Long time, no LJ
Well, it's been a really, really long time since I've posted. Anyway, here we go. I'm back in Santa Cruz now, staying with Rebecca while I search for a job. Back, as in back from three months backpacking in Europe (at the end of this post, I'll copy the two emails I sent to most/some/all of you just in case). In other news, I think I'll have an interview with the State Bar of CA in San Francisco next week for an office clerk sort of position. That would be sweet. Rebecca and I worked our most of our issues in Europe and although we're not looking forward to it, living apart is the best thing for us if we want to stay together (which we both do). A friend just invited us up to the Russian river this weekend and that would be rad. Also, I convinced my dad to give me frequent flyer miles to India to visit another friend later in the year, also rad. OK, email from Europe time, and then I'll give a brief description of what we did after the second (last) email.
Email 1
-----------------------------
Date: Apr 3, 2003
Subject: ¡Hola a todos! (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Oppose the War)
first things first: you´re getting this email because you found your way onto
my list of people who might want to get occasional updates about our (Nathan
Cardozo and Rebecca Kline) 3-month, post-grad trip to europe. if you got on
this list by mistake, just email me and i´ll take you off. please excuse the
punctuation and spelling; those take time, the internet´s not free and these
european keyboards are strange.
now that that´s out of the way, we´re having a fantastic time. we started in
paris two weeks ago where we spent six nights. we saw all the standard toursit
sights (the eiffel tower, the arc d'triumph, the champs elysees, the louvre,
versaille, notre dame, sacre cours, the musée rodin, the musée picaso, etc.,
etc., etc.) and generally had a great time. then a night in chartes, a night
in bordeaux, a night in san sebastian in basque country in spain, a night on
the night train to madrid, a night in madrid, and two nights in sevilla,
travelling by train the whole way (thanks mom and dad for that eurail pass; it
will in fact save quite a bit of money). now, i´m writting this from an
internet cafe in granada where we´re staying with my friend from high school,
jordan barbakow, for a few days.
yesterday, my mother asked what the highlights of the trip have been so far and
i couldn´t give her a straight answer. every single day has been a highlight.
paris was fantastic: really a city that i could get used to. everyone was
super friendly towards us and even though it wasn´t cheap and we´re on a tight
budget, we had a GREAT time. the hostel we stayed at was a really nice place
in clichy, just outside of the city, but 100 feet from a metro stop. we could
have spent twice as long as we spent in paris and seen only half of what we
wanted, but we made the best of it. then on to chartes, a small but fun town
totally dominated by the cathedral. bordeax, as a city, was prettly sleazy,
but we had a nice time anyway.
our first two days in spain were in san sebastain, just over the border on the
coast. a stunning basque city with a fantastic bay and truly amazing tapas
(spanish appetizer-style tidbits). madrid suprised us with a metro (subway)
system better than paris or new york and the sheer amount of pedestrian
traffic. we went to a chocolatería and had chocolate con churros (think
dipping plain donut sticks in to molten heaven). then a high speed, tgv-style
train to sevilla though two hours of stunning countryside at 150+ mph.
sevilla (seville) was as stunning as anything else so far and two nights in the
labyrinthine bario santa cruz (the 13th century jewish getto) wasn´t enough.
the cathedral (the biggest in europe) with its moorish giralda (a 900 year old,
300 foot spire that was once part of the biggest mosque in the world), a tiny
600-year old church in the same block as our hotel (which houses murillo´s
¨last supper¨), the alcázar (which was closed the two days we were there for
the filming of some french tv show, but looked amazing from the top of the
giralda), etc. i guess what i´m trying to say is that sevilla was amazing.
then on to granada. whereas chartes is dominated by its cathedral, granada is
dominated by the alhambra (an imense moorish palace) where we´re going an hour
from now. granada is, of course, amazing, and it´s good to see a friend from
home. yesterday (my birthday) we went to the arabic baths and jordan had a bbq
on the roof of his friend´s house (in the albaicín-the only remaining moorish
neighborhood in europe, the paricular roof in question with a picture perfect
view of both the alhambra and the cathedral) for me.
