Note to begin with: these photos are not being posted in chronological order. Chronologically, the trip went Viterbo, Perugia, Assisi, Bologna, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Rome. But since I'm low on time, I'm posting photos as I feel so inclined. So this is Assisi.

After staying with our family in Viterbo for about a week, Holly and I went to Perugia, home of the Perugina chocolate factory (we didn't visit it, but we should've) and a rockin' city cable car system to get people from the stations to the city on top of the hill. Perugia and Assisi, a close neighbor, are both Umbrian hill towns--not to the extent that Orvieto is a crazy hill town with cliffs on all sides, but still hill towns. We used a lot of public transportation.

We had two nights in Perugia. We arrived early on the first day and spent the afternoon exploring Perugia, and then decided that since I'd never been to Assisi we would take a day trip there the next day. Assisi is only about 25 minutes by train from Perugia, and not very expensive. It's largely a tourist attraction because of Saint Francis, but also because it is gorgeous - everything is built out of local stone, a lot of white/pink colors.

The inside of the cathedral of St. Francis:


The outside:


Other sights from Assisi:

A few more, and the Cinque Terre photos, are here.

I haven't gone though all of the 1100 photos I have from Italy, but I went through a few and edited/uploaded 10 of them last night. Places represented so far: Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, and Rome. Not yet represented: Bologna, Venice, Assisi, Perugia, Viterbo, Vetralla, Bagnaia. It was a big trip. I am going to focus on the Cinque Terre photos, because I have the most of those ready for consumption.

First, this is the train station in Manarola:



This is a portion of the path we hiked (Sentiero N.2 da Corniglia a Vernazza) and the view of Vernazza that greeted us at the end:



Dusk:



As you can see, it was pretty spectacular. We hiked about 5km, I think, in two portions - Riomaggiore to Manarola (a stroll) and Corniglia to Vernazza (actual hiking). The path from Manarola to Corniglia was closed due to mudslides, which had also made portions of the (cliffside) path we hiked more iffy than normal. It was wonderful, though.

I am in Italy, five days into the trip and at the second destination of many.

Today we arrived in Perugia, where we are staying for two nights. The hostel gave us pretty vague directions about taking a certain bus line until we saw a certain cafe. This doesn't really work, because Italy is one of those countries where you press the stop button in advance in order for the driver to know to stop. So we had to know in advance.

We asked the driver for help when we got on. She didn't know the place or understand what we were asking, so an Italian woman sitting at the front pitched in. But that driver was off shift a few stations later, so it didn't matter anyway. But she was kind enough to repeat our question to the next driver, and then we spoke with him, and it seemed like he got it.

But then he said "signorine" and motioned for us to get out far before said cafe was in sight. So we talked to him again, and then the other two people on the bus, middle aged Italian women, pitched in. They started debating the best place to get off and asking us for more details about our destination and finally a consensus was reached. They did end up dropping us one station ahead of where the hostel had recommended, but the correct street was in sight. Then all we had to do was walk out of the suburb we were in and down a muddy country road past a broken-down castle and a very loud goose and there we were.

It went really well, actually.

It seems like far more than three weeks ago that I posted more Italy pictures. That's probably because I'm in the midst of finals---in my case, final papers. In all, I have to write between 50 and 64 pages, about half of which is done and 1/4 of which is in German.

Anyway, the actual exciting news is that I'm going to Italy for 2.5 weeks, starting December 29th. On the agenda, with italics indicating possible but not definite day trips: Viterbo, Perugia, Assisi, Bologna, Venice, Verona, Padua, Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, and Rome. I'm taking my roommate, who has never been to Italy, so the trip will involve me revisiting places I have been several times in order to share them with her, but I will also be seeing new things! It should be fun all around.

Because of my impeccable procrastination skills, you should be seeing photos from this trip before I ever get through posting photos from my trip to Italy in April. (Unless I get my act together over Christmas, which is unlikely.)

Back in April, in Italy --- We took a day trip to Orvieto, a hill town in Umbria, while we were staying with our host mother in Viterbo. Orvieto is a hill town in the sense that it is built entirely upon a hill. It is famous for its cathedral (duomo), which we checked out. We also went to its well--famous for having two spiral staircases circling each other that you get to climb down and then back up, since the well is no longer in use. It was cool! One thing that made it much cooler is that Orvieto is located really close to the highway (yes, "the" highway) and the train line that runs north-south on the western side of the Apennines. So I'd seen Orvieto before, tons of times---we'd be driving past or taking the train past and suddenly there is a town carved out of a cliff. It was very cool to actually get to go there---parking in a garage below town and taking the town's system of walking escalators up through subterranean tunnels until we emerged onto the streets on top.

