Phrase of the day - ay flang dang ich ma un fluffuge? - hey pretty lady can i get a hug?

So Saturday night when we met Karol in Dublin, we ran into some Belgians who spoke Dutch (because that's what they do around there).  And, Karol of course knew a cheesy pick up line in dutch and then promptly taught it to me.  I have no idea how to properly spell it, but it my head it looks something like the above.

Anyway, we were in Rotterdam! Yay!  We stayed at the Bazar hotel which actually sold a bunch of lamps and tea sets like a real bazar.  It was very eclectic and I actually liked the hotel a lot.  Breakfast was included in the stay and they gave us breads, feta with spices, a hard boiled egg, some lunch meats, turkish wurstel, yogurt, fruit, butter, and a creamy cheese.  And, they gave it to us each morning.  It was good.  I enjoyed the breakfast there.  I did end up eating dinner there occasionally and it was good too.  So the first day there we went to the NAI - the Netherlands Architecture Institute (translated to english of course) and saw the exhibits there.  Pretty much, we did everything I did last time when I was in the Netherlands with the Clemson kids.  I actually saw much more last time.  When I was with Clemson we rented bikes and zipped around all over the netherlands.  This time, we had a guide who didn't prepare for the trip.  He kind of knew where things were most of the time, but not really.  He didn't know who did what buildings etc.  It was annoying.  Also while we were in the Netherlands Clemson hired a local architect who would know where things were and what was important about them.  My teacher didn't really know either of these things.  So from now on I'll try to only write about the new things I did while in the Nederlands.

But anyway, in Rotterdam we took a boat tour.  Rotterdam is one of the largest industrial ports in Europe and we saw it by boat.  It was a good experience.  (We didn't do that with Clemson).  That's about the only thing new to me.

In Utrecht we went inside the Rietveld-Schroder house which was really neat to see.  It's maybe 2000 sq ft at the most, and the tour took 2 hours.  This lady talked FOREVER.  But, I really liked seeing inside.  The building is all about being flexible.  The bedrooms double as the living rooms, all the wall partitions move out of the way, to create one big living room etc etc.  It was nice; I would never want to live there.  We went to Utrecht on Saturday and the most important buildings are on the University campus, which of course is closed on the weekend.  So none of the school buildings were open so we couldn't get inside.  Dumb.

We went to the Haag and saw the Richard Meier building and the OMA theater.  Those were pretty cool buildings.  Also, they have a main shopping street with a parking lot running the main length of the street.  This way the pedestrians are on top in the rain, and the cars are underground.  It was kind of interesting.

My teacher does know a lot of people though.  And, it helped out in the Netherlands because we visited 3 very prominent firms.  We visited architecture CIE, MVRDV, and UN Studio.  All are very famous firms who are well publicized and well known.  It was really good to get an inside look at how they operate, how they function, and just ask questions, and meet somebody from a successful studio.

Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam by UN Studio

 

Housing by MVRDV - the competition called for a max footprint, and max height, but wanted too many apartments.  The only way to get the proper number of apartments while maintaining the max height and max floor space was to cantilever a few apartments.  All the other competition entrants ignored the proposed number of apartments.

The first day in Rotterdam and the first day in Amsterdam were awfully rainy and cold.  It was awful.  I ended up layering socks, plastic bags, and then shoes to try and stay dry.  I did end up staying mostly dry after that, although thats just because it barely rained on those days.  One day, the sun even came out.  So that was nice.

And no, I did not actually use the can i get a hug expression on a ho in Amsterdam, or to any girl in the Netherlands.  As tempting as it was, I can be kind of shy when it comes to strangers so I didn't really meet anybody new in the Netherlands.  But, I did learn that the windmills that are everywhere are used to pump water out.  Most of Holland is under sea level so they use the windmills to stay mostly dry.

