Procrastination

I'm sure inventing all kinds of procrastination methods to avoid doing my work (including writing blog posts).. it's actually kind of ridiculous. But, I'm much more interested in going out to see things in Rome than I am in being stuck on my computer all the time.

I've made a list of a bunch of things I want to make sure I do before I leave Rome (less than a month? Really? How?). I've then been at least trying to get one thing checked off each day.

Sunday, I wandered around the Janiculum Hill area, and went on a big walk through some of the parks and trails up there. I meant to go to the Tempietto for St. Peter, but I forgot to look up exactly where it is before I left and I didn't see it (apparently, it's pretty much where I entered the area, I just didn't see it. I'll just have to go back).

Monday, I went out to the EUR neighborhood of Rome with Colleen, where there is a lot of fascist architecture and monuments. I don't really know a lot about them, and I should have done the research before I went, but I guess better late than never.

Tuesday, I went somewhere there was supposedly an antique books/prints market, but turns out I'd already been over there and it was really lame. I also tried to go to the Church Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, but I was there during the time when they are closed in the afternoon, so I have to go back. I did find a discoteque called Xanadu, though, which really amused me.

Friday, I headed up to Northern Rome with Collen, and we went up to Quartiere Coppede, which was a funky little neighborhood with a frog fountain and cool buildings. The architecture had all kinds of cool patterns and decorations, and there were also some neat frescoes. It felt a little bit like one of those creepy gated communities, though, since there were all these people that were staring at us, and a couple guys laughing at us for taking some pictures.. it was weird. Then we headed over to MACRO, a contemporary art museum. It was super confusing, we had no clue where to go, really, since there was absolutely no signage. It was set up in a weird way, where you had to go up a flight of stairs, look at small galleries on either side of the stairs, then cross a little skywalk to the other side of the building, for those galleries, then up again, in a back and forth motion. There was a cool interactive piece that was all puzzles that had pictures of atomic bomb explosions, where the number of pieces was directly related to how powerful the explosion was...

Not sure what's on for the rest of the time, but I have plenty of things on my list to choose from..

purple

I just realized how crazy it is that I chose purple for this blog before I even left.. it's only so fitting with all the purple EVERYWHERE.

NFT: III

NFT, Sunday (Stockholm):
-struggled to get up from our comfy comfy beds
-ate a good breakfast at the hostel
-so much walking all day! We dropped our stuff off at the train station, and it felt oddly pretty warm outside at this point.
-The city felt actually pretty dead, even still at 11am. It was weird, it felt like we were walking around way before everyone was awake or something...
-We finally found a bunch of people in the courtyard of City Hall, which was a pretty interesting building
-walked to Gamla Stan, the old part of the town.
-there was a guy working in some chocolate shop there that was the most swedish-looking guy I've ever seen. He was awesome.
-walked over to the National Museum, but just saw a little free exhibit
-Went to a Dance museum, there were costumes and paintings and drawings and music videos (ballet to MJ)
-Then, it felt super chilly, so we went back to where we were storing our stuff to get more layers
-grabbed food at some Tex Mex place for lunch. There were cucumbers in everything, which was really weird. Also, I've been craving tortilla chips, but the tortilla chips we got had some nasty flavoring on them (mine were cheese, and they tasted like mac 'n' cheese powder), and they were not satisfying. But still, the Tex Mex was kind of exciting... don't have that in Rome!
-Headed over to the cultural center, saw a big model of the city of Stockholm and all its islands
-started heading towards an area with a few more museums and parks
-found a monster truck and an ice skating rink! Meghann was so excited...
-We wandered around for a while, then came back to the rink as it was getting dark (since it started to get dark around 3:30...)
-it was so weird to not be in total control of myself ice skating, the rental skates were so horrible (not unexpected, though). Dull blades and no support!
-Some guy was hockey break dance skating??? It was weird. It was a lot of figure skating turns.. on hockey skates, with hip hop attitude?
-went back to Gamla Stan, stopped at a cafe for some Glogg, the swedish spiced wine. yum.
-after more wandering, got some thai food for dinner
-then waited at the train station for our overnight bus

