Photosesh: Gromit, The Astonishing Leaping Irish Hound

Barce... alone... a

Last weekend's travels brought me to the incredibly beautiful Catalonian city of Barcelona, Spain for my first (and probably only) weekend of traveling alone. I arrived on Friday evening and walked to my hostel which was located in a very central spot in the city. After checking in and calling my old friend Talia L. who is studying in Barcelona right now I decided to do some walking around. I went to the famous merchant street La Rambla and back. On the way there I passed by two Antoni Gaudí designed apartment buildings which were both incredible to see in person. For those who aren't farmiliar with this early 20th century architect, google image the name Gaudí and check out some pictures of the most unique building design I've ever seen. Gaudí designed many buildings with nature and fantasy influence, mostly in the city of Barcelona. La Rambla wasn't that cool. But there was a bunch of parrot and rooster vendors on the street, which was cool, but very loud. After that I took a little nap and met up with ol' Talia for what I intended to be some Barcelonan night life, but then I got tired so I ate a falafel and went to bed.

Saturday was my only full day in the city so I tried to see as much as I could. In the morning I walked over to the cathedral that Gaudí designed, the Sagrada Familia, and walked around the ouside. It is by far the most beautiful church I've seen in my life. Incidentally, its name is really fun to say out loud. Do it. In a Spanish accent. I was just repeating it over and over in my head as I circled it, "Sagrada Familia, Sagrada Familia, Sagrada Familia..." just rolls off the tongue. Anyway, after that I intended to meet up with Talia and her parents who were also visiting over that weekend. I did meet up with Talia but Mark and Linda never showed up. This was slightly concerning but we decided to head up Monjuïc, a hill near the city where many of the Olympic stadiums from 1992 are located. After that I split up with Talia so she could figure out what in god's name happened to Mark and Linda (turns out regardless of the fact that they rarely sleep more than seven hours in any given night, they miraculously slept for like eighteen that night and didn't wake up until about the time Talia reached them). I went to the park that was designed by Gaudí, Park Guell, to walk around and eat ice cream (both of which I did). This was also (somewhat predictably) incredibly beautiful. I walked from Park Guell back down to the Sagrada Familia to take a tour of the very unfinished inside portion. This building has been being built for more than 100 years and they don't expect to finish for another 20-40. Shit's crazy.

That night I was contacted by Mark and Linda who wanted to take me out to dinner to make up for their absence in the morning. I really found it more funny than anything that they slept for so long, but I'm always down for a free meal so I accepted their invitation. We went out for some delicious tapas, discussed short films and NPR, and drank a surprisingly large number of pitchers of sangria. It was awesome.

Sunday I left in the afternoon, but before I went home I got up early to go to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. Pablo Picasso spent a large amount of time in Barcelona and this museum had a very impressive collection of his paintings as well as a good biographic chronological presentation in their exhibit. I learned things. I had fun. I'm in Europe.

Europe, I've got to hand it to you- your Antoni Gaudí designed some of the most impressive feats of humanity that I've ever seen. Your score's rounding out to be about 274. Which is good- seriously. But it's true, David B. Weaver's score is... what? 275 (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!)

Europe Deep Cuts: Prague, Vienna and Stockholm

PrahahaLast Friday, March 5th, I traveled with all 85 castle students to visit Prague for our second and final academic excursion. This time the program set us up in apartments in the heart of the city as opposed to the hostels of the last excursion and every other independent trip I've taken. Needless to say, this was awesome. For two nights in a row I had every intention of going out and hitting Prague at night but ended up just staying in because the apartments were that awesome. Don't worry, I did eventually get the courage to leave the place on the third night and saw some spectacular night views of the city in a park near the Prague Castle quarter of town; but alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

When we first arrived on Friday afternoon the group was split up into several smaller groups in order to be guided on a walking tour around Prague to start to get to know it. My tour guide brought us to seemingly arbitrary locations in the cold outdoors to convey to us some part of the City's long history. Eventually he took us to a supposedly cubist building, explained why he felt it wasn't the slightest bit cubist, and then brought us inside to buy us coffee. Apparently this is like a "thing" that professors like to do on trips. Which is great.

Saturday led us to the Prague Castle, a fascinating series of structures built on a hill near the city, complete with its own stunning cathedral. It was certainly beautiful, but it was pretty cold and it was snowing pretty hard which put an unfortunate damper on the situation. That afternoon I joined my History of Western Art III: Modern Art class to the National Gallery at Veletrzni Palace to experience some more artworks in person. This was a great gallery, both in quality and in general size, that was eerily uncrowded. It gave our class a chance to interact with a myriad of orginial Rodins and Piccassos and things of that nature without having to deal with lame crowds that seem to be present at most museums I've visited here so far. Saturday night some of the group (including myself) went to get a Czech meal at a restaurant relatively close to our apartments. I ended up sitting at a table with the aforementioned Rob "The Duke" Dukers. The Duke has lived in the Dutch town of Roermond for his entire life and has dinner with his parents every sunday. He also doesn't enjoy Ethiopian food because his true passion in life is pre-gutenburg manuscripts, and handling them with oily food hands is strictly prohibited. You're welcome.

