Southern Europe

Day 102

For my dedicated blog readers, all four of you, here is the long awaited update you have been craving: my trips to Italy and Spain.

Let’s start with Italy. Me and my roommates were really excited about this trip because we knew it was the only trip that all four us would be able to go on together with just us girls. So Friday afternoon, me, Chrissy, Ellen, Maddie and Jacki (one of our other good girlfriends from the program) all headed out for Venice, Italy. We left so excited and kept telling each other, “Guys we are going to ITALY TODAY!!!” We couldn’t really grasp what was going on.

            So we headed off on our Ryan Air flight, which was my first experience with this “wonderful” airline. Ryan Air is the cheapest airline you can find for flights in Europe. And it is cheap. And that is about its only positive characteristic. Ryan Air only flies out Charleroi, Belgium…which is called “South Brussels” by Ryan Air, but is actually a small remote town no where near Brussels. And it takes  three modes of transportation, two hours and 13 euros to get to Charleroi. So worth the cheap flight? Not so sure. Well I decided that Ryan Air actually wasn’t worth my money when I finally got on the plane and found out that they played ads from different sponsors through the speakers by every seat during the entire flight …I was assured that next time I would spend the extra twenty euro and fly on a normal airline.

            So me and my friends finally got to Venice. And, well we really didn’t have a plan from there. We knew we needed to actually get off the actual land part of Italy and over to the little island of Venice, but didn’t really know how to do so…so we kind of followed the crowd and ended up on a bus that we hoped would take us to a plaza somewhere close to our hotel. We get off the bus and look around…and realized we have no real idea where we are.  But thank goodness for iPhone’s and the ability to pull up a map of Venice while on Wi-Fi and use that map even without Wi-Fi. Which is exactly what we did. We walked through the little (and I mean LITTLE)  streets of Venice being led by our friend Jacki, who has a much better sense of direction than I do thank God (if it was up to me we would’ve slept somewhere in Florence probably). And she used my iPhone all the way to the hotel. Which was called Hotel Pantalon (aka Hotel Pants), not the greatest of names, but hey…it was only 90euros for a room that sleeps four. So what the heck?

            We check in and the nice hotel man tells us that our “apartment” for the night is actually just down the street. And by down the street he meant a fifteen minute walk across two bridges, down two alleyways and with two different sets of keys to actually get in. Our adventure continued. We finally got to our apartment and found a very clean, nice, GAUDY room which was perfect for us five girls (we snuck Jacki in). Everything in the room was red, gold and velvet…exactly the colors and fabric I would use to decorate something ;)

            Anyway, that night we had a lovely evening, grabbed some dinner and went to bed pretty early in our medieval looking Venetian apartment. The next morning we all showered and got ready for what we knew would be a long day. Because that night we were heading out on a overnight train to Rome. So we showered, checked out of our hotel, and officially became homeless for the day.

            We started off our Venice tour by going to St. Mark’s basilica and St. Mark’s square…so wonderful and breathtaking. After we visited the basilica we wandered towards St. Mark’s port and asked one of the many gondola boat drivers prices for tours…he told us some extremely high price, so we walked away knowing we would go look for one elsewhere. Well, of course the man came running back after us telling us that we were “special” and he would give us a “special deal”.  Absolutely he would.

            The gondola ride was so fun, filled with singing by our driver Alessandro, lots of picture taking, and being in awe of the restaurants, stores and houses you could get to by boat. It really is crazy. The entire city runs on water and it feels like you have traveled back in time about three hundred years. No cars, no big businesses. It was very peaceful and relaxing for the day. After the gondola ride, we went shopping in one of the markets and then headed out to find a nice long dinner because our train wasn’t leaving until 1130 at night. Well for once when you want to find a European restaurant that takes forever to serve you, you can’t. Our waiters were very kind but wanted us to keep ordering things in order to keep the table (despite the fact that no one was waiting for a table and there were several completely empty tables). So we did, bread, dessert, etc. etc.

