Just Rome-ing Around

Ok, well I suppose I need to begin this post with an apology: I'm sorry. I have been ludicrously busy traveling recently, thanks to Robert Humphreys, a family friend who taught with my parents when they taught for the Department of Defense Schools (DODS). Not only have I been traveling, but I have been attempting to cement my spots in various classes for this coming semestre, as well as organize a visit from my girlfriend, Allison, who will be arriving in Frankfurt on the 21st. So, I will give you a quick overview of how I am going to go about attempting to cover everything that has been going on:
     a) this current entry will be about my trip to Rome, Italy
     b) I will create a second entry (within the next couple days) about my trip to Prague, Czech Republic
     c) by Sunday the 21st I will post a very short piece about the general events going on as the semestre starts up here
     d) then we will be back on track and I will fall back to the weekly updates

So the plan was to take the train down to Stuttgart on the Friday the 5th, in order to arrive at Rebert's house that evening. However, there ended up being an accident with one of the trains near Karlstadt and so all of the following trains were delayed. As I was not yet packed (imagine that, a college student procrastinating) I decided that it would be more prudent to wait and leave the morning of the 6th and arrive around 11:00 a.m., because I didn't want to be navigating new areas during the evening/night. All went well this time and I rolled into Stuttgart at about 11:15 a.m. Robert was kind enough to pick me up from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and we went back to the house. David, his son, was participating in a soccer camp, so I had the afternoon to relax and unpack. With regards to lunch, Robert asked if I would like a burger...the heavens opened and God proved to me his existence. It was the most amazing burger I have ever eaten. After being deprived of American food for so long the burger was my Mana and Robert my Moses.

That evening we went to the Cannstatter Volksfest, the second biggest fest in Germany (behind Oktoberfest). Robert and I happily ate our way through the fest as David and his friend rode some of the rides. On Sunday while David was participating in his last day of camp Robert took me to mass on the base and then afterwards to the store on base. It was amazing, I was able to stock up on American food staples as well as grab a couple gifts to cook up for the host family. Such a brownies, cornbread, Oreos, Reese's, and a couple jars of salsa. Fun little side note: While shopping for a salsa there I saw a brand which hailed from New Mexico, Albuquerque nonetheless! Pride for my state was boundless.

Fish frying

Crêpes...yes, we donated to the cause

My plane for Rome departed the Stuttgart airport on Monday afternoon and my return flight was on Friday afternoon. This gave me 3 solid days in the Eternal City, as well as a couple half days. I am going to stick with the format that I have been using to document trips, mostly pictures with a few stories or commentary here and there. However, if you have any questions or comments about anything, or just want to go a little deeper with the details of something, feel free to shoot me an email, or if you have Facebook obviously I am there too! Here we go!

DAY 1: Monday, October 8th

My plane touched down in Rome at about 6:00 p.m. local time. I tracked down my baggage, navigated the airport, and slowly sniffed out the airport train station, where I rode the Leonardo Da Vinci Express into the heart of Rome...Termini Station. Termini Station is basically the train station, as well as where all of the metro lines begin and/or pass through. I was aware of pickpockets, however I had no trouble with anything the entire trip through. Upon checking in to the American Palace Hotel EUR, I dropped my stuff off at the room and then decided that I had just enough time to explore the immediate area of the hotel. It was very interesting and I ended up finding a market to buy a bottle of water. I also stumbled upon a shop where I ordered a calazone for dinner. It was different than the American one though...it had almost a sweet bread and was mostly bread with a little bit of filling. 

DAY 2: Tuesday, October 9th

This day was huge. I spent 11 hours hitting some of the biggest names in Rome as well as just walking around and exploring the city a bit. Also, I want to warn you that you are about to see an army of pictures of the Colosseum...I'm sorry about that. It makes for quite the photo subject though and it seemed like every time I saw it the lighting or angle was different and inviting.

The first site to greet me after ascending the stairs to the city from the metro station.  You cannot see it in this picture (there is a better one later) but this is Circo Massimo...the site of all of the ancient races and such

Ruins on the Palatine. These next few pictures were taken on the Palatine Hill, the location of the houses of all of the great nobles that lived in the city

The Colosseum from the Palatine 

Another picture from the Palatine...my favorite picture of the Colosseum actually, maybe the tree does it for me.

The city of Rome

The gardens of the Palatine

From the Palatine: If you strain your eyes and look into the distance...

...you can see the big boy himself. Hello St. Peter's!

Palatine stadium

The Colosseum from the temples by the Foro Romano 

The Foro Romano (Roman Forum)

Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II)

I finally actually made my way to the Colosseum for a tour

The innards of the Colosseum. It actually legitimately had lifts which were used to raise animals or props up onto the competing surface of the arena

The colosseum from the inside. It had something like 80 entrances/exits, held around 60,000 spectators, and could be completely emptied in 15 minutes.

