HiBAiSHi

My friend Mark found out I was studying at Queen Mary, University of London this summer and invited me to travel through Italy for a week before the semester began. I then invited two of my friends who had followed me to England to come with, and we had a group filled with five guys and one girl who had in common only the fact that they studied engineering at Duke but wanted to do the same in another country. So, along with Mark and I, my friends Ray and Tai came with Mark’s friends Zach and Preeyanka, each of whom I exchanged more words in the first hour after landing than I had ever in my time at Duke.

Thus, we flew to Rome, where fresh from his experience studying in Beijing this summer, Ray taught me the words to “Tong Hua.” Seriously. We sang the chorus on the plane a couple of times until people got upset. I knew the song because a friend of a friend had performed this at Lunar New Year my freshman year where he brandished a pair of homemade angel wings midway through the song. This is the same guy that Paul likes to imitate “practicing his transitions,” or essentially making trance beats at different volumes and pretend like he’s opening the door to a club.

Also, because I feel this is important, since I watched Rocket Science a few weeks ago (and enjoyed an incredible California Burrito wrapped in a Quesadilla), I introduced the Battle Hymn of the Republic into the mix. Without any additional infusion of music, these two songs became theme songs – to the extent that Ray spent time at a hostel looking up the lyrics of these songs and writing down every verse. Incredible idea. Long live the South.

While in Rome we stayed in a hostel so far away that it had an ocean view. Kind of nice the first night when we could frolic and play frisbee in the water, shitty the second and third nights when we realized it would take an hour just to get into the city. As soon as we arrived, Irish people we met at the hostel told us that there was this festival that lasted all night in Rome – that they had even stayed an extra day just to experience it. We went out, and crowds of people were walking everywhere… so we tried to find out where the “party” was…. but then we kept walking until some lady felt sorry for us poor tourists and told us that they weren’t really going anywhere, that this was the night that Rome was open later to celebrate the summer. Long story short, nothing was happening and we wasted time walking back and forth. Still, we repeated this the next few days as we walked around all of the touristy areas and stopping only for photos and gelato.

The night before we headed off to Florence, things became fairly tense. Due to the dynamic of the group and people not getting along previously, a conflict arose involving the way the guys were acting around Preeyanka. The next morning we found out that she had decided not to travel to Venice, the last leg of the trip, and would stay in Florence instead with her friend from high school.

We arrived in Florence and actually stayed in a hostel that was very close to the city. It was also really nice and new, filled with Ikea-type furniture. In Italy they have a cabinet above the sink with holes in the bottom and use it to dry dishes. Very clever, those Italians. The ones who stuck around climbed the Duomo that day, despite the fact that Tai was very scared of heights. Later, Mark’s friend met up with us and invited us to his amazing Italian villa that used to be a former church (to the extent that next to someone’s desk is an altar), and came complete with underground passageways and a massive courtyard, for beerpong of course. Over 100 Duke students are studying in Florence right now, which is absolutely ridiculous. No wonder everyone spoke English to us.

After dinner we learned that they tend to go out and drink about five nights a week, as their classes consist of drawing naked women and walking around to the Uffizi and the Ponte Vecchio to make sketches of famous works by Michelangelo or Botticelli, then getting fucked up. I later learned that a liter of wine is enough for one person, and that you shouldn’t have too much more, otherwise you’ll find yourself passed out later. With pictures taken of you. And you’ll end up puking all the way back because it’s a long walk to your hostel. And that Florence is such a small city that you might end up running into the girl who refused to travel with you anymore while you’re almost passed out and puking everywhere. And that when locals see you on the street puking, they’ll offer to buy you a cigarette. Oh yeah, there’s also apparently this terrorist law in Florence that you have to be in your own house at 11:00 p.m. And you need your passport on you. And that I don’t chew my Fettuicini. And that it would have made a beautiful photograph since it was right in front of the Duomo! Too bad you’ll have to imagine this yourself.

Our last destination was Venice, and traveling had taken its toll in the form of diarrhea for Tai and in the form of the flu for Ray. Mark on the other hand just dropped his camera into the Grand Canal. Again, we ended up staying about a 40 minute train ride from the actual city, but at least this time we had our own kitchen and could cook our own dinners, which were the most filling ones we had in a long time. We spent the day navigating through the labrynth that is Venice and ended up finding the Piazza San Marco after numerous wrong turns into small canals. Also, there are an incredible amount of pigeons there. Its absolutely disgusting because their feathers are everywhere, and my fear of birds combined with my fear of airborne diseases meant that the pigeons circling about scared the shit out of me.

Still, it turned out to be a great vacation. I have some select photos uploaded here, but Zach had the camera that lasted the longest (and had most of the pictures), that I still have no access to. I was going to wait, but there’ll be another update about my first week in London. He mentioned that he was traveling with a GPS and was going to put up a website that tracked every step of our journey with a photograph. So maybe there will be more.