Sunday we took a tour of the Jewish Quarter of the city in the morning. This was a little bit interesting, but much of it was going over Jewish customs and rituals, something I feel I'm fairly familiar with. In the afternoon I joined my Modern Art History class once again to take a tour of the Prague Municipal House which is a ridiculously beautiful, detailed and ornate Art Nouveau building. Many buildings are done in this style in the city of Prague, which is very cool. That typical Art Nouveau type-face seems to be the comic sans MS of Prague; that shit was everywhere.

On Monday we visited the former ghetto and Nazi prison camp Terezín. This brought back memories of IST. These kinds of places are very emotional.

After being released from the program I explored the fourth and final quarter of the city that I hadn't yet been to and then took a mad nap. That night I caught a sleeper-car-night-train with my Venice buddy Pat to begin our week long travel break in...

Vienna, or How Stravinsky Raped My Ears for €5
We woke up on a train at 5:00am to the rising sun. After accidentally taking the local Vienna tram the wrong direction and walking for 1.5 hours to the city's center Pat and I found our hostel and checked in. After taking a short rest and recuperation we decided to explore around a bit. We got lunch at a delicious open-air market and visited a beautiful church with two large spires and a view from the top. This church also housed a gallery of modern religious artworks. And as any true David B. Weaver vs. Europe fan knows, this is something I value. Good work, church that I forgot the name of. After leaving this church we walked over to see the famous Stephensplatz in the center of town - also beautiful.

Tuesday night we decided to head to the Opera House and snag €3 standing room only tickets for the opera currently showing there: Medea. After sneaking down into seats and staying for the first act I can safely say that this was one of the strangest things I've ever seen. Having obviously not been able to understand the German lyrics, I could gather very little from the performance. Here's what I could tell: A woman wearing white seemed to be helping a woman wearing red somehow; they may or may not have been on the moon; two male characters may or may not be based in a hovering/descendable room; stormtroopers, being led by a witch seem to have seriously shamed the red woman. Although glad I saw an Opera in Vienna it was definitely one of the strangest performances I've ever witnessed and certainly not what I was expecting. Regardless, we ended the night on some delicious Weinerschnitzel and Beer.

On Wednesday we visited Schönbrunn Palace - a palace that has housed many Viennese royalty but is especially known for being the favorite place of residence of Emperor Franz Josef I, most famous in my life for being the namesake of the archipelago north of Russia that can be seen very easily from the old world-map shower curtain at the Mead/Aaronson residence. We walked around the extensive and beautiful gardens for a good couple of hours and then made our way inside the palace and saw some of the interior. It was very rad. We then made our way across town to get bus tickets to Bratislava Airport where we were leaving from the next day and then to the city center to purchase tickets to a concert of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin who were to play a Beethoven piece and Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird." These tickets were also standing room only and cost us very little. Unfortunately for the first piece there were some people guarding the seats so us commoners could not sneak into them. However, when everybody left for intermission so did the guards. And so Pat and I found ourselves surrounded by old Austrian men that may as well have been sporting monocles in the first section of seats, wearing plaid flannel tucked into jeans. Was this awkward? Slightly; we did get some dirty looks. However, we did pull it off and it was incredibly fulfilling. Seeing "Firebird," a piece that I was somewhat familiar with due to my fanship of the film Fantasia 2000, played live was seriously incredible. And being in the first section we could really see the passion and vigor that the orchestra played with during some of the more intense parts of the symphony. This was the highlight of my Vienna experience. The night ended again with Schnitzel and Beer, because come on, when am I going to get the opportunity to eat Weiner Weinerschnitzel after that night?

The next morning we awoke and took a bus to Slovakia, only to take a plane to an airport in Sweden where we took yet another bus to...

Stockholm: Making Snow Beautiful AgainStockholm, Sweden is a beautiful place. We weren't there in the dead of winter, nor were we there for the longest day of the summer; we came during the melty season and it was still stunning. We stayed at a hostel in the Galma Stan or Old Town, which was very cool. Stockholm is a series of islands and the Galma Stan is a very small island located at the very center. Unfortunately it was already dark when we arrived in the city on Thursday night so we just explored the old town a little bit and decided to hit the hay early.