Monday (Oslo):
-the bus wasn't as bad as I was expecting, I did actually get some rest (or I must have, even if I didn't feel like it, because the bus ride felt way shorter than 6 hours)
-the bus arrived in Oslo at 5:30am, which was a half hour EARLY. We were not happy (Meghann was REALLY not happy)
-since it was still dark outside and we were sleepy, we just sat in the train station for a while, until things opened up and it started to get lighter outside. Then we got coffee and thought about starting our day. We stored our bags, then off we went!
-We walked down the empty main shopping drag, then out more in the town.
-FALL! It was fall here, crunchy leaves everywhere!
-Headed down to the water, there were starfish. It was exciting!
-after more walking around that part of town, we headed to Vigelandsparken, a park just outside of the center of town. There were lots of small children playing on the playground, and we went to look at all the sculptures and up the hill to overlook the park
-it was really beautiful, even though a lot of the foliage was dead and orange
-went back to the main part of town, ate lunch at a bakery. We got sandwiches and two goodies, and shared them. The fruit and nut scone we got was really great!
-headed out to the Viking Ship Museum. It was impressive how low the boats must have sat in the water and how well preserved they were. Definitely interesting
-there were skeletons there, too, of the bodies they found buried in the ships. They had all kinds of write-ups on all these crazy details they speculate about the lives of the people. Crazy how they can tell that from such a small amount of in-tact bones.
-for some reason, it was really hard for Meghann and I to play our cheesy postcard game.. they were just kind of boring, not any really bad ones. It's funny how much we both perked up when we actually found some bad ones, haha
-as it was starting to get a little dark and we were getting tired, we headed to our hostel and took showers
-We went back out to explore again. We were going to go to the National museum, but it was closed since it was Monday, so we just wandered around by the University. Then we found a really awesome coffee shop that looked like some mod 60s basement and got some hot chocolate. very cozy.
-then we picked up some dinner, and headed back to the hostel to relax and sleep before getting up early for our flight the next morning.
-we saw in a convenience store some cans that looked like cat or dog food, but had pictures of children on them... kid food?

Tuesday:
-We got up super early to catch a bus to the airport, except when we got to the bus terminal, there was not a bus to the airport we needed until 10:30, but our flight left at 10:20, so that was a huge problem
-luckily, people speak English pretty well, so we asked at the info desk (and ended up picking up some Italian guy who was also on our flight in the same predicament)
-Luckily, there was a train going, but the timing was going to be tight
-the flight got delayed, so we had extra time
-flight home
-there was a really pushy annoying guy for one of the bus companies at the airport back in Rome, making fun of us for buying tickets for a different company since HIS bus company had a bus there while ours did not. The last thing I wanted while coming home from a super long tiring trip was to deal with pushy Italians, but I guess we didn't manage to avoid that one..
-but, finally, it was great to be back at our apartment for a while.

Overall, I really liked everywhere we went. I thought Basel was really cute, and had a nice comfortable, old kind of feeling. Zurich was a little cold and uninteresting until we found the lake and the old part of town, then it definitely felt like it had a lot more personality. Stockholm was way bigger than I expected it to be, but it was really cool. Everyone there seemed so put together. Oslo was great, maybe my favorite of this trip. It was very friendly and cozy, and the people seemed pretty happy and genuine.

maybe the best 50 cents I've spent?

Ah, a little tiny happy green in my life. Should've done this earlier.

NFT: II

PAST:

Friday:

-got up and went to the archives of the Design Museum of Zurich, listened to a great talk about some of the Swiss pieces she pulled out for us
-mechanical of Herbert Matter's, works by Jan Tschicold and many others, Sagmeister's biz card in person, Univers sample book, BEAUTIFUL book designed by Irma Boom, looked like a big black cube.. mm.
-had to by myself a copy of that book from the Design Museum shop... it was too nice to pass up, even though it made my backpack so much heavier.
-tasty soup for lunch
-then.. ROSEMARIE TISSI, of Odermatt and Tissi.
-She was so cute! used a slide projector with real slides, talked a lot about her currency project
-"I don't know, don't ask me that," I'm totally using that in reference to my design decisions sometime. If she can, I can, right?
-then, explored Zurich a little bit
-found a super cute park with swings, and old men playing giant chess games
-found the lake, definitely made me feel better about Zurich, as we'd only really seen industrial areas.
-wandered around the older part of Zurich, found where Rosemarie's Studio was

Saturday:
-train ride back to Milan: through the Alps, it was absolutely gorgeous! Mountains, lakes, trees, countryside!
-about an hour in the train station, then bus to the airport
-long wait at the airport, but we ate bagel sandwiches (first time I've seen a bagel around)
-flight to Stockholm, getting a bus to town was ridiculously easy and cheap
-when to our hostel, which was a funny building on the top of a hill just outside of the main part of town. Meghann said it reminded her of some Jet Li movie. It was the skinniest room ever, only wide enough for two twin beds, with no room between them, or them and the walls. There were no windows, either. BUT, the beds were SO COMFORTABLE Meghann and I had lots of trouble getting up in the morning (not that this is really a new thing, but it was way worse than normal.. so comfy...


