Brno and Dolni Vestonice

I made it to Brno by Sunday afternoon. Let me tell you, first-class train travel is THE way to go. I can't afford to do it again, but man, it was niiiice. I had a private cabin all to myself with my very own private bathroom (including a shower!) I had plenty of room to stretch out and in the morning they even gave me breakfast. I took lots of goofy pictures of myself checking out the bathroom and being all happy about it, but I'd feel way too embarrassed to post them here for the world to see. Those of you who have to love me no matter how silly I act can see them when I get home :)

On Monday I wandered around Brno. Unfortunately, Monday is the day that most places in Europe (museums, exhibits, Cathedral towers, etc.) are closed to the public. Here are some pictures of Brno:

This is the main square in the old town:





This is the cabbage market:



Here is the Old Town Hall:



A close-up of the Cathedral:



Today I went to a little town called Dolni Vestonice to visit the Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research. Dolni Vestonice is approximately 35 km southwest of Brno. Dr. Svoboda happened to be driving back and forth to Dolni Vestonice from Brno today, so he graciously gave me and my ShapeCam a lift both ways. This is what the Centre looks like:





The inside of the building is really beautiful. They painted cave art-like images of ice-age mammals on some of the walls and ceilings inside. Very cool.

The town of Dolni Vestonice is very small and I didn't see many people out and about when I went in search of lunch. I found a small restaurant, and, since I can't read Czech to save my life (although I learned the Czech word for beer immediately after arriving; it's pivo), I just asked the waitress to surprise me. I think I ate chicken.

Here are some pictures of the town of Dolni Vestonice:





Tomorrow I may take the train up to Kutna Hora to see the Kostnice bone church. I also want to check out a few places in Brno, such as Gregor Mendel's original pea garden (so cool!) and the Capuchin crypt (both were closed yesterday). On Thursday I visit the Anthropos Institute here in Brno.

Thessaloniki

I'm back from my very quick trip to Thessaloniki. I'm glad that it'll be over a month until I have to get on another plane. I've got one more complaint to add to my rant: people who get on flights wearing really stronge perfume or cologne. I think that in addition to the x-ray and metal detector machines, there should be some sort of sniff test you need to pass before being allowed to get on the plane. If you're wearing enough perfume to gas a small village, you should be hosed down prior to boarding.

The flights to and from Greece (4 in total) were very turbulenty. Not fun. I hate when planes go through turbulence. I also hate when they take off. Or when they turn. Or fly.

This is what Greece looks like from the sky:



And this is what Canada looks like to the Athens airport!:



Here's a closer look:



Look at the distance between Niagara Falls and the CN Tower! I never knew that the Falls were actually in Manitoba. And apparently there's nothing interesting east of Quebec! (Sorry M ;) Hahaha.

My visit to the university in Thessaloniki went well. The equipment survived another flight (so happy), and everyone in the Dept of Geology were really great and didn't mind me rearranging all the furniture in their paleontology museum to make room for me and my ShapeCam. Here's what the Dept looks like from the outside:



It rained the entire time I was in Greece, clearing up only when my first flight took off. Thessaloniki is a nice city with lots of shopping and lots of nice restaurants along the waterfront. I'm sure it's a lot of fun in warmer, sunnier weather.







Tonight I take the night train up to Vienna and I should arrive in Brno by Sunday afternoon. I'm sad to leave Rome so soon, but I'll be back in Italy soon enough! Ciao ciao!

Yesterday morning I went to the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini to meet with Dr. Bondioli and see my first Neandertal skull (well, the first skull for this trip.) Everything went really well. Dr. Bondioli was super nice. He had looked me up online before my visit and seen my blog entries on visiting Turin earlier this year. (If he's reading this one, buongiorno Dr. Bondioli! Grazie!) He also was generous enough to give me a copy of a big monograph written on the Neandertal fossil I had come to see. It's a beautiful book and I don't want it to get damaged as I travel around. I was thinking of shipping it to myself in IL. Does anyone have any experience shipping books overseas? How expensive is it to do that?



The other day I made it into the Colosseum (it was closed when I tried earlier) and wandered around the Palatine ruins and the Roman forum. (I also ran into my priest again. But I don't think that counts as running into someone I know because I didn't know him before I left.) Rome is very walkable and you can reach most of the important sights by foot. I've walked almost the entire city and may need to invest in new shoes soon (or maybe this is just an excuse to be able to splurge on a pair of lovely new leather boots? ;)







Tomorrow I fly to Thessaloniki for 2 days. Not happy about having to get on another plane again so soon. Grrrr. After Greece, I fly back to Rome and take the train up to Brno (via Vienna). Unfortunately, I waited too long to book my ticket and had to settle for a seat on the overnight train instead of a bed, because all of the beds (except for the very expensive ones) were sold out. The seats aren't very comfortable on long overnight trips. The italian guy who sold me my ticket offered to drive me to Vienna himself. It was a very tempting offer, but in the end I think it would have ended up costing me much more than the train ;)

Roma

I made it to Rome on Friday around noon. It feels like I packed a little lighter this time (which worries me; what did I forget to bring??), so I don't think I'll be complaining as much about all the stuff I have to carry (but don't hold me to that.)

