Merry Christmas from SAIS

Well early tomorrow morning I head home for Christmas break, so it is only fitting that Dr. Plummer showed up for my last class before break dressed up as Santa. Dr. Plummer will leaving SAIS to work for the OECD (which is a really big deal!) after this semester. His gifts , Economic Journals, were probably the equivalent of coal to most people but at SAIS they are enthralling literature!

Waltz 101

It has been quite the busy couple of weeks leading up to Christmas break here in Bologna so I have not really had any time to do much traveling this month since going to Venice. Yet even amid all the readings, papers, economic problem sets, and presentations I managed to find some time for some fun tonight!

As you may remember in February I will be going to a Venetian Ball! Well if one is to attend such a ball one should be properly prepared! It really would be a tragedy if someone spent the time and money to go to a ball in a palace in Venice and did not even know how to Waltz! Lucky for me I have had some experience Waltzing in the past in high school shows and theater classes, but that was quite awhile ago. So tonight the ball committee here offered the first of two crash courses in Waltzing! So I of course attended to brush up my skills and learn some new moves! The teacher for the evening was actually a student here who used to do competitive dancing when he was younger, and he did a great job. We learned several different step types, including the Venetian Waltz (which is much faster and more difficult), as well as how to properly ask someone for a dance and escort them onto the ballroom floor (apparently you must do it properly), and how to properly thank them after a dance. All in all the event was a lot of fun and at least we can all say we have some idea of how to do things properly when the ball arrives in early February.

Here is a video of our teacher dancing with one the girls who attended. Enjoy!

Venice

Well just like last weekend, for better or worse I took Saturday off from Homework and took a day trip. This time with two other students to Venice! No doubt it will be my last side trip before I head home to Minnesota for Christmas break on the 17th as I have plenty to accomplish between now and then!

This was my second trip to Venice, but it was still a lot of fun. We spent our time wandering the streets, canals, shops, gelaterias, piazzas, and churches in this completely unique town....and of course we spent some time in the most time honored tradition in Venice, getting lost in the endless maze of streets, bridges, canals, and dead ends.

As I said this was my second trip to Venice and I noticed a few differences. First off the last time I was there was at the beginning of May and I must say that the number of tourists on Saturday was much more preferable! (something about cold December weather seems to keep them away...nothing for a Minnesotan though!). Another difference is that parts of the streets and main square was under water! I had heard about this phenomenon but it was not in affect that last time I visited.

I also saw some similarities, gondola rides are still out of my student prices rage and San Marco Basilica is probably one of my all time favorite religious sites along with the Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris! The combination of Golden Mosaics and Marble make for a very impressive aura inside the basilica.

If you want to see pictures from my day please checkout my facebook album.

Biking Italy & San Marino

Well today against my better judgment (or perhaps as a result of it) I decided to break my streak of mostly studying on the weekends and go somewhere. I decided I had been in Italy long enough and it was time for a break so I decided to go to the next closest country....San Marino!

I decided that I would like to bike to my destination once again in order to save some money. Although I decided biking the entire 120 km from Bologna to San Marino would be a bit much especially considering the last 15 km (more on those later!). So this morning at around 9:30 (thats right I set an alarm to go somewhere!), I hopped on the train to Rimini which would bring me within 25 km of San Marino.

As I got off the train it was wonderfully sunny in Rimini (it is after all a beach town), and I had glorious fantasies in my head about how I would bike at top speeds to this little country and take in all the grand vistas along the way that everyone talks about.

Well reality proved to be much harsher. Once I was about 5 km outside of town I was enclosed in a low cloud cover that blocked basically everything more than 150 meters away from view. Before going I had looked into the geography of such a ride and I notice that obviously it would be uphill, but I grossly underestimated how tough and long it would be. About 10 km in I reached the point where it began to climb and did not stop for 15 km. This also put me right into the clouds so I could not even see where I was going (not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing...could of been motivating or depressing!). Anyways after the long climb with several stops, cursing every time I got to a curve or out of the clouds only to find out that the road goes further up, and constantly wondering why I was still going up when I was sure there would be nothing to see at the end due to the clouds, I finally made it to San Marino.

Just as I expected I could see absolutely nothing, and I almost turned around right then and there and went back down. I told myself though that I might as well go have a look (if that was possible) at the historic city center, which was of course even further up, but this time I had to walk. I enjoyed walking around the shops and checking out city walls but honestly I was not overly impressed with the place, then something happened.....The clouds we were immersed in decended just enough for the city center and castle to be above the clouds and what a site it was!

I will not say much more (I will let my pictures do the talking) expect that I think this castle is probably one of my favorite three that I have visited along with Carcassonne and Warwick!

The clouds clearing

Love this picture, just eery

This is the main part of Castle (there were three parts including the watch tower)

Inside the main part of the castle

One of the many city walls

If you would like to see more pictures from my day go to the facebook album.