Arch of Constantine 

Fontana Trevi

The Spanish Steps

"Holy Moses! There's a baby in the river!"

Rome had some of the most beautiful bridges

A statue on one of the bridges

Even though I told myself I was saving the Vatican for Wednesday the Catholic inside of me could not hold back....I just wanted to make sure it was still there after having seeing it on the Palatine Hill

Circo Massimo

Old aqueduct, if I'm not mistaken, on my way back to the metro

DAY 3: Wednesday, October 10th

Just to give you an idea of what separates Vatican City from Rome

Inside St. Peter's Square

Chairs are all set out and people begin to fill in for the papal audience, of which I was lucky enough to be a part of, thanks to a free ticket from Robert via the USO

Papa! 

Benedict XVI throwing a quick blessing down

Now within the Vatican Museum

Just a normal Vatican ceiling

Herakles

Supposedly the sarcophagus of St. Helen

I think this picture shows the difference between Vatican City and Rome well. The street to the left of the wall is Rome. 

The famous Map Room of the Vatican

The ceiling

The entire wall was covered in these paintings of maps. One of the former popes had every region of Italy documented on these walls.

St. Peter's from one of the museum windows. I unfortunately never made it into St. Peter's Basilica. However, I made it everywhere else and I think I made it to potentially a better place...I will show you later.

Holiness is always on sale near Vatican City

The Pantheon 

These pictures cannot even begin to describe how huge this building is. This is the most expansive dome I have ever seen

DAY 4: Thursday, October 11th

Thursday I was quite tired of all of the people, lines, and hecticness of the main Roman haunts so I decided to have a more relaxed day. I slept in a bit, then leisurely explored a different area of the city, specifically on a quest to find the Basilica of St. Paul. St. Paul, as some of you may know, holds a very special place in my heart as he is my patron saint.

In my search I ran into this Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul. This stood out in a huge way because, as you can see, there is a lot of open space here...something that you almost never find in other parts of Rome, or at least the heart of the old part of the city

My boy St. Paul with his Sword of the Spirit

St. Peter...see the keys there?

How my buddy St. Paul left this world.

Things didn't work out quite that well for St. Peter either.

Here it is. The site I had been searching for. The site that I would be prepared to argue is more worth a visit than the St. Peter's Basilica. This is the Basilica of St. Paul.

Here is one of the ceilings, who knows how high up there

One of the nice small side passages

The famous painting of the conversion of St. Paul

If you can see all of the small gold circles on the wall just over 1/2 of the way to the ceiling, those are all popes. The basilica had a profile of every single pope since St. Peter on the wall.

Peter snuck into the Basilica also...but I guess he does have the keys 

"Lord, where else would we go?"
"You will go on the wall of St. Paul's Basilica, Peter, that is where you will go."

There's Benedict, he made the cut for the wall too

Courtyard of the Basilica

This is supposedly the tomb of St. Paul...back in that hollowed out area there

By the way, St. Peter's is still on my list of places to get to, don't think I am not interested. However, if you don't feel like battling a crowd and if you want to be in a place of worship that actually feels like a place of worship and not simply a tourist destination...St. Paul's is not a bad second. It is also the second largest basilica in the world, second to St. Peter's of course.

DAY 5: Friday, October 12th

Friday my plane left at around 4:00 p.m. Checkout was at 12:00 so I lugged my baggage to St. Paul's for one last rosary and prayer session before the commute back to Termini and then to the airport. I landed in Stuttgart around 5:30 p.m. and was welcomed by Robert. We then drove home to rest until the next afternoon, when we would continue on to the next destination in the queue...Prague.

Freunde, Festung, und Feier

It is always a suspenseful time, boarding a train, bus, or some other form of public transportation, because human interaction is almost always guaranteed. This can be good or bad, depending on who you are interacting with and what the circumstances are. In the case of my train ride to Salzburg, on the morning of the 30th of September, this interaction devolved into a horrible 2 hour ordeal. I got on the train and started looking for a seat, it was pretty packed. However, there was a set of four seats, two facing two, which I noticed and there was only one older man sitting in one of them with his backpack next to him. I always enjoy the groups of four seats because they allow for much more room for my legs. So I asked the man if the seats across from him were free and he said yes. Well, not even a minute into the train ride this sixty-something year old man realized that I was American somehow, I still have no idea how. I realized something about him, he was quite intoxicated. For the first half hour it wasn't a huge problem. He told me a lot of interesting information about the land and culture, between strong fits of unnecessary laughter, and I actually learned a bit and was able to practice my German, since he spoke no English. However, after those first thirty minutes and the downing and refilling of his 60% vodka and 40% Pepsi drink, it became too much and started to get a little tiresome. I pretended I fell asleep and managed to make it the rest of the way. Upon reaching Salzburg I wished him a good day and hurriedly made my way out of the train. 

