Adventures in Europe, Part III

Seriously. Life can’t be this good, and I feel like I’m overdue for some seriously bad news. I’m in the middle of my internship at NATO (the Claremont Colleges’ connection to NATO is one of the reasons I chose CMC), and I love it. All of my studies have been devoted to foreign relations and diplomacy. I’ve read my fair share of communiques. And now I get to be a fly on the wall as these documents get drafted. I come home (always leaving the office late, always after a long commute), and I’m simultaneously exhausted and totally pumped to keep going. (Which is why I’m having this huge internal debate about whether or not the foreign service is right for me, but that’s for another post.)

I love Brussels. The city is so charming and there’s always something going on. And since these festivals (museum openings, parades, food fests, designer exhibitions) are open to everyone and locals go too, I don’t feel like a tourist but like someone who actually lives in Belgium. AND my French is improving! And the people who stop me on the street to ask me out are polite and typically ask me to dinner rather than their apartment. In any case, I wasn’t so sure I could live in France but I could see myself in Brussels.

I booked my dream trip to Thailand. I’ve seriously wanted this trip since middle school, and suddenly a funding source opened up, and airfare went down (thank goodness for a drop in oil prices…), and it became possible. I’m going with my boyfriend, and things are still good for us despite all the time we spend apart while I’m off trotting through Europe. This makes me happy. So now we get to do a jungle trek together! Elephant rides! Hanging out on beaches with clear water and white sand! Cheap cheap cheap massages! Eek!

I got the job of RA and couldn’t be with a better group of people. I’m about to head to Mexico for the first time, and I get some quality time with one of my best friends for the first time in years. I am about to get my wisdom teeth pulled, maybe that’s my bad news. I just hope it’s not something terrible like a year from now complaining that no one hires me, no grad school accepts me, and I have no source of income.

My host father explained to me (in English) that their oldest son plays hooky every day, but important exams are coming up in a couple weeks so he’s going to be very busy… may even need to stop playing hooky. I figured going to class the couple weeks before exams would indeed be beneficial but wasn’t entirely sure why skipping so much class to begin with didn’t faze Monsieur Parisel.

About thirty minutes later, when the conversation had switched to French, it became evident that Vincent plays HOCKEY.

I must say, the constant switching between English and French (and the fact that I’m living in Flanders, who speaks FLEMISH tyvm… which I can’t read) is incredibly disconcerting.

Flight: Very beginning: Surrounded by over-perfumed old ladies (isn’t airplane etiquette to forgo the perfume??) and screaming babies. Early middle: Watched Marley and Me. Why I decided to do that on a plane, when I know fully well that I bawled through the last few chapters of the book, is beyond me. Middle: I watched Twilight and am upset that I’ll never get those two hours of my life back. Late Middle: Tried really hard to sleep. Epic fail… End: Flight from Frankfurt to Brussels, unwashed tourists on both sides. Still not enough sleep. I’m really unpleased but have no one to bitch at. (We’ll see how much my boyfriend loves me after we fly to Thailand and back…)

BUT I’m here. And despite all the promises that Brussels would be hot and humid, it’s cold, wet, and rainy. I hope this goes away… I may not have packed well. I have a light jacket for nights, but that’s it. AND no warm pajamas, which I didn’t think I’d need. AND only one pair of flats because I forgot to pack two. AND I packed my baggy jeans instead of my skinny jeans (that are the same wash). I’ll survive. I just may need to go shopping. Believe it or not, I do try not to do so in Europe. Is it bad to call home and ask for a care package on your first full day there?

To end a good note, I have a really good feeling about my host family. My host mother squealed and hugged me when she saw me. I’m quite relieved. And now, I’m off to explore my new neighborhood!

As Wes continues to tell me, I never really wrapped up my semester in Germany, did I? The last few weeks were a flurry of school projects, Weihnachtmarkts (Christmas Markets), and realizing how much I loved Freiburg and would miss it when I’m gone.

Now that that wrap-up is done, onto the really good news: I leave for Brussels in FOUR days. Am I ready? Perhaps. Am I packed? Of course not. BUT I’m super excited to get back to the Continent.

