Pre-script: Originally, this blog was for my friends' viewing pleasure. My dad got the URL and, although I had to filter what I wrote to be family friendly, it seemed alright because we were living in different hemispheres. However, I'd like to ask the people who he gave this link to to not visit this website and... if you do, don't comment. It's nothing personal, but I didn't intend for my audience to grow out of the original few people it was intended for. Since it's public, I can't stop people from reading it, but I'd not like to know about it. Grrr... that Mark... In any case...

Greetings from Bologna!

I'm guessing I have quite a bit to update about. Where'd I leave off?

So, we left our fine hosts in Scotland on the thirtieth and flew from Glasgow Prestwick to Frankfurt Hahn. After arriving in Germany at around midnight, my mom and dad had no idea how to work the payphones and no idea what hotel to call. Eventually, we found a vacancy at a hotel run by an Italian guy (Tony!) who worked at Hahn when it was an American airforce base. He spoke English. We got five hours of condensed sleep and caught a seven o'clock bus to Karlsruhe. Eventally, we arrived at our suburbian destination and were greeted by Katya, a lady who worked temporarily at Penn State. After braving terrential rains and dropping our luggage off at her apartment, we went to an Italian restaurant (the German one was closed) and had communication problems. For example, when the waiter told us the price of the meal, he said it in Italian, then German, and Katya would translate into English. Totally unneccesarily, my mom translated into Japanese.

The next few days would be spent walking through the Black Forest to surrounding towns and watching movies: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Top Secret, and The Meaning of Life. Overall, an uneventful, but enjoyable stay in Deutschland.

On the morning of the fifth, we boarded a train headed towards Milano. Although I had no desire to stop there, Switzerland was beautiful to see from a moving train. In Milano, we transfered onto a crappy train that had no air conditioning and smelled like poo. Again, the scenery was nice and we probably lost a few pounds in sweat. Eventually, we arrived in Modena and met Luca, an Italian student who was on exchange in Logan, Utah. (Poor fella...) My first impression of Italy wasn't good because we drove around for about an hour looking for a hotel with a vacancy. After we found one and dropped off our stuff, we went into town and had a delicious dinner of authentic Italian pizza and returned to the hotel after wandering around downtown and watching participants of the International Military Band Festival tronce around town and blast people away with their bagpipes and brass instruments.

In the morning, we took a bus downtown and bought some balsamic vinegar. In the shop, we ran into the two Mormon missionaries in charge of Modena. Lucky us. Luca picked us up and drove us to Bologna. There was less of a hassle getting a hotel room in Bologna, since it's a pretty touristy area and there are lots of hotels to choose from. We wandered around, looking for a place to eat and ran into a Nutellaria. A restaurant with nine items on their menu, all of which contain butt loads of Nutella. Althought it was more than filling, we decided that our meal there was a pre-dinner dessert and continued our search for a cafeteria or osteria where we could have a light dinner. Close to our hotel, we found the Osteria dell'Orso and I had an insalatra greca. Good stuff. And today, we'll be off to Florence at some point. That's all for now. I shall update again when I can.

Ciao!