the war. as you well know, opposition to the war is nearly 99% here, but the
attitudes towards americans don´t really seem any the worse for ware.
interestingly, unlike anti-war sentiment in the US and unlike how the european
opposition is portrayed in the US, it´s not at all an emotional argument;
rather the opposition is much more of a reasoned argument (i.e. really, what
the heck does the US think it´s doing?). anyway, we´re fine, staying safe
isn´t a problem and the local attitudes towards us have been, overwhelmingly
friendly.
ok, that´s all for now. on saturday, we´re headed to barcelona, and then off
to the french riviera to spend a week with a friend of rebecca´s at her villa
outside montpillier. i hope you all are having as good a time as we are
(hahaha) and i´ll write again soon.
love,
nathan
ps, once again, please excuse typos, etc. just pretend they´re not really
there.
Email 2
-----------------------------
Date: May 11, 2003
Subject: Hello All (from Amsterdam)
well, it's been a while since my last email to you all (over a month now), and
I figured that an update was overdue. this is in fact the third time i've
written this particular update, the previous two times being deleted by
inopportune computer crashes. once again, this is nate cardozo, still bumming
around europe with rebecca, and this is the second in a series of somewhat
infrequent group-emails from the road. capitalization and, more importantly,
spelling will please be overlooked. (*NB: this email was written over the
course of theree sessions at three different internet cafes in three countries,
so it might be a bit long)
when i last wrote, i had just celebrated my 22nd birthday in granada, spain,
with my friend from high school, jordan barbakow. we were wrapping up an
amazing 4 days with him and headed to barcelona. needless to say, barcelona
was simply amazing and the day and a half (!!) that we had planned there was
not enough to do much more than glance at gaudi's sagrada familia and take a
swim in the olympic pool. we decided that we needed more time in b-town (as
max calls it), and we will be returing on 8-May.
from b-town, rebecca's friend fanny's (belgian names for you) vacation home in
languedoc in the countryside 1-hour outside of montpiller was the next stop.
jordan had been planning on coming up to visit us in this idylic rest stop (or
mansion), but his plans were foiled by a
falling-off-a-balcony-at-2am-and-having-one's-dad-come-from-the-States-to-bring-you-home-so-you-can-spend-your-3-months-in-the-hospital-in-the-US-rather-than-Spain
incident (poor jordan, get better soon!). anyway, the south of france IS in
fact all it's made out to be, and we had a great time.
from there, dijon (oui! le moutarde!) was the next stop, with me driving
fanny's tiny renault clio the entire way (ps, never drive in france), including
a side trip to the pont du gard in avingon (those romans...). dijon surprised
us both with its fantastically walkable streets, friendly atmosphere and lack
of stupid american tourists. after two days, and five jars of mustard, it was
time to head to switzerland and its capital, bern, to spend 3 days with another
of rebecca's friends (jessica).
switzerland is truly splendid. i'm sure you have a mental picture of
switzerland: tiny picturesque villages nesteled between cow studded hills,
wrapped in forests, overlooked by shining snow capped alps, on the shores of
glass-clear lakes... well, forget all of your silly mental pictures: the place
is 10x as pretty. really. we saw bern, interlaken, thun, luzern, fribourg,
montreux and geneve, and all were well worth the exorbitant cost of living
(although fribourg was probably my favorite).
from switzerland we went to wien (vienna), home of sacher torte (very, very
tasty) and the bones of 4000 plague victims in the catacombs (too bad they
don't let you take pictures down there), for three days. at the albertina (one
of vienna's ten million art museums) there was an edvard munch exhibition with
ALL of his important works. amazing.
next, munich, home of beer gardens galore, for three more days. the second day
in munich, however we took a day trip to dachau--something i'll never forget.
we both knew what to expect, but it was still much more emotionally intense
than either of us were expecting. the irish tourguide for the (free) english
language tour was VERY good and the 2 hour tour was emotionally exhausting.
there really is no way to describe what dachau is like.
