“Excuse me, were you a CU student?”

In early 2016 I did a series of posts on this website dedicated to interesting little side stories from my 2015 trip to Europe. That series concluded in early February 2016, and I thought I had detailed all the stories worth publishing, but just yesterday I realized there was at least one side story that I had forgotten to write about. Thus, today the Europe 2015 Side Stories catalog has been temporarily reopened for a single day in order to add another entry to the series. For this story, we need to go back to Istanbul.

One of my days in Istanbul was spent checking out the major sights in the Old City, and at one point on that day I was standing in the area near the Hagia Irene church when a stranger walked up to me. “Excuse me, were you a CU student?” he asked. I was surprised both that a random stranger had started talking to me, and by the fact that he somehow seemed to know me. I told him that I had been a CU student, though I didn’t know who he was. He explained that he was a professor at CU and recognized me as a student he had sometimes seen walking around campus years ago. I didn’t recall ever having him as a professor, or even seeing him while I was a student, so I couldn’t say that I recognized him. We chatted briefly about our respective travels before parting ways, and when he left I had this incredibly odd feeling come over me. Somehow, someway, this guy who knew me just so happened to run into me in Istanbul, of all places. Were I more paranoid I would swear that I was being stalked. I’ve never had another experience like that before or since my meeting with that professor in Istanbul. I wonder whatever happened to him.

The Worst Part of Travel

We've finally reached the end of the road in terms of posts related to my time in Europe last year. I think it's fitting for this post be on my least favorite part of overseas travel; returning to America. While the end of a journey is certainly a sad thing in of itself, what I'm referring to in particular is going through immigration and security when I arrive at the (American) airport. For some reason, it always takes longer and is harder for an American to come back to America than it is for one of us to enter Europe. It always takes an hour or more and for some reason it's not enough that I went through security at the airport in Europe. I understand that in our post 9/11 world, airport security is more extensive and rightfully taken more seriously, but we've got to find a way to speed up the process for American citizens coming home. When I was in Paris in November and looking ahead to the end of my journey, I was feeling a little down. Part of it was the knowledge that the dream was coming to an end, but the other part was knowing what was waiting for me upon arrival back in America.

Traditions

Having traveled to Europe twice now, there's a number of things that I noticed I did on both trips. I guess in a sense I now have things that can be called traditions with regards to European travel, and I thought I'd share a few of them.

* Going up the Eiffel Tower on my first day in Paris
* Eating an absurd amount of gelato in Italy and beyond
* Going for a swim in the Adriatic Sea while in Split, Croatia
* Hating Venice when I first arrive, but then loving it after getting settled in
* Getting pooped on by a bird
* Taking thousands of photos, and still wishing I had taken more
* Walking until my feet and legs feel like they're going to give out
* Missing at least one train or bus
* Reading through the Old Testament Book of Psalms
* Keeping a journal of my experiences
* Wishing I had spent more time in one place and less time in another
* Having a train ride in Spain that was as long or longer than the flight to Europe
* Eating unusually good fast food in the Balkans
* Slowly recovering my Spanish language skills while in Spain and then completely forgetting them after leaving Spain
* Walking from the Pisa train station to the Leaning Tower, getting some photos, and then leaving Pisa because there's nothing else there even remotely interesting
* Unintentionally having ten euro left over at the end of the whole trip
* Falling behind on blog writing
* Brainstorming the next trip before the current one is even over

The Umbrella of Constantine

If you read my post on my time in Istanbul, you might remember that before I left for the airport I bought a small umbrella in expectation of rainy weather in Spain. You might also remember that I ended up never using the umbrella in Spain, as everywhere I went the rain would either stop when I arrived or any rain in the weather forecast would suddenly disappear. Although I would eventually use the umbrella while in Paris before returning to America, the uncharacteristic lack of rain during my time in Spain led me to jokingly say that I had in fact bought some sort of magical Turkish umbrella with the power to stop rainfall. Perhaps it was some sort of ancient relic. Every relic needs a legend behind it, so over the course of my time in Spain I concocted such a story, and below is what I came up with.

This is no ordinary umbrella. It belonged to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine. Hence, it is known as the Umbrella of Constantine. Blessed by the patriarchs of the eastern church, the Umbrella of Constantine can stop rainfall and divert storm clouds away from the one who wields it. Lost after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Umbrella of Constantine faded into memory and legend and was believed to be gone forever, until it inexplicably came into the possession of an Istanbul umbrella merchant, who unwittingly sold it to an American tourist. That tourist, at first not realizing the sacred relic he now possessed, traveled onward to Spain, where the Umbrella of Constantine finally exerted its power again after hundreds of years of remaining in dormant obscurity. Today it hangs in that American's closet, waiting to again do battle with rain clouds.

