In Cork!

Alright, so I know I've been kind of lax on the blogs lately. Sorry to those of you who lost interest and aren't reading this anymore... but you won't read this anyway, so I just apologized to nobody. Whatever. Anyway, I got settled in here, and I'm living in a 7 person house full of other "foreigners." There are 3 Americans, one from Santa Barbara, one from Seattle, and myself. There's 1 Canadian from Toronto, and he's actually got the personality type of Brad Wallace, meaning he's sociable and has that courteousness towards people that makes them feel included and enforces their opinions, even when he doesn't agree. I don't know if that really makes sense, but does Brad really make sense? Anyway, there's also a guy from Britain. That's it for the males, and there are 2 females, one from Romania and one from China. There's also a house behind ours full of foreigners. There are 3 Canadians there, 2 French people, one girl from Spain, at least one girl from Poland, and one Irish guy. Our house is kind of known as the "party house" meaning people come over to our house when they want to hang out because it's got a big common room that's somewhat separated from the rest of the house. It's been great. I know some of you are interested in the project I'm working on, so I'll give a short explanation and a long explanation.

First, the short explanation: I am making a computer model of the way light travels through something called a waveguide (basically a fiber optics cable).

Now for the long explanation (don't worry, I won't be offended if you skip this): A waveguide is something that guides light waves... which is where the waveguide gets its name. The way it works is the waveguide is very thin (only about 1/200 of a millimeter thick) and it's attached to something called the substrate. The waveguide section is called the core, and the air on top of the waveguide is called the cladding. Every material has something called an index of refraction. For those of you who have forgotten your physics, the index of refraction is based on how fast light travels through that medium. It's basically like a person who can walk through air vs. a person who walks through water. The person walking through air will travel faster than the person who is traveling through water, even though they exert the same amount of effort. The air has an index of refraction of 1 (basically) meaning light is not slowed down at all. The core has the highest index of refraction, and the substrate has one an index between the air and the core. There is a phenomenon called total internal reflection that happens when light strikes the surface of a material at a very shallow angle and the material the light travels through is higher than the material on the other side of the surface. When the light is totally internally reflected, no light escapes the material. This is how fiber optics works. The light continually bounces off the walls of the material at shallow angles, and it can thus be guide to wherever you need it to go, provided the angle isn't too sharp. Now, as some of you may know, light is an electromagnetic wave, and so it exhibits an electric and magnetic field. What I am doing is making a computer model in C++ of the electric and magnetic fields of the light as it is traveling down the waveguide. This is so we can figure out things like the optimum shape of the waveguide so as to produce the least amount of energy loss, which would really help things like information transfer. I think it's pretty cool, but some of you may have already exited the window, or skipped down to here. That's cool.

Anyway, this is basically the thesis of the dissertation for the PhD that my "boss" is working for. His name is Rob, and he's very Irish. Sometimes, I can't really understand what he's saying, but I'm getting more used to the accent. At least he actually speaks English (most of the time anyway - sometimes it sounds like another language). Our supervisor's name is Dr. Frank Peters, and he's from Canada and worked in Silicon Valley for 12 years. That's cool because he actually has my accent, so it's easy to understand him. I also found out that he's a fairly strong Christian, and he was able to direct me to a pretty cool church that I checked out last Sunday. I was very thankful for that. Since then, we've had some discussions about God and how to incorporate that into a physics career. I'm so glad that God put someone like that in my life, so thanks to all of you for your prayers in that area.

Anyway, this weekend a bunch of us are going to Galway, where we are going to visit the Cliffs of Moher. Apparently they are one of Ireland's biggest attractions, and there's a 10-mile hike that we're going to go on. I'm pretty excited about it, and a lot of the people going with us are excited about it too, so that makes me even more excited because I know they're probably not going to wimp out. So I'm leaving for that at 1:30 tomorrow on a bus with everyone else. It's going to be awesome. Other then that, we got memberships to the local gym. The way they let you inside is they read your fingerprint and that opens the gate for you. Pretty cool I think. Almost like Gattaca if any of you have seen that movie. Anyway, they have a basketball court and a rock climbing gym, so I've been able to stay active. It's pretty cool. Anyway, I think that's all I have to say. If any of you have questions or just want to say hi, feel free to comment or email me at steven.horne@tyndall.ie. That way I won't have to wade through all my junk email to find your email. Also, blogspot and facebook are blocked at my office because I guess they don't want people messing around when they're supposed to be working. I love all you guys!

