In the summer of my junior year of high school, my chorus teacher, Melissa Gleichenhaus, planned a trip to see Italy and Germany and perform multiple concerts through the region while we were there.   We were to sing a mass in the Vatican in Rome and the Duomo in Florence, as well as perform a concert in the home town of a good friend of hers in Germany.   The excitement could not have been higher.

            At first, my mother wasn’t planning on letting me go because “sixteen is too young to leave the country,” but when we got the news about the Vatican she changed her mind.   As we departed the school her final words to me were, “I want you back unpierced, untattooed, and unwed.”

June 27, 2006

The trip began with a rather ominous journal entry I wrote about the plane ride there: “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.   This plane ride is going to take forever.   The kid who is sitting behind me won’t stop kicking the back of my chair.  I think I might die.”   Little did I know how prophetic that statement would be.

            The plane from JFK to London-Heathrow took off an hour and a half late due to “technical difficulties,” which is, I think, exactly the sort of thing you want to hear before you are lifted 30,000 feet in the air in a giant piece of metal which really should not be able to fly at all, much less land in one piece.   My excitement for the trip superseded this worry, however, and I found myself in a state on transcendence; highly aware of everything around me and the profound experience I was about to have.   As eye-opening as such a state of mind can be, an airplane is hardly the place for this.   Though we were scattered randomly throughout the plane to reduce the ticket cost, the woman sitting in front of me was kind enough to switch seats with me so I could sit next to my friend Darius.   This didn’t really matter in the end because he fell asleep almost instantly, but as his head flopped over onto my shoulder and he began to snore softly into my ear, I found myself quite grateful that it was him and not some random stranger who was breathing all over me.  

As he slept, I watched New York City disappear beneath us and wrote a short poem about it, seeing as I was in that sort of mood.   I watched the clouds soar past, and the sun slowly rise on the horizon over Ireland, and finally a skyline emerged that could only be London.   As if purposely intended to break me of this spell, I heard another girl from our school a few rows back named Crystal proclaim, “Hey!  We’re over London!   Do you think we can see the Eiffel Tower?”   A collective groan rose from all those who heard it.

Shitus Maximus Romus

June 28

After we transferred flights in London, we landed in Rome to discover that all but two of our 50 or so suitcases had been lost.   We waited by lost luggage and gave an impromptu concert.   It was probably the most interesting day the people in lost luggage had ever had and we were most certainly the happiest customers they ever saw.

            After a quick bus tour around Rome, we got to the hotel and that night I wrote in my journal, “the hotel is sort of really crappy… but whatever, it’s only four days.”   I had no idea how crazy those four days would be.   I was rooming with Alison Meade and Amy Denitto, and we were very excited to finally be horizontal for the first time in 36 hours.   We had been “taped in” by our chaperones after bed check, to ensure that if we snuck out of the room they would know, but we had no intention of breaking this rule anyway; we were too tired to think about anything but sleep.   There was another group of kids there on a school trip, and their teachers clearly did not take this approach, but instead relied on that old concept of honesty.   They are idiots.   The first night, my roommates and I awoke at about 11 o’clock to hear a strange ripping noise, laughter, and running feet.   We all sat up and Amy said, “Tell me that didn’t sound like the kids from the other school ripping the tape off our door and running away laughing.”   After concluding that she was probably right, we went back to sleep and were then awoken at midnight to hear “DO NOT FUCK WITH ME!” come radiating through our walls.   Apparently, the room next to us was kids from the other school (like our plane tickets, our rooms were scattered around the hotel) and, after having snuck out and been caught, their teacher was in the room reaming them out at the top of his lungs.   Then, at about three am, Oma, who was Mrs. G’s mother and one of our chaperons, knocked on the door to inform me that my luggage had arrived and I could go pick it up in the hotel lobby.   Clearly, the goal of the night was too ensure we had as much jet lag as possible for the next day’s events.

June 29

            The next day we toured Rome and saw all the usual tourist things, like the Coliseum and the Trevy fountain.   At the Trevy plaza we were instructed not to go in the fountain under any circumstances because it was illegal and there were police officers there to enforce this.   The rule was in place because in Italy the fountain water is drinkable if it’s coming out of the spout.   I really doubt that this water is actually clean but everyone was drinking it and seemed to be in perfect health so I didn’t complain.   Had I seen someone wading through the fountain, however, I definitely would have thought twice, so the rule certainly made sense.   I realized that it was a good thing they had informed of this because, knowing myself all too well, had I not been told of this rule I would surely have decided at some point that a frolic in the fountain was just the sort of thing that I needed, and would promptly have been arrested.

