The end is near

It has been too long since my last post. It seems that all of the end-of-semester activities and pre-sailing preparations took enough of my focus that I neglected to keep you all updated...sorry. As it stands, I am on a Hallberg-Rassy 40 in a harbor in Ellos, Sweden. A few days ago we left here on a 12-hour sail/power drive up to Fredrikstad, Norway, which was a beautiful passage. We are back at the Hallberg-Rassy headquarters to finish up some repairs and quick additions that needed to be made before the journey south.

The captain of the boat, Jack Hoopes, the father of a friend of mine from Tufts, keeps his own blog: http://www.windleblo.blogspot.com/. I suggest you track that for good highlights and analysis of our trip--he doesn't let me use the computer much, so this entry is mostly to point you in the direction of his blog, which he updates often.

I do, however, have my trusty BlackBerry, so if you want to contact me for some questions or just to say hello, my email is still philip.dear@tufts.edu and I can respond to you almost immediately.

The plan for my last ten days on board are as follows: trek down the coast of Sweden for a couple days, land in Copenhagen and spend a day or two there (although I've spent plenty of time there, these guys haven't, so they want me to show them around). After Copenhagen we will make our way to the island of Bornholm (the "Hawaii of Denmark") and finally we will end up in Gdansk, Poland, where we will spend a day or two before I fly home on the 16th.

The weather is stunning, the air is crisp and I'm having the time of my life, BUT...I can't wait to be home to see all of you!

Philip

Photos

So because this website isn't doing well with uploading photos and I KNOW you all want to see some cool pictures, I decided to open a free account with Flickr in order to put some up. The problem is, unless I pay, I can't put more than about 50 pictures up per month or something like that. So I wasn't able to get through Rome and up to Siena's, Pisa's and Florence's photos. I'll get those up asap. For now, here's the link to the pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35759620@N06/

Hope it works!

Technical difficulties

Sorry to keep you guys holding your breath, but for some reason the photo uploader for the blog isn't working and hasn't worked since I first tried two weeks ago. I will keep exploring other options for getting the (awesome) pictures up.

Two week travel break, two months left

It's safe to say I did enough traveling in the past two weeks to last a lifetime (not quite...but it feels like that).

Before I upload all the pictures, I figure I'll give a succinct description of each place I went for those of you who disagree with the common phrase and are more interested in the one-thousand words than the much more descriptive and efficient pictures:

1. Interlaken, Switzerland: Two friends and I flew into Geneva and took a train through the stunning Swiss countryside to this little town located between two lakes with a turquoise water color straight out of the Caribbean (aptly named Interlaken...i.e. "between lakes.") The town also happens to be the most picturesque place I've ever been, right in the midst of the Alps. The town ALSO happens to be the skydiving capital of the world...and so my friends and I took advantage of that label and went skydiving, dropping out of a plane thousands of feet above the epic peaks of the Alps. It was truly the most unbelievable experience of my life. The feeling...well...was indescribable. Let's just say it felt like gravity pulled you down at a rate much faster than 9.8 meters per second squared. I probably won't do it again just because it was absurdly expensive, but I'm definitely glad I did it. It was an incredible feeling, an incredible view, and most of all, the experience of a lifetime and probably one of the defining moments of my time abroad thus far.

2. Budapest, Hungary: Budapest was amazing. The primary reason why I decided to go here was that my good friend from home spent his fall semester here and told me all of the great things about it (plus it just sounded cool and different from the typical Paris, London, Madrid, etc...kind of the reason I came to Copenhagen also). My friend laid out a nice two and a half day itinerary for me which was extremely useful. I saw everything there, including the famous St. Stevens Cathedral, the amazing Parliament Building, and a bunch of other buildings and areas with complicated Hungarian names I don't remember. It was a beautiful, lively city that was much different from any of the other places I went because of it had a little bit more of an "Eastern" feel to it than the abundance of "Western" cities I've been to. The Danube river was massive and impressive. It gives the city its character. The significance of the river with regard to the city's lay out and cultural center and everything was very reminiscent of the Thames and London. So from a sight-seeing perspective, the city was great, but from a financial perspective, it was even better. It was by far the cheapest place I've been so far and it made me realize just how incredibly expensive Copenhagen is. The exchange rate from the Hungarian Forint to the Dollar is about 200 to 1. The funny thing is that at first I thought it was 20 to 1, so I was incredibly frustrated at how expensive everything was, so when I finally realized it was 200 to 1, I was overjoyed. I could buy a huge bottle of water for about fifty cents (in Copenhagen the same amount of water would be around 9-10 dollars...no joke). Things were cheap and I loved it. Great place.