Brussels and Dublin

Alright, well we made it to Brussels ok, obviously. The first night in Brussels, we just walked around for a bit and got to know the city. We both kind of decided that we liked Germany better than Belgium, but it was fun anyway. After a somewhat late night of walking around and stuff we went to bed. Funny story about that night. I woke up at 4:30 am and I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Being a hostel and all, the bathroom was outside the room, so I got out of my bunk and went there. On returning, I found that I had forgotten my key to get back in the room. The reception was closed at this point, and I didn't really want to knock and wake people up, so I just decided to wait outside the room until someone came out. There were 14 people in this room, so I figured someone would need to go to the bathroom or something soon. And I was right. Someone came out at 5, and I gratefully went back in the room. I just couldn't believe I had forgetten the key. I felt pretty stupid.

Anyway, the next day, it was raining all day, so we went to the museum of musical instruments. This was really cool because they gave us headphones, and I was like "Oh great, it's going to be a self-guided tour with some droning voice in a French accent in my ears." But it was actually something different. At each place, you could see the instruments through the glass, then if you stood in the right spot, the headphones would intercept a radio frequency that was playing the particular instrument we were looking at. We spent about 5 hours in the museum before we got hungry and left. It was one of the coolest museums I've ever been in. Also, I introduced Andrew to the glory of the nutella crepe. If you don't know what that is, you are missing out on bliss. It's basically a flat pancake filled with a sweet hazelnut spread. It tastes amazing! I'll try to make it when I get back to America, but I think the Europeans really have grabbed the essence, and no one can make it like the Parisians. Anyway, I got him hooked on those. After this, we went to the park and broke our hackey-sack record! Woot! No naked people this time though, but we did have a guy ask us if he could take our picture while we played. It's kind of funny because we'll be playing and every once in a while a group of people will stop to watch us, and sometimes people even video-record us! We feel like movie stars, and we actually play better when people are watching us. The next day, we decided to go to the palace that was there, and try some Belgian beer. Dave, Andrew tried the beer you said, and it was delicious. People, if Dave Smith ever gives you advice about anything food-related, definitely take him up on it. He knows what people like!

So the next morning, we had to get to the airport to catch a flight to Dublin at 10:10. Andrew wanted to get there by 8:15, but I didn't think we needed to be there until 9:00 because my flight from Edinburgh to Paris was so smooth. We were wrong. We decided to get up at 7:30 so we could be out the door by 8 and at the train station to the airport by 8:30. From there, we figured it would take about a half hour to get the ticket to the airport and take the train there. This was the plan. What actually happened is we got up at 7:30. I figured out that I had lost the paper with the reservation on it, and for those of you who are newer to our adventures, my computer had broken down the first day I got to London. So we couldn't find our reservation anywhere. I tried to look on the hostelworld web site to see the bookings I had made, but the password for my account was really weird. I had it sent to my email, but the computers at the hostel couldn't access my email for some reason, so we decided to get to the airport and check it there on Andrew's laptop. So we got out of the hostel by 8:15 and to the train station by about 8:35. We had just missed the train to the airport at 8:33, so we waited for the one that left at 8:45. We figured we would still be ok. Well the train never came. Apparently it was really delayed or something, so they just cancelled it and we had to take the 8:59 train. We got the airport by 9:15 and we had to walk for a little ways to get to the airport from the airport train station. By the time we had checked in and everything, it was already 9:25. Boarding began at 9:45 and the flight took off at 10:10. We figured we were still good because all we had to do was get through security. Actually, no. Apparently in Brussels, you have to go through customs to get out of Belgium. We got to this room with an insane amount of people where we saw that we had to wait in this huge line to get through. So we wait in line, praying that we'll get to our flight on time. This whole time, Andrew's been saying, "We'll never make it," in a joking matter, but I started saying it too when I saw how long the line was. We got to within 10 people by 9:45, but then, people started taking a really long time. We ended up getting our passports stamped by 10:00. We had 10 minutes. We run towards the security line, and all I saw was a huge amount of people, and I thought we were finished. I looked at Andrew and just sighed. Then, I saw this little tiny security line off to the side and said, "We're going there!" We get over there, and apparently we were allowed to go through that way. There were only two people in front of us, but the lady in front of us waited until the last minute to start getting ready to go through the line. She took things out of her pockets, took the liquids out of her bag, took off her shoes, took off her watch, blah blah blah, and all the while, Andrew and I are like, "Just go lady!" under our breaths. She finally gets through, and Andrew and I empty our pockets and go through. Andrew had a bunch of change in his pockets apparently, and he felt the need to get every last coin one by one back into his pocket. I grabbed his bags and my bag and ran to where there were less people. Andrew meets me there, and we look at our tickets to see which gate we have to go through: B32. I saw a sign that said B1-B98. I said to myself, "Surely, fate would not be this cruel to us..." but yes, it was. We had to run 32 gates through a Belgian airport dodging people and trying not to run over babies. At one point, I actually ran through a restaurant to avoid a group of people. I got to the gate at exactly 10:10 and said, "Please, my brother is coming in 1 minute!" The guy said that it was fine, and Andrew comes sprinting up out of breath. Apparently, the plane was delayed by 20 minutes. Thank goodness. That was probably the most stressful time of my life. Anyway, we got to Dublin ok, but we still had to figure out the hostel reservation.

