around in a parking lot. Constant movement, constant sound. The wind is unsettling. With its extreme volume you cannot hear what is going on around you and with the full moon you can see only so much as to make your mind play tricks on you. Basically it was a perfect storm of weather and mental state to make for an unrestful night.

My mind is easy prey for terror, especially without my protective rain fly barrier, which is in reality no protection at all. It is a flimsy piece of waterproof fabric that stretches over the tent. However, to my mental well-being it is so much more. It serves two important mental function: 1) It is opaque, meaning you cannot see "moving shapes" or "flickers of light" or the dreaded shadows. This deprives your mind of material to terrify you with, which is important if you want to sleep. 2) The vestibule creates a barrier of 6 inches to 3 feet between you and the outside world. This means that when your face is pressed up against the side of the tent there is still something between you and that skunk who is rubbing against your tent. The barrier may not actually be protective against wildlife, but animals are stupid as much as they are smart and can be tricked into thinking the bright orange wall is stronger than it really is.

Anyway, at about 2 am I think I feel something brush against the tent. Immediately my mind jumps to "mountain lion!" EEK! So now there is absolutely no chance I will sleep. About an hour later (more like an eternity), I think I see something in the tall grass that separates our tent from the river bank. It looks like two glowing eyes. It reminds me of when you shine a light on a cat's eye and it reflects it back as a yellow-green light. This seemed plausible at the time because there was a full (or close to it) moon, a giant floodlight, and my already startled little brain. I then proceed to freak out. I calculate if I should stay still, if I should wake Liz, if we could make it from the tent to the car before it could reach us, etc. My heart is racing and with this much adrenaline in my system the prospect of sleep becomes even more remote.

I nudge Liz awake, which doesn't take much because she is being kept up by the wind as well. "I think I saw something!", I whisper. "Where?", she responds. I point to the tall grass. "I don't see anything." I fumble in the dark for my glasses. When I put them on my heart drops. What I thought were the glowing menacing eyes of a bloodthirsty predator were actually the light reflecting off the windows of the golf shack across the river! Why didn’t I think to put on my glasses sooner? (Probably something along the lines of, "If I can't clearly see you, then you can’t see me."

What followed was relief without rest. Hormones like adrenaline take time to dissipate and the wind was still rattling the tent, although somewhat less violently. The uneasy feeling associated with the imagined glowing eyes lingered along with the adrenaline. It was a paranoia that could not be exorcised by logic; only daylight could cure these heebie jeebies. Did I mention that I really had to pee? Well, I did and I held it until there was enough daylight that I considered myself outside the dawn/dusk predator activity zone.

  Other things that happened at the Oklahoma site:

  --When settling down in the tent Liz suddenly asked me, "Do tornadoes happen in Oklahoma?". The intense wind had gotten her thinking. FYI tornadoes DO happen in Oklahoma. Thank goodness for smart phones; we checked the weather and got the all clear.

  --Large (maybe) military planes were regularly flying overhead. This only added to the less than ideal sleeping conditions. They flew fairly low and sounded like Harley's.

[wrongfairy]

Day 3 Arkansas is for Waterfalls

April 28, 2013

When we wake up we eat more peanut butter (obviously), pack up our stuff and get to shower(!). It feels so good especially considering we don't know when we will be able to shower next. Another Americorps team member, Corbin, has a friend and his family visiting on their way from Mississippi back to Iowa. Corbin has coke bottle glasses that make him seem older than he is.

 We leave the museum, cross the Mississippi river, and are immediately in Arkansas. Liz and I drank heartily to celebrate her birthday in Memphis. We feel okay in the morning but not stellar. On the road everything seems to be dragging. Things are in slow-motion. We assume that we need food and caffeine. Liz craves a hamburger, I agree. We Google hamburger places in Arkansas near Forrest City. The first two results are a Yelp and an Urban Spoon review for a nearby Wendy's. I can see from the search page that it only gets two stars out of five on Yelp so we read the review. The link follows: http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-forrest-city.

Most reviews went like this:

"Worst Wendy's ever!! It took me repeating my order four times for them to get it right. Even after having to repeat my order so many times they only gave me half of my order. When I talked to them about missing some items they looked at me like I was out of my mind. I hope it was just a bad day here."

