Where Have I Been?

It's a bit ironic that the two times I manage to post on this blog are when I'm sitting on my couch in New Jersey. Chad, I apologize to you, my friend. Thank you for holding this blog together and articulating our trip with accuracy and wit.

To be fair, I was going to post. I really was! We were in Munich and I had just written my newest blog post, with words and pictures and stuff. And alas, technology and I got in a fight, everything was erased, and I found myself saying "I'll do it tomorrow" for the next two weeks of our trip. So I'll briefly sum up my experiences in each city before I become a slave to the jet lag that is screaming "why the hell are you awake right now?".

Tuscany: 

Before meeting up with Chad, my parents and I joined a whole team of my mom's closest friends from work and their families for an adventure in the middle of (beautiful) nowhere.  Highlights include:

The Peccioli Pastries

Dad making pasta!

• Peccioli, a nearby town with a tiny restaurant that became the hit of the trip. Our first visit, we were incredibly hungry and she fed us amazing meats and cheeses. The second trip, she brought us samples of almost everything. The third time? She gave us dessert before dinner. Did I mention she's a pastry chef? It felt like we were eating in an old friend's house. And it was delicious. 
• Our villa sat on a hill that took about 5 dirt roads to get to.
• Mom drove our car into a ditch. Sorry if you're reading this, Mom, but the world needs to know how hilarious this experience was (after our initial shock of "oh shit we're in a ditch"). 
• We took a cooking class where we stewed pork in chianti and made our own pasta. Even Dad cooked (and I have the evidence!). 
• Florence, San Gimignano, Lucca, Pisa, and Siena showed us the beautiful Tuscan countryside.
• You have to pay to pee, everywhere you go. No joke. 
• Best thing I ate: Vegetable lasagna with smoked mozzarella.

Sicily:

Where we saw the family. The whole, giant family composed of my Nonna's brothers and sisters, first cousins, second cousins, cousins once removed. Just a lot of family, beach, and food. Liz and I couldn't figure out why we were so exhausted most of the trip- it was the quite literal "food coma."

The cousins

• I will be incorporating a siesta (nap) time into my American life style. Please do not disturb between 3 and 4:30pm daily. 
• Granita=Italian ice for breakfast. 
• Unexpected things I ate: octopus, swordfish. Both were delicious!
• Best thing I ate: Arancini (rice balls stuffed with meat, cheese, and sauce). That's real Sicilian right there. 

Rome:

We saw all the must-see, touristy things. Twice. Once while mom was still with us, and then again when Chad joined us for his first ever Roma experience. I never appreciated it as much in my middle school history classes, but wow, the Romans were incredibly smart. While everything in Rome is old and beautiful, seeing what was left of the Roman Forum re-solidified the awe I have for their advances in technology and government. Highlights:

• More family to see!
• The Trevi fountain had no water in it, the first time we went. They were cleaning out all the bird crap.
• We stumbled upon a cool wine-bar, where the owner-bartender-DJ understood good music (Ella Fitzgerald and Marvin Gaye were two of his favorites) and played classic movies on his four television screens.
• Best thing I ate: Salad. Liz and I were so stuffed with pasta from our Sicilian food-fest, vegetables tasted like heaven.

Lake Como:

• Serene, gorgeous, beautiful. That's all you need to know. 
• We found George Clooney's house! (Kidding.)

Munich:

Oh man, Germany is cool. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. Highlights:

• The English Gardens were incredible. They reminded me of Central Park- rivers, sunbathers, people kicking around a football, surfers in the wave-pool, and the Chinese Tower Beer Garden. 
• This is by far where people were the most friendly to us. And we didn't even speak the language (though we did try!). 
• Best thing I ate: The bratwurst. The sauerkraut. The pretzels that were bigger than my face. The schnitzel. And the beer. Yup, that's basically everything we ate there. 

Dijon: 

• A cute little town in the south-eastern part of France, where we learned about wine and, more importantly, CHEESE. 
• A little secret: Dijon is supposed to make dijon mustard, right? Well, yeah. But, only one company makes one type of original mustard that is actually made in Dijon. Everything else is an impostor that is actually made in Canada. But whatever, we like mustard and we bought some anyway. 
• Best thing I ate: The cheese, obviously. 

