Grumpy for the Holidays

Well it was nice to be home this year for the holidays. I had only been home for a matter of days though before people started to come and stay at my house and I must admit I was a bit of a grump. It really had nothing to do with my family coming to stay at my house. I like a full house, even if I’m really not sure how to entertain everyone. No I was grumpy more because of the family that was not there, specifically my wife. Who is still in Russia do to some fun Gov’t requirements. Hopefully that will end soon and she will be home. However in this final stages I am feeling quite some pressure. We still have a number of fees to pay, airline tickets to buy, and other in-law obligations that are pushing our finances and more importantly our wits to the edge. So I will admit I can be moody. On top of this the roof of my 3 season porch decided to leak and I got to deal with that the weak of Christmas. Plus it is slow at work, normally I am so involved in work only the big items at home get my attention but now I have the time to dwell on what is going on and I am not sure that is a good thing.

So I feel a little bad that I wasn’t the happiest host. Of course I enjoyed having my parents and sister staying with me. I just wasn’t in a good mood in general. We did all the normal Christmas trappings. Opened presents, had a nice dinner (and left overs for the next week), watched some movies, and played some games. It was nice that they came but I think it will be easier when RG comes home and is able to help with the host thing. She is much better than I am about worrying about things around the house and taking care of guests. I just kinda say high, help with the bags, and then let guests fend for themselves. Of course normally I don’t mope around the house as much, or spend so much time on the computer chatting to Russia.

That said I should also mention that I bought a fake tree. Normally I try to buy a tree from the Boy Scouts to help send a kid to camp but this year I didn’t have time to get to the lot and Target was running such a sale I couldn’t pass it up. The fake tree cost me about the same as a real one but should last at least 5 years if not more. I was the same height as I normally get so I had enough trimmings and such to decorate it. One problem though is the Christmas star that I use to top the tree. It is too heavy for the very bendable branches of the tree. I tried everything, using several branches, folding a branch over, balancing the star, etc nothing worked. So I left the star cocked very much to one side. Oh well. Next year I think I will tape a wood dowel to the trunk to support the star.

My parents and sister head out west pretty much right after christmans – I would guess they were sick of dealing with a grumpy me – and I spent New Year’s at an old friend’s house; he threw a small party of maybe 10 people. It was actually very enjoyable. I drank a little bit of vodka and socialized with people I haven’t been able to see enough as I was out of the country. Of course this holiday was also bittersweet as I had to call internationally to wish my wife a Happy New Year and I had no one to kiss. However the promise of the New Year is that she will return to me shortly and we can get back to the business of living our life, though in all honesty the last year has been quite exciting for us to travel the world. But it will be nice to try living at a somewhat normal pace.

My apologies to anyone that had to deal with my grumpiness!

Back in the USA

Well after a 9 months of living abroad and 4 months without flying home at all I am finally back in the USA and settled in. In fact after the last 3 and ½ years of constant travel I have been home a little over 4 weeks. That is the longest time I have regularly slept in my own bed since October of 2005. At first I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself. Actually I still don’t. I go into the office most days and get involved in what I can but until I get staffed on a new project things will be a little slow. However I have been able to start working on the house again.

Surprisingly there wasn’t that much need to adjusting to being back in the states. I guess I wasn’t gone that long. Driving on the right side versus the left didn’t cause any problems and in general things are easier to do in the States so if anything I have to get used to the idea that I can accomplish a lot more on a Saturday than just going to the post office. That was always the problem in the UK the store hours were short, it took twice as long to get around, and three times as long to accomplish anything once you got there. So I do find it a little amazing that I can go to the bank, Target, Home Depot, the Grocery store, and the post office all in a couple of hours. That same list of errands would take all week of my lunch hours in the UK.

Now working on the house again is probably the best thing about being between projects. Rather than trying to cram a lot of work in on weekends I can simply do a few hours a day. You can make a lot of progress just by putting a little time in everyday (thanks for that lesson dad sorry it took so long to take!). I am hoping that once RG is home and working we can focus on the house and get a bathroom added and redo the kitchen. Currently I am working on cleaning up the hallway upstairs (hopefully completed before the wife gets home) and then I will do prep work for the new bathroom. It is also very nice to work with my hands again. Even if sometimes I have to do chores I don’t want to.

As for work, well I am luckily still employed. I worked enough billable hours in the fall to make up for the last month and then some. So while I am looking for a new project and hope to hit the road again soon in the next few weeks who knows. I only control a part of my destiny at work. So for now I will just enjoy the routine of going to the office downtown, leaving early-ish, and going home to my own house so I can sleep in my own bed. Once I get staffed again it could be another 3.5 years without a break.