"One day, I will write my story"

Each day while I was overseas, normally before going to bed, I would spend some time writing about the day's experiences in the notebook I had brought with me. I didn't try to hide my journal writing and inevitably a few people asked me about it when they saw me writing. Most people, after I had told them what I was doing, would give me a reply along the lines of "Oh, ok." Sometimes they would compliment me for my diligence and sometimes they would just move on to talking about something else. There were, however, a few times where someone would take a genuine interest in what I was doing and talk about their own writing or aspirations for writing. The one that stands out the most is a person who told me "One day, I will write my story." I guess this person felt inspired to see me writing about my travels or just reminded of an old goal of they had set. Whether or not that person will ever do the writing they want is beyond my knowledge, but from my own experience I have to say I have my doubts. Writing seems to be one of those activities that if you continually postpone, will simply never happen. If you want to be writing in the future, you need to start writing today.

Room full of thieves

I have never had anything of mine stolen from a hostel room. In fact, I don't think I've ever been in a room where someone else got something stolen them. Despite this track record, in every hostel I stayed in I still acted like I was in a room full of thieves. At all times anything of mine was locked down, directly on me, or at least within my sight. We've all heard or read stories of people getting their stuff stolen from their hotel/hostel room and that may have been part of what drove my security paranoia. Whatever the case, I trusted no one. Perhaps I was excessive in my vigilance, but on the positive side I never misplaced anything because I always knew where everything was.

Carnivore

My normal diet has little meat in it. This is not because I'm opposed to eating meat, but because I'm not willing to put in the time and money to purchase and properly prepare it. When I was in Spain, however, this policy was completely upended, and I found myself eating meat almost every day. Spain, as some of you know, has a strong tradition of producing high quality meat, particularly the various sorts that come from pigs. Perhaps most famous is Spain's Iberian Ham, which comes from pigs that are given a lifelong diet of only acorns. Within the first few days of arriving in Spain I had tried out a few different kinds of meats and liked them so much that I kept buying more during the rest of my time in Spain. Along with Iberiam Ham, another favorite of mine was the Spanish Chorizo, which if I remember correctly, is smoked pork. When I left Spain my meat consumption returned to it's normal levels, but for those three or so weeks while I was there, I was a carnivore.

It's ok not to like it

I, like many people, oftentimes feel the need to justify my purchases even when they don't turn out as expected. This is especially true when I travel. Because travel doesn't happen all the time and requires a major investment of planning and money, the thought of spending funds on something that ends up not being worthwhile is anathema. And yet, despite all my research and investigation, there were a few times where I spent money on something while overseas and was not satisfied with the final result. When this happened my immediate psychological reflex was to put a positive spin on it and try to prove that I had in fact not wasted money. It took awhile to finally break out of that tendency and allow myself to just admit that something was either not to my liking or not worth the time and money I used on it. "Remember," I would tell myself, "it's ok not to like it."

Pro

I take a lot of photos when I travel. Lot's of other people do the same, and if you're observant you'll notice that different people have different levels of seriousness about their travel photography. While I generally take my photography seriously and think a fair amount about what I'm going to photograph and how to compose the the shot, there are others that take it more seriously than I. And then there are people who take their travel photograph way too seriously. It's not hard to see them, as they stand out in a crowd. You'll see some people (normally men) walking around with a fully extended tripod over their shoulder and the camera already attached to it, so it looks like they are always carrying a strange looking staff. When composing photos they also have this visible look of impatience and/or disgust on them, like they are on the cusp of taking the cover photo for National Geographic, but everyone and everything around them is screwing up the shot. I refer to people like this as "pro," and I mean it purely sarcastically as they are trying to look the part of a professional photographer but are clearly not. Oftentimes when I noticed a pro trying to get a "perfect" shot but being frustrated by whatever he perceived was getting in the way, the thought in my head was "Hey, relax pro, you'll get your National Geographic cover photo yet."

"We're Going In"

In a number of cities, such as Paris, I would go on an all-day sightseeing blitzkriegs. Sight after sight, museum after museum, church after church, tower after tower. It didn't matter how hungry or tired I was, I just kept going until everything was closed for the day and I couldn't do any more sightseeing (and even then, I would still be out after dark walking around). There's a cutscene in the videogame Halo 2 where a character has to make a decision on whether or not to mount a high-risk assault on an enemy position, and after a brief dramatic pause his reply is "we're going in." That phrase "we're going in" would echo in my head throughout those days as I blitzed a city and did as much sightseeing as possible. Early in the day as I approached a museum; we're going in. The middle of the day as I started up a tower; we're going in. Late in the day as I notice something nearby on the map that I hadn't planned on visiting; we're going in. At night when my feet are killing me but I want to see what the city looks like after dark; we're going in. And at the end of the day, when I was about to go to bed, I would look at my bed and hear it one last time; we're going in.