In Dublin, I get my bag and we go through customs and through the immigration office. I show the officer my passport and my papers to let me stay for three months. He points out that the letter from Tyndall calls me a "she" in several different occasions, and he suspected that it was a fraudulent letter! I got a little worried, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt probably because I was an American. We got through that alright, and we used the airports wifi to find the hostel reservation. I get my password to hostelworld, and go to the website. I see all the hostels I was at... except the one we had to get to. Apparently, the reservation had not gone on my record and therefore, we had no way of finding where we were supposed to stay that night. I didn't know what to do. We decided to go to the tourist station at the airport to see if we could make a reservation at a different hostel. The woman there said that there were a lot of events happening in Dublin that night, so most of the hostels would be full. She tried two of them, the first one was full and the second had a double available for 44 euros per person per night. We asked her to keep looking. I glanced at her paper and saw the name of the first hostel was Abbey Court Hostel. I thought that sounded somewhat familiar, so I asked if she could call there and just see if my reservation was there. She called and said, "Hello, this is so and so from the airport. I have two guys here who think they might have a reservation at your hostel. The name is Steven Horne. Do you have a reservation by that name?" Seconds that seemed like hours passed by. I was praying that this was the right hostel. Then I heard, "Oh you do?" My heart leaped, and I did a fist pump saying, "YES!" I don't know how it happened, but we found our original reservation and the rest of the day went splendidly. That incident right there makes me believe that miracles do happen.

After that whole fiasco, we checked into our hostel and visited a church and walked along the river. We were relieved to be in an English speaking country again. That night, there were a bunch of girls from Germany in our room, and they talked and had the light on really late. Finally at 1:15, I said to them, "Are you going to bed anytime soon?" (Apparently Andrew can sleep through anything, so he wasn't affected by this at all.) They apologized and the light was off by 1:30. We were up by 9:30 the next morning (this morning) in time to catch breakfast. I had to check out to go to Cork, so I did that. We decided to go to a church service we had seen the day before, and it was awesome. They had Chris Tomlin playing and they sang songs we knew. It was a very welcoming environment, and we both had a great time there. It was really awesome to be able to go to church after a long time of not being able to for a while. After this, we went to get some lunch, and I packed up my stuff to go to Cork. I got on the bus, said goodbye to Andrew, and got to the train station. Then I realized that I had no idea where to go once I got to Cork. I found an internet station at the train station and logged onto my email from there. I found the Tyndall Institute welcome letter and saw that I was supposed to be receiving an email from the housing accomodations soon. Now I know you are all familiar with spam. I receive about 600 emails per day, about 595 of which are spam. I had actually deleted the email from the housing people, so I wasn't sure what to do. The Tyndall email had given me the name of the place, so I had hoped to just show up there and check in when I got there. I checked my inbox, and lo and behold, there was an email from the place already there! It was asking me when I would arrive in Cork because the lady who runs the place is not there all the time. It alluded to the previous email that I had never gotten and gave me her phone number. Luckily there was a phone next to the station I was at, so I phoned her and left a message. By this time, it was about 10 minutes until my train left, so I went to get on that. Apparently I had forgotten to tell her I would be at the train station, so when I got to the place, the lady wasn't there. One of the residents let me in, and he let me use his computer and phone. Finally, when I called, she got to the place and said she had been waiting for me at the train station. I felt kind of bad, but I was just glad to be there. I finally have my own room! I have to share a bathroom, but I'm so glad to finally have a place I can call my own. I start my orientation tomorrow, so I'm going to do some laundry now and hopefully I will be fresh for the morning.

