No cliches please

Greetings from Morocco! Oh no. Wait. That's not true. I am actually in Vienna. So check this out. Apparently BYU decided about a week and a half ago that Morocco was too dangerous for us to visit, so they had us go to Vienna instead. Vienna's great and all, don't get me wrong. But here is what I don't get. For the past two and a half years, Northern Africa and the Middle East have undergone multiple revolutions, and some of the countries are still plagued by civil war. But only now, two weeks before we are set to go, does BYU have an issue with that. Why they didn't have a problem with that several months ago, I just do not understand. Let me fill you all in on Rome now.

Monday was our day at the Forum and the Colloseum. Some random dude from Baltimore named Brent was working as a tour guide, and he asked us if we wanted a guided tour of the Forum. We said yes, so for 20 euro we got a guided tour of the Forum, and we got tickets to the Colloseum, so we did not have to wait in the forever long line. May God bless Brent because that line for the Colloseum was ridiculous, and we just got to walk right in.

Wednesday a couple of us went to the beach in Sorrento. For those of you unfamiliar with your mythological history, that is the place where Hercules buried a nymph. Random trivial information for the day. We had to wake up at 4:30 to catch the bus at 5:40. I don't know how many of you have experienced a foreign beach, so allow me to share my impressions with you. Bikinis and speedos are encouraged, no matter the age, shape or size. Bottoms are required, but tops? Tops are optional. Now you may be asking yourselves, But Andrew, why do you say that? Well I will be more than happy to elaborate. As we walked onto the beach, I noticed that there were an overwhelming majority of men in speedos. That kind of threw me off because a speedo looks just like a bikini bottom, and therefore, from a distance, it is possible to confuse a man wearing a speedo with a topless woman. However, there was one person lying down wearing nothing but a bottom that I just assumed to be a man because no woman would be lying topless on a public beach. Wrong. I realized that this person was indeed a woman when I walked past her. She also happened to be a rather attractive woman. I always thought it was just old people that would get naked at beaches. Speaking of which, I have never seen so many older women in bikinis. Usually women in the states switch back to one pieces after a certain age, but in Italy they will rock that bikini well into their sixties and seventies. Anyway, enough about women and their choice of clothing or lack thereof. For lunch, we got a private boat to take us to a different beach and eat at the restaurant that was there. Jealous yet? There were a bunch of booths set up for tours, and we were talking with one of the women there about what to do, and she said she had a friend who owned a restaurant on a different beach. We thought that sounded great, so she called him up, and he came and picked us up and took us to his restaurant. It was sweet. He even offered us complementary shots, which of course we politely refused. We ended up getting back to our hotel in Rome at about midnight.
Thursday was our day in the Vatican. The entire group did a guided tour. Our guide was a small, blonde Italian woman who was the very definition of spitfire. She was great. The Vatican is freaking crazy. I can't imagine how much it is worth. There was a lot of original art there painted on the walls, so that was pretty cool. We went to St. Peter's as well. I don't know which is crazier, the Vatican or St. Peter's. You just have to see it for yourself to understand. I did see Michelangelo's Pieta. It's incredible, but a lot smaller than I imagined.

Friday was our last day in Rome. We just took it easy because we had pretty much seen everything we wanted to see, and we were just so burnt out. The longer I am on this trip, the easier it is to burn out. I haven't gone this hard since I was on the mission. Blitzing through countries like this really takes its toll. Kinda weird to think that I only have about 10 days left. Vienna has a really classy feel to it. The language barrier is the hardest here of all. At least with French and Italian, there were some similarities with Spanish and English, but German is in its own category. I guess opera and prancing ponies are the things to check out here. No joke, they actually have ballerina horses here. Not exactly my cup of tea, but hey, when in Rome, right?

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore

You have all been fooled into thinking that the brown stuff you eat is actually chocolate. You can blame the liberal media and their conservative agenda for that. I have seen the light, and the light is Swiss chocolate.

Apparently Europe does not believe in wi-fi that actually works. Hence you are getting two blog posts so quickly. I had the previous one written for a while, but due to the inability to access my blog, I was unable to publish it.

Geneva was absolutely gorgeous. It is a much smaller and quieter town compared to London and Paris, but it is in a beautiful location, right beneat the Alps. There isn't much to do as far as sight-seeing goes. However, we did go hiking on our last night there. We took a ski lift up the mountain, hiked around up top, and then hiked back down. We almost got lost coming back down. We ended up in this random, small French town (we actually crossed the border from Switzerland to France coming back down), but one of the locals was kind enough to direct us to the right path. Prices in Geneva are astronomical. I was able to keep my food budget under 15 swiss franks a day. Some of you may not think that is very impressive, so let me put things into perspective for you. A 6-piece chicken McNugget meal from McDonalds is at least 11 swiss franks. So check out me and my mad budgeting skills. Get on this level.