PRESENT:
I love Rome.

NFT: I

PAST:

North Field Trip:
Tues. Night
-starting same day as returning from Berlin... stressful, no time to do much but pack! Had to do emergency hat/mittens shopping to prepare
-my back hurt and I had a little cough this day, but it didn't seem to be a big deal
-overnight train. apparently these are ending after December, last chance for these!
-the cabin was SO TINY, and there were six beds crammed in there.. we actually ended up going to bed pretty much right away, even though it was only 9. A couple people in our cabin weren't feeling so well, and there wasn't enough room to sit up a little and read, so sleep it was.
-the train felt so slow. I slept great... until about 1:30 am
-they gave us a nasty packaged muffin thing for breakfast.. it was not really edible.

Wednesday
1 hour in Bern, waiting at train station, Meghann got bowled over by some Swiss dude, then train to Basel
-had about 45 minutes to wander around. Found a store that had beautiful scarves on sale, but it wasn't open. Got cappuccinos, my back started to hurt really bad
-Poster presentation by Dr. Rolf Thalman at the Basel Poster Museum. Beautiful Swiss Posters, it was really great to see them full size and in person, especially some of the Herbert Matter ones. There were posters and ID cards stuffed all over the little room. It was really interesting, but I was starting to feel a little feverish and my back was hurting, so it was getting really difficult for me to stand and listen....
-free time for a couple hours, ate and drank a lot of orange juice, wandered around some shops
-napped on the bus ride out to Vitra, in Germany just across the border
-Vitra: long tour, mostly of the architure. Big names: Gehry, Bucky Fuller, Zaha Hadid (who did the crazy disorienting fire house)
-the showrooms were the best part: fun, beautiful furniture and objects!
-napped back to Basel, then off to the hostel
-went out for Chinese, it was actually pretty decent Chinese, and a great change from Italian food.
-since I wasn't feeling well, it was straight to bed for me then...

Thursday
-free morning, wandered around.. I felt better, still super stuffy, but at least I could handle standing up for long chunks of time.
-found a couple cool churches, more gothic style, it was a nice change
-one church had an exhibition of some interesting woven rugs, I'm not sure where they were from, but they were totally different than things we see in Italy.
-found a great view
-WHY was there a table full of metal vegetables at one of the churches??? I'll never know.
-met back up with class and headed over to the Paper Mill Museum.
-wrote with real feather quills, hand-made paper, marbled paper, set type and letterpressed
-train to Zurich, then long trek out to Hostel
-ate at some pizza place, had a crazy veggie pizza (green beans, eggplant, strange!), major language barrier here.. none of us have any inkling of German...
-really bad cough this day, so straight to bed again.


PRESENT:

Today, I did the cooking class with Robert Huber (aka Johnny Depp according to some people..haha), one of the art history professors. It wasn't so much cooking class as eating marathon. We basically spent about five and a half hours eating and drinking wine.. not so much time actually cooking. A little time was spent watching in the kitchen and listening and not a ton.
Antipasti: Some sort of thingly sliced potatoes with goat cheese on a bed of lettuce, with balsamic vinaigrette, frittate (like an onion omelette), boar sausage, bread
Primi Piatti: Handmade mushroom and ricotta ravioli with cream sauce and porcini mushrooms
Secondi Piatti: Guinea foul, wrapped in prosciutto, with green beans, potatoes, and pear sauce
Dessert: White chocolate mousse with chocolate shavings, rum, raspberries and a mint leaf.
It was extremely tasty, and fun because we were with mostly interior students, too, so there wasn't really any talk of projects going on.

I was looking forward all week to this dance night some of the interior girls were talking about, with Boyz Noize DJing. ALL WEEK, I was super excited about it. Then we found out that it was way farther away than they thought it was... so disappointing!

