Markus and Brian's Excellent European Adventure

Just Call Me Hansel

Hey there peoples,

What Brian has said is indeed true. I am back with my family being fattened up for the kill once again (as it turns out I lost 6kg between leaving them and coming back) and I plan to check out Berlin, maybe my birth town of Cologne (It's Köln in german, so no jokes about how I smell) and then I plan to meet up with Brian in Paris (I like using brackets because they make my run-on sentences even longer. Woohooo! I'm gonna sing the long song now. long long long long long... sorry).

Anyways, I promised you people some descriptions of Rome, so to counter my usual format of horrendously wordy sentences, I'm going to try things in a concise single-adjective format. Rome was:

Hot. Ancient. Crumbly. Gi-normous. Catacomby. Fat...Ph-Fat that is.

Okay, so maybe I haven't escaped the early 90s and my wielding of adjectives in such a manner has turned out to be more dangerous than descriptive. Maybe adjectives just aren't my thing. Whatever it is, I guess I'll have to resort to the old fashioned paragraphs that I am only slightly more proficient at. Alrighty then, lets cut to the chase: Rome was amazing. In fact, I would have to say that Rome has been my favourite city on this trip thus far for many reasons. Some of these reasons I dare not tell you, some might even disturb you, but what I can say is that there is simply so much that has survived here which is still interesting to look at, that it can do nothing else but blow my fragile little mind. We tried to absorb all that we could in the two meager days that we had, but upon retrospect I realize that this was not nearly enough time to do Rome justice. There is, of course, the intense and excruciating heat to contend with, but as far as history and architecture and sheer jaw-dropping, awe-struck wonderment is concerned, Rome wins my vote hands down. I think the reason that I feel so intensely about this is that I have many other places to compare it too now. I've been to greece and I've seen the condition their temples are in. Sure, the experience is still relevant and intense especially when a little imagination is thrown in on the side, but being impressed by something like the Pantheon in Rome requires nothing more than the two little eyes in my head. First of all, the Pantheon has a one up on most of the stuff in Greece because it's still standing after 2000 years. All of it. But when you see the size of the dome on this thing and consider when it was built, bewilderment is the only natural thing to follow the glance up. I mean, the pyramids are big, but at the end of the day they're a bunch of blocks piled up on one another. When I saw that dome with the knowledge that it had been built over 2000 years ago, I could do nothing more than shake my head and wonder at the ingenuity that must have been used to bring something like it into existence. On top of this you have the coliseum, the Roman Forum, countless fountains, ancient ports, ruins of every size and shape and the list goes on.

Enough of that. I guess I could have summed it up with "If old buildings is your thing, check out Rome.", but then again you should know me by now. After Rome, we found ourselves visiting these five little villages, appropriately called Cinque Terre, which lie on a 12 kilometer long stretch along the Mediterranean sea. The countryside consists of sheer cliffs and green rolling hills and is graced by the presence of the 5 small villages and vineyards in such a manner that can only bring a smile to ones face. Brian and I decided that hiking the narrow and winding path connecting the five towns was the only sensible thing to do when confronted with beauty such as this, and as a result we were richly rewarded with kodak moments galore. I won't share these pictures with you right now, but am content to string you along with empty promises that they are coming soon. What I mean to say is, "Brian has the camera and I don't know when he'll have time to post pictures".

I feel that this is the time to leave you, after being shunned and disappointment, and have only this to say to you in consolation. "your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"

Take it easy,

Markus

P.S. I've been dying to do some inside jokes for a while. I appologize to those who don't get them.

Posted by Markus at July 19, 2003 12:37 AM