The first thing I did, after making sure the ShapeCam survived intact (whew!) and taking a quick shower, was eat some pizza. The pizza here is gooood. Huge chunks of mozzarella with basil, or eggplant drizzled with a little olive oil...mmm...and cheap too. Very nice. I joked with Nicoletta before I left, saying that Italy was all about pizza and gelato. But so far it's true ;) I haven't had any yet this time, but I've seen people eating gelato everywhere here and at all times (people were eating gelato while waiting in line for the Vatican Museums at 8:30 yesterday morning!!)

My hotel is very close to the Trevi fountain, and so I wandered over to see it after I ate my pizza. I also made it over to the Capuchin cemetery before succumbing to my jet lag. The Capuchin cemetery is not a burial ground for a certain type of New World monkey (like you anthro folk may think), but instead a few rooms in the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione, which are decorated with the skeletal remains of 4000 Capuchin monks. They wouldn't allow any photos to be taken (I think it's because they wanted to sell more postcards.)



Eating gelato at the Trevi fountain:



I crashed very early Friday night and woke up with enough time on Saturday morning to get over to the Vatican Museums before the lines got very long. The Vatican Museums are huge and include Egyptian artifacts, rooms designed by Raphael that were once the private apartment of Pope Julius II, and, of course, the Sistine Chapel. Even first thing in the morning, the Sistine Chapel was packed with tourists. It was very hot in there, and the guards kept yelling at people to be silent: "Silenze!" It was very beautiful, but after having seen so many replicas of all the artwork (and the room itself), I was less impressed than I thought I would have been. Maybe it was all the people bumping into me, or maybe it was the shrieking guards who were making more noise than any of the visitors. (Or maybe I'm just a horribly jaded critic already?)





St. Peter's Basilica was gorgeous. Saw Michelangelo's Pieta, and went into the Vatican grotto and saw where the Popes are buried.







While I was eating my pizza at lunch, I met a guy from San Diego who is here in Rome studying to be a priest. He heard me struggling to order in Italian (this involved me pointing and saying "pizza?" with an Italian accent) and came over and introduced himself. He wasn't as enthused to be in Rome (or to have met the Pope a few times) as I thought a soon-to-be Catholic priest would. I was hesitant to tell him that I study anthropology, but when I did, he told me that what I thought were wax figurines in St. Peter's were the actual dead bodies of past Popes. He said that it was their strong Catholic faith that kept their bodies from decomposing, and that none of the Popes decompose after death because of their faith. Ok. Whatever.

After lunch I wandered over to the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, past the Imperial ruins, and then to the Colosseum. When I was standing outside the Colosseum trying to take a picture of a couple of guys dressed up as gladiators, I was tapped on the shoulder by a former student of mine! I was her osteology TA at UIUC in 2002, and now she's living in Vienna and teaching English. It was my first full day in Europe and I'd already run into somebody I knew! Unbelievable. I told you this happens to me a lot.







I don't have to be at the museum until Monday, so I think I'll wander around Via del Corso and the Villa Borghese today. I'm already well on my way to a severe espresso addiction and I'm fighting all my "OMG, I need to buy those shoes and that leather bag!!!" urges. It's warmer here than I thought it would be at this time of year (the priest said this was unusual weather for November.) I think it's going to get much colder later on during my trip, so I'm going to enjoy this while I can!

Ciao bellas!

Bugaboo 2: Electric Boogaloo

"He who would travel happily must travel light." -- Antoine de St. Exupery

I'm working on it.



Okay bugabooers, here's the itinerary for this round of shapesnatchin'. On Thursday, November 16, I fly to Rome, where my first official stop will be to see a Neandertal skull at the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ("L. Pigorini"). A few days later I'll fly to Thessaloniki, Greece to see the Petralona H. heidelbergensis skull at the Dept. of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. At the end of November I'll travel up to the Czech Republic where I'll visit the Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research in Dolni­ Věstonice (to see these) and the Anthropos Institute at the Moravian Museum in Brno. At the beginning of December I'll be heading over to Austria in order to see some Upper Pleistocene H. sapiens fossils in Vienna at the Naturhistorisches Museum. After Vienna, I'll take the train up to Berlin and visit the Museum fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte in order to see the Le Moustier Neandertal (here's a photo of a cast of the skull.) My last stop will be at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn near the end of December, where I'll get to see some of the original Neandertal fossils.

After Bonn, I'll head back down to Italy and meet up with Pispu in Florence before flying out of Rome!

I'll be flying back to Illinois via Toronto on the 27th of December (with a 7 day stopover :) so all you Toronto people take note! (Oh hey, anyone wanna come pick me up at the airport? Aaron? Mom? Anyone? I'll likely have presents... ;)

After Toronto, I'll spend a week visiting the cast collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in early January.

So that's the plan! Advice, recommendations, suggestions, warnings, etc., are always welcome, so please don't hesitate if you have any!

Oh yeah -- and please keep any available fingers and toes crossed that nothing breaks this time!!!!