confusion

Well, as soon as I finish this posting I will turn off my laptop, back it in my bag and head downstairs to wait for the cab which will take me to Heathrow to catch my plane back to the US.

And so my year abroad comes to an end… Bitter sweet—I want to see home and friends and get a job, but I would have liked to get that job in Europe and stay here for a few years, while I am still young.

Much in my life has changed over the past 9 months; there has been pain, joy, disappointment and awe. I have a new canon of stories to tell but it remains to be seen if I will be telling them to the same people I told my C’ville stories to.

I will see many of you soon, most for the first time since I left. Some of you will not be around for a while, and I will eagerly await your return, and some of you I will have to wait too long to see as I am leaving you now. But to all of you I say, thank you for being my friends and keeping in touch. I miss you all.

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Ok, so I got up early this morning to go to the Tower of London—I figure that I should see it seeing as how I have been here for nine months and it’s just down the road. So the Tower is about a mile walk, and half way there I turned the corner and ran smack into a blocked off street. No way to the other side, both sides lined with barricades and police men walking up and down. Seems I was half way between St. Paul’s, where there was a church service commemorating the first 50 years of Queen E’s reign, and the City Guild Hall, where there was a state lunch afterwards. I asked the police if I could cross the street but they said I would have to walk back around (doubling my journey) or wait till the motorcade was passed. I decided to wait. An hour later the motorcade finally arrived, led by a brand new Rolls Royce with the Queen and Prince Philip in it. I managed to snap a few pictures—yea me, I hope they come out.

I think it’s cool that I was here for the Queens 50th Jubilee celebration, though I did not go down to the actually party by the Palace the whole city has been one big party all weekend (we will ignore the fact that the Queen’s celebration is competing with the World Cup pub parties.) I did not expect to actually see the Queen while I was here in England, how often does one actually see her in person?

Anyway, I did make it to the Tower later. Very cool, lots of history and bloody tails. “Off wit ‘is ‘ead!” Walking around the White Tower (the original “Tower” ordered built by William the Conqueror in 1078) and the Bloody Tower (where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned for 13 years) is very cool, but the best part has to be the Crown Jewels. They have their own building and the collection is amazing. The two largest cut diamonds in the world, the largest being the Cullinan I at 530 carets! The sparkle of this diamond must been seen to be believed. She sheer number of diamonds in the Crown Jewels collection is staggering! I think they could spare me a few!

I went to an amazing exibit today, called Körperwelten, or Body Worlds in English. The basis is the anatomical display of the human body (and a few other animals) using a new type of preservation technique called Plastination where the bodies are forcefully impregnated with various types of polymers to preserve the flesh and bone in a such a state that they appear to still be living. This allows the layers to be literally pealed back and cut away showing the structure in a way not possible before. The overall effect is amazing—it must be seen to be fully appreciated, words just don’t work.

OK, now Americans are being warned that their may be suicide (or as the Bush administration now calls them homicide) bombers planning to hit America. Now, I cannot see worse thing for Islamic militants to do (excuse me for jumping to conclusions but based on the what I have seen most suicide bombers are Islamic militants.) Americans already have little sympathy for the “plight” of Palestinians, and little love of Islam in general thanks to the violent interpretation of the teachings which have lead to the Intifada, the Taliban and many plane hijackings and bombings in the past 25 years. If militants decide to bring their dynamite hugging ways to Americans soil then they will have signed a blank check for Bush and the American war hawks. I do not want to seem as though I am waving a pro-America/anti-Islam flag here, but the entire Arab world would be hard pressed to stand against the full might of the American war machine—and that is what will be unleashed on them, sooner or later, if suicide bombers come to America… unless the leaders of these countries (an Palestine) can find a way to curb the terrorist instincts of their malcontents.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here for real, so this will be a “catch up” entry.

First: Well I guess I have given J███████ and K██ enough time to spread the news themselves—It’s been more than a month since I caught up with them in Florence, so with out further ado, Congratulations to J███████ and K██ on their engagement!

Second: Exams. I took my last three exams over the last two weeks. I think I did okay on all of them – not stellar, but then again I just get pass/fail credit for these classes. So once these exams are graded and the transcript sent back to George Mason via Syracuse I should (barring any bureaucratic nightmares—which we all know I will have to endure) graduate with a very nice GPA on my BS in Computer Science. Yea me!