People Watching

There's an old tourist tradition that for the life of me I don't understand: people watching. I've read and heard from other people time and again about this supposedly great activity. You find a place in or alongside a busy pedestrian area, grab a drink or meal if you can, take a seat, and then just watch the locals (and other tourists) walk by. I did this on a few occasions in Europe and found it to be rather dull. This may come from my antisocial tendencies, or maybe in my relentless quest for travel efficiency it felt too much like wasted time, but people watching is something that just doesn't appeal to me.

La Carraia

Since two days ago I did a gelato-related post, I figured I might as well do a post on my overall favorite gelato shop of the trip, a place called La Carraia. No surprise, La Carraia is in Florence, the city which is sort of the Jerusalem of gelato. You can hardly walk a hundred feet in any given direction without passing by a gelato shop, so there's plenty of selection and competition, but La Carraia is the place that I kept coming back to over and over again. I first visited La Carraia back in 2012 when I was walking around at night and saw a gelato shop with a line of people coming out the door who didn't look like tourists. So, I got in line, and was impressed with the gelato I got. In 2015, when I was back in Florence, I returned to La Carraia and was pleased to find that the owner(s) hadn't compromised their quality, even though the shop had now been discovered by the Trip Advisor crowd. There are tons of gelato shops in Florence, but La Carraia's gelato was just a step ahead of everyone else, and they also had some of the cheapest gelato in town, making for an unbeatable combination. If you're in Florence, La Carraia is worth a try if you have the time. It's located on the south side of the Arno River, away from the city center, but it's worth the effort to walk down there and check it out.

-----

Unrelated to today's topic, I just realized that this is my 200th post!

Staying Current

Social media is at times an invaluable tool and at other times a complete drag and/or waste of time. While in Europe I experienced both ends of the spectrum trying to stay current with Facebook and Instagram, and to a lesser degree Twitter. On one hand I was able to share photos and status updates from my travels, but on the other hand doing so became a massive chore that at times I nearly gave up on. People loved seeing my photos, but I lost so many hours uploading and organizing them, oftentimes staying up late into the night, that if it wasn't for this absurd sense of duty coursing through my veins, I would have stopped doing so and just told everyone that they would just have to wait until a more convenient time for me to show them what I was up to. Staying current on social media is also the primary reason why I fell so far behind on updating this blog while overseas, as the time that could have been spent typing was instead usually taken up by making sure people had the latest news and photos of mine. It was something of a relief when I got home and posted the last batch of photos and a final status update. Going forward, I'm not sure what my social media policy will be should I do another extended overseas journey, but it's clear that I'll need to set some boundaries on how much time and energy I put into it just to keep others up to date on what I'm up to.

The Chocolate Test

If you read my travelogue posts on my 2015 trip across Europe, particular the entries from Italy, then you know that I ate an absurd quantity of gelato while overseas. When you eat a lot of one thing you start to notice differences in quality from place to place. With gelato, as anything else, it's hard to judge the quality of the shop you bought it from without sampling a large part of the menu, but most of the time doing so would be impracticable. While in Europe, I was trying to find a way to get around this problem, and I came up with something I called the Chocolate Test. I came up with this test because of tendency I noticed among gelato shops. Chocolate is one of the most basic flavors offered at any gelato shop, however it also seems to be one of the most difficult to get right. Gelato shops that had good chocolate gelato tended to also have good quality other flavors, while ones that floundered in this one area tended to also have lesser quality on their other offerings. From this, I think you can guess what the Chocolate Test is: if a gelato shop can nail the basic chocolate flavor, then there's a good chance its other offerings are also good. This "test" originally started as a joke inside my head, however it proved correct enough times that I started to give it some credence. Of course, the Chocolate Test does not have a 100% accuracy rate, and exceptions abound, but I found it to be correct often enough to use it as a somewhat reliable measure of a gelato shop's quality.

Old Journal vs New Journal

On both my 2012 and 2015 journeys across Europe, I took with me a notebook to serve as a journal for my experience. After getting back from the last journey, I had a chance to compare the finished versions of both notebooks. While similar, the new journal was most notably different for the much higher level of detail I recorded on each day's events. I was much more exact on when, where, and what I was doing, and the progression from one event to another. Also included were a lot more personal notes than what was found in the old journal, such as how I was feeling at the time and my opinions on various things. If you were to read through it yourself you'd find both a log of the day's events, and my commentary on the more notable things I saw or did. More detailed writing translated into longer average entries per day, and towards the end of the journey there was a real danger that I might have run out of pages to write on. At the end I only had three blank sides left. If I have another extended overseas trip of about the same length (or longer) I will probably get a larger notebook just to be on the safe side.

