Quote of the Day

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
- H. L. Mencken

Kiev & Crimea next

Friday morning I'll fly to Kiev by way of Copenhagen, then Saturday it's on to Simferopol by plane and finally Yalta by car. Saturday-Tuesday I'll be joined by Nata, my Ukrainian friend who I am sure will also be my interpreter for much of the time. I don't know how well the Ukrainians/Russkies speak English but I fear the answer is "not much".

We'll visit the palace where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in '45 and eat at the famous "Swallow's Nest". We'll also visit the Khans' Palace further north and see his harem (oink, oink) and maybe get in a trip to the botanical garden in Yalta.

From Tuesday afternoon I'll be all alone in Crimea, and I suspect that's when things will start to get interesting. I speak maybe 20 words of Russian and a third of those are numbers... it will be "fun" to drive around the streets and roads and I fear I'll get lost more than once... Watch this space!

Quote of the Day

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.
- Doug Larson

Quote of the Day

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
- Winston Churchill

Exit

Today I handed in my letter of resignation at school. There is no single reason for this, it is the accumulated weight of lots of little things that has made me do it.

I have a 3-month period before the resignation is effective, and I don't have a new job lined up yet (I've applied to a couple of jobs), so now I just have to write travelogues and articles the best I can, for whoever wants to pay me... so if anyone wants a fat, balding, middleaged guy to write or speak about anything pertaining to US politics or general travel, I'm free. I'm not too proud to beg!

Quote of the Day

We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
- Abigail Adams

Quote of the Day

What does an agnostic, dyslexic insomniac do?
Lies awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Off to Oslo to give a speech at a seminar...

There is no crisis to which academics will not respond with a seminar.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Some people march to a different drummer - and some people polka.
- Unknown

Freebird

A legend is gone. If ya'll will excuse me, 'imma go listen to Freebird now.

*sniffles*

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.
But, if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.

Quote of the Day

Nostalgia is the realization that things weren't as unbearable as they seemed at the time.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

The only things that start on time are those that you're late for.
- Unknown

Sweet irony

You may remember how former prez George W. Bush caught heat because he kept pronouncing "nuclear" as "nucUlear"? Yesterday I saw "The China Syndrome", and guess who did the same thing? Michael Douglas.

Quote of the Day

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,"
- Michael Douglas, "Wall Street"

Quote of the Day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away - if you can hit him.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you just learned this morning.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Oh, how true...

I love my job, it's the work I hate.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
- Unknown

Got that travelin' bone again

Three weeks till the next holiday, and I am getting antsy already. On the one hand, most of my classes this fall actually seem better than most of the previous years. On the other hand I have never had so strong an urge to travel anywhere but work...

This October I shall first fly to Kiev by way of Copenhagen, then after a day in the Ukrainian capital, I shall fly on to Simferopol. I'm not sure where I'm going to stay yet while in Crimea. I have booked a room in a hotel in Yalta, but I might end up in a house further north. We'll see.

In Yalta I plan on seeing the house where the Yalta conference took place, and maybe some Greek ruins. In Sevastopol I want to see stuff connected with the Black Sea fleet and some battle sites from the Crimean War, including Balachlava. I also want to go north to the palace of the Khan - Crimea was controlled by descendants of Ghengis Khan until the late 1700s. Finally I am going to stuff face with local specialities and also hunt down some Georgian eateries. The Georgian kitchen is supposedly one of the best in the world, according to a friend of mine.

But most of all I am going to try and forget work and Norway for a little over a week. And not think about the fact that when this holiday is over, I've got more than two months till the next proper travel experience, which will be Naples. Sigh.

Quote of the Day

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
- Winston Churchill

Quote of the Day

I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it.
- Steven Wright

Quote of the Day

Max Reid: My teacher tells me beauty is on the inside.
Fletcher: That's just something ugly people say.
- Jim Carrey in "Liar, liar"

Quote of the Day

All men are liable to error, and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
- John Locke

Quote of the Day

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
- William Somerset Maugham

Quote of the Day

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
- Will Durant

Quote of the Day

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.
- Edward Gibbon

The Eternal City

Today we have come to the last installment in my meandering, lazy recollection of this summer's travels in Italy and France: Rome. I know now why they call it the eternal city - it's because it takes a fuckin' eternity to get out of the place with a car.

