A Roman mini-break

Two days in Rome might not be enough to give a proper review and blog filled with tips, but I'm gonna try it anyway, because the other travelblogs I wrote on Russia, Thailand and Barcelona are well-ridden.

The good thing about Rome is that, even though on the map it looks quite big, two days is plenty to cross of most things on my to-do list.

Vatican.
I promised my mother to visit the Vatican, so I did. Having booked a ticket in advance online, I had a timeslot in which I had to show up. I had to hurry, but in the end, nobody checked my time, in fact, the lady at the booth didn't even look at me, period. This kind of behaviour was exemplory for how tourists are treated in the Vatican, when I asked a lady where to show my ticket, she told me to go back downstairs, because "how should I know? I just work here". After explaining that I just came from downstairs, and they told me to go upstairs, she yelled at me "I'm just trying to help you."
What I found hilarious at the Vatican, or more specific the Sixtene Chappel, were the guards. In a poor attempt to keep the peace, it's them who are the noisiest, screaming "Silencio!!", "No photo!!" and "Get down the stairs!!" every other minute at the admiring, quiet crowd. The other guards filled their time playing with their smartphones.

Market.
I found the Campa del Fiori highly disappointing (just sayin'), so do yourself a favour and go towards the indoor market of Testaccio. It's covered, there's some locals doing their groceryshops and they sell more than travelsize bottles of olive-oil and fun multi-coloured pasta. There should be a market at 'Porta Portese', but only on sunday, and my 48 hours did not cover that day.

Coloseum-area.
As soon as you walk out the subwaystation, you bump into the ruins of the Coloseum. I didn't go inside (I saw a Turkish style Coloseum last april and no offence, when you've seen one, you've seem them all), but the area is really nice to walk around in. Next to the
Colosseum is Palatine hill with the foro Romano; if you walk up the exit you see a lot as well. If you walk towards Via dei Fori Imperiali, you will notice some awesome historic grounds and buildings (red arrows).

Spanish steps.
If you have ever climed the stairs in front of the Sacre Couer in Paris, the Spanish steps should be a piece of cake. Now, I unfortunately missed it, but my friend suggested to go to Via Margutta, near the Spanish steps, in the Spagna area.




Hostel.
I stayed in the Zen House B&B, cheap, small and a personal touch. The host / owner is a former traveller himself and he basically started the hostel that he would have loved to stay in. This makes it like you're staying in the guestroom of a friends house. He cooks breakfast personally, gives you tips when you want to, or leaves you alone.

Cinema.
For those of you who are anything like me and always forget how tiresome it is to walk, walk, and then walk some more, while at one point desperately longing for the cool and quiet of a cinema; there is one at Metrostation Barberini, called... Multisala Barberini. And yes, they do original language as well. I will not comment on the movie I saw. Let's just say this: I find Brad Pitt combating zombies at fifty as sexy as when he cheated on either Thelma or Louise when I was 14.

Museum.
Missed the Vatican, Palatine Hill or the Pantheon? Don't worry. The whole city is one big open air museum, with plenty of historical buildings / ruins / statues / parks to look at. You might even get the accidental history lesson, like I did. I overheard an American fellow explain some good old Gods to his holiday-party:
"So he went out and hooked up with Venus. Cause that's what you did when you were really cool in those days. You bagged yourself a godess."

Other than young Americans on their gapyear 'doing Europe', be prepared for:
Sigarettes: everybody smokes in Italy, from police-officers, to students, from people preparing your food to the homeless beggars. Electronic cigarettes are up-and-coming in Italy.
Police-sirenes: every hour or so I was shaken by sirens, whether they came from undercover vehicles, firetrucks or proper police motorcycles: Rome was siren-galore. The undercover vehicles were the best, with one guy behind the wheel and the other one hanging out of the passenger-window, holding the blazing siren, the whole thing looked kindof cute.
Guns: every guy in uniform apparently is allowed to carry a gun. From the actual police officers, to museum-guards, to the trainstation personel. Very odd.
Religion: I realized Italy is pretty catholic, with the pope living there and all. But I didn't realize how big religion was, till I noticed all the nuns and priests in the wild, chains with crosses, people reading the bible on the train, making me feel kindof embarrased for my copy of 'Als ik auto had kunnen rijden...', but ah well. 
Transportation: Italians travel by scooter, Smart car or Fiat. This is great, but if you're depending on public transportation: the subway is fine and affordable, but the trains suck.
Dealing with Italians: so, this might come across pretty pityfull, but I found it highly gratifying to start talking Dutch when my English would just trigger angry stares, wild handgestures and a stream of uncomprehensible Italian jibberish. Just to return the mutual feeling of despair when dealing with ignorant Vatican-personal, train-conductors or other locals.