3. Barcelona, Spain: An interesting city. It was simultaneously a stunningly beautiful place on the gorgeous Mediterranean and also the trashiest, dirtiest place I've ever been. It was a combination of beaches and palm trees and crystal blue water with trash, scum, pick-pocketers, people trying to take your money, hustlers, mean people, lots of poverty, etc. It was tough at times to look around and imagine myself having to live here. I had a great time here, but it wasn't really safe to go out at night considering the amount of crime and pick-pocketing and everything, so I pretty much just stuck to seeing everything during the day and staying in the hostel at night. Probably one of the coolest places I've been during this whole time abroad was the famous Park Guell in Barcelona, designed by the man who basically designed the city of Barcelona, Gaudi. It was an awesome place up in the hills so you could look down and have a great view of the city. Check out the pictures.

4. Milan, Italy: boring...sort of. It rained the whole time I was here. It was gray and gloomy. The city is considered the fashion/shopping capital of the world, and for good reason. The only thing to do there is shop. It wasn't really a great city for me. Also, the hostel I was staying it was pretty terrible. The guys didn't speak English and I was very frustrated with the room and accommodations and everything (I felt like it was wrongly portrayed on the website, and the breakfast I was supposed to get was nothing more than hot water, a tea bag and a cheap processed/packaged pastry that tasted like paper). The guys didn't really care what I thought.

Another disappointment was that I really wanted to see Da Vinci's "Last Supper," but when I got to the place I was turned away and told it was sold out. Whatever that means, I don't know. It's not like it's in an auditorium with a fixed number of seats. I pleaded with the lady to let me buy a ticket but she kind of shrugged me off/pretended she didn't understand English. I was extremely frustrated and at that point was pretty much hating Milan after walking through the rain for hours to get to this place.

HOWEVER, the one redeeming part of Milan was "il Duomo di Milano," or the famous Milan Cathedral. It's the fourth-biggest church in the world. It's extraordinary. I spent my Easter Sunday here, sitting in the pews in this epic holy space the likes of which I'd only seen in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. Because it was free and I figured I'd try to get something out of my time in Milan, I went to the Catholic Easter services here. The service was far different from what I'm used to, obviously, but it was still really cool and a great experience. For this great hour and a half, the weekend in Milan wasn't a total waste.

5. Rome, Italy: Do I really need to say anything about Rome? It was everything and more than I imagined. Beautiful, classic, epic, blah blah blah. Great food, great sights, great weather, great atmosphere. Great time. I loved every bit of it (except for the guy my friends and I ran into that went on a rant about how stuck up all Americans were and how we wanted the whole world to speak English and we didn't care about anyone but ourselves and loved to get into wars and kill tons of people for no reason). That guy was pretty annoying, but we shrugged him off and focused on things like the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, etc.

6. Siena, Italy: A stunning, picturesque little town/city a little south of Florence in Tuscany. Here my roommate from Copenhagen and I met up with my close friend from Tufts who is spending the semester here. It's hard to describe other than to say that anytime I imagined the quintessential Italian/Tuscan village on a nice sunny day with small winding streets and quaint little shops and a great feel, this was what I imagined. See pictures for better description. I feel like I'm using the same words to describe everything...so I guess I'll let the pictures do the talking.