Afterwards we decided to go to see the famous Spanish steps.   To this day, I still have yet to determine why the Spanish steps are in Italy.   We gathered on the steps and gave an impromptu concert which meant that by the end of it there were at least 400 Italians and tourists in the plaza who had stopped to listen.   We were then told to meet back there in a few hours so we broke off in small groups to see the city.   Before doing so, however, we all decided to fill our water bottles in the fountain in the center of the square.   The way this particular fountain was designed, the water shot up out of the center from a large statue of little angels and the usual riffraff present in all Roman sculpture.   Thus a little bridge of stone to the center was constructed which led directly to a less forceful spout being poured from a bucket by a small naked boy with wings; once again, the usual.   I walked out onto the little bridge that had no railings and over to the spout to fill my bottle.   It was at this exact moment, when I was as close to the center of the fountain as possible, that a boy walked past me and caught my hip with his bag and sent me tumbling into the very center of the 50 foot wide fountain.   I waded/swam to the side and crawled out, laughing hysterically, to find that all the people who had just accumulated in the square to see us sing had just stopped to stare at the crazy American girl in the fountain.   I looked around quickly to see if any police officers were about to come and haul me away and discovered my crime had luckily gone unnoticed by anyone who might enforce such a law.  I quickly shuffled away, my wet skirt slapping the sides of my legs loudly.   If it weren't for how often stuff like that happens to me I would have been so embarrassed, but I'm used to it by now.

            During the same day, my friend Justin entered my room and after a moment said, “Jenessa, I’m in a pickle.”   After promising to keep it a secret, he explained that his toilet was not flushing and that he had only discovered this after using it.   After trying to rattle our brains and come up with a solution, we decided that the front desk would need to be told.   I had suggested that he just use something to manually shove it down to the toilet to which he replied, “No, you’re gross,” so that was the end of that discussion.   Before leaving the room, however, he decided he should leave a note on the toilet lid so that his unfortunate roommates would not open it and discover the problem that way.   It read, “There is shit… literally… in there.   Don’t open this; I don’t joke about this sort of thing.”   More comically, he said this aloud as he was writing it in a lovely Russian accent, an accent which would become quite popular with us as the trip went on.   I accompanied him to the front desk and we told the manager.   He said there was nothing he could do and they would be giving them a new room instead of fixing it.   Apparently the shit was to remain in that toilet, forever enshrined.   Justin had certainly left his mark.   After explaining this situation to one of our chaperons, they approached the front desk and demanded that the toilet be fixed.   He assured us that it would be fixed momentarily and we returned to the room.

We sat around and gossiped about the day, waiting to see a plumber come trudging down the hall.   Instead, a man from the hotel wait staff appeared, handed Justin a toilet brush, and told Justin to use it to fix the toilet.   After staring at the man for a minute, his expression dumbfounded, he stepped into the bathroom and proceeded to do the only thing he could think of: exactly what I had suggested hours earlier.   He emerged a minute or so later to the sound of the toilet flushing and with a look on his face that said he would be traumatized for at least the rest of the week.   He handed the toilet brush to the hotel attendant and the man took it and left.   “I told you so,” I said, through peals of laughter.   “You could have taken care of this without involving anyone else hours ago.”   He gave me a dirty look and laid down for a nap.

Alison, Amy, and I returned to our room later that day to find a strange piece of metal sitting on our desk.   I picked it up and turned it around in my hand, trying to figure out what it was.   I handed it to Amy when I couldn’t figure it out and looked down at my hand to see grease all over it.   Suddenly, it hit me.    I took the piece back from Amy and walked over to our door and held the strange object up to the misshapen bottom hinge.   What I held in my hand was a significant portion of the bottom hinge to our door.   Apparently, the maid had broken it while cleaning and placed it on the desk for us.   Needless to say, we were confused.   When Oma came over for bed check we showed her, and her and I went to the front desk to tell them about it.   Apparently the maid never told them what had happened because it was news to them.   “We will take care of this,” the manager said in a slightly menacing tone.   I think that maid lost her job.

            That night at dinner, after reliving our multiple strange experiences in the hotel, Alison renamed it “Shitus Maximus Romus.”   Justin approached our table, sat down, and said simply, “This hotel needs to engulf itself in flames, because it’s doomed.”

In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti

June 30

            The next day we visited the Vatican museum.   The line was three hours long and was a harrowing ordeal which came to represent all of our trials and travesties throughout much of the trip.   It was boiling hot, directly in the sun, and everyone was packed together so tightly that it felt as though we couldn’t breathe.   At one point we passed a place where someone had vomited in the middle of the line and we all stood chewing gum and plugging our noses to avoid the sickening smell.   We passed numerous beggars in various states of degenerative disease, and seeing their various untreated maladies only succeeded in making me want to vomit more.   One chaperon named Mr. Evaul declared, “I don’t care if god is waiting at the end of this line, it’s not worth it.”   It was worth it.

            When we got in, the Sistine chapel absolutely took my breath away.   I looked at the walls and asked Justin what the curtains on the bottom were covering up.   “Um… those are painted on…,” he replied.   As I stared up at the ceiling, I bumped into Mike, our designated camera man for the trip.  

“What’s that red light under your jacket?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“Shut up, they’ll hear you!” he whispered.

Right on cue one of the guards silenced the crowd and reminded us that no photography or video was allowed.   Mike smiled and walked away, inconspicuously getting a shot of the far wall.