then three days in heidelberg--my favorite city in germany. a really friendly
studenty feel, due to the university based there (oldest in germany), and set
in a magnificent valley under an amazing red stone castle, heidelberg is
fantastic. two day trips from heidelberg: one hiking in the black forest (a
VERY schwartz wald, if you ask me), and one to stutgart for the mineral baths
(including an authentic sweedish sauna--no clothes allowed) and the mercedes
museum.
amsterdam. wow. stayed in the very worst hostel/hotel/idon´tknowwhat that
we´ve yet stayed in, center of the red light district, and paid more than we´ve
yet paid for a room. for those of you who haven´t been there, a good way to
imagine amsterdam is to think of vegas, and then remove all of the kid-friendly
stuff, and drop in a bunch of prostitutes and weed. saw the heinekin brewerey,
walked around, but we litterally couldn´t afford to do anything else.
OK, i´m running out of time AGAIN in this damn internet cafe so i´ll wrap it up
quick. in barcelona again (what a town) after seeing rebecca´s friend fanny in
belgium and monet´s house in giverny outside paris. having a great time,
headed to provance next week and then italy and finally scandanavia.
this trip is such that i think i´ll have the travel bug for the rest of my
life.
see you all in june, and i´ll try to write more often,
-nate
-------------------------------
OK, now as to what we did after Barcelona? Wow. Spent a week in Provance, got caught in Nimes (where they filmed the chace scene Ronin in the best preserved Roman coloseum in the world, much better, although smaller than the one in Rome) during a French railroad strike, saw Nice (where the topless hotties were both topless and hot), Lyon, then over the alps to Turin, Milan and Ferrara. Saw Venice (worth seeing once, but the whole city's a giant turist trap and just as fake as the one in Las Vegas), met up with my parents for a few days in Florence. Then Rome, one of the nicest cities in Italy. Then flew to Berlin and had a fantastic time there. I said Heidleburg (sp?) was my fav in Germany, but that was before I saw Berlin. Then Copenhagen to visit Rebecca's friend there. I was underwhelmed with Denmark, but we went to Gothenburg, Sweden next, which I loved. Then Stockholm then flew to Paris then Home. Wow. Whirlwind trip. Where would I go back to? Not Italy. I know all of you don't share this opinion, but Italians make Italy intolerable. I'd go to Spain in a flash. I could spend a month in Andalucia easily. Germany was wonderful too. A week hiking in the Black Forest would not have been enough, etc. etc. etc... We never made it to London or the UK, which is too bad. For now though, I'll be content knowing that I'll most likeley get my ass to India in November.
That's all for now.
nate
Email 1
-----------------------------
Date: Apr 3, 2003
Subject: ¡Hola a todos! (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Oppose the War)
first things first: you´re getting this email because you found your way onto
my list of people who might want to get occasional updates about our (Nathan
Cardozo and Rebecca Kline) 3-month, post-grad trip to europe. if you got on
this list by mistake, just email me and i´ll take you off. please excuse the
punctuation and spelling; those take time, the internet´s not free and these
european keyboards are strange.
now that that´s out of the way, we´re having a fantastic time. we started in
paris two weeks ago where we spent six nights. we saw all the standard toursit
sights (the eiffel tower, the arc d'triumph, the champs elysees, the louvre,
versaille, notre dame, sacre cours, the musée rodin, the musée picaso, etc.,
etc., etc.) and generally had a great time. then a night in chartes, a night
in bordeaux, a night in san sebastian in basque country in spain, a night on
the night train to madrid, a night in madrid, and two nights in sevilla,
travelling by train the whole way (thanks mom and dad for that eurail pass; it
will in fact save quite a bit of money). now, i´m writting this from an
internet cafe in granada where we´re staying with my friend from high school,
jordan barbakow, for a few days.
yesterday, my mother asked what the highlights of the trip have been so far and
i couldn´t give her a straight answer. every single day has been a highlight.
paris was fantastic: really a city that i could get used to. everyone was
super friendly towards us and even though it wasn´t cheap and we´re on a tight
budget, we had a GREAT time. the hostel we stayed at was a really nice place
in clichy, just outside of the city, but 100 feet from a metro stop. we could
have spent twice as long as we spent in paris and seen only half of what we
wanted, but we made the best of it. then on to chartes, a small but fun town
totally dominated by the cathedral. bordeax, as a city, was prettly sleazy,
but we had a nice time anyway.