Paris:

Yes, I did go to Paris twice on this trip, and I couldn't be more thrilled. I adore Paris. It stole my heart. Even though Italy will always be very special to me, what with the whole "I'm Sicilian and my family is there and I speak the language and I think the ability to make Italian food must be in my blood somewhere right??" thing, Paris has to be one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. We never ran out of things to do. In fact, I wish I had another month there to accomplish everything. Highlights:

The Macarons

• People in France are nice. We earnestly attempted to order everything in French when we went out for food or coffee; we were successful and well received!
• Notre Dame is incredible and I pretended that Quasimodo was ringing the bells. 
• We watched a dress rehearsal/sound check of an orchestra and opera company perform a concert version of Carmen in front of the Eiffel Tower, in preparation for Bastille Day. 
• The winding side streets of Marais and the Latin Quarter are so cool. I could get lost in this city for hours and not panic about being lost, that's how much I love it. 
• The Louvre was incredible. The vast amount of art in this one museum alone, never mind the rest of the city, is mind-blowing.
• Best thing(s) I ate: The macaroons. The crepes stuffed with Nutella and bananas. THE FALAFEL. 

THE MACARONS

Did I mention the macarons?

Tea Time!

London:

• Apparently London was in the middle of their heatwave. We caught the hottest day in 7 years. 
• Westminster Abbey and Poet's Corner is beyond amazing. 
• HARRODS. Will they let me live there?
• The British Library's collection of manuscripts, original compositions by Handel, Vaughn Williams, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, the earliest editions of Shakespeare's work, and handwritten lyrics from McCartney and Lennon were incredible.
• We did tea time. With scones and finger sandwiches. 
• THE ROYAL BABY WAS BORN WHILE WE WERE THERE. 
• Best thing I ate: Chips with malt vinegar (British chips, mind you). And those finger sandwiches. 




These booths had "No Faking" signs on them. Whoops.

The most important lesson that I experienced first hand while we were in Europe: there are genuinely kind people in the world. Normally I'd call them "friendly strangers," but I'm inclined to call them "kind souls" instead. The word "stranger" makes me think of the "don't talk to strangers" rule we learn when we're small. I'm incredibly thankful for even the smallest results of our interactions with the kind souls we met. Here are a few:

• When we were forced off the train somewhere in Switzerland, and told we had to take 3 more commuter trains to get to Zurich, we actually had no idea that this was what the train crew was telling us to do. A kind soul, whose name we did not learn, escorted us onto each train and talked to us like we were old friends. When he left us in Zurich, we knew that we could never have navigated our way around those Swiss train stations without his help, especially with our many language barriers. 
• Another woman told us where to buy the best Swiss chocolate in the Zurich station. 
• A older British man in Como saw us struggling to find a map, after a shop owner tried to rip us off, and offered us his copy from his Best Western hotel. 
• And then there was the two-year old who I sat next to on the train in Germany. I had the toddler's toys dumped all over my lap while she happily taught me the German names for her farm animals. Her excitement made the 4 hour train ride more than bearable. 
• Chad and I overheard the words "Ann Arbor" in the middle of Dijon, France, and met a girl who is going to be an exchange student in the fall at the University of Michigan. Studying psychology. Ten bucks we have every class together. Just goes to show that the Maize and Blue really are everywhere!

Well, I'd like to say that just about covers it, but that's completely untrue. Guess you had to be there! Now I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm graduating in 5 months from college and have to be a real person. But first, I'll sleep and maybe find the motivation to unpack.

Storming the Bastille, Fireworks, and Other non-American Red White and Blue Things

My dearest friends,

We did go to Dijon, a wonderful mini-Paris in the Burgundy wine region of France, and it was wonderful, but I am moving on to something else because it was lots of fun. To sum up Dijon was:

Wine
Cheese
Beautiful

I'm aware those are not all descriptive parts of speech, but they are exactly what Dijon was, so let's all accept that and move on to...

BASTILLE DAY!

Guys I don't know how it happened but when Szolla and I planned this trip we somehow
randomly landed in Paris on Bastille Day. I said Yes this is great And I want to do all of the special Bastille Day things. The first of which is a military parade on the Champs Elysees, which I can now pronounce correctly after years of not even attempting to do so.

I woke real early, like 7:00 am, in order to make it to the parade's start by 8:00 am. I did. The place already looked like this:

By the time the parade was about to start, by which I mean the President drives by at 10:00 am and the real parade doesn't start for another half an hour, it looked like this:

Now there's a little gap there where security guys are checking people's bags and belongings in order for them to move up. I was to scared to try because I don't speak any French. This disability left me in fear for the entire time we were in the country. But there were four rows of people behind me, two rows in front to the barrier, then at least three more in the front section FOR THE WHOLE CHAMPS ELYSEES. That's a lot of people. Speaking of a person, here's the President!