I met Johanna and her family there in the station, as they had been so kind as to come pick me up, (they live in a town maybe 30 minutes outside of Salzburg) and I began my absolutely amazing stay in Austria. I was extremely lucky to have the Eggers, there were the kindest people and most awesome hosts a traveler could hope for! We began by going to the Red Bull Museum by the airport in Salzburg, where some of the cars, planes, and other apparatuses that Red Bull sponsors are on display. I never knew this, but the creator of Red Bull is an Austrian, and Red Bull's headquarters are in a small town outside of Salzburg. I don't know how many of you are Red Bull drinkers, but you can feel good about buying a can of the energy drink now. It turns out the CEO puts a lot of the money back into the community there near Salzburg and is almost an empire there. Red Bull owns a soccer team, has that museum, provides phone services, and even has a monthly magazine that is distributed. 

You can barely see the very exclusive bar/lounge on the roof of the museum.

Might be a thrilling ride in the front seat of this plane?

The airport runways can be seen through the glass there. 

There is a man who will soon attempt the highest freefall ever, Red Bull sponsors him. This was the suit from one of his earlier endeavors.

Johanna and I

In the background you can see an exclusive restaurant on the top level and the café we ate at on the lower level

(From left to right) Johann, Katha, and Gerda 

From the museum we went the round about way home, by way of some of the sites of Sound of Music, the Red Bull headquarters, and the best Eis (ice cream) shop in the world, just to name a few. We then continued home and ate a delicious meal cooked by Gerda before watching the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup is a tournament that is put on every two years and consists of a team of the best golfers from the U.S. facing off against the best from Europe. The tournament alternates between a European location and a U.S. location. All Egger family members are golfers so the Ryder Cup is no small deal. Even though I do not follow golf, I found myself very interested in the tournament and stayed up until midnight with Johann and Gerda silently cheering for team U.S.A., who in the end suffered a crushingly close defeat to team Europe. Then 

This is the church from the Sound of Music wedding. This small town is also home the the Eis studio which Johann has claimed is easily the best in the world.

The Red Bull headquarters is made almost fully of glass.

I remained with the Eggers for two full days and left the morning of the 3rd. Unfortunately, I can't describe the whole trip in detail because there is just way too much! But what I can do is post a bunch of pictures and let them do all the talking! ...with a little commentary by myself of course! I will separate the pictures into the two days that I was there. The first day Johanna and I went into Salzburg, where she gave me the grand tour, and then the second day we went on a bike ride all over the countryside and surrounding area.

DAY 1: SALZBURG

This is actually a picture out of the Eggers' dining room window, they have a huge floor to ceiling window which has an AMAZING view! The whole house was gorgeous though, mostly designed by Johann.

After hearing about it from a Swede in my language course, I finally wend to IKEA for the first time.

Tunnel going through a hill in Salzburg.

The Dom (Cathedral) in Salzburg

A picture of a statue in one of the Salzburg squares, with Festung Hohensalzburg (Festung - Fortress) in the background

Picture out one of the canon windows of the Festung

View of the old keeper of the Kraut's lodge from the top tower of the Festung

Salzburg as seen from the tower

Backyard of one of the Festung residences

In between the two big buildings, with the flowers above its door, you can see the smallest house in Salzburg

Mozart's birth house 

 

Mirabel Palace gardens 

Johanna cooked delicious traditional Austrian meals two of the three nights!

DAY 2: BIKE RIDING IN THE AUSTRIAN COUNTRYSIDE

Johanna took me to a very peaceful and picture perfect stream at the end of one of the gorges in the area

The water was so clean you could drink it...we filled up our water bottles 

A lake we passed on the return trip

This is a picture of a fleet of ducks that came all the way from the other side of the lake to see if we had any food. It looked somewhat akin to a naval assault. It felt like one too. After they reached our shores a couple of them proceeded to mount an offensive. They rushed up to our bikes and proceeded to try to eat Johanna's shoe. When that proved futile, they moved on to her bike, in a bid to consume the tires and kickstand. They couldn't manage to perform this feat either and turned back towards friendly territory, demoralized and defeated. There courage will live on. When most ducks won't come within a few feet of you, even if you have bread, these two came up and nibbled my fingers when I put my hand out.

Our last stop before home the second day was a waterfall

View from the top

 

What it comes down to is that there is no way I could put the trip in words. I am so incredibly blessed to be able to be here in Europe and to have such kind friends and families that are willing to take me in and show me around.Thank you so much Eggers for showing me such incredible hospitality and making my trip to Austria so fantastic and truly unforgettable! Well, hopefully these last two entries weren't two much (pun intended), but I have been meaning to get my Austria trip up for a while now and won't be able to post again for at least a week so I thought it better to just do it. Auf Wiedersehen und bis nächste Woche! 

The two valiant warriors in action