This was the start of our trip into a time vortex where everything was moving as if it were swimming through molasses.  We stare blankly at the menu for what seems like eternity. (I'm sure the outside world is progressing at normal speed and that something is so wrong with time/space that even those of us trapped in the black hole feel the slowness of time and the lure of the nothingness so close-by). When we decide to get what we always get at Wendy's (as we did in Ohio): Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. I get a coke and Liz gets a coffee, our respective caffeines of choice. The woman who takes our order is clearly not interested in what's happening. We pay and then wander aimlessly away from the counter, floating in the middle of the restaurant clogging the flow lanes from the counter to the sitting area to the bathroom. Tired of feeling in the way I decide to go the restroom. Come back out, order is still not ready. When it finally does arrive not drink is with my bag. I remind the woman and she just gives me one (we should have asked for more "forgotten" items). We choose a table and slink into our seats. Silence envelops us like a blanket of honey as we begin to eat. I notice I have fries that I did not order. It somehow seems appropriate. Another fitting detail is that our table is sticky like a soda was spilled on it 2 days ago and it was never properly cleaned. Even after finishing our food we linger at that table. The gravity in this Wendy's is so strong that we are bound to this place, condemned forever to eat the wrong food order as our elbows stick to tacky laminate tables.

 A glance at our phones tells us we need to get on the road; there is a lot more driving a head of us. I walk to the car as Liz uses the restroom. I mindlessly walk toward a black sedan and only realize it is the wrong car when I am approx 5 feet away. U-turn. Upon closer inspection from a farther distance I notice that not only does the car have Arkansas plates, but also has a giant dent in the bumper. This malaise is going to be hard to shake.

 As soon as we pull out of the driveway it is like a cool breeze hits our faces. The fog has lifted! Amen! Hallelujah! Our brains have started to function and we are on the road again, which coincidentally is the song Liz and I both start spontaneously singing as we pull out of our next Forrest City stop, a combination gas station/ convenience store/ dairy queen/ Orange Julius. It is here we first saw the phrase "lot lizards", but it would be miles yet before we learned its sordid meaning.

 Apart from that Wendy's Vortex Arkansas is beautiful in the spring. Everything along the interstate is lush and green and becomes more so as we leave the interstate to take the scenic route to our camp ground in the Ozarks (Boston Mountains). The roads to the camp site are winding, hilly, and surrounded by woods. However, every once and a while there is a break in the trees and we can see down into beautiful verdant valleys. From the map on Liz's phone we see a cut-through road that will take us to the camp site. We miss it twice and have to do a crazy maneuver to get back to the road. We probably missed it because it was just a wooden gate that opened to a dirt road. It looked more like a driveway than a road. After only a minute on the dirt road we pass a sheriff's  vehicle going in the other direction. That is the only car we will see for another hour, which is how long we think we will be on the dirt road. Turns out it becomes paved after only 20 minutes of driving.

We stop at a lot of pull off to check out the beautiful views of waterfalls and valleys. Liz had found a weird video that stated Arkansas has more waterfalls than any other state. Our campsite is just as gorgeous as the rest of the area. There is a river and the park has made a stone platform that goes down to the river. The water is a strange and beautiful mint green-blue. It looks like glacial water, but there are no glaciers in Arkansas. You can hear the soothing sound of the river from our tent.

After setting up camp we walk around the site a bit and settle on the stone platform to just watch the water for a bit. To our right is a man sitting on his cooler wearing  a cowboy hat, listening to country music on his phone, and fishing in the river. With our tummies grumbling we decided to check out our new Coleman camping stove and make some dinner. Since we have never used the stove before we have to check it for leaks, which entails putting soapy water on the fixtures then turning on the gas and hoping you don't see bubbles. We didn’t have real soap so we used my face wash. Needless to say, the stove passed the test. For dinner we made black beans and rice seasoned with oregano, garlic, and red pepper flake. Liz's friend Sam had packed us a little travel spice kit. It was adorable. I make way too much food for dinner. We only eat about half of it. When it cooled off we put it in the car's trunk.

After dinner we just sit by the river. We talk sometimes, but mostly we just watch as the sun fades away. And the moon takes its place. Different shifts of planets and stars take turns in the sky. There is a particularly twinkly star that captures our attention. It flashed green and red and sometimes blue. We postulate that it is caused by the light travelling through different gases in the atmosphere (turns out we were right).  As usual, the only constellation I could pick out was the Big Dipper (and associated Little Dipper).

