Saaga

It doesn’t matter where you live; the daily grind is still the daily grind. Having said that, it’s nice to do it in a place that has seasons. Having said that, I bet I will change my mind on this whole seasons business after a couple of months of winter. I guess what I’m getting at is that even though Italy was only 9 days ago, it’s already just a memory.
The best thing about memories though, is the high-light function:
1. Seeing the Pope in the Vatican was awesome. I was a little disappointed though, as he was so far away that no matter how wildly I lunged at him, I couldn’t get the Swiss guards to take me seriously. If you are gonna go out, I can’t think of a more interesting way than by being cloven in twain by the halberd of a guy in orange and blue stripes while he is protecting the Vicar of Christ.
2. Hans (Trish’s ‘Boy’friend (Trish is Alex’s mum)) having his wallet pinched whilst on a bus in Rome, despite repeated attempts by us to have him secure his wallet in a place other than the back pocket of his slacks.
3. A bus ride up into the Florentine hills is rounded off nicely by an old lady being sent sprawling by the maniac bus driver. I suppose it was difficult for her to hold onto the bar because of the x-rays from her hip surgery in her hand. If I had been filming at the time I would now be the proud owner of a JVC home entertainment package and the lady would be immortalised across Australian televisions along with comic sound effects to mask the timbre of her breaking bones.

This is us in front of the Trevi fountain.

As soon as our Flickr account updates itself we will have more photos uploaded.

Starting off a piece about traveling to a world famous city without quoting someone of note or using a cliche is nigh impossible; given my time limit I don’t think I will try.
We arrived in Rome a few days ago (just a day after the train derailment that killed one and injured 62) and immediately started to feel what so many people say about the place…disorganisation. However after a short while I determined that it is not really disorganisation, because some things are always done well here. It seems more like unpredictability. Continuing this theme, I began to notice that there are numerous things that the Romans do very well and an equally large number of things that appear to have only recently been introduced here or seem to escape them completely; parking cars in an orderly fashion being one of them. So it’s not really unpredictable.
I can rely on the fact that the hotel shower is going to suck and that the towels will be thin. On the flip side I can be sure that the coffee I have for 65 cent is going to be one of the best coffees I have ever had and that the canoli I order is going to taste better than any other canoli (outside Italy) and from memory any other dessert I have ever had.
The list of comparrisons is long and growing, but it is safe to assume that if passion or pleasure can be drawn from an activity or passtime like football, wine or driving then the Italians will put their all into making it a great experience. But if it is only a necessity like toilets or public transport, then a half arsed effort is going to be delivered that will leave the unprepared confused and often more than a little dirty.

We went to the Colloseum and the Forum yesterday as well the Palatine. I know a couple of qualified archaeologists and I cannot believe they do not live here. Spouses could get normal jobs and the archaelogists could dig to their hearts content or work at restoring what has alrerady been unearthed; this last job seems to employ the time of almost half the population.
Today we are going to visit the Vatican, the Spanish steps, the Trevi fountain and the monastery that is built out of the bones of thousands of monks.

SPQR

We changed planes at Milan abd I got to see the baggage handlers in action and now I understand why every other aiport hides these misanthropes away from the casual observer. There were four guys unloading our luggage onto a conveyor belt and they were all large (with extra long arms) and ugly; a perfect cross between man and ape. They were amusing themselves as they worked by seeing how many times they could get the bags to bounce as they slammed them down onto the metal rollers below the cart they were working from. It seemed that the hard plastic cases bounced best and they received bonus points if they could get the luggage to bounce right off the belt; this explains why my luggage looks like it has been dragged through the abyss after every flight.
We are in Florence right at the moment and will be here for a couple more days before we head off to Rome. My overwhelming impression of the city is Australian and American accents intermingled with classic and renaissance architecture. There are tourists everywhere, but we have been assured that we have seen nothing compared to what we will be faced with in Rome.
As a nerd, my blood sings everytime I see a castle or a crypt and I am able to explore it. There is so much to do here, that our short stay will not do it justice, but still the place is beautiful and just wandering the streets is inspiring.

