Athena Blogs

There a was a place near my house that served the best lasagna in Florence for 3 euro. This was a little treasure of mine so I went there everyday. After that, I would have a glass of wine with my roommates on our porch that overlooked the city. Then there was usually some kind of class, then dinner at the little family owned trattoria in an alley by my house. Then, sitting on the porch and reading until bed or going to a bar to meet friends. I never got too much into the bar scene - too many clubs playing bad music. Then I had my finals.

Lately I have been on a climbing trip. First, my friends and I went to Sardegna. This is a little island off of the coast. If you ever come to Italy, this is a place that you have to go. We camped on the beach for free and climbed all day. We had good seafood except for once when I didn't know what 'cuttle fish skewered' meant. It is one of the most beautiful and friendly places I have been to. We sat by a fire with people from New Zealand and Germany all night and talked about everything from our home countires to the problems of global warming.

After that, we went to Cortina in the Dolomites to do long routes with many pitches, but the weather shut us down and we had to leave for La Spezia, the city near Cinque Terra. Here we hiked all day to find a climb that took us until dark, and then we camped on the side of a trail.

It is the last week before exams and things are coming to a close. I have a couple of papers to write and presentations to give, but nothing unmanageable. Other than that, I am planning what to do after school gets out. I am going on a rock climbing tour of Europe. My friends and I are going to Sardinia, Switzerland, and France. I am figuring out what to do with my things; i.e. how to ship things back and where I can store luggage. None of that has been hard, though, because there is a store that does both.

Most of the people that I have talked to are pretty ready to go home. I can't decide if I'm excited or not. There are people that I want to see, and the comfort of going back to the United States sounds appealing, but I think that I could stay and learn more out here by traveling longer. I learned most of what I learned in Europe from traveling and people-watching. The people in different places have different attitudes and it's fun to try and copy those attitudes for a short period of time. It also teaches that the U.S. mind set is not the only one, but just one in a thousand.

This week, I took a long weekend and went to Amsterdam. It was well worth it. Amsterdam blew away all of my expectations. I thought that I would walk into Amsterdam and it would live up to all of the stereotypes that it's known for, specifically the culture of the seedy 'Red Light District'. This isn't true at all.

Everything there is discreet and laid back. Amsterdam is one of the classiest places I have ever been. It is also one of the happiest and safest places I have been. Everyone runs around smiling and talkative because they are free in a way that I can't explain. They have the most laid back way of life. Not everything is serious. I knew my attitude toward life would change after living in Europe but it has never had a greater and more immediate change than after Amsterdam. The people there just want the best for everyone else and love to live their lives. It seems like small problems that constantly plague the minds of most people don't even exist there.

When Earnest Hemmingway spent time in Spain, he drank and wrote at Bar Marsalle. On my last night of Spring Break I made a point of drinking in the same place that Hemmingway wrote some of 'The Sun Also Rises,' one of the best books he ever written. I'm a Writing major, so this was one of the best experiences I have ever had. It's probably not the same atmosphere as it was in his time, as today it is packed shoulder to shoulder so no one could have moved a pencil, much less written a masterpiece.

But I could just see how he got inspired from being in that place. The bottles on the wall still have dust and the furniture looks like it hasn't been changed since the 30's. I may have been sitting in the same place that Hemmingway sat. I took in the feeling of the place, while drinking the same drink he drank. I couldn't have picked a better way to end my spring break. For me, the symbolic beauty of the bar was much better than the beauty of the Gaudi architecture.

I went from Spain back to Florence, and this weekend I'll be in Interlaken, Switzerland to do a combination of skiing, rock climbing, and jumping out of an airplane. The good stuff never ends. There is always something to do and somewhere to go.

It's Spring Break and I'm in Barcelona. I am staying at a hostel on the beach. The weather report said it was going to be cold, but instead it has been warm and beautiful. The sand is like no other sand I've ever seen before. It is more like fine, soft soil.

Today I went to the Park Guell. This is a park made by the most famous architect in Spain - Gaudi. The place is themed after 20,000 leagues under the sea. In the front of the park is a an enormous piece of art that you feel you become part of. From a distance everything looks like it has barnacles on it. The park itself is a series of long and winding paths. At the top there is what looks like the top of the tallest tower of the castle. A man sits by it and plays water music. From here you have a great view of all of Barcelona and far out into the Meditteranean Sea.