 We were just contemplating going to bed when the fishing cowboy approaches us, three Miller Lite tall-boys in one hand and his headlamp in the other. We start with the basic small talk and discover that he is here to climb the rocks. Rock-climbers and geologists get on well because they are probably the only people who are willing to talk about rocks for extended periods of time.

 The cowboy's name is Tanner. He is from Tulsa, but originally from somewhere in Texas. More talking and drinking. The rocks here are good for climbing, not so much in Oklahoma, etc. Liz and I offer him one of our warm shandys. He accepts and politely says he likes it. After we tell him that we are planning to camp in Oklahoma the next night he runs to get his atlas. He suggests a couple of places and we decide on one called Quartz Mountain (more on that later). He tries to give us the atlas when he hears that we do not have any real maps and after we refuse several times, he concedes. We say thanks and goodnight and head off to bed, but Liz and I are starving so we don our headlamps and raid the trunk for the left-over beans and rice. Between the beer and our travel fatigue we are a little goofy at this point. Because of this we cannot stop laughing as we shove food into our mouths; all while our headlamps are ablaze. We become self-conscious and turn off our headlamps, but we're still aware that the other campers can hear us laughing with half-full mouths.

 I think I slept the best at this campsite. I think about just staying there and letting Liz go on by herself. It is just so beautiful and peaceful in this place. Then I remember I'm in Arkansas and decide to keep moving. It’s the American way. Manifest Destiny and all that crap...

[wrongfairy]

Day 2 Walking in Memphis

April 27. 2013

Considering our excitement and the fact that it was our first night camping we slept pretty well. We were however, woken much earlier than we wanted by a screaming baby. Once the baby calmed down we proceeded to over-sleep. During breakfast we searched for different cave tours. Our requirements were: 1) that it was earlier enough that we could get some miles under our belts before stopping again, 2) relatively short, 3) relatively cheap, 4) super cool. We found one such tour that was billed as "good for the very young and the elderly" because it did not require taxing hiking in the caves.  The Frozen Niagara Tour explores the "wet" part of the cave (which is the cooler part because all the "drip" formations require the work of our friend H2O).  More on the Frozen Niagara later.

Second on the breakfast agenda was the "mystery fruit". The short backstory of the mystery fruit is that Liz brought a bag of fruit. Mostly apples, oranges, the like, but it also included a oblate/disk-shaped orange fruit that we could just not identify. The presence of this mystery made breakfast an intriguing prospect. We placed the fruit in the center of our picnic table and eyed it warily, taking of spoonfuls of peanut butter to steel ourselves before cutting into the strange flesh. Finally the anticipation was too much. Liz opened her pocket knife and made an incision. Check that. She made a gash. The first cut into the fruit was clumsy, but only because we did not know what kind of pit, if any, there would be. Turns out there was a big flat pit that thwarted Liz's initial attempt. Knowing the cut was doomed she cut her losses (nudge, nudge) and half ripped, half cut out a wedge. Then I tore at the fruit and procured my own piece. We bite into the fruit, sweet nectar pouring over our hands. Our teeth stripped the soft sweet fruit from the leathery flesh. Immediately we thought of the fruit and of how silly we were for not having guessed its identity earlier. It’s a PAPAYA! Of course. And a delicious one at that. We continued happily hacking away at the papaya as we packed up camp, getting traces of juice on almost everything.

 As we packed up one of us spied a bight blue robin's egg right next to one of the picnic benches. It was a miracle no one had stepped in it while traversing the space between the tent and the car.  The egg was so small and fragile, so perfect. We tried to tiptoe around it, but unfortunately it got stepped on and smushed. Luckily I was able to snap a picture of the egg before its demise.

With camp packed we headed up to the visitors center amidst a fine mist of rain that was more refreshing that burdensome. Besides we were going on an underground tour; rain wouldn't bother us there. We check in for our tour and then wander the visitor center. The information there is a mix of human history and geology. We head outside to a pavilion where our tour group will meet. A green school bus pulls up and out pops Ranger Joe Brown, our guide. He is basically an adorable southern gentleman who makes terribly corny jokes as we ride out to the cave entrance.