Munich and Time with Dave

The train ride to Munich was pretty nice. It was a direct train from Goppingen to Munich. When we got there, we were able to check into the hostel right away, then we went to go explore the city. We walked down to the Glockenspiel and then over to the English Gardens (not to be confused with Elitch Gardens). We also saw the Frauenkirchen, which means church of our lady (strangely enough, that's also what Cathedral of Notre Dame means). That was a pretty cool church. Then we walked around the corner and we saw this HUGE church! It was St. Stephen's cathedral, and it was really awesome. We took some good pictures of everything, so those will go up when we can figure out how to do it. We walked around some more, then went back to the park. We took a nap there, and right when we were about to go to sleep, this duck came over to Andrew and got really close to him. It was pretty cool. Then we saw this family of geese. There was a mom and a dad and three babies. They were pretty cute, and when another goose got close to them, the dad would start making a lot of noise and chase the other goose away. It was hilarious to watch. I told Andrew that he should go near them and see if the dad would chase him away. He got within five feet of them, when the whole family started to move away, and the little babies said, "Meep!" in a really high-pitched squeal. We walked around a little bit more, then we went to check out the Glockenspiel's performance at 5:00. It was kind of cool, just because it was the world's biggest cookoo clock, but other than that, it was kind of lame. We both agreed that our dad would have loved it. After this, we went to the Hofbrauhaus and ordered the obligatory liter sized beers and some good food. I got the sausage platter and the dark beer. It was delicious! Andrew got the light beer and a meatball plate. He said that was really good too. To finish, we had some applestreudel. It was a great meal. After this, we walked around some more and went back to the hostel. The Euro Cup soccer games were still going on, so I went and checked them out for a little bit, and Andrew went to bed. It wasn't very exciting, but there were a lot of people cheering for Holland to win, and they did, so that was cool. The next day, we went to the food market and had these yummy sandwiches with meat in them. They have a really funny sounding German name so I don't remember what it is, but they were good. We went back to the park to play hackeysack, and there were a few people scattered in this open field with a river running through it. We decided to go play over there, but I saw this guy who was either naked, or wearing some skin-colored clothes. I said to Andrew, "Andrew, is that guy naked?" He said, "I don't know," so we went over to check it out... and it turned out he was completely naked! We both just started cracking up! You couldn't really see any of his... parts because of the way he was sitting, but it was still nasty. He looked really sunburnt everywhere. Everyone just seemed like it was natural, so we said, "Ok!" and acted like it was natural. Every once in a while, we would check to see if he was still there, and he would be. Then Andrew just pointed and he was fully dressed! It was the weirdest thing ever. After that, we walked back through the food market and I had a bratwurst for lunch. The meat there was so good. We then caught a 1:00 train to go to Hof to meet up with Dave and his wife Steffi. We got there at 5:30 and had an awesome time with them. They live in a bed and breakfast type of place that Steffi's dad owns. He also has a zoo-like park with a bunch of animals in cages including tiny monkies, guinea pigs (they were nuts), and snow owls. It was quite a variety of stuff. Then we had a barbecue with Dave and Steffi's dad while Steffi was working and her mom was at English class. It was a good bit of man time. It was a bit surprising to see Dave talking in German with Steffi's dad. It was pretty cool to hear. Anyway, the barbecue was really good, and there was a lot of meat involved. Apparently it is somewhat of a tradition to make sure everything gets eaten off the table. Usually they make Dave to it, but this time we had to do it. It was really good, but we were so stuffed when it was done. Then Dave put some chocolate in some bananas and barbecued those. Those were "deelish" as he likes to say. It was good to be with someone whose first language was English again. Also, he knew the food really well so he knew the best Bavarian foods that Americans would like. It was really good. Later, we went to the restaurant where Steffi works and sat around for a while and played this game kind of like liar's dice. We'll have to teach people how to play when we get back. We shared some good stories and had a great time. Steffi had to close the restaurant, so it was midnight when she was done. We met up with one of her other friends and we were going to go in town to hang out, but there was nothing open. We decided to go back to the house and have some rum and cokes. It was delicious. After talking some more and laughing, we went to bed. The next morning, Andrew and I forgot to set our alarms, so we got up kind of late. We went downstairs, and there was another huge meal waiting for us. Steffi's mom was really nice too. She knew a lot of English because of the classes she is taking, and she packed us a big lunch for the train ride to Brussels. It was a very short visit, and everyone there wanted us to stay longer, but we weren't able to cancel our reservation in Brussels. Overall, we had a great time and got to Brussels at about 9:00 last night. More to come later about that.

Day 3 in Vienna and time with family in Germany

Alright, before we start with the touristy stuff, I have a funny story about Andrew. Apparently Andrew sometimes has a tendency to sleeptalk, so a couple of times in the middle of the night, I heard him talking. The first time, he started talking about how he needed to go somewhere. I said, "Andrew, what are you talking about?" He said, "I don't know, I'm probably just sleeptalking." Then, later, he started mumbling, then I heard him say, "Oh my guy!" which is something he's started saying lately, but I guess it's second nature now. So I went back to sleep, and the next day we woke up and I saw Andrew's fly was down. The thing is, he took his pants off the night before to go to sleep, so I said to him, "Andrew, why are your pants on?" He looked down and said, "I don't know! What the heck!" Apparently he had put his pants on in the middle of the night, and he didn't even know it. He didn't remember anything he said. It was pretty funny.