Venice is a very unique city. One thing that no one warned me about is the stench. I guess Venice's sewage system leads to the water. I'll let your imaginations fill you in on how appealing that is. Other than that, the city is incredible. Apparently there was a world-wide art exhibit where countries selected an artist to represent them. Each artist created an exhibit. One of the exhibits depicted abuse of women throughout the world. Women from all over submitted their stories of abuse, and to sign it they took pictures of just their eyes. It was a rather heavy exhibit. Of course, I did the touristy things as well. I went to San Marcos Plaza and held out crackers so that pidgeons would stand on me and eat them. We did a gondola ride as well. I thought for sure the gondola would tip with six people on it. Oh I almost forgot. The bus that took us from Geneva to Venice had an oil leak, so we ended up chilling in some random gas station for 6 hours. We weren't sure if we were gonna make it to Venice that day or just sleep at the gas station. Fortunately, we got the bus fixed. The gas station wasn't that bad either. It was quite large and had a small restaurant in it. We just played cards and mafia for six hours.

Florence is much smaller than I anticipated. We got in to Florence Friday late afternoon. We went to Il Duomo and climbed the top. Right after we got to the top, Mother Nature decided to give us a little bath. Florence looks pretty sweet in the rain. The rain drops were freaking cold though. We went to one of the main plazas for dinner, and it just so happened that there was an orchestra putting on a free concert. So we got to be serenaded by an orchestra to the likes of Michael Jackson, The Beatles, and Abba. The hotel we stayed in was something else. The bedroom had walls of black and white tiles with blue led lights in the grout. So it looked like you were sleeping under the stars. My two roommates and I thought it was pretty cool until we realized that the room was basically designed for honeymooning lovers. We turned them off immediately once we came to that conclusion.

In case you're wondering what the timeline was for the past week, we were in Geneva from Sunday to Wednesday, Venice from Wednesday night to Friday morning, Florence from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, and now I'm sitting in Rome in my hotel bed. We went to church this morning where the 2nd counselor in the Presiding Bishopric was, in addition to one of the counselors in the Primary General Presidency. So that makes 2 out of 3 wards that I've been to in the past 3 weeks that had a general authority there. We went to the Trevy Fountain afterwards, and tonight we are going to make a group dinner to avoid having to eat out again. I think I've had pizza every day for the past 3 days. I would give anything for a steak. Sadly, meat is not a common staple in the European diet. Too bad. Some of these guys look like they could use a few pounds. When there are men wearing shorts that are shorter than some women's shorts, and with thin legs to match, you know that something just isn't right.

Andrew v Louvre

The last Friday in Paris was my favorite day. In the morning we went to the catacombs. That was freaking awesome. Bones on bones on bones. The skulls were really cold to the touch. Of course, right after I touched them I noticed the sign that said "Do not touch". Typical. They should really consider putting those in a more obvious location.

Following the catacombs, I headed directly to Notre Dame. For all of those who have seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame, (great Disney movie. If you haven't seen it, watch it. If you didn't like it, repent.) the animators did an incredible job in replicating the cathedral. There were parts I distinctly recognized from the movie. Anyways, we went in the cathedral and on top as well. Turns out, the people we just happened to be waiting next to in line were the aunt and uncle of one of the girls in our study abroad. Crazy.

However, the culmination of my day, the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, the Bert to my Ernie, the Hermoine to my Ron, was, in fact, the Louvre. And yes, I am being sarcastic. I know there are one or two art lovers who will read this, and of course my mother believes that I need to be culturized by visiting art museums (my friend was kind enough to relay your facebook comment to me, mom). So let me describe my experience with the Louvre in the most cultural/artistic way possible.

In the beginning, some artsy-fartsy wingnut on crack said, Let there be a building dedicated to art from all over the world. And it was done.

On the second day, he said, "Let us put walls to create rooms for our art. But these are no ordinary walls. These are walls designed to trap all those who enter. To ensure that they will never escape. We will create maps and put up signs to give them a false sense of security, but these maps will be coded in a way that it is virtually impossible to figure it out, and the signs will lead to nowhere. And there will be no drinking fountains, and the bathrooms will be few and far between." And it was done.