Blogger + Facebook > Blogger

So I have had some fun over the last few days trying to incorporate new elements into my blog. I learned that several elements of facebook could be placed also on my Blog. I now have photo album links to my past major trips and a world map that shows you where I have traveled to, where I have lived, and a few places which are still on the to do lists. I have included the map in the post but otherwise it is just at the very bottom of my blog. Other random parts I have added over the past months include a link to my linkedin profile and a google search option for searching my blog. Hope you enjoy the new parts.

Thanksgiving in Italy

Well yesterday we officially celebrated thanksgiving here in Italy. It was quite the event with around 130 students, faculty, staff, & family members in attendance. What also made it enjoyable was sharing the experience with many Europeans who had never experienced a thanksgiving before!

As such we had to introduce them to all the important traditions such as stuffing your face with Turkey, saying what you are thankful for, and most importantly covering the history of the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving in a small skit (ironically put on by mostly Europeans!).

Thanksgiving in Italy was very different from being home with my friends and family (food was not quite as good as well!), but all in all it was a lot of fun. The evening had a non-traditional twist to it as after the big meal Dr. Plumber's band performed in the cafe. Dr. Plumber is a professor here at SAIS who will be going on a two year leave to lead the conclusion of the Doha round of development for the OECD, but he still has time to get a band together, in which he plays the drumbs, guitar, and also sang the lead on "You can't always get what you want". After the band finished many of us went out to a small street bar and then eventually clubbing. I can't say I ever had a evening quite like this one on Thanksgiving before, but it was a lot of fun.

Check out pictures for the evening here at my facebook albumn (you do not need a facebook account).
Italy Pictures

Budget Traveler at it again!

As you may remember from my trip last summer, I discovered that many budget travelers no longer backpack across Europe on trains. Instead many now airport hop from city to city via cheap airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair. You can literally travel across the continent for just $10 - $50.

While last summer, except for on a couple exceptions, I obviously choose to travel via the rails (after all that is what the romanticized backpacking trip is all about!), this year with time and money even more scarce than last year I have looked to take advantage of such great deals. So with my semester break coming up at the end of January I finally struck on some deals! In addition to flying cheap, I have managed to once again take advantage of free local hospitality and food (like any good student)!

My plan is to finish up finals on the 27th of January and then fly north to England where I will visit the Larkins (very good family friends) for a little less than a week, next I will fly to Krakow Poland for where I will spend two days (great city & exchange rate!) , before heading to Ostrava, Czech Republic to visit Pavala and her family, my final destination will be Vienna! There I will be joining my fellow SAIS students for our very own Venetian Ball in the Hofburg Palace (I saw this palace last year backpacking!).

Hofburg Palace

Somehow I doubt our Ball will be this big of an ordeal, but it still should be very cool!

All in all this trips costs have been minimized while maximizing its fun! Should be quite the experiences! No doubt I several blog posts on it will make its way onto here!

A Wall that Changed the World

Today is a very special day; 20 years ago the Berlin Wall fell. Being only just under 23 years old, I obviously have no recollection of the events that took place up to and on November 9th 1989. What I can attest to is just some of the experiences I have had since the fall of the wall that never would have happened or would be quite different had history played out in a different manor. Some of my memories are more trivial in nature than others but the implications that surround them cannot be understated.


1. Traveling in a united Germany as a sixth grader with my family - one of my most ingrained memories of this trip (other than the endless amounts of brats I ate) was my family’s trip to Dachau. The concentration camp there ingrained itself in the memory of a sixth grader in a way that very few things do, it is hard to imagine the atrocities that were committed there and the innocence that was lost. Obviously WWII is what originally led to the split; the fall of the wall is a reminder of what the Western world went through and the progress that has been made since.

2. Having a Czech sister Pavala! After having Pavala as our summer nanny my family invited her to move in and live with us for over a year while she completed her studies in the United States. My family and Pavala got so close that she is now considered part of our family. Getting to know her and traveling to the Czech Republic to meet her family are things that would have never happened without November 9th 1989.

3. In college my choir, The Wartburg Choir, was invited to sing with the Czech National symphony in Prague for a Christmas benefit concert. Two years later we returned to Europe and had concerts in East Germany and Slovenia. Once again these experiences would not of been possible prior to fall of the Berlin Wall.

4. Backpacking through Europe, was a completely different experience for me than my father when he went on a similar trip 30 years prior, the major difference is the fall of the wall and rise of the EU. As a result I was free to travel into central and Eastern Europe and cross borders without passport checks.

5. Today I am in Bologna Italy studying International Relations. As a TA for Theories of International Relations who spends great amounts of time reading academic papers written over the past century I can see the vast difference in world politics that has taken place since the end of the cold war. While the Bologna Center here in Italy has existed since the 1950s, one can imagine being here prior to 1989 would have made for a very different experience.