Anyway, the last day in Vienna, we wanted to visit Shönbrunn Palace. We decided to rent the nifty free bikes again, and we went and saw that. We had to catch our train at 11:45, so we just went there and looked around. It was pretty fun. We went back and caught our train. We were supposed to meet my mother's cousin and her kids at the train station. She gave Andrew a picture, but we didn't know how old it was, or if they looked different or something. Andrew said it would have been hilarious if we were just looking around at everyone, then we saw someone who looked just like mom. We would have said, "Oh! There she is." That would have been funny, but we found them because they looked just like they did in the picture. So we got to the house, and everyone was very friendly. Lisa and Ellen are our second cousins, so they are our age, and they took us to this mini-Oktoberfest kind of thing. It was really fun. We went on a really freaky ride, then we went to the beertent, where the beer only comes in liter-sized glasses. It was pretty ridiculous. They had a band playing, so everyone got up onto the benches and was singing with the band. It seemed like everyone was friends with everyone else, even though we didn't even know anyone's name. It was cool. After that we went to bed.

The next day, we had a big breakfast, which was really nice, and we went to meet more of our family. My grandmother had 4 brothers and sisters, and they all have kids, so we met more of our family, but certainly not everyone. All of the kids spoke pretty good English, so they were able to translate to the older ones for us. We met my grandma's last living brother, Otto. He was really funny because the only English phrase he knew was "I speak English!" We had a great time, and everyone was really happy to see us. We went to one of our cousin's birthday parties. He was turning 48. There was so much food, and there was a lot of beer and everyone was having fun. Andrew and I decided we wanted to introduce hacky-sack into Germany, so we played with everyone there. They were really good because I think everyone plays soccer. After this, we went to a place to watch the soccer game of Germany against Poland. Apparently it is Euro 2008 right now, so it's a huge deal. Everyone was decked out in black, red, and yellow. It was fun to watch and cheer for the team because everyone had so much passion. Germany ended up winning 2-0, so the streets were crowded with people honking and waving German flags. It was really fun. We went to bed after that, and now we are going to be on our way back to Munich. Awesomeness.

Vienna Days 1 - 2

When I got to Austria, I checked into my hostel and made sure Andrew and I would be in the same room. Then I decided to walk around the city for a little bit and look for a place to sit down and read for a while. I couldn't find a place for a long time, so I walked around the city for a little while and found a bench in the middle of the place where all the museums are. Of course it was raining, so I found a bench under a tree and was reading for a little bit, but the raindrops kept getting on my book, so I decided to just sit and maybe take a little nap. I must have looked like a bum just laying there because all I had was a backpack, and I wasn't using an umbrella or anything. I took about a 20 minute nap, which seems to be the thing to do after a night train experience. I woke up and walked back to the hostel and actually got into the room. I took a nice hot shower and saw that there was nobody else in the room, so we might actually get the room to ourselves that night. I tried to go to the train station to see if we could get our tickets to Germany, but when I started talking to the information guy, he looked really confused. Apparently, I was in the metro station, and the train station was across the street. I was really confused for a while, then I realized that the metro stop was called Westbahnhof, which is the name of the train station. The real Westbahnhof was across the street, and it was a lot bigger than the metro station. Anyway, I found that and made sure that Andrew's train was coming into that station. After walking around a little bit more, I went to wait for Andrew. He came in right on time, and there wasn't any problems picking him up. I thought that he might have missed the train or something, and we wouldn't have any way to communicate with each other, but everything worked out.

Now Andrew has a story about a Romanian guy he wants to tell:
Alright ladies and gentlemen, here is my absurd tale. I was having a grand ol' time on the train, just minding my business and falling asleep on people's laps, when I was suddenly interrupted by a strange tapping on my chair above my head. I turned inquiringly toward whatever individual might await me, and I was met with the fairly large face of a slightly bearded Romanian. "Romania?" He queried while pointing toward the direction the train was going (Of course, he pronounces it, "Lomahnia?"). I arched my eyebrows in surpise and perplexion. He continued to repeat his question, and finally I decided to pull my handy-dandy eurail map out of my suitcase. I saw that Romania was ridiculously far from where we were, and I answered no to him. I should have just said yes; oh the fool I was. Anyway, after this first encounter, I resumed my lovely adventure of trying desperately to stay awake so as not to impeach upon my fellow passenger's space. About half an hour later as I was failing miserably at my task of staying awake, a sharp tap above my seat brought me back to my senses. I turned around and repeated the same conversation with my new Romanian friend. I decided to ask his name, and he said, "No, thank you." It sounded like a wonderfully delightful Romanian name. Long story short, we had several of these little conversations, many after I and the train attendants realized that he did not have a ticket, and each time we talked, I think he got a little more confused. I ended up giving him 45 euro to get a ticket, mostly because I felt that it was what the Lord wanted me to do and he was just trying to get home. After we got off the train, I handed him a little piece of paper with a cross and Jesus's name hastily scribbled on it, and after he clasped his hands together and asked for some food, Steven gave him some corny bars. I will always have a special place for Nothankyou in my heart.