7. Florence, Italy: The former capital of the Renaissance, it wasn't hard to tell that Florence was basically one big museum of a town that was constantly filled to the brim with tourists. The tourism there was worse than Rome...Florence itself is so small that it wasn't able to handle all the tourists. At least in Rome there was space to move. At certain times in Florence, my friend and I were packed in the middle of these huge hordes of people not just waiting in line to see things like Michelangelo's "David" or anything like that but just walking around the streets. Still, Florence is the capital of Tuscany and for good reason. It was extremely beautiful. My friend and I spent an afternoon (since we were very tired from all the traveling) in the famous Michelangelo park.

While in Florence, we took a half-day trip out to the shore to Pisa to see the leaning tower and surrounding town. Very cool. The leaning aspect of the tower is pretty crazy to see in person. See pictures.

After Florence we finally made our way back to Rome and then flew back to Copenhagen. It was a long and busy two weeks, but I made it. I made lots of great memories. My little paragraphs here couldn't come close to really describing the unique feel of each different city, which was definitely the coolest part about traveling around--just seeing how the differently the people acted and everything.

Three or so weeks left of classes, then a week or two of finals, then a couple weeks of down time and then I go sailing for three weeks. Time is flying.

London, Bath, and Stonehenge

Two weeks ago, I spent my week in England. Mostly in London, but our class did take a day trip into the countryside to see Stonehenge, followed by a trip to Bath (beautiful...like a little fairytale place). I will let the pictures do most of the talking, but just to give you an idea of what we did:

We stayed at a Holiday Inn in central London, right by King's Cross Station. One of the best parts of the trip was the full American breakfast buffet we had every morning. But that's beside the point. Just to backtrack briefly--the purpose of the trip to London was for my "Current Trends in News Media" class to experience various media outlets in London, including Public Relations firms, newspaper headquarters for major papers such as The Daily Telegraph, photography collectives, museums, chatting with the "Spin doctor" for the Tony Blair administration, etc. We of course were also there to explore the rich culture and history of London.

Anyway, we all had a great time. Every day was filled to the max with activities. We were fed great meals at great restaurants, saw Billy Elliot the musical, saw a bunch of great landmarks and tourist attractions, museums, and so on. We also had time to explore on our own, during which I went up to see Abbey Road and a few other landmarks that we weren't scheduled to see as a group. It was such a great trip. The British were incredibly kind and outgoing as a whole, at least much more so than the Danes. In Denmark, the people are really nice once you get to know them. But they don't say "please" or "excuse me" or "pardon me" or anything like that--they generally just don't like to talk unless it's necessary. The British, on the other hand, had plenty of outward social manners which was a nice change.

The day trip to Stonehenge and Bath was one of the most fun days I've had abroad. We saw the beautiful English countryside during our bus ride to and from Stonehenge. Stonehenge itself was, of course, very humbling. The structures are absolutely massive, and to think people were able to move and arrange so many of those monstrous boulders 5,000 years ago is pretty extraordinary.

Bath was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been. All the buildings and structures are made of the same stone, which gives the town a very fairytale-esque feel to it. There was a stunning cathedral in the town, some beautiful structures, a very pretty river running through it, etc. It was just visually amazing. Hard to describe. Johnny Depp has a house in Bath, so you know it has to be a great place. Also, it was the home of Jane Austen. We saw her house and the little park where she would sit and write. Of course, while in Bath we spent an hour or so at the Roman Baths, the remains of these huge baths that the Romans built so long ago. It was so cool to see these things because they were all basically intact. As in, they were basically the same exact way they were thousands of years ago. The complicated infrastructure within the building, with all the baths and drains and this and that was extraordinary considering how long ago they were built. Again, it's tough to explain, but the Romans had these brilliant methods for filtering the water and keeping certain baths steaming hot and certain ones freezing cold, as well as making certain rooms into saunas without any kind of special technology to keep in the heat. They really were smart back then.

Anyway, it was a great week. I put up the pictures that best represent the activities and places we saw. Enjoy...