            It was at this dinner that me and my friends got our first taste of “rude Americans”. Three boys and one girl walked up to the table behind us, grabbed some chairs from another tabled and sat down without asking anyone to seat them. They then began yelling things at the waiters walking around. They wanted some “fu**in fried octopus” “why don’t you have my “fu**in octopus” “Stupid Italians” “I’m Fu**in hungry”…me and my friends were so embarrassed, for our country. Well the worse part came when those boys figured out that we were speaking English... they started to harass us…yelling things like “Hey sluts, talk to us…we hear you! You’re speaking English!” We politely ignored them and kept with our pleasant dinner. The boys then kept trying to get the waiter to pull our table next to theirs so they could talk to us. Eventually the manager came out and nicely asked them to leave. We were just thankful we didn’t get roped in with them because we were English speakers as well. As the boys left they yelled slurs at us, calling us every name in the book because we wouldn’t talk to them. With each remark one of us would get so mad we almost wanted to do something about it, but thankfully the others were there to calm each one of us down. I remember wanting any man who knew any of us girls to be present, it would’ve been pretty bad. All I wanted to do was walk over  to the loudest of those boys, kick him in the balls (scuse my French) and tell him how ashamed I was that he was ruining the reputation for all the nice Americans abroad, like me and my friends.

            After dinner, we headed to the train station to embark on our wonderful journey to Rome. By now it is 1130 at night, and I am exhausted from walking all day. All I want to do is curl up and fall asleep in a nice warm bed. I guess I had some mild hope that the overnight train we picked wouldn’t be as bad as I had heard from my friends. Those of you who know me well realize that my bed is a very big part of my life. I like my own bed, I like comfy big beds. I steal the covers, I like sleeping for long amounts of time, I am a cranky mess without my 7-8 hours.  I love being all warm and snuggly in bed. I would rather go home early and sleep longer than go out most nights. SO yes, I love the entire sleeping experience, it is an activity that is extremely close to my heart.

            So what I’m about to tell you about my seven hours on the train hurts me with every keystroke. So we got on the train, and realized that we all were in different little pods. To make you able to understand what these pods looked like, picture a pretty large restaurant booth that has two benches and seats six. Now take away the table in the middle. Now separate the benches with arm rests to make three seats on each side. So me and my friends say goodbye to each other kind of warily, not sure if we were ever to see each other again. I remember hugging my friend Chrissy and honestly thinking, I can’t believe I’m about to go through this experience alone.

            I walked into my pod and sat down in my single seat next to two black men who seemed relatively nice. I sat down, put my backpack up and looked across from me and saw a sweet American girl who was also studying abroad and doing the “cheap” thing as well. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO HEAR ENGLISH IN MY LIFE. I knew if she was there we were going to get through this. So there ended up being four black guys speaking some African language and the two American girls. The weirdest part of the whole experience is that outside our pods, people were sitting and standing around in the little hallway. I guess you could pay like ten euros cheaper and not be guaranteed a seat, and just sit in a little seat that pulled out in the hallway or just sit on the ground. Or think you were going to get real lucky and no one would be in one of the regular “nice” seats inside the pods. You’ve got to be joking me….so people actually paid money to stand outside in the hallway or  sit on the floor for 7 hours? YOU THOUGHT YOU GOT A GOOD DEAL?? You saved ten euros and gave yourself the worst night of your life. You sat and stared at the little pods the entire night, so every time a normal person like me would wake up (which was quite often) they would see you staring in at them. WEIRDEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE, Oh and when I mean those four men spoke some African language? Well they spoke it, and spoke it and spoke it, and then spoke it some more. Basically by the time the train ended,  I thought I was somewhat fluent in that African language because of the amount I heard over the night.