My summer plans in brief:

• Intern full-time at the US Mission to NATO (June 2- July 24). Wear suits and jackets every day in heat and humidity… who does’t love that? (In all seriousness though, this is an amazing opportunity and I’m beyond grateful for it.)
• Head to Paris for Euromeet to have CMC pay for expensive meals, network with CMC alumni, and visit one of my very best friends (who tells me this is the first week of the Parisian soldes, or sales, and that it’s also fashion week for hommes. Apparently I’m sneaking into a runway show or two?) (June 26-28)
• Visit Aymi, a good friend from my Germany semester, in Berlin (July 24-27)
• Return to a former home-sweet-home: yay, Freiburg!! (July 28-29)
• Day trip around Belgium, taking advantage of an SNCB deal where 10 one-way tickets cost 73EUR total and are good anywhere in the country. I’m thinking of going to Brugges, Antwerp, kayaking in the Ardennes, and Ghent. The nice thing about being in a country as small as Belgium is that I can get just about anywhere I want to go within an hour (and most far less than that.)
• I’m telling myself I’ll do research for my thesis, make connections for a Fulbright application to study multiculturalism in Estonia since EU accession, and work on grad school and fellowship applications. We’ll see how that goes.
• Explore Brussels. The three girls I know from Claremont won’t arrive until July, but Brussels, as the de facto EU capital, is full of expats and there are a lot of opportunities to meet each other. Hopefully I won’t gorge myself on Belgian waffles or chocolates in doing so.

The coffee situation in Germany is terrible. If you need caffeine (and seeing as I have class from 9am to 7:45 pm twice a week, I often do), you usually go to a bakery, plop down €1.50, or about $1.85, for about three or four spoonfuls of disgusting sludge that somewhat smells of coffee. Starbucks, meanwhile, has the same prices as the US, only in euros, and paying $5 for coffee seems ridiculous. Besides, I try not to have too many American products in Germany.

Today, however, a friend of mine introduced me to Aspect. I got a wonderful chai latte that tastes better that Starbucks, is about the same size of a cup of Starbucks coffee, and is only €1.80. And the best part? It’s open on Sundays! YAY!

Suddenly my upcoming hellish week of term-papers doesn’t seem so bad anymore. (…Who am I kidding? It totally does.)

After yet another long week of class, I headed over to Barcelona with two friends. The way to the airport was uneventful (once we figured out that the Karlsruhe airport is actually in Baden-Baden.) The flight was nearly uneventful. For the second flight to Spain in a row, we shared a plane with a group of loud, obnoxious, drunk, 30- and 40- something-year-old German men. A man the row in front of me was taking a lot of pictures, but I was half awake so not really paying attention. Then I realized that even though he was acting like he was taking pictures of his friends in the aisle, the camera was actually pointed too far down… right at me and my friends! So I conjure up the meanest evil-eye I can muster and aim it directly at the camera. Shortly afterwards, he takes the camera down to look at the pictures, and I could tell exactly what moment my “I know what you’re doing, and I don’t approve of it” pictures came up. I heard a very loud “Bahhh!” But at least he put his camera away afterwards. We land and find there’s a bus waiting for us. “This is going too smoothly,” Aymi kept saying. “Something has to go wrong.” We shushed her and told her she’d jinx it.

Our hostel in Barcelona was in a great location- minutes away from the port and from La Rambla, a street I would liken to a Catalonian Third Street Promenade, only without all the clothes stores. It’s known for its living statues (think the made-up creepy people you see in every city, only with much more elaborate costumes), and for a jewelry market on weekends… where I may or may not have bought Christmas gifts. Katie and I walked around a bit, got hungry, then decided to call our other friend, who had decided to stay with her friend for free instead of us. We never did get a hold of her, which was sad, but we didn’t worry since we knew she was with a friend who knew the city better than we did.

After dinner, I discovered that there is definitely a reason they tell girls- particularly blondes (like the other Katie) and redheads- to be particularly careful in Barcelona. I GOT OFFERED DRUGS! I’ve never had that happen before… but I got OFFERED DRUGS! By a stranger! GAH! We ended up getting majorly creeped out and calling it a early night. You know you’ve been in Europe too long if you think you’re in bed early when you go to bed at 2 on a Friday night.

