Gobble Gobble

Today we decided to show our flat what Thanksgiving was all about.
Michaele and I headed to Tescos supermarket and found all of the necessary ingrediants for a proper Thanksgiving feast, except pumpkin pie sadly. It was a very nice meal, and we had Ed from England, Erigony, Cristobal, Stephanie as guests.

It's not just Oil

This morning I had the pleasure of sleeping in. After 5 days of waking up at 5:30 and trudging to a train station in the dark bitter cold, it was a nice relief to be in bed with my heater piping. I woke up and headed into the kitchen to munch on my “ludicrously delicious cereal” and met Krista’s dad and brother who had come over from Ireland for the weekend.

I went downstairs and met Michaele in her flat and agreed that we had to see the new Harry Potter movie today. We walked back up to my room to check the cinema times and proceeded to try and buy tickets online, but were refused because the showing at 16:40 was sold out. I looked up the phone number of the cinema and just called them up, thinking this would be easier. “Welcome to Cine world Cinemas London, just say the name of the film that you would like to see.” “Harry Potter and the Gobet of Fire,” I answered. “Im sorry, we don’t have any films by that name,” said the robotic like computer woman on the other end. I cleared my throat and tried again “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” except this time, I used my well-trained British accent – thinking that it would recognize it more clearly. It worked! She proceeded to say, “The times for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are….”

The phone process became increasingly complicated, despite my earlier success in fooling the system with my London voice guise, so I wrapped up in a warm coat and scarf and walk the 4 blocks to the cinema. Erigony kindly joined me, and we bought 4 tickets to the 17:10 showing, we were able to choose our seats like usual before purchasing the ticket – ensuring that we would have great seats, even if we walked into the cinema during the previews (something the USA needs to get a move on, because it is just plain wicked.)

Michaele, Cristobal, Cassie and I went to the film and enjoyed it thoroughly; we walked back to Cristobal’s flat where we sat down at the table with Despiona and her boyfriend visiting from Greece. It didn’t take much time for Cristobal and Despiona to get into a full out argument over the usual subject: cooking oil. This hyper-ethnocentric debate is usually heavily laden with foreign swear words and violent hand gestures – and we are talking about cooking oil here people – it is as much a symbol of their national pride as a flag is, not something to joke about. I was actually surprised that no national flags were brought out – usually in these instances, Cristobal will run into his room to rip the Spanish flag off from the wall above his bed and fly into the kitchen waiving it as if Real Madrid had won a world championship.

I am trying to do as much as I can in these last weeks, as I leave for home in a month from Friday. I have made some very close friends, and London has felt like a proper home for the last 2 months. Every study abroad cliché has come true, and it is an invaluable adventure that I only wish everyone could experience.

Christmas Time Is Here

As I was waiting for my train to depart Cannon Street to take us to the filmining location on Wednesday, I walked outside the station and found Starbucks. It was still wet, cold and dark outside so I ordered a Toffee Nut Latte - it was really delicious. The view from the bar that ran paralell to the street was really beautiful and couldn't help but take some pictures.

Lights Camera Sewage

This week I am fliming south of London in an area called Cross Ness with my internship. It takes a while to get there and every morning we have specific meeting times where I am to meet the producer of the show, another assistant, and our talent at a London train station to go to the location together. Since I live in north London it takes some planning to get there exactly on time.
The shooting schedule requested that I be at Cannon Street Sation in central London at 7:45 to meet for the 7:57 train to Cross Ness. In order to get there I woke up early, and was at my local station to catch the 6:30 am train to central London - but to the suprise of myself and the other 50 businessmen and women on the platform, they announced that it was cancelled due to engine problems. Thats when mass panic set in - I ran outside the station where it was still dark and had began to rain - I looked quickly for the closest bus and hopped on it heading west towards an underground station. The underground I had to take was extrememly slow and stopped every 5 minutes - I kept looking at my watch, knowing that it was impossible to be on time at this rate. I could see outside the windows when the train would pop up from underground and the entire countryside was filled with a thick deep blue mist, as it was just barely geting light out - there were sillouettes of large trees in the distance and lights were turning on across the city as people were waking up for their early departures; it was really beautiful, despite my state of panic.
I decided to take a risk and hop off at Kings Cross Station and transfer to the 'Northern Line' that ran directly in the direction of my destination. I looked at my watch and I had exactly 10 minutes before the train would depart to the shooting location, the producer would be waiting for me right now - something I couldn't stand the thought of. When the northern line pulled into 'Bank' station, I actually ran off the train, sprinting through the consistant stream of Londoners that were dressed in their finest business atire. I flew up the escilator and turned a sharp corner to the next line that I had to catch - my train would be leaving in 2 minutes. I waited at the platform for 30 seconds, pacing in a circle as if I had to use the loo, the tube came and I got on - with only one minute to spare, I got off at Cannon street - ran again up the stairs in a fury and sliped my card into the barrier, frantically asking the police which platform the train for Abbey Wood was at - as I had no time to scan the timetables - he pointed to platform 5 and I thankfully saw the train and jumped on. The doors shut and it began its journey while I was pacing through the cabins trying to find the procuder and assistant - there was no sight of them. I found out when I arrived at the location that the entire 'Circle Line' had been delayed in the morning, delaying the producer from making the train.