            You know that common courteously when your on public transportation (ESPECIALLY OVERNIGHT TRANSPORTATION) to not talk in order to not bother everyone around you??? WELL I GUESS THAT COURTEOUSY GOT LOST IN TRANSLATION BECAUSE THEY TALKED ALL NIGHT LONG. I remember looking at my watch at 430 in the morning after being woken up by their conversation and wanting to cry, and catch the next flight from Rome to Brussels back home. We got to the train station, we all disembarked and hugged each other to give each other some kind of comfort for what we just went through. One of my roommates, Chrissy got her picture taken randomly throughout the night by an Asian couple who were trying to document the experience properly. Needless to say, it was an interesting night, and Rome promised to be even more interesting.

            We got off at the train station and took public transportation a little ways to find our hotel, where we would get ready and head out for the day (it was now only 7AM). So we got off the metro and walked about 3 miles to our B&B each with 20 pound back packs strapped to us. We got to our B&B, rung the doorbell a million times, and tried calling the number, yelled up at the windows, disrupted the old Italian neighbors, and STILL could not figure out how to get into this hotel. I guess the B&B is so small that the owner only comes by when her customers are going to check in and I guess she didn’t get our email that we  were coming at 730AM that we sent  at midnight the night before. I remember sitting outside our B&B thinking, well I’ll just stay here today, this is a great view of Rome. And I was dead serious. Thankfully, my roommates had more sense than I did and they figured out how to get back to the train station without walking 9 miles. We got to the train station, got ready for the day in the train station bathroom. Such a lovely experience. And then stored our backpacks in the train’s locker room. So now we had gone through 3 frustrating hours of being let down and trying to figure out how to get ready for the day and it was only 9 AM! Wonderful. I was hungry, tired and kind of mad at Rome. Already.

            Well our day got a whole lot better really quickly. We ventured out to Vatican city using directions my friend Ruthanne Hoggard gave us, and we ended up in St. Peter’s Basilica about an hour later. Little did we know, mass started (because it was Sunday morning) about ten minutes after we got in the Basilica, which was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. It’s hard to describe St. Peter’s. It’s like you step into a different world, the atmosphere is completely different and there is such a reverence about the place. I am not one for big grandiose displays of religion, but it is hard not to be in awe of your surroundings while at the basilica. I wandered around just thinking about all the people who had worshiped here in this church, and all the men and women of God who had appreciated his glory on that same ground. It was magnificent. It is very cool to think about the fact that I have worshipped in such an ornate place as well as an open air church in the middle of Missouri, just goes to prove once again that our God is everywhere and can be found everywhere. After we finished our time in the basilica, we headed outside to St. Peter’s square to get a spot to listen to the Pope speak. I remembered one of my friends telling me that every Sunday the Pope speaks at exactly noon from the same window in Vatican city. Because of this, we left the basilica around 1115 and found a good spot to park ourselves to wait and hear the pope. He came out around noon and the square was SO PACKED. He said a blessing in Latin, then greeted all the people in different languages. It was so cool to see all the different ethnicities and hear the pope address them all! Such a neat experience!

            The rest of the day was wonderful; we visited the Coliseum (super eerie), the Roman Forum, the wedding cake monument, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish steps. And we actually got to spend a good amount of time at each place and had a picnic in between. It was crazy to me how close everything was to each other. And it was also crazy that everywhere we went, Roman ruins were just chilling on the sideline; pieces of walls, parts of old buildings…everywhere in Rome there was something cool to see.

            That night we were completely exhausted so we headed back to the train station, picked up our bags, then found a tram that would take us directly back to the street our B&B was on. Well we came to find out that the trams are absurdly packed at night and we couldn’t even fit in the first one that came by. People were being shoved in by other people and parts of their bodies were sticking out of doors and windows. My friends and I eventually figured out that we needed to find the stop before ours in order to actually get inside the tram. So we ran to that stop, found our way inside and were incredibly smushed for about 30 minutes.

            We got back to our B&B to find that no one was there. Again. I started tearing up. I was for real going to be homeless in Rome. We tried calling the owner’s number, no luck on our cheap Belgian phones, we tried getting a neighbor to help, no luck. So finally we figured out that we could call a Belgian friend back home to call the number and then they could tell her to come let us in. After about 20 minutes of scrambling, the owner finally showed up. I had never been so happy to get into a room in my whole life. I HAD A BED AGAIN!!!! Needless to say, we got in the room, watched a bit of Italian TV, and fell asleep around ten pm.

