The Wanderer...

Cause I'm the wanderer
Yeah, the wanderer
I roam around,
Around,
Around,
Around.

-Dion & The Belmonts

Well, I have returned from my whirlwind tour of Rome and Berlin.

I'm not going to use this blog as a forum in which to express my utter displeasure with certain members of my 3-person travelling party. That can be done on a private basis. Sufficed to say, this trip teetered on the edge of complete disaster thanks to the attitude(s) of one (or more) of my fellow traveler(s). Period!

Other than that, the trip was wonderful. Tuesday. First we flew to Helsinki and then to Berlin. We stayed at a very nice hotel with a shuttle to the airport since we had to leave for Rome the next morning. We visited the Reichstag, the headquarters of the Third Reich during WWII. I saw the former location of the Berlin Wall. There is a thin line of bricks that runs right down the middle of the city, through streets and parks, signifying where the wall stood. Some pieces have been left up for, uh, sentimental (?) reasons. I talked my two fellow travelers into getting Blue Man Group tickets for Sunday night when we returned. We climbed the TV tower where you can look out over the entire city. We ate Chinese and went to bed.

Wednesday. Off to Rome. We land and take a train to the main station, Termini, which was quite near our hostel. A certain member of our party (not me) left his bag on the train, so we spent a few hours speaking English with people who spoke no English trying to get this bag back! Well, we got it, and made out way to the hostel. It was very nice. Everyone spoke English, the rooms weren't crowded, and the drinks were cheap (What more could one man want, I ask!) We got on a hop on/hop off tour bus to see the city. We stopped briefly at the colosseum with plans to return the next day. We saw the whole city and many impressive buildings. People in Rome are encouraged to drink from the fountains. It's strange to have your bus driver pull over, stick her head under a fountain, and get right back on the bus.

The next day (Thursday) we took a tour of the Colosseum, which was not nearly as impressive as we are led to believe. Don't get me wrong; it was really big and old and cool. It just wasn't as big as I thought. It's nothing like Gladiator, which was actually filmed at a different location (as were Ben-Hur and Spartacus). After spending some time fighting off all the Indians who are trying to sell us crap and the beggars who are, well, begging, we made out way to the Vatican. It was raining. It was closed at 2pm. We got there just after that. Did I mention it was raining? We met a nice American girl named Samantha who decided to join us for a couple of days. We had a great dinner and made a brief stop at the Internet Cafe. Then to bed.

On Friday, we got some gelato (Tiramisu flavored) and stopped by the Pantheon. It was closed due to the holiday. An official Pope-ish kind of holiday. Well, my fellow travelers wanted to see the Pope. He was going to make a speech at the Piazza d'Espagne at around 4:00pm. We got there around 2:00 to get a good spot (I couldn't have cared less). So the Pope, in all his Santa Claus-esque glory, came riding by in his car, waving at his adoring fans (Pope! We love you! I have all your albums! Will you sign my boobs?!) My fellow travelers ditched me to run down the street through the crowd (I've never seen a crowd like this in all my life) to witness a speech. Which was in Italian and Latin. We went our separate ways from Samantha and we had dinner. Then back to the hostel for drinks. These hostel folks were pretty wild.

On Saturday we flew back to Berlin (we had to do this jumping around because there are no flights between Rome and Helsinki, only to Berlin). We went to the famous Berlin Zoo and Aquarium. We saw some pretty cool stuff. I can show pictures of the animals to anyone who's interested when I get home. The city was all decorated for Christmas. It was much cleaner than Rome. Rome was dirty and the people were pretty rude. That's probably just the "big city" thing we all hear about and believe so faithfully. Their English is also terrible. The Berliners' English was good enough to get us through our stay there. We had dinner at a German pub where there were two cowboys playing American country music (Johnny Cash, etc.) for tips. I had a real German beer! (Just like a real American beer, just not quite as disgusting!) Off to bed.


On Sunday we took a bus tour of Berlin and saw the entire city. Then we did a lot of shopping for folks back home (and a little for ourselves, of course). Then, we saw Blue Man Group. The first few minutes were in German, but that was okay since the remaining two hours had almost no dialogue. One member of my group did not care for the show. The other member and I decided that we did not care for his attitude and ignored him. For those of you who don't know, these guys are the ones who played on the Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 commercials. They do a show with audience participation, comedy routines, paint, and play music on various forms of PVC pipe. It's really entertaining and almost completely pantomimed. I had a blast. They have about 5 shows in the States (they opened off-Broadway in New York in the late 90's) and recently opened in Berlin. Bedtime.

We were up and gone the next morning. Plane to Helsinki and then to Oulu. Our luggage was delayed by a day due to an airport worker's strike in Helsinki. I got it the next day and all was fine.

Whew.

Now I'm tired!

Check out photos: Dustin's PhotoBucket!

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