After staring at the ceiling for what felt like an hour, we dragged ourselves away to see the actual church which was even more magnificent.   One of my favorite things in the church is Michelangelo’s sculpture of the pieta.  It is currently encased in three layers of bullet proof glass because someone shot at one of his other statues at some point and they decided better safe than sorry.   Even though I am an atheist, I can’t imagine wanting to destroy such beautiful works of art.   Then again, my experience being brought up with the Catholic Church, while oppressive, was mostly comical.   If I had been brutally put down by it perhaps I would be that angry too.   Still, I’d imagine that it wouldn’t reduce my anger significantly to destroy such a harmless object.   If it came down to it and I was in the Vatican with a gun and I was going to shoot something, I’d probably shoot the pope or the bible or something much more symbolic of oppression than a pretty statue.   I immediately felt guilty that I had even thought that, after all the pope is a human too, but I reassured myself that it was of course purely theoretical and that I would never actually do something so horrid, so no crime had actually been committed.   I came back to reality and remembered that I was inside the Vatican, thus realizing that clearly there was not a god or I would have been instantly struck down by a bolt of lightning after that sin of imagination.   While I might have forgiven myself, the god I had learned about from church was not nearly so lenient.   Then I quickly determined that of course he wouldn’t strike me down in here because that would require the lightning bolt drive directly through the roof of his favorite church, so if it was going to happen, he would wait.   Despite my ardent lack of belief, after 3 years of Catholic school I could not help but look towards the heavens in apprehension as I exited the building.

            Later that day we went to a piano concert outdoors.   I like to close my eyes during classical concerts and one of the chaperons, Mr. Karliner, got a picture of me sitting in the chair with my eyes closed and my head tilted slightly back.   He attempted to use this as evidence that I too was bored and falling asleep during the concert.   After insisting over and over that I really was listening, I eventually gave up.   Since then I have made certain to keep my eyes open at a concert, if the artist can see me, for fear of seeming uninterested.

            That night Justin and my friend Sarah and I were in Sarah’s hotel room gossiping when we heard a huge commotion outside.   Turns out that Italy had made it into the quarter finals in the world cup and everyone in Rome came out to celebrate.   There were hundreds of people leaning out of their cars holding flags driving in circles around the plaza screaming. As one man stepped into the street waving a flag and high fiving people in vehicles as they sped around him, I began to get concerned.   “Where are the police?” I thought.   “Someone’s going to get hurt and sue the local businesses for not putting up signs warning about the dangers of standing in the middle of this particular intersection.”   Apparently frivolous lawsuits are an American phenomenon because no one else seemed worried.

July 1

            It was finally time for the part of the trip we were most excited about: singing a mass at the Vatican.   Though we all held varied religious beliefs, it was significant for even those who were not Catholic simply due to the prestige it involved.   This did, however, cause confusion when we began the rituals of the mass.

            When the priest began to deliver the mass, I found myself answering with the appropriate responses I had apparently accidentally memorized through years of attendance at the Catholic Church when I was younger.   Those members of our choir who had not been raised Catholic were immediately befuddled by this first strange and sudden unison response.   As it continued to happen they looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.   A few people next to me began to imitate me and when it came time for the reading of the gospel I instructed them on how to respond by making a cross with your thumb over your forehead, lips, and chest.   As the congregation began a call and response section, they just looked at me confused.

Priest:  Lord be with you.   Congregation:  And also with you.
Priest:  Lift up your hearts.   Congregation:  We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest:  Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.   Congregation:  It is right to give him thanks and praise.

At this point, with all these people around me who had never seen this before, I found myself looking at it from their perspective and realized how freakishly cultish it seemed.   I found myself wondering when I had memorized these things and realized I had just picked them up by osmosis.   I did not believe a word of what I was saying, yet here I was still droning in unison with a congregation of people all these years later.   Some things just stick with you I guess.

            After the mass had finished we got on the bus to go back to the hotel.   Our teacher got on soon afterwards and told us that we had been invited back to sing the next year.   While we did not plan to accept this invitation, due to monetary constraints, we were still excited that they had enjoyed our performance so much.   Our tour guide informed us that in ten years of touring with choirs she had never had a choir invited to return to the Vatican.   It was kind of hard not to feel totally awesome at that point.

We boarded the bus and arrived at our next hotel late that night, exhausted from the day’s events.

Florence flushes

July 2

Our next stop was Florence but, because of the price of hotels, we were staying in nearby Montecatini.   Did I say nearby?   I meant an hour away.

            Montecatini, our lovely tour guide Patricia informed us, was a spa town.   If by spa you thought I meant like a massage and a mud bath, then you are wrong.   This town was a very different kind of spa.   As Patricia explained, “People come here when they have digestive problems and there is very special water that comes up from the springs here and they go to these hotels and they drink the water and it cures their problems.   They have to run to the toilet right away.”   You could have heard a pin drop on the bus.   As I so elegantly put it in my journal, “Today, Patricia the tour guide told us that Montecatini is a healing spa for people with intestinal problems.   She said they come drink some crazy mineral water and then shit their brains out.   Well, that’s not exactly what she said, but that’s the general idea.”   This led us to a sort of investigation of the toilets in our room.

In the last hotel, we had found it rather strange that the tank of the toilet, instead of being behind it, like in American bathrooms, was up on the wall.   In this hotel, however, there was no tank in sight.   Upon noting this I said to Alison, “You know, when the tank was up on the wall it was funny, like, ‘what is it doing up there?’ but now that there is no tank at all it’s just weird.”   A second discovery was made: instead of a handle to flush it with, there were two very large buttons on the wall.   After a thorough investigation, which involved numerous unnecessary flushes and much wasted water, we could discern no distinguishable difference between the flush created by one button or the other.  “I know!” I said, “Push left for flush.   Push right for flush.   Push both for industrial flush!” and as I did so it became apparent that I just might be correct.   After all, it would make sense that they needed industrial flush in that town.  Another interesting note: the toilets were square instead of circular… even the seat…   As Jill noted, “I didn’t know Italians had different shaped asses.”