Alright, it's me again. After this little encounter, we got back to the hostel, walked around the city for a little bit and went to bed early (and we still had the room to ourselves... SCORE!) The next day, we decided just to walk around and tour the Hofburg Palace. It was pretty interesting. They had an entire museum just dedicated to the dishes of the palace! It was nuts. We then went to a park where we had a conversation with a Russian Jehovah's Witness girl. This was interesting because she didn't speak english very well. After that, we went to a bar and had some wienerschnitzel. It was really good. We then went back to the park and played some hackeysack and watched people make out on the grass... fun times! It started raining again, and everybody left except us, which was nice. Then we went back and rented a couple of bikes for free. It was pretty cool. We biked back to our hostel, where there was a drop-off point for the bikes and we had some gelato. It was a good day. More to come later. We're here in Germany with my mom's cousin and her family and we're about to go to some kind of festival. It should be a good time.

Rome Days 3 & 4 and Rome - Vienna

Well, I made it to Vienna in one piece. I'm sitting at the hostel right now waiting for Andrew, so I thought it was a good time to write a blog entry. The day before yesterday, it was raining when I woke up. I think the rain has been following me because it rained everyday I was in Switzerland, then it was sunny when I got to Rome, then it rained again the next day. I think I've had as many rainy days as sunny days at least. So I thought it would be a good idea to go to the Vatican that day and stay indoors. When I got off the subway, there was a line all the way down the wall of the Vatican and around the corner! I stood in line in the rain with my little umbrella while all these guys kept trying to get me to go on a tour to skip the line. It was tempting, but I didn't really want to pay for the tour, or stand around and listen to someone who loves the sound of their own voice, so I waited for about an hour and finally got in. I walked around the museum, which was relatively uncrowded. They had a bunch of displays on the different popes and the history of the Vatican. It was really interesting. After about an hour, I bought an overpriced pasta lunch... you'd think at the Vatican of all places that they wouldn't rip you off for the food, but I guess supply and demand even applies in God's holy places ha ha. I stole some plasticware to make up for it. By stole, I mean I just grabbed a couple from the huge stack that they were freely giving out. Anyway, I was ready to go see the Sistine Chapel. Now I remember that it was a long walk from the sign that pointed to the Sistine Chapel, and the actual Sistine Chapel, and so I thought I was prepared for it. I remembered a little bit shorter than it actually was. It took about an hour and a half from when I set out for the Sistine Chapel to actually get there. I spent about 20 minutes in there because it was really cool, but by that time I was really tired, so I didn't spend as much time as I would have. I think that might have been their point in the walk because so many people want to see it. It was kind of funny because they had an "enforcement officer" or whatever who would shout at people who tried to take pictures, then he would demand silence when people tried to talk over his shouting. He would also yell at people who tried to sit on the stairs too. It was pretty funny. Anyway, I got out of the chapel and, after grabbing some gelato, I headed over to St. Peter's Basillica. I had forgotten how big this place was! I walked in and after my eyes adjusted to the light, I just said, "Wow!" It was very cool. I spent about an hour in there, and I actually hadn't realized that Peter was the first pope. I thought that was pretty cool. Anyway, apparently all the popes are buried there, and they are pretty sure that Peter is buried there too. The reason they think that is because someone found a stone that said "Peter is here." Now why they think it was the apostle Peter, I'm not sure. For all I know, it could have been some kid whose name was Peter that wrote "Peter is here" but whatever. Anyway, after a good long day at the Vatican, I decided to go back to the hostel. When I walked in, there was a guy in there in nothing but his dark green briefs. It was a little bit shocking at first, but I guess I got used to it? I left to get something to eat and walk around, and when I was ready for bed, I came back in to the room. The guy had put some pants on, but when I got ready for bed, he stripped down to his underwear again. It was kind of gross. He got on his phone and was talking in Italian I think, so I just decided to listen to a podcast on my ipod. Then, one of our other roommates, a French kid, came in and wanted to go to sleep. I had finished my podcast, which was about 45 minutes long, and this guy was still talking on his phone! We turned out the light and tried to go to sleep (I had put my earplugs in), and the guy didn't stop talking for about 20 minutes until the French guy finally asked him to stop so we could sleep. It seemed like the guy hadn't even realized we were there because he was very considerate after that and got off the phone and went to sleep 5 minutes later. It was really weird. Anyway, he then got up at 5:30 the next morning and left, and I never saw him again. He was a weird guy.

