From Romance to Food Poisoning.. How Charming

I seem to have gotten quite a bit of feedback from my last blog post on my Amsterdam adventure. According to my father I am now all grown up, so in order to set the world right once again, I will go back to blogging about my simple sight seeing (after all, I am a daddy’s girl, not a daddy’s woman). After Amsterdam came Paris. After a very boring and uneventful train ride to the city of romance we of course got lost on our way to our hostel (but that is an entirely different story. I have bored you with numerous tales of our adventures while lost in Europe, and this one is no different, so if you really care to hear about how we batted our long eyelashes at a hotel receptionist to let us use his computer at 1am, then ask me). Sadly Paris was the last stop on our Europe tour, and we were both incredibly sick of our check-lists and map reading our way through the sights. But even though we were both tired, cranky, wet and cold, we bundled up, grabbed our map, and headed out into the city. Our check list included:

The Catacombes (which we almost didn’t find and walked around a nearby cemetery for 20 minutes before realizing that we weren’t in the right place)

Notre Dame (sadly that is the one Disney movie I haven’t seen, so I didn’t walk around hunched over like the hunchback)

Trocadero (where we took about a million and one pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background)

Arc De Triomphe (we went, we saw, we took a picture, we left)

Gardens of Luxembourg (where we had quite an amusing photo shoot with a large bronze head... pictures to be posted on Facebook soon)

The Louvre (Mona Lisa… check)

The real Moulin Rouge (NOT like the one we went to in Amsterdam. Thank GOD)

And last but not least…

The Eiffel Tower (where I got my romantic kiss up at the top over looking the city. Okay, maybe it wasn’t romantic as it was a kiss from Kimmy, but at least I can say I did it!)

Paris came and left with the blink of an eye. Before we knew it we were on a train back to London and arrived back at our London home. Again, I barely had time to think before I was waking up the next morning to get my things together to go meet my Dad in Wimbledon at Godfather Antony’s house. Dad and I had the entire house to ourselves for the afternoon to catch up on my trip and hang out for a while. When my Godfamily came home we all had an incredible dinner party with some old friends. We all had a great time reminiscing about the time my parents met my ex-boyfriends parents (only my Dad wasn’t there, but his friend Tony was, along with his girlfriend… Just imagine the confusion of introducing my mother and a man who could be my father… and his girlfriend. Again, that is another story that I would love to tell you if you ask to hear it… and it is worth asking about… trust me!). After saying goodbye to my second adopted London family, we left Wimbledon to go to a Christmas lunch where I met a whole side of my family I didn’t even know existed (I must say, after 21 loud Italian Christmases in New York, I was well prepared for the English version). At this point I shut my brain down, and was completely in my father’s hands. I have gotten tired of planning every minute of my life, so I put my body into cruise control and put my Dad in the driver’s seat. Ironically, as soon as I was in Dearest Daddy’s hands, I suddenly came down with some sort of horrible flu/bug/food poisoning. I spent the night at my Aunt’s house throwing up my wonderful Christmas lunch.. over, and over and over again. I didn’t even get a chance to see my cousins that night because I went straight to bed and didn’t get up for another 13 hours. I woke up the next morning and was afraid of food (and for those who know me at all know how unlike me that really is so I really must have been sick). Unfortunately, my fear of food affected a lunch with my Uncle, which I’m afraid I had to leave half way through to go lay down in the back of the car. Good news is that we have decided to ditch our trend of seeing each other only every 4 or 5 years, so there will be many more opportunities to catch up soon I hope! After lunch (or lack-there-of) I had to curl up in the back of the car and endure a long and very jerky (thanks Tony) car ride down to our little English cottage (Poock’s Cottage) in Exmoor. After we arrived I took another nap and felt a bit better and played a game of cards with my two old men and got my butt kicked the entire time. Just you wait until I am feeling better. Revenge will be mine!

This morning I woke up and felt like I had kicked whatever was in my system the past 24 hours. We decided to go on a famous Nettelfield walk to the circle of trees. I made it to the top of the moors before I got very dizzy and very nauseous and decided leave Dad and Tony to turn back around to go back to the cottage. After walking up the hill with my head down looking at my feet, I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was going. I somehow managed to get myself incredibly lost and wound up down a valley with a river running through it. I knew I needed to get to the other side of this rushing river to get back to Poock’s, but suddenly felt very light-headed. I sat down on a rock until my double image of the world went back into one. I very nearly donated my breakfast to the sheep 20 yards away but somehow managed to regain my composure before fording the river. I have no idea how, but somehow I tip-toed across the rushing river without falling and kept my breakfast down, all to the dismay of the sheep who I assume would have had a great laughing “baaaa-haha” at my fall and my breakfast for their lunch. I also managed to find home. I found my couch in the only warm room in the entire cottage and fell asleep with my best friend, Coke, a white polar bear. My temporary fear of food better be gone soon, because I only have three days left to eat pork pies, spotted dick, and steak and kidney pudding. On second thought, maybe I can starve until New York…