This is the current President of France. The short one. He is also starring as Jean Valjean in Les Mis and baking all of the baguettes. The tall man next to him is, of course, playing Javert. Lotsa' tension on that there humvee.

After the President this happened:

My favorite part of the parade. Sorry, President Valjean. Next came troop after troops of soldiers marching in very silly uniforms. Notable differences between the French military and the American:

Way more soldiers have swords.

Soldiers who don't have swords have big old machine guns with bayonets.

Soldiers who don't have either had what appeared to be giant red axes.

Some uniforms have hats with fuzzy poms on top, some have feathers, berets, lots of shiny metal ones.

They have a cavalry unit that must do very little in terms of modern warfare.

Crowds cheer for the Foreign Legion but for NOBODY ELSE. No idea why.

I didn't eat before the parade and it ended at noon so I was deceased by the time the mounted troops went by. I left and devoured a baguette, baked specially for me by the President, and wandered to the Eiffel Tower to lounge for a bit. I walked from there down the Seine to Notre Dame. 

Guys it is really hard not to sing Les Mis and Hunchback songs while walking the streets of Paris

"Do you hear the people sing?
And by people I mean me.
Oh you do, okay, I'll try to sing
in a softer key!

 But it is especially hard to stand inside Notre Dame and not yell

"SANCTUARY! SANCTUARY!"

I held it in. Painfully so. Here's Notre Dame.

If you want a really good look at it, watch Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which I will be playing Claude Frollo at some point in my life yet to be determined.

I slept for a bit then sped off to my second Bastille Day activity: A concert in front of the Eiffel Tower with fireworks!

I arrived to find the lawn full all the way to the Peace Memorial and the concert hadn't even started yet. Tucking in the back, I sat next to one nice woman from Los Angeles and another from Pennsylvania. We were all like,

"People smoke so much here."

"I know! How rude!"

I'm a hit with Moms... ladies.

People then started smoking all around us and blowing said smoke in our direction to which I responded with a coughing fit, tears, and a lot of passive aggression... ladies.

I couldn't see the concert or hear it very well because all of these smokers were also playing their own music. The ones who weren't smoking or playing weird Latin music (it's like, know your holiday, idiots) were standing blocking the view of all us other plebeians relegated to respectful sitting. They were doing some sort of concert version of the Opera Carmen. I couldn't hear it.

Just as I was about to turn my plastered on brooding French face into a genuine sad Chad face, it happened.

The lights on stage became bright. Idiot smokers started standing around me. A powerful baritone voice starts booming this song in French.

Everybody starts singing along.

The entire lawn in front of me and all of the people who filled in behind us during the concert start singing in unison. I gather it must be the French national anthem, but I really have no idea. Whatever it was, it was the best part of the day thus far.

I remain on the outside looking in on this French culture that I don't understand and don't particularly enjoy, but in this moment the same people who were just ignoring the Opera and ruining the day for all of the other peasants turned and joined the people in the front who had been listening attentively. Even I stood and I had no idea what was going on. We all just stood up and started singing. And the weird thing, the melody of that song was stuck in my head the whole next day. I was just making up French-ish words to try and keep singing it. I finally felt included in France after being relegated to the role of touristy American for the entire first part. I finally liked France a little bit.

I will say, I was surprised the French national anthem was not a song from Les Mis, but in writing this blog post I realize my idea of France is constructed mostly on the foundation of two pieces of popular culture.

But guys fireworks. Check these out. They did fun things with the tower.

Red!

Rainbow!

And this was the end of the show.

Oh cool I didn't know that would be a gif. Neat. Technology. Anyway, all of the bright things in front of me that aren't fireworks are people with their phones. There are as many people from me to the tower as there are behind me. It was a wild event of human collective awesomeness.

I walked back home from the tower for the second time that day, except THIS time there were food carts! The time sped by a little faster with a basket of French fries and a Belgian beer. My feet hurt, but that's what you get for having a once-in-a-lifetime experience, methinks.

Just a few final things, as I think this will be my last post.

Paris is to New York City as Munich is to Chicago. I feel almost exactly the same about both. Walking through Paris is like walking through a painting. Walking through Munich is like walking in a real place. Lots of people want to live in a painting, I just don't think I could do it. Further confidence Chicago is the place I will spend the next portion of my life.