Word of the day - Whiskey - water of life

So on Sunday the other Nick woke me up at 9 so we could go see things by 10.  Turns out that his phone didn't change timezones and he woke me up an hour earlier than he was supposed to.  So we were out of the hostel by 9, it was raining (of course its Ireland) and nothing is open because its Sunday morning at 9am.  So once we figured that out, we went  back to the hostel and checked online the actual times things open and changed our socks.  And then made our way to the Jamison Factory.  The Jamison tour was not quite as cool as the Guinness Storehouse, but because we volunteered to be a whiskey taster, at the end of the tour I got to try 3 different whiskeys.  The Jamison tour is essentially a guided tour throughout a large diorama.  All the things they showed us were made for the display, none of it was original.  So the main things about Jamison is that it uses a smokeless heat to roast the barley (natural gas (previously they used something else)) and also they use old barrels for aging.  They get their barrels from kentucky and some other place.  But either way, the barrels were used for different alcohols originally, and so that gives it a distinctive flavor.  Oh, and it's triple distilled.  So anyway we did the tour, then they sat us down and gave us 3 shots, one was a single distilled bourbon (JD), the other was a double distilled scotch (Johnny Walker), and the third was of course triple distilled Jamison.  It was actually very easy to tell the difference between all of them when you get to sip one and then immediately drink the others.  It's much harder when coke is involved (like I usually drink whiskey, but then again I rarely spend a lot of money on whiskey so I don't usually buy Jamison).  I was most proud that I could tell the difference and I figured out which thing was which.  The Jack Daniels is super sweet.  Johnny Walker uses peat to roast their barely so it has a much smokier flavor.  The Jamison is by far the smoothest and most complex of the whiskeys.  Then after our tasting, they gave us another glass of Jamison just for fun.  So I had 4 drinks before 12:30 on a Sunday.  Welcome to Ireland!

So walking back from the Jamison Distillery we stumbled upon a bunch of horses sitting around a plaza.  We asked some police officers what was going on and he said it was a horse fair, buying and selling of Dublin's finest horses. Hahaha.  He's a jokester.  But they really were selling/trading horses and ponies.  After that, we ate some lunch and then walked to Christ Church - one of the famous protestant churches in Dublin, and after that saw Dublin Castle.  Dublin Castle can only be seen with a tour group (but I got student discount, score!) and it was really good.  The tour guide had a fantastic accent.  Also, I learned that the name Seamus is gaelic for James.  Who knew?!

 

original viking foundations to the Dublin Castle

After that we found some dinner and looked for a pub to drink in.  We tried to walk in a few places but it was Sunday, most were pretty empty, one was way too loud with drunk americans trying to do a jig, so really just embarassing themselves and making a mockery of anyone in the bar who was actually irish.  Eventually we found a bar with a guy playing the guitar.  The music was loud enough everybody could hear it, but not so loud that you had to yell all the time.  It was perfect.  The guy started out by playing some traditional Irish drinking songs, my personal favorite went a little something like this:

Oooooohhhhh you're drunk you're drunk you're silly you're drunk, you're drunk as drunk could beeeeee!!!! etc etc.

It was a good time.  And strangely enough, the song that got the most people singing along was Country Roads by John Denver.  So that was bizarre, but It didn't stop us from singing along.  Later on in the night, there was a 50 year old lady who came up to the other Nick and remarked how much she liked his red hair and beard.  She said it was exactly like her husbands, and red hair puts a fire in her tights!  That's what she said!  It was hilarious.  But, boy was she drunk.  So we met a few people, some girls from West Virginia oddly enough (they went to WVU) and it was fun.  (It's strange because Country Roads is is about WV.)  But since most pubs close around 12 in Dublin we closed bar and then left for our hostel.  We were planning on getting up early to go to St. Patrick's cathedral before we had to catch our flight on Monday.

So on Monday we found St. Patrick's Cathedral.  It was nice.  Perhaps I'm spoiled because I've lived in Italy for almost 8 months, but the churches were not as large as I thought they would be.  Sure they were big and impressive, but I've seen a lot bigger and lavish churches.  So then we caught our flight from Dublin to Eindhoven and our class field trip in the netherlands began.  I'll try to blog more about it soon.  Classes here are getting pazze (pazze means crazy, that's two new words for the price of one in this blog post).  And, I've been losing weight!  Unintentionally!  Ever since I stopped lifting/generally being a hoss, I've been losing weight.  So hopefully once I get back to the USA I can go to the gym more often and get big again.  Hopefully.

Word of the day: Sláinte (in Ireland) - health (but really cheers!)

So Saturday Nick and I went to Dublin for the weekend.  We planned to arrive in Dublin Saturday at 12:00 pm and then leave for Rotterdam Monday morning for a school field trip.  For some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to find the two rainiest places in Europe and visit them consecutively for 8 days.  Anyway, we landed, found the hostel and went straight to the Guinness storehouse.  It's the old barely store house that has been converted into a museum.  The building itself was just a really cool building.  And the museum took advantage of it.