The plan was simple. I would put my two American guests, Albie & Court on a train in the morning, loll around the pool all day, eating chocolate and drinking soda and then go collect them in the evening, all bright eyed and shiny from the experience of seeing Rome for the first time.

It was not to be.

The fuckin' Italian trains were on strike this Friday, or so we'd been told, so yours truly had to get in the car and DRIVE all the way down to Rome, find a parking place, drag the yanks around town and then navigate out again. Dear reader, I have never been closer to suicide by car than that day.

First of all, while driving down to Rome we actually SAW a train or two passing us, probably heading for Rome. We became uncertain, but thought the trains might have originated outside Italy, and were therefore not subject to the strike (or so went our, ahem, train of thought). But when we walked into the Termini in Rome, it was full of people and there were trains coming and going. I don't know if the strike was over, if certain trains were exempt or whatever. But there were trains running.

In order to get to the Termini area, which I had singled out since it's the one area of Rome I actually know, I indulged in some zen driving. For those unfamiliar with the term it can be found in Douglas Adams' books about Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and it basically means that you find a car that looks like it knows where it's going and follow it. Surprisingly often it will work. I finally managed to park the car in a shady spot on a relatively quiet back street, the one stroke of luck I had all day.

We then walked down to Termini and from there to the Colosseum. Naturally the yanks were agog at seeing it, and even more so when I told them what it had looked like way back in the day. We conquered a looooong line of people and walked around a bit in the boiling sun before yours truly found out that I had to get something to drink, as I was rapidly getting dehydrated. I walked around the place but there was nothing to be found. I asked a woman sitting in an office if there was any soda to be had in the Colosseum, but she answered me nay. She did NOT bother to volunteer the information that one might buy WATER in the bookstore, something Albie told me later.

By this time my body temperature (and my attitude to Italians in general) was near boiling point, so I simply headed towards the exit (which took some time and walking to find). By sheer coincidence I ran into the yanks on the way and told them I was going outside to get something to drink, but that they could take their sweet time if they wanted to.

I then went outside, bought two ridiculously overpriced bottles of beverage and proceeded to drink most of it, and wet my tired brow with the rest. I then settled in the shade and began to wait. And wait. And wait. The sun rose and fell. Seasons passed. Children were born and grew to adulthood. And still I waited. And waited. FINALLY the yanks came out of the arena. It turned out they'd gotten separated in the crowds, and spent the most part of their (and my!) time looking for each other. I smiled on the outside, but inside I was thinking dark thoughts of murder and mayhem.

Still, I was determined that they should see the good parts of Rome before they left so I ignored the protests and objections and the hints of finding the car and getting the hell outta there, and took them down toward the Forums. We dined in an overpriced, lousy restaurant on the corner of Via Cavour and Via dei Fori Imperiali, and then took a leisurely stroll down the latter. The sight of all those wonderful old ruins and my sotto voce guidance improved things considerably.

When we came to the Victor Emmanuel monument we took a sharp left and walked to the Torre Argentina, where I told them about Caesar's demise and of course the cats that now held sway in the area. We then walked up to the Pantheon where I delivered my usual hate & rage-filled diatribe against the fuckin' Catholic church for raping one of the loveliest monuments of the ancient world. We rounded our trip to Rome off with a quick look at Piazza Navona (still tacky!), before catching a taxi to our car.

As mentioned before, we then spent an eternity - more precisely defined as appx 2.5 hours - in the insane traffic out of town. When we finally reached the motorway and were clear of the lines I put the pedal to the metal and we enjoyed a nice dinner in Tuoro on our last night in Italy. All pics from Italy & France, including lots more from Rome, can be found here.

The insane parking in Rome.


The interior of the Colosseum... supposedly you are allowed to go down into the pits these days, but I didn't see anybody down there.


The white stone marks the spot where Caesar was killed. Beware the Ides of March!

Quote of the Day

The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.
- Edward Gibbon, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

Quote of the Day

No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.
- Sam Rayburn

Quote of the Day

The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8 m/sec/sec.
- Marcus Dolengo

Quote of the Day

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
- Colin Powell

Quote of the Day

Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and what is more, the passion for making them prevail.
- Matthew Arnold