We eventually all met up and began filming at around 10:00 after a 9:00 am crew call.

I will tell you more about the production, but thought you would enjoy some photos of the set: It is a Victorian sewage pumping station that was used to pump all of London's waste into the Thames river in the 1800's. It is a beautiful building with every attention to detail - quite rare for a sewage pup.

Rome day 1

I woke up early today to dark skies and rain ready to depart for Rome with Michaele. We agreed to meet at 8:00 in the courtyard, after a little mishap trying to print out our hostel and flight information we left around 9:30. After catching the train from Ponders End to Tottenham Hale and then the Stanstead Express to Stanstead Airport. We met Chris Picardi, another CSU student who was going on the adventure with us at the airport and waited in customs. We flew Ryan Air, the cheapest airline in London with fares as low as £.99 – about $2.00 + taxes, sometimes the fares are so low you cant help but laugh. I just recently read a newspaper article in the Guardian, London’s paper, about plans that Ryan Air has to introduce in flight gambling, making flights practically free. There are no assigned seats, so when they let people into the cabin, it is a free for all, usually resulting in a rush to the emergency exit isle for leg room. The seats are nice, except for the fact that they don’t recline, and the flight attendants pass down the isle about every 10 minutes trying to sell you perfume or teddy bears, but for the price there was no complaining. In flight, we were over the English channel before we knew it and I looked out the window, shocked to see beautiful snow peeked mountains and realized that we were flying over the Swiss Alps – they looked a lot like Colorado’s Rocky mountains. After 3 hours flight time, we were landing in sunny Rome, passing over ancient ruins before the aircraft touched down.

We emerged from the plane and were greeted by bright sun and summer temperatures. It was in the customs line that I began to think about the fact that we were in a country where they don’t speak English as their first language, sure it sounds funny – but many people think of Europe as a large scale Disneyland with beautiful monuments and villages, expecting everyone to speak English, and making no effort to adapt with the culture. I had been practicing the small Italian that I knew on the plane, and handed my passport to the customs officer who looked at it, typed my name in the computer then stamped it and handed it back to me. There were Italian police everywhere dressed in camouflage and swinging giant machine guns around their necks like toys. One was actually clicking the trigger rapidly with the safety on like a small child on caffine; Im sure the purpose of them being there was to make us feel safe, but I felt like we had just landed in Rwanda International instead of Rome.

We took a bus into the city and got on the underground towards Rome Termini station. We walked from Termini about 5 blocks to find our hostel. The sun was beginning to set, and it cast an orange light on all of the old buildings – the pizzerias were starting to pull out fresh pizza for the dinner hour and the smell of tomatoes and garlic flooded the streets, it was incredible. We reached our hostel and found that the check in desk was on the 5th floor, accessible by a incredibly small lift that was roughly the size of a small telephone booth and was caged off, requiring you to shut the door manually before it putted its way upwards.

Michaele, Megan and I stayed in a 6-person room that had bunk beds and looked out to a beautiful courtyard 5 stories below. We shared our room with two guys from Paris that were travelling through Italy for a vacation. Chris and his friend Krista who was on the trip with us stayed in another room with 8 beds. We decided to go find some dinner and see some sights, as our time was very limited in each of the cities. After travelling on the underground for about 4 stops we arrived at the stop ‘colloso.” When we exited the station, we were immediately greeted by the impressive Coliseum. It was lit up very dramatically with white and purple lights; we headed around and marvelled at the fact that we were standing under such an incredible monument. It was so impressive because you feel as you do when you walk next to Coors Stadium or any other baseball stadium, but then you look up and realize entire thing is made of chiselled stone.