On the third day he said, "Let us gather the art. All sculptures and statues from ancient times. Paintings big and small, ugly and pretty. As long as the ugly ones are next to the pretty ones, we can still call it art, and people will still pay to see it." And it was done.

On the fourth day he said, "Let us put the Mona Lisa in this building. It is a small painting and very unimpressive, but with the proper PR campaign, we will attract visitors from all over the world and catch them off guard." And it was done.

On the fifth day he said, "Let us put up glass pyramids to denote our art museum from that of the other inferior art museums in the area." And it was done.

On the sixth day, he did a voodoo chant to the gods of the primary colors, Redetaurius, Bluecules, and Yellowdite, and they saw that it was good, and blessed it in their weird artsy way.

And on the seventh day, he rested.

I will let you all make your own interpretations and draw your own conclusions from that. Maybe I got a little carried away, but overall, that is a pretty accurate representation of how I felt inside the Louvre. I literally felt like I was sprinting into a wall over and over again. There were a few parts I liked. There was a room made entirely of marble with ancient Greek statues in there. That was pretty cool. Other than that, I had my fill of art museums for this life and the next. It was like art was being vomited on me from all sides, and I could do nothing but splash around in it. And for those of you thinking that I did not spend enough time in there and therefore I could not adequately appreciate everything, let me put that doubt to rest by saying I spent 2 WHOLE HOURS in there. That equates to two months of normal time in my book. I don't know why time seems to drag on so extensively inside art museums. I swear they are on their own time zone. Because of my experience, I have come up with a new question for dates. How long would you spend in the Louvre? Any answer that is greater than 2 hours automatically constitutes what we call a "deal-breaker". The date will come to an abrupt end, and there will be no second date.

So now I am sitting on a bus on my way to Florence. We have done Geneva and Venice this week, but this blog post is already long enough, so I'll fill you guys in on the next post.

Bonjour, Parlez-Vous Français?

Ah, Paris. The city of relationships and romance. So basically, I'm the walking antithesis here. Now let me catch you all up on what I've been doing for the past week.

Sunday was our last day in London. We went to an early morning sacrament meeting where Elder Cook just happened to be. No big deal. Apparently he was celebrating his 50th anniversary with his wife. Following sacrament, some of us quickly booked it over to Westminster for a church service. That was pretty sweet. I think Westminster was my highlight of London.

We left for London that afternoon, but not before one final good-bye from The Tube. We had to catch the tube to get to the Eurostar. As I was walking through the entrance gate after swiping my card, the gates were kind enough to close on my suitcase and get it lodged. Like completely stuck. I pulled it forward, kicked my suitcase back in, but it would not move. So finally I crouched down, pried the gates open, and pulled my suitcase free. At that point, not only were my classmates laughing, but the Brits who witnessed this were having a good chuckle as well. Final score: Tube 3, Andrew 0.

Monday we spent all day at the Eiffel Tower. For some reason, I thought it would have more of a silver look to it. I met a teacher from Riverton while climbing it. She overheard us talking about school, and so she asked where we were from. When we said BYU, she was really excited to talk to us about the states.

On Wednesday we went to an immigrant neighborhood of mostly Northern African immigrants. Picture, if you will, a group of 15 American students from BYU walking around in a neighborhood of Northern Africans. Oh yeah. We stood out. It was pretty cool though. We got to see a part of Paris that most people don't even know exists. The people were nice and left us alone for the most part. Some of them would say "hello". One chap was even kind enough to offer me a Gucci purse. Why he targeted me out of the rest of the Americans in the group, I'm not sure. I can only assume that either he did it because I'm blonde, or because he thought I was gay. I'm hoping it's the former.

Following our excursion into Africa, we went to Moulin Rouge. Oh my goodness I have never seen so many sex shops on one street before. Several of them had names that were rather...creative. We took a picture at Moulin Rouge, and right then two rather scantily-clad girls showed up. I said, (out loud of course, I don't have a mute button) "Oh look the workers are even here now." Turns out, they were just tourists. Fortunately, they were tourists who don't speak English, so I got a freebie on that one.

On Thursday, the choices of activity were either art museums, shopping, or Disneyland. Of course, being in Europe, and with the themes of the Renaissance and Reformation and this idea of a new birth so prevalent, I chose to go to the art museums in order to do some soul searching. Just kidding. I definitely chose Disneyland. As I explained to a colleague, I will happily pay the price of Disneyland if it means avoiding a day of art museums and a 6-story mall. We snuck onto one of the trains to help save costs. We also took a bunch of the breakfast food from the hotel to avoid paying for food.