Also notable was the presence of a bidet.   This particular piece of furniture, if you’re not familiar with it, is next to the toilet and can be used to wash your ass after using the bathroom by shooting a stream of water out of it like a drinking fountain.   It looks most like a strange sort of urinal.   While we all knew this, I walked into the bathroom later that night to find Alison sitting in front of it, washing her feet inside the basin.   While it appeared quite convenient, much more so than the sink as she pointed out, something about it seemed oddly disgusting.   Maybe it’s just because it looks so much like a toilet, who knows.

After traipsing around the hotel exploring for a while, we boarded a bus, drove to Florence, and dropped off our things in the basement of a local church.   From there, we went to visit the Medici house.   As soon as we entered it Alison proclaimed, “Man, Italy is full of penises.”   One look around the room told you why: every statue around us was a naked male and the 100 foot long hallway was lined with them.   However, upon closer inspection, it could be seen that the penises were in fact no longer present on the statues.   In comparison, the balls were perfectly intact.   Confused by this, I asked our tour guide who explained that, during the Middle Ages, nuns had found the naked statues to be inappropriate and chipped the penises off with chisels.   Apparently there is something highly inappropriate about a penis, but an exposed testicle is perfectly acceptable, even to an eighteenth century nun.

As we strolled through the immense mansion, I found myself wondering how awkward it must have been to be a sculptor at that time.   It made me think of the scene in Titanic when Jack is drawing Rose naked on the couch and he starts blushing as he draws Rose’s crotch.   This
Renaissance sculpting, had to be much worse than that, seeing as they were living in a much more conservative time period.   Having rarely ever seen anyone clothed in anything less than 50 pounds of material, they must have used models, I imagined.   As Jack sat on the couch, his sketch pad facing him, with only his flushed cheeks to give away his actions, he felt embarrassed enough just thinking about it.   With sculpture, however, the model can see everything you’re doing, so imagine as you set out to work for the day:

Your model steps into the room, removes his clothing, and stands on a dais a few feet away.   You begin your days work, having completed the torso the day prior, and take hammer and chisel to the stone, creating a soft curvature with a strict attention to detail: an exact replica of his limp penis in stone.

Perhaps, I thought, if the model is posing they cannot look round the room, so they might not be able to see what the sculptor is doing if they’re not already facing him.   Perhaps they were posed in profile and were instead staring out the window or at the far wall off to the side, unable to crane their necks to see.   Even so, they must be attempting to make conversation just to pass the time.

Model: So… uh… whatcha up to?

Sculptor: Uh… sculpting…

Model: Ah, yeah.   …Sculpting what?

Sculptor: Well… uh… you, of course.

Model: Oh yeah, yeah.   …how far did you get?

Sculptor: Um… pre… pretty far.

Model: Well like, um, what part are you on?

Sculptor: Um… the uh… your… well your…I really can’t concentrate with you talking 

    to me.   Please be silent, you’re interrupting my creativity.

Among other things in the house, I found myself highly confused by one painting in particular.   Over a door frame hung an image of a naked woman, no surprise there.   What did make it odd, however, was the presence of four men, two on either side of her, who were apparently torturing her.   Two of them held each of her arms, so that she could not run away, and the other two were both holding a pair of pliers which they were using to pinch her nipples.   It was so bizarre that, in my shock, I didn’t even get a chance to laugh at it before we had moved on to the next room.

Outside the house, we waited for the other half of our tour group to finish seeing the rest of the rooms.   I sat down next to Justin on the curb next to a puddle, inside of which swam a small insect.   “Oh!  It’s one of those things!   It’s like a… a wet bug,” Justin exclaimed.

I looked at him confused and said, “You mean a water beetle?”

“Oh yeah… that.   Oo that could be a fun game!   I’ll say two words and you try to guess what it is.   Um… milky insect.”   After contemplating it for a moment I told him that I had no idea to which he replied, “A butterfly!”   I requested he try something easier and after thinking a moment he said “crazy whore,” to which I immediately replied, “That’d be me.”

After finishing our tour of the house we returned to the church basement where we had left our things, changed into our concert attire, and walked over to the Duomo to sing the mass.   This mass, unlike the one in the Vatican, was conducted entirely in Latin, but, due to the lack of response from the audience, I could tell we were still on the sermon half an hour later.  The entire mass is usually only supposed to take an hour but this guy had an awful lot to say.   As we tapped, fidgeted, and wiggled about, standing in the choir box, I noticed Justin in front of me switching which leg he was standing on every so often to relieve the pressure.   Suddenly he leaned back and whispered to me “Jenessa, look.   I’m an ostrich,” and lifted one of his legs up behind him as high as it would go.

Struggling to conceal my laughter I replied in a choked whisper, “No, flamingos do that.”