Third: To be added to the “only in Beggs’ world” file (right next to losing of wallet in Florence): I broke my glasses during the middle of exams. A replacement pair has drained my cash resources so much that I had to change my coming home date—I will be arriving in DC on the sixth of June rather than the twenty first. Boo hoo, as much as I miss my friends and many other things in NoVa I would really have liked to stretch my time here in Europe as long as I could. But so be it—Beggs is coming…

Forth: Job, or lack there off… I STILL don’t have a job. Any suggestions? I talked with my old boss at Genesis and I *might* be able to get my old job back—this time as a full employ rather than an intern/associate. That would be cool, I really liked working at Genesis.

Now, where was I in the Europe trip? Ah yes, Milan (or Milano). A█████ and I where to meet up in Milan but I got there a few hours before him. So I marched off to find a hotel—my guide book said that there where many low cost but nice hotels near the train station. So I decided not to stow my back pack at the train station—big mistake! I spent the next hour and a half walking from hotel to hotel being told that they where “completemento,” Italian for full, go somewhere else. A█████ called me somewhere about the 100th hotel and I gave him directions to where I was—I had not made it too far yet, the book was right, there where *a lot* of hotels near the central station.

So A█████ and I met and decided to look into a lead I had just got from a desk man at one of the hotels. He said that they where full but their sister hotel had a room that was reserved but the reserver had not showed up, they did not expect him to show up and if he was not there by midnight then we could have the room. So he gave me directions to that hotel… about a miles walk. (uff, my back pack was starting to get heavy.)

A█████ and I lugged out bags to this other hotel where we were told we could drop our bags while we continued to look for a room and got something to eat. So we dropped the bags and headed out, more to find food than a hotel. We ended up, after a suitable number of rejections at hotels in a little place over by Corso Como. They had amazing food—my first true Italian food—Pizza and Capresse (I have no idea how to spell that! But it’s fresh tomato slices and fresh Buffalo Mozzarella with Basel—yummy!) And a really good bottle of red wine.

We looked for a hotel for a little while longer then just headed back the the one our bag where at, we figured that if we did not get the room we would just hike back to the train station and sleep there. We did not have to sleep in the train station – the guy who had reserved the room never showed up, but for some reason we where told we had to be out by 7 am, so we went to bed at 1 and had to be up by 6! The room had one double bed and a cot/collapsible bed. We flipped for it and I got the cot. At some point before we went to sleep I sat up on my elbow to say something and BOOM! I found myself half on the floor, half on the now half collapsed cot! Seams the supports for the bed shift very easily and my elbow shoved a few of them out of the way… Needless to say we got quite a few laughs out of Beggs breaking the bed.

Six am is too early to get up and shower when you are on vacation! But we got up and ready to go by seven, then went down stairs to wait for breakfast, served at half past seven. They even served Nutella for breakfast! Anyway, after breakfast we headed back to the train station to find the turism office and see if they could find us a room.

Well the people in front of us got the last room that the tourism office knew about, but they did give us a book with the addresses and phone numbers of all the hotels in town. We did however find out that the big deal in town was—seams there where no hotel rooms because of some FURNITURE CONVENTION! (Only to me does this shit happen!) Anyway A█████ and I spent the next 45 minutes in the dinner at the train station calling every hotel in the book that we could afford. In the end we found one, a little costly at 100 Euro a night but oh well and they could not guarantee us the second night we needed, but it was a bed.

Now that we had a place to sleep and dump out backpacks we decided to go out and get down to some serious sight seeing… and it decided to rain right on cue! C’est la vie, we went and did our touristing in the rain. We proceeded to see, the Castello Sforzesco, the Duomo and the Last Supper (that was sold out but A█████ Charmed the girlie at the counter and she let us in!) as well as a lot of other smaller things over the next two days. We did not get to see the Opera House (la Scala) because it was closed for renovations—and excuse to go back! We also gorged ourselves on pasta (ohh, Gnocchi!) and Gellato (Yummy!) and did quite a lot of sitting in bars and drinking, including one incident where the waitress got a good laugh out of A█████. When you ordered drinks at this particular bar they brought you a plate of various nuts and pickles to go with your drink, now after they gave us the plate of goodies the waitress brought us another small saucer plate, nothing on it. So A█████ assumes this is for the bill and proceeds to pile his money and change onto it. A minute or so later we hear the two waitresses in the corner giggling to each other. Then one of them tells A█████ that the plat is for the nut shells not the bill. So A█████ proceeded to turn a darker shade of red than his bloody mary (helps that the waitress was a twenty something, good looking girl…)

Anyway, we got up early the third morning to catch a train to Verona for the day before heading off to Venice… but I am tired of typing and will save that one for later…