            The next day I felt like a new woman. We woke up around nine, and ventured back to Vatican city to go see the Sistine chapel, since it was closed the day before. We were told it would take us hours to get inside the museum because of the long lines, but we were prepared to wait. We walked up to the museum…no line…we walked inside the museum…no line….I kept asking people where the line was. I guess all the tour guide people outside the Vatican were lying to people over and over trying to get the scammed into paying extra for a tour that could “skip the long lines”. So glad we didn’t listen to them.

            Anyway, we wandered through the Vatican museums for hours, it was all breathtaking; lots of gardens and little hallways with beautiful pieces of art, but unfortunately sometimes I feel as if I must be an art history major in order to fully enjoy Europe. I look at a piece of art and think wow that’s nice, but where’s the food? Or …I wonder if there’s any benches in the next room where I can sit down. I love looking at art, but I wish I had more of an understanding of why these specific pieces were placed in certain rooms or in the Vatican in general. Anyway, we journeyed through the museums and finally got to the Sistine chapel. Which is just as cool as everyone says it is. I think I stared up at the ceiling for a good thirty minutes. The picture of God stretching his hand out to man (to depict the moment of creation) has been one of my favorite representations of God’s love towards man for a few years now. If you look at the painting closely, you can see how God’s strong hand is reaching out so hard just to try and touch the tip of man’s finger…He’s trying so hard to save us, to take care of us, to keep us close to him. And then you look at man’s finger. The man’s hand is limp, as if he doesn’t care at all about touching God’s hand because he’s off doing his own thing and has it all figured out. Not sure if Michelangelo planned it this way, but that’s how I see it and it means a lot to me. It shows me once again how man constantly ignores the great love his creator has for him, and how much God is willing to fight to help man, even if man wants nothing to do with Him. Look at that picture today and don’t just see a piece of artwork, see God’s everlasting love for His creation!

            I also really love how all over the Vatican museum there were signs that talked about how the Vatican was a holy place and people needed to be respectful with the loudness of their voices and the clothes they wore. The Vatican had no shame in announcing that the area we were in was Holy to them and we all needed to respect that, even if we didn’t have the same beliefs. I guess in this day and age I don’t see a lot of people stand up for their beliefs and especially don’t see them demand respect for something religious that may be really important to them. I loved that about Vatican city. They were followers of Christ and unafraid to show it. You didn’t need to be a follower of Christ to visit the sights, but you needed to show respect for everyone else who did see this area as a holy place. So neat. I wish more people had the guts to stand up for what they believe in, no matter what it is.

            We had a wonderful day in Rome after that; we visited the Pantheon, and the Trevi fountain once again and we had time to do some fun shopping where one of my friends bought an Italian leather purse. It was overall an incredibly successful and memorable trip to Italy.

            The next morning we got ready to board our plane back to Brussels. Ryan Air doesn’t have assigned seats, so people just wait in line to board as soon as they get through security. So me and my friends stood in that line for about 30 minutes, and just before we were about to board, around fifty Italians got up from their seats and tried to board with us. Bailey was not a happy camper. One of my friends who studies in Rome told us that Italians don’t understand that concept of lines. Well this became really obvious, and I tried with all my might to explain the concept of lines to a few Italian women who tried to get in front of us, which in the words of Glozelle… “Ain’t gonna happen”. Now I should have been a Christian witness and ignored these women and let them get in front of us, but it was very early in the morning, Bailey was wearing a very heavy backpack, and she wanted to get a freakin window seat so she could sleep for two hours, and two older Italian women who were making mean faces at us were NOT going to take that away that dream. So I told them in my broken English, complete with Italian accent that I didn’t even really know I had, that they needed to get behind us that the line started back “there!”