Not Like in the Movies

Well while a lot of Roman was like in the movies there was certainly one part thing that I expected to see and didn’t. For some reason I like the movie Euro Trip it is about some kids that upon graduating high school go to Europe and cause a lot of trouble. It is completely pointless and ridiculous but sometimes those are the best qualities for entertainment to have. The best parts of the movie have to do with English Soccer hooligans and some ridiculous situations at the Vatican. The latter being the part of the movie I expected to see scenery from. But alas it was all staged and BS. When RG and I went to the Vatican I kept waiting to see where we could go on the same tour from the movie. Well you can’t. And many of the places they went don’t even come close to matching up with the actual layout.

In the movie they went in through a side entrance to tour the Papal Apartments - caused a lot of ruckus then ended up falling out of a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square. The only thing is the window was actually part of the basilica and is part of a completely different building. As are several other parts of the story they wove together to create a ridiculous, though very funny, set of events. So of course I was under the impression that you could actually get to these places on the tour of the Vatican. You can’t. Also as I toured the Basilica and museums I kept looking for places from the movie and let myself be a little confused. Though I do know that most movies work because of the magic of editing I didn’t realize they would take quite as much liberty as they did. But I guess how many Americans travel enough to call them on it. On top of that how many of those that do travel would watch such a ridiculous movie and care to try and match up the places in the movie with the real places… Probably not many.

That all said it of course didn’t change my enjoyment of visiting the Vatican. St. Peter’s Basilica is by far the most amazing building I have every toured. I did not expect what I found there. As for the Vatican Museums, I simply didn’t have the patience to get the full affect. The amount of historically important works there is amazing. You cannot take it all in it is that simple. We did go on a day that they were doing the Papal Audiences but we decided not to spend the whole day in that line. Maybe next time. One other funny thing about the visit were all the tour leaders trying to entice us to pay 15 Euro each for them to lead us through the facilities. The 30 Euro would be on top of all the entry fees it simply paid for them to orate our visit. There were so many of these guides trying to get us to sign up we started answering them in Russian (mostly RG did this) and that seemed to get them off our case. I wonder if this would work with pan handlers in Minneapolis or Chicago.

Anyway as I mentioned before I was a little confused by my memory of the movie scenes of the Vatican and the real place. So when I got back to the States one of the first things I did was to rewatch the movie. Only then did I realize how ridiculous it was for me to take an impression from such a movie with me when I went to see the real place.

The Romans Built some Big Stuff

Traveling throughout Europe I love to see what people have been able to build in times past. Some of the fortresses, palaces, cathedrals, castles, and the like are amazing in scope, size, shape, and details. But I was not ready to see what I did in Rome. Hundreds even thousands of years before most of the other sites were built the Romans were building on a much grander scale. It is absolutely fascinating just how big many of their structures were. Now I didn’t study much in college about construction techniques, and I never paid much attention to how things were built but I was amazed to find that the Roman buildings were mostly brick.

If you watch movies such as Gladiator or the history channel and see the digital recreations of Roman that was you see the immense granite and marble structures. What I didn’t realize is that the stone and marble was just the siding or the facade. In actuality the buildings are made of brick! I don’t know why this came as such a surprise for me when you think about it is one of the most economical ways to build. Cutting enough granite to build say the Colosseum would have been a very expensive proposition and the end result is really the same. And this isn’t the first time I was surprised by such a technique in St. Petersburg the palaces has also been built of brick and then covered in plaster to get the desired look and in England I was surprised to find out that most chapels used a concrete type mix to fill in the walls between cut stone rather than using stone through the entire structure. So it does make sense that the Romans would have used advanced techniques to build brick structures that were then adorned with more precious and luxurious materials.

However the sheer size of the buildings still leaves your jaw dragging on the ground when you walk around the most ancient structures. Again the Colosseum is amazing. While it is not quite as large as a modern stadium it is not the much smaller either. And they built it without steal or concrete! The Roman Forums tower easily 5 stories, the Roman Baths are simply immense two foot ball fields long and 3 stories tall, the Pantheon on has a dome so large I couldn’t fit it into the screen if with a wide angle lens, and so on. While there are many ancient structures that are large in Europe from the times after the Romans and before modern technology none of it is created with such immense and large open spaces. It is nothing short of astounding to see.