Later this evening John McCain will be speaking at the Washington DC SAIS Campus (and via a direct line to Bologna) on the continued importance of freedom today, while I am sure it will not surprise my family members to learn that I did not vote for him a year ago, I still greatly respect him as a war veteran, politician, and fellow human being. I am very much looking forward to hearing his speech on a topic that as you can see has revolutionized the world and my life thus far.

I encourage you to take some time today to think how the world and specifically your life might of been different had the Berlin wall not fallen on November 9th, 1989.

Verona: Romeo and Juliet

So as you may of noticed it has now been about two weeks since my last blog post. I did not die or fall of the face of the planet I have just been buried under long reading lists and various homework assignments that are all too common for the typical grad student. I am sure you are devastated that I did not take the time to blog about the finer points of Classical Realism and Liberal Institutionalism.

Today I took a mental health day and went to the town of Verona, Italy. This town is where it is believed the original Romeo and Juliet story originated. One is able to visit the balcony of Juliet or the tomb of the ill fated lovers.

In addition to the towns famous lovers, the town proves to be an excellent medieval town with a great many different sights, churches, piazzas, and other attractions. Enjoy the pictures blow.

Gate Entering Verona

Main Square

Me with a Roman Theater in the Background

This is Juliet's world famous balcony

This is the millions of love notes people leave by Juliet's home....gross (but I guess enough people think it is sweet because they do it)

Parma

So today, two friends and I decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of Bologna life, so we took a day trip to Parma. World renown for Parmesan cheese and other eating delights, we made sure to indulge in their culinary genius as well as taking some time to just wander the town and take in the different sights. Below are some of the pictures from the day.

Duomo in Parma

The inside of the Duomo

Battistero

Colorful buildings

Chiesa Di San Giovanni Evangelista

Inside

Park & Palazzo Ducale

السلام عليكم

As-Salāmu `Alaykum (السلام عليكم) - Peace be upon you. Well today I had my first Arabic class, and I must say it was both exciting and daunting. Above is basically the only phrase in Arabic I learned. The rest of the class time was devoted to learning the Arabic Alphabet, which as you probably know is completely different from the standard alphabets used by the romance languages. Arabic is also written and read right to left, and I feel it is a good metaphor for learning Arabic; forget what you have learned and learn an entirely new mindset! Should be exciting!

Arabic Alphabet

TWINS WIN! (and I watched it in Italy)

Well it is currently about 4:00 am here in Italy, and being the fanatic sports fan that I am, I stayed up all night watching the Minnesota Twins win game 163! The game started at 11:00 pm here in Italy, and I figured it would not go past 2:00 am....but then baseball has a funny habit of not going according to plan.

It really is amazing the strides that technology has made over the years. The fact that I am able to watch a live stream of my local hometown baseball team here in Italy (via P2P) is really Cool!

Now it is time to get some sleep...if I can...I am still really excited!

Ultimate Survival Italian Part II

So this past weekend I played in an Ultimate tournament not far from Bologna. I ended up playing with a team from Trent, Italy. A bunch of their players had not been able to come down to the tournament, so I joined their team. The good news was since there very few of us I got to play a lot! The bad news was after 5 games in the span of 6 hours my body killed!

The Team

Still I had a great time. Several of the players spoke some English, but they mostly just spoke in Italian and I began to catch onto the different Italian Ultimate terms. In the end we finished 7th out of 9 teams.

I may play in another tournament this coming weekend and I also just joined a choir at the University of Bologna with a fellow student from Johns Hopkins SAIS. Both should be fun and continue to improve my Italian!

Biking Italy: Modanella (i.e. FERRARI!)

So today I decided to go for another bike trip. I choose for my destination the small town of Modanella Italy. The town is internationally famous because this guy Enzo Ferrari started some small car company there and named it after himself (perhaps you have heard of this company!?).

At any rate the bike ride was through some beautiful country side areas of Italy, and I managed to get lost a bunch of time and tried to make up a bunch of different detours. The end result was I probably biked around 55 km instead of the 45 it should of taken to get there. Still the effort was well worth it. The Ferrari Galleria was awesome, a true Mecca for car enthusiasts and still worth the trip even if you are not a fanatic. Check out the pictures below to get a idea of what it was like.

One of the first Ferrari Racing Cars

2008 Version of the F1 Ferrari Racing Vehicle

Basically what this picture is showing is that Ferrari Dominates the F1 Grand Prix Circuits all over the world...

Classic Maserati

Newer "pedestrian" Ferrari

The engines are just phenomenal

Ultimate Ferrari Room!

What follows is a video of one of the coolest rooms ever! Every person walked in and a huge smile would just appear on their faces (Ferrari even added mood music for the room!)

