Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 12:49 PM
Subject: Alex Flachsbart’s–Ramsey Great Ideas Tour
So from Amsterdam I set off for Frankfurt to visit my cousin who works at the American consulate there. Five hours after I left Amsterdam Centraal, I was wandering through the halls of Frankfurt Hauptbanhof – and enjoying myself immensely. I’ve always wanted to visit Germany, and to finally get there was quite a cool thing indeed. I speak enough French to get by and a bit of German (definitely no Dutch – I don’t think Dutch is a real language anyway; it just looks like German with a bunch of random J’s thrown in to confuse tourists trying to navigate Belgium and Holland), so it was quite cool to have finally arrived in a place I’ve wanted to visit. My cousin lives in the American compound in uptown Frankfurt (not by choice- she, like me, would much rather be hanging with the locals than living in what amounts to a small Midwest village transplanted to Germany), so – for the first time in 10 days – I heard nothing but English spoken for the entire time I wandered around the base. I didn’t stay to appreciate the scenery too long, though; after a night of rest and relaxation, I was back on the rails again, this time on the night train to Florence where I planned to surprise Elizabeth for her 20th birthday. (Those of you at the dinner will remember her as the lovely lady sitting with my family, and for those of you who couldn’t make it and didn’t meet her, trust me, the train trip was completely worth it). So after chatting with this really cool Italian poet until about five in the morning, I finally fell asleep, only to wake up about an hour later to some of the most gorgeous scenery I’ve ever laid eyes on. If I get a chance this trip, I’m going to head back to the Italian Lake District, because the brief glimpses I saw from the speeding train more than assured me that this place was worth at least a day or two. I arrived safe and sound in Florence a few hours later and, after some difficulty in actually finding the apartment where she and her fellow Florentine study-abroad participants were staying, I walked in singing “Happy Birthday” with a dozen Dutch tulips in hand. Yeah. Carrying those across the Alps was a hassle, but completely worth it in the end. So I bummed around Florence for the day, had dinner at a Mom and Pop Italian restaurant (that, actually, was my real reason for the trip down- I haven’t had truly good Italian food in months, and I had a mad craving for some good bolognese), and arose the next morning to head off with them on a quick trip to Siena. Now I’ve been to Florence before, but I’d never been to Tuscany, and I must say that after this trip, I think I’m going to retire there. We wound up finding a hostel outside of town that was – and I’m dead serious about this – an authentic, ten bedroom Tuscan villa, complete with gardens, orchards, vineyards, and wheat fields as far as the eye could see. For thirty euro a night. OK, so I wound up getting a cot set up on cinderblocks in a closet adjacent to the gal’s room (all of them, of course, got like four-poster beds and had frescoes on the ceiling…), but believe me when I say that I wasn’t complaining. The hostel was about twenty minutes outside of Siena by bus in the picturesque village of San Rocco a Pili, where no one spoke English but they loved us because we at least tried to communicate in broken Italian and French. We all sat out in the fields and drank homemade Chianti (which the hostel matron supplied us with upon check-in) while watching the sun set. Something tells me Dr. Ramsey would have loved it.
But no great thing can last forever, so I hopped on a train that night and headed back to Frankfurt, where after sleeping in until about 11:00, I find myself sitting here at my cousin’s computer, finally completing the trip update. I wish I could give y’all a prize for making it this far in the email. Maybe I’ll pay for those of you who didn’t get a GIT to stay the night at our Italian villa/hostel. There we go.
In any case, I’ll be here in Frankfurt until Friday, then I’m off to Prague, Munich, and a John Harris visit in Wien (where I’m sure you’ll be getting the next chapter in my version of War and Peace).
Thanks again to all for the thoughts, suggestions, and prayers, and rest assured that I’ll talk to you all again soon!
Yours,
Alex