We enter the cave through a door built into the side of an escarpment, walk down some ramps, and are greeted by some beautiful cave popcorn. Cave popcorn is not actual popcorn. It is a dripstone feature that looks like popcorn. The ceiling of the cave is low and it seems you can feel the weight of the earth above you pressing down on your head. We walk about 50 feet and Ranger Joe tells everyone to stop and put away their phones, cameras, flashlights, etc. Then he turns out the lights in the cave. Boy is it dark. I cannot imagine how you could ever find your way out if your light failed. When the lights are turned back on Ranger Joe Points out another guest in the cave: the cave crickets. They cover the ceiling and are only about a foot from our heads. I think they look more like spiders than crickets and they may actually be spiders. The walk through the cave has many spectacular sites. There is a waterfall and pool, lots of stalactites and stalagmites, water pouring through the ceiling, and then there is the Drapery Room.

You walk down about 50 steps into a small circular hollow. The walls are all dripstone and are fairy pretty, but more of the same. Then you look up. The ceiling of the Drapery Room is how it got its name. It is covered in undulating drapes of limestone still dripping and being formed by the groundwater. Packed down there with 20 other people and only cell phone cameras we could not capture the true beauty of the formation, but that didn’t keep us from trying.

Back at the visitor center we say goodbye to Mammoth Caves and start trying to find the highway. On our way out we pass by an old cemetery and a church on the park grounds. Liz and I love cemeteries, especially old ones like this so we stop to check it out despite the now pouring rain. We fond the grave of Floyd Collins, who is famous because he died after getting stuck in the caves. Then back on the road headed for Nashville.

It rains and it rains and then it rains some more. We stop in Nashville for lunch and supplies and as soon as we leave Target it just downpours. So we sit in the car and eat our canned fish and crackers, deafened by the rain on the car roof. Liz takes this time to text her first friend, Joe, who  is the whole reason we took the southern route to LA. He did an Americorps program in the southern region and especially loved Tennessee. He gives us the name and number of someone he did the program with who is now a group leader in Memphis. Her name is Ana. We give her a call and she invites us to stay with them (for free!) and hang out after they are done with their project for the day.

 When we arrive in Memphis we drop the car in a parking garage (called parking is fun! No joke) and start to wander around the city. We walk alongside the mighty Mississippi, which is lined with dozens of port-a-pottys. I think that had something to do with the construction going on and that there had been a concert/festival earlier that day. We wander through Confederate Park. There are lots of carriages in Memphis and all the drives have dogs with them.

 Random things we saw on the walk:

A man on a bike finishes a brown-bagged tall boy and tosses it from the elevated park to the trolley tracks ~30 feet below. We continue walking; working our way from the river deeper into the city.

In another mini park we watch as a squirrel struggles to drag a giant turkey drumstick up a tree. It is clearly too heavy for him, but makes for a funny sight.

 We obviously eat BBQ  for dinner. I am so happy that Liz is no longer a vegetarian because it would be cruel to make her watch me gorge myself on BBQ. The place we choose is called Rendezvous. It's on a half street/half alley that is filled with people waiting for a table. There is also a loud speaker that shouts the name of the next party into the alley. Crude and efficient. The design of this restaurant is actually ingenious. In addition to the pedestrian-only waiting space outside, the whole first floor of the restaurant is filled with tables and chairs and a small bar that serves a limited selection of beer and wine. Liz and I grab a beverage while we wait. It is loud inside and even the loudspeaker is downed out by the din. Somehow we hear our table and get seated. We basically order a large platter with beef brisket, pork ribs, and pull pork to share, an appetizer of BBQ nachos and some more wine. We also get sides of baked beans and coleslaw. It is so much food and it is so good. Finger-licking good. It was Liz's birthday, so obviously I treated her to dinner.

 After dinner we wandered famed Beale Street and grabbed a giant beer. Beale Street is strange. The street is lined with bars, but they pump their music out into the street and there are beer vendors on the sidewalks. So between those two things you never have to actually go into a bar (except to use a bathroom). The road is closed to traffic and there must be some sort of moratorium on open container laws because people are just drinking everywhere.

  Random observations from Beale Street:

-There was some sort of sorority/fraternity formal going on so lots of young'n'beautiful people were out and dressed to impress.

-Some guy did about 20 back flips and twits down the center of the street to raise money for muscular dystrophy research.

-We passed Coyote Ugly (HELL NO H2O!)