Anyway, the next day, I stored my luggage at the hostel and went to the Pantheon. It was really cool. It used to be a shrine to Athena, but now it's a catholic church. It has a huge hole in the top of it for some reason, so the sun was shining through, and it made a really cool effect throughout the room. From there, I went to the Roman Forum ruins. I bought my ticket and realized that it was also good for the Colosseum, and there was no line at all! That was a nice way to save some time. After spending a couple of hours in the ruins, I headed over to the Colosseum. Apparently, they are in the process of restoring the Colosseum to it's original state. I think that's a pretty cool idea. What I want to know is, who was the architect for the Colosseum? And, who was the guy that said, "Ok, we're going to build this huge building and we need a lot of people... so all of you guys come and help." Kind of a bizarre thought to me, but whatever.

I had an ok night train here. The passengers were really nice, but there were two babies (7 months and 2 years) that were there with us, so it wasn't exactly a peaceful night. After the kids and mom went to bed, the dad (who was from California) offered to buy me a beer in the restaurant car. I took him up on the offer, and while we were there, he told me stories about his job (he works for the US State Department fixing databases for top secret people). It was fun and interesting. We arrived in Vienna, and I got off the train. I had to take a tram from one train station to the other. I didn't see where to buy the tram passes, and I just saw everybody getting on the tram, so I followed suit. I later found out that you were supposed to buy the tram passes in the station, but I didn't get caught... thankfully. So I got on the train, and while later the guy said something in German over the speaker system. A bunch of people got off, but a bunch of people stayed on too. Then I heard one of them saying in English that they thought the train was done. He then asked if anyone remaining on the train spoke German. None of us did, but we all thought everybody else did. It was pretty funny. So the driver came back and told us that we had to get off. He then told us how to get to the other train station. So we got on the train he told us to, and finally got to where we were supposed to. We never got checked for tickets, and I don't know where I would be right now if they had. After getting to the station, I followed the directions to the hostel and was able to check in alright and everything. I took a nice hot shower, which I hadn't done for 48 hours, and took a walk around Vienna just getting my bearings. I made sure that Andrew's train was getting into the train station that was close to me, and he was, so I am about to go meet him there. I think that's everything up to this point. If I think of anymore funny stories, I'll let you know :)

Rome Days 1 & 2

Alright, last time in our adventures together, I left off at a bad night's sleep on the train. That combined with all the hiking from the previous few days resulted in one very tired Steven during that day. All I really wanted to do was find a place to sit down and read for a while. I started wandering around with the map I had gotten from the hostel and I couldn't find a park bench anywhere! I ended up walking all the way to the colosseum where finally I was able to buy an overpriced panini and just park it for a while. It was really crowded at the colosseum, so there were people selling all kinds of little trinkets that nobody needs but everybody thinks are cool. I tried to read, but it was really hot and I was really tired, so I took a nap for about a half hour while I was sitting on the grass. I woke up to the sound of a huge pine cone that had fallen from the tree above me. I actually woke up a few seconds earlier than when it hit the ground, but I saw something huge falling from the sky and I thought it was a huge bird turd. I tried to get out of the way of the splash, but it didn't make a sound like a bird turd. It sounded like... a pinecone. Anyway, some girls got really freaked out because it landed really close to them. I kind of sat up for a while and read some more. 20 minutes later, I saw this little kid come over and pick up the huge pine cone and he got a look of accomplishment as he walked away with his new prize. Anyway, afterward, I made my way around the Circus Maximus, which is a huge oval shaped track where they used to do chariot races. I decided I wanted to go look at the river, because I remembered how peaceful it was by the river in Switzerland and how the water was really blue. I got to the river in Rome, and it was pretty much a dump. It was really brown, and when I went down next to it, there was nothing there except for some "houses" of homeless people and a bunch of trash. Not very impressive after what I had come to expect rivers to look like. After that I went back to the hostel to actually check in and get my room. I got there, and it was actually pretty nice. There was a sink in the room, and my bed was pretty comfortable. Also, I think someone left their plug convertor in the room, so I think I'm going to snag it before I leave because I left mine in Paris. So after checking in and seeing the hostel, I took my laundry to the laundromat and went somewhere to relax. This time I found a park bench about 5 minutes from the hostel. After sitting there for about 15 minutes a guy came up and asked if he could sit next to me. I said he could, and he started a conversation. He couldn't speak English very well, but he was very nice, and he tried. His name was Omar and he was from Iraq. He was very friendly, and he wanted to share everything he could with me... including his cigarettes. I had never tried one, so I decided to accept his offer. Just kidding (don't worry mom, I didn't smoke). I politely declined, but everything he took out, he offered me one from tissues to gum sticks. I think the middle east is more of a sharing culture than America. Anyway, showed me his passport, and I showed him mine. From that, he got that my name was Horne, and he assumed that was my first name. So whenever he started talking about something, he always said, "So Horne..." It was pretty amusing. At the end of our conversation, he asked for my email address, and I gave him one of my McDermott cards. I'm looking forward to a nice email from him, but whether or not I'll be able to understand it is a different story. After that, I had some really good tortellini and went back to the hostel for the night.