our first two days in spain were in san sebastain, just over the border on the
coast. a stunning basque city with a fantastic bay and truly amazing tapas
(spanish appetizer-style tidbits). madrid suprised us with a metro (subway)
system better than paris or new york and the sheer amount of pedestrian
traffic. we went to a chocolatería and had chocolate con churros (think
dipping plain donut sticks in to molten heaven). then a high speed, tgv-style
train to sevilla though two hours of stunning countryside at 150+ mph.
sevilla (seville) was as stunning as anything else so far and two nights in the
labyrinthine bario santa cruz (the 13th century jewish getto) wasn´t enough.
the cathedral (the biggest in europe) with its moorish giralda (a 900 year old,
300 foot spire that was once part of the biggest mosque in the world), a tiny
600-year old church in the same block as our hotel (which houses murillo´s
¨last supper¨), the alcázar (which was closed the two days we were there for
the filming of some french tv show, but looked amazing from the top of the
giralda), etc. i guess what i´m trying to say is that sevilla was amazing.
then on to granada. whereas chartes is dominated by its cathedral, granada is
dominated by the alhambra (an imense moorish palace) where we´re going an hour
from now. granada is, of course, amazing, and it´s good to see a friend from
home. yesterday (my birthday) we went to the arabic baths and jordan had a bbq
on the roof of his friend´s house (in the albaicín-the only remaining moorish
neighborhood in europe, the paricular roof in question with a picture perfect
view of both the alhambra and the cathedral) for me.
the war. as you well know, opposition to the war is nearly 99% here, but the
attitudes towards americans don´t really seem any the worse for ware.
interestingly, unlike anti-war sentiment in the US and unlike how the european
opposition is portrayed in the US, it´s not at all an emotional argument;
rather the opposition is much more of a reasoned argument (i.e. really, what
the heck does the US think it´s doing?). anyway, we´re fine, staying safe
isn´t a problem and the local attitudes towards us have been, overwhelmingly
friendly.
ok, that´s all for now. on saturday, we´re headed to barcelona, and then off
to the french riviera to spend a week with a friend of rebecca´s at her villa
outside montpillier. i hope you all are having as good a time as we are
(hahaha) and i´ll write again soon.
love,
nathan
ps, once again, please excuse typos, etc. just pretend they´re not really
there.
Email 2
-----------------------------
Date: May 11, 2003
Subject: Hello All (from Amsterdam)
well, it's been a while since my last email to you all (over a month now), and
I figured that an update was overdue. this is in fact the third time i've
written this particular update, the previous two times being deleted by
inopportune computer crashes. once again, this is nate cardozo, still bumming
around europe with rebecca, and this is the second in a series of somewhat
infrequent group-emails from the road. capitalization and, more importantly,
spelling will please be overlooked. (*NB: this email was written over the
course of theree sessions at three different internet cafes in three countries,
so it might be a bit long)
when i last wrote, i had just celebrated my 22nd birthday in granada, spain,
with my friend from high school, jordan barbakow. we were wrapping up an
amazing 4 days with him and headed to barcelona. needless to say, barcelona
was simply amazing and the day and a half (!!) that we had planned there was
not enough to do much more than glance at gaudi's sagrada familia and take a
swim in the olympic pool. we decided that we needed more time in b-town (as
max calls it), and we will be returing on 8-May.
from b-town, rebecca's friend fanny's (belgian names for you) vacation home in
languedoc in the countryside 1-hour outside of montpiller was the next stop.
jordan had been planning on coming up to visit us in this idylic rest stop (or
mansion), but his plans were foiled by a
falling-off-a-balcony-at-2am-and-having-one's-dad-come-from-the-States-to-bring-you-home-so-you-can-spend-your-3-months-in-the-hospital-in-the-US-rather-than-Spain
incident (poor jordan, get better soon!). anyway, the south of france IS in
fact all it's made out to be, and we had a great time.