After the mass, we went to go see Michelangelo’s sculpture of the David.   As we stood in front of it, admiring various qualities of the statue, Justin’s contribution to the discussion was “he’s even got the pubic hairs down to perfection.”   After an awkward silence we moved on.

July 3

            We returned to Florence the next day and were given the entire day to ourselves to shop around and see the sights.   As we walked down the street, numerous vendors attempted to sell “fake” hand bags on the side of the road.   They’re really bags, they work perfectly, and they look exactly like the designer’s design, so I wouldn’t call them fake, but apparently if it doesn’t cost $500 you didn’t get the real thing.   Every so often someone would yell “policia!” and they would all immediately wrap up their bags and disappear, leaving behind only vendors selling odd trinkets and small versions of paintings.   Starring at these paintings, I noticed that I recognized a few of them except for one of a naked woman kneeling by a stream and tossing her hair in her hands erotically and I asked, “Are these all prints of famous paintings?”

            “Yes,” Justin replied, “um… all of them except the uh,” and then he burst into hysterical laughter.

            As we continued walking I noticed a woman in front of us and was confused by the strange shadows on her shirt.   As we got closer, I began to see what I could only conclude was four breasts on her chest.  Two sets, one over the other, like a cat.   Trying not to stare but inevitably doing so anyway, I realized that what I was actually seeing was a slight swelling of her rib cage, where her breasts were supposed to be, and then a large lump beneath them which was where they were actually hanging.   Clearly this woman had never worn a bra in her life.   It looked exactly like those women on National Geographic would if you put a shirt on them, which made me suddenly realize why they don’t wear shirts: it looks worse.   They were literally resting on her stomach below her rib cage.

            I felt Justin’s hand tense around mine, and looked over to see him struggling not to laugh.   Apparently he had seen it too.   As soon as she was out of sight we fell to the ground in stitches.   I felt badly laughing at another person’s body, having been brought up properly, but Justin had no such qualms.   Tears of mirth rolling down his face, I thought myself lucky for growing up in a country where women are expected to wear bras.   Never would my chest look like that, and never would an American walk past me and find my appearance so funny that they nearly wet themselves on an Italian street corner.

Back at the hotel, Amy, Alison, and I turned on the television to find nature shows in German.   The odd thing was, because German is closely related to English, we understood much of what they were saying.   While many words were different, the two languages share the words kangaroo, dingo, and bush, which is really all you need when you’re watching a nature documentary on Australia.   As we sat watching, they zoomed in on a particular kangaroo to see it giving birth.   As the small baby began crawling its way out of the birth canal an odd silence filled the room.   Breaking it I stated, “We’re watching kangaroo vagina on T.V.”

“Yeah we are,” Amy said, and grabbed the remote to turn it off.

I walked down to Justin’s room with Sarah, and we met him in the hallway.   “Hey!” I exclaimed excitedly, “Guess what we found on T.V.?”

“Porn?” he asked.

“No, close, German nature shows.   Why?” I responded confused.

“Oh, that’s what we found,” Justin said in a nonchalant tone.   I looked at Sarah, shrugged, and followed him into the room.

“Wow!  You guys got a suite!   Lucky!”

Dan looked up from his book and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Your room is like ten times bigger than ours.”

There was a slight pause as he contemplated this and then exclaimed, “Yay!   We have a suite!”

“Dan,” Patrick said, walking in the door, “This will be our third night in this room and you’re just discovering this now?”

It would not be nearly as bad as what I was about to discover about the last two nights in my room.

I went back to my room, and got ready for bed.  Pulling back my sheets, I noticed a strange spot on the comforter.   Upon inspection, it turned out to be a strange, white, clumpy substance.   Attempting not to vomit, I pulled the comforter back from the sheet to discover the entire top half of the comforter coated in splotches of what I could only assume was semen.

“AAaaahhhhhhhhh!”

“What’s wrong?!” Alison yelled from the bathroom.

“Come look at this and tell me what you think it is.”

            She walked out and we stared at it for a good five minutes in silence.

“I slept there for two nights already, and I’m going to have to do it again tonight.”

As I tried to remind myself that you can’t get STDs from a comforter (can you?), Alison spent most of the time trying to convince me that it was actually gelato, the Italian version of ice cream.

“Alison, what else could it be?   It’s only on one side of the bed, on the inside of the comforter, and only on the top half”

“Well yeah, who eats gelato by their feet?”

I slept with the comforter at my feet that night, and I rolled up in the sheet, hoping that it was clean.

The next day, on the bus on our way to Venice, we told everyone about the incident and had the pictures to prove it.   Since we were moving to a new hotel that night and I no longer had to sleep there, we did manage to find some humor in it.

“Well,” Alison said slyly, “Italy is very romantic.  It would be a great bed to [dramatic pause] have gelato in.”

            Amy chimed in with a comment that momentarily filled me with hope:

            “Jenessa, I really think that stuff in your bed was just toothpaste.”

“Really?!?!”

“No.”

“I come to wive it wealthily in Padua,” The Taming of the Shrew (I, ii, 75).

July 4

            “OUR ROOM IS HOT AS FUCK!” Alison exclaimed upon waking.

            “No,” I replied, sitting up and wiping the sweat from my cleavage with the sheet that lay abandoned beside me.   “Our room is hotter than fuck.”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” she replied.   “Fuck is about 400 degrees and we’re bordering around 700 right now.”