I'm writing this in London right now. I start my Shakespeare program on July 22nd. I'll leave a London post to Szolla and Liz, as they're the real travelers here. For me, it's kind of home for a little bit.

I hope you enjoyed reading the blog. I don't know for sure who's reading, excepting mine and Szolla's mothers, but I hope you squeezed a little fun out of it, you non-mothers out there. 

For a final time.

Warmest regards,

Chad Rhiness

Chinese Towers, Alanguagewithoutspaces, and Other German Things

My dearest friends,

We had little idea what to expect from Germany. I had high hopes, hearing from others that the people spoke English and were wonderfully inviting. I stopped listening after "English" because they said the rest in German and I don't speak a lick-a that.

That wasn't an issue.

Munich was a delight. Thought our cab ride was through a metro area, we emerged from our easily navigable metro station, Odeonplatz, at a gorgeous open square. A monument of a man on horseback flanked by two lions (somewhat of thing here in Munich) sat before us, a cathedral with yellow stone and ornate greening broze minarets to our right. Side streets zip out with shops, cafes, and old buildings in every direction.

We spend the day in Munich's English Garden, which is more of park and had few Englishmen at first glance, but thus continues a blossoming motif of confusion in these European countries. At one entrance there is a small damming of the river that stirs up a small, but churning, bit of rapids. Locals surf here, winding back and forth at the mouth till they take a dive. The line of surfers is constant, casual, and orderly. A few friends at home will be happy to know that the gender distribution was nearly even, and the women kicked an equivalent amount of ass at River surfing, if not more. I could have watched them all day. Pictures aren't working, but there are some of these guys and my coin on the Facebooks.

Lunch was at the famous Chinese Tower Biergarter (confusion enough for you?), and we finally got ahold of some bratwurst, sauerkraut, and an entire liter of weissbier. A liter. That's plenty for any American. The Germans, however, seem to function at this level of inebriation rather well, and even mothers taking care of their children drank more beer than I did. Thinking I know I thing or two about the beers I like, and not expecting to enjoy any weissbier, the Germans do it right. I savor the memory of it as I right this blog post mildly buzzed on French wine. Don't let that influence your perception of it. I am completely capable of writing in this state.

aand wenext went to someplacebuhibkuiagbt

See that's a joke. I'm fine.

Munich continues the batch of contradictive confusion to which Rome first introduced me. The Opera house sits next to an old Cathedral above a street that rivals the shops on New York City's fifth ave. Yet somehow I still felt like I was in Ann arbor. Italy I felt on edge, touristy. France I feel like I have to put on a bit, wear nice shirts and stuff. Germany feels like home. Even the language barrier faded after I figured out how to pronounce a few words.

Munich is the first stop on the trip that makes me want to come back. It makes me want to see all of Germany. I hope to feel the same way about London. I doubt I will feel the same way about France. But some day I'm going to get a really nice bike and ride all over this country. It's wonderful. Wundebar, even.

I alluded to a bit of train difficulty in my last post, but after recent events a few delays in Switzerland hardly compares to the tragedy in France. Best wishes to those near Paris as we make our way there tomorrow.

Warmest regards,

Chad Rhiness

Validation, Lakes, and Other Grueling Tasks

My dearest friends,

It's 4:40 am when we wake to leave Rome. It's been hot. Really hot. We're heading to Lake Como.

The ride to the train station is shorter than expected, leaving us plenty of time to catch our 7:07 am train. All we have to do is get our Euro Rail pass validated.

That's all we have to do.

You see, the Euro Rail pass is a good deal. We get nice reserved seats. We have all of our tickets. They all get a nice little discount. All you have to do is validate it with a human being working at a ticket booth. That way they know you're using this pass from this date to this date and after that date you need to stop traveling.

It's 5:30 am. There are no human beings working ticket booths. There is a ticket booth right in front of us, but, as a reminder to you, the audience, it's five in the flipping morning.

"It's now the very witching time of night," Hamlet said to Chad as Szolla tried to find a human being. I KNOW, HAMLET. GO KILL POLONIUS ALREADY.

Szolla checks with a lady working some sort of shop. She says they open at 6:20. We start to get ancy. The private train company, Italo, is already open with four people working, but they're private and fancy and won't validate our tickets. Idiots.

6:20 comes and goes. Ticket office remains human-beingless.