from there, dijon (oui! le moutarde!) was the next stop, with me driving
fanny's tiny renault clio the entire way (ps, never drive in france), including
a side trip to the pont du gard in avingon (those romans...). dijon surprised
us both with its fantastically walkable streets, friendly atmosphere and lack
of stupid american tourists. after two days, and five jars of mustard, it was
time to head to switzerland and its capital, bern, to spend 3 days with another
of rebecca's friends (jessica).
switzerland is truly splendid. i'm sure you have a mental picture of
switzerland: tiny picturesque villages nesteled between cow studded hills,
wrapped in forests, overlooked by shining snow capped alps, on the shores of
glass-clear lakes... well, forget all of your silly mental pictures: the place
is 10x as pretty. really. we saw bern, interlaken, thun, luzern, fribourg,
montreux and geneve, and all were well worth the exorbitant cost of living
(although fribourg was probably my favorite).
from switzerland we went to wien (vienna), home of sacher torte (very, very
tasty) and the bones of 4000 plague victims in the catacombs (too bad they
don't let you take pictures down there), for three days. at the albertina (one
of vienna's ten million art museums) there was an edvard munch exhibition with
ALL of his important works. amazing.
next, munich, home of beer gardens galore, for three more days. the second day
in munich, however we took a day trip to dachau--something i'll never forget.
we both knew what to expect, but it was still much more emotionally intense
than either of us were expecting. the irish tourguide for the (free) english
language tour was VERY good and the 2 hour tour was emotionally exhausting.
there really is no way to describe what dachau is like.
then three days in heidelberg--my favorite city in germany. a really friendly
studenty feel, due to the university based there (oldest in germany), and set
in a magnificent valley under an amazing red stone castle, heidelberg is
fantastic. two day trips from heidelberg: one hiking in the black forest (a
VERY schwartz wald, if you ask me), and one to stutgart for the mineral baths
(including an authentic sweedish sauna--no clothes allowed) and the mercedes
museum.
amsterdam. wow. stayed in the very worst hostel/hotel/idon´tknowwhat that
we´ve yet stayed in, center of the red light district, and paid more than we´ve
yet paid for a room. for those of you who haven´t been there, a good way to
imagine amsterdam is to think of vegas, and then remove all of the kid-friendly
stuff, and drop in a bunch of prostitutes and weed. saw the heinekin brewerey,
walked around, but we litterally couldn´t afford to do anything else.
OK, i´m running out of time AGAIN in this damn internet cafe so i´ll wrap it up
quick. in barcelona again (what a town) after seeing rebecca´s friend fanny in
belgium and monet´s house in giverny outside paris. having a great time,
headed to provance next week and then italy and finally scandanavia.
this trip is such that i think i´ll have the travel bug for the rest of my
life.
see you all in june, and i´ll try to write more often,
-nate
-------------------------------
OK, now as to what we did after Barcelona? Wow. Spent a week in Provance, got caught in Nimes (where they filmed the chace scene Ronin in the best preserved Roman coloseum in the world, much better, although smaller than the one in Rome) during a French railroad strike, saw Nice (where the topless hotties were both topless and hot), Lyon, then over the alps to Turin, Milan and Ferrara. Saw Venice (worth seeing once, but the whole city's a giant turist trap and just as fake as the one in Las Vegas), met up with my parents for a few days in Florence. Then Rome, one of the nicest cities in Italy. Then flew to Berlin and had a fantastic time there. I said Heidleburg (sp?) was my fav in Germany, but that was before I saw Berlin. Then Copenhagen to visit Rebecca's friend there. I was underwhelmed with Denmark, but we went to Gothenburg, Sweden next, which I loved. Then Stockholm then flew to Paris then Home. Wow. Whirlwind trip. Where would I go back to? Not Italy. I know all of you don't share this opinion, but Italians make Italy intolerable. I'd go to Spain in a flash. I could spend a month in Andalucia easily. Germany was wonderful too. A week hiking in the Black Forest would not have been enough, etc. etc. etc... We never made it to London or the UK, which is too bad. For now though, I'll be content knowing that I'll most likeley get my ass to India in November.
That's all for now.
nate