So at the top of the Guinness Storehouse is a bar where you get a pint that is included with price of admission.  It's called the "gravity bar" and it's got a 360 degree view of Dublin.  Of course it was rainy and cloudy and I couldn't see much, but it was a cool idea.  I like the original Guinness commercials where they tried to say that Guinness is good for you.  There were actual doctors who would prescribe guinness to people who weren't feeling good.  Also, Arthur Guinness signed the original lease for the Guinness factory at St. James Gate for 9000 years.  It's only been 250 years so far, but he's done a great job.

After that, we found somewhere to eat, I don't really remember where.  More importantly we went to Temple bar on Temple bar.  And there was a great drunk Irish guy named Karol who we met and ended up talking to for most of the night.  When he was born, John Paul II was visiting Ireland.  All the mothers were naming their childeren John, Paul or John Paul.  But, his mom was creative and named him Karol, JPII's original name before he became pope.  He had a theory on getting drunk called "monopiss".  If a person were to drink liquor they would get really drunk and then kind of crash literally and figuratively.  But, if you were to drink beer, at a steady pace you get drunk and plateau and that's called monopiss, at least according to Karol.  His accent was really funny and it was halloween.  There were a few costumes here and there.  What was impressive was how international Dublin was.  Just sitting next to Karol we met tons of people.  We met a bunch of people from all over the place and he spoke to them in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.  It was pretty impressive.  Although most everybody speaks English.  And, they actually use it because that's what everybody speaks.

Word of the day: un incubo - a nightmare

Che un incubo!
What a nightmare!

So I’m going to retell the my whole trip backwards because that’s what is freshest in my mind.  So Sunday was a travel day from Amsterdam back to Firenze and it was an incubo!  I was flying Ryan Air (the cheap air line i.e. 15 euro ticket) from Eindhoven to Pisa.  In an effort to cut costs, Ryan air and often Easy Jet, usually don’t fly into real airports.  They fly into obscure airports an hour away from where you really want to go.  But since its only 15 euros, and with added travel expenses maybe 45 euros to go from Amsterdam to Florence it’s usually worth the money.  So anyway, we (myself, the other Nick, and Phil) leave the hotel at 7:30 to catch the tram to Amsterdam’s main station.  From there, we catch the 1.5 hour train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven.  And after that we catch the bus from Eindhoven Centraal to Eindhoven’s airport.  As a bonus, the ticket machine in the bus was broken and the bus driver told us not to worry about buying tickets, so that was nice.  Anyway so we arrive at the airport around 10:30 and our flight is at 12:30.  So we arrive with plenty of time to spare and there’s even a foosball table and gamecube with Mario Kart double dash to occupy our time. 

So believe it or not Ryan Air’s flight was late to board by around 20 minutes.  Although they say over 90% of their flights are on time, in my experience they are only 4/6 for being on time.  And they kept on having last calls for a flight provided by Wiz air.  So that’s just a silly name for a plane company.  But that’s neither here nor there.  We take off late out of Eindhoven and then it was too windy in Pisa for us to land.  The wind speed at the airport was around 90 km/h and our plane is only allowed to land in wind speeds of up to 60km/h.  And there was a large group of rowdy obnoxious Italians who were yelling during all the announcements and generally being annoying during the entire flight.  So we had to get diverted to Genova.  Which usually wouldn’t be a big deal, but we don’t get to go to Genova, we get to sit on the tarmac for an hour waiting for the winds in Pisa to die down.  So this was a bummer.  And of course, the wind makes the turbulence extra exciting while landing.  I over heard the person behind me say she loves turbulence because it’s like an invisible roller coaster.  I think she was trying to stay optimistic, but I’m not really sure.  So we eventually get to take off again and we get to land in Pisa around 5pm instead of 2pm.  But we made it!  But, of course, things are more exciting in Pisa.  We catch the train from the airport to the train station and that’s when it gets even more annoying.  Yesterday there was a huge train strike and about ¾ of all the trains going through Pisa were cancelled.  So instead of waiting for 10 minutes for a train we had to wait an hour.  I was so nervous because all the trains that were still “running” because a bunch were being delayed by 5 minutes, and then 10 minutes, and then 40 minutes.  Anyway, they decided not to act all funny on the 6:30 train to Florence SMN so we jumped on that one and we only arrived in Florence at 7:30pm.  So that’s a solid 12 hours of sitting/travelling.  Che un incubo!