-In addition to the music being pumped out of the bars, there were bands just playing on the street. Lots of blues and rock.

-Every sign was neon and made for a sort of fuzzy warm glow around everything.

Rain threatened and it sprinkled for about 30 seconds, but it turned out to be a beautiful evening. My beer was too big for me so I made Liz finish it. Then we drove to meet Ana, Joe's friend.

 The Americorps group is based out a of a Museum/park (T.O. something). It is about 10 minutes outside the city but may as well be in another world. From the bright lights and busy sidewalks of Beale Street we are abruptly met by industrial factories (including a Valero refining station) and wooded areas. No houses, no businesses, no street lights.

 Ana is out to greet us with a big smile and open arms. We drop our stuff off and then she introduces us to the rest of the group. In fifteen minutes all the ladies of the group are ready to head out for our ladies night at Purple Haze. We pile into an eleven passenger van and travel back into the city while Ke$ha. Ana parallel parks the gigantic van with the greatest of ease. We don't know exactly where the club is so as we are crossing a street Ana asks someone, "Do you know where I can find Purple Haze?", he looks shocked and kind of offended, but then we spot the club and bound away. He definitely thought we meant weed and not a club. The Americorps peoples had been working at a film festival for the day and got free passes to the club/after party. Since the guys were not going out, Liz and I inherited their passes. Basically we danced to top 40 and 90's hits and celebrated Liz's birthday with Kentucky Bourbon (of course).

We return to the museum and pass out after a thoroughly fun day.

*Memphis was probably my favorite stop on the way out. There was so much to do and so many fun new people to hang out with. Also, the food was out of this world. I would eat BBQ everyday if I had the choice.

I should also mention that the entire time we were headed to, in, and leaving Memphis we were constantly singing "Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn. That song still plagues me today, but is attached to the pleasant memories of my time in Memphis. 

[wrongfairy]

LA Roadtrip: Day 1 Buffalo to Kentucky

Notes and anecdotes about my trip to LA with my pal Liz Baker. Mini early retirement as Liz headed (eventually) to Oregon and as I was about to start working at The Buffalo Museum of Science. This started out as bullet points in a notebook that traveled with me and morphed into little stories about the things that stood out to me about the trip so excuse the delay in putting these up.

  Day 1 April 26, 2013

   We left Buffalo at right about 9 am. Liz drove in from Rochester and got caught up in the morning rush hour traffic. Our end goal for the day was Mammoth Caves National Park in Kentucky. Today would be our longest driving day; about 9 and a half hours. In Pennsylvania I pointed out to Liz the sign that said "Do not pick up hitchhikers next 11 miles", in reference to the prison just off the interstate. Most of the drive was pretty uneventful. Went around Cleveland. Some traffic in Columbus. Extreme rush hour in Cincinnati! Bumper to bumper and we were not exactly sure where we were going. Buffalo rush hour is not anywhere near as bad as Cincinnati's.

 For lunch we stopped outside of Columbus at a Wendy's. It was the most pleasant Wendy's at which I have ever had the pleasure of eating. Staffed entirely by sweet, white-haired old ladies and gentlemen. After several Jr. bacon cheeseburgers we hit the road once more.

 On the drive down Liz and I experienced what we called "Instant Spring". When we left Buffalo there were only buds on the trees. As we drove south we saw those buds bloom and burst over a matter of hours instead of days. It was so invigorating to see lush green on trees. It really shakes you out of those winter blues.

Mammoth Caves National Park is in the Central Time Zone and they do not let you forget that. On almost every sign there is a reminder. So we gain an hour when we arrive, but it is still dark as we begin the process of registering and choosing a site. Basically we drove around the entire campground and then settled on a site close, but not too close, to the bathrooms. We set up camp in the dark and eat some peanut butter and crackers for dinner.

The camp sites are all very close together and some people were still up hanging out around their fires. We ended up camping very close to an entire boy scout troop. Before turning off our headlamps and heading to dreamland we read. Liz a book about a woman alone on a trail and me a book about a girl who was cryogenically frozen on board a spaceship headed to find a "new" earth. Then sweet sleep.

[wrongfairy]

[wrongfairy]

Some GIMP creations to start things off. It would be really fun if people looked like this in RL. I guess we'll just have to settle for making them that way with modern technology and good old-fashioned imagination.