Pretty cool weekend, a couple guys and i went down to the Non-catholic cemetery in Testachio with our Philosophy professor to see Anton Gramsci's (a founding member of the italian communist party and we read one of his books in our "Philosophy of Communism and Fascism in Italy" class) grave. We also saw Keats and Shelley's while we were there, and then there is a Pyramide stolen brick by brick from Egypt that one of the Emperors is burried in. Afterwords we were going to go out for drinks, but it was still kinda early so our professor had us over to his house (a couple blocks away) and we ended up just hanging out there and talking philosophy, music, JFRC life and a ton more. After that my friend Scott and I went to a concert. We saw the Cold War Kids, a band i had never heard of, but Scott really liked and they turned out to be really cool, i even got my ticket signed by a couple of the guys in the band after the show, and then we hung out at the bar the concert was at for the rest of the night, good times.
Last night, one of the SLA's knew a guy that owned a bar and so a bunch of kids went there around 12 after we had all gone out to separate places, which was a lot of fun. The bar kinda sucked, but it was good to see all of the JFRC kids out having a good time and smoking was ok inside, which was awesome. After we left there, we went to get Kebap's (and opening a Kebap Stand near campus is how i plan on making my first million) but there wasnt enough room in the cab for all of us, so my friend Nick and decided to take the night bus, but instead of hopping on the close one, we just walked around the city talking for awhile, it was really cool.
Sunday was lazy, just hanging out, so i thought i would give you guys one more little insight into my life here in Rome. Big week coming up for me, and then thanksgiving break, and then its already december (or as we are starting to call it, november 31st, november 32nd, november 33rd.....). This semester has been so awesome, but i miss you guys back home almost as much as i miss rubbing the biliken and consoling Tim. Drop me a message or email so i can see how you guys are doing wrapping up the semester. Have fun out there.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Another regular update
Hey guys, sorry about the fact that i completely forgot about this blog, hell, its only been a month since i have written. This semester got me a little out of the norm (which has been awesome) but i never really set down time to send stuff out. There have been a lot of things that have happened in the mundane, day-to-day life stuff that means a lot to me but wouldn't make a shit bit of difference to you. Just to let you all know this semester has been amazing and i have loved it so far, but at this point i am just going to give you all the highlights of the past month, if you want to know more about any of the things i write about, just drop me an email (jwarmuth@slu.edu).
It is insane to me that i have not written since my day in Rome, and that the one before that was after the first calcio game, that is just impossible for me to understand. I will try to do my best, but even my journal has holes that need to be filled, because it is so hard to remember that i won't remember everything.
I pretty much left off right before fall break. Nothing really happened except for a losing, yet valient effort from the Brewers in the play-offs. it was really nice to know that they could shit the bed for an entire month and the mets would still collapse for us.
Fall break started off with a bang. Emily (Harig, who I traveled with over break)and i got to the air port early enough and we were ready to check in, when all of a sudden i get a phone call, Fly Baboo (our airline) canceled our flight due to lack of passengers. They canceled our flight 65 min before take off. So we got to take the next flight which didn't leave for another 9 hours. Sweet deal. That meant we got into Geneva, Switzerland really late, and i was all for finding a hostel there and salvaging our night, but in the end we decided to take the late train to Interlocken, and we didn't get in until 1 am. Sweet.
Interlocken was a really beautiful city, really small and kind of a flat plain in the alps where mountains rose up on all sides. We met up with our friend Matt McNichol, and his friend Paul, and then Emily and I rented some bikes and explored the beautiful city. There was a bit of a bike path into this amusement park looking place, but when we rode into there a dude yelled at us in German to leave, so we followed his truck with Llamas in the back out the way we came, it was pretty hilarious.
After that, we traveled to Lucerne with Matt, it was another just picturesque town built right along a river with these amazing centuries old bridges. Matt and I spent a couple hours walking down the row of unbelievably expensive shops, laughing at the watches that were less then $30,000 and wondering why anyone would ever need a watch that has loose diamonds just rattling around inside the face. That night we went to the Coop, a grocery store that also had other outlets that looked more like H&M. They had coop brand beer for 65 cents per liter, so we grabbed a bunch of those and drank on the banks of the river for awhile. At night, we went back out to the river to hang out some more, and saw a rat, which we then proceeded to chase with beer cans full of water in an attempt to capture the filthy rodent. There is a video of us taken on Matt's camera which is hilarious, and i should probably repost it so you guys can see it.