Saturday was a busy day, as Barcelona is a huge city with a ton to see. After getting totally ripped off at the exchange office (I don’t want to talk about it), we browsed the jewelry market, trekked up to Parc Guell, this gorgeous park designed by the famous architect Gaudi, whose works are all over Barcelona. This park is covered in mosaics. I was particularly fond of the mosaic lizard- it took me forever to wait around to get a picture of it that didn’t have any tourists standing in front of it! After spending some time in the park, we walked to La Sagrada Familia, another one of Gaudi’s “masterpieces.” This cathedral- perhaps one of the oddest I’ve ever seen- was started at the end of the 1800s and was unfinished when Gaudi died. Most of his original plans for the finished product were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, and there’s been a lot of disagreement over what precisely was Gaudi’s original vision, so it’s still not done. It’s expected to be finished in the next 20 years, I think. Then we walked to the Picasso Museum and the Barcelona Cathedral, where there was a mass baptism going on, and you could barely move amidst the sea of strollers. For dinner, we decided to try a restaurant recommended in Katie’s Let’s Go book- one which supposedly had fabulous meals for “astonishingly low” prices, but you needed to show up well before you hoped to eat because the lines would go halfway through the square it occupied. We showed up about 20 minutes before it opened (again, you know you’re in Europe when a restaurant won’t open for dinner before 8:30), and there was already a huge line. Thankfully, we were still among the first to get in. To give you an idea about how popular this place is, the line was so long that some people who were in line BEFORE IT OPENED needed to wait until the first batch of people filled the two floors and outside patio, finished their meals, and left before they could get seated. Anyways, since the prices were good, we ordered a lot, and thus had an expensive meal anyways. (It doesn’t seem so expensive until you convert the euros to dollars, and then think “Oh yeah… crap.”) Afterwards, we went to the Irish pub a couple doors down from our hostel, where we made friends with the Australian doorman, and the two bartenders from New Zealand and Wales. I love English speakers. I’m thoroughly convinced we are some of the friendliest people in the world. Katie and I were the guinea pigs for the New Zealand bartender- she would try to design her own cocktails and give us each a shotglass full of whatever she’d come up with to try it out, and they were usually pretty good. We went to bed early because we had to get up at 6:30 to take the metro to the bus station to catch the 2-hour bus to the airport to catch the 4-hour plane to catch the 1.5-hour train to finally get back to Freiburg. We set our alarms and call Aymi one more time. Still no response.

The next morning, Aymi wasn’t on the bus. This bus company schedules its buses to Girona to correspond with Ryanair flights. We figured it’d be no big deal, as there was another flight 30 minutes after ours, and she could still be on time if she took the bus intended for that flight. We get to the airport, we check in, we eat breakfast, then we go to watch the arrival of the second Barcelona Bus. She’s not on that one either. We call, and it goes straight to voicemail. So we go through security and hope she found a cab. Eventually the plane takes off without her. When we land, we call a friend to make sure Aymi hadn’t tried to contact her. She hadn’t, so we decide if there are no e-mails when we get back to Freiburg, we’ll call the program. This was a terrible situation as we left for our Western Europe field study the next day, and if you miss the group departure, you’re responsible for making (and paying for) your own arrangements to meet up with the group. Katie and I decided to facebook stalk Aymi to find out what her friend’s last name is, then I tracked Aymi’s friend down on Skype, where I discovered that Aymi’s phone had died (which was why we couldn’t get a hold of her), and they lost track of time eating breakfast. By the time they got to the bus station, they realized the next bus to Girona wouldn’t arrive in time for our flight. She could take a cab for 120 euros, but there was no guarantee that would make it on time either. Since Girona is a small airport, there’s no guarantee there’d be another flight to southern Germany that day. So she went to the main Barcelona airport, and said “I need a flight to southern Germany, but not to Munich.” Eventually she paid an extraordinary fee to get on a flight to Stuttgart, had an adventure with her train connections, and made it, exhausted, back to Freiburg and caught the bus to Luxembourg the next day. All without crying or smoking a single cigarette, which we were very proud of her for.

Pictures are on the photo page.

Grenoble, France: I’m walking to dinner, minding my own business. A little girl comes up to me and says, “Excuse me, mademoiselle, are you married?” I think she’s just a kid being a kid, so I lean down and tell her that I’m too young but I hope to one day find a handsome, charming man to marry. She says “Good, follow me,” grabs my hand, pulls me into the restaurant where there’s a group of 5 or 6 men ranging from 30ish to 45ish. One crosses his arms, looks at me, and says, “So you’re single.”

I had to pull a knife on a guy a couple weeks later. People seem to find the fact that I carry one “badass.”

For Munich sketchballs, see the Oktoberfest post.