Friday morning we walked over to the Vasa museum as recommended by the very wise and informative Zach Barter. This museum centers around an enormous Swedish warship called the Vasa that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. It was incredibly beautiful, however logistically it failed and therefore sat at the bottom of the water for many, many years. They figured out how to pull it up in the 60's, and ever since it has been on exhibit at this building built around it. We then made our way through the Galma Stan (this time during the day) to the southern island of Sodermalm and browsed around there for a while. Found a pretty cool record store called Pet Sounds. That night we decided to splurge and went to the Absolut Ice Bar, which is a bar made out of ice. It was a little bit more like a disneyland ride than an actual bar as you were only allowed to stay in there for 40 minutes and the cover charge dictated that it was more of a spectacle than an actual establishment. But, a spectacle it was! They fit us out with space aged parkas and let us enter what was basically a well decorated freezer. Everything was made of ice - the walls, the chairs, the bar, the shot glasses. It was very, as Francine Weaver so hilariously predicted it would be, "cool."

The next morning we were scheduled to fly out but felt as though we didn't get ourselves enough Stockholm so we woke up at 5:00 and watched the sunrise from Sodermalm. It was beautiful.

Europe, you've shown me your true colors over this break - and I like them. Looks like you're score's reached a whopping 238. David B. Weaver, um... let's see... oh! oh my... 239 (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!)

With A Little Help From My Friends

Last weekend I joined three Emersonian colleagues in a pilgrimage to the capital of the U.K. - London- partly to see and experience the city, but also to visit my friend Ben who has been living there for about as long as I've been in the Netherlands. We left on Thursday night and found ourselves at Baker St. tube station in the heart of London at 11:00pm. After a small moment of concern after running out of minutes on my Dutch mobile phone and not being in contact with Ben and his roommates, we eventually found each other and made our way back to Ben's humble pad in Earl's Court. Upon arrival we got to know Ben's roommates a little bit, got settled in on the floor of their room and went to slumberland.

Friday morning I joined my fellow Castle-livers in exploring the neighborhood of Earl's court to find some breakfast while Ben had his last class of the week. We then met up and decided to do some touring around. We went to Trafalgar Square and visited a couple of museums. Turns out most museums in the city of London don't charge any entrance fee, which is awesome. We visited the National Gallery that had a surprisingly huge number of 'classics' and what not that I remember studying in my Renaissance art course last year. I had a couple more of those fulfilling moments when you get to see a painting you've studied in the classroom come out of the powerpoint presentation and show you its true features. We also visited the National Portrait Gallery which is a museum that focuses around portraits of all media. I've never really seen art organized in that way; it seems to me that museums are normally organized by movement and/or their date of creation. This museum combined old, new, painting, sculpture, photograph, and blood bust (it's exactly what it sounds like), and housed them all next to each other, their only common feature being that they are all portraits of someone. We then had lunch in Chinatown and split up for a little while until reconvening for some dinner/pubhopping that night.

On Saturday we slept in a little bit and all got up and had a traditional English breakfast with English breakfast tea out at a restaurant nearby who happened to be playing The Beatles' Love. It was delicious. We then took the tube over to the Thames and walked along the river and across the Tower Bridge. We passed by Shakespeare's Globe and some other notable things until we took a footbridge back over the Thames that led us straight to St. Paul's Cathedral. Although (somewhat ironically) it cost us £9.50 just to enter the main section of the cathedral we decided to bite the bullet and check it out anyway and, let me say, it was well worth every pence. It was truly stunning - the largest cathedral I've seen so far in this crazy continent. It was also the only cathedral I've seen that's housed a piece of modern art - there was a sculpture in the back corner of a couple of shapes called Madonna and Child made out of what looked like marble. I thought that was pretty cool. We were also able to climb the many stairs to the top of the building which provided a beautiful view of most of the city of London. Not that London has a particularly phenomenal skyline, but you know, it was still pretty neat. Saturday night was spent staying up late so my Emercolleagues could catch a very early-morning flight.

On Sunday I got some long sought after one-on-one time with Ben Mead. We returned to the Thames to have a long walk exploring the Parliament and Monument areas of town and discussing a many things. Upon returning to Earl's Court we decided to end my time in London on a stereotypically delicious note: steak & kidney pie with mash and a pint.

Europe, you've brought me to one of my best friends, and for that I award you several points, bringing your running total to about 99. Oh, wait... David B. Weaver? Well it looks like you're score's at about... 100 (?!?!?!?!?!?!)

PS - Sorry it took so long to get this up - this past week has been midterms and I've been unusually busy. Also, next week is travel break so I'll be skipping a week of DBW v. Europe.