Paris is an interesting city. PDA is just kind of accepted around here. It's not completely ridiculous, but it is not really frowned upon like back in the states. For example, I saw a 40 year-old woman straddling her husband at Disneyland yesterday. So classy. Body odor is a prevalent scent. Like I-just-went-to-the-gym-every-day-for-the-past-week-and-never-showered kind of body odor. It's rancid. Oh, my personal favorite, the second day I was here I saw a woman changing shirts. On the street. I just kind of stopped and thought, Did that really just happen? Yes, yes it did. The language barrier is a bit frustrating. I've never had such a strong desire to learn to speak French. Of course, before this, I didn't have any desire to learn to speak French. However, knowing that I'm only here for a week kills any motivation to learn French because by the time I finally learn something, I'll be in Switzerland at that point, enjoying some gourmet chocolate. I lead such a difficult life.

London Bridge is falling down. Ironically, most people don't know which bridge that is.

Alrite my first blog post.  For those of you who were anxiously waiting, wait no longer.  And for those of you just waiting, you also need not wait any longer.  First up, advice for flying internationally:

-Moist toilettes will be provided.

I had no idea I would be taking a mini shower in my seat.  They handed out these moist wipes, and I just held it like, what is this?  Fortunately, the guy sitting next to me had done this before, so he was kind enough to demonstrate how to wipe one's face and hands.  Remember, cleanliness is next to godliness.

-Bring your own food.

Ok, I don't know who they think they're kidding when they hand out "chicken and broccoli".  I know what chicken tastes like, and that piece of rubber they gave me covered in car oil, or as they called it, "gravy", was hardly qualified as edible.  I wonder if the FDA has even stepped inside of a plane because that was definitely not food.

-Be friendly with your airplane partner.

As I was boarding the plane, I looked down the rows to see who I would be sitting next to.  Not gonna lie, when I saw a bald guy who weighed about 220 lbs with a bearded skull tattoo on his right forearm and a beard that was easily 8 inches past his chin, I was pretty excited.  When I got next to him, I said "Looks like we're a couple for the next 9 hours."  He asked me, "Do you snore?"  So I said, "Guess we'll find out!"  Steven, as I would later discover to be his name, is a Brit who commutes to the states for work monthly.  When I asked him about his tattoo, he said, "Well I've got to have the tattoo so I can have the beard.  Otherwise I would just look silly with a tattoo and no beard."  Pretty sound logic.  My favorite part, though, is the fact that Steven is a card-carrying member of a beard club and has actually gone to Vegas to compete in beard competitions.  Apparently there's a show called "Whisker Wars" that documents these beard competitions.  I had no idea this society even existed.  Steven has inspired me to one day grow a beard worthy enough of its own business card.

-Upon arrival in London, do not go to sleep until nighttime.

This has got to be the hardest thing.  On Monday I had like 5 hours of sleep, Tuesday on the plane I got no hours of sleep, and now I have to stay awake until nighttime on Wednesday.  Yeah, not pleasant.  I was falling asleep wherever we went, including on the metro, or as the Londoners call it, the tube.  Apparently I was quite entertaining to watch.

Speaking of The Tube, it does not care for me.  Two instances have led me to this conclusion.  The first is when we were getting on the tube to go to our first meeting.  Everyone got on, and of course right as I'm getting on the doors decide to close with me in the door frame.  So I push the doors back open and step completely inside, and then I release the doors so they can close behind me.  When I did that, the conductor announces over the PA system, "If one of the trains is full, please procede to a following train that has more available room."  Thanks ya jerk.  However, my personal favorite was today when the doors shut on me right as I'm about to get on.  Now, that's a problem because everyone else in the program, including the teacher, was already on the train, and I'm standing on the outside.  I start yelling at everyone asking what our stop was, but no one knew.  So I'm thinking great, I'm gonna be left behind and I don't have a clue where I should get off.  Fortunately, this conductor was a little bit nicer, and he opened the doors to let me get on.

As far as sight-seeing goes, I've managed to hit up Tower Bridge, St. Paul's, Westminster, Big Ben, along with a few other places.  We also hit up the National Art Gallery for about 30 minutes.  That's about 20 minutes longer than I cared to be there.  Not a very good sign seeing as how I've got like 4 more art museums to go, including the Louvre.  We'll see how that goes. 

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to post them.  Not sure how you do that though.  Nor do I guarantee that I will answer them.  I'm just saying you're more than welcome to leave comments.  Eventually I will include pictures, but right now I'm experiencing technical difficulties, and I just don't feel like dealing with them.