We headed down the main street that ran adjacent to the Colliseum and found a small pizzaria. I ordered a Marinera pizza which consists of thin crust, tomato sauce, oregano, garlic and olive oil; Michaele had a shrimp pasta dish and Chris ordered a pasta-del-mar dish with a variety of seafood. The food service was very interesting in that the food was brought out to the table in accordance to when it was ready. If the pizza only took 15 minutes to make, it was on our table as soon as it was out of the oven, but then we would have to wait 25 minutes for the pasta to get ready. We figured out that waiting for everyone to receive their dish before eating was not reasonable… because we were in Italy, and you can only take so much of staring down at a delicious fresh pizza before all manners are forgotten.

We took a stroll around the back alleys of Rome which were filled of small Italian restaurants serving family style meals to large crowded tables, all I needed was my video camera and we would have had an Olive Garden commercial.

Turning a corner revealed the great Fontana de Trevie, an impressive fountain that takes up the entire side of a building. The great thing was that I looked around and seriously could not point out another tourist, the medium sized crowd was made up of locals who were admiring the fountain after a filling dinner. We did our part of representing the tourists right away and snapped some photos.

Michaele and I were looking at the clock and had to be at Rome Termini station in about 20 minutes to meet Megan so we booked it with a street map in our hands and darted to the train station, happy to find a nervous Megan waiting for us – I don’t think it helped that we ran up and jumped on her. We ran back to the hostel and grabbed some pizza for Megan and then walked around, sat at another fountain and then hit up the Gelato shop before going to bed.

Wingardium Leviosa!

Today was the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Leicester Square; being diehard fans, or so we though so, Michaele, Chris and I headed to central London. We met Erigony and Danai at Trafalgar square to walk and ensure a spot along the barricades that ran outside the Odeon theatre. Leicester Square was royally decked out in full Hogwarts fashion with school banners hanging from the trees and a large animatronic dragon that breathed fire. It began raining and that’s when we knew our harry potter fan level boosted a couple rankings; we were wet, cold and waiting a couple of hours for the chance to glimpse some of the stars. There was a remarkable phenomenon that we all observed, when one teenage brit would begin screaming and pointing, the whole lot of them would do the same – making the surrounding 500 people whip out their cameras ready to snap a picture of someone, but alas it was only a police constable. Chants began throughout the crowd saying “We want Daniel!” (asking for Daniel Radcliffe, the actor that plays Harry Potter).



Cars with black tinted window began driving up to the unload area, passing us as we waived at the mystery people inside. The stars exited the cars very quickly because it was raining. Some of the stars that were more rugged would walk into the fan area towards us including the actors that play the Weasley Twins, Mr. Weasley and Nevil Longbottom.

There were some small British children behind us with their parents; the kids kept asking ‘Mom! Where is Harry?’ Her reply was, “Maybee Harry is wearing his invisibility cloak tonight!”

Although we didn’t get to see any of the main stars, or even Madonna (whom we later learned was there) we had a great time being a part of the mayhem and excitement.

ITALIA

Last week I had the pleasure of spending 5 days in Italy: Venice, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre and Pisa. Each day was packed to the brim with adventure and incredible sights. I have a lot to catch up on in terms of writing but thought I would share some photos first, there are more to come. Enjoy!

Anniversary

Today was the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. There were events all across England to commemorate one of the most famous battles for the British, and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson, the symbolic patriot for England. The morning started a little rough as both Michaele and Chris slept a little to late due to alarm clock malfunctions – but they were quick to get ready and head off. We tried our hardest to get to Trafalgar Square to make it in time for the parade, and we caught the very end of it. We were all starving and zombie eyed, so we made a quick dart for the closest Subway to recharge.

After walking around London for the majority of the day and shopping at Carniby street, we walked back to Trafalgar square to find a queue of about 10.000 people waiting to enter the square. Earlier on in the week I had looked online for upcoming London activities and found that there would be a 2 hour stage show and patriotic celebration to commemorate the anniversary – I requested 6 free tickets online, and they arrived in my post box about 4 days later. We entered the square and claimed our standing room territory a couple of rows back from the action. We had to wait around an hour for the sun to set and the square to become full with the 10.000 people.

The celebration show was really incredible. There were explosions, great music, a enactment of an army rescue operation where fake gunmen were on top of the national gallery gunning people down, as British army troops repelled down from the gallery’s 10 story stone façade. It was topped with a re telling of the story of the battle of Trafalgar via a large video screen shaped as a ships mast, and then a couple songs by the Queen’s regiment band. It was really incredible, and worth the 3 hours of standing, after that exhausting performance, we had to go to Pizza hut to refuel before going back home.