Both the old and new journals are treasured records of their respective journeys. I have a feeling that in a few years from now I'll find myself rereading them, and when I do, I'll have to resist the urge to drop what I'm doing and purchase plane tickets.

For Science

Some of you might remember that before leaving for Europe I did a post (found here) about comparing the taste of fast food between America and Europe. Well, I did it, though the results were not quite what I expected. My original hypothesis was that fast food from places like McDonald's and Burger King tasted better in Europe than the same fast food from the same companies here in America. While generally true, my testing of European fast food yielded mixed results. In France, the McDonald's burgers and fries tasted almost the same as those in America, while in the Balkans, most notably Sarajevo in Bosnia, the taste and quality was higher. I didn't eat at McDonald's or Burger King in Istanbul, though I did try out Shake Shack, which was good, but not worth the price I paid for it. In Italy I only got fast food once or twice and I don't remember it standing out. Fast food in Spain was largely better than what I got in France, but I was primarily going to Burger King, whereas in France I mostly ate at McDonald's, so the comparison is flawed to begin with. I'm not sure how many times I ate fast food over the course of the whole trip, but it was definitely higher than the 2012 journey. The things I do for science.

So, what conclusion did my research lead me to? I've revised my claim that fast food is always better in Europe to instead say that it is generally better. Quality varies from country to country, with cultures that have a stronger meat tradition in their cooking tending to produce superior burgers.

iPhone Infection

Our society has a number of terms and expressions for when someone is addicted to using their smartphone. My person favorite is when people say that a person has an "iPhone Infection." We all know the look of people who have iPhone Infections, or whatever else we choose to call it - standing or sitting around, head down, staring at a glowing rectangle in their hand for much of the day. I've owned my current smartphone since 2013, and even though I seem to find a new use for it every month or two, I'm perplexed at how attached people can become to their phones.

While I was in Europe I got as close as I've come to an iPhone Infection, though in my case it was intentional and necessary (and temporary). My phone was my primary, and sometimes only, connection to the internet, and its GPS and compass functionality were used extensively across the continent. Every day I'd be pulling my phone out regularly to check email, take photos and later upload them to Instagram and Facebook, examine train schedules, look up sightseeing information, keep up with my online reading, and various other things. On one hand it was somewhat convenient to be doing everything on a device that would fit in my pocket, but on the other hand I didn't like having to use such a small screen and a touchscreen keyboard. Having to charge my phone almost every day was also annoying, as at home my phone's battery would normally last several days before needing to be plugged in, but in Europe it was getting so much usage that a full charge would only get me through one to two days. But, regardless of my gripes, I'm glad I brought the phone along with me and at many points in the trip it proved itself invaluable.

Now that I'm back in America, my phone has returned to its normal usage and the iPhone Infection is gone. I think the main reason I'm not constantly tethered to my phone is because most of the things that I could do on it are done easier and better on my laptop. A piece of writing, even one as short as this, is really hard to type out on a phone, and reading an article is a lot easier when you don't have to be constantly scrolling down. If I find myself overseas, or on an extended journey without my laptop, then I guess the iPhone Infection may make a return, but until then my phone will keep to its normal routine of spending most of the day doing nothing.

The Enlightened American

There's an interesting thing that I noticed among a small number of other travelers while I was in Europe. A number of young Americans seemed desperate to be accepted by the Europeans. Usually this took the form of taking the opportunity to make fun of America and various aspects of American society and then to talk about how much smarter and better Europe is. Any person from any country can of course find grounds for joking about their country or pointing out its flaws, but these particular young Americans were going out of their way to demean their own nation and society. If you took them seriously, you'd come away with the impression that America was some sort of dysfunctional society comprised only of idiots (except for them, of course) and that Europe was a modern utopia. While I was a little dismayed by the level of ignorance and absurdity being spoken by these "enlightened" Americans, more than that I was saddened that they felt the need to berate and disown their own country in order to make friends. It would have been incredibly rude for me walk over to them and interrupt, and it's also possible their talk was merely the result of an inner need to be accepted by others, but part of me just wanted to pull these other Americans aside and let them know that it was ok to be American.

Five Weeks In Jail

On my flight from Minneapolis to Paris, I was sitting next to an older man who told me that his final destination overseas was not Paris, but Algeria. His daughter worked at the American consulate in the capital city, Algiers, and he was going out there to spend five weeks with her. At first it sounded like he was going to be having an interesting trip, but he soon explained that it would likely not be an overly enjoyable stay. As American citizens, both he and his daughter would be at high risk for kidnapping and extortion. The compound where his daughter lives, and he would be staying, is surrounded by high walls and razor wire. Any time they leave the compound they cannot just walk around or drive a regular car - they must request an armored vehicle with a security detachment. "I'm about to spend five weeks in jail" was the way the man described his stay in Algeria.