Geneva, Switzerland: Still in my business clothes from earlier that day, I’m walking back to the hotel from dinner. A man comes up to me and says, “You are beautiful, but I see you are too expensive for me.” At least if you think I look like a hooker, you think I’m an expensive one.

Budapest, Hungary: I tend to swing my arms when I walk quickly, and as I extend my arm in front of me, a man walking towards me grabs my hand. I yank it back, walk a couple steps, and then pause a split second in disbelief. I turn around, half wondering if that actually just happened. The guy is still standing there staring at me.

Freiburg, Germany: Today on the way to class, a man sits beside me, tells me in English that I’m beautiful, which is weird because I hadn’t said a word and wasn’t wearing anything to identify myself as American, and starts rubbing his inner thighs. Better than mine, but still. Wie sagt man “creepy?” I got off at the next stop and entered a different car.

And I’m off to Barcelona this weekend, where I fully expect more stories to add to this post.

When I returned from Eastern Europe, I had an awful week consisting of being sick, writing three papers, and finishing my State Department application. As a reward for that week, I had booked myself a trip with four friends to Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain. (If you’ve heard of Ibiza, Majorca is the largest island in the same chain.) And I have to brag about my find: I took the advice of some Australian tourists my mom and I had met in London and checked out a popular Australian site- wotif.com. Our 4-star hotel within walking distance of the beach was €30 per person per night. The hostels I’m looking at for my upcoming trip to Barcelona cost about that.

The day I left was something else. I came to class at 9am, found out that the train we were hoping to take wouldn’t work out, so we needed to take a train at 9:30 pm. That stresses me out because I wasnät packed, and the soonest I could have gotten back to my dorm was 8pm. Between classes, I found out that my computer ate part of my paper, and I needed to rewrite it. (I’m still scared to see the grade for that paper). But I finished my paper, packed all I needed quickly, and caught my train. We got to the airport in Basel 7 hours early! Sleeping was nearly impossible, as the airport was freezing. I went to use the restroom, saw that it was being cleaned and felt that it was really warm. Being the heat seeking missile that I am, I waited until the woman was done cleaning, curled up on the diaper changing table, and had a much better night’s sleep than anyone else in my group.

Our hotel was in Portal Nous, which is about 15 minutes outside of Palma, the main city. Strangely enough, it reminded me of Laguna Beach. The houses were obviously nice, but not big. You could sort of meander through the winding streets that eventually all seem to lead to the beach. There were families with dogs everywhere. Since Portal Nous is a haven for expats, you hear lots of English. I felt nostalgic, as my mom grew up in Huntington Beach, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Orange County visiting my grandparents. We spent Friday exploring the beach and the harbor, swimming in the Mediterranean, lounging by the pool. It was like a nice slumber party in some ways. For dinner, we went to the Flintstones Cafe (Iäm not joking!), which had a type of pizza my family had in England. My dad’s been on a quest to find this type of pizza- really thin crust, not a lot of sauce or cheese, so no taste really dominates–ever since. And the sangria was really, really good.

The second day, we took the bus into Palma, the main city. We walked around, shopped, went to the Cathedral, and were about to embark on a walk along the coast when Danielle realized her purse was gone. Her life was in this purse- her passport, her credit card, several health insurance cards, her social security card, her driver’s license. (Major life lesson everyone… separate your resources!!!) It took an inordinate amount of time to find a police station because virtually no one spoke English, French, or German, we spoke very little Spanish, and even what we could say confused them because we learned Mexican Spanish, not Castillian. (Is policia really incomprehensible, or do you really insist on adding the lisp- polithia?) When we could find someone who spoke our language, they often didnät know where the police were. It took forever to file the report. I took a cab back to the hotel with Danielle, and the others were supposed to be behind us in the bus. Similar mishaps happened, and they showed up about 3 hours later. I spent those hours in the room, mostly by myself as Danielle was on the phone with her mom, starving, and getting bitchier by the second because I had gone way too long without eating a full meal. I had tried to eat earlier, but I realized after climbing into the cab that my vegetarian egg salad takeout totally had tuna in it, and it was so gross (and so not vegetarian) that I ate just enough to keep myself from passing out, and nothing more.

Getting home wasnät hard, surprisingly. Pickpocketing and passport theft is so common in Spain that most Spanish airports will let you on with a police report. The one glitch, however, was that we didnät know that the clocks changed that weekend, and couldn’t figure out why no one was there to check in passengers 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to start.