The next day, I felt much better, but it was drizzling slightly all day. I had wanted to go to the supermarket to get some cereal for breakfast, but everything was closed. It was really confusing to me because I thought everything would have been open on Monday. I walked into the city, and there was a parade going on. I figured it must have been some holiday there. It turned out that it was Italy's Independence Day. I thought it was pretty cool that I happened to be in Rome on the Italian Independence Day. Anyway, there was a bunch of soldiers everywhere and I saw a procession of jets fly across the sky with orange smoke coming out the back. It was pretty cool. Because of this, most things had shut down early, but I went and looked at a bunch of things including St. Mary's Basillica, the Repubblica, the Castel di St. Angelo, the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain (which was really cool), and the Piazza del Popolo which had a great view from up high of most of the city. After a long day of walking, I bought some gelato (italian ice cream - to die for... I've had 18 scoops so far this trip) and some pizza. I also bought my overnight train ticket to Austria for tomorrow. I leave at 7:10 pm and get to Vienna (or Wien as the Austrians call it) at around 8:15 am. Hopefully it will be better than my last overnight train trip. Today was a trip to the Vatican, but I'll post more about that tomorrow. Talk to you later!

Interlaken Day 3 and Interlaken - Rome

Well, I made it to Rome in one piece. Yesterday, Kirk and I tried climbing up the Schilthorn mountain, where there were supposedly some really good views. The hike started out really tough, and we were huffing and puffing after about 15 minutes. We got up about a quarter of the way when we started talking to some Canadian people who were coming back down. They said that they had turned around because it was too snowy and it was raining, but a couple of people from their group had kept going. We decided to keep going and assess the situation when we got there. That has been kind of our motto: "We'll see when we get there." So we got up a little higher and kept on going. After a short lunch break, we started trudging up through the snow. About halfway up, there was supposed to be a hut, and we met the other people from the Canadian crew. They said that the hut was closed, and it was really snowy to try to keep going. We stuck to our motto and got to the hut. This hike started at about 2500 feet, and the top was at about 10000 feet. Also, the clouds were really near us, so the whole time it had this Monty Python feel to it with all the fog and mist swirling around. It was creepy and cool at the same time. Anyway, we got to this hut, and sure enough, it was closed. We knew that if we got about 3/4 of the way up to a station called Birg, we could get to the cable car and take that the rest of the way up if we wanted. We decided to go for it, even though we couldn't see the trail at all because there was so much snow. Along the way, I actually stepped on a doozy spot and was immediately up to my waist in snow! It was fun though, and we finally made it to Birg. We asked the attendant how much it would be to take the cable car up to the top and then all the way back down. It was going to cost $60! We asked how bad it would be to hike up, and he just laughed in our faces and said there was too much snow. I don't know if he knew that we had hiked up in that snow for 3 hours, but we didn't really feel like hiking anymore anyway. To take the cable car back down from there, it was only $18, and it was really foggy at the top anyway, so we wouldn't have seen anything. So we just decided to take the car back down, which was kind of disappointing, but it was fun nonetheless. As we were walking back, we stumbled across a huge chess set and decided to play a game (I told you he was like Paul!) I actually ended up winning, but it was pretty close for most of the game. After that, we walked to a couple of waterfalls, then we went our separate ways. It was a good day, even though we didn't make it to the top. My train to Rome left at 11:30 last night and got here at 9:15 this morning. It was not a good night's sleep. First of all, there were already 5 people sleeping in the 6-bed room, so I was the last person to get in. So I had to get situated in the dark and ended up sleeping with my backpack in the bed for half the night because I didn't know where there was anymore storage. Finally in the middle of the night, I found some storage space and put my backpack there. From then on, I was able to sleep pretty well, but not for very long. I woke up at about 7:30 and couldn't get back to sleep again, so I'm pretty tired right now. The hotel looks to be a big step down from the other places I've stayed (there's no reception desk!) but I haven't seen the room, so I'll find out soon I guess. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing my brother on Thursday! I'm a bit sick of traveling by myself, so that will be fun. I'll post more later.