            Well they  got behind us, but made fun of us in some other language the entire time. I just smiled at them and preteneded like I could understand everything they were saying.

            The rest of a week was a blur. Basically I got back to Brussels, got to see Rudolf a couple of times (thankfully), went  to work and class…then headed out once again on Friday to Barcelona. I was really excited about Barcelona because one of my best friends from St. Louis, Kristin Walker, was studying there. I didn’t really see Barcelona as a trip to go see everything in the city, I saw it as an awesome time that I would get to spend with one of my closest friends. I got in to Barcelona and hung out with Kristin from the very start. We got dinner, lots of tapas and went out exploring with some of her friends that night. Barcelona is a beautiful city with so much Roman  and Medieval history that I had no idea it possessed. After seeing Rome, it is crazy to see how remnants of that dynasty still exist in other parts of Europe…even as far away as Spain and Germany (I’ve seen Roman ruins in Barcelona and Trier). So crazy. It was a wonderful weekend in Spain. We ate A LOT. I guess that’s what the Spanish do, they eat, they siesta, and then they fiesta. So it was wonderful to kind of take a break from the busy traveling of Europe in order to have some good catch up time with wonderful food and drinks.

            Saturday we got to see the Sagrada Familia, which is one of the most famous churches in Spain. The different sides of the church depict different scenes from the Bible (like creation, the passion, the return of Christ, etc.) and each have a different feel to them. You can really tell the difference between the joyfulness of creation and the harshness of the passion all by the choices the artists made with the formation of the different pieces. The rest of the day was quite rainy in Barcelona, so we hid inside a pizzeria for a while, went shopping and eventually went to a jazz concert later that evening. It was really funny because the concert was all in English and it was something that Kristin really would have enjoyed going to back home…so it was basically like she and I had never left St. Louis, but in fact we were across an ocean in a little overcrowded restaurant hearing two Spanish men sing the blues. Pretty cool moment.

            The next day I got to see Kristin’s parents and sister who were flying in for the week (it was the week of Thanksgiving)…it was so great to see them and even greater to see how happy it made Kristin to have them there. I headed back home a few hours after they arrived, and was ready for some time in Brussels.

            This past week has been filled with papers and homework assignments, not the fun part of “studying abroad”, but thankfully me and Rudolf got to escape to his parents house this past weekend. They live in a small town outside of Antwerp, which is about 45 minutes away. It was such a wonderful weekend getting to know them and seeing where Rudolf comes from. His parents made us a wonderful dinner and then showed me countless pictures from Rudolf’s childhood and a lot from his trip to Africa. The next day we headed out to Zeeland, which is basically an island on the coast of the Netherlands, to celebrate Rudolf’s dads birthday. The town we had lunch in looked like it belonged in Rhode island or somewhere else in New England. Lots of boat harbors, little shops, and piers. Such a great day. It was so nice getting to know them and realizing again that there are people who serve Christ diligently over here. Rudolf’s mom is involved in the same Christian women’s ministry that my grandmother was in when she lived here some 40 years ago. After seeing Rudolf’s parents it was easy for me to see why their son was so wonderful and had such strong faith in Christ. It was a wonderful day and shows me again and again how blessed I am to have gotten to know Rudolf.

            The rest of the week here will be pretty busy… going to the Brussels Christmas market today (which is supposedly filled with food, little booths, an ice skating rink and a Ferris wheel!), then my last day of work is tomorrow. And I head out on my last trip Friday! I am heading to London with a girlfriend of mine! So exciting! After that Kristin is coming to see me in Brussels! Should have another blog update once she leaves.

            Between now and then remember the verse Deuteronomy 31:8 which says that the Lord goes before you and will be with you, he will never leave you nor forsake you! Remember the picture in the Sistine Chapel! He is always fighting for us and wants the best for us, His ways are not our ways, and it may be really hard sometimes…but He will provide! And someday soon, His hand will finally stretch out enough to grab ours and take us home with him. 

Love you guys! Home in 18 days

Bailey Jo