Sex, Drugs and… More Sex

Oh Lord. Where to begin? Well, we arrived in Amsterdam at around 7pm on Friday night. First thing we did was shower off the depression which consumed us from Berlin, and then we ventured out of our cute/quirky hostel and into the cold Amsterdam night for dinner. Kimmy and I both had some sort of American bug hit us, so when we saw a sports bar playing a real American football game, we were sold (they were also playing the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Ribs + Beer + Football + Victoria’s Secret fashion show = my idea of heaven). With my face full of barbeque sauce and my American craving fixed, we were about to get up to leave when we attracted the attention of another two guys (I swear we are a magnet for cute guys and their wingmen. Unfortunately I end up entertaining the annoying wing man all night while coughing up a lung in their face trying to scare them off). Obviously I have nicknamed these two as well, and these two particular guys were named “cute, funny Dutch boy” and “annoying, old banker”. Guess who I got? I endured about an hour of this man talking about the bank he worked for, his favorite places to travel, and why he detests facebook so much. When I finally had enough and hinted towards running far away from these guys, annoying old banker asked me if I would like to be his friend on facebook. Sorry, but you just spent the better part of the last hour (which I will never get back again) talking about how you think facebook is impersonal and then described to me what the 3 pictures you were tagged in looked like, so you do not get the pleasure of being my facebook friend.

The next day we planned to take a free walking tour of Amsterdam. We really didn’t have a plan of anything specific to see while we were there, so we thought we would take the tour of the small city and see it all in 4 hours. We had a great tour guide who showed us all of the historic sights including the old church, the new church, and the south church (the Dutch may be great businessmen, but they are about as creative as the painter of a white room). We saw coffee shops every 20 feet, gorgeous little canals, very sweet little houses and we briefly went through the red light district and got our first taste of the “ladies of the night” (which happened to be the “ladies of the afternoon” at that hour). Going into Amsterdam I had done no research, and had no expectations what-so-ever of the city. I vaguely knew what the city was about, but I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. For those of you like me, the “Ladies of the Night” are women who stand in the windows of buildings wearing little or no clothing, taunting men to come inside where they will charge for their services. What kind of services you ask? Go to Amsterdam and find out. Our tour guide told us all about how the red light district came to be.

Quick Lesson: The red light district is as old as Amsterdam. Way back when (to a date I can’t remember) the sailors would come back to land after months or years and would crave a woman’s attention. These men would go after women like a dog to steak on the ground, and the “pure women” of the city were being corrupted. Some women therefore sacrificed themselves and offered themselves as the women whom men could seek out when returning to land. They started charging for their services and that is how the red light district came to be. One more fun fact for you: There are a lot of churches in the red light district. That is because after the Catholic sailors would have their way with the women, they would realize they sinned, and run off to confession at the church where the priests would charge the men to be absolved of their sins. Convenient huh?

Okay back to more exciting things. After our day tour, we went back to our hostel to shower quickly and get ready for our next tour, a guided walk through the red light district. We decided that we got a taste of the district during the day, but this tour was supposed to take us all throughout the streets and give us more information about the girls, how the whole pimp/prostitute relationship works, the sex shops, and the sex shows (how’s that for an educational experience?!). After this second tour we knew more about the red light district than I ever thought I would care to know. We met some friends on the tour with us (and no homophobes, mutes, lame-o’s or old annoying bankers!!!!!) so we all decided to continue walking through the district to really see how it worked at night. Because we went on the tour, we were given a discount if we wanted to go see a show. What kind of show you ask?

Mom and Dad, best if you stop reading now…

We went to a sex show at the Moulin Rouge. Everyone who knows me, knows how squirmish I get at the thought of porn, and how I have prided myself in the fact that I made it through college without ever seeing one. I guess the only way to break that streak is to see one live. When in Amsterdam, right? To spare you the details of what made me gag, I’ll allow you to use your imagination as to what each of the following props were used for: a banana (which I will never eat again), a pen (writing now makes me gag), and a string (quite like the one a magician puts up his sleeve and then pulls and pulls and pulls… only this one wasn’t up her sleeve). Then came the grand finale. The “home run” if you will. No longer can I be the only person in a room who has never seen porn, because there it was. Live.

Mom and Dad, you can start reading again.