Berlin

This is going to get really fragmentary and list-like.. sorry...

-with Karen, Leah, Laura and Becky

SATURDAY
-Met them at 5 a.m., headed out to Termini station, took a bus to Ciampino airport. There was a cat wandering around in the airport. He hid underneath the seats.
-arrived in Frankfurt, had 7-8ish hour layover. did NOT know that... that's what I get for not helping plan, I guess. Luckily I had plenty of sketching to do. We hung out at the cafe, went for a walk outside (it was actually fall here! colors and trees, crisp air!)
-German words are really long...
-Arrived in Berlin around 9pm, got picked up from the airport by Becky's friend Henning and his friend Noah. On the way back to Noah's place, we stopped to pick up some Doner Kebaps (these were super delicious, and really cheap) and beer (oh, they have beer that is actually decent in Germany, hooray!)
-Sat around at Noah's apartment for a bit, with some of his and Henning's friends.. there were three languages being spoken, it was kinda crazy.
-I was super tired, but they all wanted to go out, Henning wanted to take us dancing. We didn't even GO out until after 2am. It was a long journey to get there, and the place had a few different dance floors. None of them had really great music, though. Was not so much a fan of the hip hop one where everyone spent all their time. We didn't get back to Noah's apt until about 6am.

SUNDAY
-Noah was a great host: got us breakfast.. fresh bread (whole grain kind, yum!), and tomatoes and many homemade jellies and jams and honey and nutella, yum yum. It was delicious.
-long journey north of Berlin to Sachsenhausen concentration camp
-although this really goes without saying, the camp was sad.. depressing to think that TONS of ashes of human remains were found.
-there was great signage there, though, and the design nerd in me was happy.
-it got really cold and windy, especially as the afternoon was getting later
-on the way back to the train, we picked up some hot mulled wine. yum.
-went downtown (finally). When we finally emerged from train/metro stations, we were in the middle of some magical Christmas market. It was super exciting! Lights and people in costume and candy and everything. There was a big built hill with fake snow you could sled down...
-saw Sony Center, very cool, futuristic looking.
-went to a mexican restaurant for dinner.. even though it wasn't great mexican food, it was still great to have that. It's certainly one thing you can't really find in Rome.

MONDAY
-explored Berlin all day by ourselves. Noah had class. He was worried about us getting lost, it was cute. We were totally fine, though.
-cold and rainy rainy rainy this day.
-walked along the edge of the Tiergarten to get to the Bauhaus museum. The museum did not have too much to display, as the building is under construction and so much stuff is at MoMA in NYC right now (man, I go to Europe, to Berlin, and go see this stuff, and it's actually in the States right now? Really?). We did see some nice teapots, a bunch of chairs and architectural models, and a really great photography exhibit, though.
-long walk through the Tiergarten back up (fall colors and puddles and singing in the rain, oh boy!)
-Brandenburg Gate-- there were some tugboats being held upside down in a little structure behind it.. not quite so sure why.
-Currywurst for lunch. Pretty good. Also, it came with french fries, which I haven't had the whole time I've been here. Weird.
-Holocaust Memorial, very powerful.
-cafe for a cappuccino. It's nice that they have coffee shops you can actually hang out in there. I miss that.
-Berlin Wall. we missed the 20th anniversary by a weekend, bummer.
-back to the Christmas market, we went SLEDDING. it was awesome, then got some treats.
-flew back to Frankfurt this evening

TUESDAY
-woke up bright and early from our tiny room at the B&B, flew back to Rome.
-arrived back at the apartment around 11:30.. mere hours before leaving for the North Field Trip. Crazy.

unpacking

so, sorry, still not going to write about my trip... but I just wanted to share just how much stuff got shoved into one backback for the trip...

how you say?

Saturday, October 31:
Rome > Frankfurt > Berlin

Sunday, November 1:
Berlin

Monday, November 2:
Berlin > Frankfurt

Tuesday, November 3:
Frankfurt > Rome > Overnight Train

Wednesday, November 4:
Bern > Basel > Vitra > Basel

Thursday, November 5:
Basel > Zurich

Friday, November 6:
Zurich

Saturday, November 7:
Zurich > Milan > Stockholm

Sunday, November 8:
Stockholm > Overnight Bus

Monday, November 9:
Oslo

Tuesday, November 10:
Oslo > Rome

--

yikes.

new pictures up here.
writing to come later.