After Lucerne Matt went to Amsterdam and we went to Cologne, Germany, a really really cool place. I loved the fact that it was this sweet college town that had this bizarre sense of identity and architecture because the Allies had literally bombed the place to rubble. There are pictures of Cologne from during the war and the only building left standing is the old (and really awesome) church, at least Yossarian had good aim. So they kind of patched the city back together with as many funds as they could find after WWII (read: none). The city was great though, and i met a bartender from Pittsburgh who informed me that they had a shot called the "Green Bay" which is peppermint schnapps and bailey's stacked to be green and gold. I had like 5, it was awesome (and chris, i also ordered a shot of the cheapest whiskey they had, just for you)
After Cologne was Salzburg, Austria, where we did this really awesome "Ice Caves" tour. It is the largest Ice Cave on earth, and it sure seemed like it. The place was so awesome and it was such a cool experience being down in there, and we had this hilarious Australian tour guide. After we were done with the tour, our tour guide and some of his Austrian friends were going to a hockey game, and invited us along. it was so awesome to see hockey again, and the Salzburg team was really good, having won the last two league championships (teams from Austria, Hungary and one other country (i forget) are in the league) and then beat the team they were playing 7-0. After the game everyone went into the bar that was connected to the stadium. One of the guys from the tour was from Salzburg, but claimed to be the "Biggest Green Bay Packers fan in Austria" a claim with I do not dispute. We talked Packers all night and he kept buying me drinks cause he loved the fact that he met someone from Wisconsin. We got pretty shitty, it was great.
Then on to Vienna, probably my favorite of all of the cities we visited. It just embodied a certain time in history so well, it seemed put together all at once by the same architect. and also to be in the same place where Meternick ran shit and the waltz reached perfection was really awesome.
After Vienna, Emily went back to Rome to meet up with her Mom who was in town, and i took a train over to Budapest, Hungary, to meet up with some of the other guys in our program, Matt again, Scott, Mike DiMario (known to some of you as a SLU student and to others as Will's cousin), Paul and Patrick. We all met up with Scott's friend Peter, and went out on the town. It was great traveling around and seeing the sights, but at least i got to spend one drunken night out with the guys. Peter instructed us to get as drunk as possible because he had the perfect hangover cure. The next morning we went to the Hungarian Bath's. Amazing, comforting, relaxing, everything that you could want from a hangover cure, this place had it. I would recommend a trip to Budapest just to use the Baths, it was unreal.
Well that is about it for trip stuff, since then i have had a great time hanging around here in Rome, a city that i have fallen deeply in love with. The weekends are just great chances to go out and see the city, and i dont know how much more traveling i will be doing because i can travel any time i want, but this will probably be the last time in my life that i will live in Rome.
Paddy McShane visited this weekend and we had a great time. It reminded me what a great time SLU was and what amazing friends i had back there, and really gave me my first twinge of homesickness. Plus, I officially missed SLUperbowl, which really sucks, congrats DG, you guys probably deserved it.
Calcio has gone well, we lost a game, but i think our team is poised for a big second half of the season, and there is no doubt we will lead the league in goal differential. Ok, now i am just getting into stuff you guys don't care about.
I hope you are all having a great semester, and feel free to drop me a line anytime.
It is insane to me that i have not written since my day in Rome, and that the one before that was after the first calcio game, that is just impossible for me to understand. I will try to do my best, but even my journal has holes that need to be filled, because it is so hard to remember that i won't remember everything.
I pretty much left off right before fall break. Nothing really happened except for a losing, yet valient effort from the Brewers in the play-offs. it was really nice to know that they could shit the bed for an entire month and the mets would still collapse for us.
Fall break started off with a bang. Emily (Harig, who I traveled with over break)and i got to the air port early enough and we were ready to check in, when all of a sudden i get a phone call, Fly Baboo (our airline) canceled our flight due to lack of passengers. They canceled our flight 65 min before take off. So we got to take the next flight which didn't leave for another 9 hours. Sweet deal. That meant we got into Geneva, Switzerland really late, and i was all for finding a hostel there and salvaging our night, but in the end we decided to take the late train to Interlocken, and we didn't get in until 1 am. Sweet.