Waking up the next morning I was still giggling and blushing at what we had seen the night before, and I needed to do something to take the image of cowboy boots out of my head. We headed to the Anne Frank house for something a bit more educational than what was offered at the Moulin Rouge. After the Anne Frank house we were again depressed after a few hours reading more about the holocaust. Amsterdam only does extremes I guess. We needed something in the middle. Something educational, but fun. The answer to our prayers: The Heineken brewery! We learned all about how beer was made. The history of Mr. Heineken himself, and even went on a ride in which we were actually brewed into a beer! It is a very interactive museum, so there were loads of buttons for us to push, and videos to watch which made for a really fun, relaxed evening. So far Amsterdam had gotten the best of us, so we were ready for a quiet night in. After dinner we went back and got an early and good nights sleep. On our last morning, we woke up and found a cute little park, which we went to and played on a swing set for about an hour (like you would have expected anything less from Kimmy and Joanna?). We walked around the streets a bit more and Kimmy finally bought the pair of European boots she was searching for since day 1 in London. It was time to say goodbye to Amsterdam, and we bid it farewell with a toast before our completely uneventful train ride to Paris (or something like that…).

Bleak Berlin

With my arm in agonizing pain, we took the night train from Vienna to Berlin. Kimmy was very helpful and made my bed for me and put my hair up in a ponytail (thanks baby!). We got to Berlin at 7am, and 3 wrong trains later, we arrived at our hostel at 10am (after this trip I will never trust the two of us to travel anywhere alone together without adult supervision – here is a fun game: read through all of my blog posts and see how many times we ended up lost or on the wrong train, then add about 10 more to that because I left a few out. Whoever guesses correctly get’s to come with me on my next trip!). Since we still had the whole day ahead of us, we dumped our backpacks in our room (at the 3 Little Pigs Hostel which is an old Abby so there are tons of little secret passages and long hallways. It would have been cool had there been lights inside so we could find our room after it got dark). We bundled up and headed out into the snowy German day to see what we could see through the blizzard. Berlin is apparently famous for their Christmas markets, so it was a great time for us to be there. We found our first market in the middle of a place called Potsdamer Platz (hehe, funny name) and walked around under the Christmas lights and garland. There also happened to be a huge man made snow hill which you could tube down. Like I said, a gimpy left arm wasn’t going to keep me from doing anything fun, so Kimmy and I (the 10 year olds) ran up the hill and got our tubes to go sledding. We got a big push from the man working there, but somehow Kimmy came to a complete stop halfway down the hill. I went barreling down the hill and crashed into her and then carried on down the hill (that felt really good on my arm, let me tell you) while Kimmy had to have reinforcements come rescue her and give her a second push to get to the bottom. Now that we were wet and cold from our tube adventure (or lack there of) we indulged in a little retail therapy in the Christmas markets where I bought a new pair of gloves to replace my soaking wet ones. After my purchase of new warm clothing, I was ready to see some sights. And so the checklist begins:

-The Berlin Wall
-The Holocaust Memorial
-The Holocaust Museum
-The Brandenburg Gate
-The Parliament Building (where we climbed up the glass dome up top)
-Sachenhausen Concentration Camp

Every site in Berlin has something to do with war, holocaust, division or some general negative historical event. The grey skies and the bitter cold were just the icing on the cake. How did we keep ourselves from getting severely depressed in the country of despair? Conundrums! When I was much younger I remember my Dad giving us conundrums and I remembered a few of them. For those of you who haven’t heard of these, someone basically gives you some sort of fictional situation, and everyone has to guess how it happened or what is going on by asking questions that can only receive a yes or no response. For example, “A man goes into a field and dies, how did it happen?” We met up with a couple of guys who followed us around like puppy dogs who happened to love my conundrums. Thank god that they were better than the homophobe and the mute, but we nicknamed these two Lame-o #1 and Lame-o #2, no explanation needed (although, they did love my conundrums, so I should reconsider naming them Awesome #1 & #2). All throughout Berlin, our little puppy dogs would be silently thinking and then suddenly yell out random questions like “is it a real man?” or “was he playing baseball and a lighthouse fell on him which killed him?” It was a fun way to distract ourselves when we were moving from one depressing sight to another. The train ride home from the concentration camp had some of the best conundrums because we all needed a serious pick-me-up after that little outing as you can imagine.

So here is my own little conundrum for you: A train takes them to their next destination. They look out the window and see the London Eye. What happened?

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of… Breaking Bones?