            We were sleeping in what I could only assume was a broom closet that had been converted into a hotel room in case of emergencies.   I wrote in my journal the night before that “the room is so hot I might wake up edible… but that might not be so bad because I never like the hotel breakfast.”

            After having stopped at the leaning tower of Pisa along the way, we ended our journey in Stra, a small town outside of Padua and approximately two hours from Venice.   Returning from breakfast, Sarah met Justin at the top of the stairs.

            “What smells like ass?” he asked.

            “I was gonna say mold,” Sarah replied.

            Moments later I came traipsing up the stairs to meet them and exclaimed, “Why does this whole hotel smell like ranch dressing?”

            The town was so small, it barely warranted a hotel, so this was the best we could expect.   The restaurant that night wasn’t much better.

            Italian restaurants like to serve their bread slightly stale.   This restaurant however had chosen to serve it at least a week old.   Unknowingly biting into it, I felt a sharp pain shoot through my jaw and spat out the piece of bread which proceeded to bounce off my plate and fly across the room.   Taking a piece and testing it for himself, Justin exclaimed, “I’m younger than that!” to which I replied, “Yeah, and softer too,” which sent Sarah and I into a five minute fit of laughter, preventing us from ordering.

As the platters came around with different entrees for us to chose from, I looked over to see Mr. Karliner attempting to communicate with the waitress.   Because this was such a small town, and not a tourist location, she had very little grasp of English.   Getting frustrated, he pointed at the plate and asked, “Porkay or chickenay?”

July 5

            The next day we travelled to Padua to spend a few hours seeing the sights before we went to Venice.   In the center of town lay St. Anthony’s basilica, a church and monument to the saint’s life.   Before entering we were told that he was essentially the patron saint of lost articles and persons.   If it were just lost people I would understand, but why on earth would a saint worry himself over a lost object?   Doesn’t he have more important things to do?   He is kind of a saint after all.   While people pray to other saints to cure them of a deadly disease or protect them from starvation, people pray to St. Anthony whenever they lose something, anything at all.   I noted this to Justin and asked, “How does that prayer start?   Dear St. Anthony, I lost my sunglasses yesterday…”

            “Find them for me bitch” he said, completing the prayer.

            We entered the basilica and walked around, following the velvet ropes which sectioned off the church and led us directly past the most disgusting display case I have ever seen.   Inside of it lay numerous body parts.   While an entire dead corpse might have at least made sense and been cool in a C.S.I. sort of way, like looking at a mummy or something, his followers felt that only certain parts needed to be preserved.   His voice box, for example, lay blackened and half decayed on a pedestal in the center.   I cannot even begin to imagine why anyone would feel it necessary to keep such a thing.  This display cabinet was not a shrine to a holy man, it was more like an inside look at the contents of a serial killer’s closet.   Even if he was a saint, why would anyone think his voice box was the holy part but his spleen was not, and preserve them thus?

            In Venice, we saw St. Mark’s basilica which was, fortunately, decaying-body-part free.   After that short tour, we were set loose on the city to find lunch and explore.   Sitting in the town plaza, eating pizza and gelato, we marveled at the sheer volume of pigeons crowding the square.   A rather large pigeon with a missing leg hopped towards us and we named it Eileen and threw some crumbs in its direction.   Starring at them, we began to discern that clearly it was pigeon mating season.   As we watched what we assumed were the male pigeons chasing the female pigeons around and trying to jump on top of them Justin declared, “It’s like watching bird porn.”   Sarah and I sat finishing our meals, listening to Justin giving encouragement to the closest pigeons when they nearly missed catching a female for about five minutes.   It began to get quite obnoxious and I finally decided to stop him.

            “Justin!   Can you please stop doing a running commentary on the pigeon sex?”   He lapsed into silence as the people around us turned and stared.   “Thank you.”

July 6

            The next day we returned to Venice and, after exploring some more, a group of us decided to take a gondola ride.   We hopped on and as he steered us around our gondolier, named Fabrizio, told us various facts about the canals, the city, and the houses we past, in accented but otherwise understandable English.   We past one house which he informed us was the residence of Marco Polo.   A few blocks later, if you can call them blocks, he pointed to a house and informed us that it was the house of Casanova.   “Who?” Sarah asked, having not heard him.

            “You know.   The sex machine!” he replied with a thrusting gesture to illustrate it.

            Getting off the boat later, Justin declared, “I want to live in Casanova’s house for the same reason he did.”   Following an awkward silence from the rest of the group, who didn’t know him as well, he recanted it with, “Just kidding…”

            “No you’re not,” I said walking away.

            “Yeah, I know,” he said, laughing.

Lederhosen

July 7

            After a long bus ride we arrived in Maingründel, Germany, which is essentially the capital of the middle of nowhere.   When we arrived Justin stepped off the bus in front of me, turned around, and said “We have landed in a cow pasture.”   Confused, I stepped off the bus after him only to be assaulted by the smell of cow manure.   There were houses to our right and fields of wheat as far as the eye could see to our left.   When we had all exited the buses and grabbed our things the community band we would be performing with later that week began to play and marched us through the town.   As we passed, dragging our luggage behind us, the locals stood in their front lawns and waved to us, excited to see the visiting Americans.   Luckily, because the town was so small, this parade only took about five minutes.   From there we met our host families, with whom we would be staying for the remainder of the trip.   My family consisted of a mother and a father, and three children.   The oldest girl was named Manuela, the middle sister was Sebine, and the youngest brother was named Marcus.   They were hosting me as well as another girl from our chorus, Coleen.  They were very friendly and showed us to our rooms and gave us a tour of the house.