Midterms were not terrible. One had a lot of gotcha questions that I didn’t think were terribly fair. But no matter… I was just informed that I got an internship to the US Mission to NATO in Brussels this summer! Well, I will get it as long as I get a Security Clearance, which shouldn’t be a problem since I donät do drugs and have not been involved with people who committed terrorist acts while I was 8. It was completely unexpected. Normally, the EU Center of California picks two finalists and an alternate. NATO picks which of the finalists to take, but occasionally offers the internship to both. This year, they not only took both finalists, but they offered it to me, the alternate as well because they really liked my application. I’m glad it happened this way. This is so much better than getting it only because two other people dropped out. So I’ve been giddy. I could find out this evening that I didnät get a good grade on that paper I rewrote, but it wouldnät matter since I donät need to worry about summer plans or all that nonsense. Finding an internship was so stressful last semester, and I’m so glad that I know what Iäm doing by the end of October.

Be forewarned, I’m writing this on a German keyboard, and this post will probably have many typos. Again, picture links are in the password-protected page and on facebook.

Budapest, Hungary: My first morning in beautiful Budapest, I went to two meetings at the Central European University, an American-accredited graduate school that PAYS most of its students, in addition to providing housing… Obviously, that information caught my attention, and the following speech successfully kept it. When the Iron Curtain fell, Hungary was considered one of the most stable of the post-Communist countries. Now, it is one of the least, and its economy is nearly in shambles. Its last election marked the first time a Prime Minister had been reelected, but he did so only by completely lying about the state of the economy. A speech to Parliament where he acknowledged this, said his party did nothing to be proud of and needed to fix this effing country (his words, not mine) was leaked, causing the right to call for a recall, which hasnät taken place, so there are continual protests.  In any case, Hungary seems like a very interesting place to study politics or economics. The next speech is pretty much a fog. I donät remember anything, and I can’t read my notes because I couldnät control my hands. I had a seizure that afternoon, almost as soon as I got back to the hotel from the meetings. That, needless to say, was terrifzing, and I was really worried that that would continue on throughout the trip. It didnät, thankfully, but I think the fact that much of my first day there was shot really contributes to my desire to go back.

Once I recovered, I walked around Pest (pronounced Pesht) with some girls from my program for a bit. I had some good vanilla ice cream that I’m pretty sure was alcoholic before crossing the bridge into Buda. This bridge was guarded by lions that were designed to be 100% anatomically correct. The architect was so confident in his lions that he said he would jump into the Danube if anyone found a flaw. An inspection showed these lions had no tongues, and the poor architect jumped to his death.  That evening, IES took us on a Danube river cruise at sunset so we could see the city at night. I saw so much along the banks that I wanted to see- just the banks alone! I was sleepy after the day’s ordeal, so I went to a grocery store, grabbed snacks, and crashed at about 9pm.

The next morning, we toured the Hungarian Parliament. I’ve seen a few parliaments, but this one is by far the most beautiful. If you haven’t already seen my pictures, please look at them. This was a beautiful building. Afterwards, IES offered a free tour of the House of Terror, which was a museum of communist torture. Since I’d had so little free time the day before, I found someone who was willing to go back into Buda with me, where we walked along the Danube to find the Rock Church (a church built into the rocks of one of the hills of Buda) and the Citadel (a monument on top of one of said hills.) I think that was a good call, in retrospect. I’m glad I had some time in the city. Afterwards, we board a bus for the ride to…

Bratislava, Slovakia: This was one of the first times IES took us to Bratislava, and I think they did it mostly to break up the long bus ride between Budapest and Prague. Our bus let us off right in front of the castle, which is being renovated and is thus covered by a giant advertisement. Yay, capitalism. It was interesting looking at the city from the castle, however. On one side of the Danube, you saw a lot of grey Sovietness. On the other, you saw the pretty old town. Bratislava is interesting because it only became a capital when the Czech Republic and Slovakia split in 1993. You didn’t catch the same sense of history that you would in other capitals. Once we got to our hotel, we decided to go on a quest for dinner at this student restaurant and bar that was in Aymi’s Let’s Go guide (which I highly recommend for students on a budget, and they always mention vegetarian options). The waitress, adorned in a BARtislava t-shirt, recommended the national dish, Bryndzové Halušky, which is a lot of mini dumplings covered in cream sauce and sheep cheese. It doesnät look prettz… in fact, I think my dog has left me presents that look like this, but it was still filling and quite yummy.