We were more than happy to leave the high waters of Venice. Apparently people go there over and over again to see the high waters and never do (Mego?!) and we got a first hand look (and feel) of the rain that helped contribute to the flooding. Alright, I guess that’s pretty cool (actually really cool, about 20 degrees cool). Vienna was the perfect place to land after a miserable cold and wet day in Italy.
After getting acquainted with Austria and our wonderful double date with the homophobe and the mute (which I am still laughing over days later. Honestly, it has been best described as a cross between the Born Identity and Seinfield – Thanks Williford!) we knew it was time to take the train to the city I have dreamed about since I was 5, Salzburg. For those of you who are not addicted to the movie like myself, Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was filmed, and where the real Von Trapp family lived. I grew up watching The Sound of Music at least once a week and I am proud to say that I can repeat every line of the movie as well as every lyric to every song (yes, I said I was proud of that).
We took the 3 hour train ride from Vienna to Salzburg early in the morning and arrived more hyper than I have been this entire trip. I should also mention that we were running on very little sleep at this point because we stayed up to an ungodly hour watching the movie on my laptop to prepare ourselves for the best day trip of our Europe tour. We did a lot of research on what to do when we got there, and we decided that we had to be complete tourists and go on an actual Sound of Music Tour. We found our bus and tour guide and sat in our seats with wide eyes, huge grins, and ants in our pants. I’ve never been one to enjoy a touristy bus tour because you just sit and watch the city fly by you, but this tour had one thing that we wouldn’t have gotten by walking around by ourselves; the soundtrack to the movie playing while we sat and enjoyed the guided tour!

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
The first stop was at the Abby where the real Maria and Julie Andrews tried to become a nun. Unfortunately the Abby is a working Abby, so nobody is allowed inside. It is situated on top of a hill overlooking the city and was used only as an over-head shot for the movie, but was replicated exactly in Hollywood for the scenes shot inside.

Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Te-Do
Next stop was the Von Trapp family house. The inside of the house you see in the movie was a set built in Hollywood, but all scenes shot outside next to the house were in Salzburg. They actually used three different houses for different scenes. The famous scene of the kids in the boat on the lake in the backyard of the house in Salzburg and we got out of our little bus to walk around for a bit (that scene was only filmed once because little Grettel didn’t know how to swim. Julie Andrews was supposed to catch her as the boat tipped over, but she fell backwards instead of forwards, so Grettel sank to the bottom of the lake, and someone had to fish her out. She was terrified and refused to shoot again, so they used the first take). I basically jumped out of my skin at the sight of the house because not only was it gorgeous, but as a little girl I dreamed of living there. I was home!

I am 16 Going on 17
The infamous gazebo in the movie where Liesel and Rolf sing to each other and skip around and dance on benches was moved to a little park in Salzburg. Apparently couples would go to the house where the gazebo was filmed and would make a bit too much noise, um, “singing to each other” so it was moved to a park and locked. Kimmy and I thought it was only appropriate to take a picture frolicking in front of it to recreate the part when they jumped from bench to bench. Liesel and Rolf got nothing on us.

The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music
After the gazebo we took a long drive through the lake district where you have an amazing view of gorgeous lakes, breathtaking snowy mountains and the place where you see Maria running through the hills singing The Sound of Music. They had to film that scene over and over again because the wind from the helicopter kept knocking Julie Andrews over.

I Must Have Done Something Good
After Maria and the Captain fall in love, they agreed to get married. In real life, they were married in the Abby where Maria failed miserably at being a nun, but it was too small to film the wedding scene for the movie. They used a church in the lake district for this scene and that was the final stop on our tour. Of course I walked down the aisle as Maria did and seriously couldn’t believe I was there. It was very surreal to be walking down the aisle that I was so familiar with but have never seen. Who needs caffeine when you have the Von Trapp church making you jump up and down? We ended the tour singing So long, Farewell and got dropped off at the train station to head back to Vienna.

The next day we had a mid-afternoon train to catch to Berlin, so we spent the morning on our amazing hill overlooking the city. We really wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had a private ice skating rink with the best view of Austria, so we decided that’s how we would say goodbye to Vienna. I used to be a pretty decent figure skater back in the days of my Nancy Kerrigan obsession and I guess I thought I still had that triple axel in me. Clearly I was wrong. The ice was a bit bumpy and was not very well taken care of, so while showing off my gold-medal moves, I tripped, fell, and then that was the end of my left arm. Somehow falling on my wrists, my elbow decided to get injured. I have no idea what happened, but for the next 2 days, I can swear to you I had a broken elbow. It was physically impossible to lift my arm, turn my arm or do simple tasks like put on my jacket, or put my hair in a ponytail. Let’s just say, lots of tears were shed and there were a lot of random screams in the middle of the night when I would accidently turn over onto my left side. Since then, I have gained more movement in my arm, but it still hurts like a you-know-what, and I still can’t sleep on it. Who knows what I did to it, but it’s not going to keep me from any Europe adventures, so Berlin, here I come!