Interlocken was a really beautiful city, really small and kind of a flat plain in the alps where mountains rose up on all sides. We met up with our friend Matt McNichol, and his friend Paul, and then Emily and I rented some bikes and explored the beautiful city. There was a bit of a bike path into this amusement park looking place, but when we rode into there a dude yelled at us in German to leave, so we followed his truck with Llamas in the back out the way we came, it was pretty hilarious.
After that, we traveled to Lucerne with Matt, it was another just picturesque town built right along a river with these amazing centuries old bridges. Matt and I spent a couple hours walking down the row of unbelievably expensive shops, laughing at the watches that were less then $30,000 and wondering why anyone would ever need a watch that has loose diamonds just rattling around inside the face. That night we went to the Coop, a grocery store that also had other outlets that looked more like H&M. They had coop brand beer for 65 cents per liter, so we grabbed a bunch of those and drank on the banks of the river for awhile. At night, we went back out to the river to hang out some more, and saw a rat, which we then proceeded to chase with beer cans full of water in an attempt to capture the filthy rodent. There is a video of us taken on Matt's camera which is hilarious, and i should probably repost it so you guys can see it.
After Lucerne Matt went to Amsterdam and we went to Cologne, Germany, a really really cool place. I loved the fact that it was this sweet college town that had this bizarre sense of identity and architecture because the Allies had literally bombed the place to rubble. There are pictures of Cologne from during the war and the only building left standing is the old (and really awesome) church, at least Yossarian had good aim. So they kind of patched the city back together with as many funds as they could find after WWII (read: none). The city was great though, and i met a bartender from Pittsburgh who informed me that they had a shot called the "Green Bay" which is peppermint schnapps and bailey's stacked to be green and gold. I had like 5, it was awesome (and chris, i also ordered a shot of the cheapest whiskey they had, just for you)
After Cologne was Salzburg, Austria, where we did this really awesome "Ice Caves" tour. It is the largest Ice Cave on earth, and it sure seemed like it. The place was so awesome and it was such a cool experience being down in there, and we had this hilarious Australian tour guide. After we were done with the tour, our tour guide and some of his Austrian friends were going to a hockey game, and invited us along. it was so awesome to see hockey again, and the Salzburg team was really good, having won the last two league championships (teams from Austria, Hungary and one other country (i forget) are in the league) and then beat the team they were playing 7-0. After the game everyone went into the bar that was connected to the stadium. One of the guys from the tour was from Salzburg, but claimed to be the "Biggest Green Bay Packers fan in Austria" a claim with I do not dispute. We talked Packers all night and he kept buying me drinks cause he loved the fact that he met someone from Wisconsin. We got pretty shitty, it was great.
Then on to Vienna, probably my favorite of all of the cities we visited. It just embodied a certain time in history so well, it seemed put together all at once by the same architect. and also to be in the same place where Meternick ran shit and the waltz reached perfection was really awesome.
After Vienna, Emily went back to Rome to meet up with her Mom who was in town, and i took a train over to Budapest, Hungary, to meet up with some of the other guys in our program, Matt again, Scott, Mike DiMario (known to some of you as a SLU student and to others as Will's cousin), Paul and Patrick. We all met up with Scott's friend Peter, and went out on the town. It was great traveling around and seeing the sights, but at least i got to spend one drunken night out with the guys. Peter instructed us to get as drunk as possible because he had the perfect hangover cure. The next morning we went to the Hungarian Bath's. Amazing, comforting, relaxing, everything that you could want from a hangover cure, this place had it. I would recommend a trip to Budapest just to use the Baths, it was unreal.
Well that is about it for trip stuff, since then i have had a great time hanging around here in Rome, a city that i have fallen deeply in love with. The weekends are just great chances to go out and see the city, and i dont know how much more traveling i will be doing because i can travel any time i want, but this will probably be the last time in my life that i will live in Rome.
Paddy McShane visited this weekend and we had a great time. It reminded me what a great time SLU was and what amazing friends i had back there, and really gave me my first twinge of homesickness. Plus, I officially missed SLUperbowl, which really sucks, congrats DG, you guys probably deserved it.
Calcio has gone well, we lost a game, but i think our team is poised for a big second half of the season, and there is no doubt we will lead the league in goal differential. Ok, now i am just getting into stuff you guys don't care about.
I hope you are all having a great semester, and feel free to drop me a line anytime.
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