July 8

            The next day we all boarded a bus to go to a local Renaissance fair.   Alexander, who was Mrs. G’s friend and the band director, boarded our bus to make announcements about what we would be doing that day and when.   Someone yelled from the back that the weather man had predicted rain that day and asked what we should do in the event that it began to downpour.   “If it rains, you become wet,” he said.   How right he was.

            After walking around the fair for a while, seeing the sights, we decided it was time to head to the main area to see the show.   As we sat down in the stands, it began to rain.   Within moments it was a downpour.   Pricilla proceeded to open her umbrella in the seat next to me, which only caused all the water which would have landed on her to drip off the umbrella into my lap.   It was completely impossible to see, especially with my glasses coated in water.   Justin leaned down and discovered ponchos beneath our seats, but unfortunately this seemingly lucky event was actually a bane in disguise.   Instead of simply being covered in water, I was now covered in plastic, and the water was still somehow managing to seep in.   This, along with my body heat, created a sort of greenhouse effect under the poncho.   Steam condensed on the inside and dripped back down onto me, starting a light shower inside the poncho which, when added to the downpour occurring around me, was even more unpleasant.   By the time the rain stopped, my pink shirt was completely see-through, and my fingers pruny.   As I lifted off the poncho I looked down at my soaked legs.   I brushed my hands down my thighs only to see sheets of water pour off of my jeans.   Soaked does not even begin to describe how wet it was.   I was more than likely indistinguishable from someone who had jumped in a lake with their clothes on.

            As the sun broke out, the rain stopped, and the fog cleared, we witnessed the performance we were supposed to be watching all along become visible for the first time since we had sat down.   Apparently there were various teams of knights, represented by different colored flags, and they were all attempting to win the hand of the princess in marriage.   While I found this theatrical bit to be pointless and cheesy, it was tolerable enough that the jousting and impressive riding skills being displayed could still be enjoyed.   As they finished the first round of competition the team of apparently evil black nights appeared, much to the dismay of the others knights.   In the stands, however, a few people began cheering for reasons unknown.

            “Why would you cheer for the scary black people?” Justin demanded of no one in particular.   I slowly turned to look at him, just in time to see his eyes get wide as he realized what he had just said and turn around, conspicuously attempting to see if he had offended anyone.   Luckily, (as far as we had seen) there are no black people in Germany, so it didn’t cause any problems.

July 9

            After performing a concert with the local band in the high school, we all hung around to have dinner and watch the final soccer game of the world cup.   Italy was playing France and, seeing as France had bet the German team earlier, meaning they could only play for third or fourth place rather than first or second, everyone in the room was rooting for Italy.   Justin had discovered, over the course of the trip, that he had become absolutely obsessed with soccer, though this can mostly be attributed to the fact that all the Europeans around us were highly excited by it, rather than any actual interest he might have begun to posses, as he is highly prone to flights of fancy.   He began describing to us the many reasons he loved it, finally proclaiming at the end of his rant that, when it came to soccer he was, “like a fly to light.”

            After a short pause, I looked at him incredulously and reminded him that actually, “moths go to light… flies go to shit.”

            While I found the game interesting, as with all sports I saw no reason not to converse about other things while watching it.   For me, any game is background noise to fill in the silence between pauses in conversation, not the main interest.   Due to Justin’s recently being engrossed in it, however, he saw it a little differently.   While talking with Alison I turned to him and asked him a question only to be turned away with the words, “Shut up, I’m watching the game!”

            Laughing at the striking resemblance this held to my father when my mother tried to talk to him during football games, I replied sarcastically, “Fine!   You’re sleeping on the couch.”

            Catching on, he deepened his voice and replied, “Fine then, get out my room, I’m sleeping on the couch.”

            The game went into overtime and, half an hour later, it was settled in a sudden death sort of manner.   Each team was given five penalty shots and when France missed their fourth shot and Italy proceeded to make the fifth one it was decided.   While highly exciting, I really could have cared less.   Justin, on the other hand, leapt up from the table and ran around screaming and cheering along with all the Germans present.   As I sat with Alison and Sarah, observing him running around hugging random people, I thought to myself, “Oh no, he’s gone native.”

July 10

            After spending a few hours in Augsburg, a city not far from Maingründel, we returned home and Coleen and I went with our host family to a barbeque with some friends of theirs.   Alison and Angela’s host family was also there, so the four of us, and Manuela and Sabine sat together gossiping about nothing in particular.  Alison, Angela, and I all have some gymnastics training, so when we got a little bored we began tumbling around the yard for entertainment.   The German girls found this highly amusing and then proceeded to show us how to do front tucks with a spot from two people by running between them and linking arms.   After fooling around with this some more we decided to play Twister.   When they pulled out the mat I could have died laughing.   Of all the things that were different in Europe this had to be the most striking.   The twister board was clearly at least half the size of ours.   “How on Earth is this going to work?” I thought.   While more difficult, it proved to actually be more fun.   Upon consideration, I realized that the American Twister board is better designed for overweight American children; a rather depressing discovery.