At long last, the photos from the last few weeks in Munich. Marienplatz, Odeonsplatz, and pictures from a barbecue on the Isar that we had to celebrate/mourn leaving. It was great and the sky was pretty dramatic, as you can see. Anyway, I'm back at school now, hence the delays. But I finally synced my camera, and the remaining photos are here.

As of this morning, my exams are over. This morning was neither the easiest nor the one than went most swimmingly, yet it was the best because once it was over, it was over. The semester, the year, everything! Finally done! It's a pretty nice feeling, two months later than I'm used to getting it at the end of Wellesley finals.

We're leaving for the airport in less than nine hours. Eleven months to nine hours. Wow. For those of you keeping track, that's 3:45 AM our time, which will be just fantastic, especially after waking up today at 6:30 for the last exam. And to top it all off our once-direct flight was changed such that we have a connection in Frankfurt. I hate the Frankfurt airport--you have to go through security every other corner.

My rather heavy bags are packed and my room is almost completely through the exhaustive "out processing" cleaning process (it even involved decalcification products!). The kitchen floor, pantry shelves, and inside of the fridge are all that's left. I feel like I have been cleaning forever.

In other news, today while I was de-namifying the nametag on my mailbox I found:

11 euro cents
66 Danish kroner
2 Croatian kune
+
1 notice about how the semester public transportation fee is going up. Well, I'm outta here. I don't really care what they do about the fees. But sweet, crazy old pre-Euro money. On the kune coin, for example, there is some type of large fish on one side and something that looks like a cross between a jaguar and a squirrel on the other.

Sadly, my camera cord has long since been packed. I am taking pictures of my clean, empty room at some point though, and I'll share them with you all once I'm home. I mean, everything is gone. No more carpets, no more curtains, nothing on the shelves...sad. I also have lots of other pictures still to share - from events in Munich, and more from Italy, so don't go away - the drought caused by finals should be over once I get back to the U.S.

Two flights and lots and lots of luggage carrying await.

Oh, and I have to sync my iPod.

Bye!

I decided to finally update because I'm doing fairly well on the semester-paper front, although I still have four exams to take this week after turning in my final two papers. And we fly home in 10 days! Crazy.

My aunt and cousin visited me in June and among other things I took them out to Schloss Nymphenburg, the summer palace where the Bavarian rulers lived for ages and still actually do. I also ran into Martha Stewart there in January.

We toured the inside of the palace itself, two smaller buildings on the grounds (Badenburg, the bathing house, and Amalienburg, the duchess's hunting lodge) and the Marstallmuseum (carriage museum). Everything was beautiful! The weather was great, though hot. Speaking of weather, it occasionally reached ridiculous temperatures (okay, 85 or so. But a HUMID 85!) in May and June and now, in mid-July is back to 65 and rainy. I love it. This is amazing.

Happy Fourth of July! I had class this morning (my last session of one of my classes [First Language Acquisition], which is really hard to believe!) and took part briefly in a barbecue/party we Americans staged at the ping-pong tables in the courtyard. The weather is crazy - today it can't be more than 60 outside (I wore sweaters) but three days ago it was 90 or so and ridiculously humid. I think I love it, though - 60 degree, dry, windy days in July? Amazing.

It's hard to believe it's July already! We fly home on the 23rd, so I have 19 more days - unbelievable, in light of arriving last September and facing an 11-month stay. Wow - 10+ months are gone.

In other news, I'm hard at work on the first of my three semester papers. Once they are turned in by the middle of the week after next, I will abruptly about-face and take three final exams and one 4.5 hour standardized German test in 72 hours. (Fun!)

I'm doing the hard one first - the German one for the university class (15 pages). I also have an English/university paper (12 pages), and a German/program paper (5 pages). The distinction between the German/university and German/program paper is that my German grammar skills will either be one of the worst or one of the best in the class, and thus I will worry about them at proportionately different levels.