Additional tips:

Another friend suggested 'Il ritrovo del Gusto' for dinner. Unfortunately by the time I got this message I had already worked my way through a quatro fromagio pizza. Which, by the way comes out of the oven looking like a 'cheese fondue pizza', because non of the original cheeses are retrievable, but, who cares.
Same friend suggested a cornershop place at Piazza della Pace for coffee.

Put unused napkins from fast-food in your bag or pockets. This tip isn't limited to Rome, obviously. You never know when you gotta go and all you have at your disposal is a dirty Dixie at the side of the road without any toiletpaper. Or something.

You can find a proper tour-guide to Rome here, it's a pdf, and it will work on your e-reader as well.

post-Hamburg

It's been a month since my last blog on 'meanwhile back home'. I've been neglecting it. Again. In my defense, I did write a lot for my criminology blog. Reluctantly I open up my journal, has really nothing interesting happened in my life, that is worth writing about?
I wrote a couple of application-letters, well, 6 to be exact, had a few coffee-dates and a dentist appointment, went to Hamburg. What the...? Did I not write about Hamburg? I guess I didn't. That's unfair, because my weekend in Hamburg deserves it's own blog.

When I saw my old Canterbury friends come up with a plan to meet in Germany on Facebook, I realised with a pang of jealousy that I wanted to be part of it. And my current situation allows for instant plan-making, so I booked a cheap flight.
Obviously it was really nice to see my Canterbury group, Evi, Jenny, Verena, Sandra, Nicolas and Yarin, again. They are a good bunch and I am proud to call them my friends. My weekend was calm and mellow. Just like life in a warm country slows down, the same goes for the freezing cold. With my limbs unable to heat up and my head suffering from a contstant brainfreeze, I was punished for packing wrong. Layering up might seem like a good idea to avoid check-in luggage, but when it's -5, you need proper snowboots and two pairs of jeans. Lesson learned.
But, we managed to deal with he cold and with an extra pair of Verena's legwarmers, I was even persuaded to do some ice-skating on a frozen lake. Along with the rest of Hamburgs inhibitants. My brave moves were rewarded with a nice plastic cup of mulled wine. Hot cocao might have worked when I was 5, but I now I need better bribery.
Other than that, it was the perfect weekend getaway that involved the right mixture of friends and food (lots of kaffee, kuchen and gewurst). Picking up roommates and boyfriends scattered throughout the city allowed for some interesting sightseeing. Watching a half-Turkish Yarin and a half-Greek Evi cook together in a tiny kitchen whilst listening to their ideas on politics and criminology, makes me believe in Europe. My meeting with Hamburgs nightlife was a one off. My cold limbs and tired body only allowed me to go dancing once, in a dark reggea basement. Dark because of the weedy smoke, not necessarily the lack of proper lights. Highlight must have been spending an afternoon on a boat, muddling through slushpuppy-like icewater, watching both the coast of Hamburg and the containerships pass by at a very slow pace. I felt truly blessed that I have been able to meet these guys and spent some extra time with them after my 6 weeks in Canterbury. I can't wait to see them again, and I hope they know that they are welcome in Rotterdam.

Canterbury? Isn't that the chocolate factory?

The pages in my diary were getting a bit dull. Recent highlights are quotes from Asian customers who uttered words like 'Dabidab Gow' (that's Davidoff Gold) or 'LebabaTeh' (Lebara phone voucher for 10 euro). Needless to say, working at the Bruna shop at Rotterdam Central Station proved a lost-in-translation-challenge, but didn't add much else to my life. Neither did feeding the zoo-keepers at Blijdorp, which I also did for 6 miserable weeks. This obviously does not show up on my resume, so only sharp HR-people who actually Google me, will find this out.
So there you have it, darling, the hole on my C.V. explained.
In order to pimp my profile, reinvent that resume, I decided to offer myself to the University of Kent, for a voluntary internship. The 'to go or not to go' question was answered after the x-th rejection on a carefully written application letter, followed by disappointing job-interview. When even the Nieuwe Luxor theater wouldn't hire me to sell tickets, I decided enough was enough and emailed my contact that I would be coming over. For... 6 weeks, starting from... the 17th of October. Dates and numbers were just made up on the spot.
"So what will you do there?" concerned friends would ask me.
"I'm not sure. Something with the DCGC-project", I would reply vaguely.
"Oh..."
Just throw in an abbreviation, and the questions will stop, because it immediately sounds interesting. A poker-face with sad stare helps. Honestly, I'm just not sure yet what my tasks will entail, besides who cares what I'll do? I love the UK, and anything I'm assigned to, beats frying croquettes and selling cigarettes. The trainjourney was fine; from Rotterdam to London is 5 hours, 5! To Vlieland is like 7! Even accommodation is sorted properly: I have a whole 8 square meters at my disposal. With full use of the kitchen! Yes, strangely enough this is very important to me. Let's just say the other landlady I was in contact with, was very strict when it came to her 'no-kitchen'-policy. But what does one pack for six weeks? And will I actually need a plastic container, legwarmers and a set of playing cards? And why did I buy a book I already read, and started reading it anyway? Will I finish that pack of 20 sausages in 6 weeks time? Now, these questions will not be answered, but I will keep me (and you) posted on more interesting things going on in Canterbury.
Oh, and ps: No! Canterbury isn't the chocolate-factory, that's Cadbury. Know your chocolate-brands, people!