More meetings on day 2. The most interesting thing I got out of it is that they think their economy is in great shape, even though over 50% of their economy is controlled by 5 foreign companies (3 automotive, 2 electronic… both are taking hits in the financial crisis), they have the highest unemployment rate in Europe, which should be compounded by the fact that many Slovakian labor immigrants will probably need to start coming back as the economies in Western Europe tank. BUT they get the Euro soon, so all is good, see?

Exploring Bratislava by day gave me an appreciation for just how quirky the city is. I think of it as the Berkeley of European capitals. There were a ton of random statues- a man climbing out of one of the potholes, a man peering around the corner with his camera, a man leaning over one of the benches. (I think I posted pictures of all of these.) And we found the Blue Church, which seriously looks like it came out of Candyland. We left in the afternoon for…

Prague, Czech Republic: It is unreal how beautiful this city is. I think I could live here, if it werenät for all the tourists. The first full day, we went to meetings (I’ll spare you the deals this time), took a walking tour, saw the square where the Prague Spring was suppressed, and walked around the Jewish quarter. We had a yummy Czech dinner- I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was for spinach! I tried Czech beer, which is so much better than that crap we drink in America. Which brings me to the Budweiser story:

American Budweiser was named after Budweis, a town in the CR that has its own brewery. Twentz zears after American Budweiser was created, Budweis named its own beer Budweiser. This makes sense, most European beers are named after the city in which they’re brewed. (Freiburger is disgusting, by the way.) Long legal battles ensued. Finally, it was agreed that Czech Budweiser can’t be sold in the US, while American Budweiser would be sold under the name Anheuser-Busch. Ultimately, I think we lost. (More info on Bud)

We had the second day to ourselves to explore. Normally, they take us through the Jewish quarter, but everything was closed due to holidays.They wanted to make sure only worshipers were in the synagogues, or something silly like that. So we went to the Prague Castle, St. Vitus Cathedral, famous Prague market, walked through the Old Town and into the house where Franz Kafka was born. The evening concluded with Mexican food, which was nice to have after being out of California for so long.

Auschwitz: Needless to say, this was incredibly hard. To see the Arbeit Macht Frei sign, and room after room filled with children’s shoes, women’s hair, suitcases, toys, and any other thing you can think of is heartbreaking. Then they took us to Birkenau, (if you’re thinking of Auschwitz, you’re probably actually thinking of Birkenau, which was the death camp a couple kilometers away). It still smells. You can still smell the ash over 60 years later. I think that is the only way to comprehend the enormity of what happened. How many people do you need to kill, how much ash to generate, that it would still smell 63 years later? I didn’t take many pictures. It didn’t feel right to me.

Krakow, Poland: Krakow was also quite beautiful. I was supposed to meet a fellow CMCer there, but I had run out of cellphone credit and had no way to tell her that our bus had gotten lost. So I showed up a half hour late, and she wasn’t there. Thankfully I was in a fully populated area, and the Krakow taxis were known for being really honest, even if it was painfully obvious you spoke no Polish. Our time in Krakow was brief. We had meetings. I had my “academic session,” where groups of 5 or 6 meet with the IES chaperone, he buys us lunch, and we discuss what we’ve learned in the trip. Pirogi are also really good. Thankfully, I can usually find vegetarian food, I was just really, really sick of potatoes by the end of the trip. Then we took a walking tour. My favorite story of Krakow is about the dragon and it#s slayer. A dragon had hibernated for centuries in a deep cave, and, one day, silly boys awoke it. The city was terrorized, and the king offered his daughter as a reward to anyone who could slay this multi-headed dragon. So Krakus, a very wise shoemaker, fed a sheep a large breakfast of sulfur and tied it up outside the dragon’s cave. The dragon ate it for breakfast, then walked to the river for a drink. The water interacted with the sulfur, and the dragon exploded. The word Krakow means Krakus’ city.

I am getting way too much spam on my blog, so I decided to password protect any post with photo links. I don’t want all the creepers posting comments with links to porn, viagra, xanax, etc to be looking at them. If you are facebook friends with me, you can of course still view the inordinate number of pictures I have posted by heading to my page. If not, e-mail me and I will be happy to send you the password.

In the now protected post below, I announced that I had consolidated links to all my study abroad photo albums in the “Pictures” page (link is on the right.) This page is still up, but is now also password protected.