Anyway, I may get around to posting pictures from the wonderful visit I had with my aunt and cousin two weeks ago, but at the moment I'm at 1.5-spaced-page 12 of 15 (TWELVE! YESSS!) and I still have two topics to discuss, as well as the conclusion.

For now, before I turn back to my two Word documents - one with 21 pages of quotations/citations and one with the 8.5 single-spaced pages* of my paper - I wanted to take a moment to celebrate.

Why, you ask?

One author appears in the references of both of my long papers. Why is this amazing?

Because one of my classes is in American-Cultural-History [The German Americans: History of an Ethnic Group in the U.S.A.], in which my paper topic is the German language's gradual failure to maintain itself in 19th century America and how the public school system and changing immigration demographics contributed thereto; and the other is in English-Speech-Knowledge [First Language Acquisition], in which my paper topic is - roughly - what evidence is contributed to explaining common vs. proper noun acqusition by research in categorization and semantic vs. experiential/ostential cues to acquisition.

Admittedly I came up with the most linguistic-ky paper topic possible for a general history class, but still. I have an author in common! This is like the pinnacle of interdisciplinary-anism.

* Why do I single-space the paper, when it has to end up 1.5 spaced? Well, if you've never had the joy of clicking that line spacing button and seeing your paper magically achieve the minimum length requirement without you adding another word, you haven't lived.

Addendum: Oh my god, I just realized! I type everything in Arial 10pt (it's a thing) and the paper by rights should be in Times NR 12pt - a quick formatting change and - I HAVE ACHIEVED 15 PAGES. Of course, the other side of Arial 10pt is that it really doesn't look much smaller than Times NR 12pt, so I can legit change it back to Arial 10pt and have space to finish my arguments and conclusion - and not feel guilty. YES.

Addendum Two: I really don't like writing papers anywhere near as much as this post indicates - since I dislike it so much, in fact, I have to derive my joy from the little things. Hence the Word games.

Ha. Notice the pun?

Addendum Three, for my parents: Since the USB fans have issues I don't even want to go into, the current keep-the-computer-cool-enough-to-word-process paper writing strategy involves me, sitting in my chair, with my laptop - wait for it - sitting atop a dishtowel atop 750g of frozen peas.

I'm in the midst of writing the first of my two big papers for my two Proseminare at the university. This one's in German - luckily the other one is in English - and the pregnant professor's baby is due the day before my grade needs to be returned to the program - so I need to get it to her quite early. Two months earlier than my German classmates, actually - in general, papers for Proseminare here don't have to be turned in until shortly before the beginning of the following semester. Unfortunately, by the time my classmates are writing their papers in the semester break, I'll be back in classes at Wellesley. So I'm stuck doing everything now.

Anyway, I'm in the midst of the research bits - in which, thanks to JSTOR and the wonders of text-recognizing PDFs, I can copy/paste the relevant bits of a 49-page article into five pages of notes in Word for later citation purposes.

I'm close to finishing the article I'm on - and it has been a wonderful wonderful source of information. For example, some of the less-publicized effects of the First World War:

Milwaukee:
1917 - Number of public-school children enrolled in German-language classes: 31,000.
1919 - Number of public-school children enrolled in German-language classes: 0.

Ouch.

No pictures today, as I've been reading articles since I got out of class this morning. I did succeed in fixing my bike - replacing the inner tube and tire on the back wheel - on Tuesday, thank god, and it was 10 euro + about two hours of my labor, as opposed to 40+ euro at the bike shop. So that feels rewarding, and I've ridden it more than two hours since without any problems. I need to put a bit more air in the tires and I'll be set.

Oh, and Germany got to the Euro Final! We watched the game in the courtyard of Studentenstadt on the series of big TV screens the pub has set up, and it was crazy wonderful. The Olympiastadion in Munich was open for a public viewing - 30,000 people permitted - the game started at 8:45 pm and when I got off the U-Bahn at 7:15 pm they were already running a PSA that it was closed due to overfilling. Crazy! We also got a warning email from the US Embassy, since the game was against Turkey and there's a lot of tension between German-Germans and Turkish-Germans (the embassy wanted us to stay safe and not go to a public viewing and thus avoid potential riots afterwards). Luckily our chosen venue was fine. I could see only one girl cheering for Turkey - and no one heckled her. So that was nice.