Stories from the North of the East (part 2)

The second part of this blog is devoted to Moscow. Ana was more than willing to skip Moscow, but you cannot go to Russia and ignore it's capital. And, Ana will confirm this, it wasn't bad at all. She warned that the city would be coldhearted, unfriendly for tourists and just not nice to people in general. Nobody was more surprised than her when our first encounter on the subwaystation was a young girl asking us if we needed some help finding directions. That was after a more than pleasant trainjourney from Minsk; a train where the carpet in the hallway is covered with carpet (to protect the carpet, probably).
Funny story; Ana was buying the sleepertrain-tickets in Minsk and the railway personal wanted my middle name.
Ana: "She doesn't have one".
RWperson: "How come she doesn't have a middle name?"
Ana: "Because she's Dutch, she just doesn't have a middle name. It's not in her passport."
RWperson: "But we have to fill in something...?"
Needless to say, the section remained empty, but according to Bellarussian regulation my proper name would be Therese Jan-Jaap Klok.
She also had to fight to get us bottom-beds. They were there, they were available, they didn't cost anything else, but it was just uncommon to give a duo two bottombeds. Lucky for me Ana is very determined.
The best part of Moscow, was the 'Vassily' Basilic; saint Basil's Church. It was magic, you only see that fairytale building for the first time once. Laying my eyes on it, looking up from my tourist-guide, with it's gorgeous round domes ('raindrops' I said, 'onions' Ana calls them), small towers, colourfull decorations and religic icons to finish it off.
So, we got lucky with the journey, the people, the hostel (Fresh Hostel), the weather and the subway. As in: we didn't get lost in that spiderweb of 12 different lines and 185 stations.
We only stayed in Moscow for two days and one night, but I got to see a good part of the city; Red Square, Kremlin, 3 McDonalds, Arbat street, loads of subwaystations and their subsequent pieces of art, the changing of the guards and heaps of schoolchildren imitating those guards, kicking their legs up in the air. We went to VDNCh, I didn't put some consonants in random order here, the park is actually called VDNCh. Please skip this hellhole of a carnivalesque fair. I should have read the description in my travel guide better; I skimmed the text, picking up words like; glory, architecture, fountains and youths. If I read more closely I would have read: misplaced glory of the past, kitchy architecture, flashy fountains and masses of skateboarding youths whizzing by. Well, it was clear from the start that the people who wrote the travelguide, which describes both Moscow and St-Petersburg, clearly were more fond of the latter. We spent our last (and second) night in Moscow on the busy Leningradsky trainstation, amidst hundreds of other fellow-travellers. We waited there for several hours, entertaining ourselves with music, Keith Richards' Life, machine-coffee and Russian Sudoku, before boarding the sleepertrain to St-Petersburg.
Moscow was awesome, but I was in for more treats in St-Petersburg, coming up in part 3.

Meanwhile, back home

At this moment, when leaves (and banks) are falling and my new wintercoat isn't enough to keep me warm, multiple of my (Facebook)friends have decided to use their newfound freedom (read: unemployment) to go travel.
Whether it took weeks of planning, trips to and from the travelagency or was drawn on the back of a beermat, they are gone. And not just one week to Berlin. Nooo, where's the fun in that? (Hold on, I'll ask Anastasia) No. They have left to (re)discover places that I wouldn't be able to find on a globe if my life depended on it.
The map with travelplans that Nanko put on their
Reizblog certainly provides helpfull information, especially
for someone
as geographically challenged like me. Although in the world
of criminal analysis stripey lines mean 'unconfirmed'. But
I'm not worried; I'm the one who gets lost in de South of Rotterdam, Rox can find Thailand blind (too bad they're
not going to Thailand).



Becauwe they (all of y'all in Africa, Asia and other parts of Europe) need to realise that you can just as well not have money here, enjoy a Latte at the Urban, watch elephants in the Blijdorp Zoo and feel outdoors at the Kralingse Plas, I decided to keep all of them up to date with all the exciting things that are happening here, in Rotterdam. Just to let you know waht will be right here waiting for them, when they get back home.