italian taralli and pizzelle, i'm gonna say better homemade.

and i know this because i recently bought some of each and was not as impressed. i think the biggest issue with them was simply not crunchy enough.

anyway, as some of you may have recognized my posting trend has been pretty much as upside down and backwards as can be. this is because both: i have been very busy with school, and that we had our second break! now luckily for you, i already know that "busy with school" needs to go no further than that and i'll pretty much just focus on the break. unfortunately i won't break it down like last time but i can just about recall everything that went on. allora andiamo!

at the beginning of the break we went to tuscany/florence area. well, to be fair the very beginning of break was halloween, which i naturally celebrated to its fullest. this, as always, resulted in my sleeping pretty much the entire drive to that area (a solid 3ish hours? who knows, non me importa). but what was pretty funny was the italian way of dressing up for halloween. they did a lot of generic costumes, the most common being -- bloody guy.

this consists of wearing a white shirt, then putting fake blood on it and yourself. done. real creative guys, realllll creative. that or my other favorite: 'non-continuity costume guy' which was a puma sweatshirt, hood up, wearing an alien mask and a freddy krueger glove. hey is that alien freddy krueger? awesome! and this, mind you, were the italians who dressed up. a good 75% of them didn't at all, instead they dressed like always. great spirit guys. i however went as a devil with some cheap face paint i bought next to the metro shop, yahtzee! of course it came at a price when it left splotchy red marks the next day just in time to go to florence with.

however (italian: comunque), to be technical, we started in rome seeing what there is to see (not much of anything, right? WRONG! we left many a stone unturned before the full fiek force had to leave). we also went to the vatican/st. peter's where we climbed the duomo, saw my dad trip on a step -- make enough commotion in the process to turn heads, and the sistine chapel. all went well, even our fiek travel tradition of generally skipping lunch, awesome.

so, our break started in the quite cold, somewhat more northern, area of tuscany. like last break, i packed the morning of (this is the second time i've done this, both times turned out just 'ok' -- try to avoid it) and left out one or two essentials. this time it was a second outer layer and boy was i cold! but i made it through it and learned my lesson about what i should definitely bring to berlin later on in the week.

back to tuscany, we toured around the wine country in our rented fiat. we ate panforte (actually not bad for that many candied/dried fruits in one place -- you know who's not a panettone fan? this guy!). apart from visitng the cinghiale (which, as a symbol of florence, is essentially a boar), we also visited some rad florentine sites, revisiting one of my favorite sets of stairs to get winded on, and ate (more) highly indulgent meats. i shouldn't love veal as much as i do, but more on that later.

after florence, we came back to rome -- after enduring a longer-feeling-than-duration car trip, where i overdid it on nutella and felt sub-par the rest of the night. after checking into the 'eco-hotel' i hopped on a bus, in the pouring rain, to get back to my apartment to re-pack before berlin. after florence i needed proper winter clothing for berlin.

but in true alex form (it's starting to become a trend) i had some bizarre adventure the night before our departure. so after taking the bus to the end of the line, then kind of sticking my head out of the window, in the rain, i got to the metro. then took that (it was the second to last stop!) back to my area to grab stuff. thank GOD the rain stopped when i was heading back because little did i know i had quite the walk ahead of me.

after getting off the metro (on my way back to the hotel) it was nearly midnight. now midnight in bus time means that the bus comes once an hour, on fewer routes -- it's appropriately named the 'night bus.' so i missed the first one on account of it not going my direction, options are limited when you're OUTSIDE of the aurelian walls -- meaning quite far from the city center aka my apt. now my options were hanging till 1 (after finding a stop to help me) orrrr walking to the hotel.

so i did what anyone else would, and calculated some rough timing estimates as i hung out under mcdonald's light telling people you can still get food from the side window as i read my map. i figured in at most 45 min i could get pretty damn far, and that's still 15 min before the bus would arrive. and just like that i was off walkin. after roughly 40, i did in fact not only get a sweet tour of the aurelian wall (due to me walking along them) but i also made it to the hotel. take that night bus! and was quickly to bed before our flight the next morning.

we awoke and after our breakfast, went to wait at the airport. upon finally boarding and, naturally, getting back some sleep mid-flight we were ready for our in-flight snack. ham sandwich? "aw man, if this is anything like the flight to canada this sandwich is gonna rock!" and you know what? berlin is nothing like canada. a 'ham' (it looked more like bologna and tasted more like nothing) sandwich is german for 'ham and butter sandwich that tastes like cream cheese and is on nearly-pita bread' which is alex for 'not getting eaten.'

after arriving we were warmly greeted by jurgen and brigitte who are the brother and brother's wife of my grandfather. actually, i should say i personally was greeted by jurgen's awesome bowtie, THEN by the pair. we were actually staying in the nearby city of wannsee (which believe it or not is not pronounced 'vahn-sie' -- like onesie but with a vah- prefixing it) which was in the forest. a forest which looked frightening both the night we arrived and essentially every other time. of course this may be attributed to the wild pigs that roam (rome?) these forests, at least 1500 of em in fact, but the jury's still out.

so after touring around wannsee and seeing a bit of fiek family history, we had a great first dinner. i opted for the schnitzel, which is as good as the name is fun to say. after further wannsee and potsdam touring we had coffee and cake at the relative's and the next day we were off to berlin.

berlin was fantastic, as a modern city, but not as rad as a charming city of yore. this, naturally, is due to rebuilding after the war and there are enough leftovers to remind of what once was. including parts of the wall and the holocaust memorial.

but on a brighter note, it was still flooded with sausage! we tried the local go-to 'curry wurst' which tasted like sausage in watered-down barbecue sauce, and a bratwurst of course. we also had a soft pretzel. i loved them all. we later had some very posh cake in a very upscale store which was rumored to house over 1000 types of sausage. at least that's what we were told, but whether or not 1000 types or just 1000 sausages was the claim, that's a mystery yet to be solved. certainly not 1000 types though. also, berlin was not as cold as i expected and apart from some wind chill the weather was gorgeous with plenty of fall foliage and colors. che bellissima!

anyway, that was the trip, i got back to a paper that needed writing and no groceries. luckily a few of my favorite dj's are coming to rome so i'll get that work done ahead of time in order to go see them play! also, peter was kind enough to upload pictures onto the picasa so tutto va bene when it comes to that (and captions!). until next time, hopefully sooner than later, baci e ciao ciao!


*side note, there was an article recently released about part of a corpse being sold to a kebab stand in russia, no comment on whether or not customers were served. now i'm not saying i'd buy ANY food off the street in russia, but at least now i know where it's coming from, right?

*side note, i may or may not have eaten fried brain. when you get a "fritta mista" it's just that, a fried mix, and if a little grey ball is in there it could be brain. all the signs point to it however i'm not convinced because it was supposed to be vegetarian, so i think it's best left unknown.