July 11

            On this particular day we visited Oberammagau, a quaint touristy little town.   Justin, Sarah, Prisilla, and I walked around, saw the sights, and then stopped for lunch.   Justin used the bathroom before we ate, but only moments after we finished eating and began walking down the street he stopped us to run into a building to use the bathroom again.   If it were anyone else we would have been concerned that he had perhaps taken ill but Justin either has a bladder the size of a walnut or the most efficient kidneys in the world because it was not even slightly abnormal for him, and we knew this by now.   A split second after he entered the building I got a cruel idea and said, “Let’s hide!”

            Giggling, we all ran behind a fence about twenty feet away and began peeking around the edge, waiting for him to walk back out.   As other tourists walked by and eyed us accusingly, we realized how odd we looked pressed up against the fence, and tried to appear more casual.   Suddenly Sarah whispered, “He’s coming!”

            We peeked out around the edge as he walked out of the building and looked around, a confused look spreading across his face.   Rather than laughing and calling out our names, knowing we had hidden somewhere nearby, as we had predicted, he proceeded to stop in the middle of the path and stare around aimlessly.   Making sad puppy dog eyes, he scanned the area and then sat down on a bench and twiddled his thumbs.   Feeling horrible, we came out of hiding and walked over only to be told, “I thought you really left me here.”

            We began walking back towards the buses when we realized we had no idea where the buses actually were.   It slowly dawned on us that we were lost.   We walked down the street, changed our minds as the surroundings failed to become familiar, only to have the same problem when we walked in the other direction.   After about fifteen minutes of this aimless wandering I stopped and yelled, “Wait!   I found it!” looking at a familiar street sign.   We found our way back rather quickly after that and it was far less exciting than any other story we had heard about being lost in a foreign country.   While we were fortunate enough to avoid being mugged or accidentally finding our way into a brothel or bar filled with drug dealers, we also failed to discover any secret passageways, or hidden creatures of the underworld.   I guess not everything you see in the movies is true; go figure.

July 12

            I decided to go to school with Sebine and see her classes, so I woke up at six o’clock and stumbled down the stairs.   I walked into the kitchen and greeted my host mother, then yawned, stretched, and covered my eyes against the blinding sun coming in the window.

            While she spoke very little English, she looked up at me and said “The sun is hell, yes?”

            I laughed, sat down, and began to put some Nutella on a roll; something that would become my new favorite treat when I returned home.   A moment later I looked up to see my host mother creeping through the room toward the counter with a fly swatter held high in her hand, looking for all the world like Steve Irwin sneaking up on an alligator.   With a short cry like a karate master, she leapt across the remaining distance and brought the fly swatter streaming down through the air and onto the counter top.   She then lifted up the fly swatter, smiled, and proceeded to scoop whatever it was she had killed in the garbage pail.   She then took a sponge and began scrubbing the spot happily.   As she did this she turned and glanced at me, then looked back as I was staring at her, open-mouthed.

            Feeling the need to explain herself, she looked at me and said, “The flies, they bite.”   Then, pointing to the garbage where she had disposed of the body, “That one?   No.”   She turned back to her work and after a moment I shrugged and went back to eating breakfast just as Sebine came down the stairs, stretching and yawning.

July 13

            After a sad good-bye, we parted from our host families and boarded the bus to the Munich airport.   From there, we flew to London, switched planes, and began flying back to J.F.K.   I was seated next to Sarah and Justin was in front of us.   As Sarah and I gossiped and giggled, Justin began to feel a bit left out so he took my seat and I sat in his lap as the three of us played hang man on the television screen in front of us.   As we began playing we noticed that, rather than sentences, the game only asked for single words like “kitten,” and “puppy.”    “Why are these so easy?” we wondered.   Shortly after that we discovered we had been playing it on the kindergarten level and changed it accordingly.   After what felt like the longest flight of my life, we finally arrived in J.F.K., only to find our luggage was once again conspicuously missing.

            Overall, the trip was one of the best experiences of my life.   When friends and relatives asked me afterwards, “What was your favorite part?” I found it difficult to come up with a response.   I could think of lots of fun things I had done but none of them stuck out in my mind as being the overall best.   After much consideration of this, I realized that the things I remembered and enjoyed most were not the places I went or the things I did, but the people I went with and the laughs we had.   More than half of the fun we had was right in our hotel rooms, which look the same no matter where you are.   While travel is great for broadening your horizons and exposing you to new culture, there’s a lot to be said for the people right next door.

40.h. Shoveling for Mrs. Camingay

One winter, Ryan and his two friends Steven and Ray decided they were going to shovel driveways for money.   After marching all over town looking for someone who would give them a job, they ended up next door shoveling for our 90 year old neighbor, Mrs. Camingay.   They shoveled for hours and received a quarter each.   Then Ray dropped his in the snow and couldn’t find it, so they made a total of 50 cents for shoveling her whole driveway, sidewalk, and porch.   They came in looking dejected after dark and told my father the story.   He laughed.