The trouble isn't getting on the train. That's fine. Just about anybody could. It isn't like a plane where they over-book. Tons of seats are open on most trains. But when they come and check the tickets and ask to see our passes they had better be validated or we're getting hit with a 200 Euro fine. Each. That's a lot of Euros, and about ten thousand Dollars (I think).

I'm preparing to buy us a new ticket to Milan so we can make our connection. It would set us back 80 Euro a piece, but that's better than being out a ticket to Milan and Como.

Szolla goes to ask the Idiot Tren Italo people when the ticket office opens. The lady says quite plainly, "Oh, 7:00 or 8:00," and we almost choke her. The choking we end up doing is that of holding back tears. We were so ready. So prepared. And these dummy dumbs aren't here on time and it's making Szolla very sad and I'm just gonna fight some random Italian, and you know what, Hamlet, just come kill me, yeah, I know, Polonius is behind the --

"There's a light on," Liz says as a gospel choir harmonizes behind her.

A man stamps our passes. We make our train. We connect in Milan. We land in Como. We land in this:

Lago Como

After spending a few days in one of the pinnacles of human achievement, we followed it by spending a day in one of nature's. I'm glad I can post photos here because words cannot describe the beauty of this place. I'll do my best to add a little flare.

This is my coin. My mother gave it to me to take pictures with.
Picture credit: ME. Quote credit: J.R.R. Tolkien, whoever that is.

Lake Como is a sliver of a lake cut through the Alps. Though surrounded by Swiss mountains, Como and the surrounding towns remain distinctly Italian. We settle into this wonderful place and hope, hope to hope, that the worst of our train misery is behind us.

I can assure you, being in the future, it is not.

Thus ends Italy.

Europeans pose for pictures weird. So do I.

Thus begins Germany.

Warmest Regards,

Chad Rhiness

 

Romans, Catholics, and Other Old Things

My dearest friends,

We went to the Trevi Fountain. I threw in a coin and, no, I will not tell you what I wished for because then it won't come true, duh.

Real picture. I know. It's awesome.

The Roman Pantheon, not to be confused with the Greek Parthenon, is importantly distinguished from its Grecian cousin by not being a house of defiléd pagan gods, but a pristine home to the Roman Catholics one true God who replaced the defiléd pagan gods of the Romans when those went out of style in the first century AD.

Zeus, Parthenon. Jesus, Pantheon...

Or is the other way around...

Nonetheless, I spent a moment in the Partheblahueblah below a depiction of Jesus on the cross. Many of my friends know I am not a religious man. In fact, I am openly not a fan of organized religion at all. But when I looked up at the emaciated Jesus cast in broze above me, I understood how much of the world is moved by this image, and that, to the poor, sick or needy, the beauty of the Cathedrals, Basilicas and Duomos of Italy could only have been built by the hand of God.

On our travels we discovered a mystery building near the monument to Vittorio Manuele (many buildings are near this monument because this ego-maniac built himself a building that takes up a whole city block that does nothing but look pretty, though it does that quite well) and I would like to share the process by which we discovered what that building was. You see, there are roughly three types of buildings in old Roma:

1. Churches
The Roman Catholics found themselves with all the money in the known world at some point in human history and built the most magnificent buildings in Rome. We walked into a random one near Vittorio Manuele (see, pretty easy) and there was a priest/bishop/robe wearing guy doing a lecture/sermon/yelling in Italian under a gilded ceiling surrounded by glass chandeliers. Magnificent and a totally typical find in this city. Our random building was not a church because...

2. Government buildings
When surrounded by the age and majesty of a city like this it is easy to forget that they run the country out of this place. Most government buildings announce they are such by handing a big old Italian flag above their front door. That doesn't stop most tourists from wondering aloud,

"SHOULD I GO IN THERE?!???!"

Chad said, aloud, ignoring the giant locked gate and armed guard. Our building had a flag,  so it must have been government-ish, but that is less than the whole story...

3. Really Old Roman Ruins
New Rome surrounds and defends the pieces of Old Rome scattered about the city. Most ruins are difficult to access because they are either being preserved or excavated. Go ahead and toss any pile of red bricks, set of columns, or old Panthaparblarblar-esque paganville in this category. Buildings built to celebrate these slabs of brick, known as something called museums here in Italy, flank our mystery building on each side, asking tourists to flock and making government work less than possible.