The other interesting thing about this construction is it also showed how the pillaged most of the empire in order to make Roman so ornate. Much of the stone and marble was quarried outside of Rome, much of the granite for instance was actually acquired in Egypt. Along with the materials Romans, like the empires to follow, took monuments, statues, and structures from the areas that they ruled. Many of these are used in the building in Roman or set up for display in the grand public squares. However it is oblivious that turnabout is fair play. Because very little of the expense stone is left in the Roman ruins. After the fall of the Roman empire the buildings eventually went into to disrepair and then were plundered themselves for building materials. I would be surprised if a single church in Rome built after the fall of the empire didn’t have marble, granite, or other expensive materials in its structure that had not once been part of one of the grand ruins left today. In fact the Roman baths were considered a quarry themselves for hundreds of years at they were tore apart to build new buildings.

Like in the Movies

Rome is fabulous. That is what it boils down to really. Once you get there it is pretty obvious why it is the setting for so many movies. You cannot walk more than a couple of blocks without finding something amazing. I suppose that happens in a city that is so old. One nick name for Rome is The Eternal City, and it certainly feels that way. Walking around Rome you can feel the history and everywhere you go could be a movie set. In fact we actually passed through some narrow streets that were being set up for just that purpose. Of course most major cities are the settings for movies London, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, and others are also the settings for many movies, but when I visit them most areas of those cities don’t look like movie sets. Everywhere you walk in Rome could be from a scene in a movie.

Of course St. Peter’s Square, the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Many of the ruins, the fountains, the churches, Castel Sant'Angelo, and other big attractions leap to life and have a huge presence that could be a film back drop. But so does every little corner shop, pasta bar, restaurant, gelato stand, or apartment building for that matter. It is simply a fascinating place to be. Every neighborhood in most cities has its own feel, in Rome this also includes its own look and architecture. Depending on when that part of the city was built certainly is the main driver for this. By the Colosseum of course everything is still Roman, and mostly in ruins. But you still get the feel. As you travel north toward the new city center you go through the most medieval of areas. Once you get to the Vatican things are larger newer and the streets widen. So each area has its own distinct feel.

What is funny about all this is that the residents play this up. Every attraction you go to has vendors surrounding it selling souvenirs. Mostly trinkets and models of the attractions around the city, but if the site was in any famous or not so famous movie they also sell calendars, posters, photos, and other merchandise with stills from those scenes in the movie(s). For instance if you visit the Mouth Of Truth after waiting in line to get your photo and walking through the actual church you enter a small shop. In this shop are dozens of products with stills from the movie Roman Holiday. Interestingly enough a movie I never did get around to seeing. This particular movie shows up a lot throughout Rome, who knew? At any rate the city is an amazing place to visit and I’ll be watching for it on the big screen.

Organized Chaos

After completing my project in the UK I thought it would be a good idea to take a week and go and visit Rome. I could use my airline miles to get there for free from the UK and hotel points for the accommodations. So the only expenses would be site seeing and food. The first thing you notice once you get into Rome is that no one fallows any traffic rules at all. My dad used to tell me that the signs and singles in Rome were only used for insure to figure out who pays for an accident in Rome and I believe.

RG and I stayed a little bit out of the city center on the edge of Rome Central Park. It was a nice hotel and the staff was friendly but it certainly was not in the center of the action. But it did have a free shuttle that took guests from the hotel to the center of the city and back once an hour. So this is how we would get into the thick of things everyday. It was quite the ride for us though. Rome is of course and ancient city with narrow roads and while it is not as densely populated as New York or London it seems to be twice as chaotic. There are easily as many scooters on the road as cars and everyone is darting in every direction.

Most of the roads have cars parked along both sides. But a lot of the time there are also cars double parked on both sides leaving just enough room for one car to get through on a bi-directional street. While that one car is trying to maneuver about 8 million scooters will try to whip through whatever space is left. It is absolutely insane. I was certainly surprised that we didn’t see any fender benders or other such events. At one point we even thought about renting scooters ourselves for a couple hours, but I was sure we would have gotten very lost, very quickly!

The other funny think that we noticed was how small all the cars are. The Italians take it to another level past the British even. We walked down one block and counted at least 6 smart cars parked in a row. You never saw even a mid sized car. They were all Fiats, Alfa Romeos, these little Spanish cars, and Peugeots. At one point I laughed pretty hard when RG said “I never though that a Mini Cooper would ever look like a big car”! Every once in a while we saw a BMW or a Mercedes and they seemed absolutely enormous. I also found it amusing that I saw more exotic cars, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and such, in Portsmouth a small city in the UK than in Rome were many of them are made. But then again with the way people were driving I guess there is no point to own such a car in Rome.