Last night we went to see ‘A Christmas Carol’ (or as it was marketed here: ‘Click’) and overall while I didn’t hate it, it didn’t really do anything for me either. Christopher Walken was great as all three of the ghosts rolled into one, but Adam Sandler’s standard performance brought nothing to the character of Mr Scrooge.
There were some really funny moments, like when Scrooge (Newman as he was called in this film) was nasty to the ugly red headed boy that lived next door. Unfortunately these moments were all too rare and the rest of the film relied upon fart jokes and dogs having sex with giant plush ducks, to keep it from getting the wobbles and falling over.
I do however admire one thing in about Adam Sandler and that is his loyalty to his friends, particularly Rob Schneider, who despite being the second worst* actor in the known world, keeps getting parts thanks to Sandler’s production house.
No review of this movie would be complete without mentioning that Kate Beckinsale’s body was in it too.

This morning I went to the Augenartzt (Opthamologist) to get him to check out my eyesight, because that is after all his job.** After waiting the customary 14 hours, I was shown into room 2 where he looked at my eyes and hmmed and hahed a lot and advised the nurse to put drops in my eyes and send me back in twenty minutes.
After waiting my time and having two sets of drops put in my eyes I staggered half blind back into his lair for him to finish the job. As he was about to start work, he asked me if I drove to the surgery, to which I replied that I hadn’t, to which he replied, good, because I may have some trouble seeing for the next four or five hours. He wasn’t kidding.
I came out of the clinic and into the bright Düsseldorf morning sunlight and was instantly blind. If there was a tram coming I would have been killed, because when I stopped to shield my underworld adapted eyes from the purifying scourge of the sun, I realised I was standing on the tram tracks.
Scuttling to the platform and hissing involuntarily as my being was torn apart by the once friendly giver of life, I made it under the shelter where I could open my now heavily crusted eyes in the comforting shadows.
I have only ever met four or five eye fixin’ guys that I can remember and all of them wore glasses. I mention this because I think that after finishing up with me and discovering that my vision had outdone the smallest writing he could produce on his little white box, he was pissed off at my genetic inheritance and decided to smite me with a doctor’s version of a half day gypsy curse.
My eyes are better now and just like the Spleen from ‘Mystery Men’ I have inherited a super power from my arcane adversary; I can see an extra shade of blue that I had never noticed before.

* Jason Statham is the worst actor in the known world.
**Though he does more than just look after my eyes, he works on other people’s vision as well.

I have just come across this very interesting site where you can take a quiz and see how big your “environmental footprint” is. Basically, there are only a limited number of resources on our planet and most of us are using up more than our fair share.

I was slightly under average for Germany and also for Australia, although my consumption is much higher when I answer according to my life in Australia. I didn’t write down my exact scores, but I remember that it said that if everyone lived like me (according to my living in Germany answers) we would need 2.2 planets. According to my Australian results, we would need over 4 planets if everyone lived like me. Pretty scary stuff.

It’s really hard to do better though (but we can’t give up) - it basically seems that living in a western industrialised country almost forces you to use more resources, e.g. how many of us can buy our fruit and veg direct from a farmer? Even if we could, we’d have to drive really far to get it, which would probably negate any benefits… It’s the same with flying, particularly if you live in Australia, you don’t really have much choice if you want to leave the country or even go to most other parts. It’s depressing, but we need to face up to reality and decide what we’re going to do about it (tips are available on the website too), both as an individual and as part of society as a whole.

I’d be interested to see how everyone else does.

The weekend before last we traveled up to Münster (which was about two hours by train) with Chris and Naomi.* It’s good to have visitors again and this seems to be the time of year they like to come. I don’t know why that is. Currently we have Alex’s mum staying with us and in a week or so Renea is dropping by and then at the end of October we have Dan as well.
All good.
Anyway we have some pics to post of Münster which I will put up here when I get around to it. I’ve noticed that lots of the blogs of my friends are updated only rarely and I must admit I had to force myself to write this one. Sometimes it feels like there is nothing to really write about, which I suppose is untrue, it’s just that writing about a fairly standard visit to a beautiful city has been done a million times before. I don’t feel the need to do something literary and brilliant or anything like that, it’s just that I can’t get excited about describing the 42nd European cathedral I have seen. Not that I didn’t enjoying exploring it, or the 218 tiny spiral stairs I had to stagger up to get a great view of the city.
In other news Alex went to Prague on the weekend that just passed us by and I will try to convince her to post about it.
We also went to Maastricht (Netherlands) yesterday because of the public holiday here in Germany.

*I’ve noticed that I always say Naomi and Chris, so I decided to mix it up a bit, just to keep things fresh.