Still picture of the amazing room

And of course....this will be my future car!

I talked to some people from Australia at the Museum and turns out you can rent a Ferrari to test drive in Modanella! The Aussies did and said they drove absolutely spectacularly (one would sure hope so for their price tag), well like any good young male I had to check this out for my self! I was not too surprised though when I found that the price tag for a 10 minute drive was around $100. Needless to say after that I got on my bike and rode off into the sunset (as several Ferraris hummed by me!).

Carl of Arabia!

Ok, so now I know what you are thinking....what the heck could I have in common with the epic character (and real life counterpart) of one of the all time great cinematic films (and probably the record for longest film ever too!). Well as of yet, not much. While I have always longed to roam the land fighting for freedom and philosophizing about the meaning of life, I just have not gotten around to it yet.

What I am about to begin though is taking Arabic here at Johns Hopkins SAIS! In addition it has been common for Arabic students to spend their summer inbetween their two years in a Arabic speaking country. So perhaps in time I will have a few charectorists similar to the all time film great.

Ultimate Survival Italian

Today pre-term officially ended after my economics final. As such that also means I am on my own as far as Italian goes (no more survival Italian!). I cannot say that my Italian is really all that great, but it allows me to do a few things like introduce myself and say a bit about myself, order at a restaurant (assuming they do not ask too many complicated questions), and say all the great little words like please, thank you, and your welcome!

So while my academic endeavors with Italian are officially over, I will now use the non-academic Ultimate Fields of Bologna to try and rev up on my Italian. I mean literally the Ultimate Fields of Bologna, as in the sport! There is a Ultimate team here in Bologna and it is one of the best in Europe. I am planning to practice with them occasionally and hopefully play in a tournament they are hosting in upcoming weeks! No doubt I will learn great new words such as throw it here, huck, up, and all those other great Ultimate words! At any rate it should be fun.

Biking Italy: Bologna & Ferrara

Well it took almost no time at all for me to take advantage of having a bike here. As biking places provides good and cheap entertainment (and positive externalities for one's health), I decided to go on several bike trips this weekend after taking my exam on Saturday.

Saturday Evening I biked around Bologna, checked out their soccer stadium, and then headed off into the foothills and found a nice overlook of the town. In total I probably only biked about 20 km, but with the foothills it felt like more.

Overlook of Bologna from the foothills

On Sunday I got a bit more adventurous and biked from Bologna to the town of Ferrara (50 km or 31 miles). A small town known for its biking culture, it also had a cool variety of old medieval buildings. Tired from the ride there I decided to pay the couple Euro and take the train home.

Castello Estense

Duomo San Romano

As much as I like to bike back home, it is really cool to be able to bike a ways and end up in some cool European Town you have never visited, it adds a little extra little motivation!

Happy Saturday....here is your Exam

Living in Europe does have several differences from the US and one is very evident today, a test! So instead of spending my Saturday visiting old Roman Ruins or in a vineyard in Tuscany I will instead focus on the invisible hand theory and other great Economic theories.

Bologna Bike Trade

So one of the things I have wanted to get since I arrived here is a bike. Normally this would seem quite simple, but is just so happens that bikes are a much desired commodity in Bologna! In fact when getting a bike it is best to make sure it is not that flashy of a bike. This is because stealing bikes is treasured past time here in Bologna. Once they are stolen, they are then spray painted a new color and sold at the weekend flea market (at which point the buyer better get a good lock or else the bike is likely to be back at the market the following week sporting another new paint job!).

Even Johns Hopkins has a special part to play in this story. After 9/11 it was originally required that all US institutions abroad needed to have protection at all times by the local authorities. So the school had a Bologna Police Officer who was always stationed outside of the school. Well one would certainly think that with a police officer right outside of the school, bike theft would not be a problem at all. But would you believe it bikes still disappeared from the bike racks right in front of the school! Rumor is that the police officer out front was actually in on the local bike trade and allowed the theft to occur as long as he got a cut! (as post 9/11 regulations were relaxed the school was able to let the officer go).

At any rate the main point of this post is just to say, I bought a bike! I went in search of bikes many a times and I was a bit afraid that I would not find what I was looking for. I wanted to get an old road bike that could serve as a commuter bike and allow me to go on some bike trips here in Italy! Finally on my third trip to the various bike stores one bike stood out and screamed my name, a yellow road bike. It is perhaps a bit small and the gears are by no means perfect, but I am very happy with it! (and I have two excellent locks for it!) Since I bought the bike on Tuesday I have already mapped out a few possible bike trips one in Tuscany and one in Northern Italy (Alps?). No doubt this blog will have a few posts in the future about my bike trips!

Florence

I have talked a lot in my last few posts, so this time I will just leave you with some pictures from my day-trip to Florence, enjoy!