I have no idea what the building is, but I think it captures a bit of what I take away from Rome: confusion. Ideally one should feel wildly confused when they take a step into a country where they do not know the language on a continent they have never traveled to before, therein, please call me ideal, and the city set a mirror to my inner workings. On any block in Rome you can find all three of these types of buildings. A man moving from Church to work at the Department of Argiculture to the Old Roman Forum (we found it) hardly need cross the street. Half of the city is trying to advance technology, the economy, the government, half is trying to keep the world in the 1800s and half is literally in the 100s. I know that's three halves, but when you convert to Euros it all makes sense.

We also drank wine. It was yummy.

Oh, did you think this would be an entirely sappy thoughtful adventure? No. It will not be. I will have a drink and a second and then I will lose count. Let us not forget my youthful naiveté, world.

See. I think the world is reading this blog. But a child.

Wine. We found a swanky fun wine bar/book shop that we attended two nights in a row. The man running the place played American music like Ray Charles and Etta James and played movies like La Dolce Vita and Italian Pulp Fiction. He was also drinking steadily the entire time. We loved this spot.





Thanks for sticking with this post, world. The next post will be immediate and include a detailed description of our first train ride from hell. Until then, Ciao!

Warmest Regards,

Chad Rhiness

Ciao and Other Common Sayings

My dearest friends,

I know Szolla claimed in her first post that I would be posting about Ann arbor summer and she would be posting about her month in Europe but neither of us did either of those things and now we're here to say:

"Oopsie doopsie"

 and

"here we go making the second leg of our journey far more communicated."

That being said, I made it to Roma! After eight hours on a plane over the Atlantic, a surprisingly lax passport check, so lax I thought I had missed a step, and a taxi ride, I reunited with my shining shimmering angel, Sarah Szollar. I also met her cousin Liz who is equally shining and shimmering, suggesting that somewhere in their collective gene pool is a singular person of higher shining and shimmering capacity, or they were both the offspring of a shining person and a shimmering person creating a combination of both parts.

Nonetheless, we are together again.

The first thing we did was eat. My travel companions had been loaded with food during their family time in Sicily and vowed that they "couldn't look at another bowl of pasta." I, conversely, stood up in the middle of the piazza and screamed "SOMEBODY PLEASE BRING ME SOME PASTA." Nobody understood what I was saying, of course, because this is Italy and no person who is going to serve you pasta should be able to speak English. If they can, it's a tourist trap, run as fast as you can into the arms of a real Italian.

I had spaghetti carbonara. Fun story about this dish. It was developed during World War Two when the Italians saw Americans with bacon and eggs. Not knowing what to do with the combination of these seemingly silly ingredients, the Italians made pasta (Szolla). And it is delicious.

Speaking of delicious!

The Roman Colosseum. A beautiful old gorgeous thing. Formerly full of gladiator battles to the death, currently full of Asians taking pictures.

After wandering passed the old Roman Forum, which I am not clear on the exact location of because Szolla pointed at six different things and said, "that's part of the old Roman Forum," I succumbed to jetlag. In the middle of the day. For hours. Then I ate a sandwich. Now I am writing this.

Not all of our blog posts will be this comprehensive, nor will I pass out in the middle of the day in a beautiful new country for multiple hours, but I can assure you we will be posting with more frequency.

Warmest Regards,

Chad Rhiness

The Anticipation

I'm a little wary of writing about my Euro-excursion in a blog. This online journal is definitely not meant to say "Hey, family and friends, look at the awesome time I'm having this summer! Let me brag about myself and make you jealous!" That's not the intent, I promise (although if you're a little jealous, sorry, I can't help that Italy is seriously incredible). I'm hoping to be able to update my curious friends and relatives via the internet, without having to tell the same stories over and over. Maybe we'll even get a little creative and start a mini-project on one of our longer train rides (Chad, I'm lookin' at you). Plus, it will make my mother happy to have a play-by-play of the journey once she comes back to America.

Also, Monsieur Chad is going to blog when I'm in Europe and he's still in Ann Arbor. He'll be updating you on the wonders of an AA summer (which, in my humble opinion, is equally as awesome as going to Europe on vacation).

Our Itinerary:
Paris, Tuscany, Sicily, and Rome (with Mama and Papa Szolls).
Rome, Milan, Lake Como, Zurich, Munich, Dijon, Paris, and London (with Chad and Liz, who will be blogging with me!)

This is Mom.

We just realized that we have nothing left to do before we leave for the airport--and we managed to not overpack. It's a miracle!